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• Google gives Pixel 2 owners early access to its latest Spotlight Story, ‘Son of Jaguar’
  

  

  Pixel 2 and 2 XL owners are getting a small bonus for purchasing Google’s latest smartphones. Google Spotlight Stories, a vestige of Google’s Motorola days showcasing the power of virtual reality storytelling, is giving owners of the latest Pixel devices early access to “Son of Jaguar,” an animated short film about a luchador from director Jorge Gutierrez.

  The eight-minute VR story is told from the point of view of Son of Jaguar, a formerly renown Mexican wrestler, as he “faces his legacy, his family, and what it means to be a part of something bigger than himself,” according to the Google Spotlight Stories site.

  Read More

  Google gives Pixel 2 owners early access to its latest Spotlight Story, ‘Son of Jaguar’ was written by the awesome team at Android Police.

• HTC U11 Plus leaked, along with more U11 Life details
  

  The HTC U11 was the company’s second flagship of the year, and by most accounts, a pretty great phone. We’ve already heard rumors of an upcoming budget phone with Android One, the U11 Life, but now details about a U11 Plus have also leaked.
  HTC U11 Pl…

• How to hide ‘Apps are running in the background’ notification on Oreo
  

  Oreo has a useful but annoying feature where you will be notified of every app running in the background. This app fixes that.

  One of Android’s long-time features is the ability for apps to run in the background to pull new information and deliver notifications. This comes with a cost for battery life, so in Android 8.0 Oreo the system notifies users when an application is running in the background. This is great on paper, but in reality, all this does is tell me that my music player is indeed playing music, and shame me for still using a Pebble Classic. Worse yet, there’s no way (at the time of writing) to hide this notification, so it just sits there, mocking me. Fortunately, there’s a way to fix that.

  Developer iboalali released an application simply titled Hide “running in the background” Notification, and it does just that: the “apps running the background” notification is gone. The source code is available for anyone who (rightfully) wants to make sure they aren’t installin…

• This is what the OnePlus 5T will probably look like
  

  This is the OnePlus 5T you’re looking for.

  In early October, a device render popped up for what was supposedly the OnePlus 5T. The render showed off a phone with a 6-inch 18:9 display with very minimal bezels, but it also looked a whole lot like another phone from Oppo. Since then, a new look at the 5T has surfaced, and it’s more of what we’d expect to see from OnePlus later this year.

  The new render was uploaded by a user on Weibo, and while the phone looks similar to what we saw at the beginning of the month, there are a few big differences.

  For starters, the “Never Settle” wallpaper that’s shown on the display is a lot more convincing than the lock screen on the other render that definitely didn’t belong to OxygenOS. The alert slider is no longer missing, the corners of the display aren’t so heavily rounded, and the render as a whole is much higher-res than what we saw last time around.

  The top and bottom bezels don’t seem to have changed, with the ones on the sides being ever…

• [Update: 20% off site-wide][ [Deal Alert] Google Wifi 3-pack on sale for $239.99 ($50 off) via Rakuten with coupon code
  
  • 
    Update 1:
    
    It looks like the coupon code works on a lot of things—almost all the things, in fact. It’s 20% off site-wide at Rakuten, so you can grab things like

  

  Having a single WiFi access point in your home is so 2015. You can step into the modern era of WiFi with a mesh router today at a sizable discount. Rakuten has Google Wifi 3-packs on sale for $239.99. That’s $50 off the usual price.

  Read More

  [Update: 20% off site-wide][ [Deal Alert] Google Wifi 3-pack on sale for $239.99 ($50 off) via Rakuten with coupon code was written by the awesome team at Android Police.

• [Update 5: Now $799.99] You can already buy a dual-SIM Note8 on eBay for $899.99
  
  • 
    Update 1: 2017/09/20 4:24pm PDT
    The phone quickly went out of stock but is now back $10 cheaper at $889.99.
    

  • 
    Update 2: 2017/09/27 5:07pm PDT
    
    How the mighty fall! You can grab the Note8 at this same retailer now for a mere $864.99, an all-time low.
    

  • 
    Update 3: 2017/10/04 3:30am PDT
    
    It just keeps getting better. The price has now dropped to $845.99. Get over there quickly.
    

  • 
    Update 4: 2017/10/11 2:20pm PDT
    Now it’s $819.99 from the same seller.

  Read More

  [Update 5: Now $799.99] You can already buy a dual-SIM Note8 on eBay for $899.99 was written by the awesome team at Android Police.

• Would you trust a smart assistant in your home?
  

  Consumer tech points towards a future where every home is an ecosystem of smart devices, controlled via a smart assistant, but would you invite it into your house?(This is a preview – click here to read the entire entry.)

• Google Home with display will reportedly support YouTube and web browsing
  

  The device is codenamed “Quartz”, and it’ll support YouTube, Google Maps, web browsing, and much more.

  With the Pixel 2’s unveiling on October 4, we also got to feast our eyes upon the Google Home Mini and Home Max The Mini and Max look like two solid entries in the Home series, and while they each target new demographics previously unreachable by the regular Google Home, there’s still something missing – none of them have a display.

  Can you guess what’s missing?

  Although Amazon’s Echo Show isn’t perfect, it’s built-in display does allow for certain functionality you just can’t get on a smart speaker without a screen. Android Police recently conducted a teardown of v7.14.15 of the Google app, and while doing so, they discovered references to a device codenamed “Quartz.” Quartz is expected to be a Google Home that features a display like the Echo Show, and thanks to the Google app teardown, we have an idea of certain features we can expect from the gadget.

  First off, and per…

• Explore a new reality with the $280 PlayStation VR and Camera bundle
  

  VR is cool, but who in their right mind would play Resident Evil 7 VR? No thank you, nightmares.

  Is this deal for me?

  The PlayStation VR + PS4 Camera Bundle is currently on sale at Amazon for only $279.99 when you enter promo code 100VRSAVE at checkout. The last bundle deal we shared was back in August, and that sale only dropped it down to $300. The street price for this bundle is around $350, so this is a huge chunk off.

  The PSVR headset allows you to play virtual reality games on your PlayStation 4 console (not included). It’s simple to setup and features such stunning graphics in some games that many people get frightened by the immersive nature of the headset.

  With the PlayStation camera you can livestream your PSVR gaming to all your friends, so they can watch you score and freak out.

  There are already a bunch of games available for PSVR, including Until Dawn, Rise of the Tomb Raider, Resident Evil 7, Batman: Arkham VR and more.

  TL;DR

  What makes this deal worth consider…

• Explore a new reality with the $280 PlayStation VR and Camera bundle
  

  VR is cool, but who in their right mind would play Resident Evil 7 VR? No thank you, nightmares.

  Is this deal for me?

  The PlayStation VR + PS4 Camera Bundle is currently on sale at Amazon for only $279.99 when you enter promo code 100VRSAVE at checkout. The last bundle deal we shared was back in August, and that sale only dropped it down to $300. The street price for this bundle is around $350, so this is a huge chunk off.

  The PSVR headset allows you to play virtual reality games on your PlayStation 4 console (not included). It’s simple to setup and features such stunning graphics in some games that many people get frightened by the immersive nature of the headset.

  With the PlayStation camera you can livestream your PSVR gaming to all your friends, so they can watch you score and freak out.

  There are already a bunch of games available for PSVR, including Until Dawn, Rise of the Tomb Raider, Resident Evil 7, Batman: Arkham VR and more.

  TL;DR

  What makes this deal worth consider…

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