The features Niantic announced for Pokémon Go in mid-April are starting to make their way to your mobile devices. To start with, your Buddy Pokémon — that one special monster you choose to appear next to your avatar — will now bring back gifts from nearby PokéStops and Gyms for you. It’s obviously a feature meant to encourage staying at home, so you don’t have to venture out to PokéStops to gather gifts for friends. If your buddy isn’t doing any gift gathering yet, don’t worry: Niantic’s announcement says the feature is rolling out on a regional basis to ensure stability.
Trainers, your Buddy will now bring back Gifts from nearby PokéStops and Gyms for you to send to Friends. This change is rolling out on a regional basis to ensure stability. Thanks for your patience!
In addition, Remote Raid Passes are now available in the in-game shop. The passes will give you a way to join raid battles on the Nearby screen or elsewhere on the map.
Withings is launching its third (or so) generation sleep tracking mat in the form of the Sleep Analyzer, which launches today. The mat includes the technology we expect, plus a renewed focus on sleep apnea, a condition that the tech industry is increasingly-focused on. According to the company, the apnea sensing in the new model has been validated with trials at hospitals both in France and Belgium used to diagnose the condition. And while Withings admits that the mat isn’t as capable as clinical gear, it’s accurate enough for most folks not to worry.
And, like its predecessor, Sleep Analyzer will track the user’s breathing, movement, heart rate and sleep cycle. As before, the intention is to offer you tips on how to improve your sleep, with coaching and tracking to keep you informed. If you have a smart home, too, then the mat can use IFTTT to, say, dim lights when you hit the hay or get a coffee pot going when you wake up.
The six warehouses Amazon owns in France will remain closed until May 5th as the company assesses “the best way to operate given the decision of the Court of Appeal.” If you’ll recall, a lower court prohibited the e-commerce giant from selling non-essential items in the country, prompting it to shut down its warehouses in mid-April and putting its 10,000 workers on paid furlough. It tried to challenge the decision, but it ultimately lost its bid, with the Versailles Court of Appeals upholding the lower court’s ruling.
When the appeals court revealed its decision, Amazon said it has to assess the ruling’s implications for its business in the country. Sounds like the company still isn’t done figuring things out. While Amazon lost its appeal in France, the court expanded the list of items it can sell, including pet supplies and personal care products — the items would simply be shipped from its warehouses in Germany, Belgium and other European countries.
This weekend Westworldwill wrap up another mind-bending season of full of AI and robot mayhem, but the sci-fi show I’m looking forward to is on Amazon Prime. Uploadcomes from The Office (US) and Parks & Recreation creator Greg Daniels, telling the story of a man whose consciousness is uploaded into a simulation so he can live on after a car accident, and the young woman working in customer service at the hotel/afterlife he now resides in.
If that fails to satisfy your comedy needs, the Parks & Recreation crew will get together for a special episode, and gamers can choose between Sakura Wars or Streets of Rage 4. Look below to check out each day’s highlights, including trailers and let us know what you think (or what we missed).
Much of DJI’s camera functionality comes from the numerous auto-shot and “smart” modes. Again, there are some new goodies here. DJI was eager to talk up the new “scene recognition” feature which sounds like the trick we’ve seen on flagship phones where the camera knows (or, rather, guesses) where you’re shooting and automatically optimizes the settings for you. DJI claims the Mavic Air 2 can detect five scenes: sunset, blue skies, snow, grass and trees. That might not seem a lot, but up in the air that’s most things covered we guess. Along with the aforementioned HDR mode, there’s also “Hyperlight” for when shooting in low light conditions.
Videos will benefit from two layers of stabilization now. The 3-axis gimbal as before, with some additional help from EIS (which we hope/presume is optional). The Mavic Air 2’s FocusTrack feature offers some updated tracking modes: Spotlight 2.0, ActiveTrack 3.0 and Point of Interest 3.0. The former is a hand-me-down from the Inspire 2, which locks the camera onto a target, leaving you to simply fly the drone. Active Track we’ve seen before, but this time it should be more robust at following targets even when they go out of view temporarily. The updated Point of Interest mode claims to be better at recognizing different surfaces and more dynamic tracking — again, we’ll have to wait and see what that really means once we test it.
It’s not all about the fun stuff though, DJI has added some new safety features which might be less sexy, but certainly much appreciated. Most notably, the inclusion of ADS-B — which means the drone will be able to sense when something else (as in, actual planes etc.) is flying nearby. One last acronym for now, and that’s APAS 3.0 — something we saw introduced in the first Mavic Air. In short, it’s what allows the drone to fly around things that its sensors detect, and DJI claims it’s smoother and more fluid this time around. I’m very interested to see if it comes anywhere close to Skydio’s mind-bindingly good obstacle avoidance, something DJI hasn’t been able to compete with thus far in my opinion.
