Amazon launches the GameOn app to let mobile gamers share gameplay clips

Amazon has unveiled another gaming service, this time aimed at mobile users. Dubbed Amazon GameOn, the service makes it easy for users to capture and share mobile gameplay.

With the GameOn app for Android, users can record 30 second to five minute clips in their favorite mobile games. Over 1,000 games will be supported by GameOn at launch, including PUBG Mobile, Angry Birds 2, and Final Fantasy Brave Exvius. Clips are stored on a user’s device and can be edited within the app and then shared to a user’s GameOn profile page. Users can also personalize videos with selfie commentary and on-screen captions.

While Amazon GameOn allows users to start and stop recording at will, there’s also a Recall feature. Instead of worrying about gameplay taking up all your storage, users can hit the Recall button and only save the last few minutes of gameplay. Users can configure the length of the saved clip, from 30 seconds to five minutes.

In addition to offering users a place to share gameplay clips, users can also participate in challenges. The Featured Challenges section on GameOn’s homepage includes game-specific time-limited contests where users can show off their favorite gameplay clips. Clips can be voted on, and the most popular will receive a digital ranking badge.

One of the challenges going on right now asks players to win a game in PUBG Mobile where the play zone is so small, “you can see the entire perimeter on screen.”

Amazon GameOn service arrives following the launch of Luna, a cloud gaming platform designed to compete in the same space as Google Stadia. Luna is available now in early access and has an introductory price of $5.99 per month.

GameOn is available now for Android and is coming soon to iOS.

GameOn: watch, share and record gameplay videos (Free, Google Play) →

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Facebook adds “Vanish Mode” for disappearing messages in Messenger and Instagram

Facebook hasn’t shied away from borrowing features from its competitors. Instagram benefited from the introduction of Stories, which aped on Snapchat’s core utility. Now, Facebook is looking toward Snapchat for inspiration again with the release of “Vanish Mode.” The new feature arrives as part of a major redesign to Messenger that Facebook announced in September.

Coming to Facebook Messenger and Instagram, Vanish Mode is an ephemeral messaging feature that will allow users to send texts, photos, voice messages, emoji, and stickers that disappear automatically. Facebook said that messages will disappear after they’re seen and you leave the chat, with no traces left in your chat history.

Instagram has for a while included an element of disappearing messages in its platform, with the ability to send photos and videos that vanish after they are viewed. Facebook is marketing the new feature as a fun way to share stuff that you don’t necessarily want to stick around forever, like an embarrassing selfie. Or as a video demonstrating the feature puts it, Vanish Mode allows users to “live in the moment.”

Vanish Mode is opt-in only, so you have to acknowledge the feature before using it with someone in a chat. Once the feature is enabled, messages will disappear automatically. If someone takes a screenshot of your conversation, you’ll be notified. Conversations can also be reported, and will include messages up to one hour after they disappear in the report.

To use Vanish Mode, you can swipe up on your mobile device in an existing chat thread. You can also turn the feature on and off in the settings of a particular chat message or group thread. To exit Vanish Mode, swipe up again and you’ll be back in your regular chat.

The feature has already rolled out to some users in Messenger, with a wider rollout happening in the U.S. and a handful of other countries. Instagram will get Vanish Mode in the U.S. and other countries soon. You must update to the new Instagram message experience in order to experience the new mode.

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Get the Apple Airpods Pro with free next-day delivery for just $194!

The Apple Airpods Pro are a popular and powerful pair of earbuds. While it’s Apple brand, the earbuds can connect to any Bluetooth enabled device, so Android users also get in on the Airpods experience. With the ability to seamlessly listen to music, take calls, and anything else you’d need to do, Airpods have always been a top choice for those looking for their next set of earbuds.

Now, at Staples, you can get the Apple AirPods Pro for just $194! Normally $249, this knocks a whole $55 off the retail price. In addition, Staples offers free next-day delivery, so unlike other retailers offering this price on the Airpods Pro, you can safely purchase these online and get them tomorrow, without needing to leave the house. That’s really important in times like these!

