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Many of our readers should be familiar with Takeout, ostensibly now called "Download your Data," which allows you to back up a copy of all the information associated with your account for most of Google's services. Right now you can even use it to transition your Drive storage between providers, but thanks to the upcoming open-source Data Transfer Project—publicized yesterday in a joint effort with Microsoft, Twitter, and Facebook—that data may someday be as portable as your phone.
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- There are reports that Essential is also issuing partial refunds for orders placed before the sale related to the recently discounted merchandise. If you ordered any of the sale items recently, but before this new set of discounts, you may have already received a refund, so check your email. If you haven't and you think you should be eligible, give support a ping. At a minimum, your credit card may have some level of purchase protection as well.
Essential and Amazon busted out one of the biggest deals this year when they dropped the PH-1 to an all-time low price of $250 for Prime Day. But, it turns out that's not the end of the Essential deals. Right now you can pick up the Essential 360 Camera accessory for a mere $19.
Social media is often considered a distraction, but based on the results of a recent study, that influence could have larger implications. According to research published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), frequent use of digital media, including social media, by adolescents could be associated with ADHD—though the causal direction of that relationship is undetermined.
For a while now, App Annie has been offering its metrics to interested parties so developers can better understand their place in the app economy. Careful examination and integration of data like this, paired with the knowledge of a target audience, can influence where a developer's time can be best spent. And according to App Annie's latest report, Play Store downloads are up significantly, with a 20% rise year-over-year, and 160% higher than Apple's Play Store. On the other hand, consumer spending is still 80% higher on iOS.
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- Right on time, the Sonos Beam soundbar is now available to purchase from Sonos, Amazon, Best Buy, and all the usual retailers.
Just earlier today, Sonos announced its new Beam, a soundbar that's 60% the size of the company's previous Playbar, all while including features like Airplay 2, Alexa functionality, and a surprisingly big sound for the size—or so Sonos claims. [EMBED_YT]https://youtu.be/5rpk3dWp12M[/EMBED_YT]Sonos products might be eclipsed by a discrete system, but you're unlikely to find something else with the same quality at Sonos' size, especially considering the level of software support and features the company regularly provides. The new Beam is optimized for multiple use cases, and the company advertised having tested it with over 50 "sound creators" (i.e., they asked sound designers if the Beam produced their content in the right way, and they tweaked it when it didn't). Add in the room-specific Trueplay tuning technology, and that precisely crafted sound can be even more precisely set for your environment.It includes Amazon Alexa built right in, and it supports Apple's Airplay 2 and Siri (at some level). Google Assistant support is coming soon, but no date is set just yet. Other noteworthy features include HDMI-ARC support, four woofers, and one tweeter.Pre-orders are live now, with global availability set July for 17th. At $399, the Beam isn't cheap, but if you're heavily invested in Sonos' ecosystem already, it's probably not the most expensive part of your sound system.
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Prime Day is in full swing, but it can be hard to keep track of all the different sales happening. Even a few third-party retailers seem to be trying to divert a bit of that attention to themselves with their own promotions. To make things a bit easier for our readers, we're keeping track of all the stuff that we spot together in one place, right here.American Express cardholders should also be aware of this promotion, which can be combined with some of the discounted merchandise below for an extra 20% off, up to a $100 discount.[EMBED_YT]https://youtu.be/RpWuLlDrFio[/EMBED_YT]Like always, we do our best to make a comparison to real prices, rather than just the ridiculously inflated advertised discount or MSRP, so this list (ideally) shouldn't have anything on it that was marked up only to be discounted. We're comparing things to real-world historical numbers. It's a lot more work for us (read: me), but it's better for you.
This year Google announced that third-party hardware would be able to get in on the Developer Preview fun, with almost a dozen handsets getting Android P—assuming their owners were willing to be guinea pigs. Nokia allowed for 7 Plus owners to opt-in and try Android P, and now the consecutive update for the next preview is rolling out in a surprisingly timely manner. DP4/Beta 3 is landing via both image sideloading and OTA.
MediaTek gets a lot of flak—and, at least in part, it's deserved—but the company's products occupy a necessary niche. After pretty much every ARM chipset manufacturer excluding Qualcomm pulled out of the smartphone race in the early 10's, MediaTek was left to fill the entry-level void, and it has. The fact that its chipsets typically end up in lower-end devices means we're especially excited for today's news, as the company is launching the Helio A series destined for low to mid-range hardware, starting with the A22.
Many products and services these days rely on third-party platforms like Amazon's AWS and Google Cloud to work. After all, everything that can be turned into a subscription can be made into a business, and not everyone wants to run their own data centers or software platforms just to make an app. Unfortunately, when one of those big players runs into a problem, it hits a pretty wide audience. Just earlier this hour, Google Cloud ran into a bit of a snag, and that has trickled over into other products like Snapchat, Discord, Evernote, Pokemon Go, and many others, though it should be resolving.
