Epic is finally ready to show a sliver of Fortnite season 10 a day before its August 1st debut, and it seems like nostalgia is the order of the day. The company has posted a brief story trailer suggesting that you'll see locations, goodies and themes from the game's two-year history, such as the golf carts from Lazy Links and seasonal items. It's not certain just what will make the cut. If there's a place or pickup you miss dearly, though, there's a chance you might see it again.
To some extent, there's a parallel with PUBG here -- the creators of that shooter recently revitalized their first (and for many, definitive) map after years of adding new territory. While the approaches are decidedly different, they're both reminders that the modern battle royale shooter has been popular for long enough that people have developed fond memories of what the early days were like -- even if those early days aren't all that old to start with.
Waiting for AirPlay 2 to come to your new TV? Your watch is ending. Announced at CES in January, Apple's streaming system is now rolling out to compatible LG and Vizio TVs. Previously limited to the Apple TV streaming box, AIrPlay is similar to Google's Cast, allowing iOS and Mac users to stream content directly from their devices onto a compatible TV. The TVs also work with Apple's HomeKit, allowing for Siri to control the TVs from your Mac, iPhone or iPad.
LG, which began the deployment of the new software last week, will be updating its latest 2019 OLED TVs, NanoCell TVs (except the SM8100 series) and UHD TVs that have the company's ThinQ AI capability. The OLED and NanoCell TVs will get the new software first, with the company's other 4K UHD TVs set to "receive this update later in 2019."
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Vizio’s 2019 TVs get Apple AirPlay and beefed-up hardware
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Vizio, however, will be taking things much further and updating not just its latest 2019 SmartCast TVs but other SmartCast TVs dating back to 2016. The new software, called SmartCast 3.0, will begin its rollout today and "continue over the coming months."
In addition to LG and Vizio, AirPlay 2 is also available on some new Samsung and Sony smart TVs, with Samsung also updating some 2018 TVs to get the new feature.
The Samsung Galaxy Tab S6 takes the series’ idea that a non-Apple tablet can serve as a laptop-replacing professional machine and brings it closer than ever to reality. Thanks to a few key refinements, it seriously contends with the latest iPad Pro 11 at a slightly lower cost.
Some of these refinements are obvious, like slimming down the body and integrating the S Pen stylus to clip onto, and recharge from, the Galaxy Tab S6.
Others are less so, like giving the tablet-as-desktop feature DeX a shortcut on the optional, revamped Book Cover keyboard. It might not be a generational leap that justifies hopping from the previous Samsung Galaxy Tab S4 to the new Galaxy Tab S6 nomenclature, but it's progress.
As a result, the tablet is more appealing than ever - and with the most powerful mobile chipset yet, a strong alternative to the iPad Pro with its lower price tag and included stylus. Like many leading Samsung devices, these can often be found even cheaper during deals seasons, elevating its value over Apple's rarely-discounted tablets.
Whether it's worth the money is almost down to personal preference, as the starting price is a good chunk of the way toward picking up a discrete 2-in-1 or laptop.
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Samsung Galaxy Tab S6 price and availability
The Samsung GalaxyTab S6 release date for the Wi-Fi only variant is, September 6, and it will be available online and in stores starting at $649 (around £530, AU$940) for the base 6GB RAM/128GB of storage model.
Galaxy Tab S6 pre-orders begin at Samsung.com on August 23, while an LTE edition will be available later in the year at an undisclosed price.
You can pick up the tablet in Mountain Gray, Cloud Blue, and Rose Blush colors. If you pre-order or pick up a Samsung Galaxy Tab S6 before September 22, you can get the refreshed Book Cover Keyboard for 50% off.
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Samsung Galaxy Tab S6 design
Let’s get the actual Samsung Galaxy Tab S6's design tweaks out of the way first, because all the good refinements have been to everything that isn’t the tablet.
The Tab S6 looks much the same as its predecessor, the Tab S4, but it’s been slimmed from 7.1mm thick down to 5.7mm, putting it just under the iPad Pro 11’s 5.9mm thickness. At 420g, it’s also lighter than the Tab S4 (480g) and iPad Pro 11 (468g).
Otherwise, the tablet is much like its predecessor, with somewhat thick bezels surrounding the 10.5-inch screen, quad Dolby Atmos-tuned speakers, and a single front-facing camera. (To be fair, Samsung did trim 5mm from the width and length while keeping screen size consistent.)
The big change? A second 5MP rear-facing camera for ultrawide angles which achieves the same 123-degree field-of-view as the lenses packed into the Samsung Galaxy S10 phone series. That’s located on the rear in a circular camera bump - and past that rests the S Pen.
