Aatif Sumar
Contributing since December, 2018
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140articles
About Aatif Sumar
Aatif has been captivated by the green robot since the Galaxy S. He enjoys not crashing flying his drone, night photography, and advocating for the Shield TV. He hasn't lost hope and still thinks a Messiah smartphone with removable batteries, expandable storage, and an IR blaster will one day return to save us all.
Latest Articles
Mario Kart Tour online multiplayer beta invites everyone to play during its second lap (Update: Out now)
The much-anticipated release of Mario Kart Tour this September (after an extended period of testing) was a bit of a letdown. The game was riddled with excessive in-app-purchases, had a questionable loot box mechanism, and lacked a multiplayer component — arguably the selling point of the entire Mario Kart series. At the time, the in-game-menu said that multiplayer was "inbound", and we now know more details.
If you need to automate something on your Android phone, you can be confident Tasker can handle it. While the app has always been good with updates, the new management, aka joaomgcd of AutoApps fame, has pushed some significant new functionality over the past year. Last month, the Tasker v5.9 beta added an interesting new feature — the ability to read the phone's Logcat and react to events, opening up a whole new category of reactive use-cases for your tasks. Today, the stable build of v5.9 was pushed to the Play Store with Logcat events and a whole bunch of other features.
With the Jabra Elite 75t true-wireless earbuds just around the corner, we've been seeing a lot of sales on the Elite 65t family of products. However, today's sale is the best one yet — you can get a manufacturer-refurbished Elite Active 65t for just $68 over at Rakuten (the seller is Jabra itself), with a further $8 back in Rakuten Super Points.
If you're on the lookout for a stylus-toting smartphone, the Galaxy Note series has traditionally been your only option. Unfortunately, these cost a pretty penny (except for the Note 3 Neo which Samsung sold for a hot minute), so customers on a budget were left out. LG has targetted the Note customer on a budget with the LG Stylo 5, and AT&T just announced its own variant, the Stylo 5+.
When a noteworthy smartphone launches, there are a few predictable events one can expect — like a controversial hot-take from David and a torture test from JerryRigEverything. While the former is still in the works, the OnePlus 7T just underwent Zack's blades in a durability test — and it didn't fare too well.
Shrinking a two-step process to a single step may not seem like much, but it sure feels a lot quicker. This could be why apps like Alfred, a macOS software to jump to navigate straight from the text box, are so popular. Google seems to have understood this last year when it started using the .new domain to allow creating new Google Docs in a single step. Now, you can also jump to a new Google Keep note by simply typing 'keep.new' into the address bar of your browser of choice.
The advent of the smartphone as the personal computing device of choice is still relatively recent — only in the last half-decade or so have people begun to consider smartphones to be their primary computer. That being said, smartphones actually have a long and illustrious history — if they were human beings, some would be old enough to vote and nearly old enough to legally drink. To remind us of this, popular data-visualization YouTube channel 'Data is Beautiful' charted the rise and fall of popular smartphone OSes in the last two decades into a nail-biting video.
[Update: Dead] Upcoming Jabra Elite 75t earbuds can be pre-ordered for just $130 ($50 off) right now
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Usually, if you want to find a deal on a new gadget, you either have to wait for a few months, grab it refurbished, or buy it during shopping festivals like Black Friday. For some reason, the brand-new Jabra Elite 75t true wireless Bluetooth earbuds (which we haven't even had a chance to review yet) are available for pre-order over at Jabra.com at a marked-down price of $130 (down from $180), thanks to two stackable promo codes.
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- Google's latest Gallery Go update adds the ability to manually toggle the app's dark mode between on and automatic:
Google Photos is a fantastic app, but storing and accessing to all your images from the cloud can be a strain on your smartphone's bandwidth and storage, especially if it's a budget Android device. Last month, Google launched Gallery Go (along the lines of Maps Go and Google Go), a lightweight picture manager targetted at the hundreds of millions of budget devices being used in developing countries. Today, the app got an update that adds dark mode — something other apps like Messenger and Google Photos already have.
