Swiping is one of the easiest and most intuitive gestures in the touchscreen armory, especially when you've got limited space. Google clearly gets that, having added swiping to Google Fit and Google Assistant on Wear OS smartwatches. Now, it's announcing Tiles, a new quick-access interface for more watch functions.
There are six Tiles in the new set: Goals, Next Event, Weather Forecast, Heart Rate, Headlines and Timer. You access them with a simple swipe left to see at-a-glance information about the latest news, how much is left on your timer, exactly how stressed you are, and so on. Before, swiping left and right would bring up Fit and Assistant respectively, but Google has slightly changed things in order to make way for its new information-rich Tiles.
You can touch and hold a tile to change the order in either the Wear OS smartphone app or directly on the watch, to make sure the ones you use the most are closest to hand.
Google says Tiles will roll out to all Wear OS watches in the next month, and more Tiles will be added in the future. However, it does caveat that "Certain features will vary by phone OS, watch or country."
Google has spent the last year refining its Wear OS smartwatch software to make everything feel simpler, more intuitive, and easier to use. The improvements have gone a long way in making Wear OS feel smoother and more useful. Today, Google is announcing another new addition: Tiles. Tiles are glanceable widgets that you can swipe between to get information quickly, including the weather, your next calendar appointment, your heart rate, news headlines, etc.
You access Tiles with a left swipe on your Wear OS watchface, which previously took you to Google Fit. Your Fit data is still in that spot, but now you’ll have these other widgets available to you as well.
“With a swipe left, you’ll be greeted by these Tiles and can check your progress towards your fitness goals or start a workout, know where you need to be next, plan ahead with the latest forecast, check your heart rate, follow the latest breaking headlines and set a timer,” Wear OS product manager Frank Deschenes wrote in a blog post.
Tiles can be rearranged to your liking with a tap and hold, and layout can also be adjusted with the Wear OS mobile app. Not all smartwatches running Wear OS will have all of these tiles; if your device lacks a heart rate sensor, you’re obviously not going to see that one. Google says it plans to add more tiles as time goes on.
Tiles will roll out to Wear OS over the next month, according to Deschenes. Now, if we only had a flagship Google smartwatch to use them on.
Moment has announced its biggest ever update for Pro Camera, which adds a bunch of cool new features to the app, and brings the Android version up to parity. And to celebrate, if you download the app for the first time you'll get 15 percent off in the Moment Shop, which carries more than 20 photography and travel brands.
First up, on the Android side of things, there's the addition of split focus and exposure, RGB histogram and the ability to capture both a RAW and JPG image in RAW mode, which means you'll be able to preview a RAW image a whole lot faster. The Android version has also got a few general performance improvements, camera roll redesign and improved OnePlus and Samsung S10 device support. The company even made an impressively aesthetic video showing off what can be done through the app with the S10.
New features for both iOS and Android include zebra stripes and focus peaking. With zebra stripes you'll be able to see at a glance, through the viewfinder, over and underexposed areas of a shot. With focus peaking, you can dial in focus in both photo and video mode, and when you're manually focusing you'll see the sharpest edges highlighted in the viewfinder, so you can be sure your image is crisp in all the right places. Get it on iOS for $5.99 and Android for $3.99.
Portable batteries have become more stylish, cheaper, smaller, and faster at charging your tech. More improvements are on the way, thanks to gallium nitride (GaN), a more space- and energy-efficient alternative to silicon that can already be found in a few wall chargers. Nice as these advancements are, they mostly impact devices with small batteries. Wall chargers aren’t much help if you’re on the go.
As more laptops and other high-powered devices adopt USB-C and move away from proprietary charging plugs, there’s an opportunity for big, powerful batteries that can augment your power adapters, and ideally, let you charge multiple devices at the same time. And now, a number of options are hitting the market aimed squarely at doing just that.
