Davemichels

Samsung is going to start letting app developers plug into Bixby, and hardware companies will be able to build the voice assistant into their products, too.

In the year-and-a-half since Bixby launched, Samsung has already brought the assistant to phones, fridges, TVs, and more, but they’ve all been Samsung’s own devices. With today’s news, other companies will be able to start building it into their own hardware as well, either as an alternative to Amazon’s Alexa and Google’s Assistant — or, more likely, as an additional option for users who want to live in Samsung’s ecosystem.

Consumers may have more reason to embrace Bixby in the future, too, since third party developers will start being able to build...

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• Slack has only 8 million users.
• That's a surprisingly small number given that the workplace chat app already feels ubiquitous.
• Some sources value the company at up to $8 billion, due to Slack's healthy revenue base.

LISBON — Slack is only at the beginning of its takeover of the workspace, according to co-founder Cal Henderson. Although it may feel like the office chatroom app is already ubiquitous — and a solid majority of attendees at Web Summit in Lisbon are already using it, according to a show of hands in the main arena —in fact, Slack is not that widely used.

Henderson, the British programmer who started Slack with CEO Stewart Butterfield in 2013, told Web Sumit there were about 600 million knowledge workers on the planet, who are all candidates to use Slack as a communications tool. "We'd love to capture that entire audience, but being realistic that's not going to happen. We'd be happy with 500 million," he joked.

Slack has a long way to go. It turns out the app has only 8 million daily active users, the main internal metric used at Slack. "It's the only real measure we use to think about how successful we are," Henderson said. "We want to continue to drive that up."

Those users are valuable, however. About 3 million of them are paying users, and Slack has more than $200 million in recurring annual revenues.

Slack has raised $1.2 billion in investment and has been valued at $5.1 billion. Others put its potential acquisition price at $7 billion or $8 billion.

SEE ALSO: Apple will no longer report iPhone numbers after growth went to 0%, and analysts are now worried iPhone sales may decline

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NOW WATCH: Why Amazon reportedly wants to open 3,000 automated stores

• The Nudge is a text messaging service that sends messages to its community of subscribers, trying to get people off their phones and off on adventures in the San Francisco Bay Area. 
• The company was co-founded by the brother and sister team of John and Sarah Peterson. 
• The company raised $540,000 in "pre-seed" round in July and will be expanding to Seattle in the coming months, after some early success in San Francisco. 
• When asked about starting a company as siblings, John told us: "It's kind of intense sometimes, to be honest."

Sarah Peterson was working for Apple in Munich, Germany when she found out that her older brother John was starting his own company.

That company, called Livday, created daily itineraries for people exploring new cities. The plans told users not only where to hike and which museums to explore, but also where to get a coffee beforehand, and where to grab a post-adventure meal.

Sarah was obsessed. She created over 50 Livday plans while living overseas, trying to convince John to expand his operations to Munich. 

Instead, the siblings decided to team up for a grander plan, and Sarah moved back to San Francisco. She quit her job at Apple and, together with her brother, rebranded the company as The Nudge, with John as CEO and Sarah as chief marketing officer.

In a recent interview with the family duo, John told me that most people are pretty bad with their free time and often rely on that one "planner friend" to create an exciting, weekend itinerary. 

"The Nudge is that planner friend in your pocket," he explains. 

Available only in San Francisco for now, The Nudge sends text messages, usually close to the weekend, to its users, giving them ideas of fun things to do in and out of the city. 

Some of the most successful "nudges," Sarah tells me, were a hike to the Tourist Club (a beer garden atop the San Francisco Bay Area's Mt. Tamalpais, only open to guests on certain days of the year) and a run with the Electric Flight Club (an "exclusive fitness and social club" with a chapter in the Bay Area).

The idea, the duo says, is to help encourage people to stop checking their phone and start having real-life experiences. 

Get up and go

The Nudge's primary goal is to get people to get off their rear ends and go have adventures, but John tells me that's not an easy task. 

"There's a reason why technology has not really figured this space out yet for people because it's just hard," he explains. "People are lazy. Psychology is complicated. You're trying to compete with something that is very similar to an actual cocaine addiction and checking of Instagram." 

To help them with this undertaking, the Peterson's raised a $540,000 "pre-seed" round in July with NextView Ventures as its lead investor. To date, The Nudge says it has over 10,000 subscribers in San Francisco.

The Nudge is free to download for now, but the team is considering making it a subscription service, so as to avoid having to rely on advertising.  The company has also tested paid products that "nudge" its users in other parts of their lives — like fitness. 

One recent pilot program, called The Fit 30 Nudge was launched nationally and texted people daily workout routines. To keep users accountable, the team created a "sweaty selfie-tracker" that prompted users to take a selfie after each workout. Around 2,000 people participated in the Fit 30 Nudge, which cost $19 to sign up. 

The Nudge app's user base is 70% female and Sarah — the company's CMO — tells me that 1 in 10 millennial women in San Francisco is subscribed to the Nudge. 

The team believes that the personal touch of SMS texting has been a key to their success thus far. They experimented with other mediums — like newsletters, calendar integrations, and Slack bots — but found those to be much less effective when it came to helping people find their initiative. 

Those receiving SMS messages had a different perception of the interaction as well."The text people would be like, 'Oh, you're one of my friends who texts me what to do in my free time,'" John explains. "Texting is a sacred thing."

How to make a Nudge

For the 34-year-old former consultant, The Nudge has been four long years in the making.

Like many Silicon Valley startups of legend, John worked out of his garage. This time, though, the garage was also his roommate's woodworking studio. He spent months covered in dust and wearing a construction mask to help him breathe. 

Today, the future is looking brighter for The Nudge. The team has grown to five employees and will be expanding to Seattle in the next few months — its first market outside of the Bay Area. 

As for a brother-sister duo leading the way, John and Sarah say it's been mostly positive thus far. 

"You don't waste any time," John says. "But it's kind intense sometimes, to be honest. We're siblings. We have a lifetime of experience together, so things can get intense. But it's good. It's productive." 

"You do need to unlearn some habits with the person," Sarah explains. "You might have a more fiery opinion on something, and I think that can be good and bad. We moved really quickly in the beginning because we didn't have to spend time building respect or trust with each other. We could just have a healthy debate and move on." 

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NOW WATCH: A running coach explains how to get through the NYC marathon this weekend

• TikTok is a social platform popular amongst teens made-up of short videos that often play catchy songs in the background. 
• According to TechCrunch report on Friday, TikTok was the most downloaded app in the US in September. 
• This marked the first time in the US that TikTok had more downloads than Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and Snapchat in a given month.
• Today, TikTok is the 4th ranked social app in the App Store’s Top Charts, behind YouTube, Instagram, and Snapchat. 

