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At Apple I/O 2022, the company announced its flashy new hardware and software, including a powerful new M2 chipset, redesigned MacBook Air and 13-inch Macbook Pro, as well as iOS 16. Despite all the hubbub, one feature caught my eye: Continuity Camera. With the recent release of MacOS Ventura and iOS 16, Mac users are able to use their iPhones as a webcam without any fiddly setup. It's exactly the kind of thing I'd expect from Apple because the company loves hardware integration. It's also something I think Google should adapt for ChromeOS.
An essential tool for students and educators is coming to Chromebooks — here's how to try it early
Projector gains even more useful presentation features
It's been many months since we covered Projector for Chromebooks — an upcoming presentation tool for students and educators. Google has since been working behind the scenes to finish up this new feature for Chromebooks, and thanks to a recent update, we have a near-finalized look at how it plans to amp up online presentations.
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- Additional details which Xiaomi didn't include about the smaller Mi CC9e, like panel resolution and type, were revealed in later product listings. Our coverage has been updated with that information.
A couple weeks back, Xiaomi revealed it had yet another sub-brand up its sleeves to supplement last year's Pocophone. The new CC division's image was meant to evoke "a trendy mobile phone for global young people," by focusing on things like selfies (probably the only thing we millennials love more than avocado toast). The Mi CC9 and smaller Mi CC9e are now official as of today, sporting slightly ridiculous 32MP selfie cams those 'yutes are sure to love.
Now that renders have shown what the G8 ThinQ will look like, LG has revealed more about the upcoming flagship that will be unveiled at MWC. The new handset will feature a time-of-flight sensor, which is expected to offer fast and precise facial recognition.
The biggest advantage of Pixel ownership, outside Google's highly optimized software experience, is the camera. Pixels have been consistently near or at the top of the pack when it comes to photo quality, and in no small part that's because of that Google software. A camera is more than just hardware, image processing can be as (or more) important than simply having a good sensor, and Google has included plenty of camera improvements this year. Let's take a look.
Have you ever wondered if there was a portrait of you hidden away in some museum? Maybe you're really curious to see what you looked like draped in 16th century attire? Or perhaps you've always just had a sneaking suspicion that you're the reincarnation of Mona Lisa but could never prove it to your friends. If these are the sort of questions that keep you up at night, then you'll be happy to know that Google's engineers have been hard at work solving these issues for you.
Some promos are better left unpublished and HTC should have gotten to this conclusion after seeing this video for the U11+. Even if they paid Danielle a lump of cash and got an entire team to work for weeks or months on setting this up, filming it, and editing it, with heart-fluttering music to go, this video should not have seen the light of day for one main reason: it fails at its purpose.
If there's one thing that annoys me more than almost anything else, it's the selfie stick. If you use one, I'm sorry, I really am, but I just can't stand them. Walking around packed central London streets is hard enough without people flapping about with creepy telescopic camera mounts. So when a company says they want to kill the selfie, and by virtue also the selfie stick, I'm all ears.
A new version of Allo hit this morning, but that's not nearly as important as the features that were remotely activated by Google in the last day or two. Two features we've been expecting have gone live: Web Stickers and @mentions in group chats. But just as those teardown topics make the transition into live features, the latest update does bring some new things to look out for in the future, including group management and permanent bans, plus a new way to record selfies.
At the end of last month, Asus said that it would be revealing a ZenFone 4 of some description on August 19th (in two days time) in the Philipines. Earlier in July, the ZenFone 4 Max was quietly launched in Russia. Fast forward to the present day, and Asus has just announced four phones: the ZenFone 4, ZenFone 4 Pro, ZenFone 4 Selfie/Selfie Pro, some of which were accidentally leaked by the company itself a week ago. Confused? So are we, but let's try to pick through the pertinent information.
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- You can now download Allo 11 from APKMirror, but clearing the app's cache and force-closing may be required to see the new feature.
Selfies are a bit of a pandemic these days; it's almost impossible to get through a day without seeing at least a few on social media. In keeping with that theme, along with Allo's obsession with sticker packs, the 'smart messaging app' can now create personalized sticker packs from just a selfie. We first spotted this in a teardown back in January, but it's finally live.
LG has decided to get a jump on MWC by announcing the LG X Power2. This low-end device sports some pretty mediocre specs, but the focus here is on the large battery that is meant "to meet the demands of customers who frequently use power-hungry applications" and the various camera features.
For a long, long time, emoji support on Android has been playing catch-up with iOS — sometimes lagging behind by as much as several years. In many cases, characters sent from another device (such as an iPhone) wouldn't display at all on Android, leaving a lot of information lost in translation. Even the few characters that did render were often depicted differently: if you've been on Android since the days of Jelly Bean, you probably remember those peculiar little monochrome Bugdroids that Google used in lieu of smiley faces.
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Artem wanted someone on the team to write up a deal alert in which we point our readers toward a selfie stick. After a contentious debate in which no one else agreed that we should do this, here I am.I've never used a selfie stick. I don't even take selfies without a stick. I have no problem with taking a picture of myself, but something about the ease of doing so with a phone makes the experience feel too narcissistic. Besides, front-facing cameras tend to be crap.I don't know what makes any given selfie stick better than another, but Artem says this one is pretty good. After plugging the stick into your phone's earphone jack, you can take photos using a button on the handle. This, I'm told, separates pointless selfie sticks from the more pointless ones. Plus this stick comes from Spigen, and it has 4.3 stars.
ZTE has just announced the newest entry to its Blade lineup, the Blade S7. The S7 will go on sale in Thailand and other countries across the Asia Pacific soon afterwards, and is squarely targeted at the selfie-loving segment of the population, with ZTE dubbing it its "most powerful selfie smartphone to date."
Mere hours ago we saw LG's new V10 phone leaked courtesy of @evleaks, and now LG has made it official.
While smartphone enthusiasts typically care deeply about every spec inside the phones they buy, there's one feature that nearly every smartphone owner wants: a good camera. In fact, on several occasions, I've had friends and family ask which phone they should buy based around that one qualification: which phone has the best camera? Needless to say, a good shooter is a pretty big deal in the smartphone world.With a name like Selfie, to say that Blu's newest handset is all about the camera experience would be pretty accurate. Not only does it have a 13 MP rear shooter, but also a 13 MP front camera with flash. Basically, what most phones have on the back, the Selfie also has on the front. Other specs are pretty decent, as well:
Time waits for no man, and Samsung is similarly inclined - it's not letting a little thing like the biggest technology conference in the world stop it from announcing phones for markets on the other side of the planet. Thus we have the Galaxy E5 and Galaxy E7, a mid-range, photo-focused take on Samsung's formula and its plus-sized and slightly higher-end brother, respectively. Both of them should be coming to India sometime in the near future.