According to a new report, Google could be hosting the next Nexus event as early as September 29 in San Francisco. Rumors have been circulating for some time now that both LG and Huawei would be offering Nexus devices this year, and according to CNET, Google may be announcing them at the end of this month.
Google's productivity suite just got a big update timed to students' return to school. Changes across Docs, Sheets, Forms, and Google's Classroom product for teachers focus on making common tasks effortless, product managers said at an event today in San Francisco. The changes, which include integrated search and voice typing for Google Docs, will begin rolling out today.
Sony has unveiled its new lineup of Xperia smartphones, and this year's headline model is the Xperia Z5 Premium. Available in chrome, black, and gold, the Z5 Premium looks undeniably luxurious, and the company claims its 5.5-inch 4K display is a first for a smartphone. However, with internal specs that are identical to the smaller, more reserved Xperia Z5 (and not far off the "pocket friendly" Z5 Compact), it's not clear if the Premium has more to show beyond a rich, glossy finish.
At IFA 2015, Intel announced that it will be making the Basis Peak fitness tracker available for purchase in select European markets starting later this month. The fitness tracker is already up for sale in the US, UK and Canada, and now buyers in France, Germany and Spain will be able to buy it for 229 Euro. The matte black version with black and red accents along with a brushed metal variant will be available.
Compatible with Android and iOS devices, the Basis Peak offers step tracking, calorie intake, heart rate and skin temperature monitoring along with sleep tracking. You'll also be able to view incoming notifications from connected devices, including calls, emails, messages and calendar events.
We'll update with availability details as soon as we hear more.
If you do the majority of your gaming on the Playstation 4 (PS4) and are eager to broadcast your exploits to the whole world on YouTube, you'll soon get your chance. Sony has just provided details on the upcoming 3.00 system update that is starting to roll out to beta testers, and included in the changelog is the addition of YouTube live streaming.
Though it hasn't made a ton of Chromebooks in the past, Lenovo unveiled its latest Chromebook model coinciding with the IFA conference in Berlin. The Chromebook 100S is a lower-end model starting at just $179, coming in at 2.6 pounds with an 11.6-inch HD display, Intel N2840 processor, up to 4GB of RAM and up to 32GB of on-board storage. There's a standard assortment of ports, and Lenovo is claiming eight hours of battery life.
Acer has unveiled the Predator 6, a gaming smartphone which offers high-end specs as well as the same aggressive styling of its Predator range. The device has a deca-core MediaTek processor as well as 4GB of RAM, a 6-inch HD display, four speakers, and haptic feedback that Acer says means that it handles "just like a gaming controller." The company promises that it will "dominate" any game users want throw at it, while the device's aesthetics go down the same red, black, and metal all over route as the rest of the Predator range.
Announced three months ago as part of the Asus Computex keynote, the ZenWatch 2 today gets officially unveiled to a global audience. In Europe, this new Android Wear smartwatch will cost either €149 (roughly $170) for the larger 49mm model with a 1.6-inch display or €169 ($190) for the 45mm variant with a 1.45-inch display. The original ZenWatch was already one of the best-priced Android Wear watches on the market, and Asus is now looking to push the price down even further with its 2015 generation.
Both variants of the ZenWatch 2 have AMOLED displays, Bluetooth 4.1 and Wi-Fi support, and a Snapdragon 400 processor combined with 512MB of RAM and 4GB of built-in storage. Asus promises over two days of battery life from either watch, but...
There are lots of problems with the mobile web, but one of the most annoying is clicking through a search result and having your entire screen taken over by an app install ad. You search in vain for a tiny, opaque "X" to tap, only to miss its center by a millimeter and inadvertently trigger the trap. Today Google announced an update to its search algorithm that will try to crack down on these odious advertisements, marking any site that presents too many of them as not "mobile friendly," a designation that will push that site down in its search rankings.
When you hang dry your clothes, you save on energy costs and you don’t wear them out as fast. The down side is that it takes a lot longer for the drying to actually happen. These custom “space hangers” will speed up the process.
When you hang a wet shirt on a normal hanger, or lay it out on a drying rack, the shirt’s fabric clings together, making it take longer to dry. As Instructables user flavrt explains, air drying is related to surface area, and these custom hangers double the amount of surface moisture can evaporate off of. All you need to make them is two normal plastic hangers, and a way to space them out and connect them in three points. In flavrt’s guide, plastic tubing and small machine screws are used, but you can get creative. All in all, they shouldn’t cost you more than a couple bucks a piece. Hang drying uses less energy, but it can also help you increase the humidity indoors when you’re trying to keep warm. Check out the complete guide at the link below.
http://lifehacker.com/increase-humid...
