Youngster app sensation Houseparty will get some opposition as fb Messenger is launching its personal break up-display institution video chat characteristic. Six users can seem in break up-display at the time and don Snapchat-style selfie mask, while 50 general can concentrate and communicate over voice while sending textual content, stickers, emojis, and GIFs.
The function should make a Messenger a place to “livechill” with friends instead of only a manner to send texts to alternate more utilitarian statistics or plan logistics. as opposed to simply popping in to fire off messages, you may cling out for extended periods on the app. facebook frames it as “perfect for the ones spontaneous moments in which text just isn’t enough”.
group video chat starts rolling out worldwide on iOS, Android, and net, these days, although Android will have to wait for the MSQRD-powered selfie mask that might not ever come to computing device. It’s unfastened on wireless however widespread statistics expenses will practice on cell connections.
We’ve been waiting for this launch due to the fact Messenger launched one-on-one video calling in April 2015 and institution audio calling a yr later. 245 million humans make video calls on Messenger each month already, so this option ought to see speedy adoption.
The release makes Messenger the first famous western messaging app with organization video chat. It’s controlled to overcome FaceTime/iMessage, Google Duo, and Snapchat to the punch. Messaging pioneer WeChat brought it a year in the past. WhatsApp driven video calls final month, and may handle companies video thru Booyah. [Correction: WhatsApp lacks a native group video chat feature.] Google’s disregarded Hangouts app released a lot of these functions returned in 2013, however it hasn’t grow to be a middle area for textual content messaging, making it extra of a specialty app amongst Google’s fragmented conversation family.
facebook-organization-video-chatUS teens is probably maximum familiar with the format from the recent rise of Houseparty, the brand new app from the makers of Meerkat. We profiled Houseparty’s climb to one.2 million daily customers because it will become a laid-back “livechill” organization opportunity to laborious performances on live broadcasting apps like fb live. It’s in view that in brief climbed into the pinnacle 5 iOS apps and raised $50 million led by Sequoia.
Messenger group video chat works a touch in another way, but with a similar design. in place of absolutely logging into an ever-gift video chat room that notifies buddies like on Houseparty, you deliberately select pals or a group textual content thread to ask to a video call.
once in, as much as four Messenger customers can share huge slices of the display screen, even as Houseparty comprises eight. between 4 and six callers, the Messenger display switches to a gallery layout, with whoever is speaking taking over the majority of the screen with little thumbnails of all and sundry else at the lowest. And every body beyond the first 6 up to 50 callers will handiest be able to listen, communicate, and ship content however gained’t seem in the video gallery.
by means of embracing institution video chat, Messenger becomes more of a communication destination in preference to only a sporadically used device. in conjunction with its energetic Now characteristic, we should see it becoming greater of its own full-fledged actual-time social network, whilst fb proper becomes a hub for ingesting existing content material.
Facebook will open a new London headquarters next year and create another 500 jobs, the leading social network said Monday, despite uncertainty over Brexit.
The group said the move will take its UK workforce to 1,500 staff, adding that Britain "remains one of the best places to be a tech company", amid ongoing jitters over the nation's looming exit from the European Union.
The news comes one week after US tech giant Google confirmed it would expand its vast London campus in a move that could bring 3,000 more jobs.
The Facebook announcement will be confirmed later at the annual meeting of top business lobby group the Confederation of British Industry, which is the country's top employers' organisation.
"The UK remains one of the best places to be a tech company and is an important part of Facebook's story," said Nicola Mendelsohn, the company's vice president for Europe, the Middle East and Africa.
"We came to London in 2007 with just a handful of people, by the end of next year we will have opened a new HQ and plan to employ 1500 people," she added in a statement.
"Many of those new roles will be high skilled engineering jobs as the UK is home to our largest engineering base outside of the US."
A spokeswoman added that the new office is currently under construction in the bohemian central district of Fitzrovia.
London Mayor Sadiq Khan welcomed the news from the US giant.
"Facebook's decision to expand in London is further evidence that London's strength as a tech hub keeps on growing," Khan said.
"It follows news that London remains the best city in Europe for digital startups.
"The capital's vibrant tech scene is the envy of Europe and Facebook's continuing commitment is another sign that London is open to talent, innovation and entrepreneurship from all four corners of the world."
Last Tuesday, Google revealed it will add a new office building to a complex currently under development behind London's King's Cross train station.
An estimated 3,000 jobs will be created by the move. A total of 7,000 Google staff will eventually be working at the hub, which is set to open in 2018.
The 5.5in Google Pixel XL is the company’s first own-brand phablet, the bigger brother of the 5in Pixel. It’s Google inside and out, but is it better than Samsung or Apple’s efforts?
The 5in Pixel is a good smartphone, but it’s not the most inspired design. The 5.5in Pixel XL is essentially the Pixel put in the photocopier and magnified.