TikTok — an app you may have never heard of before — was the most downloaded app in the US in September, according to a TechCrunch report on Friday using data from SensorTower. 

For the first time in the US, TikTok had more downloads than Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and Snapchat in a given month.

TikTok had 3.81 million downloads from the iOS App Store and Google Play combined in September. Facebook had the second highest download count at 3.53 million first-time installs, according to the TechCrunch report. 

Today, TikTok is the 4th ranked social app in the App Store’s Top Charts, behind top-ranked YouTube, 2nd ranked Instagram, and 3rd place Snapchat. 

So what is TikTok? 

It's sort of like Vine, the viral video creation app that Twitter acquired and later killed. TikTok is a social platform popular amongst teens made-up of short videos that often play catchy songs in the background. 

On a recent meander through the app, I watched a US Marine do one-handed pull-ups to Panic! At The Disco's "High Hopes," a woman singing a John Legend's "All of Me" to her bag of Hot Cheetos, and so much more.

You'll quickly find how addicting TikTok can be. 

Read more:  The most downloaded iPhone app in the world right now is one you've probably never heard of

TikTok is owned by the same Beijing-based parent company that bought social video app Musical.ly for $1 billion last year. 

Musical.ly, which had 60 million users at the time of its acquisition, was folded into the TikTok app to help it gain traction in the US. 

With TikTok number one downloaded social app in September, that strategy seems to be working quite well. 

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NOW WATCH: A cybersecurity expert showed us how hackers can tap into an office phone and listen to everything you're saying

I have to admit that before yesterday, I'd never even heard of US Representative Jeff Fortenberry from Nebraska's 1st Congressional District (even though I visited his district while he was in office). However, boy am I hearing an awful lot about Rep. Jeff Fortenberry, and the one thing I will now always associate with Rep. Jeff Fortenberry is that he and his staff are so offended that anyone might call him "Fartenberry" that they'll ignore the 1st Amendment of the Constitution and threaten a professor for the grievous offense of liking a Facebook post with an image of a defaced campaign sign changing his name.

No, really.

This story has a bit of everything. It starts with this, however. A Nebraska blog, Seeing Red Nebraska, posted the following to its Facebook page a couple weeks ago:

If, somehow, you cannot see that, it's a campaign sign for Rep. Jeff Fortenberry that has been somewhat crudely "altered" such that Fortenberry's face now has two giant googly eyes, his name has been changed to "Fartenberry" by adding a line to the "o" in his last name, and whatever the third item in the following list really is, was changed to: "Strong Families; Strong Communities; Strong ODOR."

A bit sophomoric, but, hey it happens.

What happened next, however... You see, University of Nebraska-Lincoln political science professor Ari Kohen "liked" that post on Facebook. And, apparently, Rep. Jeff Fortenberry's staff decided to scan through all the likes on that post, and decided that Kohen couldn't possibly get away with liking such a thing. So, Fortenberry's Chief of Staff, Dr. William "Reyn" Reynolds Archer III decided to call Kohen and chew him out and threaten him over the "like." Archer left a voicemail for Kohen, who was away at a conference. When Kohen didn't call him back quickly enough, Archer then emailed Kohen's department supervisor, Kohen's dean, and the chancellor of the university to complain about Kohen liking the image.

Again, let's just be clear what'a happening here (and it's going to get crazier). Someone else made some additions to the sign. Someone else took a photo. Someone else posted it to Facebook. The sole thing that Kohen did was click the "like" button because he found it amusing. And Fortenberry's chief of staff emailed Kohen's boss, Kohen's boss's boss and Kohen's boss's boss's boss to complain.

Kohen then called Archer back, and they ended up talking for 53 whole minutes, though the key 7 minutes gives you a good taste of what went down.

Amusingly, if you listen to the full call, it starts out with Archer specifically saying: "Look, I want to just be really clear that we support First Amendment." Then, he follows that up by saying this nonsense: "I think the thing that we're concerned about is liking vandalism which is against the law." The call goes on and just gets more and more insane (yes, dear readers, I listened to the whole 53 minutes for you). At one point, Archer tries to point to Jerry Seinfeld's comments on college students as evidence that... um... something.

Humor has changed a lot over the last five years. What we thought was funny... and even Seinfeld is saying it's really difficult to be a comedian nowadays because things are misunderstood in the context of humor. Yes you can have a laugh about potty humor or about googly eyes, but the point is you're also secondarily liking and validating vandalism without... in a way that you may not have intended, but is a direct validation of vandalism.

The call goes on and on like this, with there being two main complaints, both of which are bullshit:

1. This is an endorsement of vandalism (and even potentially "violence") and...
2. Some others had highlighted Kohen's "like" and were using the fact that Kohen is a professor at UNL to further promote this image.

And frankly we have a 1st amendment opportunity to put you out there in front of everybody and put it clearly as "why is a professor liking vandalism?" We can do that publicly. Would you like that? That's our 1st Amendment right too?

Kohen, who certainly seems to have a much better grasp of the optics here, points out to Archer how that might backfire:

Kohen: I think it'd be a terrible idea for you, if I'm being perfectly honest.

Archer: No. How so?

Kohen: Because the [disbelieving laugh] optics of this are terrible Reyn.

Archer then complains that he was calling to "come to an accommodation" and is frustrated that it seems "that is not possible with you." To which Kohen rightly asks (incredulously) what possible "accommodation" he would think is necessary or appropriate. To which Archer, hilariously replies:

For you to understand the optics of this, and you don't...

About those optics. Since this went public late yesterday, tons of publications have picked up this story. Here's a snapshot from Google News:

Now, perhaps I'm no communications expert, but I don't see any of those articles calling out Kohen for daring to "like" a silly sign defacement. They all seem to be reflecting pretty negatively on Fortenberry and his chief of staff.

Speaking of his chief of staff, Archer seems to have a bit of a history of being controversial himself. The first President Bush appointed him as the head of "Family Planning" at the Department of Health and Human Services, leading to a bunch of complaints about his lack of qualifications for the job:

"He has no credibility in the family planning community," said Judith M. DeSarno, executive director of the National Family Planning and Reproductive Health Association (NFPRHA), which represents clinics funded by Title X. "He is well-meaning, but he confuses empathy with the idea that he has to protect people from themselves." NFPRHA disinvited Archer to its last conference because so many of his views were "anathema" to its members, DeSarno said. Archer said he remains ready to work with them.

"I have nothing in common with the man, and no respect for him based on his political attitude," said Joan Hinneberry, who administers the Title X program in Colorado. "I have real problems with someone who accepts tax dollars to run a program he's basically trying to destroy."

