Blogroll

Razer’s Blade Stealth was originally placed as a tiny laptop that could dock with an eGPU for serious gaming, but it’s become a dark horse ultraportable in its own right. Now it’s a pink horse.

The gaming brand has been offering pink versions of many of its products for the last couple of years, slowly expanding the “quartz” color option throughout its lineup. Now that option extends to most of its accessories, and for the first time, a Blade laptop. Specifically the newest revision of the Blade 13 Stealth, packing 8th-gen Core i7 processors and an option for a light-duty GeForce MX150 GPU upgrade.

Razer

The redesigned laptop has those oh-so-stylish ultrathin screen bezels and a more blocky aluminum look, very much in line with the more powerful Blade laptops. You can still connect it to the Razer Core X GPU enclosure for a desktop-class graphics boost, and it lasts for 13 hours on a charge. Screens start at 1080p, though a 4K touchscreen is available too. And don’t worry, you can also get it in black.

The Quartz Pink edition is listed by Razer as “limited quantity”—though review units seem to have made the rounds, it’s actually not showing up on Razer’s online store at the time of writing. Other new members of the pink procession include the Basilisk mouse, Hunstman mechanical keyboard, Seiren X microphone, and Goliathus Extended Chroma RGB mousepad. Those who buy the pink Kraken headset can even add on some Quartz Pink cat ears to really nail the cutesy aesthetic.

The new Blade Stealth 13 starts at $1400 with an i7 processor, 256GB of storage, 8GB of RAM, and an integrated GPU. The highest configuration, which adds a 4K touchscreen, a GeForce MX150 GPU, and doubles storage and RAM, is a surprisingly reasonable $1900.

Source: Razer via The Verge

When you get messages from non-friends on Facebook Messenger, they go to a “requests” folder. The thing is, this folder isn’t really easy to find, especially after Messenger’s recent update to version 4.

The recent Messenger update is, in fact, supposed to “simplify” the experience, and truth be told, it has for the most part. But the requests folder? Nah. It’s practically hidden now in a place that makes no sense to anyone at any time.

The good news is that once you know, you know. Here’s how to find it.

So, with Messenger open and on the main page, tap the little people-looking icon at the bottom.

From there, tap the other person-looking icon in the upper right corner.

And there it is in the top row: Requests.

Read the remaining 4 paragraphs

The Oculus Go is one of the most affordable routes into the world of VR. But if you’re trying to get the most out of your Go headset, then you’ll need the help of some accessories.

While the Oculus Go is a powerful little headset, it does have some limitations. It’s fragile, it has a poor battery life, it doesn’t have a lot of storage space, and it doesn’t work with Bluetooth headphones. These limitations can be frustrating, and they can curb some of the enjoyment that you get from VR.

But these problems are easy to remedy, you just need the right accessories. That’s why we’ve taken the time to find some great accessories that can make up for the Go’s shortcomings and enhance your VR experience.

Dinly VR Display Stand ($20)

You’re gentle with your Go when it’s on your head, but where do you keep it when it’s not in use? Do you shove it in a drawer with a bunch of miscellaneous office supplies? Does it float around the edges of your desk?  You could put your Oculus Go on a display stand, to keep it safe and to show off your passion.

The Dinly VR display stand is a neat, 10″ display stand for VR headsets. You can securely strap your Oculus Go to the Dinly stand, so that it doesn’t tilt or fall to the floor. And if you happen to own a couple different VR headsets, then you could use two or three of these stands to make a neat display for all of your VR tech.

Buy on Amazon RAVpower Filehub ($25)

The Oculus Go comes with 32 GB or 64 GB of memory. That isn’t a lot of storage space, and a handful of videos or movies will fully max out your Oculus Go. And since you can’t plug an external hard drive into the Go, its file limitations can become frustrating very quickly.

