Androidifying

The BLU R1 Plus was only just launched yesterday but it’s already on sale. Over at Amazon, for the next fifteen hours or so, you can pick up a BLU R1 Plus for $109.99 (that’s $50 off its normal price). Best Buy also has the R1 Plus at the same price but doesn’t have a scary countdown clock like Amazon. If a new phone shipping with Marshmallow doesn’t put you off, this is a pretty good price, especially when you consider this is the 32 GB version with 3 GB of RAM. Other BLU R1 Plus specs include a 5.5-inch HD display, quad-core MediaTek 6737 chipset clocked at 1.3 GHz, 13 MP/8 MP camera combo (both of which have a LED flash), 4,000 mAh battery, dual-SIM, microSD and 4G LTE Plus (only for AT&T and T-Mobile). If you pick one up, be sure to let us know how it goes in the comments. If you’re after other options for affordable phones, check out our list of the best cheap Android phones . BUY AT AMAZON BUY AT BEST BUY

JerryRigEverything Zack Nelson from YouTube durability testing channel JerryRigEverything has responded to requests on social media to see if the same approach to creating a Galaxy S8 with a see-through back panel would also work on the LG G6. Turns out it does. Zack now has the world’s first clear LG G6 to go with his see-through Galaxy S8. The process starts out much the same as with the Galaxy S8 , just apply a heat gun to the back to soften the glue and carefully pop the Gorilla Glass 5 panel off. But where the Galaxy S8 required a solvent bath to remove the paint layer from the inside, the LG G6 simply has a plastic-like layer that can be peeled off by hand. A few minor nips and tucks follow to fully show off the internals and the naked LG G6 is born. If you’re at all interested in trying this on your G6, just be aware that besides voiding your warranty you’ll also lose your water-resistant rating and wireless charging if you choose to remove the coils, but it’s still a

Amazon’s Alexa is already a daily interlocutor on your conversations but you may have occasionally found yourself wishing that talking to Alexa could be a little more… lifelike. Well, that time is now here. Amazon engineers have recently detailed additions they’ve made to the Speech Synthesis Markup Language that Alcxa uses, which will allow skills developers to humanize Alexa in a number of new ways. See also: The latest Mercedes-Benz cars can connect to Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa 1 week ago Once these SSML tags are applied, Alexa will be able to whisper to you – which could be helpful when sharing sensitive information like passwords and login information – or even ‘bleep’ out expletives (or any terms considered potentially offensive), which could be pretty handy if using Alexa as a storyteller. Other changes will allow devs to modify Alexa’s rate of speech and volume to emphasize certain words or generally change the way the voice assistant speaks. These new a

Huawei’s mobile chief, Richard Yu, has admitted the exposure of the company’s memory substitution practices on the P10 were a “wake up call” that provided a “profound lesson”. Yu made the remarks in a letter initially shared internally with employees and later posted to his Weibo account, where he admits he responded “inappropriately” and that Huawei’s original stance was “arrogant”. The letter comes a day after mention of UFS 2.1 memory on the Mate 9 product page reappeared, after mysteriously disappearing the day after the P10 story blew up . Huawei told Reuters it removed the Mate 9 UFS mention “to avoid confusion” while the company double checked to confirm all Mate 9 units supported UFS 2.1. The term appears to have been reinstated on all sites globally. It's led us to wonder whether we've been running too fast these past few years, or lost sight of our original vision. Yu also announced he has set up a ‘customer listening taskforce’ and plans to lead the consume

Google CEO Sundar Pichai’s 2016 salary was 325,000 times more than Sergey Brin and Larry Page’s salaries combined. Earning more than the co-founders of Google isn’t a hard thing to do though, with even the lowest paid Googlers far outstripping the salaries of Google’s CEO and President. As in previous years, Brin and Page took home a salary of $1 for their roles heading the parent company of the world’s largest search engine, while their protege Pichai raked in almost $200 million in total compensation for steering the good ship Google. See also: Google’s parent Alphabet had a 22 percent rise in revenue for Q1 2017 2 days ago Pichai’s annual salary remained stable at $650,000 (actually $2,500 lower than in 2015) but his stock award almost doubled from $99.8 million in 2015 to $198.7 million in his first full year at the helm of Google. That saw his total compensation rise from $100.6 million to $199.35 million – not bad for your second year on the job. But Pichai has su

With more and more smartphone companies doing away with the faithful 3.5mm headphone jack, now is probably the time to start keeping an eye out for some decent Bluetooth headphones. The Samsung Level U Pro wireless headphones are currently on sale at Amazon for an impressive 65 percent off the normal purchase price of $99. That makes these a steal at just $34.99. See also: Best bluetooth headphones of 2017 To get them at this price you’ll be stuck with the black color option, but if you want to spend a little more to add some additional flair to your ‘phones, you can get the purple version for $54.72 and the bronze version for $58.99. The snazzy blue pair are the most expensive at $70.99 but fashion never comes cheap now does it? Ultra High-Quality (UHQ) Audio means the Samsung Level U Pro headphones deliver 24-bit digital audio, with double the frequency range of standard CD-quality wireless audio (when paired with supported Galaxy phones). The neckband-style in-ear buds have 13m

After putting out a software fix for the red tint issue on the Galaxy S8 in Korea earlier this week , Samsung is now rolling it out in Europe. Germany, Turkey and the UK are the first countries to get the patch, which adds a slider for making the entire display warmer or cooler. Somehow I doubt there’ll be too many folks wanting a warmer display on their Galaxy S8 , but it’s there if you want it. The individual RGB sliders can still be accessed, but they are now found under an Advanced section. That section also includes a Screen edge color balance setting, that allows you to to change the white balance at the edges of the screen, where multiple Galaxy S8 owners noticed the red tint at its worst. According to Samsung, changes may take up to ten minutes to appear. If you’re in one of those countries and you don’t see a notification icon in your status bar already, just head to Settings > Software update > Download updates manually to check. The update is a rather hefty 426 MB