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If you're a free user on Spotify's streaming music service, you may hear an ad soon that asks you to respond verbally. Spotify has started testing voice-enabled ads on a small number of free subscribers in the US. The voice-enabled ads will only be deployed to users who already have their microphone permissions turned on to use Spotify's voice search feature, the company confirmed to Engadget on Thursday.
Via: TechCrunch
The smartwatch market is still growing at a breakneck pace several years in. Counterpoint Research estimated that smartwatch shipments jumped by 48 percent year-over-year in the first quarter of 2019 -- no mean feat in a season that's typically quiet. The Apple Watch's leading share barely budged at 35.8 percent, although that came precisely because its shipments grew a sizeable 49 percent. The real stars of the show were some of Apple's rivals, though, as they enjoyed success they haven't had in a while.
Source: Counterpoint Research
Uber customers in Denver can now use the app to purchase transit tickets. This makes Denver the first city in the world to get the added capability, but it won't be the last. It's all part of Uber's goal to make the platform a one-stop shop for transportation needs, from carsharing to bikesharing, busses and more.
Source: TechCrunch
Tinder is launching a new feature for all users today called Festival Mode that’ll let users add a badge to their profile that advertises the music festivals they’ll attend this summer. The app will prompt users to make a selection on the Festival Mode card, which will give other users a heads-up that they’ll be at a festival and potentially willing to meet.
Users will be able to select from 12 festivals in both the US and UK, including Governors Ball, Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival, EDC Las Vegas, and Lovebox. Each festival option will open up three weeks prior to the event. The app will prioritize potential matches who are planning to attend the same festival and will show people from around the world who will be there — even if...
May has begun, and that means the latest iteration of Google's I/O developer conference is right around the bend. Usually, that translates to a deluge of new software, AI breakthroughs and web technology. And we're still expecting plenty of that at this year's show. This time around, however, there's a bit of a twist: Google confirmed during its latest financial results call that it will make hardware announcements at I/O, breaking a device drought from the past few years. But what does it plan to reveal, exactly? Here's a primer on what to expect so that you're prepared for whatever appears onstage on May 7th.
Hey, good morning! You look fabulous.
Are you ready for the first 5G-connected TV? Huawei may have one on the way; however, we're probably closer to seeing all of Google's Pixel 3a and the Moto Z4. Also, NASA uncovered a fraud scheme that resulted in a couple of destroyed rockets, and tinkerers should check out this DIY smartwatch project.
Harry Potter: Wizards Unite, the Pokémon Go-style smartphone game co-developed by Niantic and WB Games, is now available in open beta in Australia and New Zealand. Players in the two countries can play the game now on both iOS and Android. The announcement follows a couple of false starts for the game, which included it appearing on the iOS App Store last month before quickly being pulled.
Back in 2016, Pokémon Go also launched in Australia and New Zealand first, before coming later to the US, Europe, and the rest of the world. However, at the time it was possible to get access to the game early on Android by downloading its APK from a third-party source. That doesn’t appear to be the case for Wizard’s Unite. Although we were able to...
Niantic is giving Harry Potter fans in Australia and New Zealand the chance to be among the first to wave their augmented reality wands and vanquish rogue magical objects. The beta version of Harry Potter: Wizards Unite is now live on the Apple App Store and Google Play in those two countries. Since it's just a test run, the company says the available features, languages, design and even the game's overall appearance aren't final -- they'll likely change based on the first players' feedback. Also, testers can expect to encounter bugs and unstable environments common to most beta software.
Source: Harry Potter: Wizards Unite
The next entry of Motorola's Z series has likely been revealed, as noted leaker Evan Blass tweeted out these shots of the Moto Z4. Matching specs and a smaller picture that leaked earlier, the Z4 shown here features a teardrop front-camera design, single-lens rear camera setup, with a headphone jack and no visible fingerprint sensor. It's also visibly ready for Moto Mods, which right now notably gives Moto Z3 owners the only way to have a 5G-capable smartphone in the US.
