Posts Tagged: only

I found the perfect iPhone 15 accessory, and it’s only $50

There are lots of accessories you can buy for the iPhone 15. But if you have $ 50 and want one of the coolest, we have a great recommendation.
Digital Trends

Ford’s advanced BlueCruise driver assist features will only be available as a subscription

Ford announced today that it’s expanding the availability of its BlueCruise hands-free driving tech. Previously, customers had to decide whether to add the option on available models at purchase — and that decision was final. Now, the service will be installed as standard on all supported vehicles. In addition to enabling it at purchase, owners can add the service later or only activate it for months when needed (like for road trips).

You’ll still have the option of buying the feature at purchase and folding it into your financing. However, you can now also subscribe to access annually or monthly at any point after that. BlueCruise costs $ 2,100 at purchase (for three years), while annual subscriptions cost $ 800 and monthly subscriptions $ 75. Ford also offers a 90-day free trial if you choose not to set it up at purchase.

The automaker expects to install BlueCruise on 500,000 vehicles in North America for the 2024 model year. That’s a significant ramp-up since it’s currently only installed on less than half of that: 225,000, according to Ford.

The service’s changes will also apply to Lincolns. The 2024 Navigator and Nautilus lines and “select trims” of the Lincoln Corsair will come equipped with BlueCruise. The $ 800 annual and $ 75 monthly pricing is the same for Lincoln models.

Ford says the tech’s upcoming version, BlueCruise 1.3, will enhance performance when driving around curves and narrow lanes. The company says v1.3 lets you keep your hands off the wheel longer. “Based on our internal testing, BlueCruise 1.3 stayed engaged in hands-free mode for an average of 5X longer compared to BlueCruise 1.0, the first version of BlueCruise,” the automaker said. The 1.2 software, rolled out earlier this year, added hands-free lane changes, in-lane repositioning and predictive speed assist. The company is serious about AI-assisted driving: It created an automated-driving subsidiary earlier this year to push toward a more machine-driven future.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/fords-advanced-bluecruise-driver-assist-features-will-only-be-available-as-a-subscription-200525088.html?src=rss
Engadget is a web magazine with obsessive daily coverage of everything new in gadgets and consumer electronics

These are the only 2 reasons I’m excited for the iPhone 15 Pro

We’re only a few months away from Apple’s iPhone event, and honestly, I’m only really excited for two things about the iPhone 15 Pro — if the rumors are true.
Digital Trends

[Deal] Grab a $60 saving on Ugreen’s Nexode 6-port USB-C GaN Desktop Charger for today only

You’ve got until midnight tonight to save a massive $ 60 off Ugreen’s 200W Nexode GaN Charger that sports 6 USB-C charging ports and supports a wide variety of charging protocols such as Power Deliver 3.0, Quick Charge 4+, PPS, and more. You can clear up a ton of space both on your AC outlet and […]

Come comment on this article: [Deal] Grab a $ 60 saving on Ugreen’s Nexode 6-port USB-C GaN Desktop Charger for today only

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[Deal] Grab a Lifetime Plex Pass subscription for just $96 (Today Only)

Carrying on with the St. Patrick’s Day theme is Plex which is offering a lifetime subscription to its Plex Pass plan for $ 96 which is a very handy 20% reduction over its regular price of $ 120. Whilst the basic Plex plan is free, Plex Pass brings a range of handy features to the tablet including […]

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I tested the Galaxy S23 Ultra and iPhone 14 Pro cameras. Only one is a winner

This is what happens when the cameras on two of the best phones you can buy — the Galaxy S23 Ultra and the iPhone 14 Pro — are tested against each other.
Digital Trends

This Samsung tablet is only $180 today — but hurry!

The affordable and dependable Samsung Galaxy Tab A8 is even cheaper with Best Buy’s $ 50 discount that lowers the Android-powered tablet’s price to just $ 180.
Digital Trends

Don’t watch ‘Star Trek: Picard’ season three, it’ll only encourage them

The following article contains spoilers for earlier Star Trek properties but doesn’t reveal specific spoilers about Star Trek: Picard season three, not that you should be watching it anyway.

