Yousef Alnafjan

Every Android phone has always been a little compromised, and everybody knows it. There's been a veil of bullshit between you and what Google intended on all of them.

Sometimes that veil looks like ugly, bad, and usually unnecessary extra software. Sometimes it looks like a carrier failing to send out timely software updates. Other times it means getting something inexpensive, but fundamentally flawed in some way. Even the Nexus phones were behind the veil, little more than reference designs with hardware that was mostly determined by a third party before Google made tweaks here and there.

A pessimist would call this situation "fragmentation," an optimist would call it "diversity." Either way, it hasn't really been a huge problem for Google yet. Google wanted people to use its services, and the Android platform was flexible and ubiquitous enough to thrive and take over the planet, achieving dominant marketshare.

Just because Android is everywhere doesn't mean that Google is everywhere on mobile. There has been a lot of talk about Google being more "opinionated" about what a phone should be, and Google's opinion has always been hidden behind that veil. That situation might be okay at the low end, but at the high end (where all the profit and mindshare is), Samsung and Apple have expressed the only opinions that really matter. With Note 7s off the market and Samsung hedging its bets against Google's services, that situation was going to become untenable someday.

Someday is today: Google is making a phone for the first time. It's called the Pixel and it’s a Google phone inside and out, sold directly by the company to a mass audience for the first time. With Pixel, we finally get to see behind the veil and get an unmediated experience of Google's very best shot at a phone. All the excuses that existed before for Android phones not living up to their potential won’t work here.

No more bullshit.

There are actually two Pixels: the regular 5-inch screen version and a larger 5.5-inch version called the Pixel XL. They are identical in every respect except for the size of their batteries, the resolution of their screens, and, of course, their prices: the spectrum ranges from $649 for a 32GB Pixel and goes all the way up to $869 for a 128GB Pixel XL.

For people who have been following Google's phone efforts so far, the best comparison we have are the Nexus phones spanning the past six years. That comparison has led many to experience sticker shock about the price, because Nexus phones were usually inexpensive. But the Pixel is different: although it is manufactured by HTC, it's fully designed by Google. And Google designed it to compete at the top tier, so it's priced to match the iPhone and the Galaxy S7. It has a couple incredibly obvious objectives in mind with this phone: make it familiar and make it powerful.

Let's start with familiar and say the obvious thing: the Pixel kind of looks like an iPhone. Every high-end phone these days is designed with some combination of metal and glass, and so you could argue that there are only so many ways to make a rectangle. But even so, look at the bezels on the front, the curves at the corners, the antenna lines, and the placement of the speaker; the thing looks very familiar. After years of trying, Samsung managed to find its own, techier aesthetic. Maybe Google will do that eventually, but for this first try I think it wants the thing to look like what what people are used to. People are used to iPhones.

That said, there are lot of differences, and they add up to a phone that's utilitarian and approachable. The biggest design element is the glass shade that replaces the metal on the top third of the back of the phone. Functionally, it might help with radio reception, but mostly I think it's there to align the phone in your hand.

Neither Pixel is precisely flat, there's a subtle wedge shape to them to accommodate the camera at the top. That means there’s no camera bump but also that they still feel relatively thin where you actually hold them — on the bottom half. On the front, it's easy to kvetch about the large bezel on the bottom, but I don't mind it; it makes the phone feel balanced and it's more comfortable to hit the on-screen home button.

Google puts the fingerprint sensor on the back, and I really like having it there. It's a hassle when the phone is sitting on a table, but I usually pick up my phone to interact with it anyway. You can just rest your finger on it to turn on and unlock the phone, but it doesn't serve as a home button. You can also set it up so that when you slide your finger down on it, it pulls down the notification shade.

The Pixel is not waterproof, which is dumb and annoying. I should also note that a very short fall managed to crack the screen on the smaller Pixel during our review. A sample size of one is obviously too small to say that these devices are less durable than they ought to be, but it's not a great sign.

It fast charges via USB-C and there's only one speaker — at the bottom. Luckily, it's a pretty loud, decent speaker (a charitable person might say that’s why the bezel on the bottom is so large). There is, of course, a headphone jack on the top.

As for specs: they're great. Both Pixel variants have a Qualcomm Snapdragon 821 processor, 4 gigs of RAM, and flat-out gorgeous OLED screens with deep blacks and vibrant, punchy colors. And that’s important: at some point next month, Daydream VR will finally get released and you'll want high-quality screens for that.

The Pixels are fast — noticeably faster than Samsung's Galaxy S7. On performance alone, these are easily the best Android phones you can buy. For a phone made by Google, that's absolutely the expectation — it's just good to note that at its first time at bat, Google hit a home run.

For the first time, Google is arguing strenuously that it can make a better phone because it controls both the hardware and software. So I wouldn't enjoy being another Android manufacturer right now. That's not my problem nor yours, though. For us, the really important question is simply this: did Google take advantage of that integration to push the Pixel beyond what has been possible on other Android phones.

I'd say that the answer is yes. Google tells me that once again it did more work optimizing touch response to make the phone feel snappier. In fact, the company claims that under a high-speed camera it's exactly as responsive as an iPhone. It doesn't quite feel that way to me, but perhaps the differences come down to how the different operating systems tune their inertia on scrolling.

I also think that Google was able to optimize battery life beyond what other Android phones can do. Over the week and a half I tested the phones, I got absolutely stupendous battery life, especially on the Pixel XL. Last Sunday I streamed two hours of the Vikings-Texans game, used the phone throughout the day, and obsessively scrolled Twitter during the presidential debate. At the end of the day I was still at 30 percent.

In my experience, the Pixels are lasting a couple of hours longer than comparably sized iPhones or Nexuses. That’s better than the "about a day" you get from most phones these days, and it’s so good that I’m a little worried that it won’t last or my results are an outlier. So I’ll note that two other reviewers I spoke with were less pleased with the battery life on the smaller Pixel. If you care about battery life, definitely get the XL. It feels much smaller than the iPhone 7 Plus, too.

