The Realme GT, Realme’s Snapdragon 888-equipped flagship phone, is coming to Europe and will sell for €549 (about $670) for a model with 12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage, according to the company’s website. The price makes it among the cheapest Snapdragon 888 devices available to date, if not the cheapest. Xiaomi’s excellent-value Mi 11 started at €749 (~$910) for an 8GB / 128GB model, for comparison.
Realme says the GT will ship to Belgium, Germany, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and Portugal, though the device isn’t currently available to actually order. It’s not clear which other European markets it’ll be available in when it does launch.
Realme announced the Chinese version of the GT in March. It started at 2,799 yuan there for the 8GB / 128GB model, or about $440 at current exchange rates. Madhav Sheth, CEO of Realme’s Indian and European business, confirmed last week that the GT would get a global launch — a performance-focused flagship model in June and a camera-focused flagship model in July.
The GT series will be a part of realme’s new flagship focusing on high-performance and image, respectively. This will not only allow us to achieve technological breakthroughs but will also keep us ahead of the market.
— Madhav Max 5G (@MadhavSheth1) June 3, 2021
It’s not quite clear yet how those models will differ in Europe spec-wise, but the Chinese version of the GT had a 64-megapixel primary camera with an 8-megapixel ultrawide and a 2-megapixel macro sensor, so there’s certainly room for improvement on the camera flagship. Elsewhere, the GT has a 6.43-inch 120Hz OLED display, up to 12GB of RAM, and a 4,500mAh battery with 65W fast charging.
Realme started out as a sub-brand of Oppo focused on the Indian market but quickly turned into a major force in its own right and is now focusing on capturing Europe with more premium devices. The launch of the GT follows last year’s €499 X3 Superzoom, which had a Snapdragon 855+ and a periscope telephoto lens.
Honor has released a couple of official images for its upcoming 50 series smartphone via its Weibo page and Twitter. The images focus on the rear of the phone, showing an eye-catching pair of circular camera bumps. The Honor 50 series is currently due to be announced on June 16th.
Amidst a sea of square and rectangular camera bumps, the dual circle design is an interesting look for Honor’s next flagship. It’s also a style that Honor’s former parent company Huawei is planning to use for its next flagship, the similarly-named P50. It’s possible that the two companies finalized their designs before Huawei sold off Honor late last year, but it’ll be strange to see such similar looking devices released from two distinct manufacturers within such close proximity to one another.
From the images it appears as though Honor’s next handset will have four rear cameras in total. The upper camera circle has one large lens, and it’s joined by three more on the lower bump. In contrast, Huawei’s P50 appears to have three lenses on the upper circle, and a single camera paired with a flash on the bottom.
Beyond its design, Honor’s next flagship will be powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 778G processor, will feature 100W fast charging, and will also come with a “hypercurved screen.” It may also mark the return of Google’s apps and services to Honor’s devices (including the Google Play Store) if a now-deleted tweet from the company’s German Twitter account is to be believed. Honor was prevented from including Google’s software because of sanctions placed on its former parent company Huawei, but these are believed to not apply since it became independent.
A spokesperson from Honor previously declined to comment to The Verge as to whether or not Google’s software would be available on the upcoming 50 series. But with an official launch just round the corner, we won’t have long to wait to find out.
Tinder is finally letting you avoid all your exes, friends, colleagues, relatives, and anyone else you might not want to run into on a dating app. The company announced today it’ll start allowing people to block their phone contacts.
Romance-seekers can access the feature from their settings, under the “Block Contacts” menu, where they can define which contacts they’d like to block — meaning these people won’t surface for them, and vice versa.
Users can either upload their full contacts list to Tinder or add them individually. Tinder says it won’t store everyone’s contacts — only the ones they’ve chosen to block — and people can unblock or disconnect their contacts list at any time. Blocked contacts won’t be notified they’ve been blocked. Of course, there’s no easy way of knowing if an ex or other undateworthy person even has a Tinder account; it’s more of a preventative measure. And if a blocked individual has since changed their phone number and joins Tinder, their account could still surface.
People have wanted to avoid the possibility of an awkward digital run-in forever, and this might, finally, give them a fighting chance at doing so. However, it also feels years late. I don’t know why Tinder took so long to launch this, but hopefully new users won’t have to know the misery of running into an ex on Tinder ever again.
Nvidia does not have plans to bring its ray tracing-enabled GPU architectures to smartphones or other ultra-mobile devices right now, CEO Jensen Huang told journalists at a Computex meeting this week. The statements come just days after AMD confirmed that upcoming Samsung smartphones using AMD RDNA2 GPU architecture will support ray tracing.
According to Huang, the time for ray tracing in mobile gadgets hasn’t arrived yet.
“Ray tracing games are quite large, to be honest,” Huang said, according to ZDNet. “The data set is quite large, and there will be a time for it. When the time is right we might consider it.”
AMD, meanwhile, has licensed its RDNA2 architecture, which supports ray tracing, to Samsung for use in the upcoming Exynos 2200 SoC expected to power its laptops and other flagship mobile devices. AMD CEO Dr. Lisa Su said this week that the SoC will indeed support ray tracing.
“The next place you’ll find RDNA2 will be the high-performance mobile phone market,” Su said, as reported by AnandTech. “AMD has partnered with industry leader Samsung to accelerate graphics innovation in the mobile market, and we’re happy to announce we will bring custom graphics IP to Samsung’s next flagship SoC, with ray tracing and variable rate shading capabilities. We’re really looking forward to Samsung providing more details later this year.”
Currently, Samsung’s Exynos-powered smartphones use Arm Mali-powered graphics; whereas, Qualcomm Snapdragon-based handsets use Adreno GPUs.
Nvidia is in process of taking over Arm, which develops general-purpose Cortex CPU cores as well as Mali graphics processing units for various system-on-chips (SoCs). Nvidia has long tried to license its GeForce technologies to designers of mobile SoCs and devices without any tangible success. If Nvidia’s acquisition of Arm is approved by various regulators, Nvidia will be able to offer its latest GeForce architectures to Arm licensees. Yet, it appears Nvidia has no immediate plans to bring GeForce RTX to smartphones.
Nvidia’s Ampere and Turing architectures seem to be too bulky for smartphone SoCs (and even for entry-level PC graphics) anyway. For now, the company will have to use its GeForce Now game streaming service to address demanding gamers on smartphones and tablets.
“That’s how we would like to reach Android devices, Chrome devices, iOS devices, MacOS devices, Linux devices — all kinds of devices, whether it’s on TV, or mobile device or PC,” said Huang. “I think that for us, right now, that is the best strategy.”
Yet, ray tracing is nothing new on mobiles. Imagination Technologies architectures since the PowerVR GR6500 introduced in 2014 have supported ray tracing, so it’s up to hardware designers to decide on implementing the capability and game designers to leverage it. Imagination’s PowerVR ray tracing implementation is currently supported by Unreal Engine 4 and Unity 5, but it’s unclear whether it’s primarily used for eye candy, performance increase and/or power reduction.
Even iOS apps occasionally misbehave — they can crash, or freeze, or otherwise stop working. If you’re new to iOS, or just haven’t had this happen before, you may not know how to actually quit an app (as opposed to just swiping it off your screen). Here’s how to quit an app using iOS 14:
Open the App Switcher by either swiping up from the bottom of the screen and then pausing in the middle, or (if you have a Home button) double pressing the Home button.
