The early Black Friday sales we saw on Google smart home devices are back just about a week before we get to Black Friday proper. And there are a few other devices included this time around — like Google's new Pixel 6 smartphone, which is $100 off at Best Buy if you buy and activate today, or $50 off if you activate later. Regardless of which you choose, those are the best sales we've seen on the handset since it debuted last month.
We gave the Pixel 6 a score of 89 in our review — it can hold its own against flagship competitors from Apple and Samsung, and it has arguably a more fun design than the competition and remarkable cameras. The horizontal camera bar on its back is controversial, but striking nonetheless. It has a 6.4-inch 1080p OLED touchscreen that can reach up to 90Hz refresh rates, and it has an under-screen fingerprint sensor too (although we found this a bit too finicky). Google's new Tensor chip provides sold performance, and we liked the new Assistant and Android 12 perks such as the voice keyboard that will be popular with those who hate typing on smartphones.
As far as cameras go, you're getting a 50-megapixel main shooter along with a 12MP wide-angle lens and an 8MP selfie cam, all of which produce sharp, clean and bright photos. We also praised the Pixel 6's battery, which lasted about 20.5 hours during our testing. The Pixel 6 was already a competitively priced flagship smartphone, but this early Black Friday sale makes it even more tempting for Android users in need of an upgrade.
Along with that, a bunch of other Google gadgets have been discounted before the Black Friday frenzy begins. We've seen some of these deals before, like the Nest Hub for $50 and the Nest Audio for $60 at Best Buy and B&H Photo. But a new one is the Chromecast with Google TV in white for $10 off, bringing it down to $39. This is a pretty rare discount on the already affordable streaming device that we gave a score of 86 for its solid new remote control, excellent Google Assistant integration and 4K, HDR, Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos support.
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After debuting in Korea last year, Nreal’s Light mixed reality glasses are finally making their way to the US. Starting on November 30th, 20 Verizon stores nationwide will begin selling the device, with online availability to follow on December 2nd. The carrier will sell the glasses for $599, and while you can use them with either an Android or iOS device, Nreal says you’ll get the best experience with a OnePlus 8 or recent Samsung Galaxy phone — both of which Verizon will happily sell you.
We got our first look at the Light mixed reality glasses at CES 2019. The primary focus of the device is on entertainment and productivity applications. Nreal's Nebula software allows you to access your phone's Android apps without taking the glasses off. You can also use them as makeshift VR glasses, but the 52-degree diagonal field of view is limited compared to a dedicated headset.
Roku not only launched a new $15 streaming player yesterday, it's discounting some other products ahead of Black Friday. The best deal is on the Roku Streambar, designed to help you upgrade your TV's streaming capability and sound without spending too much cash. It's now on sale for $80 at Roku's online store, a steep $50 off the regular $130 price.
In our Engadget review, we said that the Roku Streambar makes "old TVs feel new again." The compact soundbar will blow most built-in TV speakers out of the water, it supports Dolby Audio and doubles as a Bluetooth speaker, too. While you could just use the Streambar for its sound chops, it also includes the same streaming tech as the Roku Ultra. That means it plays 4K HDR content, gives you access to all major streaming services like Netflix, HBO Max, Prime Video and others, and it comes with Roku's voice remote.
Roku
If you already have a soundbar but need some streaming capability, Roku has you covered there, too. It's selling the Roku Streaming Stick 4K for $30, or $20 off the regular price. As a reminder, the Streaming Stick 4K supports Dolby Vision and comes with long-range WiFi, letting you plug it into your TV's HDMI port and play Netflix, Prime Video and other streaming apps. An even cheaper 4K option is the Roku Premiere streaming player that offers HDR without Dolby Vision, on sale now for $20 instead of $35.
The latter two products are also on offer at Amazon for the same or slightly better prices. For starters, the Roku Streaming Stick 4K is on sale for $29, or $21 off the regular price — an extra dollar of savings. The Roku Premiere can also be found for $20 on Amazon.