Thankfully, you can use a wireless file-sharing device to add remote storage to your Go. The RAVpower Filehub can turn any SD card or external hard drive into a wireless storage device. Think of it like a cloud storage device or a streaming service that fits in your pocket. Your Oculus Go can stream videos and open files from the RAVpower Filehub, so long as your Filehub and your Go are on the same internet connection.

Buy on Amazon RAVpower 22,000mAh Portable Battery ($42)

The Oculus Go has a terrible battery life. It’s not a big deal when you’re at home next to an outlet, but what if you need to charge the Go away from home? Well, you could always use a portable battery.

The RAVpower 22,000 mAh portable battery is small and inexpensive, but it can hold a lot of power. A 22,000 mAh battery could fully charge your Oculus Go a couple of times, and you could even use it for your phone or laptop in a pinch. Honestly, a portable battery is a great investment, even if you don’t use it for your Go.

Buy on Amazon ZRSE Magnetic Breakaway Micro USB Cable 2-Pack ($17)

Read the remaining 15 paragraphs

The v7.30 patch is bringing a lot of new features to Fortnite Mobile, including support for Bluetooth controllers. Goodbye, touch controls.

Since the launch of Fortnite Mobile, fans have been begging Epic Games to include gamepad support. As you can imagine, it’s hard to play a fast-paced shooter game without a proper gamepad. Now Fortnite fans have a good reason to play their favorite game at work, at school, in the bathroom, or wherever there’s a chance to be distracted by a mobile video game.

In a press release, Epic Games says that the Android version of Fortnite will support most Bluetooth controllers, including the SteelSeries Stratus XL, the Gamevice, the Xbox One controller, the Razer Raiju, and the Moto Gamepad. The company says that most MFi controllers will work on the iOS version of the game, including the Steelseries Nimbus and the Gamevice.

Other features included in this patch are the Chiller Grenade, a Solid Gold game mode, and an early version of a tournament mode. Epic Games has also added 60Hz support for the Samsung Galaxy Note 9, the Huawei Honor View 20, and the Huawei Mate 20 X, so you can enjoy Fortnite in a higher quality display setting.

via Epic Games

While Casper is mostly known for its memory foam mattresses and other bed-related goods, the company has come out with its first smart gadget: a bedside light that helps you wind down for the evening.

For $89 (or $179 for a pair), the Glow, as it’s called, is a HomePod-shaped glowing bedside lamp of sorts that slowly dims down in the evenings to tell your brain and body that it’s time for bed. Then in the mornings, it slowly picks up the brightness and simulates a sunrise in order to wake you up more naturally.

You can control it from your phone, or do it manually on the lamp itself. What’s cool is that all you have to do is flip over the lamp to begin the 45-minute dim down sequence. You can also twist the lamp to brighten or dim the light whenever you need to, thanks to an internal gyroscope. If you have more than one Glow lamp, you can even sync them up.

The Glow is also battery powered, so you can take it with you on your late-night bathroom trips. And since it’s battery powered, it comes with a base station that you simply set the lamp on to begin charging it. So good.

Buy Now

The importance of having a high-quality charging/data cable for your phone can’t be overstated—cheap cables can ruin devices. If you’re in the market for a good deal on an excellent cable, Anker’s Powerline+ cables are cheap today.

We’ve talked about Anker’s Powerline+ Lightning cables before, thanks to their durability. This comes from the nylon braiding, which reinforces the structural integrity of the cable. Plus it looks really good. Fancy, even.

Normally, this cable runs $15 for a three-foot version and $18 for the six-foot length, but for a limited time, you can grab them for $10 and $12 respectively by using the coupon code below. That’s a pretty solid deal. Here are the details:

• Anker Powerline+ Lightning Cable, 3-feet: Use coupon code CABLE8121
• Anker Powerline+ Lightning Cable, 6-feet: Use coupon code CABLE8122

The deal works for any color, too, which is a nice bonus if black isn’t your thing. If you’re looking to grab a new cable, this is a good opportunity to do it. Unfortunately, however, you can’t stack them in the same order.