Right on the Limit
It’s no thicker, though: the wedge-shaped phablet is 7.3mm at the bottom and 8.6mm thick at the top. It weighs another 25g at 168g and it is 6.2mm wider and 10.9mm taller. Compared to the competition, the Pixel XL is about in the middle. The Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge is 7.7mm thick and weighs 157g, while Apple’s iPhone 7 Plus is 7.3mm thick and weighs 188g.
But the biggest difference for all these 5.5in phablets is the width. The Pixel XL is 75.7mm wide, which is a little narrower than the 77.9mm iPhone 7 Plus but much wider than the 72.6mm S7 Edge. Width is the biggest determinator of how easy a phablet will be to use with one hand without special adaptations for one-handed use. Where the iPhone 7 Plus is too wide, the Pixel XL is right on the limit.
Its flat edges and relatively small bezels either side of the 5.5in screen make it manageable with a not abnormal handspan of 23cm. But I suggest if you’re interested in buying one, visit a store to see if it’s comfortable to hold for.
The Pixel XL is well built, has a good balance in the hand, but is a bit bland in terms of design, with the only flourish the glass panel that covers a third of the back. It makes it a little easier to grip, but splits opinion as to whether it’s attractive. It grew on me after a week.
The display is very good. A 5.5in quad HD AMOLED with a pixel density of 534 pixels per inch. It’s crisp, colourful and bright -- bright enough to see in direct sunlight, in fact. It’s not quite as vibrant as Samsung’s Galaxy S displays, however, but it is more punchy than the LCDs on iPhones.
Specifications
* Screen: 5.5in quad HD AMOLED (534ppi)
* Processor: quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 821
* RAM: 4GB of RAM
* Storage: 32 or 128GB
* Operating system: Android 7.1 Nougat
* Camera: 12.3MP rear camera, 8MP front-facing camera
* Connectivity: LTE, Wi-Fi, NFC, Bluetooth 4.2, USB-C and GPS
* Dimensions: 154.7 x 75.7 x 7.3-8.6 mm
* Weight: 168g
* 26 hours or more between charges
The Pixel XL shares the same processor, RAM and storage as the Pixel, and performs just as well. It’s snappy, launching apps and switching between them without delay; capable of handling anything you might throw at it and is one of the first DayDream-ready smartphones.
The larger screen and increased pixel density do not seem to impact the performance of the device, or how hot it got under load. It ran cooler than most other modern high-end smartphones during general use, heating up slightly only when playing graphically intensive games such as Real Racing 3 and Asphalt 8.
One thing that is different is the Pixel XL’s battery life. Using the Pixel XL as my primary device, it lasted 26 hours between charges, managing three hours of app usage and browsing, hundreds of emails and push notifications, a couple of photos, five hours of music over Bluetooth headphones and quite a lot of Dan the Man during my one hour and 20-minute train commute to and from work. It means you’ll get through a day, a night out and the commute to work the next day, but you’ll have to charge it when you get there.
More conservative use and with the battery saving mode enabled below 20% charge will probably see most people at make it till they get home on the second day before needing a charge.
When it comes to charging the Pixel XL, zero to 100% takes about one hour 45 minutes. A half charge takes about 30 minutes, which makes it one of the faster charging smartphones. Android 7.1 Nougat
The Pixel Xl runs the latest version of Android 7.1 Nougat, just like its smaller sibling. A rundown of the new features introduced with Android 7.0 Nougat is available separately.
Google also added a few new things within 7.1 Nougat, including launcher shortcuts, a new-look launcher, Google Assistant and a built-in night mode.
The Pixel XL’s larger screen, however, makes some features more useful. The ability to have two apps side-by-side on one screen, called multi-window, is one such example. For apps that support it, holding the overview button places one app above the other, or side-by-side in landscape orientation, with a slider in the middle to change the split. It’s particularly useful if you’re having a conversation over text and need to look at a map or similar, and is much more useable on the larger 5.5in screen than the 5in Pixel.
On the whole it is the most polished and together Android experience currently available and will benefit from prompt software updates direct from Google that are not blocked or delayed by network providers for at least two years. Some other Android devices from the likes of Samsung and LG will receive relatively prompt security updates, but Android version updates take months to a year from the point of which Google releases them.
Fingerprint Scanner
The fingerprint scanner on the back of the Pixel XL is the same as the Pixel: fast, accurate and can now be used to bring down the notification shade with a swipe on the pad -- something other manufacturers including Huawei have been doing for a while.
The Pixel Imprint scanner is arguably the best in the business, but if you use your phone on a desk, you can’t activate it without picking it up, or falling back to your passcode or lock pattern.