All products recommended by Engadget are selected by our editorial team, independent of our parent company. Some of our stories include affiliate links. If you buy something through one of these links, we may earn an affiliate commission.
Starbucks has teamed up with Amazon to open a cashierless store in NYC. The new location — at 59th Street between Park & Lexington Avenues — will combine the Starbucks app's order ahead feature with Amazon's Just Walk Out technology. In fact, the store sounds a like a cross between the cafe and the Amazon Go store, which served as the launching pad for the e-commerce giant's cashierless tech experience.
It has a lounge area customers can enter by using the "In-Store Code" in the Amazon Shopping app, by scanning their credit cards or by scanning their palm registered with Amazon One on the terminals onsite. Once they're in, they'll find a small Amazon Go market containing a curated selection of customer favorites from both companies. Anything they take from the shelf will be added to their virtual carts, and they will be charged after they leave like in any other location that uses Amazon's Just Walk Out tech.
Over the past year-and-a-half, Amazon has expanded the availability of its cashierless technology. It teamed up with airport stores to implement the check-out free experience and opened the first full-size Fresh grocery store with the technology in June. Amazon also added the technology to a few Whole Foods locations and, more recently, licensed it for use to UK supermarket chain Sainsbury's. This partnership with Starbucks is yet another step towards making Just Walk Out more ubiquitous than before.
Starbucks and Amazon are planning to open three joint stores in the coming year, including this one. The second location is planned for The New York Times Building located at 40th Street & 8th Avenue. For now, New Yorkers can head to the first location at 59th Street to check out the concept.
You’ll soon be able to repair parts of your iPhone yourself, without going to an approved service center. In a major shift in policy for Apple, the company is launching a Self Service Repair program that will let you repair products yourself using official Apple parts and tools.
It’ll launch in the US in early 2022 (rolling out later that year for other countries) and will initially give the resources to fix an iPhone 12 or iPhone 13. Apple says M1 Macs will follow after that.
So why the change? It could well be all this government pressure. The White House, the Federal Trade Commission and multiple states have backed right-to-repair measures that could have forced Apple’s hand. There was even a shareholder resolution deadline coincidentally timed for the same day.
Once this program launches, any skilled person will be able to replace parts like the screen, camera and battery on the latest iPhone models. There will reportedly be 200 parts and tools available at the start. Best take another look at those iFixit guides.
Google has released a surprise mid-month update for the Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro smartphones that's specifically designed to improve the performance of the fingerprint scanner. Google changed the location of that sensor on the new model, and it's been a sore point for owners because it’s noticeably slower than other phones. Google initially defended the problem at the time by saying the reduced performance was due to "enhanced security algorithms" that took longer to verify identities.
Don’t expect huge improvements, though. According to users who’ve already updated their devices, it's still slower than some models with similar under-screen fingerprint sensors like the Galaxy S21 Ultra.
International fans will have to wait for Paramount+ to be available in their countries next year.
Days before its premiere, the fourth season of Star Trek: Discovery is no longer headed to Netflix, its streaming home outside of the US and Canada. Those fans may have to wait months to be able to see the new episodes — legally, that is — if they ever get the chance at all. According to Deadline, ViacomCBS has ended its deal with Netflix that had been in place since the series launched in 2017. All episodes of the Star Trek series have been pulled.
Apparently, it plans to make the series available again to international fans in 2022 when Paramount+ goes global. The UK, Germany, Ireland, Austria and Switzerland will be among the first regions to get access to the streaming service next year.
Tidal is adding a free, ad-supported tier as it seeks to expand its user base. The option, which is only available in the US for now, includes access to Tidal's entire library of 80 million songs as well as playlists. The service noted on Twitter that it's introducing the free tier to "remain competitive" with its rivals. There are some trade-offs beyond occasional ads, naturally. Audio quality will top out at 160 kbps, there's no offline listening option and it doesn't appear that you'll have unlimited skips, either.