Buy on Amazon

Microsoft/Internet Archive

Microsoft’s Signature Edition PCs were one of the Microsoft Store’s best offerings since Microsoft used a clean copy of Windows with no bloatware on these PCs. Microsoft no longer makes Signature Edition PCs, but you can turn any PC into one.

Buying a PC Often Comes with More Than You Paid For

Booting up a new store-bought PC usually starts with joy, followed quickly by disappointment. At first blush, Windows seems to be clean and whole, and then suddenly a trial antivirus opens up. It wants you to pay for it, install other programs, and just as you dismiss those notifications, a game you didn’t ask for makes its presence known. Your computer may be new and fast, but it somehow feels gross.

Microsoft used to offer the perfect solution: Buy a Signature PC, and you wouldn’t get a machine loaded with bloatware. Microsoft boasted at one point that their PCs would start 104% faster and shut down 35% faster than non-Signature PCs. You can only see these numbers courtesy of the Wayback Machine because Microsoft isn’t pushing Signature PCs anymore.

So you’re left with four choices if you want a clean Windows PC:

• Use Microsoft’s Fresh Start Tool to remove junk
• Buy a Surface device
• Build a PC
• Clean install Windows with the Media Creation Tool

Let’s take a look.

Use Microsoft’s Fresh Start Tool on Any PC

Starting with Windows 8, Microsoft introduced a “Reset Your PC” option to uninstall all your programs and get your rig back to a “first-launch-like” state. The problem was that this fresh launch included all the bloatware that came with your system in the first place.

Thankfully Microsoft later introduced Fresh Start, a tool that would uninstall all desktop programs that aren’t standard to Windows. Whether it’s an antivirus app or Office, this tool will remove it. There are some downsides to using this tool, though. You might lose drivers specific to your machine, for example. And while the tool might remove traditional desktop programs, it won’t uninstall any Universal Windows Platform (UWP) apps from on your computer.

That means if your bloatware came in the form of UWP Apps—as opposed to traditional Windows desktop apps—this option wouldn’t help you. Considering that even Microsoft is installing apps we don’t want now, the Fresh Start tool simply isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Still, it’s a viable option for removing a lot of the garbage that manufacturers install (and that you might have installed yourself) and it does its job without disturbing your personal files.

Read the remaining 15 paragraphs

Android and Apple have long given people a way to track and disable your gadgets remotely. Microsoft has also joined the club by letting you track and lock your Windows PC using the “Find My Device” on Windows 10.

Find My Device uses your device’s location data to help you find it when it’s lost or stolen. You can use the same service to make sure that the device is locked so that no one can use it, and also to display information about how people can return it to you.

The device needs to meet a couple of requirements to use the feature:

• It must be connected to the Internet.
• You must have already enabled Find My Device on the PC.
• You must have an account on the device that has administrator privileges and is a Microsoft account. You can’t do this with a local user account

 

Assuming your device meets those criteria, let’s take a look at how to use Find My Device.

How to Lock Your Windows 10 PC Remotely

 

Open a web browser to the Microsoft account page, enter your password, and then click “Sign In.”

Read the remaining 13 paragraphs

The Yoga C630 is a portentous little laptop: not because it’s loaded with overpowered technology, but because it isn’t. It’s the new flagship of the WOS (Windows on Snapdragon) platform—full, Windows-powered laptops running on the ARM Snapdragon chips primarily seen in smartphones.

This Lenovo ultraportable isn’t the first WOS laptop, but it is the first one with the Snapdragon 850 system-on-a-chip. Qualcomm says it’s designed this chipset specifically for full laptops. With looser space and thermal requirements, it should have better performance and longevity than the initial WOS designs.

Which is all well and good. But if you’re looking for a low-power Windows laptop over, say, a more expensive Chromebook or iPad, what you want to know is this: can it do all of the things a regular Windows laptop can? Can it, in a nutshell, just work? I thought this was a question worth answering, and with the Consumer Electronics Show fast approaching, I had an ideal place to find out.

