‘Life is Strange: Before the Storm’ Launches on macOS September 13

In March, Feral Interactive announced that its latest video game port for macOS would be the adventure game Life is Strange: Before the Storm, and at the time said it would launch in the spring. After a delay, the prequel is set to release next week on Thursday, September 13 on macOS and Linux.

Life is Strange: Before the Storm was originally developed by Deck Nine and published by Square Enix on consoles and PCs in August 2017. The story takes place three years before the events of the original Life is Strange, tracking the friendship between rebellious sixteen-year-old Chloe and a popular schoolmate named Rachel.

Gameplay puts players in the shoes of Chloe as she must make choices that ultimately shape a branching story with multiple endings influenced by every decision. One of the main gameplay hooks of the game is “Backtalk,” which the developers describe as a “risk and reward-based system” in which Chloe uses her wit to provoke NPCs or get her way.

The game requires macOS High Sierra 10.13.5 or higher, an Intel Core i5 2.0 GHz processor, 8GB RAM, and 28GB of hard drive space. Required graphics cards include 1GB Nvidia 650M or better, 2GB AMD Radeon R9 M290 or better, or 1.5GB Intel Iris 5100 or better. The full list of supported Macs can be found below:

• All Mac Minis since Late 2014
• All 13″ MacBook Pros released since 2013
• All 15″ MacBook Pros released since mid 2012 with a 1GB graphics card or better (Mid 2015 models with an AMD 370X are not supported.)
• All 21.5″ iMacs released since late 2013
• All 27″ iMacs released since late 2013 (Late 2012 models with Nvidia 675 or Nvidia 680 graphics are also supported.)
• All 27″ iMac Pros released since late 2017
• All Mac Pros released since late 2013

Life is Strange: Before the Storm includes three episodes that make up the base game, and will also come in a Deluxe Edition that includes all three episodes as well as all available additional content, including the bonus episode “Farewell.” The Deluxe Edition will be priced at $24.82 and is available to pre-order beginning today on the Feral Store.

Tags: Mac App Store, Feral
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Apple Shelves Plans for Apple Pay in India After Facing Regulatory Issues and Technical Hurdles

Apple has temporarily halted plans to launch Apple Pay in India after facing troubles with regulators in the country and a few technical hurdles, according to The Economic Times. Specifically, Apple is said to be concerned about the Reserve Bank of India’s recent data localization rule, which requires companies to store all of their payments data for local users only in India.

Because of this rule, numerous companies — including Apple, Amazon, PayPal, WhatsApp, Visa, and MasterCard — have faced uncertainties regarding the rollout of their respective mobile wallets in India. Apple is said to have gone so far as to meet with a few leading banks and the National Payments Corporation of India, which manages the country’s Unified Payments Interface platform.

In addition, Apple has reportedly encountered a few technical and design hurdles surrounding Apple Pay’s India launch, relating to the inclusion of Touch ID as a mode of authentication for payments in India on supported iPhones. The NPCI did not agree to this plan, because the country’s UPI is based on a six or four-digit passcode to authenticate transactions and does not have support for smartphone-based biometric security features yet.

Following these hurdles, plans as of now have been shelved, according to two people familiar with the matter.

“Apple will not launch payments in India yet. They are waiting to see how the regulatory landscape shapes up,” one of them said.

The Apple Pay news is just the latest in a string of negative reports regarding Apple’s attempt at expansion in India, one month after the company faced a potential legal threat over noncompliance with the Indian government’s anti-spam iPhone app. Otherwise, the company has had trouble in the country due to ever-increasing taxes on imported smartphones, rising iPhone prices because of such taxes, and user frustration with poor Apple services like Apple Maps.

In an attempt to finally rectify these issues, Bloomberg in August reported that Apple is planning a completely revamped India strategy led by Apple executive Michel Coulomb. This includes better and longer-lasting retail deals with higher sales targets, the opening of official Apple retail stores in India, “overhauling” the company’s relationship with independent retailers, and improving apps and services “aimed more closely at Indians.”

