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Mobvoi TicWatch E2, TicWatch S2 now available to buy

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Mobvoi announced its latest models at CES 2019 earlier in the month but stopped short of providing any details on pricing and availability. Today we learn how much the Ticwatch E2 and Ticwatch S2 will cost. Indeed, the two went up for sale today.

Starting immediately, both the Ticwatch E2 and Ticwatch S2 are available to purchase from both Mobvoi’s online store as well as through Amazon. Both are among the least expensive Wear OS models available today.

The Ticwatch E2 runs $160 while the Ticwatch S2 comes in at just $180, some $20 less than its predecessor. Neither watch should be considered premium but they are excellent options for consumers looking for a wallet-friendly Wear OS affair.

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As we learned upon their announcement, this latest generation of affordable Ticwatch wearables employ Qualcomm’s Snapdragon Wear 2100 platform and not the MediaTek chipset from before.

The pair also feature 5ATM water resistance for splashes and shallow submersion, swim tracking, and TicMotion features. Designed by Mobvoi, these include automatic workout tracking and swim monitoring; custom gestures and more options are on the horizon.

The Ticwatch S2 comes with a US Military Standard 810G certification, which means it can withstand extreme temperatures and environments.

Slide and bounce to the rhythm of Tiles Hop: EDM Rush! (Review)

Gerson Noboa
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Remember back a few years when music games were all the rage? Guitar Hero and Rock Band dominated the charts, whoever cleared Through the Fire and Flames in expert level became a legend.

Mobile was no exception, either, as a wide array of clones were available in the rudimentary Android Market/Play Store. Activision, as it often does, ruined the genre by saturating the market with Guitar Hero games, making them fall into obscurity.

Good news, though. The few games that are still out there are actually pretty good, and one example of the genre’s potential is Tiles Hop: EDM Rush!

Developer: AMANOTES
Price: Free

Overview

If you have played Guitar Hero/Rock Band, or even Tap Tap Revenge all those years ago, then you’ll feel right at home in Tiles Hop.

You control a ball with your finger, and your job is to hop on colored tiles that appear in front of you. These tiles closely follow the music’s rhythm, so they go faster, slower, and change positions according to the intensity of the song. If you fail to land on a tile, it’s game over.

Gameplay

In order to play Tiles Hop, the only control you need is moving your finger around. To start the game, you press and hold. To move the ball around, you just swipe to the sides until you are sure that you will land on a tile. The actual movement of the ball is not 1:1 linked to your swipe, because that would be fairly annoying.

There are a total of 34 songs in the game at the time of this review. These range from EDM to slightly rock-ish to pop songs. There’s even some Christmas songs included for the holidays. While there’s a decent amount of variety, they almost always have some small EDM elements added, so if you really dislike that kind of music, you’ll have a hard time here.

Songs normally start easy enough, but they increase their speed as you progress through it. On your way to completion, you will collect stars (just like in Guitar Hero). Three stars means you have completed the song.

After you are done with it, the game enters into an endless mode, in which you don’t earn stars but keep earning points (one for each tile you clear).

This endless mode is more fun than the normal mode because tiles start to move around instead of always keeping their position, which increases the difficulty dramatically. This, added to the already fast speed of the song at this point makes this mode challenging but very rewarding. It’s a nice way of breaking the monotony.

Import your own tunes

Tiles Hop has managed to include an “import your song” functionality. It works exactly like you would expect: you select a song from your device (no streaming services like Spotify, though), and it imports it so that you can play it. I tried this with “Pressure” by Muse and found the functionality worked surprisingly well.

The tiles’ frequency does not change according to the song, but it still does a good job in detecting the song’s BPM and adjusting the gameplay accordingly.

It also makes the songs a bit faster as you progress, just like in the bundled songs. Since the tunes you have on your device are probably longer than the ones the games provide, playing them might become a little bit boring because of the lack of variation.

Gems and ads

Although the game can be played without paying a single cent, it could be a very frustrating experience. After each session, the game throws a full-screen ad at you. Also, in order to unlock some songs, you need to watch a full-screen ad without skip.

Fortunately, the game includes an in-app purchase to remove ads for under a dollar.

There is another obstacle between you and the game’s content, and that’s gems. They are given by the game as you progress on a song and when you complete them. These are used for unlocking new songs and skins.

