Adorable Cozmo robot will soon recognize pets

Owners of the Anki Cozmo robot will soon be able to have it interact with their pets. An upgrade slated to roll out during the week of December 5th will add new functionality to the tiny automaton that includes reactions to dog and cats.

The update will also add a new memory match game, an explorer mode for point-of-view camera action with night vision, the ability to give it words to pronounce and a workout mode. Of course all of those features pale in comparison to your artificial buddy hanging out with your furry friends.

Unfortunately, Anki doesn’t share any more details than, “he can now detect dogs and cats, and reacts appropriately to both.” In a video about the new feature, all we see is cute little Cozmo barking at a dog in its tiny synthesized voice. It’s really a heart-warming Instagram video waiting to happen.

But as pet owners know, their dogs and cats don’t always respond favorably to gadgets. So it’s probably a good idea to stick close to Cozmo when it says hi to Fido so it doesn’t end up crushed in your canine’s jaws.

Source: Anki

Wind Mobile rebrands Freedom Mobile, launches LTE network in Toronto, Vancouver

It’s Freedom Mobile time!

Canada’s Wind Mobile has rebranded Freedom Mobile as it looks to move into a new phase of maturity under new owner, Shaw Communications.

The upside is this: while the orange-and-blue branding remains intact, Wind’s transition to Freedom Mobile decouples it from the often-controversial global Wind Mobile brand, and allows Shaw to move beyond the “new entrant” moniker into something that resembles a true competitor to the flanker brands of incumbents like Rogers, Telus, and Bell. It was no coincidence that Public Mobile (under Telus), Fido and Virgin have all been offering extremely competitive 4GB plans in recent weeks.

Freedom Mobile’s AWS-3 powered LTE network will launch in Toronto and Vancouver on November 27, rolling out the Greater Toronto and Vancouver areas by spring of next year. Calgary, Edmonton and Ottawa will receive LTE by next summer, and Freedom’s entire network will be awash in high-speed wireless by the fall of 2017.

To start, the company is offering two phones that run on its LTE network, the LG V20 and ZTE Grand X 4, which is coming in the days ahead. A single LTE plan will also be offered, a $40 promotional piece that includes 6GB of LTE data, unlimited calls to Canada and the U.S., unlimited global texting, reduced roaming rates, and voicemail/call display.

Shaw is calling Freedom Mobile’s LTE network “traffic-free” because it runs on AWS-3 spectrum, which is completely unused across Canada right now. Indeed, only T-Mobile has rolled it out in parts of the U.S., and sparsely at that. To get a bit technical, Freedom’s LTE network is actually a hybrid of AWS-3 and AWS-1 depending on the location: the former in the GTA, Vancouver, Calgary and Edmonton; the later in Eastern Ontario, which needed to be re-farmed after Videotron purchased all of the AWS-3 spectrum in that area.

The company says that peak speeds will be 180Mbps at 64QAM, which isn’t quite as fast as the carrier aggregation-enabled LTE-Advanced speeds we’re used to seeing from Bell and Rogers, but it’s a considerable jump from Wind Mobile’s 3G days. Freedom says that it is still planning to upgrade its 3G networks across Canada to support its one million-plus existing customers. As promised, it says VoLTE and VoWiFi will also be offered at a future date.

Lots of good stuff here, especially for existing Wind Mobile customers looking forward to inexpensive LTE service in Canada. Those traveling from Wind’s LTE network to either Home 3G or Away 3G areas will still experience slower service, and the transition may be a bit awkward for a few months, but over time the situation should improve dramatically.

Are you a Rogers, Telus or Bell customer looking to switch over to the new Freedom Mobile? Let us know in the comments!

HTC denies rumors of mobile division sale

HTC is saying rumors of a forthcoming sale of their mobile division are false.

HTC is “strongly denying” rumors out of China that the Taiwanese tech manufacturer is reportedly planning a sale of its smartphone business. Rumor has it HTC would announce the deal for early 2017.

But HTC has been adamant in its denials of the rumors. In a statement provided to Android Central, a representative from HTC strongly denied the reports, calling them false.

The rumors are entirely false, says HTC.

The rumor seemed to gain legs due to the struggles HTC has faced in 2016. The Taiwanese device maker has posted losses every quarter this year, due in part to the struggling sales of the HTC 10. It also recently released the HTC Bolt, an underwhelming Sprint exclusive that’s unlikely to win over many consumers or have an impact on the bottom line.