Apple Pay was never mentioned as part of that strategy, so it doesn’t appear that users in India will have a chance to use the company’s mobile wallet anytime soon. Otherwise, Apple Pay is available in over two dozen countries, including the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, Singapore, Switzerland, Hong Kong, France, Russia, China, Japan, New Zealand, Spain, Taiwan, Ireland, Italy, Denmark, Finland, Sweden, UAE, Brazil, Ukraine, Norway, and Poland.

Related Roundup: Apple PayTag: India
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Apple Pay Celebrates Football Season With 10% Off Under Armour Orders

With the latest Apple Pay promotion you can get 10 percent off your next order from Under Armour through Wednesday, September 12. If you’re in the United States, you can shop in the Under Armour app and then place your order before next Wednesday to see the discount automatically applied when you check out using Apple Pay.

Apple is promoting the beginning of football season with the new Apple Pay offer, which also points users towards apps like Fanatics, Gametime, and Grubhub, offering sports apparel, tickets, and food respectively.

The last few Apple Pay promotions have included partnerships with Postmates, Nike, StubHub, TGI Fridays, and Adidas. As we enter the fall, users can likely expect some of the same promos we saw last holiday season, potentially including free Postmates subscriptions, savings on Fandango tickets, free Instacart deliveries, and more.

Related Roundup: Apple PayTag: Apple Pay promo
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Apple to Launch a Global Law Enforcement Web Portal by End of 2018

Apple this week announced it will be launching a dedicated web portal for authenticated law enforcement officers to submit lawful requests for data, track requests, and obtain responsive data from the company by the end of 2018.

Photo: Alejandro Mejía Greene via Flickr/Creative Commons
Apple also said it is building a team of professionals dedicated to training law enforcement officers, which the company believes will improve its ability to reach smaller police forces and agencies around the world. This will include the development of an online training module for officers.

The web portal will be available globally as part of Apple’s new Law Enforcement Support Program, which the company detailed on the Government Information Requests page of its privacy website this week.

Apple says the program will allow it to uphold its fundamental commitment to protect the security and privacy of its users:

We believe that law enforcement agencies play a critical role in keeping our society safe and we’ve always maintained that if we have information we will make it available when presented with valid legal process. In recognizing the ongoing digital evidence needs of law enforcement agencies, we have a team of dedicated professionals within our legal department who manage and respond to all legal requests received from law enforcement agencies globally. Our team also responds to emergency requests globally on a 24/7 basis.

We publish legal process guidelines for government and law enforcement agencies globally and we publish transparency reports twice a year detailing the types of requests we receive and how we respond. In addition, we regularly provide training to law enforcement officers on the types of data available from Apple and how to obtain it consistent with our legal process guidelines.

By the end of 2018 we will begin the launch of an online portal for authenticated law enforcement officers globally to submit lawful requests for data, track requests, and obtain responsive data from Apple.

We are building a team of professionals dedicated to training law enforcement officers globally, which will significantly increase our ability to reach smaller police forces and agencies. This will include the development of an online training module for officers. This will assist Apple in training a larger number of law enforcement agencies and officers globally, and ensure that our company’s information and guidance can be updated to reflect the rapidly changing data landscape.

Apple is committed to protecting the security and privacy of our users. The above developments and the work we do to assist investigations uphold this fundamental commitment.

Apple requires law enforcement and government officials to follow applicable laws when requesting customer information and data. If they do, Apple complies by providing the narrowest possible set of data relevant to the request.

That information can include device identifiers, customer service records, and iCloud content such as emails, stored photos, documents, contacts, calendars, bookmarks, Safari browsing history, Apple Maps search history, iMessages backups, and iOS device backups, according to Apple’s guidelines.

Where and when legally required, Apple may also provide basic customer information such as name, physical address, email address, phone number, and IP address, along with customer service records and Find My iPhone logs.