Space Hanger | Instructables
Gigaset has announced its first Android-powered mobile smartphones, the ME, ME Pro and ME Pure. The first of the phones to hit the market will be the ME, which features a stainless steel and lightweight aluminum alloy body, and a 5-inch display that is made up of Corning's Gorilla Glass. Inside, the ME will be powered by a Snapdragon 810 processor, clocked at 1.8GHz that is partnered with 3GB of RAM and 32GB of storage. Powered by a 3,000mAh battery, the ME also features Qualcomm's Quick Charge 2.0 and much more.
The ME Pro and ME Pure are said to be released sometime in the future, with the Pure version being a little brother model to the Pro. The Pure will offer 2GB of RAM and 16GB of storage with a Snapdragon 615, while the Pro will feature 5GB of RAM and a 5.5-inch display. If you are looking to get your hands on one of Gigaset's new smartphones, you can purchase the ME for 469 euros, as it is already available in the UK, Germany, France, Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, Italy, Poland and Turkey.
More information about the Gigaset ME
Source: Mobiletelefon
It's new logo day at Google, and that means your favorite apps are getting a few icon tweaks. Several of Google's apps had the little 'g' somewhere, but that's no longer part of the logo. Now it's all about the big G, and Google is already updating icons on the web to reflect that.
The Google+ icon and main search icons are the most drastic changes.
Read MoreGoogle Begins Updating Icons With Its New Sans-Serif 'G' [Apps Too] was written by the awesome team at Android Police.
ARCHOS has announced its latest phone, the Diamond Plus. The phone features a 5.5-inch, 1080p IPS display, and will run Android 5.1 Lollipop out of the box. It will go on sale this November for £179.99.
Michael J. Fox has some experience with canine matters on screen; after all, he was the voice of Chance, the cocky bulldog in the Homeward Bound films. And then there was his hairy time in the first Teen Wolf. So he seems like the perfect choice to play a robotic rover in animated adventure A.R.C.H.I.E.
Robin Dunne has cooked this one up, writing and making his directorial debut with a movie about a scientist named Brooke Benton (Katharine Isabelle) who created the techno-hound to help people under the auspices of a military programme. He can talk, run amazingly fast and boasts super strength and x-ray vision. In your face, Benji!
But when the programme is closed down, Brooke helps her creation escape in the hopes that he can find a family to live with. He ends up in the small town of Deanewood, where he forms a bond with the lonely Isabel Sullivan (Sarah Desjardins), who has just moved to live with her uncle Paul (Dunne), town mayor and local burger restaurant owner. They’ll both need help from the powered pooch, as she could use a friend and he’s looking to retain his political position. Double Dutch International will be selling rights to the movie at the Toronto International Film Festival, and there’s no word on when the movie will arrive.
Researchers calculate that as many as 9 out of 10 seabirds have plastic garbage in their intestines. So sad. Read the rest
Kinsa, the maker of a smart thermometer that tracks the spread of illness, has today announced their second product in the form of the Kinsa in-ear thermometer.
Unlike the first thermometer, which was a standard (though smart) stick thermometer, the new in-ear thermometer is completely wireless, and connects to the smartphone app via Bluetooth.
The Kinsa portfolio of thermometers work like… Read More
Google is constantly evolving, and its most recent evolution is a new logo. The company has announced its new logo in a video which shows off its successes over the past 17 years. Showcased in the video is the addition of Gmail, enhancements to search, Android, Google Now and much more.
I recently started rock-climbing and have been wanting to find a trainer. This one will do nicely.
No matter what smartphone you have, all of them work within some concrete limitations. The battery can only last so long, the screen can only be so big, and the internal storage can only hold so much data. Some phones let you use micro SD cards to alleviate that last problem, but many don't and it's not a ideal solution for many. Nextbit, the company formed by former members of Google's Android team, thinks the cloud is the answer to many of these questions, and its first device, the Robin, promises to never run out of storage.
The Robin doesn't really have an endless amount of storage, but rather leverages cloud storage systems to offload pictures, video, files, and even apps when its 32GB of local storage runs out. Nextbit's software,...
Phone fans owe a lot to Scott Croyle. In his time as HTC’s design chief, Croyle presided over the creation of the critically acclaimed One series of Android smartphones as well as earlier standout devices like the Windows Phone 8X. He helped evolve smartphone design beyond mere utilitarianism, and for that he deserves our appreciation. Croyle departed HTC in April of last year to join a small startup named Nextbit, whose initial focus was on making software rather than hardware. But it wasn't long before Croyle was back to making cool new things for our pockets, and today he returns with his small group of like-minded, experienced phone makers to introduce the Nextbit Robin. It’s what Croyle and company are calling a “cloud-first,...
Windows/OS X/iOS/Web: Your emotional state can vary throughout the day, and there are certain things that you may not even realize affect your mentality. Optimism keeps track of your mental health and helps you find those emotional triggers.
