Samsung’s Galaxy S8 might have a true edge-to-edge display
With the Galaxy Note 7 debacle weighing heavy on its balance sheet, Samsung needs the Galaxy S8 to be a massive success. It isn’t expected to be unveiled for another few months, but already details are starting to emerge about what the flagship Android smartphone will offer. According to Bloomberg sources, the Galaxy S8 will include a new “all-screen design” and will not have a physical home button, with Samsung choosing to embed it under the display instead.
Previous reports have suggested that Samsung will also ditch the headphone jack — relying on its USB-C port for sound — and a brand new AI assistant capable of taking on Apple and Google’s. Bloomberg builds on this, noting that the assistant will let owners use voice commands to send text messages, make calls and set reminders but will also offer features that are “significantly differentiated” from those already available in other services.
Samsung is expected to offer variants of the Galaxy S8, which will be similar in size to the 5.1-inch Galaxy S7 and 5.5-inch Galaxy S7 Edge. They’ll “only come with wraparound displays using organic light-emitting diode (OLED) technology,” Bloomberg says, and this will almost completely remove all bezels. If you’re trying to picture what that looks like, Xiaomi introduced the Mi MIX “concept phone” in October, a phone that wowed with its 6.4-inch edge-to-edge HD display.
Although the Korean smartphone giant wants to unveil the phone in March, “tougher testing procedures” could set things back by a month. Samsung is keen not to repeat the mistakes it made with the Galaxy Note 7, so its new Android smartphone may undergo additional quality assurance examinations to ensure it’s ready for public release.
Source: Bloomberg
Windows 10 preview lets Cortana play music, turn off your PC
Cortana is the star of a big new Windows 10 Insider Preview build. Microsoft says that voice control of your PC was one its “top requests,” so the latest update now lets you shutdown, restart, lock or sleep your system using the voice assistant. You can also use natural language to play music on two apps (iHeartRadio and TuneIn) by saying “Play Drake on iHeartRadio,” for instance. Once the music starts, you can use your voice to control playback and volume.
If you request a song or genre without specifying the app, it’ll remember the last one you used and play it from that. It also lets you find a track name from any music app by saying, “hey Cortana, what song is playing?” Finally, when you say, “hey Cortana,” from an unlocked PC that’s been idle for over 10 seconds, the app will load in a new full-screen mode, showing information like the weather.
The update also includes support for 19 more games in full-screen mode with the Windows Game Bar (including Battlefield 1, Fallout 4 and Dark Souls III). You’ll also get new Windows Ink features, additional Edge extensions, a new Windows Defender dashboard, updated Narrator features, more Windows Update options and new rendering tech for Universal Windows (UWP) apps. In other words, it’s a pretty big update — check the Windows Blog for more information, or, if you’re on the Insider track, you can now get it directly. As usual, beware of the release’s beta nature and the bugs that entails.
Source: Microsoft
‘Super Mario Run’ is just as much fun as we’d hoped
It’s no stretch to say that Super Mario Run (launching December 15th for iOS; an Android version will arrive next year) is one of the most notable mobile games in years. It’s Nintendo’s first real smartphone game and one of the only instances in which the company has developed a Mario game for non-Nintendo hardware. It’s the first of several mobile titles planned and could mark the start of a major business shift for Nintendo. But let’s put aside all these heady concerns about what Super Mario Run means for the company and answer the most important question: Is the game fun?
Based on the all-too-brief demo I had earlier this week, the answer is a resounding yes. With Super Mario Run, Nintendo has successfully built a Mario title that makes perfect sense for a mobile phone while still featuring surprisingly deep gameplay and a level of polish seen in a small percentage of games, regardless of platform.
The gameplay appears to be identical to what Nintendo first showed off onstage at Apple’s event this past September. Mario runs automatically from left to right, and the player can tap the screen to make him jump. The goal is to get to the end of a course, which seems to take a minute or two, while avoiding death and collecting as many coins as you can.
