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Remember when you had to wait until Black Friday and Cyber Monday to stock up on cheap tech? Nah, me neither, and that's largely thanks to Amazon and the advent of Prime Day. Not only does Amazon discount its own hardware and tons of other stuff on its site, other retailers have had no choice but to join in. This means that Prime Day (confusingly, a two-day event) is a great time to find deals on the latest tech each summer — today and tomorrow, to be precise.
Amazon wants to make sure that no one misses out on its upcoming Prime Day sales, which begin next Monday. To keep us all tantalized, the company has just pushed out a list of deals to watch for, including many first-party hardware discounts for things like Kindles, Fire TVs, and Echo smart speakers. Among the bigger discounts are a Fire TV Stick w/ Alexa Voice Remote for just $15, an Echo for $50, and the "all-new" Kindle for $60 with $5 in eBook credit and three months of Kindle Unlimited.Prime members will see some deals beginning as early as noon on July 14th (Sunday), and some others will even be live via Alexa tomorrow. Just ask, “Alexa, what are my deals?" to find out.The full list of discounts (which aren't live yet) when it comes to electronics gadgets is just below:
Amazon's Fire tablets have been commoditized to the point where the average consumer can buy six-packs of them at a bulk discount... and that was 4 years ago. They get the job done and they're very cheap — both are good things — but they could be even cheaper. Best Buy is proving that point today with a one-day sale on the Fire HD 10.The device has a humble 10.1-inch display at 1920 x 1200, a quad-core MediaTek processor, 2GB of RAM, and cameras on the rear and the front. It runs Amazon's fork of Android, Fire OS, and you can sideload a ton of apps — YouTube, for starters — with a microSD card of up to 256GB in capacity. There's also the Alexa assistant on-board.
Just a few days after Google's "Dump your valentine" discount, Amazon has come up with its own deals, in time for February 14. These offers are more relevant, though, and are worth considering if you're short of gift ideas. Most of the giant's connected home devices are on sale, including Echo speakers and smart displays, Fire TVs, cameras, and even Kindles.Amazon's speakers have been marked down several times in the last few weeks, including deals on the Echo Plus and Echo Input, but the retailer is going stronger now to rival Google's bundles. Among the most appealing deals, there's a $15 discount on the Echo Input so you can bring Alexa to any regular speaker or audio system for just $20. If you'd rather buy a smart product from the get-go, Amazon is taking some dollars off most of its Echo line-up.
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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.
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:
Nazrin Hassan, CEO of Malaysian venture capital firm Cradle Fund, reportedly died of injuries caused when his cell phone exploded as he slept. The cause of death was initially said to be smoke inhalation — but according to a statement released by Cradle, Hassan died of "complication of blast injuries attributable to an exploding hand phone." It's not currently clear what type of phone was involved.
The giving season is almost upon us, and if you didn't get your holiday shopping done during the sales running from Black Friday to Cyber Monday, then you might want to start now. Thankfully, if someone on your list is interested in a big-screen device for running apps, we're here to help. Here's a nice simple list of our favorite Chromebooks and tablets for your consideration.
The saga of the Galaxy Note7 was one of the most surprising and disastrous events in the tech industry last year. The Note7 received very positive initial reviews, but soon after, several reports of the device catching fire were made public. After acknowledging that the problem was with the Note7, Samsung began recalling all units.
A prudent person doesn't ever joke about bombs in an airport. After today, you might want to extend those warnings to a certain flagship Samsung smartphone. According to a BBC report, a passenger on a Virgin America flight from San Francisco to Boston last week labelled his phone's Wi-Fi hotspot as "Galaxy Note 7." Hijinks, of the not particularly entertaining variety, ensued.
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- We've been informed by a commenter that effective December 15th, Samsung Australia will be banning the IMEIs of all Galaxy Note7 smartphones. Samsung AU is also offering $250 to customers who trade their Note7 in for an S7 or S7 edge in addition to the difference in resale values until December 22nd. Thanks, Beau.
Samsung's been trying very hard to get all units of the Galaxy Note7 returned to them, but some owners are having trouble letting go of their beloved stylus-equipped phablets. To force owners into giving them back, Samsung will be updating the Note7 to be severely crippled in Canada and literally unusable in the US. Now, Samsung is taking similar measures with UK Note7 units.
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- Samsung has instructed current owners of all Galaxy Note 7 models, including replacements, to power down their phones. The company and the US Consumer Product Safety Commission are currently investigating the latest fires.
