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First 10 things you should do with the LG V40

Jason England
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The LG V40 ThinQ is LG’s latest and greatest phone made for creators. The V series always stands out with the best specs currently out there and tools to get the attention photographers and videographers. Along with those tools comes tons of features, so if you just got your hands on a brand new V40 here’s where you can get started.

Read More: When and Where to Buy the LG V40 ThinQ

Protect It

The LG V40 comes with a hefty price tag and given that it’s mostly made of glass, it is not exactly rugged. With a $1000 investment and your phone being an essential tool, it’s best to take some precautions and protect it.

In this instance, that means buying a case and screen protector, because nothing is worse than seeing all that shattered glass when picking up your phone after an accidental tumble. Here are a few to get you started and you can check out our list of the Best LG V40 ThinQ cases for more options.

Cases

Screen Protectors

More Storage

You can never have enough storage, especially when it comes to a phone made specifically for creators. Between all the cameras, the great screen, and the fantastic sound you are going to pack tons of media into the LG V40. That’s where a microSD card comes in handy, so don’t forget to take advantage of this feature.

Enable the App Drawer

By default, the app drawer is disabled on the LG V40 and if you’re like me you’re going to want to rectify this as quickly as possible. No worries because a few clicks in the settings menu will have you all fixed up.

  • Open Settings
  • Display
  • Home screen
  • Select Home
  • Home with separate apps list

Read More: Early Buzz: What the Critics are saying about the LG V40 ThinQ

Turn on Comfort View

Studies have shown that the blue light emitted from displays can be damaging to our sleep cycles. Thankfully, you don’t have to give up browsing on your phone before bedtime to get a good nights rest. Just follow these instructions and enable the blue light filter which LG refers to as Comfort view.

  • Open Settings
  • Display
  • Comfort view

Customize the Navigation Bar

One frustration about using a phone with a larger display can be reaching up to lower your notification tray. Fortunately, there is a way to customize your navigation keys to add a button to drop down your notification tray. At least that’s my favorite way to use this feature, but LG also includes some extra buttons and you can rearrange them to your liking.

  • Open Settings
  • Display
  • Home touch buttons
  • Button combination

Set up Face Recognition

Face unlock is all the rage these days and with the LG V40 you won’t be left out. It might lack the IR sensors of some other systems but it still gets the job done and only takes a few steps to set up. Two things to note are that Face Recognition is less secure at protecting your phone and it won’t work when the battery is too low.

  • Open Settings
  • Lock screen & security
  • Face Recognition

Try Out the Cameras

The LG V40 comes with a whopping five cameras with three on the back and two on the front. This is a big selling point for the LG V40 and LG made sure to take advantage by offering you plenty of different settings and modes to try.

Take some time to play around with the cameras learning the advantage of each lens, and if you can’t decide then use the Triple shot feature to take a photo using all three at once. Don’t forget the camera is capable of more than just taking photos. With Google Lens built directly into the camera app, you can use it to search objects, translate, or shop.

Enable the Always on Display

With the always on display enabled you’ll be able to get the time, weather, date, battery level, and a quick glance at your notifications. You can even customize it with your own text or photos. The only downside being that it consumes more battery power, but in many cases it is negligible.

  • Open Settings
  • Display
  • Always-on display

Turn on the Floating Bar

The Floating Bar is a throwback to when the V series included a secondary screen at the top with shortcuts and controls. When LG dropped the secondary screen they kept the functionality of it by enabling a virtual Floating Bar. The bar stays hidden until you press the button to reveal it and many of the shortcuts can be customized to fit your needs.

  • Open Settings
  • Extensions
  • Floating Bar

Read More: LG V40 vs LG V7: What’s the difference?

Improve the Sound

Between using two speakers and a high-quality Quad DAC LG has packed some serious sound into the V40. However, you can make it even better by tweaking the sound settings. One way to improve the sound is by enabling DTS:X 3D Surround. It allows you to customize the effect to your liking and there are plenty more sound settings to play with. Make sure to experiment and find the perfect sound for you.

  • Open Settings
  • Sound
  • Sound quality and effects

Devices in this post were provided by Verizon Wireless

Clearing cache: What does it do and is it safe?