The specs posted by 91Mobiles suggest that's because this phone will include an in-display fingerprint scanner, as well as a 48 MP rear-camera that uses Motorola's Quad Pixel tech to deliver a higher quality 12 MP image and Google Pixel Night Sight-like "Night Vision" abilities. It also listed a Group Selfie mode for the 25 MP front camera, Qualcomm Snapdragon 675 CPU and 3,600mAh battery.
It's not intended to keep up with a flagship phone like the Galaxy S10 family and will likely cost half of the price. but if it really does arrive with an older-generation CPU and single-lens rear camera that likely lacks tricks like OIS, we'll need to know exactly how much it costs to tell if it's competing with upper tier mid-range devices like the highly-anticipated OnePlus 7 series that we expect will feature triple lenses in the rear, a bigger built-in battery and a more powerful CPU
Source: Evan Blass (Twitter)
If Google wanted to preserve what few secrets were left about its Pixel 3a phones, it's probably out of luck. Droid Life has obtained images and extensive feature lists for both the 5.6-inch Pixel 3a and its 6-inch 3a XL counterpart, including what appear to be graphics for the devices' promo website. It's now virtually certain that they'll come in purple (described in one leak as "Purple-ish") in addition to the usual black and white options, and they'll come with photographic perks of the high-end Pixel 3 like Night Sight.
Source: Droid Life, This is Tech Today (YouTube)
Amidst announcements of a new Messenger, a new Facebook app and new VR headsets, the company snuck in a quieter, less flashier update: it's now allowing creators to make and publish their own AR effects and filters on Instagram. Right now, the only Instagram camera effects you see are made entirely in-house. Thanks to Facebook opening up its Spark AR Studio tool to Instagram, however, you might eventually see all kinds of AR effects made by, well, pretty much anyone.
The costs of Apple's truce with Qualcomm are now much clearer. Qualcomm now estimates that it will pull in revenue between $4.5 billion and $4.7 billion from the settlement in the third quarter of the year, including both the one-time payment from Apple as well as the elimination of obligations. It's certainly not a trivial amount, although Qualcomm made clear that this won't dramatically alter its fortunes.
Source: Qualcomm (PDF)
Moment has announced its biggest ever update for Pro Camera, which adds a bunch of cool new features to the app, and brings the Android version up to parity. And to celebrate, if you download the app for the first time you'll get 15 percent off in the Moment Shop, which carries more than 20 photography and travel brands.
Moment has updated its iOS and Android camera apps with a swathe of new features to give you both more control and more information about your photos and videos. What started as little more than a software companion to Moment’s range of smartphone lenses has since evolved into a capable camera app in its own right. With today’s update, Moment has gained more of the features of other advanced camera apps like the iOS-exclusive Halide and Filmic Pro.
Both the iOS and Android versions of the Moment app are getting new visual cues designed to show you which areas of your image are correctly exposed and in focus. Zebra stripes show any under or over-exposed parts of an image, while focus peaking shows which areas of the image are sharp.
On...
DIY projects can be a lot of fun, and if Raspberry Pi has taught us anything it's that people love to tinker. But for most folk, forays into the world of build-it-yourself tech start and end with a specific kit and a whole bunch of instructions to help them along. Not so for one inquisitive Redditor, who recently revealed that he built an entire smartwatch from scratch. And since he's been kind to enough to share details of the process down to the smallest minutiae, you can too.
Source: Reddit
Good news: you don't have to buy a brand new Toyota (or score a very lightly used model) just to get modern mobile conveniences. The automaker has announced that you can add Amazon Alexa and Apple CarPlay (sorry, no Android Auto) to the 2018 Camry and Sienna. If you're itching for an upgrade, you can book an appointment for an installation at a dealership. While this isn't going to be much consolation if you're driving another model, this could prove a treat if you've been kicking yourself for buying a Toyota a little too soon.