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Samsung Galaxy Tab S6 S Pen and keyboard cover
Unlike the Tab S4, which kept its S Pen in a holster attached to its version of the Book Cover Keyboard, the Tab S6 has a divot on one long edge of the backside where its stylus nestles and magnetically stays put.
Like the latest iPad Pros, the Tab S6 recharges its S Pen when it’s locked in place, and refills completely in 90 minutes.
Yes, the S Pen can be easily jostled out of its magnetic place, so we couldn’t see just stashing your Tab S6 as-is in a bag - you kind of need a case. Each first-party case (both the simple Book Cover and the Book Cover Keyboard) fold over the S Pen and lock it in place. Kind of makes them essential if you plan on using the S Pen, well, ever.
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The S Pen retains its button, which can be mapped to shortcuts (in our demo, it opened the camera app), with SDKs set to be added in the future for third-party apps to introduce their own functionality.
The big addition this time around: Air Gestures, which (while holding down the button) allow you to, in theory, quickly control via shortcuts. While this worked with simple directional jabs - say, flicking the S Pen left and right to switch photo modes - the more complex gestures (like circular twirling to zoom in and out) were tough to pull off.
Given we saw a Tab S6 with early software, we’ll give Samsung the benefit of the doubt that this could get better...but as-is, they’re not too useful.
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The Book Cover Keyboard has also been revamped - most notably by splitting it in two. Folks were encumbered if they didn’t have enough space to deploy the full keyboard, according to a Samsung rep, so they split it in two: now you can yank off the bottom half if you just want the stand, which sticks securely to the back via press-hard suction adhesive strips.
The keyboard half is worlds better than its predecessor: it’s extended to include a decent trackpad (and surrounding wrist rests) with a less-cramped key spread. And, of course, it’s got new shortcuts that make things a bit easier, like switching to DeX.
All told, the new Book Cover feels like it would be just fine for casual to moderate typing, and arguably a necessity for anyone attempting to seriously work with their tablet.
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Samsung Galaxy Tab S6 display
The Samsung Galaxy Tab S6 inherited its 10.5-inch (2,560x1,600) Super AMOLED touchscreen from its predecessor, and it doesn’t look like much has changed: it’s the same bright, usable screen, though with about 2.5mm less bezel on each side.
The Tab S6 does get one new thing: an in-screen fingerprint sensor, much like the rest of Samsung’s device slate in 2019.
This should relieve anyone annoyed by the Tab S4’s reliance on facial recognition to log in and authenticate, and a nice little bragging point over the iPad Pro.
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Samsung Galaxy Tab S6 camera
We didn’t have much chance to use the cameras, but they don’t seem to be much changed from the Tab S4, with a returning 8MP front-facing camera and 13MP main rear shooter.
The new 5MP ultrawide lens is the big news here, and like we saw on the Samsung Galaxy S10 phones, it pulls back to fit more context into your shots.
How much that will matter is up for debate - it’s unclear how many Tab S6 owners will actually use it to take photos. But at a hands-on roundtable, Samsung made clear they still cater to those who duly whip out their tablet to take shots.
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Samsung Tab S6 performance and battery
We didn’t think the Tab S4 particularly suffered from running a year-old Snapdragon 835 processor, but the Tab S6 has upgraded anyway - it packs the new Snapdragon 855 chipset, which we’ve only seen in a handful of phones thus far this year.
The RAM has also been bumped up to either 6GB or 8GB options, with corresponding increases to 128GB storage or 256GB, respectively.
While this will make general browsing even smoother, we expect this to make the Galaxy Tab S6 run seamlessly during processor-intensive tasks.
We didn’t see any slowdown when running DeX, for example, on a 24-inch monitor with Netflix playing on the tablet while we browsed around on the big screen. We’ll have to put the tablet through more rigorous testing for our full review to see if it crashed when running non-Samsung apps, as we experienced with the Tab S4.
The Samsung Galaxy Tab S6 has a smaller 7,040mAh battery than its predecessor (7,300mAh), though Samsung is still claiming a full day of battery on a charge.
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Early verdict
The Samsung Galaxy Tab S6 is an upgrade over the Tab S4 in some key ways - not innovations that radically change the tablet industry, but quality-of-life improvements that make the device better for casual and professional use.
Whether it will unseat the iPad Pro as the best laptop replacement for professionals everywhere isn’t clear from here, especially with the more tablet-tailored features coming to iPadOS. DeX may be easier to access, but it’s still short of the windowed desktop experience that makes laptops and 2-in-1s simply more familiar for workflows.
