Tag: Source: Androidcentral.com

T-Mobile Presents the Galaxy S25 FE at an Affordable Monthly Rate

Experience the Samsung Galaxy S25 at a fraction of the cost.

(Image credit: Nandika Ravi/Android Central)

The latest ‘Fan Edition’ smartphone from Samsung has been revealed, and there are numerous Galaxy S25 FE promotions that deserve your attention. One of the best offers is from T-Mobile, which is providing the adaptable device for just $49.99 if you add a line with a qualified data plan.

This brings the cost of the phone down to only $2.09/month over 24 months, which is cheaper than the price of a monthly latte! This T-Mobile deal is especially appealing if you’re tired of all the top phone discounts needing a trade-in, plus you may end up with a shiny new wireless plan as part of the package.

Whether the Galaxy S25 FE is

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How Smart Rings and Smartwatches Measure Blood Oxygen Levels

Let’s discuss your technology.

(Image credit: Andrew Myrick / Android Central)
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Love our articles? Be sure to add Android Central as your favorite source in Google Search to keep informed on the newest updates, reviews, features, and more.

Welcome to Tech Talk, a weekly article series dedicated to the tools we rely on and their functionality. We aim to simplify things so that everyone comprehends how and why the device you’re using performs as it does.

At times, the discussion may delve into technical aspects, as technology inherently possesses complexity and detail. However, we can collaborate to dismantle the information and render it understandable!

Tech Talk

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Google Photos Improves Photo-to-Video Functionality with Veo 3 Update

Google Photos’ functionality for converting photos into videos now incorporates Veo 3 to generate enhanced six-second clips.

(Image credit: Jay Bonggolto / Android Central)

Essential information

  • The photo-to-video capability in Google Photos is now enhanced by the advanced Veo 3 model.
  • Users can transform static images into six-second videos with improved quality.
  • A new Create tab within Photos provides access to various creative tools including Veo 3.
  • The Create tab also showcases features like Remix, Highlight videos, collages, and animations.

On September 4, Google revealed that the photo-to-video feature within the Google Photos application is receiving an upgrade with the introduction of its cutting-edge Veo 3 video generation model.

Similar to its productivity applications such as Gmail and Drive, Google has been gradually embedding its AI technologies into Photos. It’s been over a month since the arrival of the capability to

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Samsung Health Broadens Accessibility to Healthcare through Virtual Physician Consultations and Structured Exercise Sessions

**Bringing Appointments, Prescription Monitoring, and a Brand-New Fitness Program, Just a Tap Away**

Samsung Health is transforming virtual healthcare by unveiling three new features that deliver appointments, prescription monitoring, and fitness programs directly to your fingertips. The Korean OEM has teamed up with health brands to improve user access to virtual healthcare services.

**Key Features:**

– **Virtual Doctor Consultations:** Samsung Health launches the Find Care feature, enabling users to connect with virtual doctors for same-day or same-week appointments. This service is in collaboration with HealthTap, offering a convenient alternative to traditional visits.

– **Prescription Oversight:** Health Records now collaborates with Walgreens, streamlining prescription monitoring. Users can effortlessly manage their medications, review past prescriptions, and keep informed about their health routines right within the app.

– **Structured Fitness Program:** Samsung Health provides premium fitness content, including guided exercises for various fitness levels. Users can explore high-intensity interval training (HIIT), Pilates, and recovery routines, with videos sorted by trending workouts and seasonal suggestions.

These enhancements, available from September 8, are designed to ensure effortless access to healthcare and fitness resources, helping users sustain their health and wellness objectives seamlessly.

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Where to Discover Amazing Custom Watch Faces for Galaxy Watch 8 and Pixel Watch 4

Wear OS 6 has brought back personalized watch faces to Android timepieces, with applications like Facer, WatchMaker, TIMEFLIK, and Pujie offering the Galaxy Watch 8 and Pixel Watch 4 an extensive array of designs. Other Wear OS devices will have to wait for this update, and exploring numerous custom watch faces only emphasized how thrilling this distinctive feature is.

Following the limitation of older, power-hungry watch faces in Wear OS 5 with Watch Face Format (WFF), Google collaborated with Facer and other applications to create a solution: the Watch Face Push API.

In Wear OS 6, each watch face application is allocated one “slot” in your watch’s favorites menu, which can be accessed by tapping and holding the screen. Select a watch face within the mobile application, and it will push to that designated slot. Your watch’s storage remains organized as your newest selection replaces the previous one.

You can utilize as many compatible watch face applications with Wear OS 6 as you like, but since many require a subscription for premium faces, you might prefer to stick with a single option. Thus, I explored the choices in Facer, TIMEFLIK, WatchMaker, and Pujie to identify which ones caught my eye.