"I advise people never to talk to him alone, because he twists what you say and uses it against you," said Betsy Render, executive director of the Wyoming Reproductive Health Council. "We have lots of problems in family planning, and the only thing he wanted to talk about {during a visit} was abortion."

Later, the younger Bush, George W., appointed Archer to be the Texas commissioner of health, where he made quite a bit of news for what was described as "nutty (and possibly racist) comments" that eventually resulted in Archer resigning in controversy. Indeed, when Fortenberry hired Archer in 2016, he had to defend the hiring over those comments. Some of those comments came from (wait for it...) a tape recorded conversation made by a woman who worked for Archer which was described as "a rambling, mostly one-sided conversation," in which Archer makes repeated nonsensical references to his employee's race, and talks about lynchings and privilege.

Anyway, back to the call. Kohen continues to ask why this conversation is even happening, and Archer keeps falsely stating that Kohen was supporting vandalism, and then makes various references to other professors getting negative publicity over their political views, with Kohen accurately pointing out that those were all very different situations. At that point, things get super bizarre again, as Archer references the widely debunked theory of "broken windows policing" as the reason he's calling. This makes absolutely no sense at all.

Archer: We all live in an ecosystem in which all these things hold together. Are you familiar with Felton Earls in broken windows at Harvard.

*pause*

Kohen: Uh... no, I'm not.

Archer: So you don't know anything about broken windows as a theory?

Kohen: (incredulous) The broken windows theory of policing?!?

Archer: Well, it's the idea that if you leave broken windows, it means you're going to let the festering of other things happen. You can't leave broken windows in a community without allowing the community to continue to believe it's appropriate to break windows and do other things. That's the point.

The conversation keeps going around in circles, and then Kohen correctly notes what this is: a violation of the First Amendment, in which a government official is clearly threatening and putting pressure on a constituent over his protected expression:

The suggestion seems to be that professors should watch what they say, whether they're in the classroom, or not in the classroom, professors should watch what they say. And one of the big concerns, as you know, with the First Amendment, is that chilling effect that this kind of discussion that we're having right now can have on speech.

Archer then responds in a way that suggests he has... a very, very confused understanding of the 1st Amendment.

I think there are limitations and problems created by both the left and the right around this issue. And I think that there should not be a chilling effect on your right to speak about ideas. But if you tell someone to go blow up a bomb, or you tell somebody to go vandalize, or you validate and say an inference that vandalism is a part of political discourse, by inference, you have to be careful about whether your are constraining yourself in the context of the 1st Amendment, in which... it ends when your fist hits my jaw, as you know.

We all know that this is a very complicated area. And we also know that it's important... It's foundational to this civilization without question. We couldn't survive without it. At the same time, the way we do it, also allows us to continue to do it. To be in this robust conversation with each other. So we're saying, and requesting that you look at your behavior and think about it as being an inference of supporting vandalism, which we don't think is appropriate political discourse.

So, just to be clear, if you're a government official telling someone else that clicking the "like" button (which courts have already said clearly are protected speech under the First Amendment) is "inappropriate public discourse," you are the one violating the First Amendment.

Either way, the call goes on and on and on, around and around for nearly an hour. Frankly, Kohen has the level of patience of a saint as the conversation continues and Archer's argument gets more and more ridiculous, and very carefully considers each and every wacky argument presented by Archer. Incredibly, Kohen tries, multiple times, to end the call, and Archer just keeps wanting it to go on, and pressing Kohen to somehow apologize for clicking the like button. Still, by the end the two end the call on a more friendly note and have a conversation about getting past political differences and improving government -- which is great. But... just the fact that the entire call came about over a like, and it involved a government official (1) complaining to multiple levels of bosses over a university professor and (2) further threatening to publicly shame that professor over his daring decision to "like" a silly joke on Facebook is insane.

This article is part of ProgrammableWeb's series on Crytocurrency and Blockchain.

• Amazon reportedly advised employees in a memo to avoid talking about President Donald Trump when prompted by reporters.
• It was included in a set of guidelines passed around by Amazon's public relations team, according to The Information.
• The memo was undated, and it's unclear how widely it was circulated.
  
• Amazon has been the target of Trump's ire multiple times throughout his presidency, much of it focusing on Amazon's relationship with the US Postal Service and CEO Jeff Bezos' ownership of the Washington Post. 

Amazon has reportedly laid out strict guidelines for employees talking to the media about President Donald Trump.

The company advised employees in a memo to avoid talking to the media about the president, and to direct inquires to Amazon's public relations team if a reporter questioned them. The memo and its contents were reported by The Information's Priya Anand.

The leaked memo further goes on to give some standard guidelines in the form of "dos" and "don'ts" that employees can use if the interaction is unavoidable in person. The dos include being "friendly and polite" and explaining "that we work well with the White House, as we have with previous administrations," the Information reported. 

The leaked memo says that it is ok to say that the president is "misinformed" about Amazon's partnership with the post office, and that nothing has changed in Amazon's approach. It then says to direct the person to Amazon's PR and "pivot as quickly as possible."

Some of the don'ts: talk bad about the Trump administration, discuss inner workings in Amazon, speculate, handle anything by yourself, or "panic or make it seem like we have anything to hide."

Read more: Bernie Sanders escalates war with Amazon, says he will ask OSHA to investigate 'unsafe working conditions' in warehouses

An Amazon spokesperson did not immediately return Business Insider's request for comment on the reported memo.

Trump frequently criticizes Amazon for what he says is an unfair deal with the US Postal Service. When he criticizes the Washington Post's coverage of his administration, he often refers to the newspaper as the "Amazon Washington Post," and calls the coverage "unfair." The Post is owned by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos.

Amazon does not frequently respond publicly to even high-profile criticism. A notable exception is when it responded to Sen. Bernie Sanders' repeated criticism of the company's working conditions and pay. Amazon pushed back against the senator before eventually raising its starting wage to $15 an hour for US workers.

SEE ALSO: Amazon has launched its first round of deals in its quest to win Black Friday

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NOW WATCH: Why silk is so expensive

Yesterday, Dish customers lost access to HBO due to an ongoing licensing dispute between the premium cable channel and the TV distributor. It marks the first time in HBO’s 40-plus-year history that it’s gone dark. This sort of thing seems to happen every once in a while in the cable industry, but it also might be the first indication of the closed-off cable nightmare that could be in our future as companies like Comcast, AT&T, and Disney take control of ever-larger chunks of the media landscape.

HBO is owned by WarnerMedia, which was acquired as part of AT&T’s massive Time Warner acquisition earlier this year. Back when AT&T was arguing that it should be allowed to merge in the first place, one of the Department of Justice’s complaints...

