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Robosen T9: Build your own transforming robot

AndroidGuys
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Artificial intelligence, machine learning, and robotics are everywhere. It’s the stuff that powers nearly everything we do whether we see it or not. But if we’re really being honest with ourselves, it would be cool to have a robotic companion.

If you’re like us, the Robosen T9 Programmable Robot is the buddy you’ve been wishing for, and it’s also a great way to get into the world of robotics and programming. And currently, it’s 19% off, at $399.99.

Not only is the Robosen T9 fun, but it’s programmable and functional. It’s controlled via voice or a companion app and can alternate between car and robot mode. But that’s not all.

With 22 servos built into its chest, hands, and legs, the Robosen T9 can also walk, gesture, dance, and more. In fact, in car mode it can serve as a functional RC car that you can race. It wakes up quickly from standby mode, houses a 2,000mAh battery, and is always ready to play. And because it’s 2.4 pounds, it’s easy to pack for kids who can’t be without it.

Features

  • Artificial Intelligence. Easily wake up robot from standby mode & oder it to transform or perform cool stunts
  • Robots & Cars. Core technologies allow it to automatically transform between robot and vehicle
  • Intelligent Programming. Customize your T9’s actions with 3 intuitive & easy to use programming platforms
  • Robosen Hub. Join a great global creative community of robotic fans
  • Artifical joints. Allow smooth & effortless movements
  • Bipedal Walking. An ability that can be observed on its robot form
  • Race Function. An ability that can be observed on its vehicle form
  • Robot Control/Command. Can be done through voice or app

The Robosen T9 is also a cleverly designed educational tool which helps you to understand coding. Through the robot you’ll learn Motion Memory Recording, drag-and-drop coding, and 3D graphic programming. If you want to get into the world of STEM, this is a great start.

The Robosen T9, which has a ton of 5-star Amazon reviews, is currently 19% off at the AG Deals Store, putting it at just $399.99.

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Qualcomm announces QCC305x chipset for budget wireless earbuds

Josiah Ward
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The other day, Qualcomm announced their QCC305x Bluetooth chipsets meant to power mid-tier and entry-level true wireless earbuds, bringing some premium features to the lower end.

Qualcomm QCC305X features

The new chipset supports Qualcomm aptX Voice and cVc Echo Cancellation and Noise Suppression for better voice calls

In addition, the Qualcomm QCC305x supports:

  • Always-on wake words
  • Qualcomm Adaptive Active Noise Cancellation
  • Qualcomm aptX Adaptive with up to 96Khz audio resolution
  • Bluetooth Low Energy & Bluetooth 5.2

This is assisted by the new support on Snapdragon 888 which supports Bluetooth 5.2, LE Audio, aptX, and other features

You can read the entire press release here.

Pete Lau discusses the future of OnePlus, smartwatch confirmed

Josiah Ward
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OnePlus has been said to be working on a smartwatch as early as 2016, but now it seems like a soon-to-be-realized reality.

On December 14, OnePlus CEO Pete Lau held a meeting over video call with various journalists discussing the future of OnePlus and some of the events in the past year or so of their history. He discussed Carl Pei’s departure from the company, the controversy over the Facebook partnership, how their TV is a step towards building an ecosystem of devices, and how the upcoming smartwatch ties into that ecosystem.

Lau discussed how a smartwatch was scrapped in 2015 because the company wanted to stay focused on phones at the time, having just made the OnePlus 2 with its own issues and the production of the budget X phone.

Now, though, OnePlus has been well-established in the smartphone market and they’re looking to build an ecosystem. According to Lau, they are working with Google to improve Wear OS and the interconnection between Wear OS, Android TV, and Android smartphones.

In addition, Lau discussed the company’s goals to improve their phone cameras as well as a desire to stay out of the foldables market.

EU approves Google’s Fitbit acquisition with some restrictions

Jason England
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Nearly a year ago, Google announced it was acquiring the popular fitness band maker Fitbit for $2.1 billion dollars. However, as per usual, big acquisitions such as this aren’t a simple transaction. They require the approval of government bodies and wading through a lot of red tape before being finalized.

The EU has given Google a reason to be jolly for the holidays though by approving the acquisition of Fitbit, although it comes with some conditions.