Camera
On paper, the Pixel XL’s camera, like the Pixel, isn’t that much to write home about. It’s a 12.3-megapixel camera with a f/2.0 lens without optical image stabilization. The iPhone 7’s camera has 12-megapixel camera and an f/1.8 lens, while Samsung’s Galaxy S7 Edge has a 12-megapixel camera with an f/1.7 lens. The lower the f-number the faster the lens and, in theory, the more light it lets in.
But the Pixel has a software advantage, producing some of the best, most detailed and colorful photos available. Google’s HDR+ feature is particularly good, producing some of the best high dynamic range photos I’ve seen and without the image blur that can creep in with other systems.
It’s low-light performance is also excellent, while the Google Camera app does a great job of balancing features with simplicity at a touch of button. It lacks full manual control, however.
The 8-megapixel selfie camera is also very good, producing images with good depth and color, and a good balance of soft focus and detail.
Observations
* Audio quality through the headphones socket was good but not exceptional
* The Bluetooth broadcast strength to a set of headphones was stronger and less susceptible to interference than most other smartphones I have tested
* It only has one down-firing speaker on the bottom, which is easily blocked by hands when gaming, although slightly less so than the 5in Pixel simply because the Pixel XL is wider
* A notification LED is available, but not enabled by default
* Gif search is built into Google’s Keyboard for apps that support it such as SMS Messenger app
* Google Photos on the Pixel comes with free, unlimited full resolution photo and video backup, not just up to 16MP and 1080p video
Verdict
The Google Pixel XL is a very good phone. It’s camera is great, it’s snappy, has the latest version of Android and will get updates first, it’s powerful and lasts over a day between charges. Despite its size it’s also relatively easy to use one-handed and it’s well made.
The problem is it isn’t exceptional, it isn’t waterproof and it is expensive. It commands top dollar, but unlike competitors such as Samsung’s Galaxy S7 Edge does not provide much in the way of hardware innovation.
If I had to pick between the Pixel and Pixel XL, I think the XL is a better phone all round. You won’t be disappointed if you buy a Pixel XL, but there are equally good if not better smartphones available for considerably less than £719.
Pros: Android 7.1 Nougat, rapid updates, great camera, great screen, more than a day’s battery life, Google Assistant, great fingerprint scanner Cons: not waterproof, no expandable memory, no front-facing speakers, no wireless charging, expensive, not as easy to handle as some rivals
Facebook has been putting a lot of effort into growing Messenger as a bot platform this year, and now there are 34,000 of these bots in existence, built to present you with news and entertainment, let you shop, and more — expanding Messenger’s use beyond simple chats with friends. Today, that strategy is getting a significant boost: Facebook says it will now let developers track bots on its free analytics platform, alongside ads and apps. At the same time, Facebook is also opening up its developer program, FbStart, to bot developers.
Both potentially give bot makers more reasons to build and monitor how their new widgets are working.
Josh Twist, a product manager for Facebook Messenger’s bot efforts, who is an Englishman based in Seattle but is in London today to debut the tools at a developer event, tells me that Facebook expanded the analytics and FbStart tools after a lot of requests from the developers.
“Getting bot support for messenger is the most frequently requested feature from bot developers,” he said. This shouldn’t be too much of a surprise: Facebook already provided these kinds of tools to other developers on its platform, and bots have seen a massive surge of interest since they first made their debut earlier this year. That interest has not just come from users curious about how they work; developers are also very keen to see if bots really are the next big thing.
Twist tells me that for now, the analytics will cover bots built just for Messenger. But given how bots are making their way to other communication platforms, from competing messaging apps like Viber’s through to enterprise-focused platforms like Slack, don’t be surprised if Facebook expands its both analytics to other platforms beyond Messenger.
“It is something we have talked about and haven’t ruled it out,” he said. “It’s possible, absolutely, since we already support analytics for other platforms for apps. But right now we’re prioritizing support for Messenger bots.”
Analytics, of course, is an essential tool for a developer, both to be able to track how well something is working and other kids of feedback. Here Facebook says that features that will be included are reaches across mobile and desktop devices and measurement of customers’ journeys across apps and websites.
Developers also will be able to view reports on messages sent, messages received, and people who block or unblock your app. And they will also get access to anonymized data reports on bot demographics, which include details like age, gender, education, interests, country and language to figure out who is using your bot.
FbStart, meanwhile, currently has some 9,000 members who get feedback from Facebook on their apps, ads and bots, as well as Facebook ads credits and other free tools from partners like Amazon, Dropbox, and Stripe. If Facebook was looking at ways of swelling those ranks, tapping 34,000 developers could be one way of doing that.
Twist points out that while there are a lot of standalone bot developers coming to Facebook for the first time, there is a lot of crossover with other Facebook services like apps and ads. Those who are leveraging these together — for example using the recent ability to channel a person from a News Feed ad through to your Messenger experience — will be able to look at the effectiveness of those efforts now, and make potentially more ad buys based on them.