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It doesn’t have to be this way

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You might recall that AT&T recently defeated the DOJ's challenge to their $86 billion merger with Time Warner thanks to a comically narrow reading of the markets by U.S. District Court Judge Richard Leon. At no point in his 172-page ruling (which approved the deal without a single condition) did Leon show the faintest understanding that AT&T intends to use vertical integration synergistically with the death of net neutrality to dominate smaller competitors and squeeze more money from consumers in an ocean of creative new ways.

Throughout the case the DOJ tried to demonstrate (poorly) that a bigger AT&T has every incentive to behave badly. Admittedly those efforts were pretty feeble since the multi-decade steady lobbyist erosion of antitrust law left them trying to make the case within very narrow confines of legally-acceptable economic theory. The DOJ also shot itself in the foot by refusing to even mention AT&T's attacks on net neutrality, likely because it didn't want to highlight the fact that another arm of the government (the FCC) was actively harming the same consumers the DOJ claimed it was trying to protect.

Regardless, with the merger still less than 5 months old, AT&T has been quick to show why people were concerned. The company has already quickly jacked up rates on most of its subscribers and imposed all manner of bizarre new fees as it tries to recoup the massive debt it incurred from both the DirecTV and Time Warner mergers. And this week, AT&T blacked out (previously Time Warner-owned) HBO content for Dish Network customers during contract negotiations, the first time that has happened in the history of HBO:

"AT&T Inc.’s HBO and Cinemax programs were pulled from Dish Network Corp.’s satellite service after the companies failed to reach a new distribution agreement, setting up a real-life “Game of Thrones” between two of the biggest players in pay TV. It is the first time in HBO’s more than four-decade history that programming has been blocked at a distribution partner over a contract dispute, according to AT&T, which acquired the premium cable network as part of its June $85 billion acquisition of Time Warner.

We've noted for years how retransmission and carriage fee disputes in the cable industry have grown increasingly common and are only getting worse. Basically, when it comes time to sign a new deal paying for content, broadcasters generally demand huge rate hikes for the same channels. Cable operators then play hardball, and during negotiations one side or the other (usually broadcasters) pulls their content from the cable lineup. Consumers never see refunds for these feuds, even though these feuds have occasionally left them without access to channels they've already paid for, for months.

For weeks, consumers are bombarded with PR missives, new websites and on-screen warnings all trying to amplify public outrage and drive greater pressure for one side or the other to buckle. After a while, the two sides strike a new confidential deal, and the higher rates are then quickly passed on to consumers. In a letter to lawmakers last year, Dish Network argued that consumers have faced 750 such broadcaster blackouts since 2010, with the retransmission consent fees that broadcasters demand growing a whopping 27,400% between 2005 and 2016.

Of course Time Warner and HBO management traditionally took the high road to avoid these kinds of problems, something that appears to have suddenly and abruptly changed. HBO execs are implying to media outlets that this could all just be a press stunt by Dish to apply pressure on AT&T as it fights the DOJ's recent appeal. Even if that's the case, consumer groups and out-leveraged smaller cable ops have been pushing for years for updated regulations that ban companies from blacking out content while companies bicker over rates.

These demands are never really taken seriously in DC, as it's seen as too heavy handed of an intervention into negotiations between two companies. Ignored is that during these outages, consumers don't see refunds for content they paid for, and this consumer outrage itself is actively encouraged by both sides in a bid to apply pressure on the other end of the deal. While the FCC under Wheeler flirted with the idea of basic FCC rules putting this ridiculous tap dance to bed, there was simply no follow through.

That AT&T was going to use its newfound power to jack up prices for its TV competitors wasn't rocket science, especially if you've watched AT&T's particular flavor of "doing business" anytime over the last two decades.

The irony here is that AT&T even promised the DOJ that it would avoid these kinds of blackouts as a merger condition if the DOJ approved the deal. But the DOJ sued anyway claiming it was helping consumers (though Trump's disdain for CNN and Trump ally Rupert Murdoch's lobbying against the deal are seen as more likely justifications for a consumer-protection phobic Trump administration). But the DOJ's sloppy handling of the case and a terrible ruling by Leon left AT&T more powerful than ever, and consumers and competitors left more vulnerable than ever.

And that's before you even get to AT&T's plans for the post net neutrality world, currently on hold pending the outcome of next February's looming court battle.

Here in the States we have this bizarre tendency to either mindlessly approve megamergers with zero conditions, or conditions that companies are allowed to just tap dance around. The resulting mega-company then behaves badly, and everybody just stands around with a stupid look on their face. Rinse, wash, repeat.

Samsung refreshed the Chromebook Plus over the summer with an upgraded processor and an added rear camera, and now the company is releasing an additional variant with one more improvement: LTE connectivity for browsing on the go.

Aside from the added cellular connectivity, everything else about the Chromebook Plus is identical to the June refresh: a 12.2-inch 1080p display, an Intel Celeron processor, 4GB of RAM, 32GB of internal storage, and an included, built-in pen.

The Samsung Chromebook Plus (LTE) goes on sale today for $599.99 at Best Buy, Samsung’s website, and Verizon — $100 more than the non-LTE model.

Additionally, Samsung also announced pricing and availability for the a...

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Amazon’s 4-star store wasn’t just a one-off shtick. The e-commerce giant is going to continue opening up brick-and-mortar stores dedicated to its most popular online products just like the current one in Manhattan, but this time in Colorado. On Thursday, a midwestern location will be opening up in Lone Tree, Colorado — only a few miles away from Denver. The company has plans for its first West Coast store to open up in Berkeley, California in the next few months as well.

As the name implies, the 4-star stores sell products that are rated at least four stars or higher online. You can buy basically any kind of product you would find online, whether that be tech, children’s toys, or cookware. Special discounts are extended to Prime members...

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Apple has finally added group video chats to its iPhones and iPads, thanks to an iOS update released Tuesday to devices.

The group video calling feature is a highly anticipated addition to Apple devices. FaceTime now supports video chats with up to 32 participants, as well as the use of stickers, face and lens filters, and Animoji.

The tech company revealed Group FaceTime at its annual developer's conference in June, but ended up pushing back the release from its initially scheduled date. Not to mention that the ability to group video chat has been available for years via apps like Google Hangouts and Skype, and more recently through Snapchat and WhatsApp.

Unfortunately, group video calling is only fully available on devices that are an iPhone 6s or later, iPad Pro or later, iPad Air 2, or iPad Mini 4. If you have an earlier model of an iPhone, iPad or iPod touch, you can still join, but as an audio-only participant.

You'll want to make sure your device is updated to the latest version of iOS, because you won't be able to start a group video chat with anyone whose hasn't. You can check if you have iOS 12.1 by going to Settings>General>Software Update. 