We have tested a few models that are available now, as well as some that are coming out soon. The list includes Zendure’s SuperTank, Sanho’s HyperJuice, and J-Go Tech’s Tanker Elite and Tanker Xtreme. They all have a few things in common: they aren’t small or lightweight, so your bag will gain more than a few ounces if you stick one inside. Each of these batteries has USB-C Power Delivery ports capable of delivering at least 65W of power (and in most cases, up to 100W). This means that they’re likely powerful enough to charge most laptops and replace a few wall chargers that you usually stick in your bag. Each option also has multiple ports to allow simultaneous charging of other devices. Lastly, you’ll find pass-through charging in each battery, meaning you can route power through their respective ports while the battery itself is being recharged.
These batteries do what you expect them to: charge your devices quickly, and keep them alive for longer. Cheaper battery packs suited for devices with lower power requirements do a great job of keeping phones and most tablets going for days. But if you use a Mac laptop, a new iPad Pro, a Google Pixelbook, or a Windows 10 laptop that charges over USB-C, a bigger and more powerful battery pack is a smart buy — especially if you’ll be doing some gaming, or other power-intensive activities that tend to be a quick drain on a battery.
Tallying up the costs makes it clear that trying to live your life away from power outlets doesn’t come at a bargain. At the very least, your purchase will get you a battery and a USB-C to USB-C cable that can handle fast charging. Having the right cable is worth pointing out because not all USB-C cables are created equally. You’ll have to pay extra for a charger that can refill these batteries quickly, unless you find one bundled with your battery. At half the cost of the battery itself (and sometimes more) it’s worth buying one, if only for the convenience. You can certainly use a less capable USB-C charger to fill one up, but unless you’re charging overnight, it’s an insufferably slow process that will carve out way too many hours in your day.
At $129, J-Go Tech’s Tanker Elite is one of the most affordable options that we tested. That’s not so bad, but it’s before you factor in the cost for the necessary wall charger to quickly recharge the battery in about an hour. The 87W charger that you can purchase bundled with the J-Go Tech Tanker Elite takes just 80 minutes to recharge the entire 20,800mAh capacity. For this added convenience, you’ll need to pay a total of $164 to get the battery with an 87W wall charger included. If you want more power, J-Go Tech’s 100W charging kit sans battery is $79.99 at Amazon, and includes a braided USB-C to USB-C cable, as well as universal plug adapters. Although the Elite doesn’t have the best port selection or capacity (I’d much rather have a second USB-C port than a Micro USB port, though your mileage may vary), it will be among the most budget-friendly batteries once the other options are no longer available with crowdfunding discounts.
J-Go Tech’s Tanker Xtreme offers more capacity (27,000mAh versus 20,800mAh in the Elite) and a better port selection (a second USB-C port in place of the Elite’s Micro USB port). It’s available for purchase at Amazon with its 87W wall charger for $249.99.
At $99, the Zendure SuperTank is currently the cheapest option (the battery will jump up to $149 after fundraising concludes in June 2019), and its multi-port SuperHub charger that can recharge it at 100W speeds is another $69 (it will also go up in June to $100). Most of the batteries that we tested are shaped like big TV remotes, but the SuperTank is smaller and far more stout. This could make it a tough fit in slimmer pockets, but I’m personally fine with its design since it allows Zendure to fit in a good selection of ports, including 100W and 60W USB-C ports and 15W and 18W USB-A ports.
Zendure’s SuperHub mostly mirrors the ports available on the SuperTank. It has both 100W and 18W USB-C ports and a duo of 18W USB-A ports. If you need to charge more than one USB-C device at a time, the SuperHub is an ideal option.
Sanho’s HyperJuice is priced at $159 during its fundraising process, but will cost a whopping $299 afterward — and that’s not counting its 100W charger. That accessory currently costs an extra $39 at Indiegogo, but will cost $79 when it releases later this month. It’s fairly bare bones, and other than a 100W USB-C input to recharge your battery (or straight up power your device), it offers a USB-A port to keep your iPhone, or some other device, topped off.
To compare a few other USB-C chargers currently on the market, Apple’s $79 87W USB-C power charger will definitely get the job done, but obviously won’t be as fast as a 100W charger. Google’s slightly cheaper 45W USB-C charger that costs $60 will make you wait even longer for devices to recharge.
