Celebrate the release of Nougat with these Nexus wallpapers!
It’s release week in Android land. It’s kinda like Christmas… if the presents took months to reach some of the good little geeks and nerds.
If you’re rocking Nougat right now, I’m happy for you. This is the benefit of buying a Nexus. For the rest of us, we’ll be waiting a little while for Samsung, HTC, Motorola, and the rest to get updates to our phones. Okay, some of us will be waiting a lotta while, but in the meantime, we’ve got a little piece of Nougat you can taste on your own device: a rocking new wallpaper, pulled from the Google Now Launcher that pushed with Nougat on the Nexus 6P and 5X.
It’s pink. It’s glorious. It’s dusky. And even though it’s not the most exciting wallpaper, it’s a wallpaper with a subtle grace and simplicity to add some class to your home screen.
Download: Dusk
I’m not entirely sure if this is sand or a coarse rock wall, but the lights and shadows at work here are breathtaking. I’d use two icon packs with this wall, one with the shadows and one with that beautiful golden rock.
Download: Sandy
This thin strip of sand along the deep, dark blue of the ocean is mesmerizing. It reminds me of trying to walk a delicate knife edge… Whether keeping balance or just remembering how thin the target you’re reaching for is, this wallpaper has you covered.
Download: Islet
As we navigate our lives, and the Android world, there’s always rocks we have to steer away from, and while lighthouses sometimes help, we all must be vigilant as we try to traverse our own oceans.
Download: Rocky
Waves are enigmatic things. Taming them is impossible. Riding them takes the experience and the faith to let it carry you away. Wave represent tension, conflict, and yet they are quite peaceful to watch, and especially to hear.
Download: Wave
Honor 8 is coming to Europe: First UK pricing and release info
New flagship Honor phone available from August 24, priced £369.99.
The latest high-end phone from the Huawei-owned Honor brand is officially coming to Europe. At an event in Paris today, Honor announced that the Honor 8 — recently unveiled to an American audience — will be available from today, Aug. 24, priced £369.99 in the UK. Huawei’s vMall outlet will get it first, along with an “anniversary package” of bundled goodies. In addition, the unlocked Honor 8 will be carried by the usual suspects, including Clove, Ebuyer, Expansys and Amazon. (Amazon’s throwing in a free Fire TV stick while stocks last.)
And on the carrier side, Three will offer the Honor 8 for sale “in the coming weeks.”
The Honor 8 brings many of the internals we’re already familiar with from the Huawei P9 family — Huawei’s high-end Kirin 950 chip, 4GB of RAM and a dual-camera setup combining both color and monochrome sensors for improved detail and clarity. Unlike the Huawei phone, the Honor 8 bears no Leica branding, but it appears to be much the same hardware on the inside. Naturally, Honor’s trademark fingerprint security makes a return, with another rear-mounted sensor.
The Honor 8 also sees the brand adopting a new metal-and-glass design language, with a metal trim sandwiched between two sheets of “2.5D” tapered glass. As Daniel Bader explains in our preview of the U.S. model, it’s a surprisingly compelling package.
I didn’t expect to be as impressed by the Honor 8 as I am. While I haven’t been able to do sufficient battery testing to determine whether the 3000mAh battery lives up to the competition, the phone has shown promise, refusing to drop below 20% in any of the days I’ve used the phone.
More than that, the Honor 8 consistently performs well, has a great screen, and captures fantastic photos, at a price that is sure to be significantly lower than the phone it is gunning for — the Galaxy S7.
The Honor 8’s launch price is a good bit higher than previous Honor phones, reflecting the improvements in build quality and higher-end internals than previous offerings such as the Honor 7 and 5X. The key difference between the U.S. and British pricing is that it’s more expensive than major rival OnePlus in the UK, whereas the American price tag of $399 exactly matches the OnePlus 3.
We’ll have more impressions on the European Honor 8 coming soon, as well as comparisons with its Huawei-branded brethren, so stay tuned. (We’re also updating our Instagram story live from the event, if you’re into that sort of thing.)