The first-party fabric and Google Earth Live cases for the Pixel 2 and 2 XL were among our favorites when we reviewed them, but the high price tag associated with Google's self-branded cases probably prevented many of our readers from picking one up. Thankfully for them, Best Buy has marked down the Carbon and Rock cases for the Pixel 2 and 2 XL by half.
Not everyone has one, but for many of us, external battery packs are one of the only things that can keep us going on long trips. The perils of the modern life unfortunately include battery life limitations. It's nice to get a good deal on a battery, when you can, since they can be pretty expensive. That's why we're pointing out ChargeTech's 27,000mAh 85W battery. It doesn't have USB-C, but it does have two USB-A ports, and a sizable 85W output over the included 110V AC outlet. Best of all, it has a chunky coupon for $46 off, bringing the price down to a palatable ~$139.Not everyone needs a big battery with an AC outlet, but it does come in handy when you're flying on an older plane, or if you just like taking your laptop to the park to do work—which is one of my favorite ways to spend the day, personally. The lack of USB-C is a bit meh, but for the $138 price, it's forgivable, especially if it isn't essential to you or you have an older, non-C powered laptop.We haven't tested this particular model, so we can't attest to its quality as we can in the case of the Mophie Powerstation AC—which is also on Amazon, but it's more expensive at $200, and with a more limited capacity. If you go for it, remember to use the coupon code AMUZISNW at checkout for an extra ~$46 off, bringing the price down to $138.Source: Amazon
Amazon's Prime Day consumer festivities are in full swing, and some of the best deals are going fast, like the handful of Fossil Q Wear OS watches that went on sale yesterday. Although all the Explorist models have either sold out or been marked back up to their typical ~$200 price, many of the smaller dial Q Venture watches are still on sale.All of these watches should be running the lastest Wear OS/Android Wear (or whatever Google might be calling it these days), and they feature Qualcomm's Wear 2100 SoC and round flat-tire-less displays.The full list of discounted watches is below:
Skype was once the go-to for video messaging, but those days seem to have ended. Even so, updates to the service are ongoing, and the latest bump for v8.0 of the desktop version of the service is unifying the interface with the mobile design while also adding a few new features. Anyone still using v7/Skype classic will also need to upgrade by September.
Long ago, before Google Now turned into the Feed, Google used to provide you with an easily accessible summary of custom tailored, account-scraped stuff, useful for keeping track of various deadlines or ongoing details. In that transition to Feed, though, the information was relegated to a new "Upcoming" tab in the Google app, and the personal overview started to stagnate a bit. Well, Google's bringing it all back better than ever via the Assistant.
Netflix's Fast.com internet speed test is pretty much the defacto way to check download throughput. Since it uses Netflix's servers to test, you can easily check if your ISP is throttling your video. And it's more likely to reflect the sort of speeds you'll actually see in the real world compared to things like speedtest.net, which often reports unrealistic or inflated numbers. Now Netflix has added some extra info to its test, including latency and upload speeds.
The folks over at the Dutch site Mobielkopen have spotted a trademark application in the EU for "Warp Charge," filed on behalf of OnePlus. Presumably, this new name is set to replace Dash Charge, after OnePlus previously failed to secure it as an exclusive trademark in the EU.
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Back in the spring, Google started testing a bubbly new interface for the ubiquitous content-promoting Feed. It was a confusing mixture of empty space and (still un-swipeable) cramped cards. The general reaction at the change could be accurately characterized as "revulsion" or "horror," but regardless of what our readers or we thought last time, Google has apparently decided to roll it out to a larger audience anyway.
We've been keeping track of the best deals to come from Amazon's Prime Day, but one of the most sizable discounts you can get today isn't actually tied to any specific gadget. Turns out, some AMEX cardholders can get 20% off, up to a maximum $100 off, if they link their AMEX Membership Rewards account to Amazon and make a purchase with at least 1 rewards point. There are a couple of conditions attached to this deal. For one, it'll only work on something shipped and sold by Amazon, so no third-party sales at the site will work. Additionally, not all cards work for the promotion. You'll need a card that can participate in Membership Rewards program enrollment that isn't already tied to automatic cash rewards. In some cases that means paying an extra fee. A full list of American Express cards which this promotion may work with is here.
Historically, Black Friday might have been the best time of year to pick up that new TV or laptop, but Amazon's been pushing it's self-constructed Prime Day retail discount holiday since 2015 as a way to get your deal on a few months early. Some of the promotions are still a mystery, but a handful of the Prime member-exclusive deals have been revealed already, and some hardware is already on sale.Amazon's first-party deals are already live ahead of Prime Day proper, which starts at 3PM Eastern Time and lasts for 36 hours. Parties interested in picking up an Echo or Kindle can save a good chunk of change:
Back in the far-off summer of 2016, Pokémon Go descended upon the world in a flurry of unstoppable nostalgia. It's not unreasonable to say that many if not most of us spent a good chunk of that season chasing down augmented reality models of our collective childhood. But not much later, analytics for the game suggested participation might be in decline. Now, two years on, Pokémon Go fest 2018 is in full swing in Chicago, and the summer weather across the US is perfect for the outdoor game. We're curious, how many of you are still playing?