Apple ensures that it has never created a backdoor or master key to any of its products or services, and never will. Perhaps the biggest example of this was Apple’s refusal to create a loophole for the FBI to brute force their way into the passcode-locked iPhone owned by the shooter in the 2015 San Bernardino attack.

Twice per year, Apple publishes a transparency report that outlines how many data-related requests it has received from law enforcement, government, and private party officials, both in the United States and abroad.

In the United States, during the second half of 2017, for example, Apple received 4,450 requests for 15,168 devices. Apple provided data in 3,548 cases, or approximately 80 percent of the time. Worldwide, Apple received a total of 29,718 requests covering 309,362 devices, providing data 79 percent of the time.

Note: Due to the political nature of the discussion regarding this topic, the discussion thread is located in our Politics, Religion, Social Issues forum. All forum members and site visitors are welcome to read and follow the thread, but posting is limited to forum members with at least 100 posts.
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Uber’s upcoming ‘Ride Check’ feature could save your life

Uber has recently been making more of an effort to improve the safety of its service via features that include Trusted Contacts, an in-app panic button, and a new Safety Center section within the app. A recent clash with the authorities in London also prompted Uber to focus more on safety for not only riders but drivers, too.

Now the ridesharing giant is harnessing the technology inside your smartphone for a new feature that aims to detect when an Uber vehicle crashes. For sure, this is a rare event, but when it happens, a speedy arrival by first responders could be the difference between life and death.

Ride Check

Using built-in smartphone sensors such as the accelerometer and gyroscope together with GPS data from hundreds of millions of Uber rides, the new feature, called Ride Check, is able to detect with a high degree of accuracy whether the Uber vehicle you’re riding in has been involved in an accident.

When Ride Check kicks into action, both the rider and the driver will receive an alert to their smartphones asking if they’ve been in a crash. If they have, a number of options come up, including one-tap buttons for 911 and Uber’s safety line. Alternatively, if the ride is going just fine, you can tap another button to let the system know that everything’s OK.

You might believe you’d be perfectly capable of making an emergency call by yourself without any prompt from Uber, but the disorientation than can follow a serious accident means you might not even think about calling 911. And consider this: What if the accident is so serious that neither you nor the driver can respond? If Uber’s notification receives no response,  its safety team will be alerted to the possibility of a serious incident, thereby allowing it to take quick action.

Variations of Uber’s crash-detection technology are already in use. San Francisco-based Zendrive, for example, has been developing the technology for a number of years, while GM’s OnStar system is also designed to automatically contact first responders in the event of a smash.

Ride Check can also alert Uber to potential security issues, too. For example, if the Uber vehicle stops for longer than what appears to be necessary, Ride Check will send a message asking if everything’s all right. Response options include hitting the app’s emergency button or reporting any problem to Uber’s critical safety line.

The Ride Check feature, which is expected to roll out in the next few months, was announced on Wednesday by Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi. Now a year in the job, the former Expedia CEO was hired to help sort out the company after several years of increasingly chaotic leadership under its founder, Travis Kalanick.

Editors’ Recommendations

• Uber is testing a low-fare option that’s great if you’re not in a rush
• Deadly Uber crash was ‘entirely avoidable’ had the driver not been watching Hulu
• Lyft’s self-driving taxis have made 5,000 trips for paying riders in Las Vegas
• Uber could soon know if you’re drunk before the car arrives to pick you up
• Fossil adds Noonlight’s emergency feature to its latest lineup of smartwatches

UK Deal: Power your devices on the go with two dual USB car chargers for £6

These compact car chargers both feature two USB ports which can charge devices like your smartphone or tablet in the car.

Amazon UK has the two-pack of RAVPower Dual USB Car Chargers on sale for only £5.99 when you redeem the on-page voucher or use code ECHUSATA at checkout. This set usually sells for £9.99 and never seems to have dropped below £8.99 without a promo code before, so now is a great time to pick up some in-car power.

