Google's big developer showcase unveiled an almost entirely new look for Android. Material You, which builds on the design changes of 2014's Material Design, lets you pick a color palette for your smartphone. Fewer blacks, whites and greys, and — at least according to the presentation — more pastel tones than you can ever imagine.
Within Android 12, the system will analyze your wallpaper and determine colors that are dominant, complementary or "just look great." Those tones are then applied to items like the notification shade, lockscreen and widgets. Interestingly, once you've assigned your favorite look, it will follow you from your phone to other Google products, including the web, Chrome OS, wearables and smart displays. It's a clever way of imprinting something familiar to everything Google you use in daily life.
Material You will arrive on Google's own Pixel phones this fall and roll out to more of Google's products later this year.
For everything else teased during the Google I/O 2021 keynote, we've distilled it all right here.
Now that Apple has plugged its M1 processor into an all-in-one desktop computer, the new iMac is thinner and lighter than ever before. Devindra Hardawar found it makes for an ideal family PC, with quick switching enabled by Touch ID, fast performance, an impressive 24-inch display and a design that flashes personality.
Of course, there are some compromises, with a limited number of ports available and specs that fall short of what professionals are looking for. It also doesn't come cheap, and bumping up the RAM or storage gets expensive quickly, but without many strong PC competitors, this iMac stands alone. Continue reading.
Less than a year after their debut, Apple's pricey headphones are facing an audio format they can't handle. But $550 cans should be able to play CD-quality audio, right? As Billy Steele explains, the limitations of Bluetooth are behind the missing feature. But it may not be as big of a problem as it seems: He argues that support for Apple Music's new spatial audio tracks, which is present in the AirPods Max, is something you'll more easily notice than lossless vs. lossy. Continue reading.
After years without a major update, Wear OS is getting some love. The software's latest update is coming soon and was developed in collaboration with Samsung. This isn't the deep Fitbit integration some of us might have been expecting since Google completed its acquisition earlier this year, but it's still a pretty huge deal. Samsung had previously split from Google's wearable software, trying to forge its own path with Tizen. Now, it's coming back to the fold. Continue reading.
Ford will officially unveil the F-150 Lightning tonight at 9:30 PM ET, but it showed off the truck a day early when President Biden stopped by the factory. Biden drove a camouflaged prototype of the battery-powered pickup, but we got our first glimpse of its uncovered body sitting behind him next to several classic iterations of the truck that has topped sales charts in the US for 44 years in a row. Continue reading.
While we wait for next-gen AirPods to break cover, Beats could get here first. Discovered in the iOS and tvOS 14.6 betas by MacRumors, the Beats Studio Buds look to be tiny buds with no wires — and no stems either. The code also mentions noise cancellation, which would be a first for any Beats wireless earphone product. Given where these images came from, the products might soon be on their way. Will they work with Lossless audio? Continue reading.
The original Mass Effect was definitely a rougher beast compared to its sequels. Legendary Edition fixes a lot of things, but Mass Effect is still the game you remember. Slog your way through it and get to the good stuff: Mass Effect 2 and the grand finale, Mass Effect 3. Mat Smith explains why the trilogy deserves a revisit. Continue reading.
Whether it's shopping for groceries, opening new bank accounts, buying new clothes, or paying for services, the demand on the part of consumers for a frictionless experience in the digital age is real. Fraudsters, like consumers, have had to adapt and evolve their strategies in this new online world. They have adopted more sophisticated approaches to impersonate good customers which can be hard for businesses to detect.
As a result, organizations are looking to implement or tighten fraud detection measures, which can also lead to issues with good customers being identified as fraudulent impacting their overall experience.
How are these issues impacting your bottom line?
Join Ekata's own Tom Donlea, Vice President and General Manager, APAC, and guest speaker, Forrester VP, and Principal Analyst Andras Cser live on Wednesday, June 9, 2021, at 10:00 am PST/1:00 pm EST to hear more about these emerging fraud trends.
