Peripheral-maker 8BitDo is best known for its retro-inspired wireless controllers, but for its latest release, the company has come out with a pair of officially licensed media remotes for the Xbox Series X, Series S and Xbox One. Spotted by The Verge, the two remotes cost $19.99 and $24.99, with the more expensive model featuring an additional numpad. The "Long Edition" also comes in black instead of white.
Outside of those differences, the two remotes are nearly identical. Both include a dedicated Home button, allowing you to use them to wake your Xbox. You'll also find playback and navigation controls, as well as a set of A, B, X and Y keys for navigating menus. You'll need two AAA batteries to power the remotes, though both come with a complimentary pair included in the box. Another nice touch is that all the buttons feature backlighting.
Of course, 8BitDo isn't the only company that offers a media remote for Microsoft's Xbox consoles. A company called PDP makes one that a lot of Amazon customers seem to like. It's also possible to use an older Xbox One remote with the Series X and Series S. Still, if you're in the market for a media remote, 8BitDo's new models look like they're a compelling option, thanks to their reasonable price and comprehensive key layout. You can pre-order both remotes starting today, with initial orders expected to ship out on September 15th.
Rick Osterloh casually dropped his laptop onto the couch and leaned back, satisfied. It’s not a mic, but the effect is about the same. Google’s chief of hardware had just shown me a demo of the company’s latest feature: computational processing for video that will debut on the Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro. The feature was only possible with Google’s own mobile processor, which it’s announcing today.
He’s understandably proud and excited to share the news. The chip is called Tensor, and it’s the first system-on-chip (SoC) designed by Google. The company has “been at this about five years,” he said, though CEO Sundar Pichai wrote in a statement that Tensor “has been four years in the making and builds off of two decades of Google’s computing experience.”
That software expertise is something Google has come to be known for. It led the way in computational photography with its Night Sight mode for low light shots, and weirded out the world with how successfully its conversational AI Duplex was able to mimic human speech — right down to the “ums and ahs.” Tensor both leverages Google’s machine learning prowess and enables the company to bring AI experiences to smartphones that it couldn’t before.
Holding a diet Coke in one hand and gesturing animatedly with the other, Osterloh threw around hyperbolic marketing language like “We’re transforming the computing experience” and “It’ll be what we consider to be a pretty dramatic transformation overall.”
Google
He’s alluding to Tensor enabling experiences that previous chips (the company’s mostly used Qualcomm’s Snapdragon processors in its prior phones) couldn’t deliver. Things like being able to run multiple AI-intensive tasks simultaneously without a phone overheating, or having enough power to apply computational processing to videos as they’re being captured.
That belief in Tensor’s significance is part of why Google chose to announce it today ahead of the Pixel 6’s actual launch in the fall. The company isn’t giving away all the details about the processor yet, nor is it sharing specific information about its latest flagships now. But “there's a lot of new stuff here, and we wanted to make sure people had context,” Osterloh said. “We think it’s a really big change, so that’s why we want to start early.”
Thanks to those leaks, though, we’ve heard plenty of rumors about Google’s efforts to make its own mobile processor for a while, under the code name Project Whitechapel. While the company won’t publicly discuss code names, it’s clear that work on Tensor has been going on for a long time.
The chip’s name is an obvious nod to the company’s open-source platform for machine learning, TensorFlow, Osterloh said, and that should tell you how big a role AI plays in this processor. Though Google isn’t ready to share the full details about Tensor yet, Osterloh did explain that the SoC is an ARM chip designed around a TPU, or Tensor Processing Unit. The mobile chip was co-designed with Google’s AI researchers and the TPU is based on their larger versions in the company’s data centers.
Google
It’s not just designed to speed up machine learning tasks on your phone, either. Osterloh said they’ve also redesigned the image signal processor, or ISP. Specifically, he said there are a “few points in the ISP where we can actually insert machine learning, which is new.”
