Sony unleashes the Xperia XA in the UK

Sony has announced the company’s Xperia XA handset is now available in the UK on networks other than O2. Sony had previously released the Xperia XA on O2 on June 23, but today you’ll be able to find the handset from the likes of Carphone Warehouse, Three, Virgin, and more.

As well as the £17 per month option (with 100MB of data) on O2, those seeking the Xperia XA will be able to look to Vodafone, which is offering two tariff options for £24 per month (£10 upfront fee — 1GB of data) or £19 per month (£30 upfront fee — 500MB of data). Three has the Xperia XA on plans from £18, but until July 18 you’ll be able to enjoy a 50% savings for the first 6 months.

Lastly, Virgin lists the phone on plans from £15 per month. Those unfamiliar with the Xperia XA, we’re looking at a curved 5-inch, 720p display, MediaTek MT6755 processor, 2GB of RAM, NFC, 13MP rear shooter with 8MP front-facing camera, 16GB internal storage (with microSD expansion), and a battery that is boasted to last for up to two days of use thanks to Sony’s “smart battery management.”

The Xperia XA is available in Graphite Black, White, Lime Gold, and Rose Gold (exclusive to Carphone Warehouse). Hit the links below to be taken to the respective stores where you can purchase the Sony handset. It’s worth noting that Vodafone still has the Xperia XA listed as “coming soon.”

• Buy the Sony Xperia XA from CPW
• Buy the Sony Xperia XA from O2
• Buy the Sony Xperia XA from Three
• Buy the Sony Xperia XA from Virgin

Best roaming plans for Canadians travelling to the U.S.

Here are the best ways to save money when taking your phone to the U.S.!

Millions of Canadians visit the U.S. every year and, with nearly every pocket protecting a smartphone and its data plan, they increasingly want to maintain the same quality of service they have at home. Thankfully, roaming options have not only proliferated over the past few years but, due to competition at home and abroad, plans have become significantly cheaper.

Here are the best ones.

Roam Mobility

Roam Mobility has staked its claim as one of the best roaming options for Canadians traveling south. Owned by Vancouver-based Otono Networks, the company figured out early on that most people want to have their roaming service figured out before they cross the border. Roam Mobility offers SIM cards for unlocked phones that can be easily topped up from the company’s website prior to embarking, with options ranging from per-day, for short-term visitors, to Snowbird plans, for Canadians spending longer periods in warmer climes during the winter.

Though Roam Mobility recently raised its fees to hedge against the weakening Canadian Dollar, at $4.95 CAD per day for 500MB of 4G LTE data, plus unlimited calling and texts with a unique local phone number, it is still one of the best deals around.

What to know: Data is cumulative, and doesn’t reset at midnight like some other plans. If you require more data, purchase an extra day or two in advance; those extra megabytes can be used all at once, and are cheaper than purchasing bundled plans.

See at Roam Mobility

Karma Go Hotspot

The only independent solution in the list, Karma’s Go hotspot creates a WiFi signal from a 4G LTE connection, allowing several people to connect to it from up to 100 feet away in nearly 500 American cities.

While the Karma comes with an upfront cost of $149 USD, it can be used with a monthly plan (starting at $40 for 5GB) or a pay-as-you-go flex plan, depending on a user’s needs.

What to know: Karma lasts up to six hours on a charge and can be topped up quickly using a microUSB cord.

Total Cost

• Karma Go hotspot: $149 USD
• 5GB month service: $40 USD
• 10GB month service: $75 USD
• 20GB month service: $140 USD
• Shipping to Canada: $20 USD

See at Karma

Local T-Mobile SIM

Another great option for Canadians visiting the States is to head straight to a T-Mobile store to pick up a SIM card for an unlocked phone.

While the rates used to be significantly more generous than they are today, T-Mobile still offers some decent options for data-hungry travellers. For $3 per day, you can get 30 minutes of talk or 30 texts, with the option of adding 500MB of 4G LTE data for $5 per day. Longer stay travellers can spend $10 per week for 1GB of 4G LTE data, which is a great option for those who’ll be hedging with plenty of Wi-Fi.

See at T-Mobile

Keeping your own SIM card

For those uninterested in changing SIM cards, nearly all Canadian carriers have all-inclusive roaming plans for visiting the US. The benefits are obvious: you get to keep your phone numbers, allowing you to send and receive calls and texts as if you were at home. The downsides are obvious, too: they tend to be slightly more expensive than the above alternatives.

Rogers Roam Like Home

For $5 per day, customers on Share Everything plans can access their call, texts and data buckets from back home. Enroll by texting travel to 222.

What to know: Customers spending longer than 10 days per month in the US will only be charged for 10 days, to a maximum of $50.

See at Rogers

Bell Roam Better

For $5 per day, share plan customers can visit the US and access unlimited calls and texts, along with 100MB of data that isn’t tied to their data buckets from back home. Enroll by texting roam to 7626.

