Create ‘Gran Turismo 6’ race tracks on your tablet
For ages, Polyphony Digital has been promising a Gran Turismo 6 track editor that lets you build the race course of your dreams. Well, it’s finally here… if not quite in the form you might have expected. Download the Track Path Editor app for Android and iOS and you can design circuits for the PlayStation 3 sim on your tablet. It’s not so detailed that you’ll recreate every nuance of your local raceway, but you can trace paths with your finger, choose themes and add scenery. Think of it as a way to extend the life of GT6 beyond the occasional new concept car — you don’t have to settle for driving on Autumn Ring or Brands Hatch for the hundredth time.
Source: Gran Turismo, Google Play, App Store
Dear Veronica: Smart watches and dead devices
Today it’s all about the gadgets: we have questions about Android smartwatches, how to flip the script on your Apple Watch, and what the heck to do with that old Zune you have laying around.
Do you have any use for your old Zune that we forgot to mention? Have creative uses for all your old gadgets and gizmos? Let me know by emailing me or sending me a tweet with the hashtag #DearVeronica! Keep sending those questions in, too. See you next week!
NVIDIA’s Shield TV goes on sale in the UK and Europe
In the six months since NVIDIA launched Shield TV, we’ve put it through its paces and called it best Android TV box money can buy. Consumers in the US have been able to get their hands on it since May, but now it’s time for Europe to get in on the act. That’s right, from tomorrow (October 1st), consumers in the UK, France, Germany and Scandinavia can buy the base 16GB model for £150/€200 or the 500GB Shield Pro for £230/€300.
There’s also a number of accessories you can add to your Shield bundle, including an official £40/€50 remote, £20/€30 stand and £50/€60 gamepad. One controller is included as standard, but two might make gaming on the Tegra X1-powered set-top box a whole lot more enjoyable. To coincide with the launch, the company is also debuting GeForce Now, the Netflix-for-games service which we originally knew as GRID. It’s free for the first three months on Shield devices, but transitions to a £7.49/€9.99 plan thereafter.
If you’re looking for something that matches Amazon’s Fire TV in the streaming stakes but has a little more oomph in the gaming department, Amazon and GAME will stock the Shield TV, but you can also grab it from NVIDIA’s official store if the online retailer doesn’t have a presence where you live.
Source: NVIDIA Store
NVIDIA’s Shield TV goes on sale in the UK and Europe
In the six months since NVIDIA launched Shield TV, we’ve put it through its paces and called it best Android TV box money can buy. Consumers in the US have been able to get their hands on it since May, but now it’s time for Europe to get in on the act. That’s right, from tomorrow (October 1st), consumers in the UK, France, Germany and Scandinavia can buy the base 16GB model for £150/€200 or the 500GB Shield Pro for £230/€300.
There’s also a number of accessories you can add to your Shield bundle, including an official £40/€50 remote, £20/€30 stand and £50/€60 gamepad. One controller is included as standard, but two might make gaming on the Tegra X1-powered set-top box a whole lot more enjoyable. To coincide with the launch, the company is also debuting GeForce Now, the Netflix-for-games service which we originally knew as GRID. It’s free for the first three months on Shield devices, but transitions to a £7.49/€9.99 plan thereafter.
If you’re looking for something that matches Amazon’s Fire TV in the streaming stakes but has a little more oomph in the gaming department, Amazon and GAME will stock the Shield TV, but you can also grab it from NVIDIA’s official store if the online retailer doesn’t have a presence where you live.
Source: NVIDIA Store
Apple Music and iTunes Movies hit China today
Folks in China don’t have access to the record-breaking iPhone 6s until October, but Apple’s making sure they they’ll be able to get their hands on iBooks, Apple Music and iTunes Movies ahead of that. Those services are available starting today, and Music in particular is getting some very region-specific special treatment. The streaming catalog includes work from Eason Chan, Li Ronghao, JJ Lin and G.E.M.. Apple writes that there will be a raft of movies from Chinese studios too, saying that this is the first time that its customers in the country will be able to jump into the ecosystem. There’s a three-month trial period, which gives way to a 10 RMB/month subscription. Family plans are part of the deal as well. And if you don’t own an Apple handset but still want in on its music service, Music will hit Android phones later this fall.