For starters, Google must agree to keep Fitbit user’s health data separate from its ad business. This was the number one concern of many Fitbit uses upon hearing the news of the Google buyout. Users in the EU will also have the option to prevent Google apps such as Assistant and Maps from viewing their data from Fitbit.

Next, Google is required to maintain Fitbit’s previous web API that gives third-party software access to the data that is collected. For example, apps that allowed syncing of your Fitbit data such as calorie counting apps.

Lastly, Google cannot give itself an unfair advantage by giving its products exclusive access to features or degrade the experience for third-party wearables. All improvements and changes must be made freely available as part of the Android Open Source Project giving access to its competitors.

All of this sounds perfectly reasonable, and Google must abide by these restrictions for a term of 10 years, at which time the ad restrictions may be renewed if deemed necessary.

The EU approval is an important hurdle for Google to clear, however, it is still waiting on approval from the U.S. government. Unfortunately for Google, the Justice Department and several states are currently suing the search giant over antitrust violations. It may be more difficult to get the rubber stamp on the Fitbit acquisition considering all of the heat Google has on it from regulators in America.

Channel your inner guitar virtuoso with the Jamstik, just $199

AndroidGuys
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Looking to figure out how to play the guitar, but not necessarily ready to invest in a guitar just yet? While that might sound like a goofy concept, it’s not an unrealistic one. The Jamstik Guitar Trainer, on sale for $199, is exactly the sort of thing that makes that a reality.

Around since 2015, the Jamstik was a CES hit when it first hit the scene, picking up numerous awards and accolades. And for good reason; it’s a digital device that makes learning and playing the analog guitar easier than ever.

The hi-tech unit looks, acts, and feels just like a guitar fretboard, and pairs to a companion app. Using your phone, it can help you with feedback, tutorials, lessons, and more.

The compact device (18 inches) is highly portable and is better than ever. Indeed, the 2020 version picks up a few new features as well as a sleek matte finish.

Jamstik Features

  • Updated Tactile D-Pad & spring loaded strings for a more realistic feel
  • See your fingers on screen in real-time with the Jamstick app
  • Companion app is also packed with chords & instructions
  • 18″ size lets you practice anywhere

Order Yours!

Purchase your Jamstik today for just $199 and get to learning guitar for the new year. That way, when the pandemic is over you can be the rock star you’ve always dreamed of becoming.

Best Sellers

Earn Credits!

For every $25 you spend in the AG Deals Store you get $1 credit added to your account. And, if you refer the deal via social media or an email that results in a purchase, you’ll earn $10 credit in your account.

First Time Buying?

If this is your first time buying, you are also eligible for 10% discount! Just be sure to subscribe for email updates.

Free Stuff

Not looking to spend any money today? No worries. You can still visit the AndroidGuys section for freebies and pick something anyhow.

Amazfit Band 5 review

Jason England
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Design

The Amazfit Band 5 is a budget-minded fitness tracker with a design similar to many that have come before it. The main tracker consists of a 1.1-inch full-color AMOLED touchscreen display in a polycarbonate case that houses all the sensors. To hold it on your wrist the Band 5 uses a black soft-touch adjustable TPU band.

Of course, the band is replaceable if you prefer something more colorful and a quick search on Amazon revealed myriad colors to choose from.

Finding a comfortable fit was easy thanks to the copious amount of holes on the included band, and combined with the lightweight nature of the Band 5, I could barely tell it was there after strapping it on.

User Experience

I’m coming from a Wear OS smartwatch and I found that the Amazfit Band 5 gave me many of the same features I was accustomed to along with some new ones. For starters, most watch faces will display the time and date, along with your step count or heart rate that the Band 5 monitors 24-hours a day.

Plus, the store has a wide variety of styles to choose from, including some that display additional info, such as the weather, distance walked, calories burned, and more.

Additionally, the Band 5 offers more functions, such as automatically tracking your sleep, checking your blood oxygen level on demand, monitoring your stress levels, and it can even track 11 different sports including swimming. The 5 ATM waterproof rating helps out with that last one.

Just be aware, many of these monitoring features must be enabled manually using the accompanying Zepp app, including viewing notifications on the Band 5. In fact, even after enabling notifications, you still need to manually select which apps you will get notified from.