What is clear: if you’re a Samsung diehard, or at least locked into the Android ecosystem, the Tab S6 is a solid and powerful tablet with specs to keep it running snappy for years.
Vizio is the latest TV maker to launch support for Apple’s AirPlay 2, which makes it easy to play content from an iOS device or Mac on the larger screen, and HomeKit. HomeKit integration allows people to control the TV using Apple’s Home app or with Siri voice commands. Vizio has started rolling out an update to its SmartCast 3.0 software that includes support for both, but it notes it’s a process that’ll continue through “the coming months” before all compatible sets are updated.
Speaking of which, Vizio is far exceeding other TV manufacturers in terms of how many past and present models are eligible for AirPlay 2 and HomeKit. SmartCast TVs dating back to 2016 will receive the two features. Meanwhile, other companies are limiting the convenient add-ons to 2019 sets or, in some cases, their TVs from last year.
LG also recently rolled out AirPlay 2 and HomeKit to its latest models. Samsung led the pack with AirPlay 2, but it opted not to include HomeKit. Instead, it was the first TV maker to get the Apple TV app, which provides access to movie rentals / purchases and Apple’s subscription TV channels, including HBO.
After unveiling it at CES 2019, Vizio has announced that it's finally rolling out support for Apple's AirPlay 2 and HomeKit platforms. Coming via an update to its SmartCast 3.0 platform, it'll let users play videos, music and photos directly from iPhone, iPad and Mac devices. Best of all, it'll work not just on its recent 2019 TVs, but on Vizio SmartCast models dating all the way back to 2016.
Apple device owners will be able to stream movies with 4K and Dolby Vision and play songs, or mirror photos, web pages, presentations and other content to Vizio SmartCast TVs. Thanks to AirPlay's multi-room powers, you'll be able to simultaneously stream to AirPlay 2 compatible speakers at the same time, in sync. That'll let you use a HomePod, for example, as a TV speaker, or listen to content in another room.
HomeKit support, meanwhile, lets you use an iPhone or iPad as a Vizio TV remote, or play movies, TV shows and music using Siri. A Vizio TV can also be used in "scenes" or automation programs just like any other HomeKit accessory. If Apple isn't your thing, Vizio TVs also support Google Assistant and Alexa via previous SmartCast 3.0 updates.
Vizio's SmartCast TVs range from $260 for a 40-inch V-series model to $3,500 for the 75-inch P-Series Quantum X. The update makes them a lot more useful to Apple owners, but Vizio said the update just started rolling out, so it might take a while to arrive to your neighborhood.
July is almost over. So after you double-check your UltraViolet account, it's time to look over quarterly results from Apple and Samsung to find out what's working (services) and what isn't (high-end phones). Plus, the new look for Android Auto is rolling out and you can pre-order a Switch Lite.
Now whenever you are in Android Auto and following a route, the information is shown along the lower portion of a car's display -- no more launching Spotify and wondering if you're about to miss a turn while choosing a playlist. The weird, notification-style layout of the home screen is gone. Instead, Android Auto's home screen now resembles a tablet with all your apps in one place.
The UltraFine 5K Display by LG has returned to Apple's store after a months-long hiatus, with just one notable change. The updated version of the 27-inch monitor is compatible with the USB-C output from recent iPad Pros, making it a viable option if you need a large secondary screen for media previews or screen mirroring.
Apple — which can't count on people splurging on pricey new iPhones the way they used to — is shifting to focus on its services business. It's not hard to see why, either: in the last two quarters, iPhone sales have dipped significantly year-over-year while Apple's service revenue continued to climb. Not coincidentally, CEO Tim Cook revealed that its Apple Card would launch in the US sometime in August.
Solid sales for Macs ($5.8 billion) and iPads ($5.02 billion) prove that diligent hardware upgrades do make a material impact on the bottom line. More importantly, Apple saw its wearables business -- which includes the Apple Watch, AirPods, Beats and more -- swell by nearly $2 billion since this time last year.
So what does Samsung do when the money isn't rolling in quite like it used to? The electronics giant still showed an operating profit of $5.6 billion over the last three months, but that's less than half of its haul over the same period in 2018.
Besides the upcoming Galaxy Fold and Galaxy Note 10, Samsung said it's going to focus on midrange devices like its all-screen Galaxy A80. For larger screens, it's looking to make 8K 'mainstream' this fall.
