It’s been a long time coming, but if you depend on the Electrify America mobile app to find nearby charging stations, you can soon access the software through your vehicle’s Android Auto or CarPlay infotainment system. Electrify America announced today it's rolling out support for both systems this week.

The software allows you to find the location of all the approximately 650 charging stations the company operates across the US. You can also see details about each station, including the availability of individual chargers and their capacity. Once you’re at a station, you can then use the software to remotely start and stop a charging session.

While it’s something of a head-scratcher it took Electrify America until 2021 to offer Android Auto and CarPlay support, that functionality is at least now in place as the company works toward nearly tripling its network by the end of 2025. Critically, it’s also another way Electrify America needed to catch up to Tesla. The automaker’s Trip Planner, which you can access through your car’s touchscreen display, will route you to Supercharger locations that are on the way to your next destination.

Apple thinks it might have a simple way to attract wary publishers to Apple News — give them a larger slice of app sales. TechCrunchreports that Apple has launched a News Partner Program that lowers the tech firm's cut of App Store subscriptions from 30 percent to 15 percent "from day one" if qualified publishers provide their content in the Apple News Format. Outlets previously had to wait until an app's second year on the App Store before Apple's share dropped to 15 percent.

The apps themselves have to deliver "original, professionally authored" news and, unsurprisingly, allow auto-renewing subscriptions through the App Store. If a publisher isn't located in one of Apple News' existing markets (currently the US, UK, Australia and Canada), it can still qualify for the program by providing an RSS news feed.

The move could satisfy publishers that avoided Apple's in-app subscription system, if not the App Store entirely, due to the 30 percent initial cut. You might see more publications on Apple News (if not necessarily News+) as a result. However, it's not clear if antitrust regulators will be thrilled. The program does show that Apple can be more flexible with App Store fees, but it's also an incentive for publishers to dive deeper into Apple's ecosystem.

The GoPro Quik app is getting a bit more useful for subscribers. GoPro is giving them unlimited cloud backups at no extra cost. What's more, the app can back up photos and videos at full source quality.

The mural feature is designed to showcase your favorite memories and maybe free up some space on your phone. Not only can you send captures from your GoPro to the cloud, the app lets you save images and videos from anywhere on your device, including your camera roll, using the share sheet. The latest version of the Android app now includes limited mural storage, and the upgrade is coming to iOS soon.

Being able to upload unlimited images and videos at full quality is a solid improvement for GoPro Quik subscribers. At $2/month or $10/year, it might prove a more attractive storage option than Google One or iCloud. Those service's plans each scale up to $10/month for 2TB of storage. Google Photos ended free unlimited storage in June. You might even use GoPro Quik as a secondary, low-cost backup option for all of your photos and videos.

GoPro merged its namesake app with Quik earlier this year. Mural organizes photos and videos into events and the app can automatically generate highlight videos for you. There are editing tools for your images and videos, filters and access to royalty-free music tracks.

HP, the world’s second-largest PC vendor by market share, says that the new Pavilion Aero 13 is designed for Generation Z. Youthful, vibrant post-teens who love entertainment, communication and — COVID notwithstanding — travel. It’s ironic, then, that when you examine this machine from that perspective, it becomes a less attractive proposition. This is actually a pretty nice laptop, but I doubt it’s top on any Zoomer’s wish list.

Hardware

Daniel Cooper

The focus here is on making a machine that is as thin and light as possible while still offering a decent amount of power and connectivity. Weighing 2.2 pounds, about the same as the 14-inch LG Gram, the Aero is HP’s first low-end machine to pack a taller 16:10 display. It carries a pair of USB-A ports with kick-out covers, HDMI-out and a single USB-C socket alongside a 3.5mm audio jack and the barrel power connector. I’m still torn over the throwback power connector, which on one hand is acceptable and cost-effective, but, again, does your average Gen-Zer not want to minimize the number of chunky charging plugs they’re carrying around?

Build quality is solid, with no flex or creaks when you hold it open with one hand and wave it around. The one place where I’ll take marks off is in the display hinge, which is designed to push the laptop deck up off the table like ASUS’ ZenBook. It just feels a little bit less sturdy than you might expect, which you’ll need to be mindful of if you rest your weight too much on the front of your hands. The malleability of that hinge feels just weak enough to make me paranoid.

Keyboard and trackpad

Daniel Cooper

The Pavilion Aero 13’s keyboard is well-engineered and satisfying, with a fair level of travel and a good hit at the end of your press. Interestingly, you need to pony up extra for a model with backlighting, which is either miserly or smart cost-cutting, depending on your perspective. It may not be the same quality as HP’s higher-priced laptops but it’s certainly not a chore to write with.