CES: Snapdragon’s Trial By Fire

For the uninitiated, CES is one of the largest yearly trade shows in the world, and the biggest gathering of technology industrialists, investors, salespeople, and media like me. It’s a week-long slog through the casinos and convention halls of Las Vegas, meeting hundreds of people a day, snooping through floor booths, hot-footing it from one presentation or press gathering to another.

Most of my time at CES was spent alone or with a small team with no easy place to recharge, and more or less the same needs for daily writing, research, Photoshop, and image uploading as my normal job. It was a great place to see if the Yoga C630 (and by extension, the WOS platform) could handle my fairly typical mobile computing needs as well as my trusty, rusty ThinkPad.

The Review Geek team at CES 2019.

For five days I used the C630 as my primary work tool, writing posts, researching specifications, firing off replies in Gmail, editing and uploading photos, and just generally doing the usual shuffle around the web that occupies too much of my time. Here’s how it went.

Sayonara, S Mode

I checked out the C630 in a less strenuous environment at home for a couple of weeks first, getting the hang of its quirks before the big show. And since Lenovo quotes its nigh-unbelievable 22-hour battery life with the laptop running in Windows S mode, I tried to get my job done with those restrictions in place.

Read the remaining 33 paragraphs

A lot of people buy DSLRs and other cameras because they want to take good sports photographs; it’s one of the areas where your smartphone just can’t cut it. Here are the camera settings that will generally give you the best results.

The Gear You Need for Sports Photos

The biggest challenge with sports photography is distance: for most sports, you’re stuck on the sidelines while the action’s happening up to a few hundred feet away from you. Unless you want to sprint up and down the pitch, a telephoto zoom lens is the best tool for getting good shots.

RELATED: What Is a Telephoto Lens?

For crop sensor cameras, a lens with a focal length longer than around 70mm should work quite well for most sports. I’ve shot a lot of sports photos with a Canon 18-135mm. For specific lens recommendations, check out our guides to the best lenses for your Canon or Nikon camera.

Now, with that said, it’s possible to take sports photos without a telephoto lens; you just have to be a lot more deliberate with your staging, and you will miss more shots.

Shutter Speed for Sports Photos

For sports photography, shutter speed is normally the most important setting. It’s what will freeze the action. What shutter speed you use depends on the sport you’re shooting.

RELATED: What Shutter Speed Should I Use With My Camera?

Read the remaining 15 paragraphs

LetsGoDigital

Foldable phones might be the strangest and most revolutionary tech of 2019. But how do these things work, and when will we get the chance to buy them?

What Makes These Phones Foldable?

Sure, we had flip phones that were folding back in the ’90s and 2000s. But we’re in the age of smartphones now, and if you tried to fold your smartphone in half, you’d end up with a broken phone. That is unless your smartphone has a flexible OLED display, a polymer screen, specialized components, and a jointed case. Foldable phones are filled with a ton of revolutionary tech, but the most ground-breaking component that you’ll see is the famous, flexible OLED display.

Organic light emitting diode displays (aka OLED displays) work by pulsing electricity through a mesh of organic compounds. They are extremely thin, flexible, and vivid. They don’t require a backlight, and they can produce bolder colors than thick LED displays.

These beautiful, flexible displays are primarily manufactured by Samsung, and they’re already in a host of products with which you may be familiar. The Galaxy S7 Edge has a curved OLED display. The iPhone X contains a Samsung OLED display. Sony has put out some OLED TV’s, and LG produces a line of Signature OLED TV’s that are paper-thin and slightly flexible.

Manufacturers like Samsung and Royole have been developing OLED displays since about 2011, and these displays have already found their way into a lot of consumer-grade products. Why has it taken so long for foldable phones to become a thing? Well, businesses have had to figure out how to make all of the other components in a phone flexible, too.