Google also reconstructed the memory architecture to make it easier to access RAM, and allow for data manipulation while processing images. There are also a few places where Osterloh said they’ve directly encoded their image processing algorithms into the hardware. He says this allows Google to do “stuff that was previously impossible to do on standard SoCs,” though he didn’t share specific details on what Tensor now enables that previous SoCs couldn’t.
Of course, with this being Google’s first mobile chip, Osterloh concedes people might see the company as unproven. Though he did push back by saying, “I think people are pretty aware of Google’s overall capability.”
It’s natural to wonder if the company can compete in areas like power efficiency and heat management. Osterloh said they’ve designed Tensor to perform some tasks more power efficiently than previous processors they’ve used while staying within a thermal threshold. Similar to existing processors, Osterloh said “the system has a bunch of different subsystems, [and] we can use the most power efficient element of it for the task at hand.”
Google
Though there’s an ongoing global chip shortage, Osterloh is confident that Google can manage demand. “Everyone’s affected by this, no doubt,” he said. “The positive thing about this is it’s under our control, we’re making this and we’re responsible for it. So we think we should be okay.”
Why make Tensor?
So what can Tensor do that other mobile processors can’t? Google is saving most of the juicy bits for the Pixel 6’s launch in the fall. But, it did offer two examples of areas that would see dramatic improvement: Photography and voice recognition (and processing). At our meeting, Osterloh showed off some demos of new Tensor-enabled features on the Pixel 6 and 6 Pro, which also gives us our first look at the phones. The handsets feature a distinctive new look and bright color options. They also have a horizontal camera bump that spans the width of the rear, which is “a very intentional part of the design,” Osterloh notes. "We’ve really been known for photography, [so] we wanted to really emphasize this.”
Google’s upgraded the cameras themselves, but the promised photography improvements aren’t just from optical hardware. Tensor is behind some of it. With previous chips, the company kept running into limits when trying to improve photography on its phones. “These weren’t designed for machine learning, or AI, and certainly not designed to optimize for where Google’s headed,” he said.
Google
So where is Google headed? Towards a world of “ambient computing,” a vision that Osterloh and many of his colleagues have touted in the past. They see a future where all the devices and sensors we’re surrounded by can communicate with Google (sometimes via the Assistant) or the internet. But Osterloh knows that for most people, the most important device is still going to be the smartphone. “We see the mobile phone as the center of that.”
So when Google wanted to improve beyond the limits of contemporary processors, it had to do something different. “What we've done in the past, when we encountered these kinds of engineering, constraints and technical constraints, is we take on the problem ourselves,” Osterloh said.
Upgrading photo and video processing
With Tensor, the Pixel 6 can do things like concurrently capture images from two sensors, with the main one recording at normal exposure and the wide-angle running at a much faster shutter speed. Osterloh said the system runs a number of different machine learning models in real time to help figure out stuff about the scene, like whether there’s a face and is the device moving or shaking. The Pixel 6 will then combine all that info and use it to process photos so that if you’re trying to capture a hyperactive puppy or toddler, you’ll be less likely to get a blurry shot.
Tensor will also let Google perform computationally intensive tasks while you’re shooting video. Osterloh said that in the past the company hasn’t been able to apply a lot of machine learning to video, since it would be too taxing for a phone processor. But “that all changes with Tensor,” he said. One thing they’ve been able to run is an HDRnet model on videos, which drastically improves quality in tricky situations like when the camera is pointing at the sun.
Osterloh showed me demos of how the Pixel 6 did both these things, including a before-and-after example of a blurry photo of an active child and video comparisons of a campground at sunset. While there was a clear difference, I unfortunately can’t show you the results. Besides, these were controlled demos from Google. I can’t really gauge how impressive and useful these features are until we get to test them in the real world.
Improvements in voice and speech
I did get to see a more telling preview, though. Osterloh also showed me how voice dictation will work in the Pixel 6 on GBoard. On the upcoming phone, you’ll be able to hit the microphone button in the compose field, narrate your message and use hotwords like “Send” or “Clear” to trigger actions. You can also edit typos via the onscreen keyboard while the mic is still listening for your dictation.