It’s 2034 and Warner Bros. decides it needs to wring more cash out of Friends, the decade defining cultural juggernaut and sitcom behemoth. Imagine what that show would be like; A warm and cozy three-decades-later check-in on characters you know intimately well. After all, you probably spent your formative years watching them mature from young single New Yorkers to a series of families. Maybe it’ll tickle those nostalgia glands, reminding you of when you watched the show with your own family as a kid.

Unfortunately, the hotshot creator of the age decided they want to go in a different direction this time. This needs to be a dark and gritty miserycore grief orgy that better reflects our more rough-and-tumble times. After all, TV these days can’t be gentle or comforting, offer escapism or posit a better world, not since Trump, Brexit, Bolonosaro, January 6th and Ukraine. The creative team have got that quote on a poster in their office, the one about thetriumph of evil, and they’re not going to sit idly by, they’re taking a stand.

In the sequel, Rachel’s famous for her wellness TikTok that often makes allusions to “reclaiming” the US as a white ethnostate. Joey lost an arm while filming a movie and is now in prison after a failed heist to pay off his life-ruining medical debt. Monica’s got a crippling adderall addiction and slips away most nights to murder the neighborhood cats and dogs. Everything’s shot in ultra gloomy vision, and there’s no laugh track, jokes or a studio audience, just unrelenting misery.

This revival is dense with references to the Friends backstory as well as the broader Friends universe. Remember that Lisa Kudrow played Phoebe’s twin sister Ursula on Mad About You, right? If not, you better get yourself to Wikipedia to study up. I mean, it won’t be relevant to the plot, but it’s something you remember, so clap, go on, clap.

You might be wondering why such a project would be allowed to happen, given that it wouldn’t be fun for fans of the original series. Times change, characters age, but you can’t turn a cozy sitcom into Breaking Bad overnight and expect that to be satisfying. You’d hardly think it’d be a big pull for newbie viewers either, who’d probably steer clear if they weren’t already familiar with 236 episodes of intricate backstory. Nostalgia revivals don’t need to be slavish to their source material, but it’s hard to see the appeal for something so grim and unpleasant.

Apropos of nothing, let’s talk about the third and final season of Star Trek: Picard.

Image of Patrick Stewart and Michael Dorn from 'Star Trek: Picard' in the USS Titan transporter room.
Trae Patton / Paramount+

Season three was sold as something of a course correction for Picard after its first two deeply unpopular runs. It ditched all but Raffi from the roster of original characters created for it, and instead pulled in the stars from Star Trek: The Next Generation. As well as the returning Jonathan Frakes, Marina Sirtis and Brent Spiner, we’ll see LeVar Burton, Gates McFadden and Michael Dorn back in action. And, in the six of ten episodes I’ve been permitted to watch under strict embargo, I’d say only one of them feels like the character we know and love.

Unfortunately, while we have the other TNG stars, the creative team of Executive Producer Alex Kurtzman and showrunner Terry Matalas didn’t bother to grab any of that show’s lightness of tone. Picard remains a grimdark slog, shot on perpetually underlit sets and featuring a succession of increasingly-bleak setpieces. The plot is stretched so thin that the first four episodes turn out to be little more than an extended prologue for the rest. A prologue that could, I should add, have been an efficient, and possibly more enjoyable, hour. The story is so obvious, too, that you’ll be ahead of the characters pretty much non-stop as they stumble from one idiot plot to the next.

It’s maddening that we can see how much of the plot is blocking itself to ensure things can’t move forward too quickly. There’s a whole episode of gosh-isn’t-this-tense tension that could have been eliminated if anyone in Starfleet pulled out a tricorder and used it as God intended. In this utopian future, where science and technology really are advanced enough to look like magic, why does nobody employ the tools hanging from their waistband? Mostly because Paramount ordered ten episodes, and ten episodes is what we’re going to give them. Another episode has a time-filling punch fight runaround because it’s now somehow impossible for a serving officer to use a Federation ship’s intercom system to call the bridge and warn them of impending danger.

Picard is one of those series where you often find yourself shouting at the screen as the next stupid moment unfolds in front of you. Even worse is that the show’s creative team seem to think that it’s us, the audience, who are deficient in the thinking department. There is scene after scene in which characters repeat the same lines back to each other because the crew assume we’re not paying attention. Because of the limits on spoilers, I’ve re-written a scene to match the sentiment, if not the words verbatim, so you can get a sense of what to expect:

CREW 1: The ship is being pulled closer to the black hole’s gravity well.