Source: Apple
Google and LG’s 5X is the Nexus for the rest of us
When Google (and Motorola) showed off the Nexus 6 last year, most nerds were excited. Others, making up a surprisingly vocal minority, reacted as though the companies dropped ice cubes down the backs of their shirts. Bigger isn’t always better, and they were more than a little concerned that the days of easy-to-grip Nexus phones were nearly over. They were wrong. To go with the big-screened Nexus 6P, Google once again teamed up with LG on a Nexus 5 — the 5X this time — and it’s shaping up to be the successor that N5 fans have been hoping for. Slideshow-324001
First off, yes, it nestles nice and easily into even small hands (mine are probably slightly above-average but there were some surprisingly tiny mitts at this event). The 5.2-inch 1080p IPS LCD, cutesy rounded aesthetic and the plastic body’s almost-nutty lightness make the Nexus 5X feel much more compact than it actually is. And as if it needed even more cute fuel, you’ll be able to get it in a fetching robin’s egg blue that’s a little reminiscent of that phone Nextbit is working on. Naturally, none of this would be worth a damn if the 5X failed as a phone, and it definitely doesn’t. You see, there’s a Snapdragon 808 (which we’ve seen in the LG G4 previously) and 2GB of RAM here — easily plenty of horsepower for anyone who doesn’t want/need to live on the bleeding edge of phone performance. I spent maybe a half hour with the thing in total and couldn’t get it to stutter or flip out, even with the non-final version of Android 6.0 Marshmallow running on it. Not bad.
It would’ve been easy for Google and LG to just shrug and phone things in with a weak-sauce camera, but that’s thankfully not the case. The Nexus 5X shares an impressive 12.3-megapixel rear camera with the 6P, which means it also shares those sweet, photon-slurping 1.55-micron pixels. Both did a solid job snapping photos in a weirdly lit, uncomfortably packed demo room, but we’ll have to wait until we get a review unit before we can pass any real judgment. The similarities don’t end there, either — Google really is looking at these things as siblings. Both have the Nexus Imprint fingerprint scanner (which worked well) and a USB Type-C charging port. While the 5X is a sort of love letter to a certain kind of Nexus fan, its limited memory options will make it harder for hardcore mobile nerds to take seriously. Yes, yes, Google has sunk plenty of cash and effort into building its cloud, and the original N5 didn’t have a memory card slot either, but it still sucks that the 5X will only be available with 16 or 32GB of storage and without any way to expand it further.
Speaking of which, you’ll be able to pre-order a Nexus 5X today, with the first shipments going out sometime in October. At this early stage, the hardware seems promising and Marshmallow already appears to be a worthy update (even if the nature of Android has already been changing a bit). We can’t blame you if you want more info before you pull the trigger — just stay tuned for our full review.
Get all the news from today’s Google event right here.
Android has hit 1.4 billion active devices worldwide
At the recent Google event, which unveiled two new Nexus phones, Pixel C tablet, and new Chromecast, there was also another big announcement. Google CEO Sundar Pichai stated that Android now accounts for 1.8 billion devices worldwide. These numbers are very new and were just recorded in the last 30 days.
He went on to say how Android has doubled in the last year in India and Vietnam. Also, the Android One smartphone was launched in Turkey only a month ago, but since then has become the top-selling smartphone their.
Google Chromebooks are soon to be the largest platform in schools with 30,000 new Chromebooks being activated each day. Also, Google’s new Android for Work has been tested and utilized by 10,000 companies. Wrapping everything up, Google Play has now reached 1 billion active users within the last 30 days.
Come comment on this article: Android has hit 1.4 billion active devices worldwide
HTC’s first Android Marshmallow device due on October 20th
Even though HTC isn’t a maker of the new Nexus devices with Marshmallow, it’ll definitely be one of the first to release its own phone running on the latest Android build. According to the company’s announcement, its upcoming product will be launched on October 20th, and you can tune in to the live-stream (12:00 noon ET / 5:00 pm UK) on its website. There’s no indication as to whether we can expect this to be the leaky “Aero” aka “A9,” but we’d like to think that the charcoal on HTC’s flyer is hinting at the model’s “carbon gray” color option. Guess we’ll find out in three weeks’ time.