Given all that, and coupled with the relative success of its manufacturing partnership with Google to create the Pixel, many outlets have jumped on the rumor that the search engine giant would be interested in acquiring HTC’s mobile division. Other rumors have claimed HTC’s CEO Cher Wang has been getting in touch with collaborators to give them advanced notice of a sale in Spring 2017.

Considering the vehement denial from HTC we can see how these rumors could be more of an assumption than anything substantial, but in the next few months we’ll find out if anything moves forward.

Moto Z getting Daydream support with Nougat update starting this week

Nougat is starting to roll out to the Moto Z this week!

It appears the rumors were true: the Moto Z and Moto Z Force on Verizon are the first of the company’s newest phones to receive updates to Android 7.0 Nougat, and with it, the first non-Google phones to receive support for Daydream VR.

According to Motorola, the Nougat update will begin rolling out “this week” to Moto Z and Moto Z Play on Verizon, with other variants and countries to come shortly.

The other big announcement, which was also rumored last week, is that the Moto Z and Z Force will be the first phones outside of Google’s own Pixel products to be certified Daydream-compatible. This means that the phones will be able to slip into Google’s Daydream View VR headset and run any of the apps and games currently optimized for the new platform. Moto says:

These are the first smartphones from another manufacturer to be recognized by Google as Daydream-ready devices – a distinction given to phones that have been certified for the Daydream platform and are built for VR with high-resolution displays, ultra-smooth graphics and high-fidelity sensors for precise head tracking.

While this announcement will be of little comfort to those who purchased the unlocked Moto Z or any variant of the Moto Z Play — people like specific timelines! — it’s great news in general, not just for fans of Daydream, but for those of us who want to see more Nougat on more phones.

Moto Z, Moto Z Force and Moto Z Play

• Our Moto Z review!
• Moto Z Play preview
• The Hasselblad True Zoom is a Mod to remember
• Moto Z specs
• Moto Mods custom backs
• The latest Moto Z news
• Discuss in our Moto Z forums

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Verizon

Dealing with Daydream Controller issues

How do I fix my Daydream controller?

There isn’t a lot that can go wrong with Google Daydream, due in no small part to the way it gets used, but when something does happen it’s usually a problem with the controller. This tiny accessory is a Bluetooth controller with directional sensors so Daydream knows where it is positioned in space, and while that’s incredibly cool it also means Bluetooth bugs can mess up a gaming session.

Here’s how to deal with the most common Daydream controller issues, so you’re quickly able to jump back into your VR world!

Read more at VR Heads!

OnePlus 3T review: Rekindling a love story

The best budget-minded flagship gets even better with a mid-cycle spec bump.

The OnePlus 3 is easily the company’s most complete (and well-received) product, offering a high-end experience at a fraction of what you’d expect to pay elsewhere. But the hardcore phone nerds that are so often potential OnePlus buyers are a fickle bunch, and they may not be interested in buying an “old” phone that was released six months ago. The answer? Bump the specs, add a couple important improvements and re-release the phone to reassure potential buyers that they’re getting the absolute best when they buy.

The result of that thinking is the OnePlus 3T. The “T” doesn’t really mean anything, per se, aside from the fact that some companies use an “S” to denote their follow-up models … and well, T is one letter more. But the name also denotes that you’re getting the new phone, and the OnePlus 3T does have a few points of distinction that are worth re-evaluating it as a phone worthy of your hard-earned dollars.

With the same great overall experience so many people enjoyed on the original OnePlus 3, the OnePlus 3T adds a little extra in the form of some new specs, a new storage option, a fresh color choice and the promise that a new software version is just a month away. Here is our full review of the mid-cycle OnePlus refresh.

About this review

I (Andrew Martonik) am writing this review after 9 days using a gunmetal OnePlus 3T with 128GB of storage. The entirety of the review was conducted on the T-Mobile network in the greater Seattle, WA area. The phone’s software arrived on version 28_161027 (with the October 1 security patch), and was not updated during the course of review. The phone was provided to Android Central for review by OnePlus.

Subtle internal changes

OnePlus 3T Hardware

The external hardware design of the OnePlus 3T is identical to that of the original OnePlus 3, so I won’t get into the minutiae of the hardware details yet again. I will point out, though, that even six months on, the design and in-hand feel still hold up. The aluminum feels great, the build quality is precise and I still love the Alert Slider for quickly silencing the phone. Up front the 1080p display (which remains unchanged) is still colorful and crisp, but its overall brightness leaves just a little bit to be desired — its aggressive dropping of brightness when set to “auto” doesn’t help, either.