You’ll see an overlapping view of all your open apps. Swipe to the right or left until you find the app you want to quit.
Swipe up on the app.
Unfortunately, there isn’t any way to close all of your apps at once, should you wish to do so — you’ll have to simply swipe them off one at a time.
If for any reason swiping the app off doesn’t solve the problem, then shut down your phone by pressing and holding the side button and either volume button until you see sliders appear. Drag the one that says “slide to power off” to the right. (If you have an iPhone with a Home button, instead, press and hold the side or the Sleep / Wake button.)
The specs and feature highlights are appealing but the Halo falls short when it comes to subtlety
For
Excellent black depth
Bright for the money
Handy portable features
Against
Blunt contrast control
Poor speaker placement
If you’ve ever had to pull an all-nighter for work, then you’ll know the taste of the 4am cup of coffee – strong and effective, much like the Xgimi Halo portable projector. Subtlety is not its strongest suit, but it most certainly gets the job done.
Chinese brand Xgimi has been making smart projectors and laser TVs since 2013. Now armed with an impressive array of seven portable projectors, ranging from standard-definition up to 4K, it’s here to take on Epson, BenQ and, most notably, Anker Nebula as the go-to brand for your all-in-one big screen needs.
The Xgimi Halo is just about the midpoint of the series. With its wireless speaker-sized frame, built-in battery, 800 ANSI-lumens LED light source and 1080p HDR output, it could be the home and away portable projector that meets all your needs.
Build
(Image credit: Future)
Squint and you could be forgiven for mistaking the Xgimi Halo for an aluminium Sonos One, though the Halo is a little larger at 11cm tall and 15cm wide, and it weighs 1.6kg. It’s about as large as you’d want a portable projector to be before it becomes a hassle to carry around.
Xgimi Halo tech specs
(Image credit: Future)
Resolution 1080p, HDR, 4K input support
Internal storage 16GB
Brightness 800 ANSI Lumens
Throw ratio 1.2:1
Battery life 2-4 hours
Dimensions (hwd) 11 x 15 x 17cm
Weight 1.6kg
Inside is a 2x 5W Harman Kardon sound system and a DLP projector set-up with a 0.33in DMD (digital micromirror device) at its core. The LED light source is rated to last for 30,000 hours of viewing which translates as eight hours of use per day for the next 10 years – hopefully enough for almost everybody’s needs.
The light is focused by a fixed lens with a 1.2:1 throw ratio that can produce a picture of between 30 and 300in, with a 100in image possible at a distance of 2.67m.
On the outside, there is a single HDMI port (ARC-enabled), a USB and a 3.5mm headphones socket. You can plug in most games consoles, disc players and external speakers, and play files on USB sticks, hard drives, and even from the 16GB of internal storage space. Two-way Bluetooth is available, too, so you can play music through the Halo sound system from your phone or output the projector’s audio signal to a bigger external wireless speaker.
Control of all this and more is through the rather tasteful voice remote control. It includes buttons for direct access to the settings menu and input selection as well as the usual navigation, volume and focus controls too.
There are two other helpful items included. The first is a built-in battery that offers two to four hours of video use, depending on brightness settings, and eight hours of audio playback. Also, tucked underneath is a little kickstand that is useful for angling the Halo up to the right position. The weight of the machine feels quite a lot for a little flap like this and, though it’s fine during our testing, we’re not convinced it would hold up in the longer term.
Features
(Image credit: Future)
Like many portable smart projectors, the Halo uses Google’s Android TV 9.0 OS to take care of the apps and menus. Google Assistant provides an effective voice search, and there is also the Chromecast screen sharing technology to fill in most app gaps.
There are a fair few of those, with Netflix, BBC iPlayer, Apple TV, ITV Player, All 4, Now, Apple Music and BBC Sounds all missing. Chromecast can’t stream the Apple services but there are other, free Android TV apps available to help mirror content from iOS.
Setting up the picture projection itself couldn’t be easier. The Halo is fitted with autofocus and auto-keystone. Each time you turn it on, or when its internal gyroscopes detect that you’ve moved it, the 10,000-point AF system springs into life and produces something close to the best possible image, with an impressive keystone correction of up to +/-40 degrees vertically and horizontally.
Like most portables, the Halo runs far quieter than a traditional home cinema projector. It’s rated at less than 30dB and we’re never once distracted by the sound during testing. It’s also 3D-enabled. All you need is some content and a pair of active shutter glasses.
Picture
(Image credit: Future)
The minute you switch on the Halo, you get a good idea of just how bright this projector can go. There’s certainly less luminance on the table than with traditional home cinema projectors, but the Halo is a clear step ahead of the entry-level portables, such as the Anker Nebula Mars 2, and pretty much on a par with the more expensive Epson EF-12.
The big, white Xgimi logo is quite blinding with the lights off. We don’t struggle to see what’s going on when we add some ambient lighting and that bodes well for outdoor cinema use, as well as watching sports with friends.
Popping Bumblebee on 4K Blu-ray into our player, that translates to a good, strong picture with plenty of colour saturation. The early scene at the boardwalk funfair is a real treat. The sky is a beautiful sapphire blue, the candyfloss a brilliant synthetic pink and the paintwork of the 1980s cars is a line-up of some wonderful teals, burnt oranges and assorted metallics. At its best, the Halo even has enough skill with colour handling to have skin tones not look out of place either.
However, when the light levels drop, the Halo comes unstuck. Black depth itself is decent, but the detail within those dark zones is scant. The Standard preset gets the most out of the shadows, but even so, we struggle to find much in the way of individual hair strands on Charlie’s head as she rides her scooter off to the scrapyard.
There are similar problems in other areas of this tonally mixed scene. The brightness in the sky behind her is quite blown-out for whites and the shadows in the foreground are strong patches rather than careful shades. There just isn’t enough care in handling the contrast on offer.
The contrast problem is particularly hard going with a film that has any kind of added aesthetic such as Fury in Full HD. The grainy WWII drama is a hard watch on the Halo and there aren’t enough adjustments available to get a picture that’s consistently bright and detailed.
One moment, we have the external scene of the ruined German town square exactly where we want it – some texture to the masonry, a sense of daytime – and the next we’re plunged into a chequerboard of jarring light levels in the apartments where the dead Nazi officers are slumped in their chairs.
It’s even more problematic with standard-def content. We watch Up In The Air on DVD and the upscaling is handled relatively well. Any noise is easily reduced by taking the sharpness setting down and applying a light touch to the Noise Filter, but that heavy contrast is tough to take, with detail even thinner on the ground than before.
The Halo struggles to produce any difference in the blocks of black or navy blue in the suits of the business people in this film. The moment the characters sit on any dark furniture, everything bleeds together and half of each frame can be lost. As impressive as this projector can be at times, at the first sign of a difficult frame the Halo’s big, punchy strengths turn out to also be its most significant weaknesses.
Sound
(Image credit: Future)
Sound is a genuine consideration when buying a portable projector. While we’d always recommend upping the ante with a soundbar, headphones or wireless speaker, the 2x 5W Harman Kardon sound system in the Xgimi Halo is largely well appointed and makes an acceptable stopgap for AV and music listening needs.