Besides the battery, Google says the other hardware component that benefits the most from Google’s assembly integration is the Pixel camera. The camera on the back is 12.3 megapixels with an f2.0 lens and two ways to focus: phase detect and laser auto focus. It has a two-tone flash, too, but unfortunately no optical image stabilization. Google product VP Brian Rakowski calls this "the best smartphone camera anyone has ever made." Usually you don't hear such bold claims, but he's confident — DxOMark gave it the highest score it's ever given a phone.

But benchmarks are one thing, results are very much another. Luckily for Google, the results on the Pixel are very, very good. I put it in the same ballpark as the iPhone 7 and the Galaxy S7 in most situations, which is not something I expected to say going in.

The Pixel bested the iPhone in picking up detail and color in my test shots. To my eyes, it seems to be making more pleasing decisions with lighting and HDR, too. I want to put the emphasis on "more pleasing," because my hunch is that if we looked at the raw input each sensor is getting we'd be hard-pressed to tell the difference. Instead, the distinctions between all three of these phone cameras are more about the stylistic decisions each company is making. Both Google and Samsung are slightly more aggressive at processing the image into something pleasing, while the iPhone seems to give a more natural look.

But for me, the most important thing is that Google seems to have finally fixed my biggest gripe about most Android cameras: the speed. The camera app opens fast and takes pictures immediately. Google also has figured out a way to make HDR feel fast — the camera defaults to HDR auto and though sometimes it takes a couple of seconds to process the HDR image, it happens in the background, freeing you to take more shots. You can manually turn on HDR+ mode, which forces the camera to take a higher quality HDR shot and slows things down a bit.

Holding your finger down on the shutter button takes burst photos, and the Google Photos app will pick the best one for you and also automatically make a little GIF animation of your shots. If you like custom camera controls, there's good news and bad news. The good news is that you have easy access to AF/AE Lock by holding your finger down on the screen, and dragging your finger up and down adjusts exposure. The less good news is that the camera defaults to HDR Auto every time you open it — even if you turned HDR off the last time you used it.

Google did add some video stabilization software that ties the camera sensor to the gyroscope. It can stabilize what you're shooting as long as you don't shake the camera too much. Walking down a wooded path: fine, the results are stable and don't have a "jelly" effect, though the video does look vaguely artificial to me. Running down that path: less fine, this isn't going to save you from shaky video if you really jostle it.

Bottom line: if you wanted to agree with Google and call this the best smartphone camera, I wouldn't argue with you. Instead I would say that picking the best camera among the Pixel, the iPhone 7, and the Samsung Galaxy S7 is more a matter of personal preference than it is of pure picture quality. And I would add that I don't think Google would have gotten this far if it hadn't controlled both the hardware and the software from the start.

So Google has made a great phone that can compete at the high end. But that's really not enough reason for it to exist — at least not for a company like Google. Instead, the real reason the Pixel exists is to be the flagship platform for the Google Assistant.

You launch the Assistant by long-pressing the home button and then talking, just like Siri on the iPhone. You can also say "OK Google," but (as always) that's a little less reliable for me. What's remarkably reliable is the Assistant's ability to understand what I'm asking: it gets it right almost every time, in all sorts of noise environments, and even when my data connection isn't very good.

The Assistant shows up in a chat-like interface that slides up from the bottom. You pose your question, Google answers it, and then you can ask follow-up questions either by speaking or tapping a suggested reply.

There's a lot riding on the Assistant being good. When he announced the Pixel, CEO Sundar Pichai envisioned creating a personal Google for each person. In order to make that happen, the company is going to need to keep collecting and analyzing a lot of data to make that happen. So the tradeoff has to be that you get a massive benefit from using the Assistant.

I can't judge for you whether it's a good idea to continue to let Google know so much about you — including location, web and search history, and whatever is on your screen when you launch the Assistant — but I can tell you if the Assistant is any good. Short answer: it is. But it still lives in a weird world of functionality. Sometimes it amazes you with what it can figure out and sometimes it also baffles you when it can’t answer seemingly obvious questions.

When you ask the Assistant for information that can be culled from the web, it's impressively, sometimes ridiculously, smart. It can read the screen and then tell you who the cast is for the TV show you're reading about — then understand follow-up questions about someone like Lee Pace (who is a national treasure). The Assistant can read back relevant sections of how-to articles, complete with spoken sourcing.

In general it's less likely to frustrate you enough to stop using it like Siri, but it's not radically better. For example, it can tell me when the next debates are but it's not smart enough to understand its own answer has enough information to add it to my calendar.

It also doesn't (yet) talk to as many apps and services as Siri does. I've successfully made dinner reservations with OpenTable but it can't call an Uber. Google says it's been working to create an "Actions" system that makes those integrations easier for the user than it is on, say, Amazon's Alexa. That system won't arrive until December, unfortunately.

Meanwhile the Assistant is also able to do most of the basic phone stuff you'd expect: make calls, send texts, adjust screen brightness, and so on. It also has a daily briefing feature that will tell you the weather, your next appointment, and play some news from sources like NPR, the BBC, and Fox.

That daily briefing is similar to the Flash Briefing, a feature I use with Amazon’s Alexa every day, and I love it. It's also the perfect example of the Assistant's as-yet unrealized promise: for as much as Google knows about me, it's not using all that information effectively yet. See, my most important Google calendar is on my work Google account, and the Assistant doesn't include that in the briefing. If I explicitly ask about my next appointment, it can find it, but it doesn't include it in my daily briefing.

There is one place where Google knows a lot about me and its Assistant returns amazing results: Google Photos. I’ve asked it for whiteboards, pictures of my cat, pictures of my kitchen, pictures of my friends who I don’t ever remember tagging, selfies, locations, and more. Every time Google finds the pictures. It’s way more accurate and comprehensive than iOS and Siri.