Naturally, there are a lot of variations on what you can make Mario do here beyond that: Holding longer when you tap makes him jump higher; you can tap again to get a brief momentary hover; you can wall-jump; landing on enemies gives you a chance to string together multiple jumps; and so on. There are a handful of environmental items that change things up as well — jumping off of certain bricks will send Mario soaring to the left instead of to the right, and standing on some bricks will stop Mario so you can assess the coming challenges and plan your route.
In the few levels I tried, getting to the end wasn’t a big challenge. But the replayability should be excellent here because I didn’t come close to grabbing all of the coins in the course — those among us with OCD tendencies are going to be playing these levels multiple times to perfect our route and jump timing. Furthermore, each course has five pink special coins to grab. Getting those unlocks five more purple coins in harder-to-reach locations. Getting those unlocks five black coins, again in even tougher places in the level. It’ll take at least three playthroughs to grab everything in a given level, and to get all the standard coins will be another challenge.
That’s one example of the game’s depth. The next comes when you factor in competition. The main game’s standard 24 levels are only one part of Super Mario Run. There’s also the “Toad Rally,” in which you compete against friends or people all over the world. Entering a Toad Rally competition costs tickets, which you gain in other parts of the game.
Once you’ve entered the rally, you start a timed course that doesn’t have an end and shoot to get as many coins as you can before time runs out. But you also need to impress the Toad judges by doing combo jumps and other more complicated tricks as you make your way through the level. The more you impress the judges, the more they cheer, and the more points you get.
In both the standard “World Tour” and Toad Rally, the gameplay is excellent. There’s enough of a learning curve that I didn’t feel like I could immediately master each level, but it certainly wasn’t hard to just pick up and start playing. Perhaps the trickiest thing for those of us who’ve played a lot of Mario will be remembering you don’t have to jump on Koopas and Goombas — by default, Mario will automatically vault over them. Jumping gives you more points and the opportunity for more combos, but you don’t have to do it.
The Toad Rally has another twist: You put a few members of your personal Toad posse on the line when you play, and if you lose, those Toads defect to the victor’s team. The number of Toads on your team serves as a good representation of how successful you’ve been in the rally — so you can use them to see how good a potential opponent is before challenging them to a match. Toads also serve as some in-game currency for buying little houses and other objects you can use to customize your very own Mario overworld map. There’s no actual game to be played here, but plenty of fans will likely enjoy tweaking the Mario home screen that they see every time the game starts.
Regardless of what part of the game you’re playing, the graphics look wonderful. I played the game on the iPhone 7 Plus and I’ve never seen Mario look quite so sharp and vivid (the last Mario games I played for more than a few minutes were on the original, standard-definition Wii). And there’s no hint of slowdown or performance hiccups here either. I would have liked to see how it performs on less powerful hardware, but we’ll have to wait until the game launches to see what devices you’ll need to have a good experience with Super Mario Run.
Nintendo decided to price Super Mario Run at $9.99 — more than most iOS games, but less than most games for the company’s own consoles. I think that’s a fair price, given the number of levels included and the replayability factor here. But if you’re wary, the free version of the game lets you play the first three levels and try your hand at a few Toad Rallies so you can see what it’s all about. Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime said it didn’t feel right to make people pay to keep unlocking levels when there’s so much momentum in the game to keep running through levels, so the company decided to skip all in-app transactions and go with the single one-time purchase.
Ultimately, the entry fee may seem a little high, but I suspect it’ll be one well worth paying — and I think lots of players will agree with me. Having a native Mario experience built from the ground up with the iPhone in mind is a huge win, and the game appears to be equally well suited to quick play on the subway and longer, in-depth sessions when you’re on the plane. I haven’t bought a new Mario game in years, but I’m ready to pull the trigger on Super Mario Run.
