Day: July 22, 2019

Asus is still trying to make gaming phones a thing with the release of the Asus ROG (Republic of Gamers) Phone II. Just like last year, this is a high-end smartphone with a hyper-aggressive “gamer” design and a light-up back logo, but there are also genuinely impressive specs here that you won’t find on any other smartphone right now.

The Asus Republic of Gamers Phone II is the first device to launch with Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon 855 Plus SoC. This 855 “Plus” is a mid-cycle upgrade for the Snapdragon 855 with higher clock speeds for the CPU and GPU. The SoC’s single “Prime” CPU core gets bumped from 2.84GHz to 2.96GHz, while the GPU gets a 15% boost from 585MHz to 672MHz.

You’re going to need that extra horsepower since the ROG Phone II has a 6.59-inch, 2340×1080 OLED display with a 120Hz refresh rate, which is up from 90Hz last year. This is one of the fastest displays you can get on a smartphone, alongside the 120Hz display on the Razer Phone 2, though that is an LCD. The 90Hz display on the OnePlus 7 Pro turned out to be one of the phone’s best features even when you weren’t gaming, thanks to the faster, smoother UI animations it enabled. I expect faster displays to show up in a ton more smartphones phones next year.

The third headline feature to point out is the 6000mAh battery, which is absolutely massive compared to most flagship phones on the market. The Galaxy S10+ has a mere 4100mAh battery. The OnePlus 7 Pro is only 4000mAh. Hopefully we’re looking at a long runtime.

Other specs include a massive 12GB of RAM, options for 128GB of 512GB of storage,

two

USB-C ports, a 3.5mm headphone jack, dual front-facing speakers, a 24MP front camera, and dual rear cameras featuring a 48MP main camera and a 13MP wide angle. There’s an in-screen fingerprint reader, but no wireless charging, SD slot, or water resistance.

Besides the usual display and SoC improvements, there are some actual gaming-centric features on the ROG Phone II that you won’t get on other smartphones. The second USB port lives on the side of the phone, which is great for charging the device during a landscape gaming session without the cord getting in the way of your hands. We’ve seen a few phones with pressure-sensitive sensors in them now, and Asus uses them for shoulder buttons that exist on the left and right side of the phone in landscape.

Next to the side USB port is what Asus only calls a “proprietary connector,” and the two ports team up to power a range of accessories from Asus. The clip-on cooling fan returns and comes bundled with the phone. A new “ROG Kunai Gamepad” looks like an edgy version of a Nintendo Switch controller, with two controller halves that can be held individually, slid into a controller mount, or connected to the sides of the phone with a special case.

Also returning is a new version of the TwinView Dock II, which mounts a second, identical display panel to your phone along with an extra 5000mAh battery. It looks like a ROG Phone II with a second ROG Phone II attached to it. You can Voltron the whole Asus accessory package together by putting your phone in the TwinView Dock and then connecting the controller halves to either side of the dock. You now have a 1.4 pound handheld gaming system.

The design is a minor evolution of last year’s ROG Phone, and unless you see them side-by-side, they are hard to tell apart. The front of the phone is surprisingly generic-looking compared to the laser rave party on the back.  You get an old-school top and bottom bezel design that skips the notches, hole punches, pop-up cameras, and other 2018-2019 design motifs in favor of simple straight lines. Front stereo speakers sit at the top and bottom edges of the phone, and copper accents just below the speakers are the only thing that give the front some personality.

The all-glass back of the phone looks like it will transform into a robot any second now, and it features a light-up RGB LED ROG logo, an “aerodynamic system” vent, and the dual-camera system with crazy-angled lenses for the cameras and LED flash.

The ROG Phone 1 was designed to give the illusion of an advanced cooling system, with two large copper vents on the back of the phone and an optional clip on fan. But these just seemed to just be “for looks” and didn’t actually help much with the cooling. Teardowns show a painted copper plate behind the vents, and the plate lacked any kind of thermal connection to the phone components (like say, thermal paste or thermal pads over the SoC). The phone still shipped with an actual vapor chamber cooling system, but that was deep on the inside of the phone, behind the screen. The outside was all for show.