This all works via a new Speech On Device API, and I was impressed that the system was smart enough to distinguish between when you say “Send” in “I will send the kids to school” versus when you’re telling it to send the message. Osterloh told me the algorithm is looking not just for the hotword but also your tone of voice and delivery before it triggers the action.
Finally, there are a couple more things that Osterloh showed me: Live Caption with Translate, as well as Android 12’s Material You design. Thanks to Tensor, Android’s Live Caption feature, which provides subtitles for anything playing through your device’s sound system, will be able to translate what’s being said in real time as well. This all happens on device, so the next time you’re watching a foreign-language TED Talk or your favorite international TV show, it won’t matter if they don’t have subtitles — Tensor will provide.
Google
A look at Material You
Meanwhile, Material You, which Google first unveiled at I/O this year, is what Osterloh called the biggest UI change in Android maybe since the beginning. I’ve been waiting to see the feature in the Android 12 public beta, but it’s still not available there. At our meeting, Osterloh showed me how it works — he changed the wallpaper of a Pixel 6 from something more rosy hued to a scene of a body of water, and the system’s icons and highlights quickly updated to match. App icons were painted to match as well, but something new I learned from this demo was that if you’re like me and prefer your icons to keep their original colors, you can opt to leave them untouched.
We’ve gotten a really good look at what’s coming in the fall, though Google is still keeping plenty of details under wraps. We don’t know yet if it plans to say if it had help from other manufacturers in coming up with Tensor, and details about CPU and GPU cores, clock speeds and other components will be shared later this year. But with the new chip, Google’s been able to realize a years-long dream.
“We kind of see this as The Google Phone,” he said. “This is what we set out to build several years ago and we’re finally here.”
Smartphone launch season is typically in the fall, but Google has unexpectedly early news to share today. The company just announced that not only is the Pixel 6 coming this fall, but it’ll feature the very first system-on-chip designed by Google. The chip is called Tensor and it leverages the company’s AI expertise to enable more powerful and better integrated machine learning on devices. At a demo event to show off Tensor’s prowess, I was able to check out the Pixel 6 with the company’s chief of hardware Rick Osterloh. I wasn’t allowed to take pictures or video, and Google hasn’t shared all of the phones’ specs, but I can tell you about a few new features.
First, there will be two lines: Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro. Google hasn’t shared the actual dimensions yet, but the Pro, which is larger, felt similar in size to a Galaxy Note 20 Ultra. They both look like the leaked renders we’ve seen, except shinier and three-dimensional. There’s a band about an inch tall on the rear in black, lime green or peachy red, and below that sits a horizontal camera bump that stretches across the case. According to Google's blog post, the sensors and lenses were improved and "are now too big to fit into the traditional square."
Yes, when you place the Pixel 6 on a table there’s still a slope because of the bar, but since it’s not off to a corner like on prior Pixels (or Galaxy phones or iPhones), the phone won’t wobble from side to side. The rest of the back is black, pastel green or pastel peach correspondingly.
For the Pro line, the colors are more subtle with less contrast between the sections, but they have what Osterloh called “high gloss metal accents” along the edges. The camera bump also gets this shiny treatment on the Pros, which come in black, white and sort of a light orange. The regular Pixel 6 has a matte finish on its sides. All the phones I saw appeared to have glass on their backs, with screens that are slightly curved along the edges. Google also moved the selfie camera from the top left corner to the middle of the display.
Google
I loved the peachy pastel version of the Pixel 6, though the mostly black version would suit those who prefer something less flashy. (Google doesn’t have names for the colors yet, though Osterloh said their marketing team has fun with them.)
More importantly, Google’s upgraded the cameras themselves. It’s not sharing specific megapixel or sensor size information yet, but did say these are sharper and larger sensors than before. Osterloh said the Pixel 6’s main camera will let in about 150% more light than previous Pixels. There’s also an ultrawide lens for both models, and the Pro gets an extra telephoto option as well with 4x optical zoom.