Facer Premium: $40/year or $5/month

Facer boasts a plethora of unofficial designs for well-known brands like Pokémon, Totoro, Zelda, and Star Wars. Additionally, Facer features official brand collaborations with SpongeBob, Garfield, Barbie, Star Trek, and Tetris, along with “Watchmaker” faces that emulate luxury timepieces. You’ll discover plenty of high-quality designs alongside some more amateurish ones.

The standout feature of Facer is its “power impact” rating for each face, alerting you if it may influence your watch’s battery performance. You can also tap a Sun/Moon icon to toggle between the active display and AOD layout, allowing you to verify beforehand if the latter is too demanding on power.

Facer offers a considerable assortment of Wear OS 6-compatible designs, with over 100 available for free if you want to explore the app without subscribing to Premium; considering Samsung and Google provide about 60 and 30 official faces, respectively, that’s significant—even if the best selections come with a cost.

Additionally, there’s the Facer Creator tool that allows you to craft your own custom designs; it’s designed for releasing faces for others to download or purchase, but you can simply save your creations to your account’s “My Designs” folder and upload them to your watch.

WatchMaker VIP: $20/year or $5/month

WatchMaker features hundreds of thousands of WFF designs, although only 30 are free at any given moment. These seem to rotate daily, allowing you to sample various options, though saving them isn’t possible. Generally, you will likely want to invest in the annual subscription for using this app.

Similar to Facer, there’s a vast assortment of casual user-generated designs, and you can create your own using the “New Watch” button in the main menu—though this requires a separate, one-time “Premium” fee of $12 to add personal images and access other design features.

What draws users to WatchMaker is its extensive library of curated collections that highlight a “classic” or “elegant” style, ideal for my Galaxy Watch 8 Classic. The Knight Watch collection, in particular, is quite stunning, showcasing years’ worth of eye-catching designs that will keep your watch looking fresh and distinctive.

The app interface isn’t my favorite. The primary menu is cluttered with links to other applications rather than offering useful information, and the confusing division between Premium and VIP feels like a tactic to pressure me into double-paying for features. Yet, with over 130,000 WFF faces available, these drawbacks might be easy to overlook.

TIMEFLIK

Flik Pass Pro: $60/year or $5/month

If your main interest is in discovering free watch faces, TIMEFLIK is your best bet. You can find hundreds (if not more) of free WFF-compatible designs by toggling in the main Home view or the “Top Free” view located in the Popular tab.

Where almost every face incurs a fee in Facer and WatchMaker by design, TIMEFLIK typically offers a few free faces for every popular culture or gaming icon you can think of, alongside personal drawings, photographs, and AI-generated content.

The trade-off with TIMEFLIK is that you must watch an advertisement for every watch face you send to your device unless you subscribe for $2.49/month. Since only one watch face can be saved at a time, this means an ad must be watched each time you switch, even if it’s a face you’ve previously used.

Aside from a few designs that mimic high-end watch aesthetics, the majority of TIMEFLIK’s paid and suggested faces tend to be on the amateur side.

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How Meta Quest Games Unveil the Future of Gaming on Smart Glasses

Mixed reality games are more sophisticated than ever, and these new releases attest to that.

In his weekly piece, Android Central Senior Content Producer Nick Sutrich explores all aspects of VR, encompassing new hardware, fresh games, forthcoming technologies, and much more.

I’ve been captivated by the concept of mixed reality gaming since the Meta Quest 3 launched nearly two years ago. I can’t believe this device is already two years old, but it has taken this duration for me to gather a considerable number of genuinely compelling mixed reality games that are setting the stage for gaming on smart glasses.

As we anticipate the debut of the first significant commercial smart glasses with a display this month, the latest rumors suggest that the Meta Quest 4 is likely to resemble a pair of tethered smart glasses more than a VR headset. This is fantastic news for mixed reality games, which will become even more enjoyable with lighter, more streamlined headgear.

Developers for Meta Quest are crafting mixed reality applications tailored to gamers now and in the future. Once smart glasses possess the displays and capabilities necessary for gaming, they will support many of the same types of games we currently enjoy on Meta Quest 3, all without the heft of a VR headset.

Banners & Bastions

Banners & Bastions is a new compact roguelike real-time strategy game from the creators of Airspace Defender. Like that title, everything occurs in a “half snow globe” style, conveniently situated on your lap. You can position this half-globe anywhere you desire, making it equally suitable as a tabletop board game and a compact game for laps that you can play on an airplane.

The gameplay shares similarities with Steam hit Bad North, while incorporating various contemporary roguelike trends. Each level starts with a preview of the number and type of enemies that will appear, along with the estimated movement direction of each spawn point (helpful for setting up walls).

Players select units from a random assortment of cards displayed on the screen, aligning with the roguelike aspect of the game. You have a limited budget to spend on units, making it unusual to buy more than 1-2 cards each turn. Units can be deployed anywhere on the map and moved at any moment, so while it’s essential to strategize ahead, you can always adjust placements during battle.