CREW 2: We do not have enough power to pull ourselves away, sir.

RIKER: Are you saying that we’re dead in the water?

CREW 1: We will be passing the black hole’s event horizon in 17 minutes.

RIKER: We’re dead in the water and we’re sinking.

PICARD: We’re going to be dead in 17 minutes, Will, unless we can find a way to solve this.

RIKER: We’re sinking into quicksand, and there’s no time to grab a helping hand.

The irony is that this run is so thicket-dense with references that the show basically assumes that you’ve already seen pretty much everything produced during Trek’s gold, silver and bronze ages. But, to make sure nobody’s left behind, everyone has to speak in exposition so hamfisted that, now that this is over, I think Michelle Hurd deserves personal injury compensation. Raffi gets saddled with so many cringe-inducing lines where she states, and restates and re-restates the obvious that I started grasping fistfuls of my own hair to relieve some of my discomfort.

And as for the storyline, what can I say? It’s clear that Alex Kurtzman is only comfortable writing in a single register. His go-to is usually a militaristic, testosterone-fuelled paranoid Reaganite fantasy in which the real villain was our own government all along. He did it in Into Darkness, Discovery season two and even the first season of Picard – to the point where Starfleet is now so lousy with double agents that all of their schemes fail because the saboteurs are all too busy sabotaging each other’s plans instead of that of the wider Federation.

If Picard is nothing else, it’s nearly pornographic in its use and misuse of franchise iconography. I always felt that Jeff Russo’s Picard theme sounded more like the library music for a corporate advert than the makes-your-heart-soar theme a Star Trek deserves. And here, it’s been ditched in favor of Jerry Goldsmith’s sumptuous, nectar-for-the-ears score for First Contact. The first title card is a direct pull from Wrath of Khan, and pretty much every element therein is an elbow to the ribs, reminding you of older, better Star Trek movies and TV series.

An early scene has a character “hijacking a starship” under false pretenses while it’s in spacedock. You know, the mushroom-shaped megastation orbiting Earth from The Search for Spock onwards. And because we’re already going beat-for-beat for a sequence xeroxed from 1984, said starship even jumps to warp as soon as it’s past the exit doors. Despite the fact that the sort of hardcore Trek fans who would spot the reference would also note that you’re not meant to jump to warp while inside a solar system when there’s no urgent need to do so.

I’ll admit, this is postgraduate degree-level Star Trek nerdery, but you can’t have it both ways: If you’re trying to placate hostile viewers with the excessive fan service, you can’t then complain when they point out that you’re doing it all wrong.

The show’s teaser trailer already revealed we’re getting an overstuffed roster of villains to round out the run. Amanda Plummer’s captain of an enemy ship that shares a design with the Narada from Star Trek ‘09. Then there’s Daniel Davis’ holographic Professor Moriarty, as well as Data’s evil twin brother Lore. Both of these sorta make sense in the context, but there’s a hell of a lot of narrative scaffolding to explain away the fact that Brent Spiner is now 74 years old. (The dude looks good for it, but it’s hard to play an ageless android when time marches on and the de-aging CGI budget is spent on smoothing out Patrick Stewart’s face for a single flashback and the pointless needle-drops that open every episode.)

Now, before you scurry off to Memory Alpha to confirm that Moriartywas locked away in a holobox at the end of “Ship in a Bottle,” and Lorewas disassembled at the end of “Descent Part 2,” yes, they were. Try to remember that showrunner Terry Matalas and executive producer Alex Kurtzman treat Star Trek’s continuity less as something which informs storytelling and more as a series of shiny objects to keep us all amused when the plot sags or anyone has any time to think about what’s going on.

I’ll also add that the trailers and promotional material have very intentionally kept a lot of material back. There are more classic-era heroes and villains crowbarring their way into the story in the way that, if it were fanfiction, would seem excessive. But, if I’m honest, the second or third time someone, or something, familiar popped up, I wasn’t whooping and cheering, I was sighing. The Star Trek universe is vast and broad and deep, but Picard makes it feel like a puddle where everyone knows each other, and everyone under the age of 30 has grown up watching The Next Generation. If you’re serving in the US Navy, for instance, how likely is it that you’d know the ins and outs of every exploit of even the most well-traveled combat vessel?