Testing out the batteries
To test these batteries, I used the Microsoft Surface Book 2 because it can charge over USB-C, and it’s notorious for demanding a lot of juice from power adapters. This laptop’s USB-C charging port pulled a maximum of 87W during testing, which I was able to see thanks to a USB-C multimeter. I performed a range of activities to see how these batteries impacted the Surface Book 2’s battery life, including powering the machine in an off state, again while browsing some websites, and lastly, while playing Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, a game that this machine struggles to run at its native screen resolution.
All of the batteries that we tested were able to maintain and build a charge. There was one initial snag, however. The first model of Zendure’s SuperTank fell short of its advertised capabilities, topping out at a 54W output, regardless of the task at hand. The company said the unit we were testing was a prototype and sent over a finalized unit that didn’t have any issues.
Most of the time, the batteries fluctuate between 60 and 80W, depending on the moment-to-moment power requirements. And while I hacked through the endgame of Sekiro, this proved to be enough for the Surface Book 2 to slowly build a charge. When the batteries fall around the 50 percent capacity mark, I noticed a slight dip in throughput in each of them down to around 54W. While that’s not enough to charge the Surface Book 2 during gameplay, it will work to slow the drop. If you aren’t gaming or doing intensive work such as video rendering, this shouldn’t be an issue.
There were a few other quirks to note: they all exhibited a few moments when the laptop’s batteries (it houses one within the keyboard, and another in the detachable tablet) wouldn’t charge during gameplay. But hitting Alt+Tab, then shifting the PC’s power mode to “best battery life” instead of “best performance” calmed the fans down and allowed the battery to fill up — but not without some major hits to gaming performance. This is most likely a Surface Book issue.
Also, all of the batteries that I tested, at some point, made an error pop up in Windows 10 that claimed the battery was slow, or that the USB device was incompatible. Removing the plug and putting it back in usually resolved the issue, but out of the bundle of batteries we tried, the HyperJuice was the most problematic. It could be another Surface Book quirk, or it could be related to Windows 10. Other devices didn’t put up as much of a fuss, and I didn’t encounter any warnings like this when I used them to charge a MacBook Pro.
In terms of surprises, J-Go Tech’s affordable Tanker Elite surpassed its supposed 65W output limit. It was able to charge the Surface Book 2 as quickly as the others at up to 87W, which is impressive, if not a bit baffling.
Each of the batteries lasted about an hour while charging up the Surface Book 2. From a dead state, the 27,000mAh capacity batteries (the SuperTank, HyperJuice, and Tanker Xtreme) were able to provide about 46 percent of the laptop’s power before needing to be recharged. This might not sound like an achievement, but it’s worth noting that this laptop distributed the charge pretty evenly across its two batteries, putting equal amounts of power into the keyboard’s battery as was found in the tablet.
We also tested these batteries with a 2016 MacBook Pro and the Google Pixelbook. Both of these machines demand less power than the Surface Book 2 (61W for the MacBook Pro, 45W for the Pixelbook), and each battery easily met their maximum wattage demands. The Zendure SuperTank fully charged the Pixelbook in about 90 minutes and still had 41 percent of its battery left. If you’re using one of these batteries to stay topped off while doing some light work away from a charger, the HyperJuice was able to do so while only losing about 10 percent of its capacity after an hour of use. The other 27,000mAh batteries should give you similar results for both computers.
Which big battery is worth the money?
All of these batteries are powerful, and unless you can’t compromise even a few watts, the buying decision comes down to design preference, port selection, and of course, your budget.
For the most power for your dollar, the J-Go Tech Tanker Xtreme offers a lot of juice, a good variety of ports, and since it includes an 87W wall charger, its bundle offers the best value for your money. Zendure’s SuperTank is a great, compact package that offers the best port selection, and if you’re able to buy it for less during the fundraising, the value is good as well.
If you’re hoping to get more work done away from a wall outlet, all of them can help you do that. Each is proficient at directing a lot of power to a single device, as well as spreading it out across several at the same time, like a phone, a set of wireless headphones, and a Nintendo Switch. We expect even more options to come as 2019 proceeds, but the first batch of big, powerful batteries is impressive.