Even though there's ostensibly One Google Brain behind all of it, the different lobes don't always seem to be talking to each other. That confusion extends to the various ways that Google exists on the Pixel itself. You can only speak to the Assistant, for example, not type at it. Except that you can type at it in Allo, Google's chat app. You can also tap the Google search button on the home screen to type queries, but that's not technically the Assistant. Oh, and Google Now, the predictive information stream, still sits to the left of your main home screen.

That's four different ways to talk to Google on this phone, not counting apps like Maps and Gmail. And each one has a slightly different interface and provides slightly different results. For example, the Assistant can’t recognize songs yet, but asking the exact same question with the Google search button works fine.

To be very clear: the Google Assistant is absolutely the smartest of the assistant bunch, but it's not yet in a class of its own. Google knows so much more about me than, say, Apple, and its assistant should reflect that. Because Google itself is placing so much emphasis on the Assistant, it should be held to a higher standard than all the rest — and there's clearly still some work to do.

Since we're getting into the business of holding the Pixel to a higher standard, let's also do that with Android. In general, the persistent knock on Android is that its third-party apps are slightly worse than on iOS and that it can often feel slower or "jankier." I think that these arguments still have some merit, but not as much as the conventional wisdom would have you believe. I find Android Nougat to be comprehensible and powerful, but it still has some annoying spots.

The phones ship with version 7.1 of Android Nougat, with a few Pixel-specific features. The one you'll notice right away is a custom launcher with round icons and a new swipe-up gesture to get to the app drawer. I like it — but then I am the guy who was already using a third-party launcher with a custom icon theme to begin with. You can also long-press on icons to get shortcut options, and the neat trick with them is you can drag any of those shortcuts out and make it a top-level icon in your launcher. There are also some nice Live Wallpapers that change based on your location, time of day, or even your battery level.

Google is also providing some bonus features for Pixel users. There's chat and phone support built right into the Settings app on the phone. If you like, you can give screen-viewing capabilities to your support representative so they can walk you through your issue. You also get free, unlimited cloud storage for every picture and video you take with the Pixel.

As for Android 7.1, it's a nice incremental update. It has support for Daydream VR, which I didn't get to test. It also (finally!) has a Night Mode that shows less blue light so it's easier on your eyes in the dark. It is aggressively, almost ridiculously yellow and I am not as fond of it here as I am on iOS devices, where it’s possible to adjust the strength of the filter.

Google has done more tuning to make Android feel more responsive to touch — and that work is much appreciated. But I don't think that same attention to detail has been applied to the overall interface yet. Take the new keyboard as one example: it supports GIF search, but it's buried deep in the keyboard and it only shows up in certain supported messaging apps. Sometimes it's there, usually it's not, and it's basically guaranteed you'll forget about it and never use it.

I should note that the Pixel will get software updates before any other Android phone — and they'll install quietly in the background on a custom partition and seamlessly switch you over when they're ready. Verizon users will have a small handful of apps downloaded to their phone when they put a SIM in, but you can easily delete them without any issue.

These are small gripes about an operating system that I genuinely like and prefer over iOS for its openness and flexibility. But in making a system that supports such flexibility, Google has historically let its opinions about design and functionality take a back seat to the preferences of Android manufacturers (and carriers). And that has meant that you need to do a little more work to make Android feel polished than you should have to. Google has, in essence, been too deferential to everybody else in the Android ecosystem.

You can see the results of that deference most clearly in its messaging apps, where the company's "try everything and don't piss off anybody" strategy has it losing out to Apple, Facebook, and even smaller outfits like Telegram. Should you be using SMS messaging, Hangouts, Allo, the messenger app Verizon auto-installs, Facebook Messenger, or all of the above? Google doesn't offer any guidance on the issue, and that's a problem. The result is confusion for potential iPhone switchers who don't know what their go-to messaging app should be.

I think it's just going to take a while for Google's "opinionated" take on how its software should be designed to get stronger. I hope it does get stronger. Every time Google has made a forceful choice in designing the hardware or the software on this phone, it's been a good one.

This is Google's first phone, and for a first effort it is remarkably good. By almost every metric I can think of — speed, power, camera, smart assistant, you name it — it matches or exceeds the best phones available on the market today. And though the design is far from groundbreaking, it’s certainly approachable. The whole package is pretty incredible, and if you're not put off by the premium price, you'll be very happy with this premium phone. I prefer the XL, which isn't huge and seems to get notably better battery life.

When I've shown the Pixel to iPhone users over the last week and a half, a bunch of them expressed interest in switching. That is a very good sign for Google. And yet I always asked the exact same questions: "Do you use iMessage a lot? How about group conversations?" The answer was inevitably "yes" and the light dimmed from their eyes a bit. In the US, at least, the Apple ecosystem platform lock-in is real and a big hurdle to jump.

To get over that hurdle, Google needs to do more than offer something comparable or slightly better. It needs to offer something radically better, something that makes the pain of switching feel trivial by comparison to the benefit you get from the new thing. That’s presumably supposed to be the Google Assistant, but it’s not quite ready to play that role yet.

It would be nice if that great leap forward came all at once, in a shocking reveal. But that’s not what’s going to happen. Instead, Google will have to aggressively and quietly improve the Assistant until, sometime in the future, we look back and wonder how we lived with stilted and limited AIs.

Those are going to be tomorrow’s standards. By today’s standards, the Pixel and Pixel XL are among the best phones you can buy.

---

Good Stuff:

• Long battery life

• Fast and powerful

• Google Assistant

Bad Stuff:

• Not waterproof

• Pedestrian design

• Google's take on Android needs more polish

Photography by Sean O'Kane.

Edited by Michael Zelenko and Vlad Savov.

Today, we’ll begin rolling out Android 7.0 Nougat to Nexus devices. And with more ways to make Android your own, it’s by far our sweetest release yet.

We took a different approach to building and launching Nougat this year. For starters, we invited developers to take a sneak peek at Android N back in March, so they could bring their apps to the new platform earlier. And of course we asked you to help us come up with names for this year’s release, resulting in lots of great ideas, and a delicious unveiling back in June.

Android Nougat reflects input from thousands of fans and developers all over the world. There are over 250 major features in Android Nougat, but we wanted to highlight a few of the features you’ve been most excited about.