New school year, new gear. Maybe you're due for an upgrade, or maybe you broke your phone over summer break, or maybe you just want a new toy. Either way, you might be looking to refresh your slate of devices before heading to campus. For the mobile section of our back-to-school guide, we considered the best phones you can get on a student-friendly budget. We also threw in our favorite smartwatches for both Android and iOS users.
Following the company's financial results (almost 100 million PS4s sold!), Sony's financial chief Hiroki Totoki warned that US plans for expanded tariffs on Chinese products could force a price hike on PlayStation consoles. Passing higher costs to consumers could be the result. It's TBC whether or not widened tariffs will apply in the first place -- that depends on the US administration's negotiations with China.
The US raised tariffs on $200 billion in Chinese goods back in May, to 25 percent. A further tariff expansion would cover another $300 billion in products, including PlayStation systems -- and consoles are typically sold at slim profit margins in the first place. And the Playstation 5 isn't far away.
Amazon's Ring security service is working with as many as 200 law enforcement agencies, according to an email obtained by Motherboard. A few days ago, the publication learned that Ring forged partnerships with a number of law enforcement agencies.
Some of those partners are reportedly required to advertise Ring home security cameras in exchange for free units and access to an anonymized portal that allows them to request security footage from users. A Ring spokesperson denied that the program was supposed to be a deep, dark secret, but the company never disclosed the number of partnerships it maintains.
At E3 for each of the last two years we've seen previews of Remedy Entertainment's supernatural action game Control, and on August 27th, players will be able to experience its world for themselves on Xbox One, PS4 and PC. You should read through our impressions after an hour-long demo in June to understand what it's like to pick up The Director's gun and attempt to make your way through "The Oldest House" -- a government agency headquarters that has come under attack by a supernatural force.
That agency is the Federal Bureau of Control, and your character, Jesse Faden, has supernatural abilities of her own to rely on. Last year narrative director Anna Megill told Engadget "we're trying to make something unexpected," with a game that's the studio's least-linear experience yet, compared to games like Alan Wake or Max Payne, and with far fewer cutscenes than its last effort Quantum Break.
An NVIDIA RTX trailer from E3 2019 shows more of how the game plays, and its developers have posted streams with even more to share, but the recently-posted "Story" trailer is all about how nightmareish the game feels. Given how much Remedy titles deliver in terms of atmosphere, that may be all you need to determine if this is one to check out once it's released.
Jaybird is back with another attempt at truly wireless headphones with the Vista, a redesigned model that looks to fix the various issues that held back the company’s Run and Run XT models. The new buds improve on the old ones in nearly every way, including more reliable connectivity, a lighter design, better battery life, and USB-C for charging.
Jaybird already released a pair of truly wireless headphones this year in the form of the Run XT, but they were a lightly updated version of the company’s original truly wireless Run model from 2017. They also stuck with the same design and all of the same problems that the first-generation model had.
I’ve been using the Vista for about a week as my main headphones, and so far, they have held up as well as any other top-notch truly wireless headphone on the market today.
The connectivity issues have been completely fixed with the Vista, thanks to a new JBS1 chipset and connectivity system. The Jaybird Run design tried to change the formula for truly wireless headphones by using two Bluetooth connections. One was meant to connect the right earbud to a phone or computer, and the other was to communicate between the headphones (instead of Near Field Magnetic Induction, which most headphones used at the time). That design didn’t work to keep the headphones in sync.
The Vista solve that problem by using two independent connections to the user’s phone. In all my time using the headphones, I never had an issue. The new system also means that you can use each earbud independently, should you only want to wear one earbud.
The Vista also have a new look that still features the replaceable wing / ear tip design that Jaybird uses on all its products. As someone who has a particularly difficult time finding earbuds that fit, I didn’t have any issues with the Vista staying securely in my ears, even during a sweat-soaked run outside.
The Vista are also even lighter than before, weighing in at six grams each. (For comparison, a single AirPod weighs four grams.) Like the Run XT, they’re also rated for IPX7 waterproofing and actually feature a new waterproofing system. The hardware components are completely sealed off in an internal capsule, which the company says should help make them even more resistant to sweat than simply coating the parts with waterproof materials (like it has done for its other headphones).
The case is similarly smaller and lighter than before, and it uses USB-C instead of Micro USB to charge. Despite the fact that both the earbuds and case are smaller, the battery life is actually better on the Vista than on the Run. Jaybird claims six hours of use from the buds and another 10 hours with the case (up from four hours and eight hours, respectively).
The Jaybird Vista are set to cost $179.99 — the same price as the old model — when they release sometime in August.
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