GoPro may have crashed out of making drones, but DJI seems intent on cracking the action camera market. The Osmo Action Cam, which launched this summer for $350 with dual screens and electronically stabilized 4K/60 video capture, is currently on sale at an all-time low of $261 thanks to a Labor Day promo code.
[Update: $130 at Costco] Lenovo's 10-inch Smart Display marked down to just $140 this weekend
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There sure are a lot of Lenovo smart home gadgets on sale this weekend — the Smart Clock for $50, the 8" Smart Display bundle for $90, and now the larger the 10" Smart Display on sale for $140, down from an original price of $250. That's $10 less than previous online deals we've seen.
Netflix may have paid 0M to retain 'Friends' for 2019, but come January 2020 it goes over to HBO Max. If you still want to have a show to play in the background when you're tired of 'The Office', you can buy the Complete Series Collection of Friends for $60 over at Play Movies, a cool $80 off.
If you capture, edit, and share RAW images from your smartphone, you'd be hard-pressed to find a better solution than Lightroom. While the Android version doesn't have feature parity with its PC and macOS counterparts, the August 2019 update adds a few interesting features to close the gap.
[Update: File your claims now] Google settling OG Pixel microphone lawsuit, claimants to receive up to $500
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Back in 2017, some original Pixels and Pixel XLs started experiencing microphone failures — theorized to be due to a hairline crack in the mic's solder. Google RMA-ed these devices, but the problem persisted in some replacement phones too, and a class action lawsuit was filed the following year. We now have word that Google has agreed to settle this lawsuit for $7,250,000 pending final court approval.
Installing a dashcam in your car makes a lot of sense — having footage of an accident makes insurance claims a lot easier, and you never know when you'll see something noteworthy on the road. While they may have been a novelty a few years ago, nowadays dashcams come in all price ranges from a lot of manufacturers. Fitness tracking company Garmin has a range of higher-end dashcams with some unique features, and they're currently on sale at Amazon.
True wireless earbuds make listening to media while exercising a whole lot easier. Unfortunately, a good pair can get quite pricey, with the cheap earbuds usually failing to provide a stable Bluetooth connection between each other or the phone. The Soundcore Liberty Neo by Anker is a budget pair that bucks this trend, and it's currently marked down to $40 on Amazon.In his review, Scott praises the unoffensive build and ergonomics of the earbuds and found the sound quality to exceed what can usually be had in this price bracket. The Bluetooth 5.0 radio was found to maintain a solid connection, and the IPX5 water resistance makes this a solid workout headset.The lack of USB-C charging is a bit of a letdown, and the 3 hours of battery life are very average, but at forty bucks, they make a good rough use or spare pair to keep around. You can pick up the Anker Soundcore Liberty Neo from Amazon, where it's currently $20 off.Buy: Amazon
[Update: Fixed] If you use HDHomeRun's DVR features with your Shield TV, hold off on the Pie update
The Nvidia Shield TV started receiving Android 9.0 Pie yesterday, making it the device's fourth major software update. That being said, you may want to hold off on upgrading if you use your Shield TV as a DVR for HDHomeRun, as it seems to have broken this functionality — though a fix is being worked on.
Google Sheets introduces Slicers, Scorecards, and Themes for more effective data visualization
Google Sheets is a handy tool for tabulating and working on data, especially since it's cross-platform and free to use. While it doesn't yet match the functionality of Microsoft Excel, it has been consistently picking up new features every month — from deduplication and trimming of whitespace to enhanced formatting tools. Today, the Sheets team announced three new data reporting tools that can help get you closer to a dashboard running only on Google Sheets.
The product life cycle can be harsh — smash hits fly off the shelves and rarely get discounted, but other products, though they may be decent, don't catch on and are brutally discounted in fire sales. The 3D 180VR video-capturing Lenovo Mirage Camera is one such example — originally launched for $300 in 2018, it can now be had for just $100 at Best Buy and Amazon.
FCC clearance is a hurdle every product bound for American soils needs to clear. Since the filing is public, it can give us an early look at specs or images of upcoming gadgets — like the Galaxy Watch Active 2 by Samsung, which recently stopped by the FCC showing us the front of the smartwatch, along with case options.