Gerson Noboa
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As the Android ecosystem evolves and our phones pack more features, there is an increasing need for additional storage in our phones. Apps are getting heavier, photos’ file sizes are increasing, and system files fill up that precious storage space more than ever.

While a lot of OEMs are finally starting to equip their phones with decent amounts of storage, there’s still a lot of phones out there that just have not enough space for this day and age. Factor in the increasing amount of lack of microSD slots in recent phones, and the storage situation can easily become precarious.

One of the most common solutions to recoup those lost GBs is clearing the cache of your device. While it does work, it is important to know what it does and how safe it is to do it.

What does clearing the cache do?

Let’s imagine this situation: you are scrolling down your Twitter feed. The app displays the profile picture of each account, consuming data in order to download it and show it to you. What happens if someone tweets again and the app needs to retrieve the appropriate profile picture? Downloading the picture again would be a massive waste of time and data.

This is where the app cache comes in. When the picture is downloaded for the first time, it is stored on your device under the app’s cache. In case the app needs the picture again, it will just retrieve it from the cache instead of going to Twitter’s servers to download it.

Getting an image (and any kind of data) from the internal storage is massively faster than getting it from the internet, giving you a better experience when using the app. It also means that Twitter is consuming less of your precious data by doing so, and it puts less strain on Twitter’s servers. It’s a win for everyone, right?

If you have a phone with 32GB or more of internal storage, you will not care at all about apps’ caches filling up your device. However, if you have a device with low amount of on-board storage, then this can become a bit problematic over time.

Thus, Android provides an option to manually clear the cache of an app. Doing so will free up that precious space, letting you download new apps or take more pictures.

How to clear an app’s cache

In case you want to do this manually, go to the settings of your phone. Find the Apps option, where you will get a list of all the apps you have installed. Then scroll to the app in question and press the Storage option. There you will find the size of the app’s cache and a button to delete it. Note: This process might vary slightly for certain manufacturers, but it should still be very similar to what is outlined here.

Also, there are some manufacturers that offer an automatic cleanup of cache and other non-essential files. These normally deal with the cache of system apps, so clearing it will not always clean the cache of specific apps. In order to be 100% sure than an app’s cache has been cleared, it’s better to do it yourself.

Is it safe to clear an app’s cache?

In short, yes. Since the cache stores non-essential files (that is, files that are not 100% needed for the correct operation of the app), deleting it should not aversely affect the functionality of the app. Actually, there are some very rare cases where an app’s cache can become corrupt, and clearing it could fix an issue. So, if you have low storage, or you feel that an app is not behaving as it should, you can just clear it to reclaim space.

Always look for applications that have a high amount of images presented in their interface. Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram are three of the biggest apps that gobble up your storage, although, since social networking normally relies on imagery, then the whole category uses caching extensively. Browsers like Chrome and Firefox also like to use a lot of cache.

However, unless you are dangerously running out of storage, this is something that should not be required of you. Not only will your experience degrade a bit while the app builds cache again, but also, every single request will go to the internet, which could increase your usage of mobile data if you’re not using WiFi.

Finally, several apps have a really clever way of managing the app’s cache. If something stored there reaches a certain age (say, two months), the app can automatically remove it from cache, freeing up that space for you. This is not the case for every app, though.

All in all, if you really feel the need to do so, the option is there for you, just a couple of taps away.

Ring Video Doorbell 2 review: worth the money?

Matt Adams
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Smart home products are designed to make our lives easier. They can focus on health, self-improvement, making our lives a little bit easier, or safety. The Ring Video Doorbell 2 is the latter– a safety device designed to help keep your family safe. After a month of using the device, I would definitely say that I feel safer in my home.

First, let’s get to the basics. What exactly is a Ring Video Doorbell? You may have overheard people talking about it or seen it on a store shelf, but what does it really do?

Well, the function really is right in the name. Think of your doorbells of old and put a video camera on it. The device allows you to see who’s at your door, whether they decide to ring the doorbell or not! And, the company saves video files of when the doorbell activates so you can see exactly what’s going on the other side of your front door, whether you’re there or not.

When you pick up the Ring Video Doorbell 2, you get everything you need in the box. There’s the doorbell itself, a battery, two mounts, two faceplates, and all of the screws and tools you need for assembly. A small tip: as soon as you get home, open the box up and charge the included battery.