The hardware absolutely still holds up, and outdoes other phones in its class.

For a 5.5-inch phone the OnePlus 3T is still plenty thin and compact, though the slick metal body doesn’t quite offer enough grip for me sometimes. I found myself putting it in a OnePlus sandstone case more often than not, which is a shame because I really love this new gunmetal color that’s a bit deeper and includes a hint of brown when compared to the old silver color. If you want something a bit different, the soft gold metal with a white front remains an option, and will be on sale shortly after launch.

Now to what OnePlus actually changed. There’s a faster processor, a larger battery, a new front-facing camera (more on that below) and a sapphire covering for the rear camera. You can also now option up to 128GB of internal storage for a very fair $40 more, which will help placate those still miffed by the lack of SD card slot.

The internal hardware additions are nice, and mean that you can rest assured that you have the latest and greatest inside, but right now the specs really just make sure that your OnePlus 3T will be good to use in another year more so than improving things dramatically today.

(Patiently) waiting for Nougat

OnePlus 3T Software and performance

It’s a tad superfluous to spend all that much time talking about the software here, as by the time the first OnePlus 3T orders arrive they’ll be less than a month away from an OTA that will bring Android 7.0 Nougat. I absolutely have to say that perhaps holding off on the launch of the OnePlus 3T in order to ship it with Nougat out of the box would have been a real treat, but I also understand the desire to get the phone out in the market for the holiday season as well.

Nougat will be here soon, but for now the OxygenOS Marshmallow experience is excellent.

But as it stands, the OnePlus 3T will greet you with roughly the same “OxygenOS” experience built on Android 6.0 Marshmallow as you’ll find on the OnePlus 3, OnePlus 2 and OnePlus X today. The newly combined OnePlus software team has made a handful of small visual and feature enhancements, though — there’s a fresh look to the notification shade, a few tweaks to the stock launcher and under-the-hood file system improvements to provide even more speed.

The tweaks are relatively minor, and all build into the same great software vision — OxygenOS is still all about simplicity, respecting Google’s vision for Android and augmenting it with a handful of useful features and customization options. As I’ve said before, OxygenOS includes many of the features we rooted our phones for years to get, and it integrates them into Android as if they were meant to be.

Though the OnePlus 3 was already one of the best-performing and slickest phones available, a bump to a newer Snapdragon 821 processor is always welcome. The OnePlus 3T is of course extremely fast and smooth, and I never experienced a slowdown in over a week of using it — and I’d expect it to hold up just as well as my OnePlus 3 has after months of use. And not only does the new Snapdragon 821 give you the confidence that you’re getting the latest and greatest mobile CPU when you buy the phone, but it also prepares you for the future — you just got a little extra runway for top-end performance a year or 18 months from now.

It isn’t uncommon to finish a day with over half of the battery left.

The same goes for the battery, which jumped over 10% in capacity to a hearty 3400 mAh. Together with the more efficient processor and already svelte software, the OnePlus 3T has offered me amazing battery life. My usual day, kicking off at 8 a.m., with lots of podcast listening, frequent app use, retrieving email, managing my social networking apps and taking photos left me with 40-50% battery when I headed to bed after 10 p.m. A lighter weekend day saw the OnePlus 3T end up with over 65% left when I went to bed. That longevity puts it in rare company already, and battery life is only set to get better when Nougat arrives.

Dash Charge fast charging is of course still included, though because battery life was so great I really didn’t find a need for it and regularly just used whatever charger I had laying around. Adding to that feeling is the fact that Dash Charge is proprietary to the OnePlus 3 and 3T, meaning I’m still going to lean toward carrying a different charger that’s better suited to powering all of my devices rather than tailoring to just one. But for those who just use a single phone, the ridiculously fast refill times from Dash Charge still can’t be overlooked.

Cameras

OnePlus made an … interesting move to switch away from its previous 8MP front-facing camera, which had large 1.4-micron pixels, to a new 16MP sensor (different from the rear camera) with much smaller 1-micron pixels. Aside from the spec change the camera is still fixed-focus and offers 1080p video, if that’s your sort of thing.

This feels like an overall upgrade to the front-facing camera, but it’s still just average.