The Bumblebee soundtrack is a pleasure to listen to through the projector alone. Steve Winwood’s Higher Love provides a real moment of joy as Charlie drives away in her first car, thanks to the decent dynamic ability of the system. There’s plenty of weight and a clear tonal balance that never threatens to get too bright even when we push the volume towards its limits.
Unfortunately, Xgimi has chosen to have the drivers facing forwards on the Halo and that seems an odd choice. The throw distance means you’ll most likely be sitting behind this projector and so the sound will be going the wrong direction. It makes the audio more muffled than it should be but, even in front of the Halo, it is still a touch soft and lacking a little precision compared with the Epson EF-12.
The clicks and whirrs aren’t quite as crisp as they could be when Bumblebee transforms from car to robot in the garage. There is some good spatial sense to the sound as the yellow bot’s metal parts unfold. Details might be placed more clearly in the soundscape if the Halo had a little more organisational know-how.
For this price, it’s the dynamic ability we’re most pleased with. Listening to Know Your Enemy by Rage Against The Machine, there are plenty of dramatic ups and downs and appropriate attacks and crescendos to make the song exciting.
Verdict
The Xgimi Halo makes a good stab at a serious step-up device from entry-level portable projectors, but it doesn’t quite reach a rich and complex level of performance.
Its brightness, battery, storage, speakers and connectivity options mean that, at first glance, it looks the part of a punchy and convenient travel projector. It’s still small enough to throw into your bag, but big enough to give some impact around the house or even in the garden.
But, while it is a decent option for social watching situations, its picture quality just isn’t up to the same standards as those around it. Spend a bit more on the Epson EF-12 and you get a far more sophisticated portable projector. If you need something with a built-in battery, then the Anker Nebula range seems to provide more image subtlety and at a lower price too.
(Pocket-lint) – Google has announced a new version of the Pixel Buds, its true wireless headphones that originally launched in 2017 – the first-gen weren’t all that, though, while the second-gen Buds 2 stepped things up a little in 2019.
The third model belongs to the A-Series, picking up on the A series that we’ve seen in Google’s phones, presenting an affordable choice of true wireless headset.
What’s different to the previous Pixel Buds?
To look that, there isn’t a huge difference between the A-Series and Buds 2: both have the same overall styling and come in a case that’s smooth, much like a pebble.
Both have the same earbud design with a little promontory at the top to help keep them secure, and a round touch-control area on the outside.
Pocket-lint
The Pixel Buds 2 have wireless charging, however, and inside the case and on the inner part of the ‘buds have a matte finish to the plastics, while the A-Series is glossy. That means the older version looks slightly higher quality.
The A-Series also lacks the option to change the volume via gestures – instead you have to use voice for that – and there are a few minor feature differences. Otherwise, the experience is much the same – but the A-Series is much cheaper.
Design & Build
Earbud: 20.7 x 29.3 x 17.5mm; 5.06g
Colours: Dark Olive / Clearly White
Case: 63 x 47 x 25mm; 52.9g
IPX4 water-resistant
Three ear tip sizes
The Buds A-Series’ case, for all intents and purposes, is the same as that of the Buds 2: it’s the same size, has the same feel, and that same satisfying action when you open and close the lid. Both have a USB-C charging port, a manual connection button on the rear, but the A-Series is slightly lighter.
There’s a satisfying magnetic action when you drop the ‘buds into the case to charge and don’t worry about mixing these up if you happen to have the older version too – the A-Series has two charging contacts inside, the Pixel Buds 2 has three.
Pocket-lint
There are two colours to the A-Series – Clearly White or Dark Olive – and opening the lid reveals the colour you’re looking at, as it’s the touchy smooth round end of these Buds, carrying the ‘G’ logo, which makes them really distinctive.
The A-Series ‘buds have the same design as the previous model, with the body of the earbud designed to sit in the concha of the ear, while sealing into the canal with a choice of three different ear tips. These are round – Google seemingly hasn’t been tempted to move to oval as seen on some rivals.
There’s an additional rubber arm that sticks out the top of the buds that is designed to slot into one of the folds at the top of your ear to help keep things secure. We weren’t a fan of it on the previous version and we have the same reservations here: you can’t remove it from the ‘buds and we’re not convinced it’s necessary. As for us, the Buds A-Series sit securely in the ear anyway – even when exercising.
Indeed, if we rotate the earbuds to get that blobby rubber ant to engage with our ears, the sound from the headphones gets worse because they then don’t sit in the best position for our ears. That’s one thing to consider: all ears are different, so this might work for some people and not for others.
Pocket-lint
The great thing about these earbuds’ design is that they don’t hang out of your ear, so you don’t need to worry about pulling a hat over the top or anything else – we think they look a lot better than the ear-dribble style of Apple’s AirPods and all those who copy them. We find the Google design more comfortable for wearing over long periods, too.
Connection, setup and control
Native Pixel support
Pixel Buds app
Touch controls
Google Fast Pair means you just have to lift the lid of the case and your nearby Android phone will detect the Pixel Buds A-Series and allow you to connect with one tap. It’s essentially the same as Apple’s system with the AirPods and iPhone, linking the Buds to the Google account you register them with so they are then available on other devices too.
If you’re using a Pixel phone then you’ll have native support for the Buds; if using another brand Android device you’ll be prompted to download the Pixel Buds app, which will provide access to firmware updates and details on how to use all the features, as well as some options.
Pocket-lint
As far as setup is concerned, that’s all there is to it: you’ll be asked to walk through things like Google Assistant, and you’ll be prompted to allow notifications access, so you can unlock the potential of the Pixel Buds.
The touch-controls are fairly easy to master, too, with both left and right sides offering the same function: single-tap to play/pause; double-tap to skip forward; triple-tap to skip backwards; press-and-hold to get a notifications update.
The last of those is interesting, because you’ll get a report of the time and then you’ll be told about your notifications – with the option to reply, needing a press-and-hold to speak your reply, before it’s confirmed and then sent.
Pocket-lint
Missing from this selection of touch-controls is volume: unlike the Pixel Buds 2, you can’t swipe to change the volume, you have to ask Google Assistant to do it or you have to thumb the volume controller on your device instead.
This, we feel, is the biggest flaw of these headphones: volume control is pretty important when you’re listening to something, so having to ask Google using voice just isn’t appropriate in all situations.
Google Assistant and smart features
Google Assistant integration
Adaptive Sound
With a lack of volume control, Google pushes its Adaptive Sound option as a solution. This is designed to adapt the volume to the ambient sound levels. As the external noise goes up, so does the volume of the headphones. That’s fine in principal and works when you move from and area of consistent background noise to another – from a quiet library to a server room with whirring fans, for example – but it’s hopeless when you have varying noise levels.
Just walk along a busy street with Adaptive Sound on and you’ll find the volume of the headphones yo-yoing, because it’s not constant noise, it depends on what’s driving past at that moment. This could be corrected by a software update with Google reducing the frequency of volume changes. If you manually adjust the volume then it suspends the system for a bit and leaves the control to you, but in reality, it’s just too irritating to use in many situations and you might as well turn your phone volume up instead.
