Reuters: Samsung to sell refurbished high-end phones
Samsung is preparing an official refurbished phone program, according to Reuters, which could launch “as early as next year.” The scheme would offer premium handsets — think the Galaxy S and Galaxy Note line — at a discount for customers that can’t afford them at full price. Most of the phones would be sourced from its one-year upgrade program, available in places like the US and South Korea, which gives super-fans an easier way to trade-in and acquire the latest handsets. It’s not clear, however, how much the new discounts will come to, or where the scheme will be offered.
A used phone program would give Samsung an additional revenue stream and maximize its returns on each individual handset. After all, the company would be selling the phone twice — once as new, the second as used — with presumably minimal repair costs. Since the Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge, Samsung has stumbled on a design philosophy that far outstrips its previous efforts. (Remember the band-aid Galaxy S5?) The superior hardware, coupled with a slightly more hands-off approach to Android skinning, has culminated in some extremely desirable smartphones. But they’re expensive — the Galaxy Note 7 starts at around $850 in the US.
While Samsung has a ton of devices that hit cheaper price-points, it’s the Galaxy S7 and Note 7 — and their most immediate predecessors — that can best compete with the competition from Huawei, Xiaomi and OnePlus. Refurbished phone sales could cannibalise Samsung’s own mid-range offerings, but they would also shore up its stake in the overall smartphone market. And for the consumer, it would be just another option when buyinh a new handset. A win-win for everyone but Samsung’s competition — especially HTC, which is already struggling to sell its best phones.
Source: Reuters
Facebook’s Lifestage is a video-centric social app for teens
Facebook isn’t done launching products designed to capture the Snapchat generation. Its latest attempt after Instagram Stories and live filters? A new standalone, video-centric social app for high school students called Lifestage. To be able to complete your profile, you’d have to take videos and selfies of your likes, dislikes and facial expressions. It will ask you take videos of your BFFs, to bust out dances moves on cam, take photos of your desserts, so on and so forth. When we say that it’s for high school students, we mean you won’t even be able to see other people’s profiles if you’re older than 22. That’s assuming you won’t creepily pretend to be younger than you are.
See, it only shows you profiles of other kids going to your school and other ones nearby, similar to how Facebook was in the beginning. Further, the app will only unlock profiles from your school if over 20 students sign up. While we’ll have to wait and see if the new social network catches on, Lifestage was created by someone who truly knows its audience: 19-year-old Facebook employee Michael Sayman, who’s been with Facebook since he got out of high school. He’s been making apps since he was 13 years old, and Mark Zuckerberg personally invited him to join his team.
Sayman says his app “looks back at the days of Facebook from 2004 and explores what can be done if we went back and turned the crank all the way forward to 2016 with video-first.” That certainly aligns with Zuckerberg’s plan to transition his website into a more video-centric network. There’s no word yet on when it’ll come out for Android devices, but iPhone- and iPad-using high schoolers can now download it from iTunes.
Via: TechCrunch
Source: Michael Sayman (Facebook)
Oracle funds a group trying to tarnish Google’s image
It won’t shock you to hear that Oracle is nursing a grudge after it lost its big copyright case against Google. It’s pushing for a new trial, for one thing. However, the software giant is also trying to undermine its rival in roundabout ways. Oracle has confirmed to Fortune that it’s funding Campaign for Accountability, a non-profit advocacy group with a decidedly anti-Google bent. While it promotes some common causes, such as fighting “big oil” and promoting LGBT rights, it also has a Google Transparency Project that aims to “track the company’s influence” on government and personal lives. And not surprisingly, most of it is critical — the project is obsessed with the possible ethical implications of Google’s White House meetings.
Ironically, CfA isn’t very transparent about its own membership. Microsoft has explicitly denied funding the group, however, so it’s not necessarily a haven for tech giants with an axe to grind. The big concern is that Oracle will use CfA as an astroturfing (fake grassroots) weapon to undermine Google, particularly among politicians who might not either see the Oracle connection or are willing to turn a blind eye to it.
Source: Fortune, Campaign for Accountability
Niantic vows to ban ‘Pokemon Go’ cheaters
Niantic is trying to make Pokemon Go more fair for its millions of players across the globe, this week officially confirming that it will ban any account that appears to be cheating.
“After reviewing many reports of in-game cheating, we have started taking action against players taking unfair advantage of and abusing Pokemon Go. Moving forward, we will continue to terminate accounts that show clear signs of cheating,” Niantic said.