The game gives a decent amount of gems after each run, so it doesn’t feel like it is begging you to buy gems. In case you do want to speed up the process, there’s a store for that.

Graphics and Sound

The developers have chosen to go with a neon, colorful art style. It reminds me of something taken out of Tron: Legacy or Muse’s Simulation Theory artwork. Normally, a color is chosen by the app, and then all elements are either a shade of that color or black. It works perfectly, looks good, and performs superbly.

As a nice touch, there are different backgrounds. The Christmas songs were particularly nice, setting an appropriate holiday tone. According to the developer, there are more than 20 different backgrounds.

Being a music game, the music and sound need to be top-notch in order to be taken seriously. Fortunately for Tiles Hop, they are. The songs are of good quality, even though the songs have been either done for the game only, or can be used without paying licensing costs.

As previously said, there are different genres here, so not all songs are EDM. Sound effects are also acceptable and they follow the same futuristic style as the graphical part of the game.

Conclusion

Making a music game is always hard, with several things to keep in mind, such as good song quality, fluid graphics that don’t get in the way, and engaging gameplay.

Tiles Hop ticks all check boxes and provides a free game with a lot of strong elements. The full-screen ads are annoying, but the developer has given a very inexpensive in-app purchase to remedy that.

The original roster of 30+ songs might be a little bit short, but the importing tool works great, giving the potential for an infinite amount of songs to play with.

Download and install Tiles Hop: EDM Rush! from the Google Play Store.

A look back at our favorite products from CES 2019

Jason England
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Every year CES brings a menagerie of products to tease and delight us. Whether you’re the average consumer or a tech geek like us, CES features all the products that will impact your life for this year or even longer. Below you’ll find some of our favorites from CES 2019 and what gets us excited for this next great year in tech.

Google Assistant Devices

It should be no surprise we are huge fans of Google Assistant here at Android Guys. It has become an integral part of our day that helps us manage our lives. Thanks to Assistant hitting more and more devices every year, it is becoming even more convenient to use. Here are some of our favorite devices shown off from CES 2019 with Google Assistant.

Lenovo Smart Clock

This charming little clock from Lenovo is the modern alarm clock I’ve been wishing for. It features a 4-inch display, physical controls, a speaker, Google Assistant integration, and even a USB port to charge your phone. The Lenovo Smart Clock is basically everything I’ve been dreaming of since the Google Home was first introduced. Fortunately, when it is launched this spring it will only set you back $80.

Soundbars

There were a few soundbars or what I’m calling smart bars announced at CES 2019. Companies such as Klipsch, LG, and JBL were all present and accounted for showing off their latest in smart home theater tech.

For home theater geek like myself who can’t get enough of Google Assistant, these are particularly interesting. Having the ability to add high-quality sound to my TV along with Google Assistant, and having a new loud speaker to group for whole home audio sounds like perfection.

Look out later this year for the Klipsch Bar 40G, the SL10YG, SL9YG, and SL8YG soundbars from LG, and JBL’s Link Bar. The JBL Link Bar is of special interest because not only does it offer Google Assistant but it is also a full-blown Android TV device.

Assistant in the car

JBL and Anker are both expanding Assistant’s reach to your vehicle. Both companies announced dedicated Google Assistant devices that are powered by a cigarette lighter port. The JBL Link Drive and Anker Roav Bolt both offer USB ports for charging your phone, as well as specialized mics to help filter out road noise making it easier to give commands.

Nubia Red Magic Mars

The Nubia Red Magic Mars is an affordable gaming phone from ZTE’s sister brand Nubia. This phone is packing some serious specs with a Snapdragon 845, 6GB of RAM, 128GB of storage, and a 3800mAh battery for only $400. That will be music to many consumer’s ears when compared to the outrageous prices we’ve seen in the smartphone industry lately.

If you care about smartphone gaming on a budget or just performance per dollar then this will be the phone for you to check out this year. You won’t have to wait long either as it is expected to launch next month and with Android 9 Pie.

Jabra Elite 85h

Jabra is jumping into the premium noise canceling over-ear headphone market and our ears are ready. With several microphones tuned for canceling out noise around you, Jabra expects the Elite 85h to outperform the other major players.