Read more: Hunter Symphony Smart Fan –  Pricey and niche, but great

The instructions are simple and easy to understand. After we charged up the battery, we had the unit installed in about ten minutes. We one mounting bracket to angle to the left. There’s another that angles it down so you can get the perfect view of who was coming to your door.

I also appreciated the inclusion of two different faceplates. There’s a silver and dark faceplate which allows the Ring to look perfect no matter what kind of siding or material you’re attaching it to.

Speaking of attaching, it was a breeze. We have siding and we were easily able to screw in the mounts then attach the doorbell to those mounts with a few more screws. If you have existing doorbell wiring, you can hook the Ring into that too. The doorbell can take up 8 to 24 W AC power, but unfortunately does not support DC power.

If you’re able to hook into your existing wiring, your Ring should be able to chime your speaker. If you can’t hook into wiring but still want that chime experience, Ring sells a $30 chime that you can plug into any outlet. It runs off WiFi so you should be able to place it anywhere in your house that has internet so you’re notified when someone rings your bell.

The bottom features a screw so people can’t easily tamper with your doorbell

Personally, I don’t have wiring and I didn’t spring for the chime (yet) but I still have had a great experience. We have the live preview feature turned on so that we get an alert on our phones if anyone walks inside the camera’s sensor. You can adjust exactly where you want alerts from within the camera’s field of view so if you have a neighbor that often leaves their house, you won’t get alerted everytime the door opens.

Despite the live preview feature sucking power, we’re still at about 40-45% battery. I can’t tell you exactly how much battery it has because it only shows and icon instead of a battery percentage number, something I hope they change in a future software update. I know that turning off the live preview feature will increase my battery life, but I value it too much.

Read more: Deebot 901- Cleaning your house just got smarter and easier

After you successfully install and setup your Ring Video Doorbell 2, you’ll log into the app and connect it to your WiFi settings. You’ll also notice that Ring gives you a free 30-day free trial to its premium subscription service. This, among other things, allows you to go back and watch previous video clips of when someone rings your doorbell or the live tracking catches someone.

This is extremely useful if you’re keeping your eyes out for a package or making sure someone doesn’t steal that Amazon box off your doorstep. If you see something nefarious, you can share it with other Ring owners in your area so they know what to look out for. I really love the community feature built into the Ring app. While people are mostly sharing videos as a “just in case”, there have been a few confirmed thefts around here that people have caught and shared.

I have only a minor gripe with the app, and really it’s only one of two gripes I have overall. Sometimes the app will lock up when I tape on the notification and take me to a black screen. In this screen it’ll give me an option to view or ignore what’s going on outside, but even tapping “view” takes a pretty long time to get it to load. Hopefully Ring fixes this in a future app update.

My only other gripe? This doesn’t feel like the most premium device in the world. In all actuality, it’s fine. There’s hard plastic all around the device and it’s fine to stand up to the conditions, but it could feel a little bit more premium, especially for how much these devices cost. This is a minor issue and I wouldn’t let it deter you from picking one of these up.

The segment of smart doorbells is growing rapidly but I feel like Ring offers the best package for the money out there. You can even get the subscription for as low as $3 per month or $30 a year. The top-tier package is only $10 per month or $100 per year. Really, it’s a small price for the peace of mind that it provides.

If you’d like to pick up a Ring, you can grab one at Amazon and Best Buy.

Verizon unveils new app that lets you add multiple numbers to one device

Alexandra Arici
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Verizon announced a new solution for people on its network who carry multiple phones for personal and business use.

The carrier launched a new app called My Numbers which lets subscribers add up to four additional numbers to one smartphone. Interested parties can download the application via the Play Store.

Verizon’s My Numbers is not a free service

Each line costs $15 and comes with unlimited calling and texting, but also with its own voicemail, inbox and texting services. All of these are available via the My Numbers app.

Users can also choose from different ringtones to differentiate between contacts. Moreover, the app allows you to set an auto-reply for when you’re not available, as well as to mute calls/messages when you just want to be left alone.

Those using the app can make outbound calls only to numbers in the US, although inbound calls aren’t limited to domestic numbers and can come from international callers.

My Numbers is available for both business and personal accounts at Verizon. However, prepaid users can’t take advantage of this option.

However, there’s one thing to keep in mind if you want to use the app. It will act as your primary messaging app, so you’ll have to renounce others you might be using.