Pocket-lint
As we’ve said, Google Assistant is fully integrated into the headphones, so you can ask Google anything that you might on your phone or Nest Hub at home. For fans of the system, that’s a great addition, because you don’t need to fish your phone out of your pocket first. Sure, there are lots of headphones out there that offer Google Assistant, but naturally, Google puts Google first and the experience is nice and smooth.
It’s also a two-way experience, with Google Assistant notifying you of incoming messages and it’s able to read them out to you too – with the option to speak a reply. You can disable messages from any apps you don’t want in the Pixel Buds app, to maintain privacy (or, indeed, a barrage of non-stop voiced messaging). You can also trigger message sending through voice – and you’ll get to confirm the message that’s being sent.
Thanks to Voice Match, it will only respond to your voice – and that also means you can access things like your calendar and so on. It’s plain sailing all round.
Sound quality and performance
Buds: 5 hours battery life
Case: 19 hours extra
Spatial Vents
Bass Boost
When it comes to the performance, Google is taking a bit of a gamble. Rather then pursuing isolation from the outside world, it wants to provide an experience that lets some of the ambient sound in, so you don’t feel cut off.
Pocket-lint
Google uses what it calls Spatial Vents, while claiming that the headphones provide a gentle seal rather than trying to block everything out. We’re not huge fans of this approach and with the rise in headphones offering active noise cancellation (ANC), it suggests that generally speaking that’s what people are buying.
Needless to say, there’s no ANC here and you’ll be able to hear what’s happening around you a lot of the time. At home that’s perhaps useful – you can hear the doorbell or the dog bark – but out on public transport, you’ll hear every announcement, door crash, clatter of the wheels on the tracks, and that’s not something we want. This is exactly the same experience as the previous Pixel Buds and whether that suits you will depends very much on where you wear your headphones. If that’s a busy place, the A-Series might not be the best for you.
Aside from that, in quiet conditions, the sound quality is actually very good. The Pixel Buds A-Series benefits from the Bass Boost option that Google added as a software update to the previous Buds in late 2020, so they offer better performance for tracks which want a driving bassline. In quiet conditions at home we have no complaints: the Pixel Buds A-Series is a great pair of headphones, especially at the asking price and given the smart options they offer.
Pocket-lint
When it comes to calling there are two beam-forming mics on each ‘bud, but they still let noise through to the caller. This is reduced, but they’ll hear every car that drives past as a hiss. If you’re after a better calling experience, the Samsung Galaxy Buds Pro offers a far better experience, providing a better veil of silence when making calls.
The Pixel Buds A-Series provides battery life of 5 hours, which we’ve found to be accurate – although we found the left ‘bud to drain slightly faster than the right one. The case supplies 24 hours of life, recharging the buds when they are back in it, and charged itself via USB-C. This isn’t the longest battery life on the market, but it matches the Apple AirPods.
Best Bluetooth headphones 2021 rated: Top on-ear or over-ear wireless headphones
By Mike Lowe
·
Verdict
The Pixel Buds A-Series have a lot to offer considering the price: Google Assistant integration, comfortable design, a lovely case, plus great audio performance when in quieter conditions.
The biggest downsides are the lack of on-bud volume controls and the design decision to not strive for isolation from external noise. The Adaptive Sound – which auto-adjusts volume – is a good idea in principle to compensate for this, but it sees the headphones’ volume yo-yo unnaturally.
Compared to the older Pixel Buds 2, we’d pick the Pixel Buds A-Series every time: they do the important things just as well but the price is much more approachable, meaning you can forgive the omissions given the context of price.
Also consider
Pocket-lint
Samsung Galaxy Buds Pro
Samsung’s Galaxy Buds Pro offer great noise-cancelling – which is especially effective when making calls – while also offering a great set of features.
Read the full review
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Jabra Elite Active 75t
These headphones are a little more bulky, but they offer noise-cancellation that will almost entirely eliminate external noise. If you want silence, Jabra delivers it.
The new Pixel Buds A are available in a dark green color
The $99 Pixel Buds are a better buy than their pricier predecessors
With the new, awkwardly named Pixel Buds A-Series, Google is trying to do more than merely introduce a much cheaper set of true wireless earbuds: the company wants to get it right this time — and get it right for under $100. Google’s second-generation Pixel Buds were certainly an improvement over the company’s original wireless earbuds; let us never forget the most overly intricate carrying case of all time. But the 2020 earbuds came with issues of their own. At the top of that list were concerns with stability. Google never managed to get the two Pixel Buds connected as reliably as many competitors, and some owners still complain of audio dropouts even after numerous firmware updates.
In several ways, Google has succeeded at its goal. The $99 Pixel Buds A-Series are more comfortable to wear over longer stretches of time than the pricier earbuds. They retain the same enjoyable sound quality, and hands-free “Hey Google” access to Google Assistant and features like real-time language translation are still useful tricks to have at your disposal. The carrying case is just as fun to fidget with as before (though it lost wireless charging) and has the same satisfying thunk when you close it. Google promises the same five hours of continuous battery life, with a total of 24 hours when you include case recharges.
The bad news is that Google didn’t fully overcome the connectivity issues, though it made some improvement. I recently talked with Google’s Sandeep Waraich, who went over some of the changes made to the A-Series buds that were meant to enhance wireless reliability. Each earbud connects individually to the source device. Both the antenna and chipset architectures were optimized for stronger transmission power and increased range to avoid cross-body audio dropouts. There’s even an all-new chipset inside, though Google declined to tell me who manufactures it.
But in my experience so far, the Pixel Buds A-Series still have more occasional blips and audio interruptions than those from many competitors. It’s not as much of a glaring problem as before, and I really only encountered it on the move (and on busy streets with plenty of wireless interference), but it’s still something you’ll run into at times. But I find that it’s easier to tolerate things like this for $99 than the $179 that Google still asks for the 2020 Pixel Buds.
Google also told me about some subtle improvements it made to the physical design. The A-Series earbuds look nearly identical to the 2020 Pixel Buds, but according to Waraich, the nonremovable “stabilizer arc” — a source of discomfort last time after prolonged listening — has been made softer and smaller than before. I’ve got large ears, and it seems like the hook never settles into the folds of my ear the way it’s meant to, but the Pixel Buds A-Series sit snug and stable regardless.
The Pixel Buds A-Series look just like the regular Pixel Buds.
Google also shaved off a few milligrams of weight from each earbud. The Pixel Buds A-Series come in either white or olive green, and the inside of the carrying case is now color matched to whichever earbuds you get. In the ear, the Pixel Buds continue to have a very discreet, flush style and can be hard to spot when looking at someone head-on.
They still have a discreet design that sits flush against your ear and doesn’t stick out far.
The acoustic architecture is unchanged, so the sound signature between the Pixel Buds and Pixel Buds A-Series is very consistent. That’s a good thing. Google aims for full, natural audio reproduction, and that’s what you get from these earbuds and their 12-millimeter drivers. You can still enable the “bass boost” option in settings to give the low end some added oomph. Even with bass boost active, the Pixel Buds don’t match the boominess of something like the Jabra Elite 75ts or Sony’s WF-XB700s. Still, there’s a level of clarity that outshines many earbuds that sell at the $100 mark. Waraich told me that Google increased overall volume levels across the board after some customers found the 2020 Pixel Buds couldn’t crank as high as they’d hoped.
