circuitbreaker

One of the sharpest-felt pains of the current obliteration of headphone jacks from the smartphone market is the absence of a good wired alternative. Sure, every company that ditches the analog jack tells you to go wireless, but what if you don’t want another gadget that needs regular charging, or you switch devices often and don’t enjoy diagnosing Bluetooth pairing problems every day? USB-C headphones are the perfect, most logical cure for our self-inflicted audio connection headaches, filling the void left by the humble 3.5mm connector’s absence by letting users of Android phones and a majority of new laptops plug into the digital port for their sound instead. And yet, such headphones and earphones remain scarce and expensive, a status that seems unlikely to ever change. Here are the main reasons why USB-C headphones are destined to only ever be a niche category: Apple and Samsung aren’t interested The most obvious factor working against USB-C headphones is … [Read more...] about Why USB-C headphones aren’t, and likely never will be, mainstream

One of last year’s most talked about Chromebooks is getting an update this month. Samsung announced the second generation of its Chromebook Plus today, which will include a few upgrades like a second camera and new processor. The Samsung Chromebook Plus (V2) doesn’t stray too far from the size and style of the original model that came out in early 2017. The device can still switch between laptop and tablet modes, and comes with a built-in pen that doesn’t require any charging for sketching and note taking on the go. The biggest change you‘ll see is to the processor, which is switching from an ARM-based chip to an Intel one. The original Chromebook Plus used an ARM-based chip to help it run Android apps during the early days of Android support on Chrome OS — it even used a chip specifically picked by Google for this purpose. The ARM processor was the only real defining feature between the Chromebook Plus and the Chromebook Pro, which were announced … [Read more...] about Samsung upgrades the Chromebook Plus with a second camera and new processor

Over the past few years, smart home tech has become more and more accessible. It connects to our phones and routers, it speaks our language, and it’s increasingly easy to find that you’ve bought a product that includes smart home features, without even thinking about it. So what does a modern smart home look like, and how can you start building one? In our latest episode of Workflow, we decided to set a roughly $200 limit to see how much stuff we could get to start making your house smarter. Here’s what we picked. Google Home Mini — $49 A smart speaker is probably your best starting point. You can use it to look up information, order pizzas, play podcasts, and tons more. More importantly for our purposes, you can also use it to control smart home gadgets and hook them all together. I chose Google‘s Home Mini... mostly because it came bundled when I bought a new phone last year. But it‘s a good choice for anyone who uses a lot of Google products. You … [Read more...] about How to start a smart home for $200

Eero is responsible for introducing two major trends to Wi-Fi routers: mesh networking and subscriptions. But after Plume — another mesh router startup — said earlier this week that it’s going to start requiring a subscription just to buy a router and keep it fully functional, Eero has said it doesn’t plan to follow suit. “We’ve never had plans ever at Eero to do that,” Eero CEO Nick Weaver said on a phone call. “We’ve never had plans and certainly don’t have any future aspirations for requiring a subscription with the core product we sell.” Though Eero does offer a premium subscription plan, it includes services above and beyond the basic functions of a router. For $99 / year, Eero adds content filtering, malicious site blocking, and subscriptions to other security products, like 1Password and a VPN. The service is optional and has never been required to use Eero’s routers. Weaver compares Eero’s approach to … [Read more...] about Eero promises not to brick routers if you don’t pay a subscription

Maingear has refreshed its Pulse 15 gaming laptop, adding it to the ranks of six-core gaming laptops with Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 graphics cards. This new model starts at $1,399, which gets you a six-core Intel Core i7-8750H processor, 8GB of DDR4 RAM (with an option for up to 32GB), a discrete GPU, and a 1TB 7,200rpm traditional hard drive (up to an optional 2TB Samsung SSD). Overall, it seems like the Pulse 15 is for the user who wants to spend less than $1,500 on some gaming capability, while also having a powerful laptop at their disposal for productivity tasks. Maingear seems to be aware that being a boutique manufacturer well-versed in extravagant, several-thousand-dollar builds also requires catering to the casual player or the budget PC gaming market. Some of the other noteworthy specs of the new Pulse 15 include a thin bezel 15-inch, full HD display with 60Hz refresh rate, a weight of 4.4 pounds with 0.86-inch thickness, and custom laptop lids which Maingear can produce to … [Read more...] about Maingear refreshes the Pulse 15 laptop with a Core i7 and GTX 1060 graphics