Now, I don’t have the language or experience to discuss this properly, and I’m aware of others who do feel differently. This is just my opinion, but I think the depiction of drug and alcohol use in Picard has always felt off. And since I can’t talk about the third season, I’ll talk about the first, where something very similar happened and is just as vexing here as it was back then. Raffi deals with her son’s rejection by relapsing, but then mere hours later, she’s back at her station and advancing the plot. I don’t recall a sense that her use clouded her judgment and I don’t think it was discussed subsequently – so despite the portentiousness in the build-up, it was depicted almost like someone just having a bad day and knocking back some drinks. I’m not saying that’s a bad thing, because there are plenty of people who use drugs and it doesn’t impact their professional lives at all. (Read any Making-Of book about The Original Series and you’ll notice how more than a few references to the production team’s drug use.) But if you’re going to write a plot where scenes hang on the will-she-or-won’t-she tension of relapse, but it all turns out to be hunky dory straight after, what was the point of depicting any of this in the first place?

Then there’s the violence, and the casual way that it’s doled out, especially in the show’s numerous interrogation scenes. I’m not advocating for forced confessions, but given Starfleet’s advanced science, and the Federation has a planet of literal telepaths at its disposal, why are we always punching people in the nose with a butt of a phaser pistol? I mean, I know why: It’s a nerdy sci-fi show play acting as a muscular basic-cable drama, but that doesn’t mean it works. I’ve often theorized that many modern-day Star Trek creators would much rather be over the hall making their own Star War instead. Maybe I’m wrong, and the Picard crew is really nostalgic for the hamfisted Bush-era politics of 24.

Image of Amanda Plummer and some aliens in a dark corridor in an unnamed location during 'Star Trek: Picard's third season
Trae Patton / Paramount+

It was always going to be hard to pull Picard out of its creative slump that started back when the show was greenlit. If there was ever a character who we’d seen grow, change, mature and treat his own life with more kindness, it was Jean-Luc Picard. Some of TNG’s best episodes forced Picard to consider his own life, his history, his mortality, his motives, including the series’ grand finale. “All Good Things” isn’t just good Star Trek, it’s one of the best series finales ever made, encompassing the entire breadth and depth of The Next Generation in one glorious sweep. And between seven years of TV and four less essential but still important movies, he was done.

I wrote somewhere, I forget where, that a smarter idea would have been to center the action on a less-well served member of the Enterprise D crew. I’d have been second in line to watch a Geordi LaForge spin-off (behind uber fan Rihanna, of course), and there’s plenty to explore there. Or a Beverley Crusher spin-off, as she solves people’s problems as a simple country space doctor back on Earth or on some far-flung planet. Maybe a sci-fi version of In Treatment fronted by Marina Sirtis could have worked, and would have certainly cost less than this.

All of which would be preferable to what we got, which despite initially having a Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist at the helm, was two years of go-nowhere, do-nothing bore-a-thons. Its brief moments of cleverness drowned out by the baffling character decisions, tin-eared dialog and ligneous acting. And both had plots which would have struggled to fill a movie stretched out across a painfully slow ten hour runtime.

And that’s before we get to the moralizing, which had characters pointing at a bad thing and saying “thing bad.” I don’t think the second season’s 26 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes is because the (inexplicably) conservative wing of Trek fandom was outraged that a show about happy space communists solving problems while remaining friends suddenly “got woke.” Good, old-fashioned Star Trek at least had the good grace to cloak its progressivism in allegory that could slide past the otherwise closed minds of some of its viewers. By comparison, Picard felt like the first draft of a high school theater production made the term after the teacher had explained agitprop.

Maybe that’s why I feel so annoyed by Picard, because all of the things that are wrong with the show, and its kin, are examples of amateurishness. Amateurish plotting, amateurish dialogue, a lack of thoughtfulness about the material, what it says, or what it’s doing. Just an endless parade of big, dumb, brash, po-faced melodrama used in place of some sort of maturity or integrity. I don’t expect Star Trek to be brilliant all the damn time, but I do expect a minimum standard of something to be upheld. And this falls so far below it, it’s hard to call it Star Trek. Some people will call that gatekeeping, but Star Trek can be anything it damn well wants to be, so long as it’s competently made and halfway entertaining. 