While that remains to be seen, one feature the Jabra Elite 85h will have that you won’t find from Bose or Sony is hands-free Google Assistant activation. Add to that impeccable style with 30+ hours of battery life and you’ve got our full attention. Expect the Elite 85h to launch later this year with a $300 price tag.

LG Signature OLED TV R

The Signature OLED TV R from LG gets special mention because this concept is no longer a concept. A TV with a flexible screen that appears out of a box is a bit awe-inspiring to see, and for the first time you’ll be able to actually buy one.

No longer is this just a gimmick seen on the CES showroom floor, it is now a fully fledged consumer-ready product. The LG Signature OLED TV R is expected in the second half of 2019 in a 65-inch model and the price is currently unknown.

Check out the rest of our CES 2019 coverage

There were plenty more great products to come out of CES 2019 but these were some of our favorites. Did we miss one of yours? Let us know in the comments.

My Sprint Rewards launches with deals and discounts for Sprint subscribers

AndroidGuys
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Sprint this week introduced its own rewards program which provides discounts and perks to subscribers. Called My Sprint Rewards, it’s a way of giving its customers goodies in the form of deals across a whole range of industries.

Available immediately to Sprint customers, the exclusive deals get started with a free large one-topping pizza from Papa John’s (while supplies last). To get rolling one simply needs download the Android or iOS app and enroll.

The rewards are valid any time and can be redeemed at the customer’s pace. This sets it apart from T-Mobile’s program T-Mobile Tuesdays.

Among the benefits expected from Sprint are discounted movie tickets and cash back. According to Sprint, customers can earn 3 percent to 20 percent cash back on select purchases. An all-inclusive trip for two the St. James’s Club, Morgan Bay in St. Lucia is also currently up for grabs.

Those who are already a Sprint customer can sign up for the My Sprint Rewards today.

Google snaps up Fossil smartwatch tech in $40M deal

AndroidGuys
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Google on Thursday announced a deal which sees it acquiring Fossil’s smartwatch technology and members of its research and development division. Worth around $40 million, the deal gives Google a dedicated team with hardware experience to work on its WearOS platform.

Does this mean that we’ll get a Pixel watch or Google Watch in the coming year? It’s hard to say, but it certainly makes sense. It’s not all that dissimilar from what Google did with HTC when it brought in a team to focus on the Pixel phone line.

According to Wareable, who exclusively learned of the deal, this stems from intellectual property related to a smartwatch technology that’s in development today. Stacy Burry, Google VP of Product Management, says that the new tech will make its way into the overall ecosystem. In other words, it won’t be exclusive to Fossil.

Fossil produces not only Wear OS watches, of course, but traditional analog wearables and hybrid devices, too. Blending smartwatches with more standard timepieces, they often feature activity tracking and other features. Perhaps whatever Fossil was working one fell into this area.

See Also

Google’s WearOS has evolved quite nicely over the years and looks nothing like what it did upon launch when it was known as Android Wear. At the same time, many of the brands who were quick to adopt Android Wear were smartphone OEMs. It’s only the last few years where we’ve see the space shift to largely become dominated by longstanding watch makers.

Despite all of these changes in wearables, Wear OS has yet to truly hit its stride or have a runaway hit. Perhaps bringing things a little more into the Google fold could be the recipe for success.

The deal is expected to be wrapped up this month.

Samsung Galaxy Tab S4 review: Slim, sleek, premium, and lacking

Jason England
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Over the years, as Apple has all but taken over the tablet landscape with Samsung being one of its biggest challengers. The Galaxy Tab S4 is the latest competition for the iPad from Samsung. Verizon has generously provided us with this review unit to see how Samsung’s sleek new tablet stacks up against the competition.

Design

The Samsung Galaxy Tab S4 makes use of the glass sandwich design we’ve become familiar with over the past few years from premium devices. This design utilizes glass on the front and back of the device with a metal frame around the edge. It looks fancy and it sure feels high-end, but a glass back is not the most durable choice for a tablet.

Glass is fragile

Unlike its phone brethren, tablets are larger, heavier, and aren’t usually replaced as frequently. In this case, a large fragile glass back is just asking for trouble. Without an added layer of extra protection, you can expect tons of scratches to accumulate over the years and that’s if you don’t somehow crack it beforehand.