The carrying case is also similar, though this one lacks wireless charging.
But although the Pixel Buds A-Series can get louder, they still have to contend with a lot of the outside world. Like the previous model, these A-Series earbuds just aren’t very good at noise isolation. While working from the outdoor seating area at my local coffee shop, I could hear an annoying level of traffic at all times. I think it partially comes down to their vented, airy design, but Google seems to struggle with this more than other companies.
Google says it actually tweaked the spatial vents to allow less outside noise in, but it’s still a noticeable downside of these earbuds. I think it’s inherently got something to do with the fit and “gentle” in-ear seal that Google had in mind with the design. What’s become clear to me is that the next flagship Pixel Buds really need some form of active noise cancellation to counteract this. I know there are people who prefer some awareness of what’s happening around them, but you get a little too much of that with the Pixel Buds.
I already mentioned the loss of wireless charging, but other sacrifices that Google made to hit the $99 price aren’t as obvious. The swipe forward / back gestures that let you easily control volume on the Pixel Buds are gone; now you’re limited to just taps for track controls. The A-Series earbuds also ditch the “experimental” attention alerts feature that could detect specific sounds like sirens, dog barks, or a baby crying. And the LED that was on the inside of the Pixel Buds case (to indicate charge status of the buds) is also history. These omissions make sense to me, and Google has at least preserved other important vitals like IPX4 water and sweat resistance. Voice calls also remain a Pixel Buds strength on the A-Series, with dual beamforming mics that do a good job of plucking your voice out of noisy environments and maintaining clarity during phone chats or work conference calls. Voice commands to Google Assistant were also recognized loud and clear.
The “adaptive sound” feature, which automatically adjusts volume based on your surroundings, is also carried over from the 2020 Pixel Buds. It works reasonably well and only activates when there are sustained changes in ambient noise as you move between different locations, but I’m old-school and prefer controlling volume myself rather than letting algorithms do it. The Pixel Buds A-Series still support Android’s Fast Pair feature for quick setup. On Pixel smartphones, the companion app is built in, but you can also grab it from the Play Store on other Android phones. With it, you can locate your earbuds, toggle settings like bass boost and in-ear detection (another thing Google didn’t skimp on), or check battery levels for the earbuds and case. No such app exists for iOS, however.
By holding onto a lot of what worked best on the 2020 Pixel Buds — namely sound quality and hands-free voice controls — and improving other parts that didn’t, Google has ended up with an appealing set of $99 earbuds. The Pixel Buds A-Series haven’t fully stamped out the biggest issue that dragged down their pricier older sibling, and the level of outside noise your tunes compete against will turn some people away. But even with some of the things Google left out, you’re getting a better overall product for less money.
It’s the sort of thing that can almost pass for background noise these days: over the past week, a number of publications tentatively declared, based on a UN report from the Libyan civil war, that killer robots may have hunted down humans autonomously for the first time. As one headline put it: “The Age of Autonomous Killer Robots May Already Be Here.”
But is it? As you might guess, it’s a hard question to answer.
The new coverage has sparked a debate among experts that goes to the heart of our problems confronting the rise of autonomous robots in war. Some said the stories were wrongheaded and sensational, while others suggested there was a nugget of truth to the discussion. Diving into the topic doesn’t reveal that the world quietly experienced the opening salvos of the Terminator timeline in 2020. But it does point to a more prosaic and perhaps much more depressing truth: that no one can agree on what a killer robot is, and if we wait for this to happen, their presence in war will have long been normalized.
It’s cheery stuff, isn’t it? It’ll take your mind off the global pandemic at least. Let’s jump in:
The source of all these stories is a 548-page report from the United Nations Security Council that details the tail end of the Second Libyan Civil War, covering a period from October 2019 to January 2021. The report was published in March, and you can read it in full here. To save you time: it is an extremely thorough account of an extremely complex conflict, detailing various troop movements, weapon transfers, raids and skirmishes that took place among the war’s various factions, both foreign and domestic.
The paragraph we’re interested in, though, describes an offensive near Tripoli in March 2020, in which forces supporting the UN-backed Government of National Accord (GNA) routed troops loyal to the Libyan National Army of Khalifa Haftar (referred to in the report as the Haftar Affiliated Forces or HAF). Here’s the relevant passage in full:
Logistics convoys and retreating HAF were subsequently hunted down and remotely engaged by the unmanned combat aerial vehicles or the lethal autonomous weapons systems such as the STM Kargu-2 (see annex 30) and other loitering munitions. The lethal autonomous weapons systems were programmed to attack targets without requiring data connectivity between the operator and the munition: in effect, a true “fire, forget and find” capability.”
The Kargu-2 system that’s mentioned here is a quadcopter built in Turkey: it’s essentially a consumer drone that’s used to dive-bomb targets. It can be manually operated or steer itself using machine vision. A second paragraph in the report notes that retreating forces were “subject to continual harassment from the unmanned combat aerial vehicles and lethal autonomous weapons systems” and that the HAF “suffered significant casualties” as a result.
The Kargu-2 drone is essentially a quadcopter that dive-bombs enemies. Image: STM
But that’s it. That’s all we have. What the report doesn’t say — at least not outright — is that human beings were killed by autonomous robots acting without human supervision. It says humans and vehicles were attacked by a mix of drones, quadcopters, and “loitering munitions” (we’ll get to those later), and that the quadcopters had been programmed to work offline. But whether the attacks took place without connectivity is unclear.
These two paragraphs made their way into the mainstream press via a story in the New Scientist, which ran a piece with the headline: “Drones may have attacked humans fully autonomously for the first time.” The NS is very careful to caveat that military drones might have acted autonomously and that humans might have been killed, but later reports lost this nuance. “Autonomous drone attacked soldiers in Libya all on its own,” read one headline. “For the First Time, Drones Autonomously Attacked Humans,” said another.
Let’s be clear: by itself, the UN does not say for certain whether drones autonomously attacked humans in Libya last year, though it certainly suggests this could have happened. The problem is that even if it did happen, for many experts, it’s just not news.
The reason why some experts took issue with these stories was because they followed the UN’s wording, which doesn’t distinguish clearly between loitering munitions and lethal autonomous weapons systems or LAWS (that’s policy jargon for killer robots).
Loitering munitions, for the uninitiated, are the weapon equivalent of seagulls at the beachfront. They hang around a specific area, float above the masses, and wait to strike their target — usually military hardware of one sort or another (though it’s not impossible that they could be used to target individuals).
The classic example is Israel’s IAI Harpy, which was developed in the 1980s to target anti-air defenses. The Harpy looks like a cross between a missile and a fixed-wing drone, and is fired from the ground into a target area where it can linger for up to nine hours. It scans for telltale radar emissions from anti-air systems and drops onto any it finds. The loitering aspect is crucial as troops will often turn these radars off, given they act like homing beacons.
The IAI Harpy is launched from the ground and can linger for hours over a target area. Image: IAI
“The thing is, how is this the first time of anything?” tweeted Ulrike Franke, a senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations. “Loitering munition have been on the battlefield for a while – most notably in Nagorno-Karaback. It seems to me that what’s new here isn’t the event, but that the UN report calls them lethal autonomous weapon systems.”