The constant callbacks got me thinking about the period when Nicholas Meyer was, directly or indirectly, the major creative force behind Star Trek. It’s been 32 years since his 1991 swansong, The Undiscovered Country, and it remains a high-water mark of cinematic Trek. Drawing to a close the story of The Original Series crew, Meyer didn’t go for nostalgia, but savaged his characters, exposing their flaws, their bigotries, their failings. There was redemption, and heart, and it never needed Meyer to stage endless close-quarters phaser-fu fights in unlight rooms.

But that was a filmmaker with a clear vision, and the good graces to really drag his characters in the dirt before washing them clean. Imagine what would happen if Picard encountered any of the same level of subtext – they’d probably spend an hour running from it before beating it over the head with the butt of a phaser rifle and then spend the next hour feeling glum about it. If nothing else, I’d say don’t even watch Picard for ironic kicks, lest Paramount think it’s somehow a runaway hit and continue to produce crap like this.

Engadget is a web magazine with obsessive daily coverage of everything new in gadgets and consumer electronics

This Motorola Android phone is only $49 in Walmart’s Rollback Sale

The Moto G Pure is a smartphone alternative to the budget feature phones, and you can pick one up for less than $ 50 in the Walmart Rollback Sale.
Mobile | Digital Trends

There’s an apparent PS5 jailbreak, but only for old firmware

Almost two years after the PlayStation 5 went on sale, it seems that modders have found a way to jailbreak the console, albeit with some significant limitations. As IGN notes, a modder known as SpecterDev revealed the apparent jailbreak, which is described as an experimental IPV6 kernel exploit that takes advantage of a WebKit vulnerability.

It appears the jailbreak will only work on PS5 systems that run firmware version 4.03 or earlier. If you have updated your PS5 since last October, you're probably not going to be able to try the exploit. Even then, it seems that trying to install the jailbreak only works around a third of the time.

As for what you can actually do with a jailbroken PS5 right now, you'll gain access to the system's debug menu. You might be able to install games from outside of the PlayStation Store as well, but it's not possible to run sideloaded software. 

Modder Lance McDonald tried the jailbreak and was able to install the PS4 demo P.T., Hideo Kojima's famed, delisted teaser for the canceled Silent Hills. (PS4 units with P.T. installed often pop up on eBay.) However, McDonald wasn't able to start playing the game. While the exploit offers read/write access to the PS5, there's currently no way to execute sideloaded files. P.T. isn't backward compatible on PS5 in any case.

As it stands, it doesn't seem likely that this jailbreak will be in widespread use anytime soon, due to its limitations and the fact that Sony could ban modders' accounts. On top of that, there's the risk of bricking the console at a time when it still isn't super easy to buy one. Still, this could give other hackers and modders a foundation on which to build more robust jailbreaking tools.

Engadget is a web magazine with obsessive daily coverage of everything new in gadgets and consumer electronics

Nintendo’s Switch Lite is on sale for $160 today only

For today only, Woot has discounted the Nintendo Switch Lite. With a 20 percent reduction, the $ 200 handheld is currently $ 160. That’s one of the best deals we’ve seen on the entry-level Switch. Note that the promotion is only available while supplies last. As of the writing of this story, the blue model is out of stock, leaving only the turquoise, yellow and coral ones available to purchase.

Buy Nintendo Switch Lite at Woot – $ 160

The Switch Lite is ideal for those who plan to use the console exclusively for handheld gaming since it doesn’t feature a TV output. Engadget awarded the system a score of 90 in 2019. It’s lighter and more comfortable to hold than the standard and OLED models thanks to a design that’s more compact and does away with detachable Joy-Cons. A proper d-pad also makes the Switch Lite better for playing 2D games. The display isn’t as vivid as the one on the OLED model, but it’s about as bright as the LCD screen on the standard variant. Even with the Switch Lite’s shortcomings, it’s a great system and one of the most affordable ways you can access Nintendo’s compelling library of first-party games.

Follow @EngadgetDeals on Twitter and subscribe to the Engadget Deals newsletter for the latest tech deals and buying advice.