A perfect example of this is how my review unit already had a scratch on it when it arrived. That does not bode well for years of usage. To make matters worse, the Tab S4 doesn’t offer wireless charging providing one less justification to use glass on the back.

Despite my worries about the long term durability of the glass back, I must admit the glass offered a fantastic feel and provided a surface which was easy to grip. However, if I was keeping the tablet, I would have needed to add some sort of protection which would have negated the premium feel and nice grip.

Unlocking made complicated

Another qualm I have with the Galaxy Tab S4 design is Samsung’s decision to drop the fingerprint scanner. The fingerprint scanner provided a quick easily accessible way to secure your tablet. Whereas now you must rely on intelligent scan or the iris scanner. I’ve used both of these systems in the past on Samsung phones with great success.

Sadly, this was not the case with the Galaxy Tab S4. Intelligent scan was far less reliable on the tablet for me than it has been on Samsung phones. It constantly failed to unlock the device, forcing me to enter the PIN number nearly half of the time.

The iris scanner worked much better. However, it still required me to use two hands to lift a large tablet up to my face each and every time I wanted to unlock. In the end, I disabled all secure lock functions because it either took too much time or effort. Had Samsung included a fingerprint scanner it would have provided a much better experience. Even on their phones where facial and iris scanning works more reliably, I still prefer to use the fingerprint scanner.

Brilliant Screen and Sound

Besides these two major issues, I was a big fan of the design and quality of the Samsung Galaxy Tab S4. I heralded the return of the 16:10 widescreen format that allows for viewing of media content with minimal black bars. The previous Tab S2 and S3 turned me off with their 4:3 aspect ratio resulting in larger more obnoxious black bars while watching videos, my main use for a tablet.

To further enhance your videos Samsung has packed a gorgeous 10.5-inch Super AMOLED screen with a 2560 x 1600 resolution screen. If there is one company that knows how to excel at displays, it is Samsung.

The exceptionally bright screen is paired with inky black darks and vibrant colors that offer a fantastic viewing experience. Samsung didn’t skimp on the audio either with four total speakers tuned by AKG with Dolby Atmos technology.

Watching movies and TV shows on this tablet will never disappoint. Between the beautiful screen and immersive audio, this ensures your movies will look just as amazing as they sound.

All the ports you could need

When it comes to I/O the Tab S4 has everything you need from a modern tablet. It includes a headphone jack, in case charging a pair of Bluetooth headphones just to watch movies on your tablet is something you don’t enjoy. There is also a USB-C charging port, pogo pins for an optional keyboard, and a nano-SIM tray with a microSD card slot.

S-Pen

From the company that created the Note series the S-Pen on the Tab S4 feels a bit like an afterthought, unfortunately. With no place to store the larger S-Pen in the tablet itself, I found myself leaving it on my desk and never taking advantage of it.

That is disappointing when Samsung already has a solution for storing the S-Pen in their smaller Note series of phones. An argument could be made that the larger S-Pen is more comfortable to hold and use, and that is a valid argument.

However, if I never have the pen with me because it is not stored in the device, then it is never going to be used period. In order to get any use from the S-Pen you’ll need to either buy a case with a holder for the pen or have a dedicated workspace with the pen always within reach.

When I did use the S-Pen it felt comfortable to draw with and offers some of the extra features you’d find on the Note phones. For example, creating gifs or live messages.

Software

Samsung tends to gets a lot of hate from Android die-hards for their software skin and bloat they add to their devices. While others find the changes and added enhancements useful. Over the past couple of years, I’ve generally been fine using their software and grateful for many of the additional features. However, the software on the Samsung Tab S4 came up lacking in my opinion.

First of all, I was disappointed to find features I’ve become accustomed to on their flagship phones missing. For example, there was no option to lower the resolution to extend battery life. Video enhancer which enriches your video playback was also absent. A feature I assumed would be a no brainer for a media consumption device.

Even worse than the missing features were the software bugs I encountered. The most annoying of which was the screen turning off while I was actively using the tablet. I was never able to find the root of the problem, but I believe this was caused by me tilting the tablet from a well-lit area to a dark area. Possibly tricking the tablet into thinking it had been covered and putting the display to sleep. Whatever caused this was random, sporadic, and incredibly frustrating.