In addition to the actual camera hardware improvements, the Pixel 6s promise better photo processing thanks to Tensor. At our meeting, Osterloh highlighted changes coming in how Google will process images and videos for clearer, better exposed images of moving subjects. The company was also able to apply things like an HDRNet to video as it’s recording a scene to ease tricky situations like shooting a campsite with the phone pointed at the sun.
Google
Google also redesigned its speech software, with a new platform called SODA (Speech On Device API) that lets apps leverage Tensor for data-center-level speech recognition. Better yet, Osterloh said this all runs at half the power it used to on prior Pixels. He showed me a new Live Caption with Translate feature that subtitles all audio playing through your phone’s sound system. With Tensor, the device can both transcribe and translate what’s playing at the same (ish) time, without needing to use the cloud for processing.
Dictation is also getting some major upgrades. In GBoard on the Pixel 6, you’ll be able to hit the microphone button in the compose field, narrate your message and use hotwords like “Send” or “Clear” to trigger actions. You can also edit typos via the onscreen keyboard while the mic is still listening for your dictation.
We don’t have all the details on CPU and GPU cores or clock speeds, RAM and battery life yet — those will come later. But Osterloh did say Google knows “users expect to get a day’s worth of battery life,” and that it’s aiming for that mark but to also “offer them a lot more capability in that period of time.” The devices will also support 5G, which “in the US means supporting all the different bands we have here,” Osterloh said. He declined to name any brands of 5G modems, though.
Though it’s not an official launch for the Pixel 6, this preview has shown us a lot. There will be new cameras, new design, new UI (in Android 12) and a new chip, among other things. Osterloh said he’s excited about the launch. “We kind of see this as The Google Phone,” he said. “This is what we set out to build several years ago and we’re finally here.”
Klipsch's redesigned T5 II true wireless earbuds are a big improvement over the T5 that debuted in 2019. However, the company's 2020 models didn't offer active noise cancellation (ANC) and only the pricier Sport version had wireless charging. Today, Klipsch is making both of those standard features with the T5 II ANC, plus it's throwing in AI-powered features from true wireless pioneer Bragi and Dirac HD Sound. All of the additions make this model a true flagship, right down to the premium price of $299.
The T5 II ANC has the same design for both the earbuds and the case as the T5 II. The buds were retooled after the original T5 to make them more comfortable. Klipsch still includes six sets of oval silicon ear tips to help you find the best fit, but the T5 II ANC is only IPX4 rated water resistant (compared to the T5 II's IP67). Inside, the company uses a redesigned 5.8mm driver with a thinner diaphragm that it says improves sound quality across all frequencies.
Klipsch takes the audio profile a step further with some help from Dirac's HD Sound technology. Dirac is known for its "digital audio optimization," and in 2020 the company announced plans to both recalibrate your headphones and integrate its sound tech directly inside future products. For the T5 II ANC, Klipsch says HD Sound will improve staging, clarity, voice and bass while still allowing you to apply custom EQ settings at you see fit.
Another key element of the T5 II ANC are the hands-free gestures called Bragi Moves. Bragi was one of the first companies to build true wireless earbuds, long before Apple helped popularize the product category. The company's Dash line of earbuds not only worked better than many of the early options, but they were also packed with more tech: gesture controls, on-board music storage, fitness tracking, real-time translation and more. In 2019, Bragi announced that it had sold its hardware business to focus on software and AI. Klipsch is one of the first to integrate the company's gesture controls, including the ability to answer calls by nodding or to skip tracks by shaking your head. Bragi's tech will also enable Sidekicks or automated processes like turning on ANC when you listen to music or activating transparency mode when you get a call. Klipsch and Bragi said more features will be available in the future.
Klipsch T5 II ANC McLaren Edition
Klipsch
The noise-cancelling setup on the T5 II ANC employs dual microphones on each earbud (feedforward and feedback) to catch as much external distraction as possible. Like the T5, this model also includes a transparency mode so you can tune into your surroundings when needed. Klipsch promises "loud and clear" calls as well, with six beamforming microphones and automatic noise suppression.