Via: Autoblog
Source: Toyota
Out of all the announcements Facebook made at its F8 2019 developers conference, one of the most important was the redesign of its core smartphone app. The new application, which has been updated with what Facebook is calling the "FB5" version, is now cleaner, faster and puts Groups front and center. And, as Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said, "The app isn't even blue anymore." That's the first thing you'll notice when you check out the new app, which is rolling out to users starting today. If you use Messenger, the white-covered design of the FB5 Facebook app will feel quite familiar.
If you're a New Yorker, you won't have to wait long to use Apple Pay for mass transit. As part of a call discussing Apple's latest earnings, Tim Cook revealed that New York City's transit system would support Apple Pay in early summer, narrowing down the generic "later this year" mentioned in March. He didn't say just which services and routes would be covered, but the Metropolitan Transportation Authority's tap-to-pay OMNY system is supposed to launch May 31st with coverage on the 4, 5 and 6 subway lines as well as Staten Island buses.
Source: Apple
Workplace communication platform Slack says it will be deactivating a public channel dedicated to giving away $1,000 per day to anyone that can guess that day’s selected vocabulary word, citing company policies. The game, called The Word of the Day Is, was started by Gabriel Whaley last week as an experiment. It used a Slack bot to monitor entries, which were any one-word messages entered into the public channel. Winners were then sent the money via Venmo.
Whaley, the founder and CEO of a New York City-based creative agency called MSCHF Internet Studios, told The Verge at the time that he was “just trying to keep the internet a fun place and an escape.” In quick order, the game gained popularity and write-ups from major news...
Facebook hosted the opening keynote for its annual developer's conference today and announced several updates to its main social network as well as Instagram, Whatsapp and Messenger. Privacy seems to be the name of the game this year, as Facebook tries to rehab its damaged reputation and regain the trust of its users. Only time will tell if Facebook made any progress today.
Source: Facebook
There were rumors that Facebook was going to make its messaging products interoperable, but now it appears they're about to be a reality. At F8, Messenger's head of consumer product Asha Sharma said that in the future, users will soon be able to send messages across Facebook's three different messaging platforms: Messenger, Instagram and WhatsApp. "We believe people should be able to talk to anyone anywhere," she said.
This interoperability is just one of many features of the new, upcoming Messenger 5. All messages will also be end-to-end encrypted, which is part of Facebook's recent privacy-focused mantra. It's unclear just yet when this will roll out to users, but it sounds like it'll be some time this year.
With over 1 billion monthly active users, Instagram sees a major opportunity to disrupt online shopping. And, over the past year or so, the company has been working hard to make shopping a cornerstone feature of its app. Just last month, it started allowing users buy products from a select group of brands without leaving the application, and now it's taking that one step further by opening up these features to celebrities, athletes and influencers. Starting next week, Instagram will make it easy for you to shop looks from your favorite creators: They'll now be able to tag products in their posts, giving you the ability to buy whatever they may be wearing (from apparel to cosmetics) directly from the app.
As rumored, Instagram is indeed getting ready to roll out a test that hides "Like" counts from people looking at your pictures and videos. The company made the announcement at Facebook's F8 developers conference, where it revealed that it will start doing this with users in Canada next week. With the test, Instagram plans to remove the total number of likes from photos and videos on that show up on the main feed, profiles and permalinked pages.
If you've ever wanted to let Facebook know who your romantic crush is -- and no, "poking" doesn't count -- soon you'll have the chance to do just that. Today, at its F8 2019 developers conference, the company announced Secret Crush, a new feature that will let you use Facebook Dating to express interest in someone from your friends on the site. Facebook says that users have told it they believe there's an opportunity to explore romances within their own extended circle of friends on Facebook, and that's how the idea for Secret Crush came to be.
Facebook is introducing a feature called "Meet New Friends" at F8 2019, its annual developers conference, as part of a major redesign to its mobile app. The company says that Meet New Friends is designed to help users start friendships with others from their shared communities on Facebook, such as the city you live in, the school you go/went to or the place you work at. Since this may raise privacy concerns, which is the last thing the company needs right now, Facebook is quick to point out that Meet New Friends is an opt-in tool. That means you'll only come across other people who have turned the feature on, and the same goes for you populating on someone else's feed.
