Apple’s latest watchOS beta appears to have revealed the company’s plans for new Apple Watch models. Just days after spotting a potential iPhone 11 announcement date, iHelp BR has discovered references to new ceramic and titanium watch models in the latest watchOS 6 beta. Both new watch models will reportedly come in both the 40mm and 44mm versions, and iHelp BR has found animations for the initial Apple Watch setup process.
Apple has never released an Apple Watch in a titanium finish, but 9to5Mac notes that this is the same finish used on the company’s new Apple Card. A ceramic Apple Watch was first introduced with the Series 2 and 3, but Apple didn’t produce a ceramic version of the Series 4 Apple Watch.
It’s not clear if these new Apple Watch models will be part of a bigger Series 5 launch, or simply added to the existing Series 4 lineup. Apple is expected to unveil its iPhone 11 lineup on September 10th, and these Apple Watch models will likely be part of that announcement.
We’ve got a terrific daily deals roundup for you to check out on Saturday, and the cherry on top is some free money from Amazon! Buy $50 or more of Amazon gift cards and Amazon will give you a $15 credit for free if you enter the coupon code 19GIFTCARD at checkout, or you go to this page first and click the button to apply this promotion to your account. You’re obviously going to spend $65 on Amazon anyway, so why not get $15 of it for free!? The only caveat is that you’re not eligible for the promo if you’ve purchased Amazon gift cards from the Amazon site before.
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Here's some inside baseball for you: before the Galaxy Note 10 was officially unveiled, I attended three press briefings as a cameraman, shooting for the various sites across Mobile Nations. That amounted to roughly five hours with both the Note 10 and 10+, meaning that I've probably spent more time with the phones than anyone else outside of Samsung's payroll.
Since their announcement at Samsung Unpacked, the Galaxy Note 10 and 10+ have become possibly the most controversial devices in the series since the explosive Note 7, thanks to the removal of "legacy" features (if you can call them that) like the headphone jack and, in the case of the smaller phone, the microSD slot. But in spite of that, the biggest change that drew me into the smaller Note during my briefings was, well, just how small it really is.
I'm tired of giant phones. The Note 10 feels perfect in my hands.
I've been using the Xperia 1 daily since reviewing it last month, and part of the reason for that is because of just how much screen I get without the phone feeling huge, thanks to the extra-tall 21:9 aspect ratio. It's narrow enough that I can still get away with using it one-handed (so long as I don't need to reach the top of the screen), which is something that's usually reserved for smaller phones like my previous daily phone, the Pixel 3.
The Galaxy Note 10 isn't quite as narrow as the Xperia 1, with a slightly shorter, wider 19:9 aspect ratio, but the bezels are so tight around the 6.3-inch display that the phone isn't much bigger physically than the Galaxy S10 — or even the Pixel 3, for that matter. I've been saying it since the first time I held the Note 10: Samsung is finally bringing the benefits of the S Pen to a relatively small phone that just about anyone could comfortably use.
As you might expect, that size doesn't come without its compromises. On top of the removal of the headphone jack and microSD card, you also get a smaller 3500mAh battery on the Note 10 (for reference, the Note 10+ has a 4300mAh cell), and the display maxes out at 1080p. But that lower resolution should lead to slightly less battery drain, at least in theory, and well, I lived with the horrendous battery life of the Pixel 3 for months. Anything has to be better.
I can empathize with those for whom the smaller Note 10's trade-offs are too much to live with, especially for the whopping $950 Samsung is commanding, but I'm personally not bothered too much by them. I haven't used wired headphones in years, and Samsung at least packages in its AKG earbuds, newly brandished with a USB-C connector — though would including the $15 headphone adapter have been too much to ask for? I can't remember the last time I've used removable storage either, and 256GB is more than enough for my needs.
I know not everyone will agree, but the Note 10's lack of a headphone jack and microSD slot don't bother me.
This isn't meant to be an apology piece for Samsung, nor am I trying to justify the high price tag on what's frankly not a great deal against Samsung's other flagships like the Galaxy S10 and S10+. Without having used one extensively myself, I have no way of knowing how well the Note 10's 3500mAh battery will hold up under heavy use, nor can I comment on the performance differences against the Note 10+, which has 50% more RAM. I'm just tired of giant phones, and as I write this out with a Note 10+ review unit sitting on my desk, I can't wait to give the smaller Note 10 a go.
