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Fitbit Versa undercuts Apple Watch on size, price
Here's how to use Texture, the beautiful 'Netflix for magazines' app Apple just bought
Galaxy S9 Plus vs. Pixel 2 XL: a new low-light photo champion?

Fitbit Versa undercuts Apple Watch on size, price

Posted: 13 Mar 2018 06:01 AM PDT

Fitbit Versa is the company's third attempt at a full-on smartwatch, and the company may have finally nailed a good design at a really good price. It's fully compatible with all of the apps designed for its more expensive predecessor, the Fitbit Ionic, which debuted just five months ago. The Versa arrives in April for $200 (£200, AU$300) -- that's $50 less than the entry-level Apple Watch.

The Versa will release alongside the Fitbit Ace, a new $100 (£80, AU$130) fitness tracker that's designed for kids.

It's the Versa, however, that Fitbit is pinning its hopes on. The company, which made its name on fitness trackers and step counters, has been struggling with a sagging stock price after a soft holiday sales quarter. Apple, meanwhile, continues to gobble up market share as consumers turn to smartwatches.

Correcting the mistakes of the Ionic

I had two thoughts after reviewing Fitbit's first smartwatch, the Ionic, that launched last year: It would be better if it were less expensive and wasn't quite so bulky.

That's exactly what the Fitbit Versa is: A thinner, less expensive Ionic. It's also Fitbit's strongest counterpunch to the aforementioned Apple Watch. And it happens to look almost exactly like the late, great Pebble Time smartwatch I reviewed a few years ago -- the startup darling that Fitbit purchased in December 2016.

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That's not a bad thing: In fact, maybe it's the best thing. The four-day battery life of the Versa, and its solid list of features -- heart rate monitoring, 50 meter water resistance, on-board music storage, compatibility with hundreds of watchfaces and apps -- make it sound like the best all-around Fitbit to date.

It lacks the GPS of the Ionic, but in my brief time with the watch it also seems more comfortable and easier to use. The Ionic felt fine on my wrist, but was angular and much larger than the Apple Watch. The Versa is smaller and slimmer.

48-fitbit-versa — Apple Watch Series 3 (left) next to Fitbit Versa (right).
Sarah Tew/CNET

I couldn't tell how it feels with different bands, but the whole watch is a lot more low-key than the Ionic, in a good way. On my large wrist, it felt great. But Fitbit is clearly looking at the Versa as a way of addressing the design shortcomings of the Ionic.

Its "squircle" design is reminiscent of the Apple Watch (and even moreso, the Pebble Time). The aluminum design comes in several colors (black, silver, and rose gold), and will work with a variety of new silicone, leather, steel link, Milanese mesh-style, woven and knit bands.

Versa replaces the Fitbit Blaze in the company's line-up. That first-generation Fitbit watch, which had few fans, is now being discontinued.

A renewed focus on women's health

The Versa is part of what Fitbit CEO James Park details as a mission to reach out to a larger audience -- and more women in particular. To that end, the company is introducing new tools, in coming app updates, to track women's menstrual cycles.

Today, many women track their cycles in dedicated apps (like Kindara). But by folding the feature into the main Fitbit app, the hope is that women will find it easier to do all their health tracking in one place. (Apple Health added reproductive health tracking back in 2015.) The expanded feature will come in an upcoming software update which will work across older Fitbits, too.

With this update, women might be able to find correlations between their fitness routines and menstrual health. Fitbit's also planning to learn from the data collected, as the company shifts more towards integration with health care platforms. The hope, according to Fitbit, is to study relationships between activity, sleep and menstrual cycles on a larger scale.

67-fitbit-versa — The Fitbit Versa is like a thinner, less expensive Ionic.
Sarah Tew/CNET

New software

Last year's Fitbit Ionic and the new Versa will get a revamped OS, with added on-wrist fitness data and, eventually, a promise of more coaching and daily encouragement. The new software I saw on-wrist with the Versa included a swipe-out fitness-at-a-glance rundown that has stats like resting heart rate, recent workouts, and more info in general than what I saw on the Ionic. The touchscreen felt a little more responsive, too: The Ionic's sluggish interface was one of its downsides.

The next Fitbit 2.0 OS will also add quick replies to messages, but for Android users only. The quick replies are a canned list of responses that can be customized in the Fitbit phone app. The Fitbit Ionic currently can only receive messages.

FItbit Pay, which makes NFC on-wrist payments, will only available on a step-up Special Edition model in the US ($230, with an extra woven band). In Europe and Asia, all Versa watches will have Fitbit Pay. I was let down with how few banks are supported on Fitbit Pay at the moment versus Apple Pay, Android Pay and Samsung Pay, which is why I don't tend to use it.

24-fitbit-versa — The Fitbit Ace. Which looks like...the Fitbit Alta.
Sarah Tew/CNET

There's a kid Fitbit, too

Fitbit's also making a kid's fitness tracker, if you're ready for it. The Fitbit Ace is basically a rebranded Fitbit Alta, a small tracker with a narrow screen released several years ago. The Ace will come in blue or purple bands, cost $100, and will have goals and challenges for kids, plus be tuned for different daily activity and sleep goals (60 minutes a day, and 9-12 hours of sleep a night, more than adults). Unfortunately, though, the Fitbit Ace won't be water resistant for swimming, and it doesn't track heart rate, either.