Engadget is a web magazine with obsessive daily coverage of everything new in gadgets and consumer electronics

Google Play Store now offers third-party app payments, but only for some users

Ahead of the EU’s Digital Markets Act coming into force, Google opens up the Play Store to third-party payment providers.
Android | Digital Trends

The Spotify app is a mess, and audiobooks will only make it worse

The Spotify app has far too much clutter in its current version. The addition of audiobooks in the future seems like a disaster waiting to happen.
Mobile | Digital Trends

The Razer X Fossil Gen 6 smartwatch is only for the 1337

Fossil has partnered with Razer to make the Razer X Fossil Gen 6 smartwatch, which brings the gaming brand’s colorful aesthetic to Fossil’s latest wearable.
Wearables | Digital Trends

Get the Samsung Galaxy Watch 4 for ONLY $210 today

There are big savings on the stylish and practical Samsung Galaxy Watch 4 right now at Samsung.
Mobile | Digital Trends

This is the only cheap tablet worth buying on Black Friday 2021

If you’re after a cheap tablet, then look no further than this Samsung Galaxy Tab A7 Lite Black Friday deal.
Android | Digital Trends

Samsung Galaxy Watch 4 is ONLY $200 at Best Buy today

Right now, you can pick up the Samsung Galaxy Watch 4 for just $ 200. It’s a smartwatch deal that you don’t want to miss.
Wearables | Digital Trends

Nintendo is releasing a six-button Genesis controller for Switch, but only in Japan

Next month, Nintendo will give Switch Online subscribers the chance to purchase Sega Genesis games as part of a DLC pack with N64 titles. And to make the experience as authentic as possible while playing them, the gaming giant is also selling wireless N64 and Genesis controllers exclusively to Switch Online subscribers. The gaming giant showed off a three-button Genesis controller at its most recent Direct stream in the west. Based on a tweet by Nintendo Japan, though, it will release a six-button version in its home country instead. 

Nintendo has confirmed to Polygon that the six-button Genesis controller will be exclusively available in Japan. A Nintendo of America rep told the publication that "different regions make different decisions based on a variety of factors" and that the three-button model was the more widely used and more well-known version in the US and Canada. As the publication notes, the three-button model came first, and the one with six buttons was only released when fighting games boomed in popularity. Playing titles like Street Fighter was easier with more buttons to mash. Take note that the Sega Genesis Mini also launched with a three-button controller outside Japan in 2019, whereas the Japanese version came with a six-button model.

Even if you find a way to import the Japan-only controller, it may be better to wait until other gamers have confirmed that it works with consoles in your region. Nintendo doesn't have a release date for the three-button model yet, but it will set you back $ 50 when it becomes available.

Engadget is a web magazine with obsessive daily coverage of everything new in gadgets and consumer electronics

This week’s best deals: AirPods for only $100, plus more early Black Friday sales

The holiday shopping season is in full swing — and yes, we know it’s only early November. Retailers like Amazon, Walmart and Best Buy have already kicked off the first rounds of their big sale events, and there will be more to come in the lead-up to…
Engadget

Samsung rolls out the October Security Patch to the Galaxy Tab S2 in what can only be described as ‘Peak 2020’

This isn’t an incorrectly scheduled post, nor is it a hoax, Samsung really has begun rolling out the October Security Patch to the five-year-old Galaxy Tab S2. And yes, it’s the October 2020 patch. For a company that sometimes forgot to update its tablets more than once in the past, it’s an incredible example of […]

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Instant Pot’s Duo Evo Plus is only $100 on Amazon

Instant Pot’s Duo Evo Plus 9-in-1 Pressure Cooker is listed for an all-time low price of $ 100 on Amazon today. That’s $ 40 less than it’s typically listed for and nearly $ 70 off its original price.Buy Instant Pot Duo Evo Plus at Amazon – $ 99.95
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Turn your Amazon Echo Flex Mini Speaker into a Smart Clock for only $15/£15

If you’ve got an Echo Flex Plug-in mini speaker with Alexa built-in, you can make it even smarter with the Smart Clock accessory that turns it into, you guessed it, a smart clock that lets you set timers. The all-new Smart Clock accessory costs $ 15/£15 from Amazon, and simply plugs into the USB slot on […]

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Report – Samsung to squeeze Galaxy Note 20 Ultra buyers by only including a 25W charger in the box