T-Mobile also has an app with a similar functionality called Digits that lets users add up to five numbers on a single device for a cheaper $10/line.

In related news, Verizon also announced that it will start rolling out support for RCS messaging in early 2019. In case you are not familiar with the term, RCS is the next messaging standard which is soon set to replace SMS.

The change has been long in the making, but global carriers have finally aligned themselves with supporting the Universal Profile in 2016.

UP is the version of RCS technology that allows messages to be cleanly distributed between carriers. Currently, America’s largest carriers, Verizon and AT&T both use proprietary texting systems. But by adopting the same system, users from any carrier using any device will be able to take advantage of the same set of features.

Download My Numbers from the Play Store

How to turn on Smart Lock on Chrome OS

Andrew Allen
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Google’s Chrome OS and Android are becoming more and more alike with each update. With that, certain features are also being shared across the two operating systems. One of the newest additions to this is Smart Lock coming to Chromebooks.

What’s it do?

Smart Lock allows for your Chromebook to be unlocked without a passcode while it’s linked to your Android phone. When the two devices are paired, you simply click your account photo or hit the enter key to log in.

How to turn it on?

Turning on Smart Lock takes a few steps on both your phone and Chrome device to work properly. But don’t worry, we are going to walk you through it now.

  • Open up the Settings app in Chrome OS.
  • Find and select “Screen lock and sign in.”
  • Enter your current password to allow this option to be edited.
  • Find the line titled Smart Lock and click “Set up.”
  • You’ll be dropped into the lock screen and have to enter your current password again.
  • Now you’ll need to find and pair your Android phone.
  • Click “Use this phone” when prompted.
  • You can now “Try Smart Lock” and see if it works.
  • Once you see the green unlocked icon next to your password bar, Smart Lock should allow for clicking your account photo or pressing enter to sign into Chrome OS.

Success

Once you see the green unlocked icon next to your password bar, Smart Lock should allow for clicking your account photo or pressing enter to sign into Chrome OS. From then on, you should have a slightly easier way to log into your Chromebook as long as your smartphone is nearby. Speaking of proximity, you may have to play around with the “Distance needed for the phone to unlock this Chromebook” drop-down in settings. I’ve found that in order for this to consistently work I needed it to be on the “far” option.

Is this the Pixel 3 Lite?

Alexandra Arici
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The Pixel smartphone line-up rose from the ashes of the popular Nexus family. But compared to its predecessors, the Pixels have always sported a high-end price tag.

Well, this might change in 2019. Russian tech publication, Rozetked who also leaked the Pixel 3 XL in full back in August, has now revealed a batch of images which allegedly show the real-life Pixel 3 Lite.

The blog claims that this is the device codenamed “Sargo” which we heard about this summer when references to it where discovered in a few code lines in Google’s ARCore software.

Possible specs for the Pixel 3 Lite

According to @Radness, the phone will supposedly arrive with a 5.56-inch LCD display with 2220 x 1080 resolution and will be powered by a mid-range Snapdragon 670 processor backed-up by 4GB of RAM and 32GB of internal storage. To quickly compare, the Pixel 3 features a 5.5-inch OLED display with 1080 x 2160 resolution and ships out with an powerful Snapdragon 845 under the hood.

The Pixel 3 Lite is also expected to feature a plastic back, which is not very surprising given that this is a budget device.

Other specs include a 2,195 mAh battery and interestingly enough the same 8MP and 12P front and rear cameras the current Pixel 3 is using.

But the best part is this: the affordable Pixel 3 will have a 3.5mm headphone jack, which is probably very good news for a lot of people.  If the leak is to be believed the phone will go on sale with a price tag between $400 and $500 sometimes in early 2019.

While Rozetked did indeed reveal the Pixel 3 XL two months before the phone went official, we should still take this leak with a grain of salt. If you look carefully, you can spot a C instead of a G on the back of the phone, which seems a bit fishy.

On top of that, remember how Google’s own Rick Osterloh firmly shut down rumors of a cheaper Pixel back in 2017 by saying that the “Pixel stays premium.” But even so, Google might have had a change of heart since then.

Would you be interested in a Pixel 3 Lite?

10 essential apps for Android to help you celebrate Thanksgiving

Alexandra Arici
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Ah, the holiday season is on our doorstep. With a few weeks to go until Thanksgiving, you should consider starting your prep ahead of time to ensure a stress-free celebration.