More personal
Providing more ways to customize your phone to fit your personality is kind of a big deal, and Android has been leading the way since day one (Homescreen widgets, anyone?). With Android Nougat, you’ll have even more ways to make your phone your own, including:

• Expanded emoji: There are now over 1,500 different emoji built into Android, including 72 new ones, so go ahead: express yourself.

• Quick Settings controls: Quick Settings gives you easy access to things like bluetooth, WiFi and the all-important flashlight. With Android Nougat, you can actually control what tiles go where, and move ‘em around to fit your needs.
• Multi-locale support: Apps can tailor their content based on your locale settings. So if you speak multiple languages, for instance, then search engines can show results in each of those languages. 

More productive
Whether you’re responding to work emails or making plans with friends, Android Nougat helps you multitask with ease with new features like Multi-window, Direct reply, and Quick switch.

• Multi-window: Run two apps side-by-side. The windows are resizable, too, by simply dragging the divider.
• Direct Reply: Reply directly to notifications without having to open any app.
• Quick Switch: Switch between your two most recently used apps by simply double tapping the Overview button.

More battery smarts
Starting with the release of Android Marshmallow last year, we have been making the battery smarter. That’s why we made the Doze feature even dozier with Android Nougat. Your device can now drop into lower power usage when it’s getting jostled around in your pocket or bag while on the move.*

More immersive
Android Nougat is designed with immersive experiences in mind—including support for VulkanTM (an advanced 3D rendering API) and Daydream (Google’s platform for mobile virtual reality).

• VulkanTM: Games will now leap to life thanks to high-speed, next-generation graphics — all powered by your device’s multi-core processor.
• Daydream: Android Nougat is ready to transport you to virtual worlds with Daydream-ready phones, headsets and controllers — all coming later this year.

More secure
As always, Android is built with powerful layers of security and encryption to keep your private data private. For new devices coming this fall, we’ve also added new features like Seamless updates, File-based encryption and and Direct Boot.

• Seamless updates: New Android devices with Nougat can install software updates in the background which means you won't have to wait while your device installs the update and optimizes all your apps for the new version. And for current Nexus users, software updates now install much faster, so you won't have to wait for minutes while your device reboots. 
• File-based encryption: Android Nougat can better isolate and protect files for individual users on your device.
• Direct Boot: Direct Boot helps your device startup faster, and apps run securely even before you unlock your device when your device reboots.

And for those of you who also want to use your Android device at work, there are also new security features for using Android in enterprise, which you can learn more about on the Android for Work website.

Coming soon, to a device near you
Today, and over the next several weeks, the Nexus 6, Nexus 5X, Nexus 6P, Nexus 9, Nexus Player, Pixel C and General Mobile 4G (Android One) will get an over the air software update** to Android 7.0 Nougat. Any devices enrolled in the Android Beta Program will also receive this final version.

And there are many tasty devices coming from our partners running Android Nougat, including the upcoming LG V20 which will be the first new smartphone that ships with Android Nougat, right out of the box. You can learn even more about Android Nougat at www.android.com/nougat.

Posted by Sameer Samat, VP of Product Management, Android & Google Play

<sub>*Hey, just a reminder that actual battery performance varies and will depend on a number factors including signal strength, network configuration, battery age, operating temperature, features selected, device settings, and voice, data, and other application usage patterns.

**The Nexus and Pixel C update to Android 7.0 Nougat occurs in stages and some carriers will receive the update later than others. This update will be pushed simultaneously to devices in the Android Beta Program.</sub>

This week, Zero Punctuation reviews Mario & Luigi: Paper Jam.

Street Fighter II: The Definitive Soundtrack now available ⊟

Sorry about the vinyl, those all sold out before I could get a post up! But if you want CD or digital, I got you. Here’s where you can order that stuff.

The CD version ships in mid-December, and the digital release is available right the hell now, with multiple versions of all the music from the arcade game. Let’s see if I can remember to get this on our holiday guide, because this would make a rad gift!

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There’s a funny thing about fans (whether they’re fans of a sports team, a band, or a particular company or product): they can be hard to please. Google learned this with last year’s Nexus 6. It was a much larger and more expensive phone than the Nexus 5 that preceded it, and there was no guarantee that if you loved the Nexus 5, you’d also love the Nexus 6. In fact, many Nexus fans did not like the 6, as they were either not interested in spending $650 for a new phone or using one that’s roughly the size of a mid-’70s Coupe de Ville.

So this year, Google has rolled out two new Nexus phones. There’s the larger and more expensive Huawei-made Nexus 6P, which my colleague Dieter Bohn will examine in detail. And then there’s the Nexus 5X, the first real successor to 2013’s Nexus 5. The 5X carries many of the aspects that made the Nexus 5 so beloved: it’s usable in one hand, has a solid list of specs, and has a starting price south of $400 ($379, to be exact). It’s also built by LG, which was responsible for the Nexus 5 and Nexus 4.

If ever you could say a smartphone was fan service, the Nexus 5X would be it.

Read next: Nexus 6P review and Android 6.0 Marshmallow review

The Nexus 6P is a premium phone.

"Premium" is a funny word when it comes to phones. It's as though everybody in the business of judging them got together in a secret cabal to come up with the most awkward language possible to describe the set of ineffable qualities that separates the very best phones from the rest. They get designated as "flagships" with "elegant" design that are "top tier" thanks to some combination of their materials, craftsmanship, specs, and of course their (usually very high) price.

It’s a pretend category, maybe, but you know it when you see it. For a long time, it included the iPhone and not a whole lot more. Later, you would see Samsung and Sony's best in there (and maybe HTC, in a good year). But Nexus phones never really played at this level. The history of Nexus phones is a history of great, clean software paired to hardware that is usually flawed in some fundamental way: cheap plastic or a bad camera or missing some vital thing like LTE. The Nexus 6P has none of those flaws. It's the first Nexus device made by Chinese manufacturer Huawei, and Huawei came to win.

