Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga won't arrive until next spring, but another game from the franchise is coming soon — and it's an Apple Arcade exclusive. Lego Star Wars Battles is a real-time strategy game that pits players against each other in one-on-one showdowns.
You'll amass a collection of upgradable characters, troops and vehicles from all eras of the Star Wars universe. You'll be able to pit porgs against Boba Fett, for instance. Don't expect to stick to one side of the Force — you'll have a deck of light side and dark side armies, with different play styles for each. You'll have a number of abilities at your disposal too, such as Darth Vader’s Force Slam and Luke Skywalker’s Force Push.
TT Games Brighton/Warner Bros. Games/Lucasfilm Games
Battlefields will feature Lego towers that you'll build, defend, attack and use to claim territory. The locations include some familiar environments, including Hoth, Naboo and Endor.
TT Games Brighton is developing Lego Star Wars Battles, while Warner Bros. Games is the publisher. It won't be the first Lego game to hit Apple Arcade, though. Lego Brawls and Lego Builder's Journey both landed on the service in 2019. The latter was ported to PC and Nintendo Switch in June.
Apple is expanding its music streaming options after buying classical service Primephonic. Apple Music aims to release a dedicated classical music app next year, which will combine Primephonic’s user interface with some of Apple's own features.
"As a classical-only startup, we can not reach the majority of global classical listeners, especially those that listen to many other music genres as well," Primephonic wrote in a letter to users on its website. "We therefore concluded that in order to achieve our mission, we need to partner with a leading streaming service that encompasses all music genres and also shares our love for classical music."
Primephonic has closed its doors to new users and it will shut down on September 7th. Subscribers will get a prorated refund and six months of Apple Music access for free. They'll be able to listen to hundreds of thousands of classical albums while Apple builds the forthcoming app. Apple says all of those albums are available in lossless and high-res audio. Hundreds of them have spatial audio support as well.
Apple is promising Apple Music subscribers a "significantly improved classical music experience" following the deal, including Primephonic playlists and exclusive audio content. In the coming months, it plans to harness the capabilities of Primephonic to offer classical music fans improved browsing and search functions. You'll be able to look for works by composer and repertoire, and see "detailed displays of classical music metadata."
“We love and have a deep respect for classical music, and Primephonic has become a fan favorite for classical enthusiasts,” Oliver Schusser, vice president of Apple Music and Beats, said. “Together, we’re bringing great new classical features to Apple Music, and in the near future, we’ll deliver a dedicated classical experience that will truly be the best in the world.”
Instagram will require users to share their birthday, an update the company says is meant to protect young people using its app. The photo app already asks new users to provide a birthday when they sign up, a requirement that’s been in place since the end of 2019. But people who previously signed up may not have shared the information.
But over the “next few weeks” Instagram will begin prompting users who haven’t previously shared a birthdate to do so. While they will initially be able to dismiss the prompts, the app will eventually require birthdays from everyone.
For now, there’s two scenarios in which users will be asked for their birthdays. First, the app will show a notification “a handful of times.” A separate prompt may also appear if users try to view a post that’s hidden behind a warning screen. These warnings appear on “sensitive content” that might not break Instagram’s official rules, but could be considered borderline, such as “suggestive” images or photos of medical procedures. Users will no longer be able to view these posts until they provide a birthday, and younger teens may not be able to see these posts at all.
Instagram
The company also says it will use artificial intelligence to detect when a user may have provided a false birthday, and that some users may be asked to “verify” their age. “In the future, if someone tells us they’re above a certain age, and our technology tells us otherwise, we’ll show them a menu of options to verify their age,” the company says. “This work is still in the early stages, and we look forward to sharing more soon.”
The changes are the latest as Instagram has tried to beef up security and privacy features for its youngest users. The company has also said it will switch to making younger teens’ accounts private by default, and has limited advertisers’ ability to target the demographic. It also recently introduced features to prevent adult strangers from messaging teens. Instagram has also said it’s in the early stages of thinking about a version of its service for users under the age of 13, which has prompted concern from lawmakers and other officials.
Jon Stewart will soon return to a screen near you to once again dissect some of the big issues of the day. His Apple TV+ series, The Problem With Jon Stewart, will premiere on September 30. Rather than airing on a nightly basis, like The Daily Show, or even weekly, new episodes will arrive every other week.