With less than two weeks to go until the Galaxy Note 20 is officially unveiled on August 5th, a new leak has appeared that might put a tiny dampener on the occasion for those that are looking at ordering the Galaxy Note 20 Ultra. It seems that despite the Ultra being capable of 45W charging, […]

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All Otterbox Star Wars cases are 20 percent off today only

Otterbox is slashing prices on its Star Wars collection in honor of the punny “I am Your Father’s Day.” Today only, you can save 20 percent off their typically durable cases. These usually run between $ 45 and $ 55 (depending on which model phone you h…
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Get 3 months of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate for only $23

A three-month subscription of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate is now only $ 23 at Best Buy, down from its normal $ 45 price tag. Game Pass Ultimate grants you access to a sizable library of games that you can play on your Xbox One or PC. Joining Game Pass nets…
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Coronavirus claims another victim: Google I/O 2020 is getting canceled, will be online only this year

If you thought 2020 was going to be the year of folding phones, game streaming, or the Linux desktop, you’d be wrong. This year is all about things getting canceled and ruined thanks to the coronavirus. Google I/O is the next on the reaper’s list, and Google has officially nixed the physical event for their […]

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[Deal] Amazon has a ton of Logitech accessories and peripherals on sale today only

Whether you’re looking to build out your workstation at home, you need a new keyboard for your laptop or NVIDIA Shield, or you’re ready to start buying discounted gaming gear for the holidays, Logitech is running a sale that you might be interested in. The deal is today only on Amazon and knocks a big […]

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[Deal] Upgrade your home theater setup with Anker’s discounted Dolby Atmos soundbar, today only

Tired of dealing with janky and quiet TV speakers, but don’t want to invest in a full-blown home theater setup? We don’t blame you, considering that can cost quite a bit and can take up a bunch of space. Instead, you can go with something like Anker’s Soundcore Infini soundbar, which delivers a big improvement […]

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Apple Music finally picks up Chromecast support, but only on Android

Despite being an Apple product, Apple Music on Android seems to get a good bit of attention. It doesn’t have a very Android-esque interface, obviously, but if you can get past that, Apple’s music streaming service is still a serious competitor even without an iOS device. We’d heard some rumors that Apple would be adding […]

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DxOMark rates the Pixel 3a a flat 100, only 1 point below Google’s own flagship

Nobody should take DxOMark’s word as gospel on camera quality, however their testing has ranked Google’s popular mid-range Pixel 3a with a camera arguably tied as leading the industry. Google turned heads when they launched their mid-ranging Pixel 3a and 3a XL offering hardware – in particular camera hardware – nearly on par with their […]

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Huawei’s new mobile OS is only half-baked, putting Huawei in another bad position

Huawei has reportedly been working on an internal mobile operating system for a few years now, which is apparently called Project Z. It’s designed to help give Huawei a way out of using Google’s Android without giving up the massive library of Google apps. Despite earlier rumors suggesting that this new OS would be ready […]

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Galaxy Fold only uses Snapdragon processors

Samsung typically releases Snapdragon and its own in-house Exynos variants of their flagship phones, however this will thankfully not be the case for their foldable debut. Samsung has been manufacturing their own ‘Exynos’ mobile chips for years, though only began utilising them in their flagship-tier devices with the release of their Galaxy S6 and its […]

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Facebook only checks for impostors within your circle of friends

When you go to Face Recognition in Facebook's Settings page, there's a link that leads you to more info about it that says switching it on can "help protect you from strangers using a photo of you as their profile picture." That pertains to a feature…
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LG confirms smartphone AI for MWC, but only for the new 2018 V30

LG has announced its plan for MWC this year, and if CES wasn’t a big enough clue for you, it’s going to be totally centered around smartphone AI. With smart assistants in vogue right now, every major OEM is building out artificial intelligence solutions for daily problems and tasks, and LG couldn’t pass up that […]

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LG’s G6 is finally getting a taste of Oreo, but only in China for now

Although the LG G6 launched several months before the much improved V30, it’s finally dipping its toes into Oreo waters. The V30 started receiving Android 8.0 Oreo in South Korea on December 26th, so it’s nice to see LG paying attention to the G6 as well. This only a beta version and limited to China […]

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HMD Global’s Nokia 2 listed on Amazon for only $99