You’ll receive two compact car chargers which can each provide a 4.8A output with their dual 2.4A charging ports. Its circuit design ensures your devices will remain safe from over-heating and over-charging. You’ll need to bring your own charging cable or consider buying extras for the car like this MFi-certified braided nylon option for iPhone from Syncwire that’s currently on sale or this durable Anker USB to USB C cable, also reduced in price right now.

Those wanting more port should check out the newest RAVPower in-car charger featuring a 4-port design and Quick Charge support.

For more UK deals coverage, be sure to keep an eye on Thrifter UK, sign up for the UK newsletter and follow the team on Twitter.

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The first 9 things to do with your Galaxy Note 9

Unbox, set up, and do these things first.

So you just got your Galaxy Note 9. You’re in awe at the size of the phone, the pile of features it has and you want to jump right in to using the S Pen’s new wireless capabilities. Wait! For as exciting as the phone is, there are some things you should do first in order to make the most of your Note 9.

Set up face/iris scanning in addition to fingerprint

With the Note 9’s fingerprint sensor moving to a good location on the back of the phone, the discussion about face and iris scanning has moved to the back burner. But Samsung’s implementation of these alternative unlocking methods is really good, and you’re doing yourself a disservice if you don’t turn on at least one of the two — and preferably both.

The fingerprint sensor is great, but sometimes you need other ways to quickly unlock.

Go into Settings and then Biometrics and security to get started with the setup. You can choose to use Face Recognition, which is fast but less secure, or Iris Scanner, which is slower but more secure. If you’re planning to use Face Recognition, you really should just use Intelligent Scan, which tries to scan your face or your irises at the same time.

The most important setting for making this face and iris unlocking work seamlessly is under Intelligent Scan, it’s called “Screen-on Intelligent Scan.” When you turn this on, the phone starts looking for your face and irises as soon as your screen comes on, rather than after you already swipe. For those times when you can’t reach the fingerprint sensor, your phone will unlock quickly without any further intervention.

Enable easier access to your notification shade

The Note 9 is a massive phone. With a 6.4-inch display and 18.5:9 aspect ratio, it’s really hard to reach the top of the screen to pull down the notification shade. But Samsung has two ways you can more easily get your notifications without reaching.

First, there’s a fingerprint gesture like on so many other phones. Go into Settings, Advanced features and find Finger sensor gestures. Turn it on, and now you can swipe down on the fingerprint sensor to lower the notification shade.

Second, if you’re still using the default Samsung launcher you can change a setting to pull down notifications with a swipe down on the home screen. Pinch in on the home screen to open its settings and tap on Home screen settings. There’s a toggle for Quick-open notification panel to turn on. Now it’s as simple as a swipe down on the home screen to bring down the shade — and a swipe up still opens the app drawer.

Set up S Pen button actions

There’s a good chance that part of your Note 9 buying decision was predicated on the new wireless S Pen features. Now that the S Pen connects over Bluetooth, it can perform actions with single and double presses of its button even when it’s away from the phone. Go into Settings, Advanced features and then S Pen to control all of these settings and get familiar with what it’s capable of.

S Pen remote is the settings are for all of the wireless features. You’ll see a list of every app that supports S Pen remote features, plus the top-level choice of which app you’d like to launch with a long-press of the S Pen’s button. For each app, you’ll see options to assign a different action to a single-press and double-press of the button. You can also choose to have one or the other do nothing, if you think there’s a chance you’ll accidentally do something you don’t want.

It may take a little while of using the new feature to see what works best for you, but these settings will always be there to help you tweak and get the most out of your new S Pen. The Note 9’s software will also highlight the fact that you can use S Pen remote features whenever the S Pen is removed and a supported app is launched.

Turn on all of the notification icons in the status bar

The Galaxy Note 9 has a huge screen and no display notch, but curiously Samsung has it set by default to only show the last three notification icons in the status bar. Sure it looks a little cleaner, but you bought a Note 9 to see everything and be aware of your notifications, not forget about them because the software restricted the display.

