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Valve's Steam Deck is the latest attempt to make portable PC gaming a thing
Aggressively priced to start at $399, but you'll probably want more storage
For the last 4 years, the Nintendo Switch has been out on its own as the best portable gaming experience outside of playing on your smartphone. Other attempts at a portable gaming PC have come and gone without much success, but for the first time, the Switch may have a real contender.
Win a Nintendo Switch Lite from Ting Mobile (Update: Winner)
Or buy one with the money you’d save by switching to Ting Mobile
You can score a rare discount on a Nintendo Switch Lite today — with one caveat
It may have an accent, but it's on sale
It's become a running joke that Nintendo's games hardly ever go on sale. And it's true: while big-ticket releases from the likes of Ubisoft or EA are liable to be in a BOGO sale three months after release, Nintendo toes the MSRP line for as long as possible.
The Nintendo Switch Joy-Con may just be a better Bluetooth camera shutter than game controller
At least stick drift won't affect your camera shutter's performance
Taking a group shot on your phone is more challenging than it has to be. Sure, you can set up a timer to go off after a few seconds, but there's no guarantee you'll be smiling with the shutter finally clicks. Remote shutters can make things a lot easier, but who wants to pay extra cash just for the occasional opportunity to capture a family portrait? If you're the owner of a Nintendo Switch, you're in luck. Just grab a Joy-Con the next time you need to take a photo remotely.
This smartphone has physical kill switches for its cameras, microphone, data, Bluetooth, and Wi-Fi
And it runs Linux
Modern smartphones can feel like technological black boxes. The mobile operating systems that power them have become incredibly complex, with often hundreds or possible even thousands of various functions that can trigger things like your GPS, cellular modem, or Bluetooth radio. Even when you tell your phone to turn off certain things, like Wi-Fi, our phones don't always do as they're told. But it doesn't have to be that way, provided you're willing to dive very, very deep into the Linux end of the smartphone pool. The PinePhone is one of the few mobile devices with hardware kill switches for common features, giving you full control over your smartphone.
Mobile gaming continues to grow in relevance, with significant releases like Fortnite and PUBG being published on smartphones, but many titles have been held back by awkward touchscreen controls. External controller support in Android has worked to address that, giving players more powerful options. It turns out a pretty big one arrived thanks to an AOSP commit this past June, granting Android gamepad mappings for the Nintendo Switch Pro Controller.
Ecobee thermostats come highly recommended here at Android Police, with the Ecobee4 earning the top thermostat ranking in our list of the best smart home devices. Things only got better with the introduction of the company's SmartThermostat, which improved on the Ecobee4 by updating the processor, improving sound quality, and the addition of 5GHz Wifi compatibility. In an exciting smart home-focused deal that is available from Best Buy for one day only, buyers will receive a free Ecobee Switch+ with the purchase of either the SmartThermostat or Ecobee3 Lite.
Developer group 'switchroot' has been working on porting Android to the Nintendo Switch for a while now, and a few days ago, most of the documentation and installation guides appeared. If you've been itching to play Candy Crush on your Switch, the unofficial Android ROM has finally been released.
Late yesterday, the developers responsible for the long-awaited Android ROM for the Nintendo Switch (a group known as switchroot) pushed up a thread to the XDA forums describing most of its upcoming features, limitations, and even the installation process. All that's missing at this point is download links, but the page says the developers expect to have them posted soon — on the order of days.
Earlier this year, a handful of enterprising developers were able to boot Android Q on the Nintendo Switch, though it was pretty rough at the time. In the intervening months, they've made quite a lot of progress, and a new @switchroot_org Twitter account was started yesterday to show off the group's achievements, which include rigging Nintendo's console to play Overwatch via Nvidia's GameStream.
Nintendo's wildly successful Switch console is a hybrid—part handheld and part big screen gaming. Inside, it has hardware that many Android fans will recognize as being very tablet-like. Nintendo doesn't use Android on the Switch, but an independent project is working to make that possible. There's now a very early build of Android Q up and running on the device.
Electronics skins from dbrand. Why do you need one on your phone, laptop, console, or other devices? Well, they add grip, and a layer of protection against wear and tear, dings and scratches. Let's be honest though, you could accomplish that with some duct tape and a exact-o-knife if you wanted to get crafty. The things that set dbrand's skins apart are that they are perfectly cut to fit your device and –most importantly– they look freaking awesome.
Changing to a new phone can be a hassle; it's especially annoying for those of us who have to do it often. Thankfully, many OEMs include a proprietary data transfer app to help you through the process. OnePlus has the Switch app, and it's just been updated with support for moving from an iPhone.
OnePlus Switch is an app that lets people quickly migrate their stuff from an old phone to a OnePlus device. It comes standard on OP phones now, going back to the 3/3T. The app just got updated to v1.2, addressing a few issues and improving what can be transferred.
The Tegra X1 is one of Nvidia's latest mobile processors, powering devices like the Nintendo Switch, Google Pixel C, and Nvidia Shield. It's not uncommon that vulnerabilities are discovered in SoCs, and that has just happened for the Tegra X1. Katherine Temkin and the ReSwitched hacking team have just released details about a security flaw, nicknamed 'Fusée Gelée,' that allows unauthenticated arbitrary code execution on devices using the Tegra chip.
Judging by the number of views on every AP article about Mario or Pokemon, it's easy to tell that there are a TON of Nintendo fans amongst AP's readership. It's also a safe bet that a lot of you own a Nintendo Switch.
Any parents who've bought their kids a Switch should already know about the Parental Controls app. Nintendo's latest console continues to prove incredibly popular with adults and kids alike, so it's not surprising the app has more than 100,000 installs. The Japanese gaming giant has just announced an update which includes individual play time stats, downloads records, and a 24-hour alarm disabling option.
Apple has a switch tool in the Play Store that helps Android people switch to iOS. It's unlikely Google would get such an app approved by the Apple bots in the App Store. However, it's done a bit of an end-run around that with an update to the Drive app. You can now back up your iPhone data to Drive, then restore it all on Android.
To help you make the transition, Sprint will pay up to $350 to buy out your existing contract. It will also match the previous data allowance, so your transition over can feel as familiar as possible. But without the ability to match network speeds and coverage, there's only so much it can do.
Apple's proprietary iMessage system lets iPhone users send text messages to other iPhone users over a data network, avoiding SMS charges and making texting free, at least within Apple's ecosystem. It's an impressive run-around of the entrenched carrier system - the same basic idea, applied to an agnostic model, has made texting alternatives like WhatsApp fantastically popular. But users found that trying to leave Apple's walled garden was much harder after setting up iMessage with their personal phone numbers.