HMD Global‘s Nokia 2, the cheapest phone in their current portfolio of Nokia devices, has shown up on Amazon for U.S. buyers. The Nokia 2 was first announced for India and it was unclear whether the device would make it to the U.S. market. The Amazon listing for the Nokia 2 has it at a […]

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Only 5,000 Essential Phones have sold to date

BayStreet Research, which tracks shipments of phones across the US, estimates that Essential has only sold 5,000 phones since its US retail debut in the last few weeks. That’s a tiny fraction of what larger companies like Samsung and Apple achieve, selling tens of millions of phones per quarter. The Essential Phone sells for a […]

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Google hardware executive moves on after only six months

Last fall Google managed to lure David Foster away from Amazon as part of an effort by the company to enhance its hardware business. Foster had been a key player for Amazon where he led development on several devices, notably Kindle tablets and the Amazon Echo. Reporting to Rick Osterloh as a vice president of […]

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MIT’s app only needs a second to teach you a new language

You know the seconds and minutes you waste waiting for the elevator to arrive, for a friend to reply to an IM or for a website to load? A team of MIT CSAIL researchers believe you can put them to good use, so they created a series of apps called the…
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The only guide you need to get started with Android Wear

Got a new Android Wear smartwatch, but don’t know how to set it up or use it properly? Here’s how to add music, customize the watch face, block unwanted notifications, and carry out a host of other actions.

The post The only guide you need to get started with Android Wear appeared first on Digital Trends.

Wearables–Digital Trends

Daydream believer: Google’s VR headset is only $50 at the moment

Google has cut the price of its Daydream View VR headset from $ 80 down to $ 50 in its latest deal, making it an excellent deal for Pixel phone owners keen to try out virtual reality.

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Mobile–Digital Trends

Fossil could be the only company that really gets wearables right in 2017

Fossil is taking the same approach to its wearable tech as it does to its fashion-forward watch range, by updating them seasonally to reflect the latest trends. We’ve been looking at the latest versions.

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Mobile–Digital Trends

Lamborghini confirms Urus SUV will be its only plug-in hybrid

According to Autocar, we'll be seeing the first production hybrid Lamborghini soon. The publication reports that Lamborghini's research and development chief, Maurizio Reggiani, confirmed that the Urus SUV will be offered with a plug-in hybrid powert…
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Fragmentation woes: Android 7.0 Nougat running on only 0.3 percent of devices

There are more devices running Gingerbread than Android 7.0 Nougat, Google’s latest Android version. These monthly numbers highlight Google’s biggest issue with Android: fragmentation.

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Android Army–Digital Trends

How the UN thinks virtual reality could not only build empathy, but catalyze change, too

Technology is hoping to turn empathy into action. Or at least, the United Nations is hoping to do so. The intergovernmental organization is 71 at this point, but it’s constantly finding new ways to better the world’s citizenry.

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Mobile–Digital Trends

Watch the world’s largest aircraft crash-land on only its second outing

Having celebrated a successful maiden flight just a week ago, the team behind the world’s largest aircraft were shocked to see the enormous Airlander 10 crash-land on Wednesday at the end of only its second outing.

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Xaomi’s Redmi 3S starts at only $106 and is bound for China

Xiaomi is releasing a variant of its Redmi S phone, the Redmi 3S, for the Chinese market in June. The budget handset starts at an attractive $ 106, and its attractive price point and all-metal construction put it neck-and-neck with the competition.

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Android Army–Digital Trends

Once something you only saw on ‘Top Chef,’ sous vide hits shelves at Target, Best Buy

Now that you (or your parents) can buy an Anova immersion circulator at Target and Best Buy, will sous vide cooking finally go mainstream? Here are a few reasons it might.

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Cool Tech–Digital Trends

This 9,000mAh portable battery bank can recharge itself in only 18 minutes

Portable power banks can take forever to recharge, but not the iTron. This 9,000mAh battery can recharge from zero to 100 percent in only 18 minutes, and it’ll have enough juice to charge your iPhone 6S after only five minutes.

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This automated store in Sweden doesn’t have any human employees — only a smartphone app

At this convenience store in the town of Viken, Sweden, you won’t find a single cashier — or even a cash register for that matter. The entire store is unmanned, and patrons must use a smartphone or tablet to enter and purchase goods from it.

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Cool Tech–Digital Trends