This is a Nexus phone, and it's also a premium phone. It's nice to finally be able to say that.

Read next: Nexus 5X review and Android 6.0 Marshmallow review

When you wear something every day, you want to be sure it really works for you. That’s why Android Wear offers countless design choices, so you can find the watch that fits your style. Want a round watch with a more classic look? Feel like a new watch band? How about changing things up every day with watch faces from artists and designers? With Android Wear you can do all of that. And now, Android Wear watches work with iPhones.

Android Wear for iOS is rolling out today. Just pair your iPhone (iPhone 5, 5c, 5s, 6, or 6 Plus running iOS 8.2+) with an Android Wear watch to bring simple and helpful information right to your wrist:

• Get your info at a glance: Check important info like phone calls, messages, and notifications from your favorite apps. Android Wear features always-on displays, so you’ll never have to move your wrist to wake up your watch.
• Follow your fitness: Set fitness goals, and get daily and weekly views of your progress. Your watch automatically tracks walking and running, and even measures your heart rate.
• Save time with smart help: Receive timely tips like when to leave for appointments, current traffic info, and flight status. Just say “Ok Google” to ask questions like “Is it going to rain in London tomorrow?” or create to-dos with “Remind me to pack an umbrella.”

Dr. Seuss once said: “Today you are You, that is truer than true. There is no one alive who is Youer than You.” We agree. So whoever You are, and whatever You like—Android Wear lets you wear what you want.
Posted by David Singleton, Director of Engineering, Android Wear

In Europe, Google stands accused of favoring its own products and services when providing search results to users. Now, India has joined in, with the country's Competition Commission accusing the company of abusing its dominant position in the search market. A report by the Economic Times says that a coterie of other firms have poured anti-Google sentiment into official ears, including from Microsoft and Flipkart. The latter claiming that its position in the ranks seems to get higher the more advertising it buys from the engine. It's not the first time that Indian regulators have jabbed angry fingers towards the firm, accusing it of dodgy dealing when it came to AdWords sales in 2012.

As with the EU's investigation, the company is believed to be pushing its own products ahead of those actually wanted (or needed) by users. In one example, this means that CNBC's India-based investment site MoneyControl will get second-billing to Google Finance, even if the former is more popular. The company now has 10 days to answer the charges, and public hearings will kick off shortly afterward, although it has already protested its innocence. If the commission finds that Google is at fault, it'll be able to fine the firm up to 10 percent of the company's income -- and if Europe follows suit, it's going to mean some painful weeks for Alphabet's accountants.

[Image Credit: MANJUNATH KIRAN/AFP/Getty Images]

Filed under: Internet, Google

Comments

Source: Economic Times

Tags: Antitrust, CompetitionCommission, CompetitionCommissionOfIndia, DominantPosition, google, India, Investigation

Twitch meets a formidable competitor in YouTube Gaming, which works surprisingly well on its first day out.

The post Watch Out, Twitch: YouTube Gaming Just Went Live appeared first on WIRED.

New Brave Wave release: Smoke Thief’s “Heart Beat Circuit” ⊟ 

This album is from a first-time solo composer, Smoke Thief, but since it’s a Brave Wave joint it features work by the label’s unmatched roster: Manami Matsumae, Panzer Dragoon Saga’s Saori Kobayashi, and– wow! Bayonetta’s Takahiro Izutani. “Smoke Thief experiments with a variety of musical styles to explore this concept album. He strives to contrast the mathematical aspect of music with its more human qualities by mixing genres from ambient to jazz, and fusing electronic elements with instruments such as saxophone and piano.”

Sample the tracks and buy downloads or CD audio here! As always, I have to note that Brave Wave is a Club Tiny supporter.

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Super Mario Bros. 2 is a weird game

Being an actor is hard. Everyone knows that the movies, while glamorous, are a difficult and stressful business to break into, no matter your background. But actors of Middle Eastern origin face an even more unpleasant prospect: they must go through the same stress and competition, but are often restricted to a range of roles that can be narrow, degrading, and offensive.

Jon Ronson has an excellent GQ profile of a group of Muslim and Middle-Eastern actors working in Hollywood. They all told him the same thing: that there were essentially no roles available to them other than terrorist villains. And the terrorist roles, unsurprisingly, were mostly just two-dimensional stereotypes — plot devices, not characters.

They describe the wearying frustration of going to audition after audition for characters with names like "Terrorist Number Four":

"My agent had called me. ‘There's this film. It's a $55 million action suspense thriller starring Kurt Russell, Halle Berry, and Steven Seagal. They want to bring you in to read for one of the parts.' I said, ‘What's the part?' She said, ‘Terrorist Number Four.' I said, ‘I don't want to do it.' She said, ‘It's three weeks of work. It pays $30,000.' " And so Ahmed read for the part.

The actors whom Ronson interviewed explained that they're stuck with an unpleasant choice: either take roles that reduce their heritage to a sort of terrorist minstrelsy, or stop working at all. That is what Ahmed Ahmed, the actor who decided to go ahead and read for the role of Terrorist Number Four in the anecdote above, found when eventually he told his agent that he he would no longer read for terrorist parts: "After that, she never called."

Before that, he said, his agent had called him three to four times a week.

In one of the most poignant anecdotes, actor Maz Jobrani described how excited he was, auditioning for a Chuck Norris movie, by a throwaway line in which Norris's character rejects the assertion that the US should "kill them all" in Afghanistan: "And the Chuck Norris character goes, ‘Now, now. They're not all bad.' And I thought, ‘Wow! A nuance!'"

Jobrani landed the part. But when he showed up on set, he found that the role was nothing like the nuanced one he had been hoping for. The director insisted that he wear a turban, for instance. When Jobrani tried to explain why that wasn't authentic for his character — "Afghans in America don't wear turbans. Plus, this guy's a terrorist. He's not going to draw attention to himself" — word came back that "the turban was mandatory."

Even the character's death was humiliating: instead of hand-to-hand combat with Norris, he was summarily shot after first running away. The experience soured Jobrani on acting. He now focuses on standup comedy instead.

