Apple promised a revolution with the iPhone X when it was first announced on September 12, 2017. At the time, I was skeptical. What I mainly wanted was a perfect size, nothing too big. I wanted less bezel. I was also excited by the possibilities of not having a home button. And I wanted it to …
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This is going to sound pretty silly, but bear with me a sec. There’s a new “Voice Remote” feature for the YouTube TV app that — get this — lets you ask for exactly what you want to watch. But only on phones, according to 9to5Google. Not on Rokus or Android TVs or other YouTube TV-equipped bigscreen devices where you’d likely …
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Like Facebook and Apple before it, Google has introduced a new user privacy policy to comply with a new European data privacy law — General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) — that goes into effect on May 25. Google’s updated privacy policy makes it easier to understand what information it collects about you. More importantly, Google has improved its privacy controls …
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Those smartphones we’re always carrying with us? The police have a simple way to turn them into a tracking device without our knowledge. On Thursday, The New York Times revealed that Securus Technologies, a service that monitors calls to prison inmates, has been used by a former Missouri sheriff to monitor people’s phones and track their location. The sheriff, who was …
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Google wants to trick you into thinking machines are human. That’s a theme the tech titan pushed as it rolled out new features for its Google Assistant voice software at Google I/O, Google’s annual conference for developers. Google Assistant is in nearly every Android phone, the Google Home smart speaker and drives future smart displays, which means that robo-voices that …
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Austin Pruitt, a two-time US Paralympian, walked me over to a racing wheelchair that he set up for a stationary workout routine. Pruitt has cerebral palsy from the knees down, which forces him to walk slowly, but he’s able to compete on the world stage by racing in a wheelchair. He said he used to set up a bunch of …
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Update, June 5: The Lenovo Z5 has been officially announced — and it has a notch after all. Notches, it seems, are the new black. Originally seen — and often criticized — on the Essential PH-1 and iPhone X in 2017, the trend of adding notches to Android phones has only accelerated this year as phone makers look to maximize the screen …
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When Google revealed Gmail’s new look in April, it unveiled some new features too. There’s a new offline mode, a new tool for sending self-destructing messages, and Smart Replies. Going one step further than basic replies, Google announced a new Smart Compose feature at Google I/O last week. The feature was promised to launch in the coming days and weeks, but …
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President Donald Trump is doubling down on his defense of Chinese telecommunications giant ZTE. Trump said on Twitter on Monday that ZTE, the fourth-largest smartphone maker in the US by market share, “buys a big percentage of individual parts from U.S. companies.” HE also said ZTE was “reflective of the larger trade deal we are negotiating with China and my …
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DVR manufacturer TiVo appears to have set up a placeholder app for Alexa last weekend, Dave Zatz reports. TiVo announced at CES in January that it would be bringing Amazon’s Alexa voice assistant to its boxes, old and new. Last March Amazon announced the skill programming interface (Google translation from Spanish) that would make it possible. The creation of the placeholder …
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