Go into Settings, Display and then Status bar to bring them back. Turn off the toggle for “Show recent notifications only,” and your Note 9’s status bar will now show all of your unread notifications across the status bar — at least, until they run into the persistent icons on the right. If that happens, maybe you should think about tweaking the notification settings in your apps …

Configure your navigation buttons

Years after moving away from hardware navigation buttons, Samsung is still shipping its phones with the “back” button on the right and “recents” on the left — but thankfully, you get options to configure them. Head into Settings, Display and Navigation bar to set them up how you like.

“Button layout” lets you switch the back and recents buttons, which is the most useful part of this whole area. But you can also change other parts. You can set a background color for the bar if you want something a bit more unique than a grey gradient. You can also select how sensitive the home button is to a hard press, which is used for (among other things) turning on the screen from the Always On Display.

“Show and hide button” is an interesting one — it gives you a small dot on the left side of the navigation bar that lets you hide the bar entirely. Double-tap the dot to hide the bar, and then it only appears when you swipe up from the bottom of the screen — once it’s visible, double-tap it again to lock it in place. It isn’t that useful considering how tall the screen is, and full-screen apps will hide the bar anyway, but if you have a specific need for it, the choice is yours.

Set up the blue light filter

It’s been shown that being exposed to bright, blue light in the hours before you sleep can strain your eyes more than necessary and influence your ability to fall asleep and stay asleep. If you ascribe to this theory, you should use your Note 9’s Blue light filter. With this feature, the display will turn to an orange-red hue at a specific time so when you look at your screen you don’t strain your eyes so much.

Go to Settings, Display and then Blue light filter to configure it. First, toggle “Turn on now” to see what it looks like, and use the “Opacity” slider at the top to change how intense the blue light filter is. Turn it back off, and choose when you’d like to it to come on automatically. “Sunset to sunrise” is a great choice, because it changes as the length of the day changes throughout the year, but if you have specific needs you can also set a custom schedule.

If you ever want to turn off the Blue light filter manually, perhaps if you’re editing a photo and you want accurate colors represented on the screen, you can add a toggle to your notification shade for quick access.

Configure Always On Display

Samsung pioneered the information-dense always-on display with its exclusive use of OLED screens, and though it isn’t as interactive and useful as other implementations it’s highly configurable. To start, go to Settings, Lock screen and tap Always On Display. Here, you can choose wether you want to see a clock on the Always On Display, whether you want it to automatically change brightness (believe me, you do) and when you want it to stay on. I typically set my Always On Display to only come on from morning to night, rather than 24 hours a day, but each person has their own needs. You can also turn off Always On Display when your Note 9’s battery hits 15%, which is a smart battery-saving move.

Now back out of those settings and go to “Clock style” to configure how it looks on the Always On Display. Samsung has about a dozen different clocks to choose from, ranging from simple to extravagant, and each one has further configuration options. You can choose the style and color of each one, and then tweak further features depending on which one you choose. You can add subtle backgrounds to the clock, get multiple time zones set and so much more. Give yourself a few minutes to play around and see the options so it’s set up uniquely for your needs and style.

Turn off app icon borders

This is a small thing, but one you’ll be scrambling to if you haven’t been using a Samsung phone lately. By default, Samsung’s software places a squircle-shaped border around all of your apps, so that they all have the same size. This looks fine from a glance, but most app icons really don’t look good with an auto-generated background, and you may want to turn it off.

Back in Settings and Display again, you’ll see Icon frames at the top. Just tap it, and select “Icons only” and you’ll be good to go. The interface even shows a quick representation of what apps look like with and without the frames.