Another problem I encountered was the picture freezing in the Samsung Video app during my video loop battery rundown test. Even after completely closing out the app and starting the video again the picture stayed frozen on the screen with the audio playing in the background.

I was then forced to switch to another video player to complete the test. Granted this happened after it had been running for 10 hours and is not something most normal users will experience. Regardless, it happened both times I ran the test with different video files on two different Galaxy Tab S4 units.

In fact, all of these issues persisted across the two different units Verizon was kind enough to send out to guarantee it was not a hardware or software issue.

Dex

Dex is Samsung’s attempt at transforming the Tab S4 into more of a desktop or laptop environment. This is an important feature for many who love the portability of a tablet but still need an efficient way to get work done. Unfortunately, without the optional keyboard dock, I was unable to try this out.

Performance

Powered by a Snapdragon 835 and 4GB of RAM I found the performance to be more than acceptable on the Galaxy Tab S4. These are specs you would find on flagships from 2017 and are more than capable of keeping up with any tasks you want to run on a tablet.

I never encountered any sort of stuttering or noticeable lag during daily usage or while gaming. After benchmarking in AnTuTu the Tab S4 returned a respectable 200,908 and returned a score of 1797 in Single-Core and 6347 in Multi-Core performance from Geekbench.

Camera

The rear 13MP f/1.9 aperture camera on the Samsung Galaxy Tab S4 left a lot to be desired. The photos lacked dynamic range and as a result, came out too dark in most cases. While the front-facing 8MP f/1.9 aperture camera offers good detail, it yet again comes up short in dynamic range and causes highlights to blow out.

Overall, if you have a more recent flagship this is all the more reason to use it over your tablet when taking photos. The results will undoubtedly be better and save you from being that “person” who uses their tablet to take photos.

Battery

The battery life on the Tab S4 did not disappoint. During my time spent using the tablet, I only needed to charge it once a week on average. This provided me with 6-7 hours of screen on time for browsing, gaming, and watching videos.

If you’re planning on using it for long flights or road trips the Galaxy Tab S4 has plenty of juice for that as well. In the course of my video loop battery rundown test, it was able to average 15-16 hours of screen on time with the brightness set manually to 30 percent. That should be plenty to get you through most trips and give you time to charge up after you arrive.

Final Thoughts

After not upgrading my tablet for several years, I was excited when Samsung announced the Galaxy Tab S4. On paper, this tablet has everything I’ve been waiting for. Between the gorgeous widescreen 10.5-inch display, modern specs, great battery life, microSD card slot, and the headphone jack I was ready to make this my next tablet.

Unfortunately, the actual experience of using the Tab S4 the past couple of months left a bad taste in my mouth. Questions of how well the glass back is going to hold up over the years combined with the buggy software experience left me disappointed.

While the durability of the device could be easily rectified with a case. The frustration of the software bugs I encountered made this a pass for me. If you’re interested in a high-end 10-inch Android tablet I’d suggest checking out our review of the Huawei MediaPad M5 instead.

Devices used in this review were provided by Verizon

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Opinion: Improvements I want to see from Chrome OS in 2019

Andrew Allen
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Chrome OS has grown by leaps and bounds over the last few years and it has slowly become one of my favorite operating systems to use. However, there are still several shortcomings that I’d like to see Google work to fix in 2019. While some are new on the scene others are longstanding personal pain points.

A Real File Manager

So, here’s the thing. People have used computers most of their lives now. Anyone alive in the booming era of the modern PC is familiar with a more holistic approach to manipulating files and folders.

Chrome OS has a file manager, but it’s essentially an overgrown version of the Android mechanism of simply showing you the Downloads folder. While this will get you by for quick file management, it doesn’t feel like a computer.

People want to be able to organize their digital lives. They want to move files into custom folders similar to how their mind works. I’d love to see Google allow more access to the overall file structure of Chrome OS -especially with more nerdy additions like the Linux runtime.

If you are appealing to the superuser, treat them accordingly and allow them to not feel hindered by something as trivial as the file manager.

More Seamless Integration from Android apps

Chromebooks have struggled to offer a “native” app ecosystem, but Google has mostly filled that void with the Android Play Store. While this is a worthy attempt, it’s still got a ways to go. I’d love to see this merging of platforms both look and feel more seamless.