Update: If you want to try Super Mario Run out for yourself, Reggie announced on The Tonight Show that starting Thursday, a demo will be available at Apple Stores worldwide.
Nintendo’s Reggie Fils-Aime explains why it’s time to go mobile
Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime has garnered a reputation for being a larger-than-life character, whether he’s onstage presenting his company’s latest or getting ready for a one-on-one interview. He’s playing Super Mario Run on an iPad mini when our meeting begins, as if he just can’t stop to focus on the more mundane task at hand. “I’m gonna put this down now,” he says as we get started. “I had a great run going, too.”
It’s clear salesmanship, but it doesn’t feel dishonest. Fils-Aime is one of Nintendo’s most passionate and charismatic advocates, and the brief time I spent with Super Mario Run prior to this meeting made me believe Nintendo has successfully crafted an addictive experience that stays true to Mario’s roots while also feeling native to mobile devices. With that mission accomplished, Fils-Aime is ready to talk about the rather stunning reversal Nintendo has gone through in regard to mobile games. Rather than build only for its own hardware, Nintendo is now focused on making experiences for phones that don’t devalue the company’s franchises.
“The mobile business really has changed versus when Mr. Satoru Iwata [the late CEO of Nintendo] made those comments way back at GDC,” Fils-Aime said, referring to when Iwata dismissed the value of mobile gaming back in 2011. “As we sit here today, literally multiple billions of smart devices are out there in the marketplace … in places like India, throughout parts of Europe, parts of South America where we don’t have a robust dedicated console business. So it really is a different type of opportunity, arguably a mainstream opportunity, that we’re looking at now.”
Those comments sound very similar to what Google, Microsoft and Apple have all said about reaching the “next billion” consumers in developing regions coming online. Those consumers are getting online not with traditional computers but with mobile phones. And Nintendo views mobile as a huge opportunity in those markets as well.
Specifically, Fils-Aime mentioned Brazil as a perfect case where mobile can unlock a big market for Nintendo. He said the country has import duties that make a $200 Nintendo 3DS cost the equivalent of about $600 for a local consumer. “That’s a really tough business model — and yet they all have smart devices,” he explained. “As a way to satiate the desire for our IP, to introduce new IP, to effectively keep the market warm while we figure out how to do business there with our dedicated systems, [mobile] is a huge business opportunity for us.”
Image credit: Troy Harvey/Bloomberg via Getty Images
To that end, Fire Emblem and Animal Crossing will follow Super Mario Run to smartphones in Q1 of 2017, and it seems all but certain more mobile games will follow. Fils-Aime promises the company will provide both value and experiences you can’t get anywhere else, whether you’re playing on a smartphone or on Nintendo’s own hardware. “What we will do is create experiences specific to the device,” Fils-Aime said. “We’ve optimized [Super Mario Run] for the [smartphone screen] — and in doing so it really is taking an approach that is unique, is differentiated, and looks to maximize the value of our IP.”
Of course, Nintendo could have made specific mobile experiences four years ago, but now the opportunity is simply too big to ignore. In 2011, Iwata said that mobile games might help profit in the short term but ultimately not help Nintendo’s “mid- and long-term competitive strength.” However, with millions of consumers who can’t afford a Nintendo console but carry their smartphones everywhere, going mobile can provide a good fix until the company figures out a good way to affordably bring its hardware to various markets.
The launch of Pokémon Go this summer certainly helped Nintendo realize how big an impact a good mobile game can have on the company’s core hardware business. “We saw the impact on our 3DS hardware [and] the 3DS game sales,” Fils-Aime said. “We know that the launch of Pokémon Go generated a tremendous amount of play and anticipation for all things Pokémon; certainly we hope that Super Mario Run will do the same thing for all things Mario.” Further quantifying the impact of Pokémon Go, Fils-Aime said that 3DS hardware sales have increased year-over-year every month since June.