The app is free, and it’s relatively simple to use. It includes four main tabs where you enter daily data:
Each tab includes customizable fields. In these fields, you simply record how you feel and what activities you completed that day. It’s sort of like a journal, in that you record your own habits and feelings, but instead of free writing your thoughts, you fill in a series of questions every day.
It doesn’t take much time, and when you have enough data, you can check out their “Charts & Report” tab. This lets you see how your mood fluctuates over a period of time, and you can also see how that correlates to activities like your sleep schedule and quality.
The app seems to be designed for people managing depression, bipolar, and other conditions, but it’s helpful for anyone who wants to track their mental health. By keeping track of things like triggers, symptoms and health behaviors, you get a better idea of how you can manage your mental health.
You do have to use your email to register to use the app, but they take great care to keep your info safe. Via their security policy:
The only personally identifiable information held on the server are email addresses and first names. Email addresses and passwords are encrypted.
We use a PostgreSQL database for storing clients’ records. PostgreSQL is a mature object-relational database that has been in open source development since 1996. The PostgreSQL Global Development Group (PGDG) takes security seriously, so that users can have confidence in the security of the database and applications built around it. Their approach allows excellent configuration options, ensuring a secure, robust database, and seamless integration with our applications.
You can read more about their policy here. For now, the phone app is only available on iOS, and while they don’t mention any plans for Android, they do have a web app version, linked below. You can also download a desktop version on Windows and Mac from that link.
Welcome to the roundup of the best new Android applications, games, and live wallpapers that went live in the Play Store or were spotted by us in the previous 2 weeks or so.
Looking for the previous roundup editions? Find them here.
Android Police coverage: Framed From Noodlecake Studios Is A Gritty Comic-Style Puzzler Where You Control The Story
In Framed, you play a silhouetted detective in the vein of Sam Spade, tasked with solving some rudimentary puzzles.
Read More35 New And Notable Android Games From The Last 2 Weeks (8/18/15 - 8/31/15) was written by the awesome team at Android Police.
PayPal today is launching a new take on peer-to-peer payments with the debut of a platform it’s calling PayPal.Me. For the first time, PayPal customers will be able to set up their own user profiles which are associated with a personalized URL (e.g. paypal.me/username), which can then be shared with others via text, over email, on instant messenger, via social media, or anywhere else, as… Read More
UK residents can now make contactless payments of up to £30 without the need for a PIN. The increase from the prior limit of £20 means that people will be able to use phone-based payment services like Apple Pay, as well as contactless cards, for a wider range of transactions across the country. The UK Cards Association, which decided on the change, says that £30 covers common usages like an average supermarket spend, as well as most payments made in pubs, cinemas, gift shops, and elsewhere.
The question remains how long this limit will last. Apple Pay has no transaction limit in the US, the only other country where it's available, but the iPhone guarantees an extra layer of security. In the UK, many people also use contactless cards...
Wireless internet is the most convenient thing since sliced bread...when it works. As one of the most frustrating parts of modern computing, we though it was worth a look back at some of our best tips for networking and Wi-Fi for today’s installment of Lifehacker’s 10th anniversary celebration.
Check out the full list below, and see more of our 10th anniversary look back at lifehacker10.lifehacker.com.
Google is expanding the testing of its self-driving cars to Austin, Texas. These aren't the retrofitted Lexus SUVs that have been in Austin since July, we're talking about the tiny, adorable prototypes that Google unveiled back in 2014. The expansion marks the first time that these prototypes will be tested outside of Silicon Valley.
Texas doesn't have any legislation on the books that allows the testing of autonomous vehicles (Nevada, Florida, California, and Michigan are the only ones that do), but Google worked with the governor, Austin's mayor and police chief, and the Texas Department of Transportation in order to start testing its self-driving Lexuses there this summer. That groundwork helped pave the way for this next round of...
After briefly teasing it on stage earlier this month, today Samsung has released more details about its coming Gear S2 smartwatch. Unfortunately, the company is still withholding crucial information like pricing and release date — but those probably aren't too far off. We're not even yet positive which phones it works with; if history is any indication, it'll be limited to Samsung's more recent devices. In today's press release, Samsung has revealed that its latest Tizen-powered watch will come in two models: the regular Gear S2 and a Gear S2 classic, which is aimed at consumers who "prefer more timeless watch design."
Gear S2 Classic features a black finish with a matching leather band, so it's being positioned to take on high-end...
Jailbreaking your iPhone has its downsides. In what’s being called the “largest known Apple account theft caused by malware,” security specialists Palo Alto Networks on Sunday released a report detailing a new form of iOS malware it’s calling “KeyRaider,” which is responsible for stealing the account information from over 225,000 Apple customers. The… Read More