And to help you prepare and organize the festivities here are ten helpful Android apps you might want to download on your Android phone ASAP.

Ninja Turkey Thanksgiving

But first let’s start off with something lighter. Get in the mood to celebrate Thanksgiving with this fun and addictive game. You get to play as Ninja Turkey, the courageous bird who tries to escape being turned into a delicious Thanksgiving dinner.

The game offers 30 challenging levels to play and includes dozens of missions to complete. Get into the fun and help Ninja Turkey face the dangers of Thanksgiving Day.

BigOven

Once the time for fun and games has passed, it’s time to get serious and start thinking about your Thanksgiving dinner. What dishes will you prepare? Should you try something new this year?

BigOven is here to help you answer these questions. Browse through the app’s 350,000 recipe database, set up grocery lists and plan your menu – all from your Android phone. Find the most delicious Thanksgiving recipes simply by using a search bar or by accessing the seasonal collections on your home screen.

What’s more, Big Oven also acts as a social network by allowing you to see what friends, family, and favorite bloggers are making.

Read more: Ring shares Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals on its smart home products

Trello

Want to make sure you don’t forget anything this Thanksgiving? Download and install Trello to keep all your chores in-check. The app lets you create boards to organize everything you’re working on from cleaning the house to preparing the Thanksgiving meal.

Each main task you add contains three sub-boards which house the activities in your To Do list, those you’re currently handling (Doing), as well as the Completed ones. With a clean, modern-looking interface, Trello makes organizing your daily activities a breeze.

SnipSnap

Throwing an awesome Thanksgiving dinner can get pretty pricey. But coupon app, SnipSnap will help you find the best deals this holiday season. Even more, the application will even notify shoppers if they are in a store where a coupon is applicable. To use it, customers will only have to show their phone to the cashier. Easy breezy!

Hello Vino

Not sure which type of wine would go with the dishes your cooking this Thanksgiving? Then you might want to try out this app which is basically your personal wine assistant. Easily find wines to go with a certain type of meal/food or for a specific occasion with Hello Vino.

And as you go about the business of selecting your preferred wines, the app which uses artificial intelligence will learn your preferences and deliver personalized recommendations based on your activity.

Momondo

Spending Thanksgiving far away from home this year? Momondo helps you find, compare and book flights at the cheapest rates. The Price Calendar tool helps you find the best deals in your budgets by showcasing the average prices on different dates in an interactive calendar.

If you haven’t booked a ticket yet, it’s not too late. Just download the Momondo app from the Google Play Store.

Amazon

Want to make Thanksgiving your favorite holiday? Find out more about the origin of Thanksgiving and the traditions associated with it by doing a little bit of reading. You can get your reading material from Amazon, which features a large library of books, in digital as well as traditional format.

Suggested read: The Thanksgiving Ceremony – New Traditions for America’s Family Feast

Thanksgiving Greeting Cards

As the name suggests, this app lets you send fun and colorful Thanksgiving greeting cards to friends, family, and acquaintances. Easily share your cards with friends on WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger and more.

Autumn Wallpapers HD 2017

Get yourself in the mood for Thanksgiving by setting seasonal wallpapers on your Android phone. Bring the autumn feeling to your device by installing the Autumn Wallpapers HD 2017 app which houses a pretty extensive collection of beautifully shot autumnal images.

Black Friday 2017

You can take advantage of the free days to get ready for Black Friday which comes immediately after Thanksgiving with this app. Black Friday 2017 brings you the best deals on electronics and tech accessories from top retailers like Walmart, Best Buy or Target at your fingertips. Search deals by store or category and get notifications on the latest news and sale events.

Check out these great products from Relay Go, Jabra, Creative Labs, Ecoflow, and Funcl

AndroidGuys
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Whether it’s a gift for a friend or a treat to yourself, November is a wonderful time to purchase tech gadgets. Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and a six-week season of shopping make it hard to not spend money.

Before you go off blindly buying something you’ve never heard of just because it’s on sale, do a little homework. Ask around, check reviews, and turn to others for help. That’s where we come in; this is our platform for sharing our opinions on tech and other items worth buying.