This is about much more than just a handful of struggling actors

Reading about the degrading ways in which Hollywood forced these actors to reduce themselves to an ugly stereotype, I was reminded of this quote from the writer Junot Diaz, and what it feels like to not be represented in popular culture:

You guys know about vampires? … You know, vampires have no reflections in a mirror? There’s this idea that monsters don’t have reflections in a mirror. And what I’ve always thought isn’t that monsters don’t have reflections in a mirror. It’s that if you want to make a human being into a monster, deny them, at the cultural level, any reflection of themselves. And growing up, I felt like a monster in some ways. I didn’t see myself reflected at all. I was like, "Yo, is something wrong with me? That the whole society seems to think that people like me don’t exist?" And part of what inspired me, was this deep desire that before I died, I would make a couple of mirrors. That I would make some mirrors so that kids like me might see themselves reflected back and might not feel so monstrous for it.

We have all felt the sting of not living up to a cultural ideal, of not being thin enough or muscled enough or blonde enough or whatever-else enough. But what Diaz is talking about is something far more severe and painful: the experience of seeing no representation at all of who you are. Of having everything important in your life, from your family life to your hobbies to your sense of humor, erased from the public narrative as if it never existed at all. Of being made to feel like a freak — a monster without a reflection.

I kept thinking back to that Diaz quote as I read Ronson's article. But arguably, the men he interviewed have it even worse than Diaz did as a nerdy Dominican-American kid searching for a reflection of himself in popular culture. Actors like Ahmed and Jobrani are not only being deprived of mirrors for their own lives, they're being pressured into becoming part of the problem. Because they're actors in someone else's movie, they don't have an opportunity to "make their own mirrors" as Diaz did. They're stuck.

Middle Eastern and Muslim actors are rarely if ever cast to play romantic leads, or brilliant scientists, or high-school mean girls, or varsity football heroes or good wives or bad husbands. They're stuck reading for one-dimensional terrorist roles over and over again.

That's not just offensive, it's an absurd misrepresentation of American life. There are millions of Muslim citizens in this country, and the percentage of them that remotely resemble Terrorist Number Four is effectively zero. And yet the stories of those millions of people are nowhere to be found in Hollywood movies. I grew up in a small Midwestern college town, but even in my tiny high school, I had classmates from Iraq, Iran, and Pakistan. When Hollywood can't manage to match the diversity of a minuscule high school in a small town surrounded by an endless sea of cornfields, something has gone terribly wrong.

Ronson writes that the men he profiled in his story "are going through something that future generations will regard as outrageous. They're the bloodthirsty Red Indians surrounding the settlers' wagons in Stagecoach. They're the black savages in The Birth of a Nation (who were played by white actors in blackface). They are the people Hollywood will be apologizing to tomorrow."

They deserve that apology. I hope they get it. But in the meantime, maybe they could get some better parts?

It's a sad, sad day in the video game world. Nintendo reports that President Satoru Iwata has died at the age of 55 due to a bile duct tumor. The executive had been forced to skip E3 2014 due to health issues and had surgery to remove a growth later that year, but it's unfortunately clear that this wasn't enough to help him recover. The company isn't saying much about succession at this point, but it looks like Genyo Takeda and company legend Shigeru Miyamoto are taking the reins for now.

Iwata had a profound effect at Nintendo, even in the initial stages of his career. He came to the company in 1983 and helped create some of the developer's legendary titles, such as EarthBound and the early Kirby series. He took charge of the firm's corporate planning in 2000, and in 2002 became the first person to lead Nintendo that wasn't part of the founding Yamauchi family.

His track record as the head of the firm is mixed, but memorable. He presided over most of the GameCube's less-than-stellar history and, of course, the struggling Wii U. However, he also led the company through the Wii's glory days, ushering in the era of motion-controlled gaming. Also, he helped cement Nintendo's dominance in dedicated handhelds through the DS and 3DS. And while Nintendo was reluctant to compete directly with the likes of Microsoft and Sony, the company was gradually adapting to the reality of a smartphone-dominated world with plans to develop mobile games.

It's also important to note Iwata's personal touch. For many, he was literally the face of the company -- if you've seen a Nintendo Direct event, the odds are that you saw him introduce the latest games in his polite, friendly style. And who can forget the "Iwata Asks" series? While there will certainly be others taking Iwata's place, there's no doubt that Nintendo will feel poorer without him talking about the latest Mario or Zelda news. We'll miss you, Iwata-san.

Filed under: Gaming, Nintendo

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Via: Kotaku

Source: Nintendo (PDF)

Yoko Shimomura, more Ninja Gaiden composers join Brave Wave ⊟ 

Amazing news out of Brave Wave, the brilliant label creating original albums with classic game musicians (and, FULL DISCLOSURE, a sponsor through Club Tiny): Yoko Shimomura has joined up to work on a new album of original music. 

That’s Yoko “Final Fight, Street Fighter 2, Kingdom Hearts, Mario & Luigi, Xenoblade, etc.” Shimomura. That’s a big get!

Ryuichi Nitta (Ninja Gaiden 1 & 2) and Kaori Nakabai (NG3) have also joined up, adding to a roster that already includes Ninja Gaiden 1′s Keiji Yamagishi (oh my god get Retro-Active pt.1). There are… a lot more composers new to the BW team. I’ve just attached all of their bios after the break. It’s, like, everybody.

Yoko Shimomura

Shimomura’s name is one of the most recognized in video game history, and her compositions are some of the most beloved. Since graduating from Osaka College of Music in 1988 as a piano major, she has contributed her music to some of the most renowned video games, such as those within the Kingdom Hearts, Mario & Luigi, and Street Fighter 2 series. After working at Capcom and Square Enix for much of her career, she now continues to compose for games through freelance work, and is currently the lead composer on the upcoming Square Enix flagship titles Final Fantasy XV and Kingdom Hearts III. For Brave Wave, she’ll be contributing to the upcoming concept album Project Light, which is directed by Ippo Yamada (Mega Man series, Mighty No. 9) and Mohammed Taher, in addition to other unannounced albums.

