Airbnb to offer more experiences in 2018 as it expands to 1,000 cities

We reported earlier that Airbnb was expanding its offerings for a wealthier clientele. But that wasn’t all the company is working on. Airbnb also announced it plans to expand its “experiences” feature to 1,000 cities. The feature was launched a little over a year ago to offer its travelers unique, local activities they might want to try out. Some of the new places to get experiences include Iceland, Easter Island, and Tasmania.

The move to introduce experiences was a wise one especially when it faced regulation issues in some cities as well as continued competition from hotels and others that work in the travel industry. It helps supplant the revenue of the company, while drawing in more users that want more out of their trips. Some of the experiences the company offers range from those with a “social impact” to meeting others for a meal to activities for thrill-seekers, among many others. "The options are endless," said Joe Zadeh, Airbnb's vice president of trips. "We are working with our hosts where anyone can build an experience around their passion."  

Source: CNET

Google confirms it’s looking into the battery drain bug affecting Pixel 2 and 2 XL users

Review: Google Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL

You may or may not have noticed the battery on your Pixel 2 or 2 XL draining faster than usual. You’re not alone. A bunch of pixel users have been complaining of this issue after the February security patch was released. Google stayed silent about the matter for a while but now the company at least acknowledges it’s looking into the problem. A community manager on the company’s user forums confirmed they are investigating the issue. There are big releases yet to remedy the issue but for now they are “reaching out privately” for bug reports.

The issue revolves around battery levels dropping faster than usual and some even report their phones are taking longer to charge as well. And it seems even some original Pixel users have been experiencing these issues. Here’s to hoping Google fixes this relatively quickly.

Source: 9to5Google

Huawei sets date for P20 launch

Huawei has already officially confirmed that the successor of the P10 and P10 Plus will be aptly named the P20 and P20 Plus. But we wouldn’t be seeing it at this week’s MWC in Barcelona. Instead, we might see it launch in Paris on “27-03-2018” as the new teaser video Huawei released for the P20 and P20 Plus has been uploaded. The seven-second clip also showed hints at the possibility that the phone will have three cameras as is being rumoured. Android Authority got some hands-on time with a prototype of the device but it didn’t have three camera lenses just yet.

The phones are rumoured to be using the Kirin 970 processor so both phones will carry artificial intelligence features (which was also hinted at in the short teaser) and run on Android Oreo. RAM is expected to be between 6GB or 8GB of RAM. Storage might support microSD expansion. And battery could be as large as 4,000mAh. But we’ll only really know the final specs when the phones come out on March 27^th.

Source: Android Authority

Review: Acer Windows Mixed Reality Headset and Controller

By Gadjo Cardenas Sevilla

The VR headsets of one or two years ago like the Oculus and the HTC Vive did deliver on the promise of bringing VR to consumers but at a steep price as well as high-end hardware requirements. With the entry of Microsoft into VR, using tech and knowledge coming from its HoloLens solution, makes enjoying VR more affordable.

Microsoft showed off the future of Windows as a holographic OS with HoloLens which put the desktop in virtual and real space. HoloLens was unfortunately too expensive for mass production and while it seems to be making waves in enterprise and special situations, there’s no consumer version available.

Instead, Microsoft created the Windows Mixed Reality VR standard, packaged it as part of Windows 10 Fall Creators Update and makes it accessible to anyone running Windows on the minimum specs (8^th Intel Generation Core Processor). Hit jump for my immersion into WMR.

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