Samsung Galaxy Note 9

• Samsung Galaxy Note 9 review
• Galaxy Note 9 vs. Note 8
• Where to buy the Galaxy Note 9
• Galaxy Note 9 specifications
• Is the Note 8 still a good buy?
• Join our Galaxy Note 9 forums

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Firefox 62 for Mac Makes Browser Mojave-Ready With New Automatic Dark Theme

Mozilla today launched Firefox 62 web browser for macOS, bringing variable fonts support and a new automatic dark theme to Mac desktops.

By introducing a dark theme to the browser, Mozilla is following up the one it added to its mobile counterpart last month, the only difference being that the desktop version comes with intelligent support for the new native Dark Mode featured in macOS 10.14 Mojave.

What that means is Firefox automatically switches to the twilight theme whenever the the macOS Dark Mode is active, making for a more uniform desktop application interface without requiring action on the user’s part.

Meanwhile, support for variable fonts makes it possible for web designers to create typography using a single font file, rather than generating several files for variations of the same font.

Also listed in this release’s changelog: Firefox Home (default new tabs) can now display up to four rows of top sites, Pocket stories, and highlights, while a “Reopen in Container” tab menu option appears for users with Containers that lets them choose to reopen a tab in a different container.

Lastly, disconnecting from the desktop version of Firefox Sync prompts the browser to ask if you want to wipe your Firefox profile, including passwords, history, cookies, and web data.

Firefox now has 300 million active users, according to Mozilla’s weekly user activity report. If you’re already a Firefox user, you should receive an automatic upgrade after restarting the browser. For everyone else, Firefox 62 is available for macOS as a free download directly from the Mozilla website.

Tag: Firefox
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Realme 2 review: One step forward, one step back

It’s only been about three months since the Realme 1, and yet here we are with the Realme 2 — an iterative update to an incredibly affordable device, bringing some additional features without inflating the price much. However, for every step forward, the phone takes another step back. This device removes as many feature as it adds!

Realme has now broken away to become its own brand. For its debut it kept the price the exact same as the previous model, thus necessitating more compromises for a phone already all about compromise.  Let’s take a look at the $130 handset in this Realme 2 review and see what exactly is going on here.

Realme 2 design and media

Realme 1 and 2 side by side

The phone’s design shows most of its positive progress, as well as a some suspect decisions.

Editor’s Pick

OPPO Realme 1 review: Pretty good, really cheap!

Buy now from eBay
Lately, I’ve reviewed, compared, and previewed a whole host of great smartphones at mid-range price points. My conclusion: you can get a heck of a lot these days without needing to pay …

The very plasticky build and the interesting polygonal effect adorning the rear of the phone have remained the same. I said in my Realme 1 review this looked much better in photos than in person, and this time around the effect seems even subtler. Every now and then it catches the light and brings out the pattern, but most of the time it looks like a glossy black finish. It’s certainly not a killer design feature, but on an otherwise nondescript, cheap phone, it’s still a welcome inclusion.

The branding around the back is now a little less ostentatious (a big win), and there’s a dual-lens camera and a finger print sensor (more on them in a bit).

Another interesting design choice this around is the inclusion of a notch. Many of you just clenched reading that, but I actually quite like it (interestingly, this feature seemed to have been cut last minute from the first Realme based on early renders).

Notch the upgrade we were looking for

It’s not that I like notches — I’m not really a huge fan — but a notch can make a phone look a little more 2018. Cheap phones don’t often get to have modern design aspects, so having a notch here just makes the phone look and feel a little less like a compromise. It’s interesting to see a notch on a phone this affordable, basically.

However, there is another very big compromise here in the form of a lower-res screen. The Realme 2 comes with a 720 x 1,520 screen. This isn’t hugely noticeable until you put it next to a device with a sharper screen (especially a punchy AMOLED). That’s when you really notice the difference and even the whites look murkier than last time around. If you lean in close, you can even see individual pixels.

Obviously, this isn’t really a media consumption device. It can consume media (nom nom) but the lack of sharpness combined with a very sub-par single speaker mean it’s not particularly good at it. This really doesn’t sound good when you crank it up. You certainly won’t want to listen to much Spotify without using the headphone jack (which is thankfully present and correct).