If there is a Staples near you, you can go and pick them up, though. Basically, the next-day delivery is really fast and convenient, but if you need them as soon as possible, you can get your new Apple AirPods Pro in as quickly as an hour.

If you’re not already an AirPods user, you might be wondering what the fuss is. Most consumers know that Apple can charge a premium for its device due to the brand name, but the Apple AirPods Pro are quality devices worth the price of admission. The AirPods Pro contains an H1 chip, which ensures low audio latency and are sweat and water-resistant. Perfect for outdoor fitness! You can get more than 24 hours of listening time on a single charge, and when they do run dry, they’ll charge quickly in the case, wirelessly or wired.

There is plenty more to get into, but it might just be better to look at the specs and details on Staples’ store page! The details include a deep breakdown of the audio aspects, which I can’t begin to understand. But, I know it’s a pretty solid piece of audio technology!

Apple Airpods Pro

Save $55 and get free next day delivery? What are you waiting for? The Apple AirPods Pro are a quality set of earbuds, and you can get them at a nice discount at Staples.

$194 at Staples

While you’re looking at Apple products, why not head on over to Ben’s hands-on of the iPhone 12 Mini? The phone’s so small, it’s really cute!

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The RedMagic Cyberpods are low-latency TWS earphones for gaming

There’s no shortage of wireless gaming headsets on the market — even Bose got in on the action — but there aren’t that many true wireless earphones designed with low-latency gaming in mind. If you’re looking for something discreet and next level, RedMagic’s new Cyberpods might be for you.

Weighing in at just 5g, there are a few things that set the Cyberpods apart. One is the “atmospheric lighting,” and the other is a low latency “Gamer Mode.”

RedMagic says the Cyberpods feature RGB lighting for some added sci-fi flair. Open the case and a light will display the battery life. The headphones, meanwhile, feature two lights to “create a gaming ambient lighting environment.”

The Cyberpods are also promising a low latency experience. RedMagic claims the Cyberpods offer 39ms audio latency and a “Gamer Mode” that can be manually turned on or off. Users should seemingly experience no discernible disconnect between what’s happening on their device and what’s playing on the earphones. Unfortunately, Gamer Mode is only supported by RedMagic phones; the headphones offer 60ms latency when paired with other devices.

Cyberpods owners should expect about four hours of battery life when connected over Bluetooth 5.0, with the case offering an additional 16 hours of power. The case includes a USB-C port, which RedMagic said can be fully charged in just two hours. That’s about on a par with other truly wireless headphones, including Apple’s AirPods.

The earbuds also support AAC and SBC Bluetooth audio codecs and can be controlled via touch-sensitive controls on the earbuds.

RedMagic says the Cyberpods will be available globally beginning November 20 and retail for $50, €50, and £40.

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OPPO starts rolling out ColorOS 11 based on Android 11 for the F17 Pro and Find X2

OPPO has announced an expanded roll-out for ColorOS 11, the latest version of its operating system, based on Android 11. After a lengthy beta program, we got the first hints of a stable release last week, but now the Chinese OEM has announced the first countries to receive the rollout. A post to the OPPO Community forums today enthuses: “Dear ColorOS Superfans, The long-awaited Official version of Find X2 Series ColorOS 11 based on Android 11 Official Version finally kicks off. So hurry up & don’t miss it.”

The first models to receive ColorOS 11 are the OPPO Find X2 Series, which is currently rolling out in India, Thailand, Malaysia, Philippines, Cambodia, Pakistan, Egypt and Vietnam. We’ve also confirmed that it will arrive in the UK in early December. Also at the front of the queue is the OPPO F17 Pro, where the update is currently available in India. Users may get a push notification, or alternatively, look for the Software Update page in Settings. In all cases, users who have taken part in the beta will be upgraded to the stable build.