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The bottom line: Our quick verdict on the BlackBerry DTEK50
With a review headline that reads “cheap, secure and better than expected,” you might expect the device in question to have earned a high score. As it turns out, this is a BlackBerry we’re talking about, which is to say, “better than expected” doesn’t necessary mean you should actually buy one. The good news is that the new DTEK50 offers solid build quality at a reasonable price: just $299. For the money, you also get improved security over typical mid-range Android phones — a potential selling point for prospective business customers. While this is indeed a decent choice for IT departments, individual users can get more for their money at a similar or slightly higher price (read: faster performance, longer battery life and superior image quality). Basically, then, while the DTEK50 surpassed our admittedly modest expectations, you can still do better.
Moto Z’s Hasselblad camera add-on surfaces in fresh photos
When Motorola and Lenovo unveiled the Moto Z, they unveiled a host of MotoMods… except for one. Where was that camera add-on we’d seen in leaks? Apparently, it’s still coming — and it might be more than you were expecting. Moto G3 has come across community photos showing that the camera module is not only Hasselblad-branded as anticipated, but packs a 10X optical zoom lens. There aren’t any clues as to the sensor, alas, but we suspect that this is more likely to be a point-and-shoot quality (maybe mirrorless) sensor given the size, rather than Hasselblad’s signature medium format. You’ll be taking better photos than you would with the stock camera, then, but we wouldn’t count on magazine-quality Instagram shots.
If leaks are accurate, you won’t have to wait long for more details. The Hasselblad MotoMod may be announced at Germany’s IFA show, which officially starts on September 2nd. There aren’t any clues as to the price, but we can’t imagine that Hasselblad camera hardware will come cheap. We’d expect something in the ballpark of a previous photography add-on like Sony’s QX10, which cost about $230 when new.
Via: TechnoBuffalo, PetaPixel
Source: Moto G3
Dyson’s latest smart fan heats, cools and purifies the air
Dyson has expanded its lineup with The Pure Hot+Cool Link, a very expensive WiFi enabled fan that combines all the features of the Dyson Pure Hot+ Cool fan and Pure Cool Link. It can thermostatically cool, heat and purify the air, and connect with your home network. You can then control everything using the smartphone app introduced with the Pure Cool Link model.
The device sucks air in through the bottom and can either heat it with an element or cool you down using the so-called air multiplier technology. On the way, a HEPA glass filter scrubs 99.95 percent of harmful particles, including formaldehyde, dust, dead skin and pollen.
A built-in thermostat keeps the air temperature constant, Dyson says, though it’s not an air conditioner, so don’t expect it to save you on a super-hot day. The included app lets you tweak settings like fan speed and temperature, or set up a timer that it shuts off at night. It can also monitor air quality, and let you specify how often you want it to scrub the air. The app will notify you when it’s time to change the filter.
The Dyson Pure Hot+Cool Link fan will be available in the UK on September 5th for £500 and the US on September 6th for a (cool) $600. That’s $100 more than the Pure Cool Link model, but if you’re spending $600 on a fancy fan, that probably won’t phase you.
Why young-adult video games are thriving
In the recent hit game Inside, you play a child on the run through a mysterious and horrifying surveillance state straight out of 1984. Oxenfree stars a group of teenagers with a complicated history arriving at a spooky island for an ill-advised camping trip. Life Is Strange puts you in the shoes of a young girl at a boarding school with burgeoning time-warp powers and messed-up friends. The common thread among these three highly acclaimed indie games is obvious: They star youthful protagonists facing confusing coming-of-age moments in worlds tinted by magic and mystery. They’re what you might call “young adult” video games.
But these games — and popular “YA” works in other mediums, such as the Netflix series Stranger Things — tell us something about what YA has become. Over the past few years, “young adult fiction” has become less of a demographic for book readers, and more of a genre in its own right, like sci-fi or true crime. It used to be that young adult fiction was regarded strictly as books aimed at children aged 13 to 17, but many of those titles appeal to a much broader age range. In fact, young adult fiction is hugely popular among grown-ups too, with Nielsen reporting last year that over 80 percent of all YA book sales were made to adult readers.
With such broad appeal, it was inevitable the young adult genre would soon colonize film and television with massive multimillion-dollar franchises. Now YA has taken root in video games too — and it’s thriving.