As for HTC’s existing devices, most of the hero models from last year up to now will get the Android 6.0 update, according to an official tweet. These include the M8, M8 Eye, E8, Desire 816, Desire 820, Desire 826, M9, M9+, ME, Butterfly 3, E9 and E9+. Subject to regional and carrier requirements, the M9 and M8 will be the first among the lot to get the goodies — before end of the year.
Source: HTC
Meet the Nexus 6P, Google and Huawei’s shockingly svelte flagship
After last year’s unwieldy attempt, Google had to think a little more carefully about how its nerd-friendly Nexus line should work and feel. Rather than just offer one new phone today, Google showed off two — the Nexus 5X and 6P — meant for different subsets of people. The former? It provides enough horsepower for the masses in a body that normal humans won’t have trouble carrying (and I’ll have a deeper dive ready shortly). The 6P, on the other hand, is the more sophisticated cousin, and more impressive than it might look at first glance. Slideshow-323971
First off, it’s just as sleek and light as you’d expect a modern Huawei phone to be — the designs might be different, but you can definitely feel some of the P8’s unibody metal DNA here. In fact, it’s just that devotion to metal that drew Google to Huawei in the first place. As an Android team staffer casually mentioned while showing me the phone, Huawei is one of only a few companies that can make these unibody metal chassis at scale, and that sturdier direction is what Google was gunning for this year.
Sturdier, in this case, doesn’t mean “heavier.” Like the fantastic-in-plastic 5X, the Nexus 6P feels almost impossibly light, belying the power of the revised Snapdragon 810 with 3GB of RAM thrumming away inside. Can we real talk for a moment? It feels great. It might seem a little tricky putting a chipset with that much power into a slim metal frame, but nothing we could do with it here at the venue could make the thing overheat. Yet another nail in the coffin of those persistent rumors about the 810’s heat-management problems. Anyway, that much power should ensure the 6P runs nice and snappy, which is exactly what I experienced while I was fiddling around with the phone and testing out some of Android 6.0 Marshmallow’s newer features. Throw in a nicely saturated, 5.7-inch WQHD display that showed off some sweet, deep blues and the 6P’s broad strokes are very encouraging ones.
One of the last big question marks leading up to today’s show was the big, black bar that swallowed up the 12.3-megapixel rear camera lens. Turns out, it’s actually hiding quite a lot. I’m told that next to the camera and two-tone LED flash is the near-invisible laser autofocus module and a whole host of coils and antennas to help with connectivity. That’s the problem with metal bodies, right? Too much metal could mean WiFi, cellular or NFC signals get snuffed out, so Google and Huawei shoehorned a bunch of them behind that black plastic bar. Aesthetically it’s still a little weird, but it’s a neat engineering solution that should get the job done — we’ll bring the full low-down once we get a review unit. Same goes for the ballyhooed camera that Google and Huawei dropped into this thing; the shots we got in this dim event space were better than I’d expected, but they require even more scrutiny.
Despite spending about a half hour with the phone, I’m still a little surprised it’s a Huawei. Yes, the company makes good, well-built devices. I simply didn’t expect Google to give it a public pat on the back like this. Being tapped to build a Nexus phone is no sure sign that a company will find huge success, but it is a very nice gesture toward a company that has made many great phones without a glut of admiration.
Get all the news from today’s Google event right here.
Incoming! Android 6.0 Marshmallow to land on Nexus devices starting next week
Proud owner of a previous generation Nexus device? You’ll be happy to know that sometime next week, you’ll be getting a mouthful of Marshmallow.
The Nexus 5, Nexus 6, Nexus 7 (2013), Nexus 9, and Nexus Player will all be receiving the highly-anticipated software update to the latest version of Android. The new Nexus 5X and Nexus 5P will ship with Marshmallow already installed.
Obviously Google can only confirm when its devices will be receiving Android 6.0, so it’s unclear at this time when other OEMs will be joining the Nexus devices with Marshmallow. It is likely going to occur on October 5 as Telus named that date last week.
Come comment on this article: Incoming! Android 6.0 Marshmallow to land on Nexus devices starting next week
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