Glass isn’t very flexible, in case you were wondering. As a result, manufacturers have had to develop bendy polymer screens for flexible phones. Powered circuitry and lithium-ion batteries can catch on fire if you flex them back and forth, so manufacturers have had to find a solution for that. Aluminum and plastic phone cases are technically bendable, but they’ll snap after a couple of folds. See where this is going? Everything that you’d expect to find in a cellphone has to be revolutionized for use in a foldable phone.

Manufacturers like Samsung and Royole have figured out how to make the components in a phone more flexible. Otherwise, they wouldn’t be releasing foldable phones. But the technology is still in its early stages. That being said, it’s going to take a few years for these devices to become affordable and commonplace.

In the meantime, we can only hope that manufacturers come up with a better name for foldable phones. People will inevitably start calling them “phondables” or “flexiphones,” and that’s just no good.

Foldable Phones Offer Endless Possibilities

So, what are we going to do with foldable phones? It’s kind of hard to figure out where this trend is going because manufacturers have already taken the tech down a variety of unique paths.

Read the remaining 14 paragraphs

Skimmers Are Used To Capture What Kind Of Data?

1. Credit Card Numbers
2. BitTorrent User IDs
3. Social Security Numbers
4. Email Headers

Think you know the answer?

MichaelJayBerlin/Shutterstock.com.

Anyone can call you on FaceTime and hear audio or see video from your phone before you answer. This bug is going viral on social media, and the only protection is disabling FaceTime.

Update: Apple has now disabled group FaceTime server-side. However, this may not have fixed the problem. We still recommend disabling FaceTime until the problem is fixed.

We learned of this via 9to5Mac. In summary, all you have to do is start a FaceTime call. While the call is dialing, swipe up from the bottom of the screen, tap “Add Person,” and add your own phone number. A group FaceTime call will begin and include the other person, even if they haven’t answered yet. It looks like they’ve answered, but the call will still be ringing on their lock screen.

All you can do is disable FaceTime to prevent people from snooping on you. If you see a FaceTime request on your phone, someone could be listening to you. There’s no way to limit FaceTime only to your friends, from what we know.

Apple told BuzzFeed News that is “aware of this issue and we have identified a fix that will be released in a software update later this week.”

That’s completely insane. A bug this big needs to be fixed immediately. Apple should shut down FaceTime for everyone if that’s what it takes.

Now you can answer for yourself on FaceTime even if they don’t answer

Noyna/Shutterstock

Unlike iOS, Android allows you to use third-party apps to perform essential functions, like texting. Here is how you can set a new default texting app on your Android phone.

First, you’ll need to install the replacement texting app you want to use. There are plenty of SMS Apps on the Play Store. Textra SMS is a popular one and what we’ll be using as our example here.

After you install your texting app, there are two ways to set it as the default. You can do it from the app itself when you launch the app for the first time or you can do it later on through your device’s Settings app.

Set the Texting App as the Default the First Time You Launch It

Open the app and click past the initial startup stuff (here, we have to click “Start Using Textra” and agree to the necessary permissions).

Once the app launches, you’ll see a button at the bottom asking if you want to make it your default app. Tap the button, and then tap “Yes” to confirm.

And it’s now your default texting app. Almost all apps will prompt you to set them as the default app when you use them for the first time. For ones that don’t (or if you’ve used the app for a while and now want to set it as the default), use the technique in the next section.

Set a Texting App as the Default in Settings

Read the remaining 12 paragraphs

So you’re ready to buy a new TV, and you want it to be a good one. If this is your first time buying a TV where the consideration goes beyond price, you might want to brush up on some terms.

Below are ten factors that should affect your buying decisions, arranged roughly from most to least important. Naturally, not everything will be the same for every buyer: you might be willing to spend a little more for an OLED TV with fantastic contrast versus a larger LED-LCD TV at the same price. But if you factor in all of the following for your buying decision, you’ll be happy with the result.