That being said, I'm also excited to spend the next week or so with the Galaxy Note 10+. It's bigger than I prefer, but thanks to its tight bezels, it's still manageable (never thought I'd say that about a nearly 7-inch device), and in addition to the larger battery and extra RAM, it has two extra sensors next to the camera array that aid in depth-sensing. This supposedly aids in the Note 10+'s newly improved portrait video mode, along with some AR-related features like the ability to scan real-world objects into 3D models. Definitely excited to give all of that a whirl.
If you're interested in either size of the Note 10, keep an eye on the Android Central home page over the next few days. Andrew and I both have Note 10+ units in hand, and we'll be writing all about our experiences with the phone leading up to the full written and video reviews next week.
Despite its compromises, the Galaxy Note 10 could be the perfect phone for fans of the S Pen who want a relatively small phone they can reasonably use in one hand. It has a powerful spec sheet, three great cameras, and faster charging than previous generations.
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Apart from its real-but-not-ready foldable, Motorola is best known these days for churning out respectable smartphones for people on a budget. Those devices — like those in the Moto G and E series — offer some of the best performance you can find for under $300, and over the past year, they've helped Motorola creep steadily toward profitability. They aren't, however, all that interesting as phones.
Motorola gets that, and it's changing. Those classic G and E product lines aren't going anywhere, but the Lenovo-owned smartphone brand has been breaking out of its rut lately with the help of its Motorola One devices — more stylish mid-range phones with an emphasis on novel features. And of Motorola's small handful of One devices, the new Motorola One Action is easily the strangest.
That's not because it uses one of Samsung's octa-core Exynos 9609 chipsets, because it shares that trait with the existing One Vision. It's not because of its 6.3-inch, 21:9 CinemaVision display, either — these extra-long screens are slowly becoming more common. No, what makes the One Action so pleasantly bizarre is its triple-camera setup: There's a standard 12MP sensor with an f/1.8 aperture for all your day-to-day shooting, plus a 5MP depth sensor to make sure your portraits have appropriately blurry backgrounds. The last sensor, however, isn't meant to be used for photography at all; it's a 16MP wide-angle video sensor that captures 117 degrees worth of whatever's in front of it. The thing is, it's mounted the wrong way here.
Motorola
According to Motorola's market research, many people — too many, perhaps — shoot most of their videos while their phones are held upright. Sure, that means these people don't have to two-hand their mobile cameras when some interesting is happening in front of them. Unfortunately, that also means the videos in question don't actually look very good when you try to view them in landscape mode or on external displays. To address that, Motorola stuck this video camera into the phone rotated 90 degrees to the right, so that videos shot while the One Action is being held vertically fill the entire screen when you review them later. And the weird stuff doesn't end there.
Motorola is also pushing this third, video-only sensor as an action camera — hence the name. That's largely because of the electronic video stabilization Motorola built in here, which to their credit, did seem to do a good job reducing shake and jittering in the test footage we shot. The demo space Motorola set up was pretty dark, too, so it helped that the One Action effectively treats clusters of 4 pixels on that sensor as one for improved brightness. I sort of doubt it would fare as well as, say, the super-steady video mode found in premium Samsung phones, but based on a little hands-on time, the feature fares more respectably than you might think at first. Not bad for a phone that'll only cost €259 (about $287) when it goes on sale this week.
This is exactly the kind of weird camera stuff Motorola has been leaning into lately, so the video gimmick here almost doesn't register as a surprise. I guarantee people who use that video camera for the first time will be surprised, though, because they'll see that wide-angle view bounded by lots of dead space above and below. Even though I knew exactly what to expect when I started to test the camera, I still got the immediate impression that I was doing something wrong or that the phone was acting up.
The resulting 1080p footage was indeed expansive and correctly rendered, but what you see while shooting it runs counter to everything you'd expect after using a smartphone camera for years. No wonder Motorola didn't try to pull off a feature like this in something like a Moto G — in North America at least, Motorola's mainstream cheap phones are especially popular among older men, and I can't help but think of the frantic phone calls I'd get from my dad if I gave him a One Action to use.