What to know: Need more data? It’s easy to add another 100MB of data for an additional $5 per day. Plans expire at 11:59pm Eastern Time, regardless of which US time zone the customer is in.

See at Bell

Telus US Easy Roam

For $7 per day, postpaid customers can access their calls, text and data buckets from back home. Enroll by texting travel to 7626.

What to know: Customers will not be charged after spending 14 days in the US, to a maximum of $100 per billing cycle. Unlike Rogers, users don’t have to be subscribed to a share plan — all postpaid plans are valid.

See at Telus

Wind Mobile

Wind Mobile US Roaming Add-on: For $15 per month, Wind Mobile customers can add unlimited talk and text, and 1GB of full-speed data in the US. Wind also offers many plans that include unlimited US talk, text and 1GB of monthly data.

What to know: Instead of charging extra, Wind Mobile will throttle connections to 2G speeds after using 1GB of data per month.

See at Wind Mobile

Your roaming plans?

Is your carrier not listed? Check with them to see if they have inexpensive daily, weekly, or monthly US travel bundles. Have roaming experiences or tips to share? Leave them in in the comments!

You will soon be able to add stickers to liven up your Twitter photos

Twitter will soon begin rolling out a new feature to its iOS and Android apps, along with Twitter.com, that will allow for adding stickers to any uploaded photos in a post.

Coming soon! Unleash your creativity by adding fun #Stickers to your photos on Twitter: https://t.co/Ph92Oivyhy pic.twitter.com/NZoM6nHenD

— Twitter (@twitter) June 27, 2016

In a blog post, Twitter stated:

Soon, you can browse our rotating sets of stickers to join in on real-time conversations, and select from the library of hundreds of accessories, emoji, and props to make your photos more fun. Use them to share what you’re doing or how you’re feeling, to show support for a cause, or to just add some flair. You can use multiple stickers on a photo, resize and rotate them, and place them anywhere on your picture.

The new feature will also allow Twitter members to tap on a sticker to create a timeline that shows how it is being used by different Twitter accounts in different ways. The stickers addition will be available sometime in the next few weeks.

T-Mobile Galaxy Note 4 now receiving Marshmallow

T-Mobile is finally pushing out Marshmallow for the Samsung Galaxy Note 4. Weighing in at 1.5GB, the update brings a number of big new features to the phone. Right now, T-Mobile’s support site doesn’t show that the update is available, but there are a number of reports floating around that people are receiving the update over the air.

Marshmallow brings Doze, enhanced permission controls, some new design elements and more. If you have a Galaxy Note 4 on T-Mobile be sure to check for the update and let us know how it works out for you.

Discuss the update in the forums

Android Marshmallow

• Read our Marshmallow review
• Will my phone get updated to Marshmallow?
• Welcome to the Marshmallow era
• Join the discussion in our forums

Samsung Galaxy Note 7 name appears alongside specs: Iris scanner and branding virtually confirmed

A Samsung Galaxy Note 7 label leak has been published online by the usually-reliable Evan Blass. It virtually confirms rumours we’ve been hearing for weeks: Samsung is skipping the Note 6 name.

Although it doesn’t make sense sequentially, the reasoning behind this name is that it fits the next Galaxy Note into this year’s “7” family, alongside the Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge. 

Blass, who tweets under the name @evleaks, followed up the tweet with another saying that the rumoured iris scanner is also confirmed. Given the source and his previous track record, we don’t find any reason to doubt the information, especially not the branding, which looks very official. 

Confirmed. pic.twitter.com/jo1EF3Mp3J

— Evan Blass (@evleaks) June 25, 2016

As previously mentioned, this isn’t the first time we’ve heard speculation about an iris scanner, or the move away from sequential naming. Evan’s tweets are just the final, unofficial stamp of approval we needed to be anything close to convinced that both moves are in Samsung’s plans. 

With the iris scanner, we’d expect it to work in a similar manner to the Microsoft Lumia 950 XL’s, and be built in to the front of the device, near the front-facing camera. Along with the fingerprint scanner – which we’re expecting to be built in to the home button – it will add an extra layer of security to the device. 

As for the name change, bringing it alongside the S7 and S7 Edge suggests that rumours about sharing a similar design to the S7 Edge are accurate. The most recent speculation suggests that the Note 7 will essentially just be a larger version of the S7 Edge with an S-Pen, and that there won’t be a regular non dual-screen variant. 

Samsung is expected to launch the new device on 2 August, around a month before IFA in Berlin. In yet another tweet, responding to the previous two, Blass also listed a few specifications we should expect to see: 

• 5.7-inch Quad HD Super AMOLED display
• 64GB Storage (plus microSD card slot)
• 12MP dual-pixel
• 5MP front-facing camera
• IP68 certification (water/dust resistant)
• Black, silver and blue colour options

Of course, we don’t know for sure if any of these rumours are true, but thankfully we only have just over a month until we found out how many of them are accurate. 