Still, there are going to be consumers who think: Why buy a Nintendo Switch when I can get Mario on my phone? But it’s not something keeping Fils-Aime up at night — while the company may have started crafting great mobile games, it still believes its hardware will be something no other platform can truly match.
“Go back and look at the Nintendo Switch video that we aired back in October and ask yourself: Can you do that on a smart device?” Fils-Aime asked, somewhat rhetorically. “Can you have a big-screen experience and then, ‘I gotta go jump on the train — I’m going to take it with me and continue to have that great experience’?” Again he answers his question: “No, you can’t do that. We believe in creating a differentiated experience for all the platforms that we participate in, and if we do that, the consumer will see how these experiences are different and how there’s room for all of them in their entertainment time.”
In some ways, the combo of the Switch and Nintendo’s mobile game strategy seems to be an admission that mobile games are going to kill dedicated handheld consoles sooner than later. Nintendo did surprisingly well with the 3DS, but it seems likely that it’ll use mobile for quick gaming fixes and the Switch for in-depth experiences going forward. And since the Switch can be used on the go as well, those used to the deeper experiences a 3DS can provide shouldn’t worry about being stuck with quick-play games like Super Mario Run when they need a portable gaming fix.
We still need to find out more about the Switch before we can say if Nintendo’s new strategy will be successful. But after the confusing and poorly received Wii U, it feels like Nintendo might be able to recapture the public’s imagination. It’s a tall order, but 20 minutes with Mario on the iPhone had me missing all the fun I’ve had on Nintendo systems in the past. With the Switch right around the corner, now’s the perfect time for Nintendo to get old fans back into the fold — if games like Super Mario Run can do that, the move to mobile will surely have paid off.
Nintendo Switch makes its live TV debut on ‘The Tonight Show’
After you check out our discussion with Nintendo’s president Reggie Fils-Aime, you can get a good look at the new Switch console in operation () on the Tonight Show stage. Reggie and host Jimmy Fallon played the yet-to-be-released console, taking a trip through The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild showing off its ability to go portable with the press of a button. Additionally, after previewing a bit of Super Mario Run action, Reggie announced that starting today, you can visit Apple Stores worldwide and try out a demo version before the game launches December 15th.
There’s not a lot of new information if you’ve been paying attention, but it does give a good idea of what using a Switch will be like when it ships in March. As an extra bonus, check out the second video to see Mario creator Shigeru Miyamoto playing the game’s theme song along with The Roots.
Source: The Tonight Show (YouTube)
Windows 10 is coming to Qualcomm’s Snapdragon mobile chips
Microsoft’s first attempt at bringing Windows to ARM-powered machines was, shall we say, not a good idea. But perhaps the second time’s the charm. Microsoft and Qualcomm just announced that Windows 10 is coming to the next generation of Snapdragon mobile processors. And to be clear, they’re referring to the full version of the OS, with support for legacy Win32 software and universal Windows apps. It won’t be a stripped-down affair like Windows RT.
Both companies are being vague about specifics, but in short you can expect Snapdragon-powered Windows 10 devices to be incredibly light and power efficient. And since those chips typically appear in mobile devices, they also have the added benefit of packing in cellular radios. As for availability, Qualcomm says the first Windows 10 Snapdragon PCs could arrive “as early as next year.” Perhaps they’re just hedging their bets, but the cynic in me thinks that really means we won’t see them until 2018.
Biggest names in VR band together to create industry standards
The world’s most popular virtual reality headset makers have assembled. Google, Oculus, Sony, HTC, Samsung and Acer have come together to create a non-profit organization called the Global Virtual Reality Association (or the far snappier GVRA, for short). The association’s goal is to “promote responsible development and adoption of VR globally,” according to its website, and members will do so by researching, developing and sharing what it believes to be industry best practices.