All of those new features led to less battery life. With ANC on, Klipsch says you can muster five hours of listening on the buds themselves. That's down from eight on the T5 II and T5 II Sport. When you disable the noise-cancelling feature, the company says you can expect two more hours of use. The included case holds 21 additional hours (three full charges) and Qi-compatible wireless charging is on board.
Like it did with the T5 II Sport, Klipsch is offering a McLaren Edition of the T5 II ANC. The company is a sponsor for McLaren's Formula 1 team, so it's bringing papaya orange, carbon fiber and a tire tread pattern from the track to your earbuds. This special version carries all of the same features of the regular T5 II ANC, but it comes with a wireless charging pad and it's equipped with NuCurrent charging tech. Klipsch says this feature combined with the McLaren Edition case "will charge twice as fast as anything else on the market." Racing fans will have to pony up an extra $50 though: the special edition is $349.
If you've been eyeing Apple's latest Mac Mini as your next desktop, now is the time to act. You can currently get the 512GB model for $799 at Amazon, or $100 off the normal $899 price. The deal brings the desktop down to just below the record low we saw in March and April. It also means you're only paying $100 more for double the storage of the $699 base model.
That should come in handy if you plan to take full advantage of the Mac Mini's M1 chip. As we've previouslynoted, Apple's in-house silicon is a powerhouse that makes quick work of most tasks, be it browsing bloated websites or opening creative editing software. Inside the desktop, you'll find an 8-core CPU with four performance cores and four efficiency cores and a 16-core Neural Engine. Unlike with the iMac, you'll also need your own display and peripherals like a keyboard and mouse.
There are a few caveats, however. The Mac Mini's RAM and storage aren't upgradeable and the two rear Thunderbolt ports won't please those who need extra monitors and faster connectivity. Apple also offers 16GB unified memory, up to 2TB SSD storage and 10 Gigabit Ethernet support at a cost. In fact, the true top-of-the line Mac Mini will set you back $1,799. Saying that, the specs available on this deal model should please most casual users.
Follow @EngadgetDeals on Twitter for the latest tech deals and buying advice.
In a bid to boost YouTube Premium sign-ups, Google has offered everything from free hardware to access to unique features. Now, it's going back to basics. The company is testing a lower-priced subscription plan in parts of Europe that gives you ad-free viewing without offline downloads, YouTube Music and background playback. A Resetera user first spotted the new YouTube Premium Lite tier in Netherlands, Finland and Sweden while trying to cancel the paid-for service.
The plan costs €6.99 ($8.32) per month, the same as the student tier, whereas the normal price is €11.99 ($14.26). YouTube confirmed to The Vergethat it's also testing the offering in Belgium, Denmark, Luxembourg and Norway with local equivalent pricing. Comparatively, Netflix Basic costs €7.99 ($9.50) in several of those regions.
The YouTube Premium Lite page states that you get ad-free YouTube and YouTube Kids across multiple devices including mobile, desktop and TVs. In the past, YouTube has announced incentives for paying users including free products such as Google Stadia and neat features like automatic downloads.
But, since its launch, and subsequent rebranding, the service has always been more like a bundle with the inclusion of YouTube Music, which may not entice those already paying for Spotify or Apple Music. Trimming the fat to offer the core ad-free experience for less will certainly appeal to more viewers, and could help to drive subscriptions as a result.
Square has announced that it plans to pay $29 billion in stock for Afterpay, an Australian service that lets you pay for purchases over time with no interest, The Verge has reported. Square, led by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, has already purchased a majority stake in Tidal and launched a new Bitcoin business in 2021.
In a press release, Square called Afterpay "the pioneering global 'buy now, pay later' (BNPL) platform." Afterpay notes that it has over 16 million customers worldwide and services nearly 100,000 resellers across retail markets like "fashion, homewares, beauty, sporting goods and more."
"The addition of Afterpay to Cash App will strengthen our growing networks of consumers around the world, while supporting consumers with flexible, responsible payment options," said Square's Brian Grassadonia. "Afterpay will help deepen and reinforce the connections between our Cash App and Seller ecosystems, and accelerate our ability to offer a rich suite of commerce capabilities to Cash App customers."