In the show, Stewart will tackle one topic per episode (similar to the much-missed Patriot Act with Hasan Minhaj). He'll speak with people affected by the issue and those who were involved in it impacting others. Stewart and his guests will "discuss a more productive path towards action," Apple says.
The conversation will continue on the companion podcast, which features staff members from the series and activists working on the issue at hand. It's not clear how many episodes the first season will include, but the show is slated to run for multiple seasons.
Here's some good news if you're looking to get your hands on a Neon Genesis Evangelion Blu-ray set without paying through the nose. It emerged this month that the anime will be released on the format in North America for the first time later this year as part of a $275 Ultimate Edition. Although that set sold out quickly, you'll still have the chance to buy a copy of the saga on Blu-ray, as there are two other options on the way from distributor GKids.
NEON GENESIS #EVANGELION now available to pre-order on Standard & Collector’s Edition Blu-ray!
? Both feature the complete series, EVANGELION:DEATH (TRUE)² and THE END OF EVANGELION ? Collector’s Edition includes bonus Classic Dub & Subtitled Versionshttps://t.co/MN2UaYop32pic.twitter.com/0AKJ2lLyG6
The Collector’s Edition set includes 11 discs. You'll be able to watch the the 26-episode series and the Evangelion: Death (True)² and The End of Evangelion movies in the more recent "official" dubbed and subtitled versions, or the classic dubbed or subtitled versions. There's also seven hours of bonus material — including animatics and music videos — eight art cards and a 40-page book.
Like the Ultimate Edition, the Collector's Edition package will be released on December 8th. Lock in a pre-order and it'll set you back $175, as Polygonnotes, but it'll cost $220 as of the release date.
If you can't wait quite that long, or aren't willing to pony up at least three figures for a Neon Genesis Evangelion Blu-ray set, the Standard Edition arrives a month earlier. It includes the series and both movies, along with five hours of bonus features. However, you won't get the classic dub or subtitles with this set. It costs $60, or $46 if you pre-order.
That's not all, though. As of November 2nd, you'll be able to buy digital versions of the series, Evangelion: Death (True)² and The End of Evangelion. So, if and when they vanish from Netflix, you'll still be able to find legal versions online. Meanwhile, the four Rebuild of Evangelion movies are available on Amazon Prime Video.
Google's Nest Audio has been one of our favorite smart speakers since it came out almost a year ago. When compared to other $100 devices, it packs a lot of value and will be especially attractive for those who already use the Google Assistant a lot. But now you can grab the speaker for even less because Best Buy and B&H Photo have the Nest Audio for only $80. While we did see the speaker drop to $75 ahead of Amazon Prime Day back in June, this is the best price we've seen since then.
The Nest Audio is Google's answer to Amazon's Echo and Apple's HomePod mini and it holds its own against both of those devices. We like its attractive, minimalist design and you have five colors to choose from, so you'll likely find one that fits well with the rest of your home decor. It takes only a few minutes to set up the Nest Audio via the Google Home mobile app, and once that's set, you're able to ask the Google Assistant to play music from a bunch of sources like Spotify, YouTube Music, Apple Music and Pandora.
If the Nest Audio is your first smart speaker that costs more than $50, you'll immediately notice the difference in audio quality. It's leaps and bounds better as a music player than the Nest Mini or the Echo Dot, and it sounds even better if you have two Nest Audios playing in stereo mode. It even has Media EQ, which adapts the audio to better fit what you're listening to (like music vs. podcasts), and Ambient QI, which changes the Assistant's output so you can hear it better in louder environments.
And as with other assistant-toting devices, you'll be able to call upon the Google Assistant when you have a question that needs answering, when you want to know what the weather will be like tomorrow, when you want to turn on your smart lights and more. If you're an Android user or simply use a bunch of Google services every day, the Nest Audio is one of the best smart speakers you could add to your home that will make it easier for you to access your information at any time.
Follow @EngadgetDeals on Twitter for the latest tech deals and buying advice.
China has announced a further crackdown on the amount of time children can play online video games, with the new limit set to just three hours per week. Bloomberg, reporting from local news sources, says that platforms like Tencent can now offer gaming to kids between the hours of 8-9pm on Friday, weekends and public holidays.