Here are the many ways to use Group FaceTimee on your Apple device:

SEE ALSO: Apple's next iPad Pro could have a high-resolution 3D camera creating an 'all-new productivity experience'

There a few different ways to launch a Group FaceTime call. One way is through the FaceTime app itself, where you can add contacts, phone numbers, and emails to a group.

You can also launch a group call through any of your existing group conversation in Messages. Tapping the contacts at the top of a group chat will reveal the FaceTime icon to start you call.

There are a couple ways to enter a Group FaceTime call that someone else started. This also means you can join into a video call at any time while it's going on.

From the Lock Screen or Notification Center, just tap the notification to be automatically connected.

Through the Messages app, tap the notification that appears at the top of your screen, or tap "Join" in the group conversation to enter the Group FaceTime call.

• Apple will no longer support the iPhone 5 with repairs, as it is now considered "vintage."
• There are now few options for people who prefer smartphones with displays under 5 inches.

Apple added the iPhone 5, which came out in 2013, to its list of "vintage and obsolete products" for the US.

This means that Apple will no longer repair the hardware for the iPhone 5. iPhone 5 owners with broken devices, whether it's accidental or simply from old age, will have to buy a newer model (I suppose they could even get a second-hand iPhone 5 in working condition, but I wouldn't recommend that route now that Apple won't repair the phone). 

Apple describes vintage products as "those that have not been manufactured for more than 5 and less than 7 years ago." As for "obsolete," that's a classification for devices that were discontinued seven years ago. The iPhone 5 isn't quite obsolete yet.

Apple doesn't sell any of the iPhone 5's successors that have 4-inch displays, including the iPhone 5C, iPhone 5S, and the iPhone SE. If an iPhone 5 owner wants to upgrade to one of those phones, they'll likely need to buy it second-hand.

Read more: Apple quietly killed off 4 older versions of the iPhone — including the last versions that had a headphone jack

The iPhone 7, which Apple still sells, is going for a great value of $450 from Apple these days. Still, it's not the small phone that iPhone 5 owners are used to. In fact, Apple no longer offers any iPhones with displays under 4.7 inches. 

Apple users who prefer smaller displays may even be forced to look at Android devices, but even those are hard to find with displays under 5 inches. It looks like the days of smaller smartphones are numbered.

SEE ALSO: The 20 best smartphones in the world

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• Comcast isn't looking to join the list of companies offering over-the-top streaming video (OTT) services, like AT&T and Disney.
• The cable giant has tried to get streaming services, like Seeso and Watchable, off the ground without success.
• It's unclear what the Comcast's strategy with Sky's OTT service, Now TV, will be.

For consumers seeking alternatives to linear TV, the options seem boundless.

Walmart, WarnerMedia, and Disney have all announced options coming to market — not to mention digital upstarts like Netflix, Hulu, or YouTube.

But armed with an arsenal of NBCUniversal content and the largest cable TV subscriber base in the US, Comcast isn't looking to join the list of companies offering overt-the-top (OTT) services, or television delivered over the internet.

"When you look at over-the-top services, it's very difficult for us to identify a business model that makes sense, especially when you see some players selling video at a negative gross margin," Matt Strauss, the executive vice president of Xfinity Services, told Business Insider. "Out of footprint OTT doesn't look nearly as attractive to us as the opportunity to continue to grow our broadband share in footprint and to deliver other products and services as part of that broadband."

Comcast seems so averse to the thought of streaming that Strauss mentioned the ability to bundle other products and services, like Xfinity home security, as a more attractive upside opportunity for the company than a streaming service.

Perhaps prior attempts at streaming contribute to Comcast's reticence to jump into the field. NBC shuttered its comedy streaming service Seeso last year, and couldn't get the app Watchable off the ground.

What about Now TV?

The timing of Comcast's aversion to streaming is interesting. A highlight of the third quarter earnings call was a separate presentation on Sky, which Comcast recently acquired. Sky already has an OTT service called Now TV, and with 23 million satellite subscribers in Europe, Comcast now has a large customer base to convert over to OTT subscribers.

That option is so attractive that some analysts predicted Comcast might focus on a global Netflix challenger, building out Now TV, which already has a strong content portfolio with exclusive rights to run HBO shows like "Game of Thrones" and "Westworld" across Europe, as well as the majority of Premier League TV rights and exclusive rights to the German Bundesliga. Comcast also has a 30% stake in Hulu, with majority ownership from Disney, which would directly compete with Comcast's newly-acquired Now TV, Sky's OTT platform. That has led some analysts to predict Comcast will sell its Hulu stake.

"Comcast may divest its stake in Hulu given it will now have its own Now TV platform and would likely have no interest in feeding its content to a direct competitor to both sides of its business," according to a research note by Cowen analysts.

In the US, Comcast's recent attention has been on the OTT integrations on its X1 set-top box.

X1 is the number one platform for Netflix in its footprint, according to Strauss, and Comcast has integrated YouTube service into its platform, with Amazon Prime Video coming soon. Comcast's goal is to offer to customers a seamless way to access all of its content in one place.

"We really see X1 as the premium destination for allowing customers to get access to all of their TV choices in one place," Strauss said. "Some say the future of TV is apps, we really believe it is more and more around aggregation."

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If you'll recall, FCC boss Ajit Pai has spent the better part of the last few years insisting that giving the telecom industry whatever it wants will somehow magically boost sector investment, jobs, and competition. Of course if you've paid attention to history you'll probably notice that in telecom, it never actually works that way. Former FCC boss Mike Powell (now the top lobbyist for the cable industry) engaged in much of the same behavior in the early aughts, promising that if you obliterate consumer protections and regulatory oversight of ISPs, telecom Uptopia magically springs forth from the sidewalk. Instead, we got Comcast.

It's a cycle of dysfunction Americans just can't seem to learn anything from.

Since the start of his tenure, Ajit Pai and the GOP have taken a flamethrower to numerous, basic consumer protections ranging from basic privacy rules governing the sale and collection of your private data, to net neutrality rules that protect consumers and competitors from being nickel-and-dimed by lumbering telecom monopolies. He's also attacked efforts to bring competition to cable boxes, has slowly dismantled broadband programs for the poor, attacked states rights' to protect consumers or build their own networks, and basically neutered the FCC's ability to protect you from monopoly power.

More recently, you'll recall the massive tax cuts were supposed to spur investment, the telecom sector included. As was Ajit Pai's recent policy order neutering local authority over cellular tower placement. Both, like net neutrality, were supposed to result in a dramatic spike in next-gen "5G" network deployment, and a big boost in sector investment overall. This week, Verizon made it clear that none of those things would actually be happening, despite the $2 billion in savings Pai's 5G "reform" alone provided Verizon:

"Verizon Wireless says it will not move faster on building its 5G cellular network despite a Federal Communications Commission decision that erased $2 billion dollars' worth of fees for the purpose of spurring faster 5G deployment...in an earnings call last week, Verizon CFO Matt Ellis told investors that the FCC decision won't have any effect on the speed of its 5G deployment. Verizon also said that it is reducing overall capital expenditures—despite a variety of FCC decisions, including the net neutrality repeal, that the FCC claimed would increase broadband network investment.