GVRA also intends to serve as a resource for policymakers, consumers and industries interested in the medium. In a statement on the organization’s website, Google’s director of immersive design Jon Wiley said,”The GVRA is a necessary first step toward ensuring great VR experiences for everyone.” Execs from the other founding companies made similar statements, echoing the same sentiment. Although Microsoft’s HoloLens is technically an AR device, it’s a bit surprising to not see the Windows maker in this list.
Citing VR’s potential to improve “sectors ranging from education to healthcare,” as well as the resulting contributions to the global economy, GVRA also states that its founding members will work to maximize the platform’s potential and to “ensure those gains are shared as broadly around the world as possible.” Considering the clout some of these companies already have in tech, it sounds like this will be the virtual reality authority in the future.
It’s a little concerning that the only affiliates of the organization so far appear to be hardware makers. Hopefully, the GVRA will soon gain some members from different parts of the industry, including representatives who are more invested in the impact of VR on our health.
Source: Global Virtual Reality Association
The sequel to ‘Alto’s Adventure’ is an ‘Odyssey’
Built By Snowman has a busy year ahead of it. In addition to the recently announced Distant, the studio is also working on a sequel to its ultra-soothing endless-snowboarding game Alto’s Adventure. Alto’s Odyssey will be out sometime in 2017 but aside from that there aren’t any details of what to expect.
“Whether it was creating new versions of Alto for different platforms, or updating the game with things like Photo Mode and Zen Mode, Alto’s village is a place we’ve been coming back to every day,” a blog post teases. So, it might be safe to expect that Odyssey will bring those features back to multiple platforms next year.
Judging by the gorgeous piece of promo art (above) that was released, it looks as though the scope could be much larger than Adventure’s procedurally generated slopes. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but hopefully the sequel doesn’t lose sight of what made its predecessor so special.
Via: Alto’s Adventure (Twitter)
Source: Built By Snowman, Alto’s Odyssey
Bluetooth 5’s faster, longer-ranged wireless is here
Bluetooth is about to become a lot less hassle-prone. The wireless standard’s Special Interest Group has officially adopted the Bluetooth 5 spec, clearing the way for device makers to use the much-improved technology in everything from phones to wearables to smart home equipment. This doesn’t mean that you’ll see it right away, of course. The group expects Bluetooth 5-equipped products to hit the market in the next 2 to 6 months, or right around when the next wave of smartphones is likely to arrive.
Again, the new spec is all about raw performance. You can expect up to four times the range, twice the speed and eight times the amount of data in broadcast messages. Those will be particularly helpful for smart appliances and the Internet of Things, where the existing Bluetooth 4.2 standard might not be powerful enough to connect an entire home. However, it should also make a difference anywhere that you notice Bluetooth’s existing limitations. Smartwatches could see a serious upgrade, for example — one of the biggest bottlenecks on wristwear is the slow connection to your phone. And regardless of the device you use, there are techniques to reduce interference with other wireless devices.
Just don’t expect much of a boost to audio quality. While Bluetooth 5 could help with range, you won’t see improvements to audio compression, latency and power use until 2018. The newly adopted format is primarily about dragging Bluetooth’s range and speed into the modern era, and future efforts will build on top of that groundwork.
Source: Bluetooth SIG
Sprint stores are PokéStops and Gyms for ‘Pokémon Go’
As rumored, Niantic is bringing brand partnerships to its hit augmented reality game, Pokémon Go. The software developer has announced that Sprint will have the first sponsored locations in the US, with more than 10,500 stores expected to be turned into PokéStops and Gyms. It’s worth nothing this doesn’t only include Sprint’s namesake shops, but also those from Boost Mobile and RadioShack — which are owned by the carrier. These spaces will feature in-store charging stations too, in case your smartphone can’t keep up with all your quests.
Now don’t get too excited (or do), but Niantic says you should keep an eye on its social media channels on December 12th. That’s when it will be sharing details about new Pokémon additions to Pokémon Go, and we know you’re dying to find out all about that.
Source: Niantic
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