During this webinar you will learn:
Emerging fraud trends that impact your business
How you can effectively fight fraud without sacrificing the customer experience
Strategies you can take to make your fraud measures more effective
Today is Google's day, as its I/O developer conference kicks off. The company canceled last year's conference entirely, ensuring there's plenty to show off this time around. What can we expect to see? A deep dive of the next iteration of Android is all but certain, following the three developer previews of Android 12 that have already gone out. We're expecting audio-coupled haptics, improved picture-in-picture for videos and a few more interesting features, too.
Alongside Google's vision for Android, expect to hear more about Assistant and WearOS. With the latter, the big rumors suggest that Samsung — a company that once ditched Android Wear before investing heavily in its own Tizen operating system — will return with a new Wear OS watch. This could be notable when Google has struggled to match Apple's success in wearables.
Talking of Apple — always one to crash a party — it unveiled its plans for lossless music streaming, and Amazon piled on at pretty much the same time. We'll get into all that below, then come back to Engadget for Google I/O's keynote address at 10AM PT/1PM ET. We'll be following along with all the news.
After all the hints and rumors, Apple has unveiled two new high-quality music options. The price for Apple Music, however, stays the same. Apple promises to make Dolby Atmos content easy to find with curated playlists and special badges. While the company didn't go into specifics on the size of the music library, it says "thousands" of songs will be available at launch.
The company is also making its entire music catalog available in lossless audio. Lossless streaming uses Apple's ALAC codec (Apple Lossless Audio Codec) at up to 48kHz, while Hi-Resolution Lossless increases the quality to 192kHz. For that level of quality, Apple warns you'll need some extra gear to make it worthwhile — like an external USB digital-to-analog converter (DAC). There are a few questions on compatibility that still need answering. Expect to hear more soon. Continue reading.
At Display Week 2021, Samsung Display showed off concepts like a double-folding OLED panel and a Slidable OLED display that extends horizontally. For larger flexible devices, it even had a 17-inch foldable panel. Finally, it showed off a laptop concept with an under-screen camera that could help get rid of bezels forever — as long as you don't need to put a cover over it. Continue reading.
Around the same time Apple Music announced a lossless streaming option, Amazon made its Music HD plan available to Music Unlimited subscribers at no extra cost. To Amazon's credit, its upgraded service works starting today in the US, UK, Germany, Canada, France, Italy and Spain. That includes 70 million songs in high definition, more than seven million in Ultra HD and "a rapidly growing catalog of 3D Audio, including songs mixed in Dolby Atmos and Sony 360RA," according to Amazon. Continue reading.
The independent company might do a better job competing with Netflix and the rest.
AT&T purchased WarnerMedia as part of its $109 billion Time Warner acquisition in 2018. At the time, the telecom said the deal was a "perfect match" that would mate top-tier content with AT&T's far-flung distribution network. Now WarnerMedia is combining with Discovery in a $43 billion deal to form a standalone company.
The new company will have Discovery President and CEO David Zaslav as its new leader, and WarnerMedia head Jason Kilar is reportedly negotiating his exit. One thing to keep an eye on is the Warner Bros. gaming studios, as they're reportedly splitting up due to the deal, with some remaining within AT&T and others heading to the new company. Continue reading.
The California Department of Motor Vehicles appears to be actively investigating Tesla over CEO Elon Musk's audacious claims about his company's Full Self-Driving (FSD) technology. This comes barely a week after Tesla engineers privately admitted to the DMV that Musk had exaggerated the FSD system's capabilities on social media.
FSD is a $10,000 option for Tesla models and promises to do everything from change lanes in freeway traffic and take exits on its own to independently stopping at traffic lights and signs. However, this does not make them "fully" autonomous. Continue reading.
Ahead of releasing Mario Golf: Super Rush next month, Nintendo has revealed a bit more about what to expect from the game, including the speed golf mode. You and up to four friends will play at the same time. Not only will you try to complete a hole with fewer shots than your opponents, you'll want to do so faster than them as well. There will also be a battle royale-style speed golf variant called Battle Golf. The showdown takes place in an arena packed with obstacles and nine holes. The first golfer to capture three holes, by having the lowest stroke count at a given time, will be the winner. The game arrives June 25th. Continue reading.