That net neutrality hampered broadband industry investment has been the cornerstone of Ajit Pai's entire justification for removing those rules, despite this claim never being adequately supported by the facts. Again, that claim was directly contradicted by SEC filings, earnings reports, and more than a dozen public CEO statements. And here it is again being disproved by the industry itself, just as they were by Powell's empty promises in the early aughts. All the bogus, massaged ISP economist claims to the contrary can't save this turd of an argument when the evidence is sitting right in front of you.

Telecom sector investment doesn't magically explode just because you let AT&T, Verizon, and Comcast directly dictate your tech policy agenda. Gutting essential consumer protections doesn't magically "unhinder the free market," it simply lets lumbering, politically-powerful giants double down on a generation of nickel-and-diming captive customers, with neither regulatory oversight nor healthy competition acting as guide rails.

Targeted deregulation can help healthy markets if it's aimed at eliminating bureaucracy that hinders competition or innovation, but anybody claiming that mindless deregulation can cure telecom either is lying to you for financial gain, or doesn't understand how the U.S. telecom market works. People tend to take Libertarian or free market theories cultivated from other sectors, and apply them to a telecom sector that's uniquely broken and corrupt, failing to understand that blind deregulation won't work here. Steadily weakened antitrust protections similarly aren't the panacea these folks believe.

What the telecom sector desperately needs is even-handed, intelligent tech policy and regulatory solutions with an unwavering focus on one thing: driving broadband competition in whatever form that takes. There's a million ways to accomplish this, from eliminating ISP-written, protectionist state laws banning your town and city from exploring creative alternatives to purely private networks (like public/private options), to actually holding giant ISPs accountable when they try to hamstring both direct broadband or streaming video competitors.

What you don't do is let companies with an obvious, vested interest in less competition and no guard rails completely dictate tech policy, then repeatedly lie about the amazing net benefits this mindless fealty will have. For whatever reason, despite history repeatedly and painfully illustrating the perils of this approach in the form of some of the worst service of any kind available in America (call Comcast customer support or spend a week using a West Virginian Frontier DSL line if you need first-hand experience on this front), it's a lesson the United States stubbornly refuses to learn.

• FaceTime can now support video chats for up to 32 participants, thanks to the iOS 12.1 update that was released earlier this week.
• However, Apple's website reveals a catch: users with iPhones older than the iPhone 6s and certain iPad models won't be able to broadcast video, thought they'll still be able to communicate with audio.

The latest update to Apple devices lets you FaceTime with up to 31 other people simultaneously, but some older generation iPhones and iPads will miss out.

To participate in group FaceTime calls, your device must be an iPhone 6s or later, iPad Pro or later, iPad Air 2, or iPad Mini 4. The caveat on Apple website's guide to using Group FaceTime was discovered by MacRumors.

If you have an earlier model of an iPhone, iPad or iPod touch, you can still join in as an audio-only participant.

The ability to group video chat is a feature of iOS 12.1, which was made available for Apple devices on October 30. The upgraded FaceTime also includes face and lens filters, stickers, and Animoji and Memoji.

Group FaceTime was initially supposed to launch with Apple's iOS 12, which was released to iPhones and iPads in September. However, Apple said in August it was delaying the feature's release, and that group chat would "ship in a future software update later this fall."

The ability to group video chat has already been widely available through other apps, including Google Hangout, Snapchat, Skype, WhatsApp, and Houseparty (which hit its viral peak in 2016).

You can update to the latest version of iOS by going to Settings > General > Software Update.

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The aftermath of a national emergency follows a now-familiar pattern. Various bad actors race to fill social platforms with misinformation and outright hate speech. Reporters perform simple searches for conspiracy theories and offensive keywords, and write up stories documenting what they find. Platforms belatedly issue contrite statements, saying there is no place for this kind of thing on their platforms, all evidence to the contrary.

Lather, rinse, retweet.

In the wake of last week’s domestic terror attacks, though, a new vector for bile has emerged. More than ever before, journalists are finding vast swaths of hate speech on Instagram. Yesterday, I mentioned this story from the New York Times that found nearly 12,000 posts with the...

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Hyper has a new USB-C hub, and it’s a pretty clever twist on the usual hubs we’ve seen. Instead of plugging your charger into a separate hub, the HyperDrive USB-C Hub Attach attaches (get it?) to the charger for a more seamless setup than a dangling dongle.

It’s similar to the TwelveSouth’s PlugBug, which attaches to the plug end of Apple’s MacBook chargers to add USB Type-A ports for charging. But the HyperDrive USB-C Hub Attach goes a step further by actually serving as an active USB-C hub. It lets you not only use the two extra ports for charging, but you can actually connect them to your computer for data transfer, too.

Due to the physical design of the Hub Attach, Hyper is making two versions. There’s a $49.99 model...

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The era of Facebook’s nonstop growth has long since come to an end. Although the company is far from the point at which it might start to shrink, its growth in the US and Canada, as well as Europe, has stopped entirely and appears to occasionally decline.

In its 2018 third quarter earnings report out today, the social network confirmed that the number of daily active users in US and Canada has remained flat at 185 million, while the number of European users has slipped from 279 million to 278 million. The latter may be a direct result of recent European privacy regulations, namely GDPR, which initially caused Facebook to lose 1 million monthly active users after it went into effect in May.

Overall, the company continues to grow thanks...

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• There was a longer line of people waiting outside T-Mobile's flagship store in Times Square to buy the new OnePlus 6T smartphone than there was for the new iPhones.
• The OnePlus 6T is the first OnePlus phone sold by a US carrier.
• T-Mobile is offering a trade-in deal where anyone can trade in an eligible smartphone for a $300 credit toward the $580 OnePlus 6T model.
• That means the OnePlus 6T could cost a mere $280 for those who take advantage of T-Mobile's trade-in deal.

At an event on Monday, OnePlus announced some big news: You'll be able to buy the new OnePlus 6T smartphone at a US carrier store.

The OnePlus 6T comes with high-end design, specs, and performance for under $600, while other top smartphones with similar specs can cost more than $800.

The OnePlus 6T is available to buy from T-Mobile stores nationwide and online starting Thursday, making it the first smartphone from OnePlus sold in a US carrier store. It's a big deal for OnePlus to make its mark in the US market, as a smartphone's popularity usually relies almost entirely on whether it's available from a carrier.