Last week, the US Department of Energy and IBM unveiled Summit, America’s latest supercomputer, which is expected to bring the title of the world’s most powerful computer back to America from China, which currently holds the mantle with its Sunway TaihuLight supercomputer. With a peak performance of 200 petaflops, or 200,000 trillion calculations per second, Summit more than doubles the top speeds of TaihuLight, which can reach 93 petaflops. Summit is also capable of over 3 billion billion mixed precision calculations per second, or 3.3 exaops, and more than 10 petabytes of memory, which has allowed researchers to run the world’s first exascale scientific calculation. The $200 million supercomputer is an IBM AC922 system utilizing 4,608 compute servers containing two 22-core IBM Power9 processors and six Nvidia Tesla V100 graphics processing unit accelerators each. Summit is also (relatively) energy-efficient, drawing just 13 megawatts of power, compared to the 15 … [Read more...] about The world’s fastest supercomputer is back in America

HMD Global’s updated version of the Nokia 3 — the Nokia 3.1 — is making its way to the US. Preorders are available now for the Android One smartphone at the relatively low price of $169, via Android Central. Of course, a $169 smartphone won’t give you the same firepower as a pricier flagship, but the updated version doesn’t seem to be a terrible phone for what you’re paying: the updated Nokia 3.1 update offers a 5.2-inch HD display, a 1.5GHz MediaTek octa-core processor, 2GB of RAM, and 16GB of storage, with a 13-megapixels rear shooter and an 8-megapixel wide-angle front-facing camera. More importantly, the Nokia 3.1 is also an Android One smartphone, which means it runs an untouched version of Android optimized for the lower specs on the phone, and it should get regular security updates for three years. There’s no word yet on the Nokia 5.1 or 2.1 models, which were announced at the same time as the 3.1, but FCC filings indicate that the … [Read more...] about The Nokia 3.1 is now available to preorder in the US for $159

Google already announced this at I/O 2018, but the new Multiple Actions feature has just started rolling out to Google Home users across the United States. Now, you can stack commands — like asking about your commute, the weather, and telling Assistant to start playing music — by only saying “OK Google” or “Hey Google” once. It’s great news for frequent users of Assistant on Home speakers or on smartphones. Queries are natural, so instead of asking, “Hey Google, what’s the weather in Paris and what’s the weather in New York,” you can ask a more straightforward, “OK Google, what’s the weather in New York and Paris?” All of this currently applies to US English only, but Multiple Actions and triple commands are planned for other languages. If you pair this with the fact that you can have three separate commands, plus what are essentially compound questions, using your Google Home, Home Mini, or Home Max … [Read more...] about Google Home can now handle up to three commands simultaneously

One of the main knocks against Nest’s comprehensive smart home security system, the Nest Secure, has been its high cost. Today, that price is dropping by $100 from $499 to $399. It’s still not cheap by any means, but Nest is taking a nice chunk off of the original list price. The lower MSRP is now available from Nest, Best Buy, B&H, and other retailers. The Secure bundle includes a Nest Guard keypad and two Nest Detect units that can be placed on windows or doors so the system can monitor when they’re opened; when placed on a wall (or door), the Detect can also sense and alert you of nearby movement. Nest also includes two “tags” that you or someone you trust can carry on a keychain to quickly disarm the Secure with a tap. Your smartphone and the Nest app can also be used to arm / disarm Secure or receive notifications about events that it detects when you’re away from home. The system operates over Wi-Fi, but can also activate a cellular data … [Read more...] about Nest drops price of its home security system to $400

The Federal Communications Commission recently approved the Nokia 5.1, a mid-range phone that’s a refreshed version of the Nokia 5. The FCC approval indicates the phone will launch soon in the US, as spotted by Android Police. We got an early look at the Nokia 5.1 at the end of May, after HMD Global, which now manufactures Nokia smartphones through a licensing deal, confirmed the device’s existence and promised a July release. There are four variants that the FCC approved and it looks like two of them have support for dual SIM cards. Each variant has a slightly different RAM and storage capacity, with options for 2GB or 3GB of RAM and 16GB or 32GB of storage. All variations will be powered by a 2GHz MediaTek Helio P18 octa-core processor and come with a 5.5-inch HD+ display with an 18:9 aspect ratio. On the back, there’s an improved 16-megapixel camera above the fingerprint scanner, which has moved from the front where it was on the Nokia 5. On the front, … [Read more...] about The Nokia 5.1 may be coming to the US soon