Facebook announced an overhaul of its main mobile app today that puts more emphasis on two of its most critical features: events and groups. The company says it’s placing groups front and center as a cornerstone of how it wants users to think of the main Facebook app, while events is getting a fresh coat of paint as one of the most-used parts of the app that keeps users coming back day in and day out.
“There are tens of millions of active groups on Facebook. When people find the right one, it often becomes the most meaningful part of how they use Facebook. And today, more than 400 million people on Facebook belong to a group that they find meaningful,” the company said in a blog post. “With this in mind, we’re rolling out a fresh new...
Instagram is announcing a couple of new features today that are designed to make the app more appealing to influencers, creators, and online business owners. It’s part of a broader shift within the company to position its photo-sharing app, which is now used by more than 1 billion people every month, as a kind of Facebook replacement. Younger users have for years been leaving the main app for greener, more hip pastures, and Facebook seems to recognize that Instagram is now at a scale and level of cultural ubiquity that it can begin carrying the torch — at least partially.
The first new feature, announced today at Facebook’s F8 developer conference, is a redesigned camera with what Instagram is calling Create Mode. The new mode will make...
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg says he’s committed to turning his company around. Onstage at Facebook’s F8 developer conference, the chief executive says that privacy will be the defining pillar of his social network’s sprawling empire going forward.
His opening statements build on the massive shift in Zuckerberg’s vision for the company that he first outlined early last month when he announced Facebook would transition away from the News Feed and public posts and toward a “privacy-focused communications platform” that unified its messaging products around concepts like ephemerality and encryption.
“The future is private,” Zuckerberg told the crowd, noting that Facebook’s most dominant vision over the last decade was to build global...
YouTube will live stream 13 Major League Baseball games in the second half of this season, the company announced today. The schedule of which games those will be hasn't yet been announced, but the news is another example of pro sports looking to platforms beyond traditional TV and their own dedicated streaming apps to bring in new audiences. YouTube will have exclusive rights to those games in the US, Canada, and Puerto Rico. They’ll be viewable from the MLB’s main YouTube page and via an upcoming channel that’s being added to YouTube TV for subscribers of that $50-per-month service.
That said, it’s not as if YouTube is about to give MLB.TV any competition: 13 games are just a drop in the bucket when you factor in the entire 162-game...
Facebook's annual F8 developer conference keynote is upon us at 1PM Eastern, and that means a lot of news whether or not you're a coder. This year, the company is not only outlining the future of social networking and technologies like VR -- it's likely addressing privacy questions in response to a string of scandals. Thankfully, there are multiple ways to watch such a definitive event. The company is livestreaming F8 through multiple channels, including its main F8 page and its Facebook page for developers. And if you're an Oculus device owner, you can even watch in VR through Venues. These events are seldom short, but they're worthwhile if you want to know where Facebook is headed for years to come.
Source: Facebook F8, Facebook, Oculus
Facebook’s developer conference has become a strange affair. Each year in April, the social network convenes a gathering dedicated to its sprawling platform in San Jose, California, for the thousands of companies, creators, and programmers that depend on it. The conference typically includes announcements for new features coming to Facebook’s suite of apps, along with updates on its more experimental efforts in virtual and augmented reality and artificial intelligence.
In recent years, the conference has been overshadowed by controversies related to data privacy, security, moderation, and other topics revolving around Facebook’s struggle to police its platform and reckon with its global influence. Last year, Facebook reportedly delayed...
The days of spending your precious lunchbreak standing in line for a sandwich are increasingly numbered, as supermarket chain Sainsbury's has launched the UK's first ever till-free grocery store. The busy store in London's Holborn Circus has been given a mobile-first makeover, so customers can scan and pay for their goods via their smartphone, while staff previously chained to checkout areas are free to spend time helping customers on the shop floor.