It’s a significant and notable reduction from the previous rule, which had been generally capped at 1.5 hours per day in 2019. Earlier this month, Tencent was forced to cut the amount of time minors could play the smash hit mobile title Honor of Kings to just an hour on weeknights and two hours on the weekend. The added restriction is likely to impact the share price of companies in this space, which has seen recent instability.
Historically, China has always had an aversion to video games, albeit with more nuance than most people believe. The country has, however, amplified anti-game rhetoric in recent years, and on August 3rd, a key state-owned news outlet described video games as “spiritual opium.” The piece, as reported by The New York Times, went on to outline all of the ways in which gaming could harm Chinese kids.
As well as the time limit for online gaming (and we’ve asked our colleagues to clarify if any of this can also apply to offline and console gaming), authorities want all titles hooked up to some form of anti-addiction system. Other new rules include companies keeping (real) name data for all users, more reporting on the use of in-game transactions, and more regulatory scrutiny more generally.
It’s not clear how much of an impact this will have in the real-world since Tencent says minors make up a very small part of its overall business. But given the country’s continuedassault on various parts of the tech industry, it’s likely that there will be more hoops for businesses to jump through in future. A week ago, meanwhile, South Korea declared that it would ditch its infamous "Cinderella Law," banning video gamers from playing between midnight and 6am, saying that it is respecting children's rights.
Fossil is today announcing its new Gen 6 smartwatches, its first range of devices powered by Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon Wear 4100+. The new platform will, Fossil promises, offer a number of quality-of-life improvements including faster loading times and the ability to fast charge to 80 percent in half an hour. In addition, the new watches will offer continuous heart-rate tracking, a new blood oxygenation sensor and a new built-in wellness app for more reliable activity tracking. Oh, and users will be able to make tethered calls thanks to an integral speaker and microphone combo, should you need the feature.
Naturally, Fossil has made it clear that these Gen 6 watches, unlike the current (and older) models, will be compatible with Wear OS 3 and users can expect to receive the update due in 2022. The new watches will launch in two sizes: a 42mm case with three color options, while you can get four different paint jobs if you opt for the 44mm case. Both devices, however, have a 1.28-inch round AMOLED display (326 ppi), with 8GB of built-in storage and 1GB of RAM. Since a big part of Fossil’s sales pitch is customizability, you’ll also get a wide variety of strap choices to help make these devices more suited to your personal style, too.
The Fossil Gen 6 watches will cost between $299 and $319, with pre-orders open now.
We’ll get into Samsung’s bigger foldable below, but first let’s talk about a new, kind of, PS5. You might have struggled to get a PS5, though anecdotal evidence suggests a lot of us have been able to find consoles as stores stock up, but that hasn’t stopped Sony sneaking out a slightly new model. According to a teardown of the digital (no disc-drive) PlayStation 5 by Austin Evans, there seems to be a smaller, lighter heatsink and a new screw to attach the console to its stand.
So no, this isn’t like the smaller PlayStation consoles the company likes to roll out during a console’s midlife — it’s way too early for that. It does show that the company is looking for ways to shave production costs and get these consoles into profitability.
Interestingly, Sony already stated it’s selling the disc-based PS5 at a profit. Games consoles typically sell at a loss for the first couple of years after launch. Hopefully, that smaller heatsink will still handle the bigger, more lavish titles on their way to the PS5.
The Z Fold 3 is an impressively refined foldable, with water-resistant hardware that feels sturdier than before. It offers nifty S Pen support — important when this is a fallow year for Samsung’s Galaxy Note series — smoother screens, capable cameras and some helpful software. Reviews Editor Cherlynn Low, however, isn’t quite sold. Using its outside screen as a regular smartphone remains uncomfortable, and its internal display — a technical marvel — isn’t great for casual texting or browsing.
But the Freewrite's price and quirks make it impractical for most.
Nathan Ingraham / Engadget
News Editor Nathan Ingraham is looking to flex his creative writing skills, and the Freewrite helped him do exactly that, avoiding all distractions associated with writing (well, typing) on PCs.
