Stephen is Growth Director at 9to5. You can find his current work at 9to5Mac, 9to5Google 9to5Toys, Electrek, and more. If you want to get in touch, follow me on Twitter. Or, email at stephen (at) 9to5mac (dot) com, or an encrypted email at hallstephenj (at) protonmail (dot) com.
Ecobee, maker of smart thermostats that notably go head-to-head with offerings from one particular Google sibling company (Nest, for those unaware), has today announced support for its products in Google Home. The voice activated speaker joins other competing platforms that have already had support for ecobee products, like Apple’s HomeKit and Amazon Alexa.
It’s really easy, especially if you work at home, to get entirely off task and wander around the web aimlessly for hours. We’ve all been there — in the midst of doing something for work, only to find that 2 hours passed after a “short” Reddit tangent. We’ve covered other similar productivity apps before, but this time I wanted to see what Chrome extensions might be out there to help with this. After trying a few that didn’t help me, I settled on one that’s easily my favorite.
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In this week’s top stories: Tech publication posts an unboxing of the OnePlus 5T early, the forthcoming flagship will reportedly have the same price as the OnePlus 5, and we examine the best Chromebooks available right now.
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In what seemed partially intended to be consolation for removing the headphone jack from the Google Pixel 2, the Mountain View company announced the Google Pixel Buds last month, a pair of semi-wireless headphones (they’re still wired to each other, but not your phone). Now, those who had fast fingers on October 4th are seeing their orders ship with expected delivery early next week.
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I’ve been waiting a really long time to write this review. Google announced Project Jacquard, its high-tech fabric initiative, all the way back at Google I/O 2015. And I was that guy when I snapped spy photos of the Jacquard booth the morning of — several hours before ATAP took the stage. During their event, they also announced they were working with San Francisco-based Levi’s to launch the first consumer product with the tech. Now, that product is available for anyone to buy.
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I spent my first several days with the Google Pixel 2 XL tearing its display to pieces. In light of concerns regarding its quality that were brought up in the first round of reviews (including ours) I wanted to know exactly what its shortcomings were. Lots of units — mine included — had burn-in/image persistence issues, blue tint shift, black smear, graininess, and other undesirable qualities. None of these issues are entirely unique to the Pixel 2 XL, but I came to the conclusion that Google’s flagship seems to suffer from them more than average at this price point. I stand by that.
I took it upon myself to look at every one of these problems under a microscope so that anyone that cared — which, I know, in the grand scheme of things is a tiny minority of Google’s target market — could know exactly what they’re getting in comparison to other flagships, the smaller Pixel 2, and even last year’s original Pixel. But even with all of the problems I’ve hounded on and pixel peeping I’ve admittedly done, I’ve finally come to a conclusion on this display: It’s not bad enough to keep me away.
In this week’s top stories: New OnePlus 5T leaks have dropped, Moment’s ‘Made for Google’ lenses improve an already great camera, and Pixel Visual Core is expected to be enabled in the coming weeks.
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In this week’s top stories: Verizon sells Pixel 2 with packaging for USB-C headphones, Google Photos adds a new Lens animation for Pixel devices, and we run through everything new in the Android 8.1 Developer Preview.
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The Google Pixel 2 XL has been getting lots of flack for its display being, well, subpar. Some are reporting burn-in, others have complained about the phone’s blue tint/discoloration when viewed at an angle, and yet others have weird green lines, overall graininess, and dead pixels. Then there’s the display’s general lack of vibrancy, which can attributed to Google’s tuning of the display to sRGB.
But there’s another problem, albeit one that’s minor in comparison to the others. We’ve found that the phone’s “black smear” — a phenomenon that’s familiar to OLED displays in general — is far worse than an average OLED display on a phone in this price range.
The Pixel 2 XL has been hit hard with criticism for a variety of problems, mostly related to its LG-made pOLED display. Now we’ve discovered another problem with Google’s new flagship, this time with its dual front-facing speakers. It seems the top speaker has been tuned down a bit, something that’s ever-so-slightly noticeable on occasion when watching videos or listening to music.