Source: Sainsbury's
Hey, good morning! You look fabulous.
Would you buy a 43-inch TV that works in vertical mode? Why didn't you buy Anki's cute toy robots? When are you going to try that meatless Burger King Whopper? So many questions, and it's only Tuesday.
Remember the comically enormous phone that Avenir Telecom showed off under the Energizer brand at this year's Mobile World Congress? Its subsequent crowdfunding campaign has crashed and burned, as The Verge points out.
Via: The Verge
Source: Indiegogo
A few weeks ago, Samsung warned investors that its Q1 profit would drop about 60 percent from the same period in 2018. Now the detailed report has arrived, confirming that projection with an operating profit of $5.4 billion that reflected a 23 percent drop in revenue from its memory chip business. Samsung also suffered smaller drops in the mobile and consumer electronics divisions.
Still the company claims "the newly launched Galaxy S10 smartphone logged solid sales." Paired along with its midrange A series, it expects market demand to increase slightly in the next quarter even as prices drop.
Once item it didn't mention in the report is the now-delayed Galaxy Fold, however the future of foldable devices is still expected to increase profits in its display division. It still believes foldable devices, along with the Galaxy Note and 5G will help "strengthen" its leadership in premium smartphones. Its earnings call is still ongoing, if there's any notable news we will update this post.
Source: Samsung
T-Mobile and Sprint have pushed back the deadline to complete their $26 billion merger, reports Reuters. The companies will now have until July 29th to earn the approval of the US Justice Department and the Federal Communications Commission.
Source: Reuters
Images of an unannounced new version of the Motorola RAZR appear to have leaked online. The renders, which first appeared in a post on Weibo and were reuploaded to SlashLeaks, depict a vertically folding screen design. They also show off a wireless charging station and range of accessories, all of which seems to fit in a triangular box.
Via: The Verge
Source: SlashLeaks
If that whole folding smartphone thing doesn't work out, Samsung has lot of other ideas cooking. It recently received patent approval for a continuous display that covers the front, while folding around the top and part of the rear of the phone, as spotted by Let's Go Digital. That would make for some interesting applications, like letting subjects see how they look before you take a photo or showing live language translations on the rear display.
Via: Let's Go Digital
Source: WIPO
Cyberattackers don't need to find obscure technical flaws to launch phishing attacks -- they might just need a screen capture and some clever web coding. Developer James Fisher has found a relatively simple exploit in Chrome for mobile that takes advantage of how the app displays the address bar. When you scroll down from the top of a page, the approach displays a fake address bar that won't disappear until you visit another site. The attacker can even craft the page to prevent you from seeing the real address bar when you scroll up.
Via: 9to5Google
Source: James Fisher
Action Launcher has received a tune-up for the spring, but its biggest change may be how it makes money. Version 40 of the Android launcher has introduced an Action Search feature that looks across apps, contacts, settings and the web, but also displays ads whenever you hunt for something that isn't on-device. If you want Action Search to query Google for web results, you have to both purchase a one-time $7 Plus upgrade and the once-a-year $5 Supporter Pack.
Source: Action Launcher (1), (2)
Following the introduction of Apple’s iOS Screen Time feature, a number of app developers who created screen-tracking and parental control apps have been asked to change their products, or have been booted from the App Store completely, according to a new report in The New York Times.
The Times says that “Apple has removed or restricted at least 11 of the 17 most downloaded screen-time and parental-control apps,” as well as a number of others. The report points out that Apple’s Screen Time app has some drawbacks compared to some of the third-party alternatives, giving users fewer ways to block kids (or themselves) from accessing unwanted apps, less-granular scheduling, and that children were able to work around Apple’s web-filtering...
It can be a headache to share a favorite podcast moment with your friends. Unless you're willing to dive into the file with a media editor, you'll usually have to share the whole episode and make a note of the time. Overcast, however, might have just made sharing relatively trivial. An update to the iOS-only app makes it possible to create shareable minute-long clips from any public podcast, whether it's audio or video. Choose to share a clip and you'll get a basic timeline editor, complete with different aspect ratios to make video clips social-friendly.