Fujifilm’s new $200 flagship instant film camera has a higher resolution than previous models and improved smartphone integration. As with other Instax cameras, you can take photos and instantly develop them to Fujifilm's credit card-sized Instax Mini film, but you can also review photos on the LCD monitor and choose the ones you want to print. There’s also a print lever and lens/film filter dials. That lets you take a picture then choose among 100 combinations of effects (including "Soft Focus," "Light Leak," "Monochrome" and "Retro") and print the image afterward by pulling the print lever.
After testing the feature in the US and elsewhere, Spotify has launched synchronized song lyrics for users around the world, the company announced. The new feature is coming to the "majority" of Spotify tracks for both free and premium users, and will be powered in-app by Musixmatch .
The feature will work across iOS and Android devices, desktop, TV and consoles. To use it, you tap on the "Now Playing View" on a song and swipe up from the bottom of the screen. From there, you'll see track lyrics that scroll in real time, along with a share button for social media. Spotify didn't say how many songs had the feature available, but "majority" implies more than half, at least.
Spotify has previously dabbled with lyrics, showing the stories behind them with help from Genius, but the feature was limited to a handful of songs. It also teamed up with Musixmatch previously to show lyrics, but that experiment closed down in 2016. Spotify started testing the new feature early this year, but it has actually been active in 26 markets since mid-2020, including Brazil, Mexico, Hong Kong and India.
In any case, the update puts Spotify on the level of Apple Music, which debuted its own song lyrics back in 2019, while Deezer also offers a similar feature. However, Spotify has more paid subscribers than both those services put together, meaning more people will be able to sing along to their favorite songs using the correct lyrics.
Boost Mobile has revealed its first Carrier Crusher plans, which also happen to be its first under AT&T's network. The main Carrier Crusher product is a $100 annual plan designed for customers who use less than 10GB of data a month. It costs $100 a year and will give customers access to unlimited talk and text, as well as 1GB of high speed data. The Dish-owned prepaid mobile carrier cited a couple of studies in its announcement, including one that found that 45 percent of Americans are paying for unlimited data, even though one in three use less than 5GB.
Stephen Stokols, CEO of Boost Mobile, said:
"The US market is set up for the carriers to provide a high price point to all Americans today. It's great for the 15 percent of users who consume over 10 GB of data per month, but for the rest of us, we are subsidizing the bill for those users. You wouldn't pay $70 for an all you can eat buffet if you only wanted a salad, so why are we forced to choose all you can eat in wireless?"
In addition to the $100 annual plan, Boost has also launched a Carrier Crusher product with unlimited talk and text plus 15GB of data. It costs $20 a month, but customers will be billed annually. For those who prefer paying monthly, it now offers a $25 and a $15 plan with unlimited talk and text, as well as 5GB and 2G of data, respectively.
Dish struck a deal with AT&T back in July, paying the carrier at least $5 billion over 10 years to provide voice, data and messaging services to its Boost Mobile, Ting and Republic Wireless customers. Boost used to be Sprint's prepaid brand until the company had to spin it off as part of its merger with T-Mobile. Prior to its deal with AT&T, Boost was entirely reliant on T-Mobile's network. However, the companies' relationship soured when T-Mobile announced that it was shutting down the Sprint legacy network Boost is using on January 1st, 2022. Dish argued that the deadline doesn't give it enough time to migrate its customers, and T-Mobile ultimately agreed to move it to March 31st next year.
What kid hasn't wished that their toy car was a full-sized road-going vehicle? Mattel showed some serious commitment to that idea by unveiling a full-sized EV version of the Barbie Extra Car based on the Fiat 500e that looks exactly like the toy car, Roadshow has reported.
Now showing at the LA Auto Show, the Extra Car is sitting on a Fiat 500e chassis, with an all-electric powertrain offering 100 miles of range and a healthy 147 pound-feet of torque — enough to let a human-sized Barbie Extra and her pets, accessories, etc. zoom around town. At the same time, Mattel used CAD files to duplicate the body of the toy car precisely and scale it up in foam to fit on the Fiat undercarriage.