It’s kind of a big undertaking to get the Band 5 set up initially. The app has so many options that it can feel a bit daunting to sift through them all and make sure you enabled everything you want. Plus, there are many features present in the app that are not compatible with the watch, such as the ones meant for the smart scale, and it quickly becomes cluttered and a little confusing.

For example, it took me a couple of days to find where to set up support for Alexa. Furthermore, it’s not helped by the fact that some of the English translations are a little off, in some areas of the app it’s very apparent a native English speaker wasn’t present when translating.

However, once you get the app and Band 5 set up, you won’t have to go digging around anymore. The Zepp app puts all of your pertinent details front and center, and it makes keeping up with all of your stats quick and easy.

Overall, I guess you could say I have a love/hate relationship with the Zepp app. I love the way it displays all of my health data, but navigating and setting it up is quite the chore in the beginning. The good news is, Google Fit syncing is supported in case you don’t like the app or you’d rather view all your data from multiple devices or services in one app.

I mentioned above that the Amazfit Band 5 gives me most of the functions I’m accustomed to with a Wear OS watch, however, one I didn’t realize I’d miss so much is an always-on display.

The Band 5 doesn’t have support for this and the lift to wake feature requires quite an exaggerated flip unless you enable the “sensitive” option in the settings. This made me wish there was at least some sort of tap to wake function because I don’t always want to flip my wrist to view the time or my stats for the day. Regardless, it’s a sacrifice for extended battery life and I understand that.

Battery Life

Speaking of battery life, Amazfit estimates the Band 5 will get you up to 15-days worth of usage. In my experience, that’s a big stretch, I’m sure the Band 5 is technically capable of providing 15-days of usage, but it would be a very limited use case.

In my experience, with everything enabled and taking full advantage of the fitness tracker, it lasted around eight to nine days. That’s still not bad at all, you can get a full weeks worth of usage in between charges. Still, it’s a far cry from 15 days.

Final Thoughts

The Amazfit Band 5 is a capable little fitness tracker that is much more affordable than a comparable Fitbit. It has some unique features that truly make it stand out at this price point such as Alexa support and an SPO2 sensor. Still, the app could use a little polish and a more organized design, but once you get it all set up you’ll pretty much live on the homepage anyway.

The Amazfit Band 5 retails for $50 but it can currently be picked up on sale for $30 from Amazon, B&H Photo, or on the Amazfit website.

Buy from Amazfit Buy from Amazon Buy from B&H Photo

Apple TV Plus is headed to Chromecast with Google TV in early 2021

Jason England
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Google announced on its blog yesterday that Apple TV is coming to Chromecast with Google TV early next year. The announcement comes after Apple Music support was recently added to Google smart speakers and displays last week.

With the addition of the Apple TV+ app, Chromecast with Google TV users will have access to award-winning original programming. This includes titles such as The Morning Show, See, Mythic Quest, Ted Lasso, For All Mankind, and many more. As someone who has already watched a handful of these, this is fantastic news. Remember, you’ll also need a subscription to Apple TV+ and that will run you $4.99/month.

Additionally, you’ll also be able to access movies and TV shows bought from the Apple store. That means, soon you won’t need multiple dongles and boxes to watch all the great streaming content out there, because Chromecast with Google TV will have you covered with support for every major streaming service.

The post doesn’t mention if the app will also come to other Google TV devices out there, such as the popular Nvidia Shield Android TV. However, given that it is an app running on the Google TV platform, I’d be surprised if it isn’t available on all the supported devices.

It seems as Apple transitions itself from a hardware company to one focused on services, it’s now opening up its walled garden. Perhaps, the tech giant finally realized that if you want to make the most amount of money, you can’t ignore some of the largest platforms. That’s part of what made Netflix so popular in the early days, its app was available on pretty much every platform imaginable.

Unfortunately, there is still one missing piece of the puzzle, Android mobile app support. The blog post makes no mention of support for Android smartphones. That’s more than a little odd, as Apple Music has been on the Play Store for years now. Hopefully, sometime in the near future, we’ll see Apple TV+ make its way to all Android devices.

Stadia is now available on iPhone and iPad

Jason England
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When Stadia first launched one of the most exciting prospects of the service was being able to game anywhere on any screen. Unfortunately, at launch, the service was barely available on a handful of screens, including a very limited number of Android phones.