OnePlus fans in and around New York City got a bit of a treat on Monday: They could buy the new $580 OnePlus 6T model at T-Mobile's flagship store in Times Square three days before the smartphone's official release. And to top things off, T-Mobile offered prospective OnePlus buyers the option to trade in their old smartphone for a $300 credit toward the OnePlus 6T, a deal it said would end in about a month.

With the trade-in deal, a person could snag the OnePlus 6T for $280. To be clear, it's possibly the best value for a smartphone in recent memory — and judging by the crowd of people outside T-Mobile's store at 5 p.m. on Monday, I certainly wasn't the only one who noticed.

'I've never seen anything like this'

On Monday, T-Mobile's flagship store in Times Square saw a larger crowd of people waiting to buy the OnePlus 6T than it did for the new iPhones, a T-Mobile employee there told me.

"I've never seen anything like this," the employee said.

The same goes for other Android phones from major companies like Samsung and LG.

Now, to be fair and accurate, new iPhones are available to buy from numerous Apple Stores dotting the city, as well as nearly every carrier store, so it's safe to say that lines of people waiting to buy them are diluted across several stores. If the new iPhones were sold at a single store, as the OnePlus 6T was on Monday, the city would most likely need to shut down several blocks, perhaps even a district or two.

Still, a plucky smartphone company that's significantly smaller than Apple and major Android players like Samsung and LG gave T-Mobile's flagship New York City store its biggest line in recent memory.

The popularity of the brand is growing to the extent that budding content creators are starting dedicated YouTube channels to talk about OnePlus devices, much like the numerous brand-centric YouTubers who discuss Apple and Samsung devices. (Watch out for the launch of the "OnePlus Hype" YouTube channel, whose creator was waiting in line to buy the new device.)

Others skipped "optional" exams and work to get in line at the Times Square T-Mobile store, and some people had been waiting for three hours by the time I spoke with them around 5:15 p.m.

One man originally from India said he skipped classes at Northeastern University in Boston to travel to New York to get the new OnePlus 6T. His professor supposedly understood.

Another person in line, on vacation from Bogota, Colombia, said that one item on her checklist was to get the OnePlus 6 because her boyfriend has the OnePlus 5T and she liked it, citing its comparatively low price tag as the main draw.

"But then I heard that they launched the 6T," she told me, and the rest was history. By the time this post is published, she's likely to own the latest OnePlus smartphone before most other OnePlus buyers. Her boyfriend was not in line, as he was studying, she said.

One man who owned the Google Pixel 3, a smartphone that was released just a few weeks ago but isn't eligible for T-Mobile's trade-in offer, was unfazed about buying the OnePlus 6T at the full price of $580. (For reference, the Pixel 3 starts at $800.)

He was accompanied by his fiancée, whom he had proposed to hours earlier, after the OnePlus keynote, with the help of company representatives and the OnePlus cofounder Carl Pei himself. She was wearing a hat with OnePlus' slogan, "Never Settle," which seemed appropriate.

Another man, who was accompanying his friends in line, said he could finally buy a OnePlus phone now that the OnePlus 6T is compatible with his network, Verizon. It wasn't clear whether he was switching to T-Mobile to buy the new phone. He said he always wanted a OnePlus phone but couldn't get one because previous models were incompatible.

Overall, those in line cited the quality, software, design, feature set, high-end specs, and comparatively low price of OnePlus devices as the driving factors behind their OnePlus fandom.

But the one element that nearly everyone mentioned was "community." OnePlus fans seemingly have a closer connection with the company behind their mobile device, possibly the most important device in their daily lives. And OnePlus consistently communicates with its fans, with tweets and blog posts often addressing them as "friends."

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• Daylight-saving time, or DST, began in the US in 1918 as a way to conserve energy.
• However, many Americans believe the practice is not worth the hassle.
• Scientific studies also suggest that daylight-saving time may cause more problems than it solves.
• There are two main proposals to get rid of DST: by creating fewer time zones or moving to one universal time.

On Sunday, November 4 at the stroke of 2:00 a.m., most people in North America will roll their clocks backward one hour to end daylight-saving time, or DST.

There's some reason to celebrate: This will give hundreds of millions of people one extra hour of sleep. But on March 10, 2019, the invisible time vampire will return to suck away that hour of sleep. (Most of Europe ended DST on October 28 and will resume it on March 25.)

This is perhaps the modern world's dumbest ritual — a curse upon those who live within its confines, and a practice that needs to be abolished.

Daylight-saving time (not "daylight-savings" time) was created during World War I to decrease energy use. The practice was implemented year-round in 1942, during WWII. Not waking up in the dark, the thinking went, would decrease fuel use for lighting and heating. That would help conserve energy supplies to help the war effort.

Nearly 100 years later, though, the US is a divided nation on this topic. A 2012 survey of 1,000 American adults found that 45% thought daylight-saving was worth it, while more than 40% considered it worthless.

More than 152,560 people have petitioned Congress to end daylight-saving time. Some of the comments on the petition are practical appeals.

"Please stop switching the time! It's awful driving home in the dark. I'm a woman that drives 30 miles down a 2 lane state hwy to get home!" wrote Lana J. from Gilmer, Texas.

Others are warranted and blistering critiques.

"Daylight saving time is an antiquated practice and serves no purpose in the modern world," wrote Dustin M. from Kings Mountain, North Carolina. "It causes undo stress to millions of Americans and does nothing for anyone."

We're with Dustin, and here's why.

What's the problem with DST?

According to advocacy groups like Standardtime.com, which are trying to abolish daylight-saving time, claims about saving energy are unproven. "If we are saving energy, let's go year-round with daylight-saving time," the group says. "If we are not saving energy, let's drop daylight-saving time!"

In his book "Spring Forward: The Annual Madness of Daylight-Saving Time," author Michael Downing says there isn't much evidence that daylight-saving actually decreases energy use.

In fact, sometimes DST seems to increase energy use.

For example, in Indiana — where daylight-saving time was implemented statewide in 2006 — researchers saw that people used less electricity for light, but those gains were canceled out by people who used more air conditioning during the early evenings. (That's because 6 p.m. felt more like 5 p.m., when the sun still shines brightly in the summer and homes haven't had the chance to cool off.)

DST also increases gasoline consumption, something Downing says the petroleum industry has known since the 1930s. This is probably because evening activities — and the vehicle use they require — increase with that extra daylight.

Changing the clocks also causes air travel synchronization headaches, which sometimes leads to travel delays and lost revenue, airlines have reportedly said.

There are also health issues associated with changing the clocks. Similar to the way jet-lag makes you feel all out of whack, daylight-saving time is like scooting one time zone over. This can disrupt our sleep, metabolism, mood, stress levels, and other bodily rhythms. One study suggests recovery can take three weeks.