The optional clip-on cooling fan for the ROG Phone 1 also didn’t do anything. Like the vents, it had no thermal connection to the hot parts of the phone. The fan just blew air over the glass back, which is a poor conductor of heat. Reviewers reported that the ROG Phone 1 fan didn’t significantly lower the phone’s running temperature, and in some cases, it actually made the phone run hotter.

I bring up these ROG Phone 1 cooling issues to say “Don’t believe the design!” Last year, Asus had no issues adding completely misleading design elements and accessories to the phone, so this year the company has earned some skepticism. The ROG Phone II has a new clip-on cooler fan that, again, looks like it just blows air on the back of the phone and doesn’t have a thermal connection to the hot parts. There is once again a vent on the back, but it’s even smaller this year, and we’ll have to wait for teardowns to see if it is actually related to the cooling system.

Asus hasn’t posted official availability or pricing, but a report from Engadget says the phone will launch in Taiwan on August 1 for NT$26,990 ($870 USD). The Twinview Dock is NT$6,990 ($230 USD) and the Nintendo Switch-like gamepad is NT3,990 ($130 USD).

Listing image by Asus

Posted by

Shane McGlaun |

Fri, Jul 19, 2019 – 8:24 AM

Recently Google’s director of Product Andrey Doronichev offered some details on Google’s Stadia online gaming service coming in November. A number of questions were asked during a Reddit AMA, and one of the key tidbits is what you get with a Google Stadia Pro subscription.

Doronichev was clear that the Stadia Pro service won’t be an “all you can eat” plan. For the $10 monthly charge players get “roughly one free game per month.” There are some other benefits to the Pro subscription.

“To be clear, Stadia Pro is not ‘Netflix for Games’ like some people have mentioned,” Doronichev said. “A closer comparison would be like Xbox Live Gold or PlayStation Plus. The Pro subscribers get 4K/HDR streaming, 5.1 sound, exclusive discounts, and access to some free games. Roughly one free game per month give or take. Starting with Destiny 2.”

Base plans won’t offer the free game or other benefits. The base plan only gives access to the gaming hardware in the data center, and then players spend their money on the games they want. He also noted that the Stadia controller wouldn’t support Bluetooth audio at launch, wired headphones will be required reports Engadget.

On the second evening of Prime Day, Amazon’s annual sales bonanza, Anne Marie Bressler received an email from Amazon that had nothing to do with the latest deals. The message, sent from an automated email address Tuesday, informed her that the Align nutritional supplements she ordered two weeks earlier were probably counterfeit. “If you still have this product, we recommend that you stop using it immediately and dispose of the item,” the email reads, adding that she would be receiving a full refund. It’s not clear how many other customers may have purchased the fake supplements. Amazon confirmed that it sent out the email but declined to specify the number of customers impacted.

For years, Amazon has battled third-party sellers who list knockoffs of everything from iPhone charging cables to soccer jerseys on its site. Nutritional supplements are another popular target for fakes, as it’s a largely unregulated industry. The US Food and Drug Administration has been criticized—including by former staff—for declining to test dietary supplements for safety and effectiveness the same way it does pharmaceuticals. In this instance, the problems came together: An Amazon merchant sold dupes of genuine probiotics made by Align, a Procter & Gamble brand.

“We are aware that some counterfeit Align product was sold on Amazon via third parties,” Mollie Wheeler, a spokes­person for Procter & Gamble, said in an email. “Amazon has confirmed they have stopped third party sales of the Align products in question and Amazon is only selling Align product received directly from P&G manufacturing facilities.”

In a statement, an Amazon spokes­person highlighted several initiatives the company has devised to detect counterfeiters, like Brand Registry and Project Zero. Brands typically need to elect to participate in these programs, and the spokesperson declined to clarify whether Procter & Gamble or Align were already enrolled.

“We investigate every claim of potential counterfeit thoroughly, and often in partnership with brands, and in the rare instance where a bad actor gets through, we take swift action, including removing the item for sale, permanently banning bad actors, pursuing legal action, and working with law enforcement when appropriate,” the statement reads. “We have taken these actions against the bad actors in question and proactively notified and refunded customers.” Neither Amazon nor Procter & Gamble would say who first detected the fake pills.