Panel Size and Type

Obviously, the most immediate factor you’ll notice for any TV is its size, expressed in inches. That’s a diagonal measurement, from one corner to its opposite. These tend to come in a few general sizes, from 32 inches on the small end through 40/42, 46, 55, 65, 75, and sometimes even higher, with little variation in between.

Samsung

But size isn’t everything. If you see a 55-inch TV that costs twice as much as the 65-inch TV next to it, it’s probably using a superior image panel. Most televisions use an LCD (liquid crystal display panel) with an LED backlight. That backlight affects the image quality: better LED lights, spaced closer together and with more fine illumination control, can more subtly illuminate the LCD panel for a superior picture. You’ll pay extra for smaller, more thinly-spaced LED lighting. Different brands have different names for their LED approaches: Samsung’s best TVs use “QLED” arrangements, while Vizio calls its top line P-Series “Quantum,” even though they’re using very similar tech.

LG

Rarer and more expensive televisions use OLED, Organic Light-Emitting Diode screens. This design, which you might be familiar with in your phone, incorporates a color-changing RGB cell and a backlight into each and every pixel. The result means that when a pixel is displaying black, it’s entirely off, creating a nearly perfect black contrast effect. OLEDs are also (usually) more vibrant and saturated with colors. At the moment, only LG and Sony sell OLED TVs, and they’re among the most expensive in both company’s catalogs.

4K Resolution

In 2019, it’s hard to find even a small television that doesn’t feature 4K resolution. That’s “4K” as in “four times 1080p,” the previous standard for high definition video, with a total resolution of 3840 by 2160.

It’s still hard to find some 4K content, but the availability is growing, thanks to services like Vudu, physical media like 4K Blu-ray movies, and upgraded game consoles like the Xbox One X and PlayStation 4 Pro. At this point, if you’re looking at a new TV it’s almost certainly 4K unless you go smaller than 40 inches or so. You won’t save any money hunting for a cheaper low-resolution panel, so you might as well go for the upgrade, even if you don’t have any movies or games that work with it yet.

Read the remaining 29 paragraphs

Samsung

As mobile tech gets ever more sophisticated, cheaper and cheaper phones get the features that were previously restricted to flagship designs. Samsung’s latest phones for the Indian market, the Galaxy M10 and M20, illustrate this principle perfectly.

Let’s start with the M20. For just 11000 INR (about $155 USD), users get a huge 6.3-inch 1080p display with curved corners and a “teardrop” camera notch, as seen on the OnePlus 6T. That big body lets the phone hold an incredible 5000mAh battery, which should be good for multi-day charges. The phone features both a rear fingerprint reader and face unlock via the front camera, dual rear cameras with 13MP primary and 5MP ultra-wide secondary. A USB Type-C port, still not a given on budget designs, hangs out on the bottom with a 15-watt fast charger in the box.

The M20 comes with 3GB of RAM and 32GB of storage on the base model, plus whatever you can fit in the MicroSD card slot. A more expansive model, with 4GB of RAM and 64GB of storage, will be 13000 INR (a bit over $180).

Outside your budget? Then consider the Galaxy M10. It shrinks the screen just a tad to 6.2 inches, busted down to “HD+” (read: 720p) resolution, but with the same teardrop rounded corners and teardrop notch. Samsung doesn’t mention a USB Type-C port or fast charging on the M10, but it foregoes the fingerprint scanner (face unlock is still available) and massive battery, with a slower octa-core processor. 3GB of RAM and 32GB storage runs 9000 INR ($125), while the cheapest model with 2GB of RAM and 16GB of storage is just 8000 INR ($115). Even if the specs don’t wow you, it’s a fantastic deal for a phone that looks like a flagship from a couple of years ago. Tellingly, Samsung doesn’t mention Android in its press release, so there’s no telling whether the phones are running 8.0 Oreo or 9.0 Pie.