The rest of the time it’s fine — the Nintendo Switch is 720p after all and most people don’t have a problem with it. It just doesn’t make a ton of sense to increase the size of the screen to 6.2 inches and hit a 80.85 percent screen-to-body ratio with the notch, only to then make the screen actually less sharp.

The phone’s design is still very clearly cutting corners to save money. The plastic build is really noticeable, and the seam running around the side is even worse. The buttons are both oddly placed and mushy. Separate volume buttons always give me the heebie-jeebies.

I wouldn’t expect a water-resistant, unibody, glass, and metal construction at this price. For what you’re paying, this is about as good as it gets. I’m just letting you know what to expect.

Realme 2 performance and software

The design got a bit of an upgrade, but the internals have actually taken a small step backwards.

We’ve gone from a Mediatek to a Snapdragon, which you would normally expect to be a good thing. Unfortunately, it’s the rather underpowered Snapdragon 450.

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The original Realme 1 was not exactly a speed demon, but for day-to-day use you could generally get by. It would even be fine for a bit of light gaming. This time around expect things to chug a little. You’ll see the odd stutter as you navigate with the browser. Apps take a long time to open. 3D games will experience skipped frames and occasional slow-down. You can still play something like Asphalt 8, but you’re going to experience a fair few stutters on low settings. The Adreno 506 does okay with 2D games though, but don’t get this for gaming!

AnTuTu benchmark scores weren’t good. The Realme 2 only defeated 20 percent of users, compared with the 38 percent managed by the Realme 1.

I found performance significantly better than the Honor 7S sporting the Mediatek MT6739 processor. That phone was just… urgh.

This is a manageable phone, it’s just not great. That’s a big shame considering the Realme 1 was actually better than I anticipated. This device wreaks of missed opportunities.

What’s unfortunately not helping matters either is the software, which is everyone’s favorite Color OS. I’m sure it’s actually someone’s favorite somewhere, but it sure isn’t mine. There are worse offenders out there in the bloat department, but it felt like I was constantly fighting against this UI. Being unable to dismiss notifications before they’re ready to leave of their own accord is simply obnoxious, and finding out how to change the default launcher took longer than it should (thankfully it’s doable though).  Why are so many dialogue boxes lime green on white? Who possibly thinks that’s a good color scheme?!

Why are so many dialogue boxes lime green on white? Who possibly thinks that’s a good color scheme??

Other budget devices out there, like ones from Nokia, sport Android One and other vanilla experiences — which is certainly something to consider when weighing up the value of this phone.

I’m testing the 3GB/32GB model, but you can also get 4GB/32GB and 4GB/64GB. None of these configurations are anything to write home about, but they’re all perfectly serviceable and RAM management hasn’t been a bottleneck for me.

Perhaps the most impressive aspect of this phone from a hardware perspective is the battery. At 4,230mAh, that is a significant upgrade over the Realme 1’s 3,410mAh, and also a whopping great battery by any standards. Combined with the low-res screen, the battery has fantastic staying power and will easily see you through a day of even heavy use. Honestly, this is among the best longevity you will get from any phone. It’s a compelling backup for travel and the like when you factor in the cost as well.

Realme 2 camera and features

While the Realme 2 takes some surprising steps backwards in some departments, the camera is actually a bit nicer. The dual lens camera combines a 13MP f2.2 lens with a 2MP secondary depth sensor for bokeh. Around the front is an 8MP selfie lens, which is also capable of portrait effects, despite losing the NPU found in the Helio P60 from the Realme 1.

The only change here is the secondary lens, which presumably should only come into play with depth effect shots. However, it felt like the shots I managed with this camera were slightly superior. Perhaps the second lens lets in a bit more light? Maybe it allows for better post processing. Perhaps it’s a software update. Whatever the case, photos appeared a little more contrasty to me. The original camera was never that bad given the price anyway.