DJI
One last small, but important thing. It looks like DJI has updated the radio controller so that your phone will now perch on top, rather than clip in below. This might seem a minor detail, but as anyone with a larger phone will attest (especially if it’s in a case), clipping it into the old controller was clumsy at best. Let’s hope this new setup is simpler and more comfortable.
As rumored, the Mavic Air 2 will cost $799 at launch, but thanks to the pandemic, it’s only available in China right now, with a global rollout set for mid-May (around the 11th). DJI has a habit of semi-cannibalizing its own products, with new drones offering features even its flagships don’t have, and that seems to be the case here. Which is both great, and slightly confusing when it comes to deciding which one is for you. The premium Mavic Pro 2 series, with its superior camera, or the Mavic Air 2 with it’s longer flight time and new software tricks? Once we get it in for review, hopefully we can help you decide.
As capable as the new iPhone SE might be for the money, there’s one software quirk that could sour the experience for some. Users on Reddit, MacRumors and elsewhere have discovered that you can’t use Haptic Touch (that is, a press and hold with vibration feedback) for notifications on the lock screen or Notification Center like you can with the iPhone 11 series. And like TechCrunch’s Matthew Panzarino noted, this is apparently intentional in its current form — at the moment, there are no known plans to patch the functionality.
We’ve asked Apple for comment. Haptic Touch still works on the home screen for app shortcuts, and will work if you happen to catch a notification as it pops up (but only after the phone has been unlocked).
The watch is also notable for what you don’t see. Hodinkeenoted that NASA’s merch requirements forbid any thing that suggests joint development or official endorsement, so the Casio logo is nowhere to be seen on the front — the embossed G-Shock logo and a small Casio badge on the back are about as far as the watchmaker goes to advertise itself.
The wristwear’s $130 price is accessible, but the real challenge may be getting your hands on it. Casio has already sold out of the initial batch, and new orders won’t ship until May 6th as we write this. Consider this, though: when many space-themed mechanical watches cost tens of thousands of dollars, the G-Shock will seem like an absolute bargain.
Comcast and Verizon (Engadget’s parent company) are extending their pledges to keep people online as the US grapples with the COVID-19 pandemic. Both providers have announced that their no-disconnect policies will now last through June 30th for home, small business and wireless subscribers. As before, anyone who can’t pay their bills during the period just has to notify the appropriate company to avoid disconnections and late fees.
We’ve asked AT&T and T-Mobile if they’re following suit. Multiple major telecoms adopted the FCC’s Keep Americans Connected pledge in mid-March as the government agency stressed the importance of enabling remote communication for work and school, not to mention to offset the economic impact.
Another potential drawback, is that the centralized approach may eat up more power. Apple’s solution lets the contact tracing happen in the background, but the UK’s app has to be woken up every time the device detects another nearby device running the same software, BBC explains.
By choosing the centralized approach, the NHS is aligning more with Australia than some of its EU counterparts. Australia’s app, which was released over the weekend, uses a mix of Bluetooth and stored contact data on both the app and servers. Germany, on the other hand, has switched its stance and is now pursuing a decentralized architecture, as are Austria, Estonia and Switzerland.
So far, the European Commission and the EU’s data protection watchdog support both models but note that the differences aren’t entirely clear, EUobserver reports. In either case, the challenge will be getting enough widespread adoption for the apps to be effective.
Engadget’s Chris Velazco gave the 2018 iPad Pro a score of 84 when it first came out. He particularly liked the updated Apple Pencil and the iPad Pro’s smooth 120Hz refresh rate display. Most of the issues he had with the 2018 model’s software Apple has since addressed with the release of iPadOS.
While we don’t usually recommend people buy an older device over its newer sibling, the differences between the 2018 and 2020 iPad Pro are few and far between. The new tablet features an additional ultra-wide angle camera as well as support for LiDAR mapping. It also comes with an updated A12 chipset that features an extra processing core. Those additions don’t make the 2020 iPad Pro immediately better than its predecessor, but they do promise a future in which the new iPad Pro will be able to do more. That said, trackpad support, the best feature Apple added with the 2020 iPad Pro, is available on the 2018 model through a free software update that came out last month. Either way, the iPad Pro is one of the best tablets you can buy currently.