Allow me to offer up a few rough edges that need to be ironed out.

The first one that comes to mind is that the fonts in apps installed by the Google Play Store don’t match those from the web or the rest of Chrome OS.

Take a look at these screenshots of Slack. The left is the Android app installed and running full screen. The right is the Slack web experience.

As you can see, the Android apps don’t respect the same font settings as the web settings in Chrome OS. This can be jarring and lead to confusion for new users who don’t understand that these runtimes are shown together, but are ultimately two different app layers.

I really believe that Google has to be working on making this a little more universal. When settings are changed in the main menu of Chrome OS, the Android apps should adhere to the same dimensions. I shouldn’t have to wander around the Android app settings to make sure they are the same.

Honestly, the most recent version of Chrome OS removed the option to change the font size completely from the OS. Google simply needs to polish this and streamline the reaction the UI elements have across both web apps and Android.

Another slip-up of how it manages Android apps is that they don’t have full access to the Chrome OS files. Since the Play Store is technically running inside of a container, the file access is literally an independent Android OS running inside Chrome OS.

This leads us back to file management. You simply have access to the Downloads folder much like many Android apps function on your phone. Google seems to be actively working on filling the gaps between the Android and Linux runtimes, but it’s another point of confusion to new users on how some of this works.

Better App Development on Android Apps

As we have seen time and again, with any new platform, developers need to be on board. It’s a blessing and a curse. From BlackBerry to Palm and Windows Phone, the lack of development houses flocking to those operating systems is a vital reason for them ultimately crumbling.

Google saw a similar road map with Chrome OS. The lack of support to web apps led the company to shift gears and tack on Android apps as a bandage. Google thought that millions of existing apps would bring the next wave of development for the platform.

Unfortunately, most apps aren’t designed with Chromebooks in mind. Much like Google’s failed attempts at tablets, devs don’t yet take advantage of the larger screen real estate. From my favorite podcast app, Pocket Casts, to Google’s own Hangouts app, they miss the mark on having original UI concepts when on a laptop-sized display.

Google has to find a way to lure applications this direction. It’s one of the main reasons that iPad apps are so well received on iOS versus iPhone apps. The new screen size brings new interaction and options for the users. Developers take advantage and provide a truly unique experience.

More High-end Desktop Hardware

The Google Pixelbook is the king of the Chromebook. Of all the hardware you’ll find Chrome OS running on, it’s the best overall combination by a long shot. I can’t help but think that Chrome OS is nearing a maturation that is near parity with its rivals.

Despite this growth, Chrome OS has a gaping hole in its hardware portfolio. The desktop is all but ignored by Google’s desktop operating system. Yes, Google’s partners have made Chromeboxes. But they’ve been underwhelming and under-powered.

Microsoft made a living off the desktop PC and even Apple has recently reinvested in the desktop with the Mac Mini renewal. Google needs to make a similar investment in the home office PC. There’s a certain segment of the market that wants a high-powered desktop.

Google has recently flirted with game streaming that seems like making a “Pixelbox” even more appealing. A desktop focused device seems to be the next progression in the Chrome OS story, but consumers need more than the plastic Chromeboxes that have been the past norm.

Bright Future

Despite the aforementioned shortcomings, I believe that Chrome OS has a bright future. The operating system is shaping up to be a nice amalgamation of old desktop paradigms and mobile first apps. Is it perfect? No… but it is getting closer with each update.

I just think we need a little more polish, and perhaps a few more good ideas. Here’s hoping Google can make some of my wishes come true in 2019.

Lenovo adds to smart home family with Smart Clock

Andrew Allen
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Lenovo has helped Google lead the way with Smart Displays. They were an original partner with the new generation of visual smart home products. Now, Lenovo is back with a smaller version we’ve all been waiting for: The Lenovo Smart Clock.

Honestly, since Smart Displays were announced, I was disappointed that there wasn’t an Echo Spot version to use as an alarm clock. Lenovo has essentially solved this issue with Smart Clock. The new addition to the smart home is a smaller companion screen to fill the gap between phones and full-fledged Smart Displays.

The 4-inch bedside gadget has a limited use case that equates to a slimmed down version of its larger sibling. You can set alarms, check calendar appointments and weather, as well as control audio playback. The full array of Google Assistant voice commands are on board too.