The idea of Fitbit Ace is to help kids track sleep, activity and fitness goals, plus join challenges with the family. But it's also a way for families to keep an eye on kid activities... and for Fitbit to study kid fitness data trends, too.

Fitbit's technically late to the kid fitness tracker game: Garmin's already on the second generation of its Vivofit Junior.

Fitbit Ace is designed for kids eight and up. It'll be up to parents to decide whether it's necessary or not. I'm really not wild about kid wearables, but I'm curious to see what my kid thinks of it. It's a little unclear how Fitbit will customize its software for kids, or whether the idea of the Ace is to simply help track and motivate like every other Fitbit.

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Here's how to use Texture, the beautiful 'Netflix for magazines' app Apple just bought

Posted: 13 Mar 2018 07:33 AM PDT

Girl iPhone X Tomohiro Ohsumi/Getty

Apple is employing the help of a popular app to help it fight fake news.

On Monday, Apple announced it was acquiring Texture, a smartphone app that gives users unlimited access to popular magazines for a monthly subscription fee.

Texture basically imports full issues of magazines and lets users read them in the original format. You can save individual articles and even download full issues of magazines, all within a beautifully designed app.

But it wasn't just Texture's look and feel that attracted Apple's interest. In an interview on Monday, Apple's head of software and services Eddy Cue said that Apple wants to use the app to bring quality journalism to its users.

"We wanted to bring trusted sources to users in a beautiful layout," Cue said, according to Axios reporter Sara Fischer. "We wanted to bring them trusted sources so we don't have to worry about a lot of the problems in the marketplace."

Apple hasn't said how it will be incorporating Texture into its lineup of products — it already has an Apple News app, and Texture seems like a natural addition to that. But if Cue's comments are any indication, the acquisition is an effort prioritize traditional news sources — and keep fake news off its devices.

For now, however, Texture remains a standalone app in the App Store and Google Play Store. Here's how it works:

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Galaxy S9 Plus vs. Pixel 2 XL: a new low-light photo champion?

Posted: 13 Mar 2018 05:51 AM PDT

Samsung's 2018 flagship phone, the Galaxy S9, is the first in the world with an f/1.5 lens aperture. But set aside all the hype about it being part of a dual-aperture system. What I really wanted to know about this change is how it might improve Samsung's low-light imaging. Having the widest aperture means being able to soak up the most light, so, in theory at least, the Galaxy S9 should be the best cameraphone for situations where light is at a premium. Except, well, there's Google's Pixel 2, which has taken over the mantle from the original Pixel as the best all-around camera on a phone. The Pixel achieves superlative results through clever image stacking and processing algorithms rather than pure hardware might. So it could still be the best.

The only solution to this uncertainty, of course, was to put the two cameras to the test. While in Geneva for the Motor Show, I went out for a late-night walk with the Galaxy S9 Plus and the Pixel 2 XL and took a bunch of side-by-side photos. It's worth acknowledging that the S9 Plus also has a second telephoto lens and a super slow-motion mode that the Pixel lacks — both situationally useful features, which would figure in a more comprehensive camera comparison, but here I'm only interested in the single-camera still photo performance.

You can find the unprocessed, full-resolution Galaxy S9 Plus sample photos in this Flickr album, and the Pixel 2 XL shots in this one. Here is a selection of examples (which include daytime and indoor photography, too) to illustrate my findings from shooting with the two phones.

If you want a simple summation of this entire comparison, this Lambo scene provides it. Without zooming in and studying the details, you'll find it hard to distinguish between the Pixel and S9 cameras. I spent a long time trying to pick out differences and select a winner, but ultimately the distinctions are too small.

Both phones do a remarkable job of amping up the brightness of the scene (which was darker to the naked eye) without destroying the reflections in the lake and the glints of light on the car or wrecking the black sky with image noise. Once you zoom in close, the Pixel exhibits more grain than the S9, but the latter also has a slightly more artificial look because of Samsung's preference for smoothing that grain out.

Another image that shows the comparative strengths and weaknesses of each camera well. Under artificial light, the Pixel bathes this phone booth in a yellow cast, whereas the S9 judges the white balance correctly. Neither of them is perfectly sharp on the keypad (which might be my fault for not being steady enough), but the Pixel also exposes the scene better and retains the detail in the Swisscom message on the screen that the S9 blows out.

Another situation where the two cameras seem to be very close, but there are meaningful differences here. First, I had to manually reduce the exposure of the Galaxy S9 to match it to the Pixel's: Samsung habitually overexposes these low-light photos in an effort to make them look like daytime. I find that results in unrealistic and overprocessed photos.

In any case, there are two big differences to spot here. The red traffic light and the streets lights on the left edge of the image are surrounded by huge blobs of image noise on the Pixel photo, whereas Samsung's shot keeps such imperfections under control. The Pixel does, however, retain more of the color of the image, whereas the S9 looks desaturated.