At this point I think it's safe to say that Samsung's Galaxy Note 7 is the most embarrassing failure in the history of Android hardware. A spate of statistically high battery fires caused a worldwide recall of millions of Note 7 units, followed by multiple reports of explosions from the allegedly "fixed" replacement phones. American carriers T-Mobile and AT&T are no longer selling the device, all four major carriers are accepting unconditional exchanges, and we at Android Police are officially recommending that consumers not buy the phone for now. It's an unmitigated disaster for Samsung.
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- The Verge reports Verizon and T-Mobile are also now allowing customers to exchange their "safe" Note7 replacement devices. That means all four major carriers have elected to do so.
The Galaxy Note7's tendency to explode and its subsequent recall have been well-publicized, but it appears that the issue wasn't completely fixed. Following the explosion of a revised Galaxy Note7 on a (not yet in the air) Southwest Airlines flight, American carriers AT&T and Sprint are permitting any concerned customers to exchange their 'safe' replacement Galaxy Note7s for any other smartphones they have available.
Just two days ago, Roku announced their new lineup of media center devices, and today Amazon has made public their latest Fire TV Stick. If you are unfamiliar with Amazon's hardware offerings, the Fire TV Stick is their competitor to the Chromecast (even to the point of Amazon removing Chromecast listings from their store). But unlike the Chromecast, and similar to the recently-announced Roku Express, all applications run directly on the device. The Fire TV stick also has a sizable game library, which is certainly unique at the price point.The updated Fire TV Stick is a major improvement in almost every way. The CPU has seen a major upgrade from the first generation's dual-core ARM Cortex A9. It is now powered by the quad-core Mediatek 8127D, the same chipset found in the Amazon Fire tablet. It has the same 8GB internal storage and 1GB of RAM as the original, but makes the jump from Bluetooth 3.0 to 4.1. The device can also decode H.265 video, no doubt future-proofing for future streaming and media support. Finally, 802.11ac WiFi support has been added.On the software side, the new Fire TV Stick is running the same Fire OS 5 that other Fire devices run on, a modified version of Android 5.0 Lollipop. The biggest improvement is the addition of Alexa, Amazon's voice assistant. You can open applications, ask queries similar to Google Now, and control other Fire TV functions easily. To facilitate this, the new Fire TV Stick has a redesigned remote with a microphone button.Overall, this is a much-needed improvement from the first generation, and if you don't mind the Amazon ecosystem it is a solid option. You can pre-order it right now, and it will go on sale October 20.
Samsung and the CPSC officially recall the Galaxy Note7 in the US after 92 reports of battery issues
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Samsung and the CPSC (Consumer Product Safety Commission) have just announced an official recall of the Galaxy Note7 in the US. This news comes after statements last week that Samsung and the CPSC are working together to issue a formal recall and reports that Samsung is limiting the batteries of Note7s in Korea to 60% via an OTA update. According to the CPSC, 92 reports of batteries overheating in the US have been received. This is out of an estimated one million units sold.
It's official. Amazon is ready to sell you a tablet for just $50. Not only that, it will let you order six of them together for $250. The Internet retailer is making the task of filling a home with tablets as affordable as bringing home a Wii U.We first caught wind of this device earlier this month, and it appears to pack better hardware than the junk Android tablets we're accustomed to from no-name brands. That said, the specs still come in on the low-end side of things. The front offers a 7-inch 1024 by 600 display. On the inside there's a 1.3GHz processor, 1GB of RAM, and 8GB of storage (along with a microSD card slot). Less than stellar cameras sit on the front and back.
Amazon wants you to buy its shiny new Fire Phone, and one of the biggest selling points is that fancy head-tracking camera system. So naturally, the first two games to come out of the company's home-bred Amazon Game Studios for the Fire Phone feature functionality that can only be done with that specific hardware. Unfortunately, both platformer To-Fu Fury (available now for ) and Match 3 RPG Saber's Edge (free) exhibit classic signs of Kinect Syndrome.
Everyone likes free stuff, and Amazon is sort of giving you more free stuff for your Android device today. The retailer is expanding Amazon Coins to all Android devices in the US, UK, and Germany through the Amazon Appstore.
Listen up, super-late Christmas shoppers: Best Buy has a pretty good deal going on seven-inch Kindle Fire HDXs today. You can score up to $82 off of various HDX models, and while they definitely won't arrive before Christmas (because, you know, that's today), they all have free shipping. Here's a full list of the options:
For many of us, it's getting cold outside. While there's always the option to invest in a thicker coat, bundle up in more blankets, or crank up the thermostat, none of these options particularly involve Android (with some exceptions). So here's another approach. Fire up YouTube on your Android device of choice and load up this YouTube channel. Send it out to the nearest Chromecast and you have yourself a warm fire that will burn for the next hour or so.