On the face of it (har har) this change should offer better image quality in daylight and a dropoff in low light situations. The camera does pretty well, actually, particularly in better lighting. Low light shots were understandably grainy, but no more so than any other front-facing camera I’ve used lately. The only issues I can find here is that the fixed focal distance can sometimes leave your face a tad soft (an issue with most front-facing cameras), and there’s no sort of front-facing “flash” mode that lights up the screen in dark situations. A move to an auto focusing front-facing camera would be more expensive, but a front-facing screen light when taking a selfie in darker areas should be standard particularly when you have a sensor with such small pixels.

Now, a small gallery of selfies for you to judge (hopefully just the camera quality) for yourself — and no, these shots didn’t use the “beauty” mode.

The rear camera is exceptional for a $440 phone, and competitive with $650+ phones.

Aside from the addition of a sapphire glass covering, the rear camera has remained unchanged from the OnePlus 3 — a 16MP sensor with f/2.0 lens that’s known to be a solid performer. The Snapdragon 821’s improved ISP (image signal processor) may be helping things a tad here, but I honestly couldn’t tell the difference in images taken with the OnePlus 3T versus its predecessor. In most situations the camera does a great job of quickly snapping a photo that’s accurate and colorful, though low light pictures still get a good bit of blurry chroma smoothing when compared to top performers like the Pixel XL. For a $440 phone the camera is beyond fantastic, and when compared to $650+ phones it’s competitive. Once again, things could improve further with the Nougat update.

Still great

OnePlus 3T Bottom line

Whenever a company replaces a popular product with a new model less than six months after its launch, it has the potential to turn customers sour. Discontinuing the OnePlus 3 in favor of a spec-bumped and more expensive OnePlus 3T was always going to rub some the wrong way, but considering the overall minor extent of the upgrades and the continued software support for the original model I think we can all get past it. The original OnePlus 3 is still a great phone today, and nobody who has one should feel any different now than the 3T is here.

You still can’t find a better value than the OnePlus 3T.

Looking at the OnePlus 3T as a standalone device, available in late 2016 to compete with phones ranging from $400 to $700, it’s absolutely a fantastic total package. OnePlus took a proven platform that was already a crown jewel of “affordable flagship” phones, and refreshed it with a couple important improvements without removing anything that made it appealing when it launched the first time earlier this year.

Even with the modest price bump, the OnePlus 3T is an amazing value. It has great hardware, slick and responsive software, amazing battery life, strong rear camera and every internal spec you could want. Even its few weaknesses, like slightly low screen brightness, lack of waterproofing and questionable software update frequency, are minimal bad marks on what is otherwise an exceptional phone. At $439, you can’t find a better value than the OnePlus 3T.

See at OnePlus

OnePlus 3 and OnePlus 3T

• OnePlus 3 review: Finally, all grown up
• The OnePlus 3T is official
• OnePlus 3 specs
• OnePlus 3T vs. OnePlus 3: What’s the difference?
• Latest OnePlus 3 news
• Discuss OnePlus 3 in the forums

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Instagram borrows from Facebook, Snapchat with live video, expiring photos

What’s old is new again with Instagram’s latest update.

Instagram is beginning to roll out some new features that will seem oddly familiar to Snapchat users and fans of Facebook live videos. In its latest update, Instagram has added live video to Instagram Stories, along with disappearing images and videos in direct messages to friends and groups.

The update has yet to reach all users, but when it does you’ll find the new live video option by swiping right in the Stories camera mode. Your followers may receive a notification to let them know when you’re live, and you’ll be able to stream for up to an hour. When someone is live, you’ll see “Live” under their profile pic on the Instagram Stories feed. Simply tap their story to join their stream, where you can comment. The streamer also has the option to pin their favorite comments to the stream. Live videos will also be found in the Explore tab.

This sounds pretty much identical to Facebook Live, which was launched back in April to allow all of Facebook’s 1.79 billion users to stream live video right from the Facebook mobile app.

Meanwhile, Instagram has taken another page out of Snapchat’s playbook with it’s new direct messaging feature. With the new update, you’ll be able to send photos or videos directly to friends or groups that will expire as soon as they’re viewed. Take a silly selfie, slap a sticker on it and send it off to your Instagram besties. You’ll then be able to see if your snaps — I mean, direct messages — have been replayed or screenshotted.

Sound familiar at all?

Let us know if you’ve gotten the update, and what you think about Instagram’s ‘innovations’.