One thing that is hampered a bit is Chromecast, but in a way that makes sense. You can Cast audio but not a video to the Smart Clock. Lenovo says this was a conscious decision due to the smaller form factor and we’d tend to agree it’s the right move.

The design of the Smart Clock is very appealing and fits well with other Google endorsed Home devices. The display is wrapped in woven fabric that immediately reminds you of the Google Home Mini and Home Hub.

Up top, you have volume rockers with a touch-enabled strip in between. This is used for pausing audio and dismissing alarms. The rear of the device has an AC power port, mic mute switch, and USB-type A for charging your phone without the need of another outlet.

Lenovo has set the price of the Smart Clock at $79.99 with availability vaguely up in the air as “late spring 2019.” Personally, I think it should bump this timetable forward as much as possible. The Smart Clock is a device that just may be a big hit for the company.

Funai shows off Philips 24-inch Kitchen Android TV with Google Assistant

AndroidGuys
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Funai Corporation this week showed off the Philips 24-inch Kitchen Android TV with built-in Google Assistant.

Built with kitchens in mind, the Google Assistant software gives users the same experience they might find with a Home Hub or other smart display. Android 8.0 Oreo software powers the unit, providing the full Android TV experience, making it a more robust device.

The 24-inch LCD screen is wrapped by a thin white bezel and a woven gray mesh cloth covers a pair of 8iwatt speakers. Minimalistic and stylish, it matches pretty much any decor. Also included are two HDMI ports and a far-field microphone which catches all of your voice commands.

Unlike other smart kitchen displays or tablets available, or on the horizon, the Philips 24-inch Kitchen Android TV can function as a stand-alone device. One can download additional apps via Google Play store, for example, or work with other devices through the HDMI ports.

We’re big fans of the way Google Assistant works with a display and found the Google Home Hub to be one of our favorite devices of 2018. Similarly, we’re in love with our NVIDIA Shield TV and the Android TV experience. Pairing the two experiences, in the kitchen, seems like a match made in heaven.

It’s not clear how much the Kitchen Android TV will run or when it will be made available. For now it appears that it’s simply a proof of concept or a tease of things to come.

The device falls somewhere in the space between smart displays and full-size Android TV experience. To that end, we could be looking anywhere from, say $200-$300 for the Philips Kitchen Android TV.

Philips debuts 4K Android TVs with Google Assistant with pricing as low as $350

AndroidGuys
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Funai this week showed off the first Philips 4K UHD Android TV models with integrated Google Assistant for the US market. The two lines (5704 and 5904 series) are offered in five display sizes, ranging from 43-inches up to 75-inches.

The Philips 4K UHD Android TV models are powered Android 8.0 and provide easy access to streaming services and personalized recommendations from the likes of Netflix, Hulu, YouTube TV, and more. Additionally, the televisions include access to Google Play.

Both lines of the Philips 4K UHD Android TV come with a Bluetooth near-field mic remote for voice control with the Google Assistant. This lets users ask the TVs questions, control smart devices, and anything else you’d get from a Google Home device.

Chromecast is also built into the products meaning you can mirror your phone, case photos and apps, and more.

The Philips 4K UHD Android TV series features HDR 10 and are equipped with Bright Pro, a setting that boosts the backlight and brightens the image. According to Philips this is about twice as bright as standard LED displays and it also provides for high contrast.

Availability

The 5704 line is already available at select retailer and warehouse clubs around the country; the 5904 series arrives in the second half of the year. What’s the difference in the two? The forthcoming models will feature integrated far-field microphones which let users/watchers say “Hey Google” to activate the Google Assistant.

Connectivity includes HDMI, antenna RF, Wireless 802.11ac dual-band MIMO, Ethernet, and USB multimedia. As for audio, look for digital optical, and Bluetooth 4.2 for optional headphone, keyboard or other accessory connectivity.

Philips 4K UHD Android TV series are available in 43-inch, 50-inch, 55-inch, 65-inch, and 75-inch displays sizes with prices that start at $350.

About Funai

Funai Corporation, Inc., located at Rutherford, NJ, is a subsidiary of Funai Electric Co., Ltd. and is the exclusive licensee for Philips and Magnavox consumer televisions and home video products, with marketing and distribution rights in North America.

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