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Sony LinkBuds review: Uniquely inadequate
Points for creativity, but the LinkBuds are little more than an experiment
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You've no doubt seen plenty of true wireless earbuds in recent years—they've expanded from a niche luxury product to an omnipresent smartphone accessory. You've never seen anything quite like the Sony LinkBuds, though. These TWEs eschew the traditional closed-ear design for a radical ring-shaped driver, keeping you in touch with the outside world while you're listening to tunes. Sony actually hopes people will just wear their LinkBuds around all day like AirPods, and the LinkBuds have several innovative features aimed at making this experience better. However, the LinkBuds don't work as well as I'd hoped, and the price tag is high for a device that has such a narrow use case.
Samsung's LTE-only Galaxy A13 debuts with a better screen, more cameras, and a 50% off deal
AT&T will sell you Samsung's latest for under $100
Samsung released the A13 5G earlier this year, and we liked that phone a lot. There's now another phone using the A13 moniker, but this one doesn't have 5G. That's not the only difference, and it's actually better in some ways, but the result is a phone that costs less than its sibling -- much less if you take AT&T up on its 50% off launch deal.
There was a time when we reported obsessively on the number of apps in the Play Store, but that was mostly before it was even called the "Play Store." After all these years, there are more apps than you could ever need—so many, in fact, that we can honestly do without the older ones. Security has been a major feature of recent Android updates, but those abandoned apps don't support all the new requirements. Later this year, Google is taking steps to ensure that the apps of yesteryear don't negatively impact your security.
Roku and Amazon Prime somehow manage to maturely negotiate streaming deal without public spectacle
Prime Video and IMDB TV won't vanish as previously rumored
Even with the best streaming boxes, today's media ecosystem is a patchwork of distribution deals and limited licensing, which occasionally leads to consumer frustration as services vanish without warning. We all remember the YouTube TV feuds of last year, and that's just the most recent example. Reports in late 2021 claimed that Roku could be set to lose access to Amazon's selection of video, but that is no longer a concern. Whew.
Nvidia last updated its long-lived family of Android TV boxes in 2019, adding a very unboxy base model Shield. That device is still among the most powerful media streamers you can get, even with its 32-bit limitations. The Shield TV Pro was refreshed at the same time, but it gets less attention because of the higher $200 price tag. That's a lot to pay for a streaming box in the era of $30 Fire TV Sticks and $50 Chromecasts, but this is a special device. It's not perfect by any means, but if you care about audio/video quality, the Shield Pro has no equal.
Spotify made a low-key acquisition last year, picking up a podcast discovery platform called Podz for just shy of $50 million. Thankfully, the name is gone, but the technology from Podz powers a new UI test rolling out to some Spotify users. The toolbar now has a button that launches a TikTok-style feed of podcasts that could help you find your next pod-binge. Or if this change upsets you, there are other music services out there.
Gmail rolling out option to pause mobile notifications when using your computer
Ditch the double ping
Notifications on your smartphone are useful — one might even say essential to the experience. It was Android's early lead in notification management that helped it gain traction against Apple. Notification overload is a thing these days, with dozens of apps and services screaming for your attention, but Google is rolling out a new feature that will help cut down on the noise in one very specific instance. When you're using Gmail on your computer, you can pause the Gmail notifications on your phone. There's clearly still some work to be done, though.
You may still be reeling from the sudden loss of YouTube Vanced last week, but there's another YouTube-based fight on the horizon. The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has restarted its quest to kill popular video downloading tool youtube-dl. After trying and failing to get the project pulled from GitHub, it's now going after the German web firm that hosts its homepage.
Today is another milestone in the development of Android 13 with the release of the second developer preview. Yes, it seems like we just had an Android release, but that was the unusual mid-season bump to 12L. Android 13 is the big update for 2022, and Google is adding even more privacy functionality. The new DP adds a Quick Settings shortcut to your privacy controls and security settings.