If you want to see these pics in all their glory, you can check them out here.

Obviously, this is no Pixel or Galaxy. Occasionally I found images to looked a little blurry due to the lack of stabilization. Colors are washed out. It falls apart in even slightly lower light (with lots of noise), and background detail gets lost in a lot of pictures too. However, it still performs perhaps better than you might expect overall. There are even a couple of fun options like AR and time-lapse in the app.

Other features here all work well too. The fingerprint sensor is really fast, and the face unlocking is really good — better than even some much more expensive implementations. The fingerprint sensor is actually worth mentioning because the Realme 1 lacked the feature. With face unlock not quite secure enough for things like PayPal, this was actually a serious omission.

We’re still charging via MicroUSB too, which is starting to feel really old hat.

Realme 2 review: Closing comments

I’m in a weird position. I still think Realme is offering a great value phone here. It’s definitely leaps and bounds better than the Honor 7S (*shudder*). I’m less sure whether this is better than the Realme 1. While the secondary lens is nice, the only tangible advantage you get from that is bokeh — something the Realme 1 already did. The bigger screen is cool too, but it’s lower resolution and notch mean it isn’t really an unqualified win.

Really the fingerprint sensor and the battery life improvements are the two really wholly positive improvements here, though the Realme 1 had no problems in the battery department anyway. It feels like two steps forward and at least two steps back, especially considering the same cheap design and use of MicroUSB. It’s so weird this self-proclaimed “successor” would force you to make so compromises to get those new features.

If it had just kept the exact same internals and screen as last time, this would have been a really compelling device for the price range. As it is, it’s bit of a curiosity.

Those of us with less spending power at least deserve upgrades to still actually upgrade our phones

I get it’s a cheap phone, but those of us with less spending power still want upgrades that actually upgrade our phones, right?

If you have $100-$150 to spend, then a Realme phone is a good choice. Which one you pick is a tougher question, and really depends on what you value.

That’s it for our Realme 2 review. Let us know your thoughts!

Meet the autonomous starfish assassin bot that’s here to protect coral reefs

We’ve covered a number of underwater drones at Digital Trends, but we can safely say that we’ve never covered one quite like RangerBot. Created as a collaboration between Australia’s Queensland University of Technology, Google, and the Great Barrier Reef Foundation, it’s an underwater robot intended to look after the world’s largest coral reef system by seeking out troublesome starfish and killing them by injecting drugs. Seriously.

“RangerBot builds on the QUT’s original COTSbot prototype that won the 2016 Google Impact Challenge,” Professor Matthew Dunbabin, a lead researcher on the project, told Digital Trends. “We believe it will be a very valuable tool for reefs around the world. Having an easy-to-use, small underwater robot that can operate in coral reef environments fills a current technology gap to allow larger-scale monitoring and management of reefs globally. We believe this is a first step in the development of a range of visual-guided robotic systems for environmental monitoring.”

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The reason RangerBot targets crown-of-thorns starfish is because they prey on coral, secreting digestive enzymes that allow them to absorb their nutrients. A single starfish can consume up to 65 square feet of living coral reef every single year. To stop them, RangerBot is trained to identify these starfish — which it can do with 99.4 percent accuracy — and then initiate a fatal injection. This injection kills the starfish, but does not affect anything else on the reef.

The robot is kitted out with computer vision technology, allowing it to both recognize its target and avoid obstacles. Multiple thrusters let it easily move in any direction it needs to. In addition to acting like a Terminator for starfish, the drone can also be used to monitor coral bleaching, water quality, pollution, and more, as well as help map out large underwater areas.

“We are now in the process of starting the evaluations and assessments necessary to best integrate RangerBot into various management programs — including for crown-of-thorns starfish — with the immediate focus intended to be for the mapping tasks, and then roll in the more interactive capabilities,” Dunbabin said. “Longer term, we envisage a wide range of applications which could include pest management, coral restoration activities, and fish stock assessment.”

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