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DIY projects can be a lot of fun, and if Raspberry Pi has taught us anything it's that people love to tinker. But for most folk, forays into the world of build-it-yourself tech start and end with a specific kit and a whole bunch of instructions to help them along. Not so for one inquisitive Redditor, who recently revealed that he built an entire smartwatch from scratch. And since he's been kind to enough to share details of the process down to the smallest minutiae, you can too.
Smarchbme, who calls his stunning creation the "Smarch Watch," said it took him a few weeks to build the fully-functional, self-coded device, which boasts a battery life of seven days and takes just 2.5 hours to fully recharge (because of course he went the whole hog and built a charging cradle, too). The watch brings up color-coded notifications from his phone, including messages, email and calendar, although he humbly states there's "no music playback yet."
He sourced his materials as cheaply as possible, with a final price tag of about $50. However, he says that "as a rule of thumb, for a product to be successful and make a profit, you would have to sell it for four or five times the cost of the goods. So in my case (assuming no discounts due to the economies of scale) I would have to charge somewhere between $200 and $250 to make a profit." This goes some way to explaining why companies charge such high prices, then. Alas, despite repeated requests by impressed Redditors, Smarchbme has no plans to put his creation into wider production. But he's shared everything -- and we mean everything -- you need to know to get started yourself is here.
Admittedly, Smarchbme had a few things stacked in his favor, such as his five years working as a product designer and access to equipment such as a 3D printer. But he says that "We live in the golden age of making -- there's no better time than now to start making things," adding that "You can DIY anything -- next up, a DIY spaceship."
There are so many flagship Android smartphones set to be released in the next few months, and several of them are already stirring up some serious hype. Even still, there is no unreleased smartphone out there that has been generating as much buzz as the upcoming iPhone 11. Early details surrounding the iPhone 11, iPhone 11 Max, and iPhone 11R that leaked last year painted a somewhat boring picture of Apple’s next-generation smartphones. The hardware design was rumored to be almost identical to the 2018 iPhone XS series and the 2017 iPhone X, and there wasn’t much talk of any innovative new features that fans might look forward to. As we get closer to the iPhone 11’s release date, however, the puzzle continues to come together — and it looks better and better with each passing day.
TF International Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo is the world’s top Apple insider, and he’s plugged into the company’s supply chain. Kuo has shared a number of details about Apple’s upcoming new iPhone 11 models, and he’s almost always accurate when it comes to iPhone leaks. The analyst says Apple’s new iPhone 11 and iPhone 11 Max will both get a huge camera upgrade with a triple-lens rear camera array, which is fantastic news. Apple used to be a leader in the mobile camera space, but the company has fallen far behind Google and Huawei in recent years. We can also look forward to a big bump in performance and a refined design with a frosted glass back, according to Kuo.
Following Kuo’s reports, Apple’s final iPhone 11 and iPhone 11 Max design was revealed in a series of leaks. That design has now been reimagined in a new video, and the results are simply stunning.
Each and every year, detailed files containing the schematics for Apple’s next-gen iPhone designs are stolen from servers at Foxconn, the electronics manufacturer Apple uses to assemble its iPhones. Those leaked files are used by accessory makers to design protective cases so they’re ready in time for each new iPhone’s release. But they’re also used to mock up each new iPhone model’s design, and that’s exactly what has happened with the iPhone 11 series in recent weeks.
First we saw Apple’s iPhone 11 mocked up in great detail, and it reminded us how much better Apple is than Android phone makers when it comes to fit and finish. Then the iPhone 11 Max was rendered, showing us a sleek and refined design that looked even better than we initially thought it would. Now, another graphic designer has used those leaks as a jumping off point, and he has created a new video that showcases Apple’s iPhone 11 design.
Graphic designer Hasan Kaymak has created new renders of the upcoming iPhone 11, and they’re stunning. As it often does, YouTube channel ConceptsiPhone compiled several of Kaymak’s renders into a video that showcases the design from all angles. In a nutshell, the new iPhone 11 looks stunning in these renders. Kaymak went a bit overboard with the reflections in his renders, but you can still get a very good idea of what the iPhone 11 will look like in real life once it’s released this coming September.
Check out the full video, which is embedded below.
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