Jack McDonald, a lecturer at the department of war studies at King’s College London, says the distinction between the two terms is controversial and constitutes an unsolved problem in the world of arms regulation. “There are people who call ‘loitering munitions’ ‘lethal autonomous weapon systems’ and people who just call them ‘loitering munitions,’” he tells The Verge. “This is a huge, long-running thing. And it’s because the line between something being autonomous and being automated has shifted over the decades.”
So is the Harpy a lethal autonomous weapons system? A killer robot? It depends on who you ask. IAI’s own website describes it as such, calling it “an autonomous weapon for all weather,” and the Harpy certainly fits a makeshift definition of LAWS as “machines that target combatants without human oversight.” But if this is your definition, then you’ve created a very broad church for killer robots. Indeed, under this definition a land mine is a killer robot, as it, too, autonomously targets combatants in war without human oversight.
If killer robots have been around for decades, why has there been so much discussion about them in recent years, with groups like the Campaign To Stop Killer Robots pushing for regulation of this technology in the UN? And why is this incident in Libya special?
The rise of artificial intelligence plays a big role, says Zak Kallenborn, a policy fellow at the Schar School of Policy and Government. Advances in AI over the past decade have given weapon-makers access to cheap vision systems that can select targets as quickly as your phone identifies pets, plants, and familiar faces in your camera roll. These systems promise nuanced and precise identification of targets but are also much more prone to mistakes.
“Loitering munitions typically respond to radar emissions, [and] a kid walking down the street isn’t going to have a high-powered radar in their backpack,” Kallenborn tells The Verge. “But AI targeting systems might misclassify the kid as a soldier, because current AI systems are highly brittle — one study showed a change in a single pixel is sufficient to cause machine vision systems to draw radically different conclusions about what it sees. An open question is how often those errors occur during real-world use.”
This is why the incident in Libya is interesting, says Kallenborn, as the Kargu-2 system mentioned in the UN report does seem to use AI to identify targets. According to the quadcopter’s manufacturer, STM, it uses “machine learning algorithms embedded on the platform” to “effectively respond against stationary or mobile targets (i.e. vehicle, person etc.)” Demo videos appear to show it doing exactly that. In the clip below, the quadcopter hones in on a mannequin in a stationary group.
But should we trust a manufacturers’ demo reel or brochure? And does the UN report make it clear that machine learning systems were used in the attack?
Kallenborn’s reading of the report is that it “heavily implies” that this was the case, but McDonald is more skeptical. “I think it’s sensible to say that the Kargu-2 as a platform is open to being used in an autonomous way,” he says. “But we don’t necessarily know if it was.” In a tweet, he also pointed out that this particular skirmish involved long-range missiles and howitzers, making it even harder to attribute casualties to any one system.
What we’re left with is, perhaps unsurprisingly, the fog of war. Or more accurately: the fog of LAWS. We can’t say for certain what happened in Libya and our definitions of what is and isn’t a killer robot are so fluid that even if we knew, there would be disagreement.
For Kallenborn, this is sort of the point: it underscores the difficulties we face trying to create meaningful oversight in the AI-assisted battles of the future. Of course the first use of autonomous weapons on the battlefield won’t announce itself with a press release, he says, because if the weapons work as they’re supposed to, they won’t look at all out of the ordinary. “The problem is autonomy is, at core, a matter of programming,” he says. “The Kargu-2 used autonomously will look exactly like a Kargu-2 used manually.”
Elke Schwarz, a senior lecturer in political theory at Queen Mary University London who’s affiliated with the International Committee for Robot Arms Control, tells The Verge that discussions like this show we need to move beyond “slippery and political” debates about definitions and focus on the specific functionality of these systems. What do they do and how do they do it?
“I think we really have to think about the bigger picture […] which is why I focus on the practice, as well as functionality,” says Schwarz. “In my work I try and show that the use of these types of systems is very likely to exacerbate violent action as an ‘easier’ choice. And, as you rightly point out, errors will very likely prevail […] which will likely be addressed only post hoc.”
Schwarz says that despite the myriad difficulties, in terms of both drafting regulation and pushing back against the enthusiasm of militaries around the world to integrate AI into weaponry, “there is critical mass building amongst nations and international organizations to push for a ban for systems that have the capacity to autonomously identify, select and attack targets.”
Indeed, the UN is still conducting a review into possible regulations for LAWS, with results due to be reported later this year. As Schwarz says: “With this news story having made the rounds, now is a great time to mobilize the international community toward awareness and action.”
When somebody comes to your door — not a virtual door, your real door — and wants to get your attention, they usually ring the doorbell. Zoom has a feature that is sort of, kind of like that: it notifies you with a loud “ding dong” when somebody enters your meeting. This can be useful if you’re waiting for a friend to show up for a Zoom meeting and are playing with your dog or dusting the bookcase in the meantime. It can also be irritating if you’re part of a meeting with ten or more people, and you hear a “ding dong” every time somebody enters or leaves the meeting.
So if you want to turn this notification on — or off — here’s how you do it.
To turn audio notifications off, go to the web-based Settings page.
If you’re in the Zoom app, click on your personal icon (usually in the upper right corner). Select “Settings.” Go down to the bottom of the Settings page and click on “View More Settings.” This will open Zoom’s browser-based Settings page.
Alternatively, sign into Zoom using your browser rather than the app and click on “Settings” in the left-hand column.
Click on “In Meeting (Basic)” in the left column and scroll down until you see “Sound notification when someone joins or leaves.” You can now toggle the feature on or off.
If the feature is toggled on, you will have the option of playing the sound for everyone who joins or leaves your meeting, or hosts and co-hosts only. You can also have Zoom ask to record the voice of someone who joins by phone to use as a notification.
It’s going to get harder for Android apps to track users who’ve opted out of receiving personalized ads, the Financial Times reports, after Google announced changes to how it’ll handle the unique device identifiers that allow marketers to track them between apps. Starting later this year, Google is cutting off access to these “Advertising IDs” after a user opts out, and will show developers a “string of zeros” in its place.
The news was announced in an email to Play Store developers, and Google has also updated its support page for Advertising IDs with the announcement. Google told developers the changes will “provide users with more control over their data, and help bolster security and privacy,” the Financial Times reports.
The change comes a few short months after Apple overhauled how advertising IDs work on iOS in an apparent attempt to compete with the new policy. Recently, Google also announced that it’s adding privacy info to its Play Store listings, mirroring a similar feature Apple added to its App Store last year, and is also limiting which apps can see what you have installed on your phone.
Users have long been able to opt out of personalized ads on Android (you can do so by heading into the Settings app, going into the Google menu, and selecting “Ads”), but it seems this doesn’t currently stop developers from being able to access your device’s advertising ID entirely. AdExchanger reports that apps have previously been able to use the identifier for non-advertising purposes like analytics and fraud prevention, and Google’s support page says it will announce an “alternate solution” for these use cases next month.
Google’s support page says that the rollout of the new policy will happen in phases. Android 12 devices will start seeing the change in “late 2021,” before it rolls out to all devices with Google Play early next year. XDA Developers reports that Google Play Services will also notify existing apps with access to your advertising ID and related data, so that this can be deleted where appropriate.