Except for, and I am being needlessly grouchy here, HP’s inclusion of a function row along the rightmost side of the keyboard. Most 13-inch laptops, for obvious reasons, try to cut down on superfluous keys that you may only find on more spacious models. And that’s fine, because it’s rare that I ever find myself needing to use Home/Pg Up/Pg Down/End when I have other keyboard shortcuts (and, you know, a trackpad) available.

I get why HP insists on using them here, but it means that you’ll have a learning curve when coming off pretty much every other laptop in this class. And, if I were king, I would have opted for a standard layout with more breathing room, not to mention full-size up/down keys with more space around them. After more than a week using this thing, I’m still hitting the home key instead of backspace, dramatically slowing my typing speed, much to my frustration.

As for the trackpad, it’s bigger than on the 2020 model that this replaces, and has a decent click with tolerable accuracy. The lack of a touchscreen on this laptop isn’t, in my opinion, a huge issue given its size and class, so long as the trackpad is solid. And this trackpad is very much that, and there’s not much else to say about it as a consequence.

Display, sound and webcam

Daniel Cooper

This machine carries a 13.3-inch HD display, although because of its 16:10 ratio, that 1,920 x 1,200 resolution is actually WUXGA. I don’t think anyone would need a 4K display on a machine like this, but you can configure it with a WQXGA (2,560 x 1,600) screen should you need to. The 400-nit panel can balance any strong summer light, and the matte screen means that you avoid a lot of glare.

The downward-firing B&O-branded speakers hidden under the edges of the laptop deck provide acceptable audio. They sound a little better than on some ultrabooks I could mention, but it’s still thin and reedy, with tinny equalization presets and nonexistent bass. This is audio you can put up with rather than enjoy during all of those Netflix and Chill sessions where you actually watch Netflix and Chill.

Daniel Cooper

Perhaps I’ve been reviewing too many laptops of late that have some sort of webcam shutter, but the omission here surprises me. The HP WideVision 720p HD camera is at least sharp enough that people can see your face properly when you’re using it. Even better, it handles most light well enough that blow-outs are occasional rather than ever-present, which is good considering how much we all need to Zoom each other right now.

Software

One thing to note is that HP pre-installs a number of apps onto its laptops, including McAfee, LastPass and ExpressVPN. This means you’ll start getting pop-ups after installing Chrome, telling you that plugins are about to be installed. That I think this is an unacceptable thing to happen, even for a relatively low-cost laptop, should go without saying.

Performance and battery life

Both Intel and AMD have made enormous strides toward integrated graphics units that don’t suck. This is thunderingly relevant in the ultrabook market where thinness and portability are prized over pretty much everything else. After all, even a few years ago you couldn’t have done much more on a machine of this class beyond mash the odd spreadsheet. Now you can expect passable, even quite pleasant performance on a wide variety of tasks, from intensive Chrome browsing to video games.

The model that HP sent to reviewers retails for $999, and includes AMD’s Ryzen 5800U with Radeon Integrated Graphics, which packs 512MB of dedicated DDR4 VRAM. Rounding out the spec list is 16GB of RAM and a 512GB SSD, which sits on the higher end of what you can expect to get for this sort of money. Certainly, the benchmarks make this thing look a lot less powerful, but I suspect the Aero simply isn’t set up for intensive gaming. It’s worth saying that even the fan noise isn’t that aggressive under heavy load, too.

That said, I was able to play Fortnite pretty smoothly on this machine with the graphics set to Medium, and an evening’s marathon session of Two Point Hospital passed without comment. Certainly, if you are happy with undemanding titles, you’ll be able to squeeze a lot of fun from this machine. GTA V’s benchmarking tool was able to produce a fairly consistent 30fps, and if you dial down all of the visuals, you can get this running fast enough to play in a pinch.

Battery life is similarly resilient, with this machine clocking in at 9 hours and 43 minutes in our standard rundown test. When untethered from power, I didn’t feel any nagging urgency to head back to a socket while using this thing, and you should expect this to last for the length of your working day. And, to be honest, if this had conked out any sooner I would be screaming from the rooftops about it, since the whole point of an ultraportable is, after all, to be portable.

Price and the competition

Daniel Cooper

As I said, the model I’m testing costs $999. That’s a fair price, especially if you try to configure a similar spec list with some rival machines in the same category. There are some alternatives, and if your priority is a slender, lightweight machine, then LG’s Gram 14 can be picked up for $799.99. It has a 14-inch WUXGA display and weighs 2.2 pounds. Sadly, its specs fall far short of HP’s offering, with an Intel Core i3-1115G4, 8GB RAM and a 256GB SSD. You could also opt for ASUS’ ZenBook 13 OLED, which packs a Ryzen 7 5700U, 8GB RAM, a 512GB SSD and an OLED display for $899.99.