Afterpay, like other increasingly popular BNPL services (including Affirm, Klarna and Uplift), allows customers to pay over time without interest. To make money, they charge retailers a fee (4 to 6 percent), promising to connect them with a desirable demographic and assume all financial risk. In Square's press release, Afterpay also said it can help "drive repeat purchases [and] increase average transaction sizes."
One of the world's largest retailers, Apple, is reportedly planning to offer its own buy now, pay later type program directly to consumers. Much like PayPal's "Pay in 4" service, "Apple Pay in 4" would allow Apple Wallet users to stretch purchases out to four payments, interest-free. Square's purchase of Afterpay, meanwhile, is expected to close in the first quarter of 2022.
Are you still holding on to a Nexus One for sentimental reasons? It might be time to move on. Reddit users and 91mobiles have learned that Google will no longer let you sign into the company's apps on devices running Android 2.3.7 (Gingerbread) or lower from September 27th onward. You can still sign in on the web, but you'll have to update to at least the tablet-only Android 3.0 (realistically, Android 4.0) if you want to avoid major hassles while checking Gmail or navigating with Google Maps.
The cutoff is necessary to protect account privacy, Google said in an email to customers. We've asked Google if can elaborate on its reasoning.
This won't affect day-to-day phone use for many people, as you might guess. Gingerbread and earlier Android releases have so little usage share that they've been lumped into the "other" category for years, and the hardware already struggles to handle many modern tasks. However, it does mark a rare instance of Google cutting off basic functionality for older Android versions, not just OS updates or Play Services features. Think of this as Google setting a baseline — you'll need a device updated within the last decade to receive at least rudimentary support.
Mobile app shops are cracking down on one of the higher-profile communities spreading anti-vax misnformation. Bloombergreports that Apple has removed Unjected, a hybrid social and dating app for the unvaccinated, for "inappropriately" referencing the COVID-19 pandemic's concept and themes. While Unjected bills itself as a place to find others who support "medical autonomy and free speech," social posts on the site have included false claims that vaccines modify genes, connect to 5G and serve as "bioweapons."
The app founders are also embroiled in a fight over their Android app. Google told Unjected on July 16th that it had two weeks to remove the misleading posts from its app to avoid a Play Store ban. The developers responded by pulling the social feed. However, co-creator Shelby Thompson said Unjected planned to defy the request by restoring both the feed and the offending posts.
We've asked Apple and Google for comment. Unjected still has a presence on Instagram despite that social network's anti-misinformation stance, although that account mostly promotes its views on "freedom" and only occasionally mentions falsehoods, such as incorrect claims that mRNA vaccines alter DNA. We've asked Facebook for a response as well.
Unjected is small compared to mainstream social networks, with roughly 18,000 app downloads (according to Apptopia). However, the crackdown clearly serves as a warning — Apple and Google won't tolerate apps that knowingly accept and encourage the creation anti-vax content, even if they aren't directly producing that material.
Telegram has expanded the group video calling feature it launched in June to be able to accommodate more participants — a lot more. The latest version of the messaging app now allows up to 1,000 people to join a group video call. While the number of participants that can broadcast video from their camera or their screen remains capped at 30, an additional 970 people can tune in and watch.
As Telegram said when it first launched the feature, it was always planning on increasing the number of people that can join a group chat as it expands its voice and video calls to support live events. In its new announcement, the company said it'll keep on increasing the limit. In addition, Telegram has updated the video messaging feature so users can watch them at a higher resolution. Users can now also share their screen with sound during 1-on-1 video calls and set their messages to auto-delete after one month instead of within a day or a week like the older options allowed.
Telegram's updated media editor makes the brush width smaller upon zooming in, allowing users to draw finer details on photos and videos. Other new features include more password reset options and animated emoji. For the Android app, the latest version also includes support for 0.5x, 1.5x and 2x playback speeds, as well as new sending animations. Meanwhile, iOS users will have access to a new in-app camera that can use all their device's zoom levels, as well as the ability to forward messages to multiple recipients.