Harumi Fujita

Fujita started her career at SNK in 1984 with Mad Crasher, but her following years at Capcom ended up defining her as a stellar composer. She was one of the few who worked on the NES, arcade, and the Game Boy simultaneously, contributing to games like Ghosts ‘n Goblins, Bionic Commando, Strider, 1943 Kai, Final Fight, and most famously Gargoyle’s Quest. She was part of Capcom’s in­house band Alph Lyla alongside Manami Matsumae (of Mega Man 1) and Yasuaki ‘Bun Bun’ Fujita (Mega Man 3) among others, and ended up composing ‘Needle Man’, ‘Gemini Man’ and ‘Staff Roll’ for Mega Man 3 before passing the rest of the composition on to Bun Bun. In the past few years she has composed and arranged music for various theatrical productions, and now Brave Wave welcomes her arrival to video games once again. Last year at BitSummit, Brave Wave took the stage to unveil that Fujita is part of Project Light.

Masashi Kageyama

After composing the cult­favorite Gimmick! for the NES, Kageyama slowly retreated from the limelight and decided to change gears from music to design. He built his new career over the years and not only went on to master photography and design, but also ended up becoming an in­house favorite at NARU, the oldest jazz house in Japan. As a jazz enthusiast himself, he started performing with his saxophone during the past two years, and today he’s officially back as a gaming composer with Brave Wave. Kageyama is currently planning his first­ever solo album with Director Mohammed Taher (In Flux, Retro­Active Pt. 1) and looks forward to finally contributing his signature jazzy style to Western games. His photo exhibition of jazz players in Japan will take place in Tokyo, Ginza at “Gallery 84” from August 24 to September 5, 2015.

Yuji Takenouchi

Better known as TECHNOuchi to his colleagues and fans, Takenouchi’s career is an expansive one that began way back with the MSX, where he composed for classics like Metal Gear 2 and SD Snatcher. In recent years, Takenouchi gained popularity and respect as the founder of the now­ defunct music collective GE­ON­DAN (which featured a large group of Japanese video game musicians) and has served as the lead sound director on From Software’s critically acclaimed Demon’s Souls and Dark Souls games, as well Access Games’ D4. He wishes to connect with a global audience through Brave Wave, and is preparing an album of unreleased game music to be released for the first time ever.

Ryuichi Nitta

Ryuichi Nitta started his gaming career at Tecmo, where he co­composed the original Ninja Gaiden alongside Keiji Yamagishi (using Yamagishi’s sound driver), and then went on to compose the soundtracks to Ninja Gaiden 2 and Solomon’s Key 2. After his time at Tecmo and Banpresto, Nitta became a freelancer and co­founded his own music company, Kajiya Music, with Keiji Yamagishi and Kaori Nakabai (of Ninja Gaiden 3). Now, fifteen years later, Brave Wave is proud to represent the full Kajiya Music family in conducting their business outside of Japan.

Kaori Nakabai

Following the works of Keiji Yamagishi and Ryuichi Nitta at Tecmo, Kaori Nakabai took over Ninja Gaiden 3 and was able to deliver the same quality of music that the series was well known for. Her gameography includes Tecmo’s role­playing game Radia Senki (composed alongside Yamagishi) and the fan­ favorite Captain Tsubasa 3 on the Super Famicom. She went to Koei and helped shape the soundtrack of Dynasty Warriors with Yamagishi, and then formed Kajiya Music alongside Yamagishi and Nitta. Today, Nakabai looks forward to working on Western games as well as contributing original tracks to Brave Wave’s music catalogue.

George Art “Smoke Thief” Baker

Smoke Thief is the alias of George Art Baker, a British composer with a Master of Arts in Music Performance. Formerly a professional jazz bandleader and composer, he was drawn to create a style incorporating ambient, jazz, and hip­hop. Emerging from this jazz background with his own style, he set out to explore more minimalistic arrangements that focus on connecting listeners to his vast inner worlds, evident in his recent work for Relay FM’s podcast Behind the App as well as his Bounty Hunter Remix on Keiji Yamagishi’s Retro­Active Pt. 1. Brave Wave is proudly presenting him as the label’s first original artist. His new album is coming out soon, following Keiji Yamagishi’s Retro­Active Pt. 1.

Alex Mauer & Steve Lakawicz

Mauer is the co­founder of game company Imagos Softworks, home of the upcoming Starr Mazer videogame in which Mauer serves as its lead composer. His involvement in Starr Mazer finds him working with a multitude of musicians including Brave Wave’s Manami Matsumae (Mega Man) and Keiji Yamagishi (Ninja Gaiden). Mauer is perhaps best known for his 2007 album ‘Vegavox’, which was the first album to be released on handmade NES cartridges. Alongside him is chiptune tracker Steve ‘ap0c’ Lakawicz, a classically trained musician with a Master’s degree in Music Performance, specializing in orchestral tuba.

Lakawicz have toured with brass quintets and performed with the Curtis Symphony Orchestra, and lately have taken an interest into crafting and emulating authentic chiptunes. The duo’s initial role at Brave Wave is to work closely with Director Mohammed Taher and Keiji Yamagishi on a special project involving authentic NES sounds (TBA), and Brave Wave is excited to add their exceptional talent at crafting authentic chip sounds to the team.

Kung Fury might be the greatest '80s action movie the '80s never produced. The Kickstarted movie, which premiered at Cannes this month, features smoky alleyways, a city ravaged by murderous arcade cabinets, a cop with the head of a Triceratops, and a huge number of neatly trimmed mustaches. Only one man can save the world — the eponymous Kung Fury — and you can now see his escapades in their entirety on YouTube after its TV debut.