In the days after DST starts or ends, in fact, researchers have observed a spike in heart attacks, increased numbers of work injuries, more automobile accidents, and higher suicide rates.

Why keep it?

Despite those early studies about energy use, one analysis from 2008 did find a small amount of energy savings after we extended DST by four weeks in 2005.

According to the Christian Science Monitor:

"Most advocates cite a 2008 report to Congress by the Department of Energy which showed that total electricity savings from the extended daylight-saving period amounted to 1.3 terawatt-hours, or 0.03 percent of electricity consumption over the year. That's a tiny number. But if electricity costs 10 cents per kilowatt, that means an estimated $130 million in savings each year."

More evening light also inspires people to go out and spend money.

Downing told NPR that this comes in the form of activities like shopping and playing golf — the golf industry told Congress that an extra month of daylight-saving was worth $200 million in 1986. The BBQ industry said extending DST would boost sales by $100 million.

Extending daylight-saving time to November might also help the Halloween industry — the longer kids can trick-or-treat, the more candy you need to buy.

Changing the law can also be expensive. One legislature representative in Alberta, Canada, suggested that holding a referendum on DST may cost the province $2 to $6 million, even if it were put into a standard election ballot, and that holding a no-DST vote on its own might cost $22 million to organize and execute.

A world divided over time

Other areas of the world have gotten rid of daylight-saving time, or never had it to begin with.

The map above shows the breakdown. Blue areas observe DST, red areas never have, and orange areas once did but have since abolished it.

Some parts of the US have decided not to observe daylight-saving time, including most of Arizona (excluding the Navajo and Hopi reservations in the northeast), and until 2006, parts of Indiana.

A bill to abolish DST was once recommended for passage in Oklahoma, but it was not signed into law. A lawmaker in Utah also introduced legislation to try to abolish DST, but his bill died in committee.

The decision is up to individual counties, but choosing not observe DST when other nearby cities and counties do can be problematic.

Alternate proposals

Standardtime.com has a unique suggestion.

Their proposal is to create just two time zones in the continental US that are two hours apart. 

Compare that to the current state of things in America.

Right now, the US is broken into six time zones: Eastern, Central, Mountain, Pacific time, Alaska time, and Hawaii-Aleutian time, each one hour apart from the next.

These time zones exist so that areas in the east of each time zone get sunrise at about the same time.

Under Standardtime.com's proposed system, the US' East and West Coasts would only be two hours apart. This would standardize more travel and meeting times within the country.

But the downside would be that sunrise and sunset would happen at wildly different times for many areas of the nation. 

For example, the sun rose in New York City at about 6:15 a.m. EST today and in Chicago at 6:10 a.m. CST; but if the two were in the same time zone, sunrise would be at 8:15 "Eastern Time" in Chicago.

Johns Hopkins University professors Richard Henry and Steven Hanke have come up with yet another possible fix: adopting a single time zone worldwide. They argue that the internet has eliminated the need for discrete time zones across the globe, so we might as well just do away with them. The proposal also includes a 13-month "permanent calendar." (The idea, understandably, has encountered some resistance.)

No plan will satisfy everyone. But that doesn't mean daylight-saving time is right.

The absence of major energy-saving benefits from DST — along with its death toll, health impacts, and economic ramifications — are reason enough to get rid of the ritual.

This story has been updated. It was originally published in October 2017.

Jennifer Welsh and Sarah Kramer contributed to previous versions of this post.

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We thought we started a software startup. We were wrong.

I’ll explain. It was 2011. Like many soon-to-be founders, we were getting frustrated with the inefficiencies of our day jobs.

Our specific frustration was with everyone’s favorite email app: Gmail. Google designed Gmail for users to add and move attachments using Google Drive, but in reality, their users had Dropbox, Box and other services in their cloud storage tool belts.  

• T-Mobile is the first US carrier to sell OnePlus phones, starting with the latest $580 model of the OnePlus 6T that was announced on Monday.
• The T-Mobile store in Times Square will sell the OnePlus 6T three days before its official release on November 1.
• T-Mobile customers will also be able to trade in their old devices, including iPhones, to get a $300 credit toward the OnePlus 6T.
• That means the OnePlus 6T's price could be $280 for those with eligible devices to trade in, which is absurdly good value. You can see the eligible trade-in devices below.

T-Mobile is the first US carrier to sell a smartphone from OnePlus, the OnePlus 6T.

Smartphones from OnePlus are popular around the world but perhaps less so in the US, where availability at carrier stores is paramount. 

Exclusive to the Times Square T-Mobile store in New York City, T-Mobile will sell the OnePlus 6T beginning on Monday, October 29 at 5 p.m. — three days earlier than the phone's official release date of November 1. 

T-Mobile carries the $580 model of the OnePlus 6T, which comes with 8GB of RAM and 128GB of storage. But it won't be carrying the $550 base model that comes with 6GB of RAM and 128GB of storage, nor the $630 higher-end model with 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage. For those models, T-Mobile customers will need to buy the devices directly from OnePlus' website.

Starting on Monday at the Times Square location, T-Mobile will also let people trade in their old devices for $300 in credit — the only stipulations are that the device needs to be listed below, fully paid off, and in working condition. The offer will be extended to all T-Mobile customers, not just the Times Square location, starting on November 1.

Essentially, that reduces the price of the $580 OnePlus 6T to $280. If you plan on going with a monthly installment plan, it'll be around $11 per month for 24 months. That helps put it into perspective compared to smartphones that usually cost more than $30 per month.

At $580, the OnePlus 6T is already an incredible value. At $280 with a valid trade-in, it's possibly the best value for a smartphone with the OnePlus 6T's performance and features in the history of smartphones. The only phone that comes close in terms of pricing, performance, and features is the $600 LG G7 at T-Mobile. 

The offer extends to T-Mobile customers, as well as customers on other carriers. 

Here are the phones that are eligible for the OnePlus 6T trade-in offer:

• Apple: iPhone 8, iPhone 8 Plus, iPhone 7, iPhone 7 Plus, iPhone 6s, iPhone 6s Plus, iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus
• Samsung: GS8 series, Note 8, GS7 series, Note 5, GS6 series
• Google: Pixel 2, Pixel 2 XL, Pixel, Pixel XL
• LG: V30, V30+, G7, V20, G6
• Motorola: Z2 Force, Z2 Play, Nexus 6
• OnePlus: 5, 5T, 6, 3, 3T, X, 2, 1

Update: A previous version of this post mentioned that the trade-in offer only extended to existing T-Mobile customers. The post has been corrected to say that existing T-Mobile customers and those on other carriers can take advantage of the trade-in OnePlus 6T deal. 

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