Twitter Stickers are the hashtags for your photos, only sillier

Twitter has recently announced a whole raft of tweaks and changes that are coming to the platform soon, but the first to arrive will be #Stickers, the fun photo-changing feature that was trialled with a select few accounts a few months ago.

Twitter Stickers are being rolled out to everyone’s account soon, and they will be available to use through the iOS and Android apps initially.

They give you a wide range of images to place over your photo posts, including pictoral accessories, emoji and props. They serve two purposes; they make your photos look wacky and also work like hashtags. By clicking on a #Sticker on someone’s photo, the search engine will pull up every tweeted photo using the same decal.

You can use multiple stickers on a photo, resize and rotate them.

In addition to the mobile apps, users will be able to view and click stickers on Twitter.com, although you won’t be able to place them as yet.

Twitter now has a wide range of photo editing tools, including filters, cropping and accessibility. What’s more, the social network will soon remove images, video and other media from the overall tweet character length. That means you will be able to tweet a photo, for example, but still use 140 characters to describe it.

READ: Twitter will give you more characters if you add a media file

Anki’s tiny Cozmo robot is a Pixar character made real

Best known for its sleek and intelligent remote controlled cars, Anki is stepping into new territory with its latest product, a small robot toy named Cozmo. If you’ve seen Wall-E, you’ve already got a good sense of its personality. Thanks to a combination of artificial intelligence, robotic movement designed by former Pixar animators and computer vision technology, Cozmo is curious and incredibly expressive, with the ability to interact with the world around it. It’s smart enough to recognize your face and remember you over time, and it can explore its environment and play games with its very own toys. But it’s most interesting feature? It’s not a perfect robot, and that’s just how Anki want’s it.

“Perfect is boring,” Anki CEO and co-founder Boris Sofman said in an interview. “With the [Anki Drive] cars, the first version was boring because it was too good. With Cozmo, we wanted him to be imperfect. When he goes and fails to do something, that’s not a bad thing… As long as you can detect what happens, it’s a good opportunity to show off the emotions it generates.”

While we’ve seen plenty of toys claiming AI and robotic capabilities in the past, Cozmo feels unique. I’ll admit, I fell for it pretty quickly during a brief demo. As it was charging, it “slept” in a tiny dock, complete with a snoring sound effect and sleeping animation that can only be described as adorable. When it woke up, it looked around the table and came up right to the edge, quickly realizing it couldn’t go any further. Upon recognizing my face, it wandered up to me with a suspicious look. Like a child, it will recognize people it’s already met and be a bit more hesitant around strangers.

Cozmo also comes with a bunch of smart blocks, which basically serve as its very own toys. It stacks them when it’s bored — and trust me, Cozmo gets really annoyed if you mess up its work. We also used the blocks to play a competitive game, which involved tapping down on them when they displayed like colors. In the first few games I easily trounced Cozmo, much to his adorable dismay. Eventually, he learned to hit the blocks faster, and he had no problem letting me know it.

Sofman says the company was inspired by how toddler and pets interact with the world. They can’t speak, but they can clearly explore and interact with you. Like a child, Cozmo slowly learns to recognize people and explore its world, and over time it learns to play games. But also like a child, it gets frustrated when things don’t work out. Instead of being annoying, though, those little personality quirks — like gloating when it wins a game, and getting angry when you beat it — make it more endearing.

Cozmo is a tiny thing, which adds to its vulnerability. It’s light, has a small display up front for its eyes, a single articulating arm to pick up objects, and uses two tiny treads to get around. Eventually, you’ll be able to replace its arm mechanism with other types of appendages. Cozmo communicates through a combination of Star Wars-like bot noises (yes, in many ways this is the Droid you’ve been looking for), and expressive movements. It relies on an iPhone and Android app to have your phone do much of the processing, which also plays a soundtrack perfectly suited to Cozmo’s mood. Its battery lasts for around two hours, but it charges up in 10 minutes.

Anki paid particular attention to Cozmo’s emotional smarts. It has an “emotion engine” that lets it respond to situations realistically, which should help you bond with it pretty quickly. (Again, it took me all of five seconds.) Its animation team is led by former Pixar animator Carlos Baena, so they know how to toy with your feelings with simple robotic movements and noises. Anki also developed a customized version of the Maya 3D software to have it directly command how Cozmo moves, allowing the animators to quickly get up and running.

Looking ahead, Anki plans to release an software development kid (SDK) for Cozmo, which will let anyone program it. It could also end up being used in STEM programs in schools — it wouldn’t be hard to convince kids to learn programming so they can control Cozmo. The company is also sending Cozmo units to Carnegie Mellon, where Anki’s founders got their start.

You can pre-order Cozmo today from Anki’s website for $180, and it’ll be widely available in October. Yes, it’s expensive, but it’s only slightly more than Sphero’s $150 BB-8 toy, which every geek coveted last year (and wasn’t nearly as smart as Cozmo).