After being bitten by a cobra and struck by lightning at the same time as his police partner was chopped in half by a sword-wielding kung fu master, Kung Fury is working as a cop in 1985-era Miami. The city has kept its palm trees and beaches, but has changed in other, fairly notable ways. Everything's bathed in a pink or orange neon light, for one, and there's a huge shaolin temple rising high above the ground that residents might not recognize. That temple is Kung Fury's home, but he doesn't stay there long. His mission takes him on a quest through cyberspace, before ending in a climatic showdown in a secret underground bunker that pits dinosaurs, Norse gods, and cyborg hackers against Hitler and an army of his gas-masked goons.

---

The result is particularly impressive considering director and star David Sandberg doesn't actually know any kung fu. Certainly, any shortcomings in his technique are covered up with liberal use of modern visual effects, or wiped away with tracking errors and frequent interruptions of fuzz, making it look like the movie's been copied straight from a VHS. Just in case it couldn't get any more '80s, Sandberg also secured the services of David Hasselhoff for the movie's theme song, the synth-heavy slice of retro pop that is True Survivor.

Remember the security researcher who was pulled from a United flight and had his equipment taken (before its frequent flier miles-paying bug hunt) for tweeting about hacking into the plane via its entertainment system? In an application for a search warrant, FBI agents said he previously told them he's gone further than that. APTN National News obtained the document, which contains claims that Chris Roberts told them he connected his laptop to a plane via an Ethernet cable, hacked into a thrust management computer and briefly controlled one of the engines, causing the plane to change course. As reported previously by Wired, he has warned of vulnerabilities in planes for years -- manufacturers deny they exist -- and the conversations were apparently intended to get these problems fixed.

Find myself on a 737/800, lets see Box-IFE-ICE-SATCOM, ? Shall we start playing with EICAS messages? "PASS OXYGEN ON" Anyone ? :)

- Chris Roberts (@Sidragon1) April 15, 2015

Irony: for FBI to make its case against Chris Roberts, they're going to have to seriously harm confidence in the aviation industry.

- Matthew Green (@matthew_d_green) May 16, 2015

If you tell FBI agents you can control an airplane's engines with your laptop, you're gonna have a bad time. http://t.co/73qWvaxTvU

- Christopher Soghoian (@csoghoian) May 16, 2015

According to the application, Roberts traveled from Denver to Chicago via United flight 1474 on April 15th, and when agents checked it, they found damage and evidence of tampering to the electronic system under his seat. On Twitter, Roberts has since claimed that no systems were harmed during the trip, and more recently, that discussion is "out of context." He told Wired in an interview that he had only ever tapped in to watch data traffic on airplanes, and while he believed such hacks were possible, he has only done them in a simulated environment.

Last month's arrest spurred warnings from the TSA and FBI to watch out for passengers trying to access internal networks. Now, while law enforcement sorts out the difference between theoretical and actual hacking, it may be a good idea to tuck in any loose network cables while going through security.

[Image credit: Nicholas Burningham / Alamy]

Filed under: Transportation

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Source: APTN

In The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, the sacred is always at war with the profane, and beauty is always at war with blood. The series has always contrasted its world's physical glamor with its intrinsic violence, but never has that contrast been this uneasy, this convulsive. That The Witcher 3 depicts the immediate brutality of battle in great detail is not a surprise; many games fill the screen with decapitated heads and gory entrails. It's the way this incredible adventure portrays the personal tragedies and underhanded opportunities that such battles provide that makes it so extraordinary.

It is more than its thematic turbulence that makes The Witcher 3 extraordinary, actually. Excellence abounds at every turn in this open-world role-playing game: excellent exploration, excellent creature design, excellent combat mechanics, excellent character progression. But the moments that linger are those that reveal the deep ache in the world's inhabitants. In one quest, you reunite two lovers, one of which is now a rotting hag, its tongue lasciviously lolling from its mouth. In another, a corpulent spouse-abuser must find a way to love two different lost souls, each of which test the limits of his affection. Don't worry that these vague descriptions spoil important events: they are simple examples of the obstacles every resident faces. On the isles of Skellige and in the city of Novigrad, there is no joy without parallel sorrow. Every triumph demands a sacrifice.

As returning protagonist Geralt of Rivia, you, too, face the anguish of mere existence, sometimes in unexpected, unscripted ways. The central story, which sees you seeking your ward and daughter figure Ciri, as well as contending with the otherworldly force known as the wild hunt, often forces this anguish upon you. But it was my natural exploration of the game's vast expanses that proved most affecting. At one point, I witnessed a woman sentenced to death, doomed to starve after being chained to a rock. It's a chilling sentence, of course, but it was only later, when I accidentally sailed past the tiny island where her corpse still rested, that the horror of her punishment sunk into my heart. The Witcher 3's story did not script this moment; it was merely a passing detail that might have been lost in the waves or overlooked in favor of the harpies circling overhead. Yet there she was, a reminder that my actions--actions that felt righteous and reasonable as I made them--allowed this woman to rot in this faraway place.

Continue Reading at GameSpot

This week, Zero Punctuation reviews Half-Life 2 Update.

Libsyn (1:35:28 | MP3 Download | SoundCloud)

Google has unveiled a whole new type of Chrome device, and it's one that can fit in your pocket. It's called the Chromebit, and it's essentially a Chromebook crammed in a dongle. This tiny little package contains a Rockchip 3288 SoC, 2GB of RAM, 16GB of eMMC memory, a USB 2.0 port, WiFi 802.11 ac support, Bluetooth 4.0, a Smart Ready controller and an ARM Mali 760 quad-core GPU. Just like Intel's Compute Stick, all you have to do to get the Chromebit working is to attach it to any display with a HDMI port, and voila, you've turned it into a computer. Unlike the Intel stick though, the Chromebit's HDMI end actually swivels around so that the dongle doesn't stick out in an unsightly way behind a monitor or TV. As for battery life, well, Google says it doesn't really know that just yet as the product is still in testing. Google promises that the Chromebit -- the first is made by ASUS -- will retail for less than $100. It'll be available in either silver, blue or orange and will be out later this summer.

Filed under: Misc, Home Entertainment, HD, Google

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Source: Google Chrome Blog

finance.yahoo.com

Posted by Dave Burke, VP, Android Platform

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