Samsung says the Galaxy M10 and M20 will launch in India first, on February 5th. They’ll be sold on the Indian Amazon storefront in blue and black variants. Given the company’s history and vast phone lineup, expect to see these models—or ones practically identical to them—available in other markets before too long.

Source: Samsung via Android Police

wavebreakmedia/Shutterstock

Brushing your teeth manually is far from the most effective method, as many dentists will attest to. Instead, pick one of these electric toothbrushes and save time (and potentially your teeth) for many years to come.

See, with a manual toothbrush, you’re liable to miss out some key areas. Human nature means it’s easy to slip up and skip a part of your mouth, simply because you’re tired or rushing. An electric toothbrush does the brushing part much faster and typically also reminds you of timings and even which parts of your gums you may have missed. The right electric toothbrush can potentially save you a lot of money in the long term when it comes to avoiding expensive and painful dental bills.

Here’s our pick of electric toothbrushes, encompassing various needs you might have for it.

Best Smart Toothbrush: Oral-B 7000 ($110) Oral-B

Oral-B has a solid reputation in the dental field so you’ll see them featured a lot here. When it comes to smart toothbrushes with Bluetooth and real-time feedback, you can’t go wrong with the Oral-B 7000. It offers up to 800 brush movements per second leading to the brush removing 300% more plaque along the gum line than a regular manual brush.

On top of that, it has 6 modes including Daily Clean, Gum Care, Sensitive, Whitening, Deep Clean, and Tongue Cleaner. Where the brush truly stands out is its smart features. It offers real-time feedback that tracks your brushing habits over time before offering up useful tips on how to take better care of your teeth. It also senses when you brush too hard so you can cut back on inadvertently damaging your gums and tooth enamel through over enthusiasm.

Buy on Amazon Best For Keeping Teeth White: Philips Sonicare Diamond ($190) Philips

Look, no toothbrush is going to magically cure hideously stained teeth. Especially if you drink a lot of coffee or still smoke. However, the Philips Sonicare Diamond does a lot when it comes to helping you maintain your shiny teeth. Combined with a few lifestyle changes and your smile will continue to look great. The toothbrush promises to remove up to 10x more plaque than a manual toothbrush with a gum health mode dedicated to improving your gums up to 7x in just two weeks. A white+ mode also aims to remove up to 100% more stains in 3 days.

The device comes with 3 different smart brush head types which automatically pair with the brushing mode you choose for maximum effectiveness. Smart sensors and app support enhance the service so that your teeth get the best clean possible. As they should at this premium price tag.

Buy on Amazon Best For Regular Travelers: Oral-B Genius Pro 8000 ($150) Oral-B

If you regularly travel, you want a toothbrush that’s sturdy enough to be safe in your holdall or luggage. The Oral-B Genius Pro 8000 is a tough and smart toothbrush to choose. It comes with a smart travel case that allows you to charge both your toothbrush and smartphone at the same time, saving you the hassle of finding additional charging ports.

As a toothbrush, it’s incredibly effective too. It has 6 cleaning modes much like the Oral-B 7000, plus some smarter app connectivity. It uses facial recognition to help you know where you’ve brushed, as well as a multicolor SmartRing that provides visual coaching on brush times and how much pressure you use. It’ll also automatically slow the brush speed if you’re using too much pressure.

Read the remaining 11 paragraphs

Have you passed up on a Nintendo Labo kit because of its $70 price tag? Well, now’s your chance to grab one for just $39.99. But don’t wait, this deal won’t last forever.

Right now, Best Buy is offering a massive $30 discount on all of its Nintendo Labo kits. It’s no secret that we love the Nintendo Labo, and we’d recommend one to anyone who loves innovation or engineering.

The Nintendo Labo kits aren’t just a fun toy, they’re also a great educational resource. These kits are filled with rudimentary engineering and programming challenges, and they can give kids (and adults) an appreciation of what can be done by hand, off-screen. There aren’t many big-name toys that prioritize education anymore, but the Nintendo Labo is a fantastic exception.

