Androidifying

This post was originally published on our sister site, SoundGuys.com . Along with today’s official reveal of the Gear Sport and Gear Fit 2 Pro wearables, Samsung has also introduced the 2018 edition of its Gear IconX wireless earbuds during its IFA 2017 press event. The original IconX earbuds were first revealed in June 2016 and went on sale later that year. Don’t miss: Hands-on with the Samsung Gear Sport, Gear Fit 2 Pro, and Gear IconX 2018 The new Gear IconX models offer up to seven hours of standalone time on a single charge, or up to five hours in Bluetooth mode and up to four hours of talktime. The new versions also come with a carrying case that includes its own 340 mAh battery. The earbuds, which have a 82 mAh battery of their own, take only 10 minutes to charge for up to an hour of use. If you use the Gear IconX 2018 earbuds in standalone mode, you can listen to up to 4 GB worth of music with its onboard storage. The streaming mode on the earbuds allow the o

If you listen to the way Samsung tells it, wearables are hot news right now. While the fitness band market has taken off, non-Apple smartwatches haven’t been quite as fortunate. But at the top of the Android-based smartwatch pyramid is Samsung’s Gear S3 range, with the Frontier being the most popular LTE-equipped wearable device in the US and global markets. At IFA 2017 Samsung is further filling in the gaps of its wearable strategy, with a new, slightly smaller Gear Sport smartwatch , Gear Fit 2 Pro fitness band and a 2018 version of its IconX truly wireless earbuds . Join us as we go hands-on with the Samsung Gear Fit 2 Pro, Gear Sport, and Gear IconX 2018. The Gear S3 will remain the flagship offering, with the Gear Sport fitting in somewhere between it and the Gear Fit 2 Pro To be clear, the Gear S3 will remain the flagship wearable offering, with the Gear Sport fitting in somewhere beneath its $349 price tag and the Gear Fit 2 Pro’s $199 price tag. With that in mind it

As Samsung said it would last week during the Galaxy Note 8 launch, the company has used its IFA 2017 press event in Berlin today to formally introduce two new wearable products. Most of the details about the Gear Fit 2 Pro fitness tracker  have already leaked, but Samsung also introduced a new smartwatch, the Gear Sport, today as well. Don’t miss: Hands-on with the Samsung Gear Sport, Gear Fit 2 Pro, and Gear IconX 2018 Gear Sport The Samsung Gear Sport comes with a 1.2-inch circular screen with a 320 x 320 resolution and Gorilla Glass 3, a water resistance rating of five atmospheres, as well as a focus on nutrition, with the ability to monitor your calorie balance throughout the day. The Gear Sport will include access to fitness programs, along with a way to help you complete your weight loss goals. This new smartwatch will also be able to connect to Samsung’s smart TVs via the Samsung Connect app, and will support the company’s Samsung Pay service with its NFC hardware.

If you’ve received an email from Essential asking to provide “additional verifying information”,  do not reply . According to our readers, folks on Reddit , and many other reports around the web, Essential Phone customers received an email last night from a support account – customercare@essential.com – claiming that the company needs “additional verifying information” to finish processing their order. The full email, attached below, asks for an alternative email address, phone number, as well as a picture of a photo ID clearly showing the customer’s photo, signature, and address. Take a look at the full email below: Hi, Our order review team requires additional verifying information to complete the processing of your recent order.  This verification is performed to protect against unauthorized use of your payment information and similar to what is conducted for in-person purchases. Please provide an alternative email and phone number to confirm this purchase.. We would like

Hypothesis: it takes at least one killer feature to sell a smartphone. I used to feel as though smartphones these days had become boring. They all look the same, they rarely push the envelope – you know the familiar gripes. But then I had the realization that actually, we’ve just become spoiled. Phones are now generally waterproof, they can practically all play fully 3D games, they have digital assistants, they power virtual reality headsets, and they can even replace our wallets. The problem is not that smartphones are boring, it’s that we’ve seen it all before. Next! It’s harder than ever for a smartphone to stand out these days and that’s why many large manufacturers choose to go all-in on a particular feature or innovation. By investing lots of R&D to push the envelope in a specific area, a smartphone can still grab headlines and make a name for itself – even when the rest of its spec sheet reads like any other. This also has the effect of creating a clear audience and niche

It seems like everybody wants a shot at 360-degree cameras these days. We’ve seen a number of new devices crop up in the past couple of months including the Moto 360 Camera , a mod for the Moto Z , and the Essential 360-degree camera  from Andy Rubin’s startup. Now, it’s Acer ‘s turn. Acer has shown off its new 360-degree camera at a press conference ahead of IFA 2017 . The Acer Holo360, which Acer first lifted the lid on in April , runs on Android 7.1 Nougat and has LTE capabilities — though it doesn’t have call features and can’t be used like a regular smartphone — with Acer pitching it as an all-in-one solution for livestream 360-degree videos. The idea is that the Holo360 can allow users to capture and edit photos, as well as share them, all from a single device. It makes use of a Snapdragon 625 processor, which arrived as part of Qualcomm’s Connected Camera Platform  introduced in 2016. This was designed to help manufacturers bring 360-degree camera devices to market with adv

Samsung’s IFA press event is scheduled to kick off later today at 6PM CET (12PM EST). It will take place at Berlin’s Tempodrom arena, where the tech giant is expected to take the wraps off a number of devices. As usual, Samsung will live stream the event, so you can watch it from the comfort of your couch anywhere in the world. Those of you interested can just head to Samsung’s website via the button below later today when the video for the event becomes available. We’ll also update this post with the video as soon as it pops up online. Watch Samsung’s IFA event Although Samsung didn’t share a lot of specific details regarding the products it will reveal in the capital of Germany, it did announce on Twitter that we can expect to see a few wearable devices. What’s new in wearables? You’re about to find out. Watch live on 08.30.2017 at https://t.co/D1o7wTsE5H http://pic.twitter.com/7z0qMrkIQK — Samsung Mobile (@SamsungMobile) August 28, 2017 See also: Using Samsung DeX