The Freewrite combines a mechanical keyboard with an e-ink display and is meant purely for drafting text. There aren’t even arrow keys, so editing anything more than a few words back is a non-starter. It has WiFi, so you can sync your drafts to Dropbox, Google Drive or Evernote, but that’s about the only concession it makes to the internet age.
New watch faces may take advantage of the bigger displays.
Bloomberg's Mark Gurman claims Apple’s Watch Series 7 will come in larger 41mm and 45mm case sizes (up from 40mm and 44mm) with bigger screens to match. As with the Series 4 launch, when the watch faces also changed, there will reportedly be new watch faces to take advantage of the added visual real estate.
Apple normally updates its smartwatches alongside its iPhones in September. In short, it won’t be long before we know if the rumors are true.
A newly unsealed consumer lawsuit against Google alleges the company offered to take a "significantly reduced" cut of Netflix's Play Store revenue to quell the streaming giant's "displeasure." Netflix, Spotify and Tinder all supposedly tried to get around the requirement to use Play Store's in-house billing system, and deals like this were meant to keep Netflix using Google's payment platform.
The same filing also includes a claim that Google's normal revenue share is arbitrary. The company typically asks for a 30 percent cut of Play Store purchases, but it apparently could break even with a mere six percent. Internal communications suggest Google chose the 30 percent share for no reason "other than copying Apple," according to the lawsuit.
When the Xbox 360 arrived in 2005 with 1,280 x 720 resolution, 72×72 pixels probably seemed a perfectly reasonable gamerpic size. With the 4K Xbox Series X displaying eight times the number of pixels, however, anyone still using the ancient gamerpics will get a hilariously tiny view of their avatar.
Video producer and editor Gabriel Roland (@Noukon) was complaining about that very issue on Twitter. "I bought this gamerpic for 80 Xbox Points in 2006," hetweeted. "And I’ll be fucked if it won’t remain the best dollar I’ve ever spent." An accompanying image shows his beloved, barely visible avatar floating in a massive circle of grey.
With each passing generation, Xbox tries to shame my Pac-Man ghost avatar by shrinking it ever smaller and smaller. I will not yield. I bought this gamerpic for 80 Xbox Points in 2006, and I'll be fucked if it won't remain the best dollar I've ever spent until the seas boil over pic.twitter.com/Ji5ttoUVjh
Fortunately, the right person saw that tweet in the form of Xbox engineering lead Eden Marie. "Listen, I can't promise anything, but I'm going to make it my personal mission to fix this," she replied. Amazingly, she found that the same gamerpic Noukon purchased was still on sale, albeit at nearly two and half times the price, but she gladly splurged the $2.38 to buy it.
Right off the bat, Marie noticed that Xbox 360 gamerpics display differently if you're looking at your own profile or someone else's. On your own, the avatar is displayed as above and looks truly wonky. On someone else's profile, it displays better against your background, but it's still tiny and the edges are cut off by the circular format of newer gamerpics.
Before we even think about what looks good, we need to look at the inconsistency in the profile page/editor that started this thread. 360 gamerpics look fundamentally different here depending on whether you're looking at your own profile (broken) or someone else's (intended). pic.twitter.com/m5o0sXHfMx
The grey border issue turned out to be a bug introduced at some point, so Marie was able to fix that first. Then, she took advantage of the Xbox UI's ability to handle transparency in images by overlaying the square gamerpic into a transparent circular image. After upsizing everything to a reasonable size, the avatar looks great and the problem has been solved. "What do you think, @noukon? Feel better about that dollar?," she tweeted.
It's a lot of fun, and sometimes, you even learn something new, like… apparently 360 gamerpics supported transparency all along?
"I have never and will never feel better about a dollar in my entire life," replied Roland. "I'll also say this: I worked in game QA for over a decade and I've never seen a bug addressed this quickly." Replied Marie: "It really helps that your bug report tweet made me laugh."
While this story on its own should warm the cockles of any gamer's heart, that's not the end of it. Marie noted that the fix will be introduced for all Xbox users still rocking those old gamerpics. "PS, since there have been questions, this will need to roll out with other console updates, Insiders first, and this will change how all 360 gamerpics show up on console, not just certain ones," she noted. The fix has now been added to the Alpha ring, so if all goes well, it should fix everybody's messed up Xbox 360 gamerpics in the coming months.