Some of those details include sparkly silver paint and wing-shaped doors. The 20- and 22-inch (front/rear) pink and rainbow-hued wheels were apparently 3D-printed and hand painted. The headlights are gold and star shaped, which, nice touch. Sure, the whole affair is designed to promote Mattel's lineup of Barbie Extra dolls and accessories, but it should make the auto show a bit more accessible for kids.
Cher Scarlett, one of the lead organizers of the #AppleToo movement, is leaving the company on Friday. Scarlett was the face of the movement and connected with workers with grievances to air via Apple's Slack channels and on social media. The former Apple security engineer was also one of the workers who filed a complaint against the tech giant with the National Labor Relations Board, accusing the company of suppressing workers' organizing efforts and interfering with surveys involving gender pay equity.
According to Bloomberg, Scarlett reached a settlement with the iPhonemaker regarding the NLRB complaint and has already requested a withdrawal. She didn't divulge the details of the settlement, but her lawyer Alek Felstiner, told Bloomberg News: "The matter was settled privately and the request for withdrawal is pending before the board. We hope the crucial organizing work at Apple will continue."
Friday is my last day at Apple.
I’m taking a bit of time to decide where I’d like to go next, and will announce when I’ve made that decision.
It's unclear what will happen to the #AppleToo movement with Scarlett's departure. Its website, which publishes workplace stories from Apple employees and workers, hasn't had an update over the past 10 days. That said, Scarlett isn't the only face of the movement. Most of the posts on the website are by Janneke Parrish, the other #AppleToo lead organizer who was fired by the company back in October. Apple fired its former program manager for allegedly sharing private information, something that Parrish denies. When details of a company meeting were leaked to the press, Apple investigated Parrish and confiscated her work devices. She deleted some apps and work information before doing so, which Apple interpreted as being noncompliant with its investigation.
Aside from Scarlett, former Apple senior engineering program manager Ashley Gjøvik also filed a complaint with the NLRB. She said she spent months talking to Apple about unsafe working conditions and sexism in the workplace and was put on indefinite paid administrative leave after raising her concerns. Apple fired Gjøvik in September.
The following only contains slight spoilers for the first episode of season four of 'Star Trek: Discovery.'
Since its debut back in 2017 (and even before then, really), Star Trek: Discovery has been a divisive show. There was a long laundry list of complaints: the series is too dark, everyone is mean, everyone cries too much, the Klingon designs suck, it shouldn’t be set before the original series, Michael Burnham is an unlikeable main character. While some changes have been made to the show over the years to smooth these rough edges, the elevation of Michael Burnham to the captain’s chair for season four has made it clear that Discovery is still largely going to do its own thing, regardless of what the fandom thinks.
In the past, season four for Star Trek series has always been a turning point, the moment when a show finally figures out what it wants to be. Season four of The Next Generation started with the riveting “The Best of Both Worlds,” and produced a number of classic episodes like “Family,” “Clues” and “The Drumhead.” Deep Space Nine added Worf to its crew in its fourth year, while Voyager got Seven of Nine. Enterprise’s final season is generally considered its best. So fans were curious to see if the pattern would continue in the Kurtzman era of Trek.
Things certainly looked promising at the end of last season. The crew of Discovery had jumped 900 years into the future, to a galaxy where dilithium fuel for space travel was in short supply and the Federation was in tatters thanks to an event known as “The Burn.” Burnham and the rest of the Discovery crew figured out the source of the disaster and solved the problem in last year’s finale, opening the doors to a show dedicated to rebuilding the Federation and its ideals. After three seasons of war, it finally looked like the USS Discovery could finally get down to Starfleet’s long-stated mandates of science and exploration.