Relay Go

Keeping track of your kids is always a bit of struggle. You want to give them the freedom to let them play, but you want to make sure they’re safe. There are options out there like getting a kid’s smartwatch that can track them or giving them an old phone, but most options come with some pretty serious downsides.

That’s where the Relay Go comes into play. Relay Go is best described as a cute walkie-talkie that runs on a mobile network so you can use it pretty much anywhere. The small, puck-like devices have a large button in the middle surrounded by a speaker grill. Pressing the button broadcasts your voice to all of the other devices in your network. We’ve been using two devices so my daughter and I can talk back and forth. But, you can also use the mobile app if you’d like, too. The app also allows you to track where the Relay Go is on a map, which makes locating your kid pretty easy.

I’m pretty impressed at how durable the Relay Go is. It’s made out of a hard plastic-like material that stands up to some abuse. Both our units have been dropped multiple times, including on concrete, and have no noticeable scratches.

The devices connect to both cellular networks and WiFi networks seamlessly so you’ll never have to mess with connection settings. This is truly a setup and go solution. We love how easy it is to get going and communicate with your child. You can grab the Relay Go from the company’s website.

Jabra Elite 65T Active

Jabra is one of the most respected names in audio devices because it simply makes fantastic products for a decent price. We’ve previously taken a look at the Elite 65T, Halo, Eclipse, and more.

Now, the company is back with a new offering, the Elite 65T Active. As you may gather, the truly wireless earbuds are a lot like the Elite 65T, but are more focused on those who want to go hard at the gym.

With a snug fit and an IP56 rating, these are the perfect gym earbuds. You have the ability to completely block out the world or use Jabra’s passthrough technology which allows some of the sound from the outside world through the earbuds. I’ve found the feature really useful when I’m listening to music and someone needs my attention. Now I don’t have to bother with taking my earbuds out and putting them back in when I’m done.

Battery life is another stand out here. The Elite 65T Active are rated for five hours of usage with an extra two charges in the carrying case. The case also features rapid charging with gives you up to 1.5 hours of usage in 15 minutes of charging. I’ve found that I get more like 6 to 6.5 hours of usage at lower volumes, which is class-leading.

If you’d like to pick up the Jabra Elite 65T Active, you can find them at Amazon, Best Buy, and Walmart (refurbished).

Creative Stage Air

Creative, like Jabra, is a gigantic name in audio. The company is known for its high-quality speakers, DACs, amps and more. Now its hitting the market with a brand new type of speaker, a super budget sound bar.

Sound bars have been gaining popularity in the last few years. No longer do you have to mess with a million long cables and a receiver to get excellent sound from your TV. The Creative Stage Air looks to dominate the budget end of that market.

The Stage Air is small. At only about a foot long and around a pound in weight, it’s super portable. Why would you want a portable soundbar? Well, it has Bluetooth too so you can use it as a portable Bluetooth speaker or connect it to your television through the Aux port. It also has a USB port so you can play MP3s directly from the soundbar from a flash drive. Pretty nifty.

SEE ALSO

So, how does it sound? Well, you’re not getting going to get amazing audio here, but we do think it punches above its weight. At only $40, this thing is super cheap but provides a decent audio experience.

You’re not going to get deep rumbling bass or a huge sound stage, but you shouldn’t expect that from a $40 soundbar either. We think this is perfect for something like a child’s room, your dorm room, or adding some extra umph to your computer audio setup. You can get the Creative Stage Air at Creative’s website and Amazon.

Ecoflow River Rapid

Battery life in phones still sucks – that’s all there is to it. Sure, there are some standout phones out there that can last all day with heavy use, but most phones just can’t. Between power-hungry processors, high-resolution displays, and demanding games, batteries just can’t keep up.

So, we’re forced to lug around huge heavy batteries or go scurrying for a power outlet any time we can. Or, you can just grab an Ecoflow River Rapid and avoid all that nonsense.

The River Rapid is a super tiny battery that packs in 5,000 mAh. That’s enough juice to charge up almost any phone with a little more left over to top off. There are batteries with more capacity, but none that match the Rapid’s size. It’s just over three inches long, and a hair over an inch long and deep. It’s super small compared to other batteries out there.

And there’s a pretty good reason why Rapid is in its name. It offers two ports- one USB C 18W Power Delivery port and one 18W Quick Charge 3.0 port. This thing will charge up your phone in a snap. It also recharges quickly, supporting up to 12W input as well.