What defines “young adult” as a genre? Settings span from high fantasy to science fiction to magical high schools, while a lot of stories are set in ordinary places with ordinary people. But there are two common elements. First, while any good story is about change, YA embraces a kind of all-consuming transformation as its core theme. It is, in essence, about leaving behind an old self and (sometimes reluctantly) embracing a (sometimes frightening) new one. You could call it growing up.
The second tenet of young adult is, of course, youthful protagonists. With young characters as its focus, the transformative moments — whether they’re about graduating high school, falling in love or leading a postapocalypse rebellion — are new to them as they enter a larger, more disorienting world. And the emotional stakes are therefore heightened: Sometimes falling in love or becoming unpopular really is the end of the world. The effect of these stories, when executed well, is that they stir emotions not just in young readers/viewers/gamers, but in adults as well, who might remember their own first encounters with this “young” kind of startling transformation.
Video games are in an ideal position to tap into the transformative power at the center of young-adult stories. This is partly thanks to the way video games demand that the player directly interact with and exert control over the characters. In Inside, you’re pushing your young child protagonist forever toward the right of the screen. He is pursued by dogs, murderous soldiers and plenty of other brutal obstacles, but the boy never stops pushing right. The child remains largely unknowable throughout his journey, but as you put together pieces of the story, you begin to see that this is — at the risk of spoilers — a journey of complete transformation from a young boy into … something else entirely.
The puzzle portions of Inside are more recognizably “video gamey,” but I think they detract from the experience. A far more subtle game mechanic is all Inside needs to invest the gamer with the story’s transformative core: pushing right on the control stick. In a side-scrolling video game, it’s inevitable that you push further and further right, even if you don’t understand why; even if you don’t want to. It’s like growing up. You have no choice. And Inside is fundamentally about the young boy’s lack of choice in becoming something else.
Oxenfree is blessedly lighter on puzzles. In the game, you control Alex, a young girl who stands on the precipice of major life changes with the recent passing of her brother and the introduction of her new stepfamily. Oxenfree is built around a unique gameplay mechanic: conversation. Usually, video game dialogue choices boil down to three Bioware-style choices: positive, negative or neutral. Instead, Oxenfree’s dialogue offers nuanced choices (a favorite line: “You think contemplating annihilation makes you special?”). Also, the conversation doesn’t wait for you; the other characters will move on with or without main character Alex’s participation. In this way, Oxenfree’s story is all about the navigation of complex, burgeoning relationships. Through your dialogue choices, you can steer Alex over the course of the game’s magical-realist events to become wiser and more mature by the end of the trip, or just more jaded.
Life Is Strange takes a more heavy-handed approach to conversation, with plenty of painfully awkward stabs at “hip” dialogue, but its earnestness has its own kind of endearing charm. More successful is its time-warp mechanic, which allows the main character, Max, to come to terms with choice and consequences. As the player, you steer Max as she travels back and forth through time, grappling with the realization that even seemingly simple choices can lead to major consequences for her and her friends. In the game, your actions shape the world that Max inhabits, and who she and her friends ultimately become.
A still from Life Is Strange.
These games strike markedly different tones: Life Is Strange is more earnest and didactic, like an after-school special, but is populated with several well-drawn characters, particularly Max’s troubled and rebellious best friend, Chloe. Oxenfree remains truer to the spirit of real-life teens, so much so that their web of relationships overshadows the light horror story that underpins it.
Inside, meanwhile, is a horror story that has more in common with Lars Von Trier than The Hunger Games, but nonetheless it crafts a unique young-adult story that’s effective only in the form of a video game. (This same story, I suspect, might be too much of a tough sell for even the most adventurous book publishers.)
In their marketing, these games were free from the baggage of demographic targets or any cynical big-budget Divergent-style franchise agenda. They have been exempt from any conversation about which bookshelf they would belong on, or what their MIAA rating would be. They were small, beautifully told stories marketed to all gamers, and warmly received by the press as fine examples of the medium. They are artistic creations that further establish “YA” as a genre, and not just a demographic.