If you’re feeling picky, you could do worse than to wait for more AMD-toting laptops to enter retail channels in the near future. I expect that we’ll see models similar to Lenovo’s ThinkPad X13 and Acer’s Spin 3 with comparable internals coming very soon. At which point, you should have your pick of any number of high-quality machines that can do jobs similar to this one.

Wrap-up

Daniel Cooper

This isn’t a fair comparison at all, but in my head I keep thinking about Dell’s XPS 13 which, for many people, is either the gold-standard ultrabook, or in the top three. And, right now, that on both specs and price, the Pavilion Aero 13 is a more compelling choice. When you look at the base model XPS 13, which starts $1,019.99, the only thing that HP loses out on is aesthetics. In almost every other regard, I’d much rather have this Pavilion Aero than the XPS and that, to me, is wild.

I think the Pavilion Aero 13 is a very good machine, with a solid thin-and-light body and performance that punches well above its weight. For some people, the 5800U running the show is enough of a reason to buy one of these that everything else is broadly immaterial. Do I wish it was priced a little more aggressively? Yes, because I could forgive the learning curve with the keyboard if it was a hundred bucks cheaper. Despite the keyboard and sound, though, it’s a good machine for folks who want a little bit of everything.

Tesla is rolling out a major update for its iOS smartphone app with new controls, improved management and cool visuals. Version 4.0 also gives you the choice between two different sized widgets for your iPhone home screen. As detailed by Tesla Software Updates, both feature the same information: the name of the car, battery percentage, location (or charging info), unlock status, an image of the vehicle and the time the information was last updated. Tesla previously had a "Today" extension for iOS that was nowhere near as comprehensive as the new widgets. 

In terms of controls, you can send commands to your car immediately upon opening the app, instead of waiting for the vehicle to wake up. There's also enhanced phone key support that essentially lets you unlock multiple Teslas.

An updated visual that should be immediately noticeable is the new 3D vehicle render. There are also new animations when you charge your car and in the climate and controls sections. Design-wise, Tesla has ditched the charging section and now displays that info when your car is plugged in. You can also view Supercharging history from within the app. While the speed limit, valet mode and sentry mode settings have been moved to a new category titled Security, which includes tips on how to use the Bluetooth, phone key and location services.

To sum up, this is the biggest update to the EV maker's iOS app in a while. Recently, Tesla has mainly focused on providing bug fixes and improvements, outside of the introduction of Virtual Power Plant enrolment in July.

Google's YouTube Music app for Wear OS is now live, a few months after the tech giant promised to release one for the platform. That certainly sounds like great news for users who've been waiting for it after Google retired Play Music for Wear OS in 2020. The bad news is, as noted by 9to5Google, it only currently works on Google's Wear OS 3 platform. Samsung's Galaxy Watch 4 and Galaxy Watch 4 Classic wearables, which will be available on August 27th, will be the only devices that will be running the OS in the foreseeable future. 

The company killed off the Play Music app for Wear OS watches back in August 2020, weeks before it completely shut the service down in favor of YouTube Music. It quickly released a YouTube Music app for the Apple Watch, but Wear OS users have had to wait for their turn. And, based on what we know now, they may have to continue waiting, unless they're set to get Samsung's new smartwatches tomorrow. In comparison, Spotify's Wear OS app works even on older smartwatches and can be used to stream and download music.

In addition to extremely limited compatibility, the app can't actually be used to stream music. According to 9to5Google's hands-on experience, users will only be able to download tracks on the app. Further, the phone must be plugged in to be able to download anything. For those not bothered by all those limitations and will soon have access to a Galaxy Watch 4, the app is now available on Google Play.

To say that Facebook's Project Aria AR glasses were never meant for consumers would be an understatement. Facebook does not even consider them a prototype. And they are not, and may never be, available for purchase. Rather, Facebook has always described them as a way for its employees to study and test augmented reality tech. 

Though Facebook's announcement at the time made clear the company's intentions, it was light on details about how the glasses would actually work. Now, nearly a year after the initial launch, a series of regulatory documents are giving us a belated first peek inside. In a user manual first reported by Protocol, we learn that this specific device goes by the codename Gemini EVT, with EVT being an abbreviation for "engineering valuation test." 

As you might expect, given the stated purpose of the device, there is no visual AR component. Meaning, there's no built-in display for viewing 3D image overlays. Again, the glasses in their early form really do exist just for this small team of engineers to collect data.

Not that you can buy one but if you could, the glasses would also support prescription lenses, the manual reveals.