In addition to all the lovely new features in Android 11, OPPO’s version also brings a wallpaper and ringtone maker, customizable always-on display, three-finger translation, gamer mode, and the ability to change the notification tone dynamically according to how many times you’ve ignored it. Most interesting of all, for X2 users, is FlexDrop, which lets you turn apps into resizeable windows which you can place side by side. There’s even more than that, but rather than repeat it all here, why not check out our ColorOS 11 review?

OPPO warns that as part of the installation process, your device could run hot, or drain the battery faster than usual, so best to do it at the end of the day. It should right itself after a night on-charge. ColorOS 11 will arrive on other handsets during early 2021, including the Reno, F, and A series.

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Android’s Neural Networks API now supports hardware-accelerated inferencing with Facebook’s PyTorch Framework

Machine Learning has shaped our present in many ways that we don’t even notice it anymore. Tasks that previously were either impossible have now become trivial to execute, making the technology and its benefits even more widely accessible to the population at large. A lot of this is made possible through on-device machine learning and Google’s Neural Networks API (NNAPI). Now, even more users will be able to experience accelerated neural networks and their benefits as the Android team has announced support for a prototype feature that enables developers to use hardware-accelerated inference with Facebook’s PyTorch Framework.

On-device machine learning allows machine learning models to run locally on the device without needing to transmit data to a server, allowing for lower latency, improved privacy, and improved connectivity. The Android Neural Networks API (NNAPI) is designed for running computationally intensive operations for machine learning on Android devices. NNAPI provides a single set of APIs to benefit from available hardware accelerators including GPUs, DSPs, and NPUs.

NNAPI can be accessed directly via an Android C API, or via higher-level frameworks such as TensorFlow Lite. And as per today’s announcement, PyTorch Mobile has announced a new prototype feature supporting NNAPI, consequently enabling developers to use hardware-accelerated inference with the PyTorch framework. This initial release includes support for well-known linear convolutional and multilayer perceptron models on Android 10 and above. Performance testing using the MobileNetV2 model shows up to a 10x speedup compared to a single-threaded CPU. As part of the development towards a full stable release, future updates will include support for additional operators and model architectures including Mask R-CNN, a popular object detection and instance segmentation model.

Perhaps the most well-known software built on top of PyTorch is Tesla’s Autopilot software. While today’s announcement doesn’t spell any direct news for Autopilot, it does open up the benefits of accelerated neural networks to millions of Android users that use software that is built on top of PyTorch.

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Future Pixel phones reportedly won’t get unlimited Google Photos backups

It came as a big surprise when Google announced that it would no longer offer Google Photos unlimited free storage for high quality photos. Beginning June 1, 2021, users will instead get just 15GB of free storage that comes with every Google Account.

The good news is existing Pixel devices are exempt from these new policy changes. That means if you have a Pixel 5 or older, you can continue to get unlimited free storage for high quality photos. It’s a great perk for Google’s phones, and a reason to choose a Pixel device over a competitor.

However, that perk apparently won’t be offered to future Pixel devices. According to Android Central, when the next Google smartphone is released, it’ll feature the same 15GB that comes free with every Google Account. After that, you’ll seemingly be required to pay for a Google One subscription, which starts at $1.99 for 100GB. If you pay for a 2TB plan, which is $9.99 per month, you’ll get extras like a VPN and even advanced editing features in Google Photos.

If the report is true, it’s a huge disappointment, because having unlimited free high quality photo storage is a fantastic perk. You would think Google would use that as a selling point for future Pixel devices, but that’s apparently not the case. In yesterday’s announcement, Google didn’t mention any plans for future Pixel phones, so we’re still holding out hope unlimited free photo backups will continue to be a perk.

If you own a Pixel 5 or earlier, you have more reason than ever to withhold from upgrading. If you don’t own a Pixel device, the policy changes will go into affect beginning June 1, 2021. According to Google, most Photos users should have roughly three more years worth of free high quality photo backup. But as we learned, it won’t just be photos that count toward your 15GB allotment, but files and documents, too, so the free storage might go quicker than you think.

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