The company didn’t specify what the “clear signs of cheating” are, but it will most likely target accounts using bots to level up at inhuman speeds, those with skewed location data and other hacks that violate its user guidelines. Anyone who believes their account has been unfairly banned can submit an appeal right here.
Trainers, we’re working hard to provide a fair, fun and legitimate game experience for all: https://t.co/aaYfjvECq0
— Pokémon GO (@PokemonGoApp) August 19, 2016
Niantic recently shut down many third-party Pokemon Go tools like PokeVision, which displayed all of the creatures available for capture in a live map. Closing these services allowed the company to expand into new territories, the company explained.
Niantic isn’t alone in the fight against cheaters — Twitch is also on the hunt for players that violate Pokemon Go’s guidelines. Anyone caught cheating in a live stream will receive a strike against his or her Twitch account.
Source: Pokemon Go
Samsung’s Galaxy Note 7 and new Gear VR headset are available now
Samsung announced a host of new gear earlier this month, the most notable of which is its excellent new Galaxy Note 7 handset, and it’s all available now in the US. The phone is now on sale at AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile, US Cellular and Sprint stores as well as at Best Buy, Target, Walmart and a handful of other retailers. If you loathe going to retail locations, you can pick it up on Samsung or straight from the carriers online.
The new Gear VR headset is on sale, as well. It’ll set you back $99.99 and is a notable upgrade over the earlier model — we found it to be one of the best introductions to VR content you can have, particularly at its reasonable price. If you’ve wanted to create your own VR content, Samsung’s Gear 360 camera is available, but that’ll set you back more. It costs $349.99, but it’s one of the few options consumers have for creating more immersive video. The little camera will only be available online, for now.
Lastly, a pair of Samsung accessories — the Gear IconX earbuds and Level Active headphones — are both available for $199.99 and $99.99, respectively. The Gear IconX buds are particularly intriguing; they’re totally free of cords and have built-in memory for storying music. And they can also track motion, making them an all-in-one fitness and music solution. The Level Active, a more traditional pair of Bluetooth enabled headphones, is a bit less exciting. They do integrate with Samsung apps through an “active” button you can press to hear workout data from the S Health app or to activate a timer for your run.
Robocall ‘strike force’ sets out to end unwanted calls
The Federal Communications Commission is just as fed up with robocalls as you are. After opening the door for telecoms to offer robocall blocking services last year, and urging those companies to make them available for free last month, members of the FCC convened a meeting of the Robocall Strike Force this morning to figure out what should happen next. (And yes, that’s really what it’s called.)
“As in any pressing challenge like this,” FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler said, “perfect is the enemy of the good. The nature of software, as you all know, is to start and continually improve. Let’s have that philosophy here.”
That fast-moving mentality is good news for folks sick of getting fake calls from the IRS at dinnertime, but it’s too bad the part of the meeting the public got to see was a little light on the substance. Still, we got get a finer sense of the companies throwing their weight behind this cause. Beyond AT&T, Apple and Google (which were already known to be part of the strike force), AT&T CEO and strike force chief Randall Stephenson conformed that “technical experts” from Comcast, Level 2, Nokia, Samsung, Sprint and Verizon.
“We have carriers, device makers, OS developers, network designers, and as you heard the commissioner speak, regulators and lawmakers are going to have a role to play in this as well,” said he added. “So what we’re going to have to do is come out of this session with a comprehensive playbook and that we [will] all go out and begin to execute.” Beyond that, Commissioner Ajit Pai raised more specific questions about steps the working group could take, from encouraging Congress to pass an anti-spoofing act proposed in 2015 to pushing for enforcement actions against known, shady telemarketers.
Not long after, strike force members in attendance took sequestered themselves behind closed doors to get to work. Here’s hoping up they cook up a thorough plan of action soon — they’ll report their findings in 60 days.
Via: Reuters
The Engadget Podcast Ep 2: One More Robot
In Episode Two: One More Robot, editors Cherlynn Low, Dana Wollman and Chris Velazco join host Terrence O’Brien to talk about how fitness trackers ruined Happy Meals, the true potential of AI and try to figure out what monster would want the backspace key navigate back a page in Chrome.