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SpaceX's Starlink satellite internet now averages more than 100 Mbps
It might be faster than your wired internet
Until recently, satellite internet was a last resort for people in rural areas, but you might actually want satellite internet if Starlink keeps up like this. The service, which was in beta until just a few months ago, now averages more than 100 Mbps down in 15 countries, according to Speedtest.net operator Ookla.
Action Launcher v49 improves Android's ugly home gesture animation
Using a custom launcher is now less annoying
A new version of Action Launcher is rolling out today, and it includes a feature that might sound small: Transition home animations. This is actually a big deal for power users who've been putting up with jittery home animation ever since Google moved to gestures and screwed up custom launchers. The new adjustable animations are buttery smooth, and there's a raft of other tweaks and improvements in Action Launcher v49.
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Essential was already struggling when Andy Rubin's past caught up to the fledgling startup, leading to its eventual dissolution. A big chunk of the Essential team has forged onward as OSOM with a greater focus on privacy. It'll be releasing its first smartphone soon, known as the OV1. It comes with a neat privacy-centric cable, which the company is showing off again ahead of release.
Despite Google's moves to add more proprietary features to its Android build, the underlying software is still open source. That means every Android phone release is followed some weeks later by a less notable open source code dump. Today, Samsung has gotten to that phase, releasing kernel source for the Galaxy S22 family. Not all of it, though.
Google is rolling out a handy new tool for Workspace admins who use Google Meet to keep in touch with staff. Starting today, admins can see a record of participant bandwidth during meetings. So if you were hoping to fake a bad connection to get out of a meeting early, prepare to be called out.
Fitbit released its first true smartwatch in 2017, and it was solidly "okay." I didn't love it at first, but Fitbit provided some much-needed wearable progress at a time when Wear OS was dead in the water. The Ionic isn't aging gracefully, though. Fitbit is working with the Consumer Product Safety Commission to recall the Ionic due to overheating batteries that have caused burns in some cases.
If we're talking about a stylus 'round these parts, it's usually an S Pen. Samsung's stylus isn't the only option, though. The Universal Stylus Initiative (USI) provides technology for the pens that work on many Chromebooks, and it's getting better in the new 2.0 release. It only has a few new features, but one of them is a clever way to charge accessories via NFC coils.
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If I had to bet, I'd put my money on foldables being the future. Increasingly, the high-end of the market is going to shift to these devices as mobile enthusiasts warm up to the idea and prices come down. But we're not there yet—foldables still have unavoidable drawbacks that you won't have to worry about with the Galaxy S22 Ultra. This phone doesn't fold, but it does just about everything else you could ask of a flagship device in 2022.
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Motorola announces a new Edge+ with a borderline ridiculous price tag
Going toe-to-toe with the big boys again
Motorola sells a lot of phones, but they're mostly the cheap ones you can get for a pittance at your nearest carrier storefront. It did not release an updated flagship phone in 2021, but that changes in 2022. Motorola has announced a new Edge+ smartphone with the latest hardware and software. However, it's even more spendy than the last Edge phone at $1,000. Moto is promising a $100 discount at launch, but we don't know when that will be yet.
Google prepares to let everyone delete their Android advertising IDs
Plus, the end of ad targeting in kid-friendly apps
Spend any amount of time on the internet, and someone somewhere will build an advertising profile for you—even your phone does it. Google has long let you reset the advertising ID on Android, but last year it started allowing those on Android 12 to delete it entirely. You won't have to be on the latest OS much longer. In April of this year, Google will make the same option available to all phones via Google Play Services update.
Sony announces loopy LinkBuds, hopes you'll never take them off
True wireless earbuds with a "transparent" design
Try as it might, Sony wasn't able to keep the wraps on its latest audio product. The newly official LinkBuds are just too strange-looking to remain a secret, but now they're official. These $180 ring-shaped buds are intended to help you listen to the audio of your choosing without completely missing out on the real world. Sony is so confident these holey earbuds will help you stay connected that it thinks you should wear them all the time.