Volkswagen has unveiled a new feature for its Car-Net connected vehicle service that lets you get 4G data from two major US telecoms. Called "Carrier of Choice," it offers the option of Verizon or T-Mobile, making it relatively easy to add your vehicle to an existing mobile plan.
Starting in September, VW owners in the US will be able to access the subscription plan options on VW's dedicated website or via its mobile app. From there, you can add an account to your existing mobile wireless provider (assuming it's Verizon or T-Mobile) and pair it with your existing Volkswagen Car-Net subscription. It will then appear as a new line-item on your existing bill. If you're not already with those carriers, you can get unlimited 4G data for $20 per month.
Car-Net offers connected car features like remote start, locking and unlocking the vehicle, maintenance, status, teen driver alerts (curfew, boundary, speed) and more. Those features can be accessed remotely from both iPhone and Android smartphones using VW's updated mobile app. It also offers a WiFi hotspot with "unlimited" 4G connectivity for up to four devices.
On top of those features, VW lets you access iHeart Radio and TIDAL media streaming apps with a paid subscription. It also offers the "Plus Nav" subscription with real-time traffice and route updates for $49 per year, a radio subscription with 30,000 global stations for $8 per year and a natural language speech option for $9 per year. Of course, VW models from 2019 and up come with CarPlay and Android Auto support, giving you many of those options for free. Car-Net comes standard on most 2020 model year and newer Volkswagen vehicles. .
On Monday mornings, I send out a story via email: ultra-brief tales of 1,000 words or more, usually in genres including science fiction, horror, and the supernatural. Those stories collectively are called Once Upon A Time. I’ve also published four ebooks and one paperback anthology of those stories so far.
I’d love to have you as a subscriber to the weekly free story. You can subscribe via email here, or use the form below. Unsubscribe any time, from the link in every issue.
Google's Pixel 5a famously has a headphone jack, but you'd better hope that the USB-C port never breaks. The fact that it's soldered directly to the motherboard rather than being a separate component is one contributing factor in its middling 5/10 repairability score, according to a new teardown from YouTube channel PBKreviews.
The Pixel 5a is Google's midrange 5G smartphone and a direct successor to the popular 5G Pixel 4a. Though a bit larger than the latter and now water-resistant, it's equipped with nearly the same internal components, including a Snapdragon 765G, 6GB of RAM and a 60Hz panel. It's a solid mid-range phone for $449, though essentially a stopgap device until Google unveils the Pixel 6 family that will use its all-new Tensor mobile chip.
The good news is that the 6.34-inch OLED display is relatively easy to replace, as you can pull it off simply by heating it up and using a pry tool to pop it off. It's also fairly straightforward to get access to the battery and motherboard, once you remove the numerous screws and pry off the large metal cover.
From there, however, things get trickier. The battery is glued solidly to the case and the pry tab meant to help remove it is "pretty useless," according to PBKreviews. Instead, they had to use isopropyl alcohol to loosen the glue before they could pry the battery out. The other issue is that the USB-C port is attached directly to the motherboard, so making repairs to it would be "difficult," according to the video.
All told, however, the Pixel 5a appears to be slightly easier to repair than its predecessor. While you might not try to fix it yourself, that means it could be a bit easier to find local service if you'd rather not send it away to Google. The teardown also shows a solid-looking device with water resistance as a big new benefit — so hopefully, all that will add up to a reliable device that won't need repairs in the first place.
Apple Watch Series 7 might be a more substantial redesign than you think. Bloomberg's Mark Gurman claims Series 7 will come in larger 41mm and 45mm case sizes (up from 40mm and 44mm) with bigger screens to match. As with the Series 4 launch, there will reportedly be new watch faces to take advantage of the added visual real estate. One will apparently include an update to the data-heavy Infograph Modular face.
Earlier leaks on Twitter and Weibo hinted at the larger cases, but didn't come with many details. Gurman, Jon Prosser and 91mobiles have all claimed Series 7 would focus on an overall redesign with flatter edges, flatter screens, thinner bezels and more color options. It might also pack a faster processor and improved ultra-wideband tech, although any advanced health sensors might have to wait until the 2022 model.
Apple has historically released updated smartwatches in September, usually alongside new iPhones. If so, you might not have to wait long to know whether or not the rumors are on the mark.