Although Google’s announcement follows hot on the heels of Apple’s own ad tracking changes, it’s not yet clear how similar the two approaches will be. Google’s support page still refers to the decision to stop ad tracking as an “opt out” process, while Apple’s changes effectively make tracking an opt-in decision. But regardless of how Google eventually handles the process, it’s another potentially huge shake-up for the digital advertising industry.
WhatsApp has confirmed that its long-rumored multi-device support will be entering public beta in the coming months, allowing users to access their accounts from up to four linked devices. New “view once” and “disappearing mode” features were also officially announced. The news came in an interview between WABetaInfo and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and WhatsApp head Will Cathcart.
Cathcart stopped short of confirming reports that WhatsApp has an iPad app in development, but said that multi-device support will make WhatsApp on iPad a possibility.
As well as multi-device support, Zuckerberg also confirmed that WhatsApp is adding a new “view once” feature, which will allow users to send content that disappears after it’s been viewed. The service is also expanding its disappearing messages feature, which currently allows messages to be deleted after a set period of time. In the future, a new “disappearing mode” will let you turn on disappearing messages across all chat threads.
Facebook’s CEO confirmed that the multi-device feature will not compromise the end-to-end encryption that WhatsApp offers for messages sent between individuals. “It’ll still be end-to-end encrypted,” Zuckerberg wrote. “It’s been a big technical challenge to get all your messages and content to sync properly across devices even when your phone battery dies, but we’ve solved this and we’re looking forward to getting it out soon!”
WhatsApp did not confirm when the “view once” and “disappearing mode” features are expected to launch, but Cathcart said that multi-device support will be entering public beta “in the next month or two.”
Alongside multi-device support, WABetaInfo has also reported that WhatsApp is working on a new password-protected encrypted chat backups feature which could finally allow users to transfer their chat histories between iOS and Android devices. WABetaInfo has previously discovered numerous features before their official release, including adding contacts via QR codes and WhatsApp’s disappearing messages feature.
The Olympics is currently hosting its first-ever virtual sporting event series, the Olympic Virtual Series, where competitors can play in virtual versions of five different physical sports: motorsport, cycling, baseball, sailing, and rowing. The cycling competition, for example, takes place in Zwift, which lets you pair your bike and a bike trainer with your computer, phone, or tablet. The motorsport competition takes place entirely inside Gran Turismo Sport.
You might notice that none of those are games you might typically associate with esports, such as Overwatch, which has previously hosted World Cup-style tournaments where players represented their countries. At least for now, though, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) is intentionally choosing to host competitions in virtual versions of physical sports.
“I think it’s fair to say that we remain a sport-based and sport-focused organization,” the IOC’s sport director, Kit McConnell, told The Verge in an interview. “We’re looking to keep the Olympic Virtual Series focused around sport titles.”
While that might sound like the IOC has shut the door on keeping esports out of the Olympics, the Olympics still plans to stay in touch with the esports community, especially since more athletes are playing video games. “We don’t think there’s any mutual exclusivity between the esport community and the traditional sport community,” McConnell said.
The IOC also wants to find ways to help support esports players similarly to how it supports athletes in traditional sports. “As elite esports and gaming competitors are relatively new to the highly competitive environment, they have more limited access to resources than athletes in traditional sports,” the IOC says in its latest strategic roadmap, which was released in March. “The IOC recognises these challenges and aims to adapt various existing tools and resources to support them in different fields such as gender equality, mental and physical health, competition integrity and career transition.”
And the IOC sees virtual sports continuing to play a growing role in the Olympics. While the Olympic Virtual Series isn’t a medalled event, there is a possibility that a virtual representation of a physical sport could become one as early as the 2028 Los Angeles Summer Games, according to that roadmap.
To be clear, the actual language in the roadmap does not make that a sure bet. The roadmap has a “recommendation” to “consider the addition of physical virtual sports in the Olympic Programme in cooperation with the respective International Federations.” But if that became a reality, you could expect to see it take a similar form to what’s being done for the cycling and rowing events for the Olympic Virtual Series, McConnell said. (Of the five sports in the Olympic Virtual Series, only those two require players to compete on physical hardware.)
So while we may not see a League of Legends team adorned in Olympic gold medals anytime soon, virtual sports might actually become an official Olympic event someday. And the Olympic Virtual Series could be a preview of what that may look like.
(Pocket-lint) – Huawei’s latest watch has been announced, and is the first to launch officially running HarmonyOS, the new cross-category operating system designed to make multiple devices seamlessly connect with each other.
The manufacturer has built some great fitness tracking watches of late, including the previous flagship watch: the Watch GT 2 Pro. So, what’s changed between the last watch and the Watch 3? Let’s dive in.
Design
GT 2 Pro: 46.7 x 46.7 x 11.4mm – 52g
Watch 3: 46.2 x 46.2 x 12.15mm – 54g
Watch 3 Pro: 48 mm x 49.6 x 14mm – 63g
GT 2 Pro: Titanium, Sapphire glass and ceramic
Watch 3: Stainless steel, hardened glass and ceramic
Watch 3 Pro: Titanium, Sapphire glass and ceramic
All: Waterproof to 50m
All of Huawei’s watches are fully round and in basic terms they do look similar. They share similarities like having the same ceramic underside, with the same design for the optical sensors for reading your heart rate and blood oxygen saturation.
Where they differ is in the glass, metal and shape of the lens. For instance, both the GT 2 Pro and Watch 3 Pro have completely flat Sapphire crystal glass screens and titanium cases. The standard Watch 3 has curved hardened glass on top of stainless steel.
While all three have two buttons on the side, only the new Watch 3 and Watch 3 Pro feature a rotating crown which functions similarly to the Apple Watch’s Digital Crown. You can turn it or press it to control various functions and interface elements.
All of them are waterproof to a high level (up to 50m) and all three charge wirelessly using the same magnetic plastic cradle.
The one other thing worth noting is that the Watch 3 is the more compact of the three, but not by a huge amount. With a 46mm case, it’s hardly tiny. At 14mm, the Watch 3 Pro is clearly the thickest as well as being the largest.
Display
GT 2 Pro: 1.39-inch AMOLED screen
Watch 3 and 3 Pro: 1.43-inch AMOLED screen
GT 2 Pro: 454 x 454 resolution – 326ppi
Watch 3 and 3 Pro: 466 x 466 resolution – 326ppi
As mentioned, all three watches have completely round screens and they’re all AMOLED and have the same pixel density. There’s a difference in size though, with both the new Watch 3 models featuring a 1.43-inch panel versus 1.39-inches on the older one. That means skinnier bezels, not a bigger watch.
More importantly, however, they have refresh rates up to 60Hz, which means you’ll get smoother and more graphic rich images and animations on it compared to the GT 2 Pro. That – of course – also means it eats more battery (more on that later).
With a peak brightness of 1000nits, that means the watches will be easier to see in daylight too. From a hardware perspective, this is the biggest – or at least most noticeable – upgrade over the Watch GT 2 Pro.
Software and Fitness tracking
GT 2 Pro: LiteOS
Watch 3/3 Pro: HarmonyOS
All: GPS, Heart Rate, spO2, steps, sleep and stress tracking
Watch 3/3 Pro: Temperature sensor
Watch 3 Pro: Precise dual-GPS location
All: Compatible with iOS and Android through Huawei health
The Watch 3 and 3 Pro are the first watches to run HarmonyOS, that means a few things have changed when it comes to the interface and software, but key elements have remained the same.