US Judge absolves Fitbit of corporate espionage allegations
In the ongoing case between Jawbone and Fitbit, a US International Trade Commission judge ruled Tuesday that Fitbit did not steal trade secrets from its major fitness tracking competitor. Last year, Jawbone accused Fitbit of infringing on multiple patents and stealing away employees with key business knowledge, but according to Judge Dee Lord’s ruling, “no party has been shown to have misappropriated any trade secret.”
Jawbone’s end goal was to ban the import of Fitbit products to the US by proving their competitor infringed on their own patents, but as Reuters reports, two of the six patents Fitbit was accused of stealing were withdrawn and the other four were invalidated by a judge earlier this year. That meant the case was limited to questions of corporate espionage and poached employees when it went before the court in May.
In a statement provided to Reuters, Fitbit CEO James Park once again accused his competition of trying “to disrupt Fitbit’s momentum to compensate for their own lack of success in the market.” (In May, Jawbone denied it was getting out of the wearables business.) In a statement provided to Engadget Tuesday, Jawbone wrote that the company would continue to seek a review of the ruling before a larger ITC panel, as well as in a broader trade secret case against Fitbit which is set to go to jury trial in California. “The California court already has granted a preliminary injunction and rejected Fitbit’s efforts to dismiss the case,” the statement said. “Jawbone is confident it will prevail when the full scope of its claims is heard by the jury.”
Source: Reuters
Longest-ever aircraft takes damage in second flight
The future of air travel may have to wait a while. Airlander 10, Hybrid Air Vehicles’ cross between an airplane and airship, suffered damage at the end of its second test flight. The longest-ever aircraft wrecked its cockpit when it nosedived on landing. HAV reports that the crew is “safe and well,” thankfully, but it’s not clear how long this will delay the Airlander program. The company tells the BBC that it’s waiting on the results of a debriefing before it provides more details.
This isn’t likely to be a major setback for the oddly-shaped (okay, butt-like) aircraft, which promises to be useful for everything from long surveillance missions to eco-friendly passenger flights. However, it’s going to be expensive. The Airlander 10 costs about £25 million ($33.1 million), so even a comparatively modest accident will prove costly.
Via: BBC
Source: Hybrid Air Vehicles (Twitter)
Microsoft’s Word Flow keyboard gets a Bing search upgrade
Microsoft’s Word Flow keyboard for iPhone just got a significant upgrade this week, adding a search engine for emoji, GIFs, and more from Bing.
The new search feature will copy GIFs to your clipboard so you can paste them into messages and can even choose GIFs from what you type for contextual searches. If you type something like “yaaaas!” or something inane like that, you can search for matching GIFs of that nature.
Microsoft is planning on adding in additional themes, support for iOS text replacement and cursor placement using 3D Touch.
The new built-in search is obviously meant to compete with Google, after Google previously released the Gboard keyboard for iPhone with built-in search.
There are several different keyboards available for iPhone to choose from, but now that giants like Microsoft and Google have made their own options available, the vanilla iPhone keyboard seems like an afterthought, especially considering Microsoft previously acquired SwiftKey.
It’ll all come down to personal preference, but Microsoft just shot ahead to Google’s level with its addition of these new features.
Via: The Verge
‘Halo 5: Forge’ reaches PCs on September 8th
It won’t take much longer before you can get a taste of Halo 5 on your PC. Microsoft and 343 Industries have revealed that Halo 5: Forge, the multiplayer level creation experience, will reach Windows 10 on September 8th. As mentioned earlier, it’s all about playing multiplayer matches on custom maps created either on the PC or the Xbox One. You won’t get either the single-player campaign (possibly a good thing) or the stock maps from the console release. You do get the perks of playing on more flexible hardware, though, such as support for 4K displays and a interface that takes advantage of finer-grained mouse and keyboard controls.
At the same time, Xbox One owners are getting a Halo 5: Guardians update (Anvil’s Legacy) that brings them in sync with the Windows release. You can play Forge maps from Windows creators, and you’ll get both two new maps (one for the Arena mode, one for Warzone) as well as new weapons, attachments and skins. No, it’s not the same as getting the exact same game on both platforms, but it’s clear between this, Forza and Gears of War that the days of Xbox-only flagship games are over.
Source: Xbox Wire