Vimeo announced (via TubeFilter) that it is releasing a new toolkit called Showcases that will allow creators to show off their videos, including customizable portfolio sites and Smart TV channels.
The company describes Showcase as a new way for users to highlight their portfolio online, and brings three tools to the table: a customizable portfolio / video site, the ability to embed video playlists on existing websites that creators might have, and TV apps for Pro users, which will allow creators to build their own Smart TV channels, which can be distributed via Roku and Amazon Fire TVs.
The feature will replace Vimeo’s Album feature (it says that it’ll update the design and keep “all the features that you love while adding new ones.”)...
Intel's decision to bail on 5G modems may have gone hand-in-hand with Apple's truce with Qualcomm, but it's now clear there were hints of a shift weeks earlier. The Telegraph has learned that Apple poached Intel's 5G phone modem leader, Umashankar Thyagarajan, in February. While the departure itself wasn't a complete secret (Thyagarajan's LinkedIn profile confirms the switch), the news outlet claims to have email showing that the ex-director was the project engineer for the XMM 8160 chip at the heart of Intel's plans. He also "played a key role" creating the Intel modems used in the iPhone XS and XR.
Microsoft has fulfilled one of the larger promises behind its Your Phone software -- if you're willing to experiment a bit. The developer has released a Windows Insider Preview that displays Android notifications on your PC. If you allow apps to display alerts, you can find out about an important message or status update without reaching for your handset. You can clear notifications one at a time or all at once, and anything you dismiss on your PC will be reflected on your phone.
Via: Android Police
Source: Microsoft
We've already seen the likes of ASUS and Black Shark offering external cooling fans for their gaming smartphones, but the folks over at Nubia reckon it's about time to stuff a fan inside a phone (I mean, what else would you expect from a company that brought back the wearable phone?). Today, the Chinese brand unveiled the Red Magic 3 which not only packs a "liquid cooling" copper heat pipe, but also an internal cooling fan.
This small fan can spin up to 14,000 rpm while apparently staying relatively quiet, and it has an IP55 rating plus its own isolated chamber, so you won't have to worry about liquids and dust getting in. It's apparently good for over 30,000 hours of continuous use, though Nubia didn't specify the speed used for the test. Regardless, combining this fan with the heat pipe, the phone's heat transfer performance is apparently five times better than conventional passive cooling methods, thus ensuring a smooth gaming experience for a longer period.
The chest-thumping over 5G continues. AT&T has reported that it achieved the first 2Gbps speeds on a 5G network in the US. It achieved the feat using a Netgear mobile router on the carrier's public-facing network in the Atlanta area. The performance comes less than a month after the provider cracked the gigabit mark in multiple cities.
Source: AT&T
Overcast is one of the best podcasting apps out there, and it’s introducing a new feature that should make it even more useful to listeners: the ability to share clips of episodes to share online.
The app’s latest update allows users to converts an excerpt of a podcast into a short video, which can then be shared on social media, (or by email or text message). Developer and Overcast founder Marco Arment notes in a blog post that people have long been able to share podcast episodes, but that it’s been a cumbersome process, and that it’s easier to share a short video than it is an audio link.
To share a clip in the app, click on the share icon in the top right-hand corner, and select the “Share Clip” option. That will bring you to the...
The introduction of Screen Time in iOS 12 was ostensibly a boon for parents and anyone else wanting to keep a lid on device use, but there are concerns that it's cracking down on apps that compete with that feature. The New York Times and Sensor Tower have learned that Apple has either pulled or requested feature limitations for "at least" 11 of the 17 most popular parental control and screen time apps, and leaders at those developers claim it's trying to discourage apps that rival Screen Time's functionality. The creators of two apps, Kidslox and Qustodio, filed an EU competition complaint on April 25th.
Source: New York Times