All three kits are on sale right now for $39.99 ($30 off the regular price of $69.99):

• Labo Variety Kit
• Labo Vehicle Kit
• Labo Robot Kit

All of these kits focus on different activities, and you’ll want to buy whichever one seems the most appealing. The Variety Kit has an emphasis on tools, like fishing rods and musical instruments come alive when connected to the Switch console. The Robot Kit focuses on motion controls and lets players control an on-screen robot with their arms and legs. And the Vehicle Kit is, as you can imagine, focused on cars, planes, and boats.

Whether you’re a gamer, a collector, or a wonderful gift-giving human being, this is a great opportunity to scoop up a Nintendo Labo kit (or two) for a seriously low price. Just keep in mind that a deal like this won’t last forever, so grab it while you can.

Buy Now

Google’s “Better Together” pairing of Chromebooks and Android phones allows Pixel and Nexus users to share a data connection from the phone to Chromebook automatically, but now it’s getting a broader range of device compatibility.

Given its limited availability so far, you’d be forgiven for not being familiar with the Instant Tethering feature. But, in a nutshell, it allows an Android device to automatically tether to a Chromebook when the ‘book doesn’t detect a usable Wi-Fi connection.

As I mentioned earlier, this is part of Google’s “Better Together” feature in Chrome OS, which is an attempt at a more Mac-like pairing of laptop and phone. Once connected, users can use Smart Lock, Instant Tethering, and even send SMS messages from their Chromebook. The thing is, it was only compatible with Google-branded phones (Nexus, Pixel). Until now.

Of course, its availability is still pretty limited. It’s only available on the Chrome OS developer channel, and you’ll need a compatible phone. Baby steps. Before we get into how to get it running, however, there are a few things you’ll need to note:

• You’ll still need a compatible tethering plan. If you don’t have tethering on your mobile plan, this won’t work. Google isn’t interested in helping you dupe the carriers. Sorry.
• Your phone has to be compatible. Before you go through all the trouble of setting it up on your Chromebook, head into Settings > Google and look for “Instant Tethering” on your phone. If it’s not there, this won’t work.

With that, let’s do this thing.

Step One: Connect Your Android Phone

Assuming you’re on the developer channel, go ahead and jump into your Chromebook’s settings menu. From there, scroll down to “Connected devices” and click the Set Up button.

In this new menu, hit the dropdown on the left side and choose your phone. Next, click the Accept & Continue button.

Read the remaining 20 paragraphs

With all the apps we have on our iPhones these days, organizing them into folders is pretty much a requirement. But why does Apple still only show nine apps per folder page, especially with screen sizes getting bigger?

Apple first introduced folders in iOS 4, and you could only have up to 12 apps in a single folder—they bumped up that number to 16 starting with the iPhone 5. But the nice thing was that all 16 would appear on the screen at once.

However, the introduction of iOS 7 meant a completely redesigned user interface, and that included folders. While folders now came with pages you can swipe through (up to 15 of them!), you can only fit a measly nine apps on a page at once.

This still made sense on the iPhone 4 and even on the iPhone 5, both of which had a much smaller screen size than current models. On the smaller models, opening up a folder with nine apps filled out the screen quite nicely. But with iPhone screen sizes all the way up to a gargantuan 6.5 inches with the iPhone XS Max, using that same folder size just wastes screen space.

Unfortunately, on these larger iPhones (even on the regular iPhone XS’s 5.8-inch screen), folders look kind of…bad. Just look at this screenshot of an open folder. There’s a lot of wasted screen space that could otherwise be put to good use. And why is the folder title so far apart from the folder?

Of course, this could be a deliberate design choice by Apple so that you wouldn’t have to reach way up to the top of the screen to select an app in a folder, but you have to do that anyway to select apps at the top of the home screen.

In any case, we did a bit of Photoshopping to see just how much better a folder could be on iOS, and how much nicer it would look on newer, larger iPhones.

Read the remaining 9 paragraphs