Relevant links:
- Intel shows off Project Alloy, an all-in-one VR headset
- McDonald’s hands out activity trackers with Happy Meals
- McDonald’s pulls plug on Happy Meal activity trackers
- Elon Musk’s OpenAI will teach machines to talk using Reddit
- Duo, Google’s supersimple video chat app, arrives today
- Chrome extension restores the backspace key to its former glory
- Google will stop you hitting backspace in Chrome by mistake
- We don’t understand AI because we don’t understand intelligence
- How a robot wrote for Engadget
- The Galaxy Note 7 vs. the competition: familiar, but different
- I taught a computer to write like Engadget
You can check out every episode on The Engadget Podcast page in audio, video and text form for the hearing impaired.
Watch on YouTube
Subscribe on Google Play Music
Subscribe on iTunes
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Subscribe on Pocket Casts
Samsung Note 7 teardown reveals waterproof components
iFixit, famous destroyer of gadgets for the good of all humankind, has busted out its arsenal of teardown tools to take apart a Samsung Galaxy Note 7. In the team’s quest to see every single component inside the phone, they found several sealed components that make the device waterproof. If you’ll recall, the phone is rated IP68, which means it can withstand being submerged for up to 30 minutes or five feet underwater. The teardown reveals that the company achieved that rating by protecting the device’s headphone jack with a sealing gasket, the speaker with several layers of material and its S Pen chamber with copious amounts of glue, among other measures.
The teardown also confirms what people already know: the Note 7 has its cousins’ (the S7s’) main camera, flash memory and gyroscope. It even has a nearly identical chipset. The newer phone has a third camera, though, that it uses as its iris scanner. When it comes to battery, it’s not quite as good as the S7 Edge’s, but as we mentioned in our review, the difference is barely noticeable. Further, its batter is “significantly more powerful” than the one found in the iPhone 6s Plus. Besides examining the phone itself, iFixit has taken a closer look at the S Pen, as well. The phone’s stylus is apparently more sensitive than both Apple’s Pencil and the Surface Pen.
Overall, the device got a low repairability rating due to its modular components, but iFixit says it still “lives up to the hype.” You can see the whole teardown on the team’s website or watch the highlights below.
Source: iFixit
NYT’s curated news app will shut down next month
Just about two and a half years after launching its NYT Now mobile experiment at South by Southwest, the New York Times has announced it will be “officially shelving” the app. After August, NYT Now will no longer be be available for download, but many of the features have already been rolled into the main NYTimes app or the paper’s other digital platforms.
When it launched in early 2014, the app was mean to grab “a younger, mobile-savvy audience” (read: millennials) with a curated article list and lower price that was about half the monthly cost of the next cheapest digital-only subscription. According to the Times’ own post mortem article, the app “never quite took off” and the paper actually dropped the subscription fee entirely last year in an attempt to pick up more users.
While NYT Now itself is going away, the app’s editors and developers have pointed out that many of the design elements have informed recent redesigns of the paper’s main mobile offering. Features like the Morning, Evening and Weekend briefings will migrate to the NYTimes app and NYT Now subscribers should see an email soon with an offer to switch to a standard Times digital subscription, otherwise the NYTimes app still only offers 10 free articles a month. The Mini Crossword, however, is still free to play.
Source: New York Times
Sprint’s new Unlimited Freedom plan is unlimited with a catch
Hot on the heels of T-Mobile’s new unlimited data plan, Sprint is launching a new Unlimited Freedom plan for $100.
The plan is meant to compare to T-Mobile, AT&T and Verizon’s offerings, giving customers unlimited data, talk and text for $60 a month for one line and $100 for two, including access charges. The option is available to both new and existing customers, though there are some caveats with the new plan that you’ll definitely want to take note of before taking the plunge to alter your plan.
The unlimited data isn’t really so unlimited, as so often seems to be the case, especially with T-Mobile’s One plan. Video streams are “optimized” at 480p resolution and music quality tops out at extreme quality, up to 500kbps. Gaming is also limited up to 2mbps. Unlike T-Mobile One, where you can simply pay extra to stream HD video, there doesn’t appear to be an option to do so with Sprint’s Unlimited Freedom plan.
While the plan is slightly cheaper than T-Mobile’s plan and certainly cheaper than others offered by the competition, the fine print once again puts a damper on what initially seems like a great deal. If you’re okay with lower-quality video streaming and even capped streaming quality for your music, it might be worth it to switch to Sprint’s new offering, but for everyone else you may want to do some shopping around in the interim.
Source: Sprint
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