Additionally, the manual indicates there's a proximity sensor on the inner temple, along with four cameras that can capture both video and still photos. Interestingly, Facebook used the same camera sensors here that it did on the Oculus Quest 2 headset, our review of which we published the same day in September last year that Facebook announced Project Aria. Given the timing, it may just be those sensors were the most readily available to Facebook.

Also inside is a Qualcomm chipset, with a modified version of Android powering the software experience. Charging happens via a USB cable, which attached magnetically to the glasses.

The user experience seems simple, as far as we can tell. There are shutter and power buttons, plus a mute switch that "toggles privacy mode on/off." When a recording is in progress, a series of LEDs help passerby understand that the camera is on. Meanwhile, there's a companion iOS app called Ariane that handles the basics: device setup, scanning for WiFi networks, showing the battery status and uploading what data the sensors have collected. It's unclear, however, if there is also an Android version of the app that exists, or is in the works. Again, not that you'd be able to download it either way.

We're not sure who or how many people use Microsoft Office on a Chromebook but if that's you, you're in for a downgraded experience. Microsoft will soon kill its Office app for Android on Chrome OS, the company confirmed Wednesday to About Chromebooks. The app will leave the Google Play Store on September 18th, at which point users will need to sign in through the web via Office.com or Outlook.com. As 9to5Google notes, the Office app will still be available on Android phones, even as it vanishes from Chrome OS.

Though signing in via the web app should work in a pinch, it's clearly an inferior experience to what the Android app has offered until now, not to mention what Google's G Suite can do on its native Google-controlled platform. In particular, be warned that the web app offers almost no offline access, something users have enjoyed on the Google Play Store version. 

It's unclear why Microsoft is making this change, except that the company described the move in a statement to About Chromebooks as an "effort to provide the most optimized experience for Chrome OS/Chromebook customers." Whatever the intention, this is likely to give Chromebook users another reason to give the G Suite a try, if they haven't already. Or hey, perhaps they'll ditch their Chromebooks and download the Android app on Windows 11.

Following a meeting with President Joe Biden today, Google and Microsoft promised to invest a total of $30 billion in cybersecurity advancements over the next five years. Google pledged $10 billion, while Microsoft pledged $20 billion. 

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said on Twitter that $150 million of that money will be used to expand Microsoft's training network and help US government agencies upgrade their digital security systems. The White House described that particular investment as follows: "Microsoft ... will immediately make available $150 million in technical services to help federal, state, and local governments with upgrading security protection, and will expand partnerships with community colleges and non-profits for cybersecurity training."

Google, meanwhile, will focus on extending the zero-trust security model, securing the software supply chain, building out open-source security, and offering more training opportunities to Americans. Specifically, Google said it will help 100,000 Americans over the next three years earn Google Career Certificates in cybersecurity fields.

Today, President Biden met with technology companies and cybersecurity thought leaders to discuss threats like the recent SolarWinds attack and how the US can better defend its digital systems. In addition to Google and Microsoft's financial infusion, Apple will establish new, widespread supply-chain protocols in the name of tighter security, and Amazon will offer its internal cybersecurity training to the public at no charge. Other organizations, including IBM, Girls Who Code and Code.org, made plans to expand cybersecurity defenses across government, society and industry.

It was unclear what would actually shake out of today's White House cybersecurity meeting, and $30 billion (and then some) certainly isn't a bad place to start.

Audio-Technica has pulled back the curtain on its latest set of budget headphones. The $59 ATH-S220BT offers a decent set of features for the price, including a battery life that offers up to 60 hours of use on a single charge, according to the company. You'll be able to add up to 3.5 hours of listening time with just 10 minutes of USB-C charging, Audio-Technica says.

The Bluetooth 5.0 headphones have 40mm drivers, which, Audio-Technica claims, deliver low-latency audio. You can also plug them in using an included 3.5mm cable, which has an in-line mic and controls.

The ATH-S220BT can connect to two Bluetooth devices simultaneously for fast switching between tasks. There's a built-in microphone, earcup controls and Google Fast Pair support for Android devices. Along with Siri and Google Assistant compatibility, there's a "voice guidance" function, which can provide info on the current battery level, pairing status and more.

Audio-Technica

Although the headphones lack higher-end features such as active noise cancellation, they seem worth a look if you're in the market for a budget set, even if the audio quality turns out to be just fine (Audio-Technica says they deliver "excellent sound quality"). They're lightweight too, at just 6.3 ounces or 180 grams.

The ATH-S220BT is available now in a number of color options. You can pick them up in black with dark-gray accents, navy with beige earpads and headband or white with a black trim.