The Morning After: Herman Miller unveiled a $1,495 gaming chair
And Dell's XPS 17 has a huge screen
Herman Miller is known for iconic seating designs, like the Eames Chair or Aeron office furniture, so what can it do for gamers? Well, this.
The $1,495 Embody Gaming Chair eschews the racing-inspired designs of most gamer chairs and, instead, starts with the company’s existing Embody line, which it says is “The benchmark for pressure distribution, natural alignment and support for healthy movement.” To hold up under intense sessions, Embody worked with Logitech to add tweaks, like padding to support an “active posture” plus cooling foam. And, of course, some alien-looking blue coloring to make it stand out. You gotta have that.
— Richard
Dell XPS 17 review (2020): So. Much. Screen.
Cheaper models start at $1,400.
After going missing for a decade, the XPS 17 is back, bringing Dell’s bezel-less design to an even larger frame. Devindra Hardawar took this top-of-the-line $3,000 model, with its NVIDIA 2060 Max-Q GPU and massive battery, for a spin. Unsurprisingly, it can handle pretty much any game you’d like to see on a large 4K screen, and it ran for more than twelve hours during our testing.
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Space Force official logo and motto unveiled
Yes, it looks familiar.
No, it’s not Star Trek or Pontiac, this is the logo for a new branch of the armed forces.
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AT&T is telling customers they need new phones now
Though it won’t be necessary until February 2022.
In an email Wednesday morning, AT&T told some of its customers their phones soon won’t be supported by new network technology. The message urges customers to buy a new phone to ensure they’ll still be able to make voice calls. However, it slickly sidestepped that the change isn’t happening until February 2022. That’s, like, two iPhone launches away.
The email links to an AT&T support article that mentions the company plans to scrap its 3G network in February 2022. The page says: “Once we do, 3G devices and 4G wireless devices that don’t support HD Voice will no longer work on our network.” In a statement to Engadget, the company said “We apologize for any confusion this may have caused and will be more clear in future updates.”
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Lenovo's first gaming phone has two batteries and a camera on the side
It gets a point for being unique.
We’ve seen phones with pop-up front-facing cameras before, but the Legion Phone Duel is a little different — this one’s mounted on the side. Gamers overseas can buy a Legion Phone Duel with either 12GB or 16GB of LPDDR5 RAM (both options being overkill) and either 256GB or 512GB of fast UFS 3.1 storage. Oh, and yes, it has two 2,500 mAh battery cells. Why? Maybe the real question is why not?
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Microsoft's Xbox and Surface business keeps growing amid the pandemic
And its cloud business continues to boom.
Microsoft is weathering the coronavirus pandemic well. Amid strong revenues of $38 billion (up 13 percent from last year), the company’s Q4 earnings report revealed its Xbox business has increased by 65 percent from a year ago. Surface laptop sales, meanwhile, jumped up by 28 percent.
It makes sense, given the increasing demand for PCs to manage work and school at home, as well as games for us to play through when we’re not going anywhere else.
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Apple will provide 'hacker-friendly' phones to security researchers
This isn't your ordinary iPhone.
Apple has claimed for years that its devices are more secure than the competition, but it was often through restricted software access. Now, the company will begin loaning out special “Security Research Device” (SRD) iPhones to security researchers so they can truly suss out the device’s security vulnerabilities.
The SRD phones are only for controlled settings and will feature unprecedented access that normal iPhones don’t typically have, such as root shell access and the ability to run custom commands. These are not researchers’ smartphone daily drivers and must stay at the research premises at all times.
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Review: Sony’s ZV-1 is a powerful portable vlogging camera
For beginners, it's also incredibly forgiving.
The ZV-1 is Sony’s first RX100-series camera designed specifically for vlogging. According to Steve Dent, it does that job well thanks to a lightweight body, built-in high-quality microphone, flip-out display, best-in-class autofocus and excellent image quality.
The 24-70mm lens is sharp, but it needs to be wider because of the 25 percent crop when using electronic stabilization. It also lacks a true touch display and a headphone port. That nitpicking aside, if you’re looking to step up from a smartphone or just want something simple, it does the job nearly perfectly.
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But wait, there’s more...
Tesla will build Cybertrucks at a new Gigafactory in Austin, TX
Tianwen-1 launches China's first interplanetary mission to Mars
Samsung's $1,450 Galaxy Z Flip 5G lands in the US on August 7th
The unlocked, 5G-capable Motorola Edge launches July 31st with a $200 discount for pre-orders
Microsoft shows off potential changes to the Office UI
Twitter confirms one elected official had DMs accessed in hack
Facebook tests new Pages that feel more like Instagram and Twitter
On Mixer's last day, all eyes were on Twitch
ASUS ROG Phone 3 preview: An upgraded gaming phone that feels familiar
Microsoft's Surface Laptop 3 is on sale starting at $800 right now