This is my new favorite battery and I take it everywhere when I’m running low on battery life. You can grab one for yourself from Ecoflow’s website.

Funcl W1 Wireless Earbuds

Recently launched on Indiegogo, the Funcl W1 are quality earbuds with an affordable price tag — just $19.

The earbuds pair via Bluetooth 5.0, and feature touch controls, automatic on/off, and IPX5 waterproof and sweat-proof coating.

The Funcl W1 has a 150ms optimized latency which is slower than what you’d get from other, pricier options. The AirPods and Bose SoundSport Free have 100ms, for example, while the Jaybird Run have 60ms reponse.

As far as battery goes, you’ll get 4.5 hours of playtime per charge. The carrying case that comes with the earbuds houses its own battery and can provide a total of 18 hours of listening. Learn more at Indiegogo and purchase yours for $19.

Enable Google Assistant on most Chromebooks

Andrew Allen
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Google Assistant is a huge part of the company’s current portfolio of services. So are Chromebooks. However, for now, the Pixelbook is the only Chromebook with access to Assistant on Chrome OS. Fortunately, the latest Google Canary builds show that a fix for other Chromebooks is around the corner.

What’s it do?

This tweak will allow for older Chromebooks other than the Google Pixelbook to have access to Google Assistant. We do offer a word of advice on the following instructions to always take in account that this requires two things we do not recommend for average users: manual enabling Chrome flags and updating to the Chrome Canary testing channel.

How to turn it on?

Again this is two-fold and we’ll start with changing your Chromebook to the Canary channel.

  • Hit the key combination of CTRL+ALT+T to enter the built-in command line for Chrome OS.
  • Type this command without the quotations: “live_in_a_coal_mine”.
  • Hit “y” for yes when prompted.
  • Once the command completes, open the Settings app.
  • Click hamburger menu in the top left and select “About Chrome OS”.
  • Click “Check for Updates”.
  • Chromebook will then update and ask you to restart.

Welcome to the dark side of Chrome OS and you should now be running the Canary builds.

Part Deuce

Now we are ready for the second step of this tutorial of enabling the Assistant flag in Chrome’s hidden menu.

  • Paste this URL into the browser address bar: chrome://flags/#enable-native-google-assistant
  • Change the setting to “Enabled”.
  • Restart your Chromebook.

You should now have Google Assistant on your Chromebook. Again, we don’t condone some of the steps here for a stable Chrome OS experience. We honestly don’t even know what’s powering this version of Assistant. The Pixelbook is running a modified version of the Android app, but enablement via the flags page suggests this option may be a web variant.

Verizon’s latest is the rugged Kyocera DuraForce Pro 2

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Verizon Wireless this week announced the availability of the Kyocera DuraForce Pro 2, a ruggedized smartphone aimed at construction and public safety workers.

Priced $444, or $18.50 per month for 24 months, the phone is housed in a hard rubber exterior and meets the mil-spec 810G rating. In other words, it can withstand drops, shock, vibration, radiation, extreme temperatures, sleet, rain, and high elevations.

Additionally, the DuraForce Pro 2 has an IP68 rating for protection against water; it can withstand submersion in up to five feet of water for up to 30 minutes. According to Kyocera, the phone can be used around harmful vapors without worry of sparking a fire.

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Running Android 8.0 Oreo, the phone features a 5-inch HD (1920 x 1080) display protected by scratch-proof Sapphire Shield. Internally we find the DuraForce Pro 2 packs a Qualcomm Snapdragon 630 processor with 4GB RAM and 64GB of storage. A microSD expansion card slot allows for up to 512GB worth of added space.

The rear has a 13-megapixel camera with wide 135-degree field of view, underwater mode, slow motion, and other options. Around front is a 5-megapixel sensor as well as powerful speakers that produce up to 106dB of sounds.

The DuraForce Pro 2 has four noise-cancelling mics to ensure that push-to-talk (PTT) calls, music, speakerphone, and other audio is well received. Rounding out the hardware is a programmable key for launching select apps as well as a 3,240mAh battery with fast and wireless charging capability. The fingerprint reader is located in the power button on the side of the phone.

The Kyocera DuraForce Pro 2 is only available online at Verizon’s website.

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