Season four begins five months after the previous episode, with the Federation now in high gear reaching out to old members and allies. That’s where we join the USS Discovery, as Burnham and Cleveland Booker are attempting to give a shipment of dilithium to a species new to the Star Trek audience. The mission quickly goes awry, strongly reminiscent of the madcap opening of Star Trek Into Darkness.
CBS
The parallels to the weakest of the three Abrams-era films are not entirely an accident or even a homage: both Into Darkness and this week’s season premiere were co-penned by Star Trek head Alex Kurtzman. They exhibit some of the excesses of modern Trek like an emphasis on frantic action and quippy dialogue — at least there’s less lens flare this time around. And everyone seems to be in a good mood, a contrast to when everyone was just worn down in the 23rd century by years of war and secret experiments.
The season opener is largely dedicated to showing off a new optimistic status quo, with Starfleet Academy being reestablished, Booker traveling to attend his nephew’s coming-of-age ritual and a new Federation president getting sworn in. It all seems rather staid, but Star Trek has always had its share of pomp and circumstance so it was actually a nice change of pace for the program. But things do go awry when the Discovery is tasked with rescuing a station crew and have to make a few hard choices, thus the title of the episode: “Kobayashi Maru.”
CBS
For those unfamiliar with Star Trek lore, the Kobayashi Maru is a test that all command-track cadets must take at Starfleet Academy. In the simulation, the cadets are faced with the choice of rescuing a ship stranded in enemy territory. To cross the border to rescue the craft is to risk war, but to preserve peace means to consign that crew to death. It’s been called a “no win” scenario,” and the Academy is interested in how a cadet reacts to it rather than the actual outcome. Kirk is known as the only person to have actually beaten it, because he reprogrammed the scenario; he cheated.
Like Kirk, Michael Burnham also doesn’t believe in the no-win scenario. She always does what she feels is best, and it’s made her crew unfailingly loyal to her over the past few seasons. But it’s earned her a share of detractors off-screen, because Burnham often disobeys orders and ignores good advice. She’s the rebel cop who plays by their own rules. Except this is Star Trek, a franchise about teamwork. Michael’s actions — and the fact that they always succeed — often undermine her superiors and even her own crewmates.
CBS
Placing her in the captain’s chair should have alleviated some of this issue, since Burnham is now the one her crew has to listen to. But even then the show felt it needed some sort of conflict, bringing the Federation president along to question Michael’s judgment in front of her crew. I couldn’t help but be reminded of how before the show aired, the producers and writers were bragging about how they were going to break one of Gene Roddenberry’s key rules for the series: No inter-crew conflict. Watching that in action in this episode, however, was mildly uncomfortable and even a little embarrassing to see.
Not everything is rosy by the end of the adventure, but it’s still a better outcome than we’ve seen at the end of many Star Trek outings. But the new “happy” status quo is thrown out the door by an anomaly at the end of the episode. As seen in previews, this anomaly will be an ongoing concern for the USS Discovery and the entire Federation — not just as a threat to life, but as a threat to the Federation’s efforts to pull itself back together.
CBS
Unfortunately, this also means that Discovery won’t be doing a lot of discovering in its fourth season. Fans who love “planet of the week” adventures and were hoping for the show to embrace that format will come away disappointed for now. However, while episodes one and two are involved in setup for the ongoing anomaly plot line, episodes three and four still make room for some vaguely one-shot adventures, albeit ones designed to further character development.
But while Discovery doesn’t seem all that interested in changing how it does things, the environment around it has changed. It’s no longer the only Star Trek show on TV, thanks to the premieres of Picard and Lower Decks in 2020, last month’s kid-oriented Prodigy and the debut of Strange New Worlds next year. All of these shows tackle the Star Trek universe in their own way, and are not required viewing to understand what’s happening in other shows (though there are some references to Picard in the first episodes of Discovery). Viewers can choose the Trek that suits them best, removing the pressure from Discovery to be all things to all fans and making it even easier to just do its own thing.