Samsung's optical image stabilization in the Galaxy S9, paired with a greater willingness to apply post-processing sharpening, resulted in a lot of my images looking crisper coming out of that camera. That's an undeniable advantage and becomes particularly relevant at the lower shutter speeds used in low-light photography. This example shot exhibits two other consistent themes: Samsung's photos tend to look redder than the greener-leaning Pixel 2 shots, and the S9 blows out highlights that the Pixel is able to keep under control.

Multiple Galaxy S9 reviewers have noted that its images tend to look washed out. My experience agrees with that critique, with this image ably demonstrating the slightly desaturated, slightly too bright appearance of the S9's photos. Looking at the same pictures on the S9's hypersaturated screen, they look just about perfect. So this might be a case of Samsung toning down the saturation of its camera to offset the excess saturation of its screen. Granted, the phone's display is the most likely screen on which the S9 photos would be experienced, but that doesn't make for the best possible photos.

Another one where it's difficult to pick a winner between the two. Frankly, without a third phone camera to show how difficult this shot directly into the sun is, you might not be adequately impressed by the dynamic range exhibited by both the Samsung and Google cameras, but it is impressive. Google's HDR processing may be getting a little out of hand here, as it renders a vastly more dramatic and ominous cloud formation. Most people's preferences might lie closer to Samsung's warmer and more natural-looking shot.

Samsung again judges the white balance perfectly and also delivers a sharper photo than Google's camera. My overwhelming experience with the Galaxy S9 Plus camera was that there was no bad way to shoot. I could pull the phone out of my pocket with one hand and capture the moment without having to tinker with menus or think about things too much. If only Samsung would let nighttime scenes look like nighttime (instead of trying to create unrealistic day-like exposures), I'd say this is the best camera for casual photography.

As with the Lambo photo, all I can do is marvel at the absence of graininess and noise in the black sky at the top left here. Both cameras are boosting the brightness, however, the Pixel edges out the win, thanks to better contrast and dynamic range. (Note how the Chayto logo remains distinct in the Pixel 2 photo instead of blending in with the bloom of light behind it as on the Galaxy S9 picture.) That said, I wouldn't be too aggrieved with either picture.

A second opinion from Verge Creative Director James Bareham

The S9's automatic color balance for these night shots is very impressive across the board, especially on those photos taken inside (the shot of the hotel lobby interior is particularly good).

However, that's as far as it goes. The images taken on the Pixel 2 XL have much better shadow and highlight detail across the board. Take the shot of the sick Lambo for instance. Yes, Vlad is right, at first glance there are few obvious differences between the two cameras apart from the color balance. But if you look closely at the illuminated signs on the buildings in the background, "La Mobiliere" and "LGT Bank" are blown out and illegible in the shots taken on the S9; they are far more legible on the shot taken on the Pixel 2.

The same differences can be seen in the shot of Hotel de la Paix. The highlight detail in the sign and the shadow detail in the facade of the building and the statue of the lion are also far better in the shot taken on the Pixel 2.

Judging from the pictures taken on the new S9, the f/1.5 lens is clearly an improvement over last year's f/1.7 lens on the S8, and the S9 is almost certainly better than the Pixel 2 XL when it comes color balance and shots in dimly lit interiors. But judging from these photos, I still think that the 2017 Pixel 2 is superior to the 2018 Galaxy S9. To sum it up, the photos taken on the Pixel 2XL are still more "real." Both cameras are using a lot of algorithmic processing to take pictures; only Pixel keeps these processes hidden below the surface.

The Galaxy S9's camera is a worthy rival to the Pixel 2. That's not something I would say of the iPhone X, LG V30, Huawei Mate 10 Pro, or most of the other flagship smartphones out there. In my experience and testing, there's a tiny elite tier of cameraphones, which is today populated by Google's Pixels, HTC's U11 models, and now Samsung's Galaxy S9 handsets. I think the overall camera upgrade resulting from the wider aperture and a year's worth of small refinements has elevated the S9 substantially from the S8. (Its camera was basically a reprise of the S7's camera.)

But is the Galaxy S9 better than the Pixel 2? Sometimes, it is. I'm more certain that the first shot I take with the S9 will be the best possible shot with that camera. Samsung's optical image stabilization really comes in handy for people like me who aren't perfectly steady when shooting with their phone. And I also enjoy the prettier display of the Galaxy S9 and the superior white balance judgment under artificial lighting.

Nonetheless, the Pixel 2 still feels like the phone capable of getting me the best possible photo. In simple terms, the Galaxy S9 Plus has a lower image quality ceiling that you can hit more regularly, while the Pixel 2 — thanks to its untouchable dynamic range and gorgeous color reproduction — offers greater potential but lower consistency.

I wish I could declare a definitive winner and tell you to go buy that phone if you want the best low-light camera. But the competition is now so good and vibrant that even the reliably excellent Pixel 2 has to look over its shoulder. Aside from Samsung's Galaxy S9, Huawei is preparing to launch a new flagship with no fewer than three lenses on the back, and HTC will have a successor to the U11 in April, so both the present and the future of Android photography are looking bright.

Photography by Vlad Savov / The Verge

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