Amazon also didn’t respond to a question about whether it would test the counterfeit probiotics, leaving Bressler and other customers to wonder if they may have ingested something dangerous. The FDA has found that supplements sometimes contain prescription pharmaceuticals like steroids or antidepressants, which can be harmful if a person takes them without being aware of it. CVS recently announced plans to independently test every nutritional supplement it carries in its stores. That Amazon isn’t doing the same might sound careless, but the reality is that the company has already taken far more action than it’s obligated to under the law.

Even if the counterfeit Align pills Amazon sold turned out to be harmful, Bressler and other buyers would likely have little legal recourse against the company. When consumers have tried to sue online marketplaces like Amazon and eBay for selling dangerous goods in the past, courts have ruled they aren’t responsible for products offered by third-party vendors—they serve merely as intermediaries between consumers and sellers.

In many of these cases, the companies have defended themselves using Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. Passed in 1996, it shields them from nearly all liability for what sellers or users post on their sites. In one 2014 case, for example, a judge found that because of Section 230, eBay isn’t liable even when it sells items that have been recalled. “Marketplaces aren’t responsible for passing along recalls, even if they know the recalls have been issued, and even if they would have the capacity to share them,” says Eric Goldman, a professor at Santa Clara University School of Law who has written extensively about intermediary liability. (Items that have been recalled, however, are prohibited under eBay’s Terms of Service.)

Retailers, on the other hand, can be held directly responsible for selling things like questionable dietary supplements. Three years ago, the Department of Justice ordered GNC to pay a $2 million fine for selling products with harmful hidden ingredients, and the chain agreed to better police the goods on its shelves moving forward.

Amazon is both a retailer and a third-party marketplace. It buys some products directly from manufacturers and sells them at a markup, and it allows independent merchants to offer their goods directly to consumers, the latter of which accounts for 58 percent of gross merchandise sales on the platform. But the line between those two parts of its business are not always clear. Amazon exerts a significant amount of control over sellers, including dictating how their goods appear in search results. It also often warehouses and ships their products for them. And unlike on eBay, Etsy, or other online marketplaces, a single Amazon product listing can feature goods from dozens of independent sellers, making it difficult for consumers to understand from whom they’re purchasing a product. “Amazon has obviously kept pushing the needle further and further toward taking responsibility for marketplace goods,” says Goldman.

The US 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals ruled earlier this month that these kinds of differences do, in fact, make Amazon liable for harmful products sold by third-party sellers in some circumstances. The judges noted that because third-party vendors can only communicate with consumers directly through Amazon, they can “conceal themselves from the customer, leaving customers injured by defective products with no direct recourse.” The case involved a woman who purchased a dog collar from a third-party vendor on Amazon in 2014. Several weeks later, while she was walking her dog, it snapped, leaving the woman permanently blind in one eye. Goldman notes that the ruling is based on Pennsylvania law and doesn’t yet set a precedent for the rest of the country. Amazon is also asking the court to review it again.

Making Amazon legally liable for everything on its site wouldn’t be a silver bullet. The immunity granted under Section 230 is what, in part, made it possible for online marketplaces to thrive in the first place. If platforms became totally liable, that would make it incredibly difficult for, say, Etsy to allow independent artists to sell their work on its site. Amazon has banned some products it has deemed to be dangerous, like hoverboards, but there are an endless number of other categories in which seemingly benign products may pose risks.

And in situations where Amazon can’t be held legally responsible, it can be almost impossible to track down the entities who are. The third-party vendor who sold the knockoff Align pills, or the company that manufactured them, may very likely be difficult to find, especially if they’re overseas. In the dog collar case, The Furry Gang, the third-party vendor that sold the defective collar, completely disappeared.

The US government is taking more notice of the growing problem of counterfeits and how online shopping in many ways has allowed knockoffs to flourish. On Thursday, lawmakers in the House of Representatives held a hearing on counterfeits, where people from a variety of industries spoke about the threat to their businesses. “As one of the largest and most influential ecommerce companies in the world, Amazon has an important role to play in ensuring that counterfeit goods stay out of consumers’ hands,” said Robert C. Barchiesi of the International AntiCounterfeiting Coalition in written testimony. “And we look forward to their continued cooperation toward that end.”

This story originally appeared on wired.com.