Over the past year, support has grown for Google’s cloud gaming service adding additional Android devices, and now Stadia is finally coming to iOS devices. Starting on December 16, 2020, Stadia Pro and free-tier users can load up their favorite games on an iPhone or iPad using the Safari web browser.

Unlike on Android devices, Stadia cannot currently work on the iPhone or iPad via an app. That is due to Apple’s app store policies, which requires even game streaming services to submit every game as a separate app for approval. Not only is that ridiculous for a game streaming app, but it’s also just not feasible. To get around this limitation, Google had to implement the service in Safari as a web app.

That explains why it has taken so long for Stadia to make its way to iOS devices, but all you need to know is that you can now open Stadia.com on your iPhone or iPad using Safari and get your game on. You can even add a shortcut to the home screen making Stadia only one tap away.

This year is truly the year that Stadia has evolved into a somewhat viable gaming platform. Initially, Google’s cloud gaming service launched in a barebones state, but it recently celebrated its one year anniversary in November, and it only continues to improve over time.

Most recently, Google ran a promotion giving away free Stadia Premiere bundles with the purchase of Cyberpunk 2077. The promotion was so popular it ended before its original cut off after Google ran out of supplies. Alongside that, Google also enabled the option to live stream to YouTube last week. Plus, this week Ubisoft added support for Ubisoft+ so members can now play 15 of the subscription service’s games on Stadia.

Nokia 5.4 introduced for €189 with Snapdragon 662

Josiah Ward
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HMD Global has just unveiled their Nokia 5.4 phone coming to Europe. Here is what the phone has to offer

Internals

The Nokia 5.4 packs a Snapdragon 662 backed by either 4 or 6 gigabytes of RAM and 64 or 128 gigabytes of expandable storage.

Battery

The phone has a 4,000mAh battery with Type-C charging, though it’s only 10W. HMD Global claims this device has 2-day battery life

Camera

The Nokia 5.4 has a total of four cameras with a 48 megapixel main sensor, a 5 megapixel ultra-wide sensor and two 2 megapixel sensors, one being a depth sensor and the other being a macro camera. The front camera is 16 megapixels.

Features

The device features a Google Assistant button, a rear fingerprint scanner, and a headphone jack.

Design

Nokia 5.4 Color Options

The phone looks like a Nokia device, with a nice chin at the bottom for the logo, the fingerprint sensor on the back, and a circular camera module with the flash set to the right of the phone. It sports a 6.39″ HD+ display, and the front camera is set in a punch-hole on the left top side of the screen.

The Nokia 5.4 will launch in a Polar Night (blue) color and a purple Dusk color on its polycarbonate body, though Dusk will release later.

Software

The Nokia 5.4 launches with Android 10, though it is an Android One device with two years of guaranteed software updates. In addition, HMD Global is guaranteeing three years of security updates.

Release and Pricing

The Nokia 5.4 in its blue color is launching tomorrow, December 18th in the UK, with the purple color coming in January. It will be priced at €189 for the base model. There is no information about a release in other regions yet.

Google and Qualcomm partner up to support four generations of Android

Jason England
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Over the past year, Google and Qualcomm have been hard at work trying to prolong the life of today’s phones with more software updates. And why shouldn’t they? Smartphones these days are the most powerful they’ve ever been, and more expensive than ever. We should all get as much life out of these devices as possible, and not be restricted due to the lack of OS and security updates.

Together the two companies have now announced that all Qualcomm chipsets will support four versions of Android and four years of security updates, starting with the Snapdragon 888.

Hold the phone though, because that four generations of Android includes the initial version of the OS your handset ships with. So what this actually means is, your phone will support up to three Android OS updates and up to four years of security updates.

If you’re using a Pixel phone or a recent Samsung flagship, not much has changed. Both Google and Samsung have already promised three generations of Android OS updates, but this does add an additional year of security updates to the mix.

The real winner here will be low-end and mid-range Android phones, because now all of Qualcomm’s chipsets will support three generations of Android OS updates. However, this in no way guarantees you will receive three OS updates or four years of security updates on your Android device.

That responsibility is still solely on the manufacturer of your phone. The only difference being that now the blame cannot be placed on Google or Qualcomm for the lack of updates. Still, this is fantastic news for the Android platform as a whole. All we have to do now is keep the pressure on OEMs to continue updating its lineup of phones at all levels, whether it be a $1000 flagship or a $200 entry-level smartphone.

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