For better or worse, the rest of the One Action package is fairly standard: It'll ship with 4GB of RAM, 128GB of onboard storage (which you can expand upon with a microSD card), a non-removable 3,500mAh battery and a rear-mounted fingerprint sensor. Oh, and despite what the name suggests, the Motorola One Action won't actually be an Android One device everywhere — it'll run that super-clean version of Android in markets like Brazil, Mexico and Europe, but Americans will instead get the usual Motorola tweaks and interface layered on top of Android Pie.
I've spent a lot of time here calling the Motorola One Action weird, and it certainly is. The rationale that went into it, however, was anything but. This smartphone brand has finally started to turn a profit thank its to cheap devices like the Moto G family, but by throwing caution to the wind and trying outlandish tricks in its Motorola Ones, Motorola hopes to speak to a new kind of customer. These aren't people who buy smartphones because of their utilitarian value — these are younger people who want ambitious features that could change what they think of Motorola in the future. In a way, the One Action isn't just a smartphone with GoPro ambitions; it's a clear indicator of Motorola's unabashedly interesting future.
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The Galaxy Note 10 has quite a few new features, but perhaps the ones Samsung spent the most time talking about at its Unpacked event were those that came from its Microsoft collaboration. One of those features, the handy “Link to Windows” shortcut, is now available on older Samsung phones with a quick workaround. Here’s how to get it.
The best gifts for Android users
In case you missed it back on launch day, the Note 10 comes with a suite of features designed for Microsoft users. It can output content to Word, has a plethora of pre-installed Microsoft apps, and more. One of the most interesting features is a shortcut toggle in the quick settings which can be used to quickly activate a connection to your Windows PC.
This new feature is powered by Microsoft’s “Your Phone Companion” app, but it requires an additional app to enable the special features on Galaxy devices. Some users have found out (via SamMobile) that sideloading a single APK from the Galaxy Note 10 also enables the functionality on some older Galaxy devices.
To get started, you’ll need a Samsung device running on One UI. This includes the links of the Galaxy S10 family, Galaxy Note 9, and more. Technically, it should work on any device with One UI, but those are the only ones that have been tested. Next you’ll need to download the Your Phone Companion app from the Play Store and set it up. Finally, you’ll need to sideload the “Link to Windows Service” APK on your Samsung phone from a trusted source.
Once that’s done, the “Link to Windows” toggle should be available as an option in the quick settings, although you’ll need to manually add it. Tapping it may ask for permissions the first time, but after that it should quickly connect your phone to your PC.
We also can’t stress enough that you should not install this on non-Samsung phones. The results aren’t pretty.
Google has one of the most extensive, diverse, and affordable smart speaker lineups on the market right now, which explains why the search giant looks like the only company in the world capable of challenging Amazon's global domination in a rapidly expanding industry. But those thriving sales numbers occasionally need a little boost, and that's precisely what the latest Google Store deals aim to provide.
While not exactly unprecedented or unbeatable, these fresh discounts are at least comprehensive, covering the entire Google Home family, as well as the rebranded Nest Hub. But perhaps the most compelling special offer sees the popular Nest Hello video doorbell bundled with a so-called "Smart Light Starter Kit" at a $229 price. Normally, that's how much the Nest Hello costs by itself, so the combo deal essentially hooks you up with a free Google Home Mini and GE C-Life smart bulb.
Separately, the Smart Light Starter Kit would set you back $55, although this extensive new Google Store sale brings that price point down to $35 as well. If you're merely interested in snapping up a dirt-cheap smart speaker, fret not, as the pint-sized Google Home Mini is also available for $29 instead of $49 when purchased alone. Meanwhile, the "regular" Google Home is on sale at $69 (once again) after a cool $30 markdown, which helps the bad boy undercut Amazon's second-gen Echo... at least for the time being.
Audiophiles might be more excited about the prospect of buying a premium Google Home Max at $30 off list, even if that still means you need to cough up a whopping $269, and last but certainly not least, the Google Nest Hub smart display fetches $99 instead of a $129 list price. All discounts are apparently good until September 2, but we wouldn't be surprised to see third-party retailers like Best Buy or Walmart one-up at least some of these interesting promotions.