Controls are similar, although you can now view apps in a grid and even use AppGallery to install them directly from your wrist. The other addition is a fall detection feature which can be set up to call an emergency contact when you fall and don’t respond within a certain time frame.
From a fitness and health perspective, the three watches are largely similar and capable of all-day tracking for things like heart-rate, spO2, stress, sleep and steps. The new sensor on the Watch 3 series also allows skin temperature sensing.
As for the Pro, that one has a dual-GPS mode which allows for much more precise tracking during runs and outdoor sessions to give you a more accurate distance reading and mapped route.
All three are compatible with Android, iOS and HarmonyOS devices using the Huawei Health app.
Performance and battery
GT 2 Pro: 14 days battery life
Watch 3: 3 days in smart mode, 14 days in ‘Ultra-long’
Watch 3 Pro: 5 days in smart mode, 21 days in ‘Ultra-long’
GT 2 Pro: Wi-Fi and Bluetooth
Watch 3/3 Pro: Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and eSIM/4G
What’s interesting about the Watch 3 series’ is that it has – essentially – two modes of running. You can use it as a regular smartwatch and get either three or five days of battery, or kick it into ‘ultra-long’ mode and get either two or three weeks of battery life.
What this does, sort-of, is switch the software and capabilities so that it’s very much like the Lite OS software running on the Watch GT 2 Pro. Due to its lightweight software, Watch GT 2 Pro can get up to two weeks on a full battery.
Watch 3 – as well as having Wi-Fi and Bluetooth like the GT 2 Pro – has eSIM support. This enables 4G connection on networks that support it, allowing you to stream music, answer calls and see notifications. The only downside to this is that it’s only supported by a couple of Chinese networks currently with no news on planned expansion worldwide.
Price
GT 2 Pro: £249
Watch 3: £349
Watch 3 Pro: £499
With its higher-end internal hardware, revamped software, higher refresh screen and eSIM support it’s no surprise that the Watch 3 starts at a higher price than its predecessor.
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In the UK, the standard Watch 3 starts at £100 more than the GT 2 Pro’s original price at £349. Because it’s no longer new, you can now find the GT 2 Pro even cheaper without too much trouble. The Watch 3 Pro is a pound short of £500.
Conclusion
When it comes to fitness and health tracking, there’s little reason to go for the Watch 3 over the Watch GT 2 Pro. It does mostly the same stuff which is then display in the same way on the watch and in your smartphone app.
Where the Watch 3 comes into its own is when it comes to the display and the richer graphics and interactions on that screen. It’s starting to feel much more like a proper smartwatch and less like a rebadged fitness tracker. With a built-in eSIM and potential to stream music and answer calls away from your phone, that’s freedom you don’t get from the Watch GT 2 Pro. Sadly though, that’s not yet available outside China.
With photogrammetry, hundreds of still photos can be transformed into an incredibly realistic 3D model of a real place on Earth — assuming you capture them all.
This Memorial Day weekend, a self-flying robot cameraman did that entire job for me. I simply designated where to fly and where not to fly, kicked back in a chair, and a Skydio 2 drone nabbed those photos all by itself.
Today, Skydio is launching Skydio 3D Scan, an optional software suite for its self-flying drones that lets them build incredibly detailed models for far more important tasks than my holiday backyard BBQ. We’re talking about scanning bridges that might be in need of structural repair, accident reporting at crash sites, and allowing clients to inspect construction sites from most any angle, anywhere in the world, during and after structures are built.
Those aren’t theoretical, by the way: Skydio says the North Carolina Department of Transportation is using it for bridges; the Boston Police Department for crime and accident scene reconstruction; and, below, you can see an real-life interactive 3D example of a water treatment plant for an upcoming semiconductor facility being built in Chandler, Arizona by Sundt Construction, presumably for Intel. (Skydio says it doesn’t know for sure.)
As you can imagine with that kind of clientele, the feature doesn’t come cheap: $2,999 per year, per drone, for the ability to autonomously grab all those photos given a designated volume that you’d like to capture. That also doesn’t include the drone, a controller, or the software you’ll need to actually stitch the images together: $99+ a month for DroneDeploy, or several thousand dollars per year for Bentley Systems’ ContextCapture, as a couple examples — the embedded Sketchfab models in this post use Bentley’s solution. 3D Scan will come to the company’s $10,999-and-up Skydio X2 drone later this summer as well.
Though it’s aimed at professionals with money to spend, a few short sessions showed me you don’t need to be a pro to use 3D Scan, or necessarily even know how to fly a drone. Assuming you’re following all local drone laws, it’s simply a matter of powering up a standard Skydio 2 drone (with two high-capacity microSD cards) and a Skydio controller, then following a series of prompts on a phone. You fly the drone to the top, bottom, and corners of the area you’d like to capture, pick how much detail you want, and then it does the rest on its own — taking pictures with its 12-megapixel front camera while the drone’s other six eyes and navigation system keep it from crashing.
The larger and more detailed your scan, the longer it’ll take, but you can resume after a battery swap — Skydio recommends you don’t stay out longer than four batteries.
Like I wrote in our Skydio 2 review, you can trust this drone not to crash, and the 3D Scan mode adds a geofencing feature that can help you keep it from flying into unwanted areas, too. Frankly, I didn’t feel a pressing need to hang onto the controller during my backyard patio scan, so I left it on a table while I watched. The only thing that confused me was knowing when the scan was done: it turns out you have to land the drone, then leave it powered on to finish processing. Then, it was a matter of uploading a couple gigabytes of photos to DroneDeploy or Bentley and waiting for them to process.
There’s an AR mode where you can keep track of a virtual Skydio drone as it makes its rounds.
As you’ll no doubt see in the 3D models (or failing that, YouTube), they’re not quite seamless yet — not something you’d want to explore in virtual reality, for instance. (I tried.) Even though I can make out the exact texture of the cement slab and tiles in my backyard, and the metal carnage in this Swiss cheese of a busted helicopter, here are loads of holes and smudges that photogrammetry is just failing to provide.
Skydio CEO and co-founder Adam Bry admits that 3D isn’t everything, and that some clients will simply use 3D as a guide to all of the individual high-res photos that Skydio also provides. “If you set the closest resolution, you’re talking about something like .5mm per pixel … it’s enough to see fine cracks in concrete, it’s enough to see rust on a bolt, it’s enough to see details of a skid mark on the ground.” And while he says the system works in indoor environments, it’s currently optimized for flying around an object you’d like to capture instead of capturing the world around the drone, like you might for an indoor tour. (Skydio is “fairly active” in pursuing inside-out capture as well.)
Long term, Bry thinks the automated aerial scanning might come in handy for digitizing the world for other reasons, like augmented and virtual reality, but for now it seemed like simple, detailed 3D structure modeling was a problem Skydio could solve. “There are countless examples of the world’s best drone pilots keeping this mental model of the path they’ve flown,” says Bry. Now, scanning may not need to be about flying, or even programming a path on a map. It’s just another app on your phone.
Skydio’s holding a special live webinar at the US Space and Rocket Center today at 9AM PT / 12PM ET to show a bit more of what 3D Scan can do. They’ll be scanning some exhibits inside the center, Bry tells me.
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