Levels progress in a linear manner and receive the standard 3-star mobile scoring system. Stars may be used to unlock a substantial skill tree, and you’ll gain new cards and units as you advance. Additionally, emergency abilities like summoning meteors or calling for reserve soldiers can aid in keeping your units intact between rounds.

The primary attraction of playing this in mixed reality is the level of control you possess over the action. The game relies solely on hand tracking, making it far more convenient to engage with compared to most VR games, since you only need to wear the headset and start the game. Hand tracking has become exceptional lately. Even my son, who previously disliked hand tracking due to its past unreliability, found Banners & Bastions’ hand tracking to be remarkably effective.

Creating a mixed reality game that depends on hand movements instead of controllers guarantees that, in a few years, smart glasses equipped with displays and capable hardware can effortlessly run this kind of game on the go. It’s a significant improvement over squinting and trying to tap the right unit on a phone screen. I also greatly appreciate the game’s quick levels, which usually take just a few minutes to finish, making it an ideal choice for portable gaming.

Mythic Realms

Mythic Realms is among the most developed mixed reality games I’ve experienced thus far. While it begins as a seemingly straightforward mixed reality game where you fight monsters in your own physical space, you quickly discover that this title is more than merely a combat simulator.

Instead, it’s a comprehensive roguelike RPG akin to The Elder Scrolls: Blades. In fact, the gameplay loop is strikingly similar to that title, including the idea of embarking on quests to collect resources and funds to restore your hometown. From blacksmiths ready to enhance your gear to daily random events that will keep you returning to see what’s happening, there’s never a shortage of entertaining activities.

I genuinely gasped when I grasped the game’s depth, as many comparable mixed reality titles with fantasy combat and randomized room layouts tend to focus solely on combat with little else.

The town itself exists in full virtual reality, so while that segment would need modification to function correctly on mixed reality glasses, I can envision the company adjusting the town concept to a diorama scale that feels more manageable in mixed reality. I really enjoy experiencing the town in VR, though, so it currently feels excellent in its configuration for Meta Quest 3 and 3S headsets.

The way Mythic Realms transforms your plays

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TCL Launches NXTPAPER 60 Ultra Showcasing Relaxing 4.0 Display Technology at IFA 2025

TCL made a notable impression at IFA 2025 by introducing its newest NXTPAPER devices, catering to users across all age groups. The center point of TCL’s showcase was the NXTPAPER 60 Ultra, which is equipped with the innovative NXTPAPER 4.0 technology. This gadget is crafted with eye health as a priority, boasting a 7.2-inch FHD Plus screen that minimizes blue light and glare, ensuring a natural viewing experience. The NXTPAPER 60 Ultra features a 50MP primary camera, AI tools for reading and writing, and the Dimensity 7400 SoC for enhanced AI functions. It comes with a price tag of €499 (~$581) and will be launched in Europe, LATAM, and APAC starting September 2025.

Alongside the 60 Ultra, TCL revealed the NXTPAPER 5G Junior, a device designed for teens, which incorporates eye-care technology and a “Digital Detox Mode” to lessen distractions. This model provides 256GB of storage and is priced at €249 (~$290), with a European launch scheduled for October.

TCL also introduced the MOVETIME MT48 smartwatch for children, featuring AI capabilities for educational and adventurous activities. This smartwatch comes with a 1.68-inch display and is priced at €150 (~$174), with availability in Germany, the UK, Spain, Italy, and France beginning in late October.

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In-Depth Examination of Garmin Fenix 8 Pro Characteristics: LTE, SOS, and MicroLED

Garmin enthusiasts have been eagerly awaiting the arrival of the Garmin Fenix 8 Pro, which brings innovative features such as InReach satellite and cellular connectivity, enabling journeys without a phone. This latest model provides voice calling, messaging, and satellite SOS functionalities, establishing it as a genuinely independent device for outdoor adventurers. The Fenix 8 Pro comes in two sizes, 47mm and 51mm, with starting prices from $1,200. It includes an InReach subscription, allowing users to remain connected even when their mobile devices are out of reach.

A key highlight of the Fenix 8 Pro is its MicroLED display, which offers a brightness of 4,500 nits, making it the most luminous smartwatch display available. This display delivers impressive visuals, although it does impact battery longevity. The MicroLED variant is offered in a 51mm size and is priced at $2,000, positioning it among Garmin’s pricier models.

The connectivity features of the Fenix 8 Pro span across 34 countries and territories, including the U.S., Canada, most European nations, Japan, Australia, and New Zealand. Users must sign up for an InReach account and utilize the Garmin Messenger app for messaging and sharing their location. The watch leverages low-powered LTE-M cellular networks to optimize battery performance, though coverage can differ based on geographic location and signal strength.

Regarding battery life, the Fenix 8 Pro provides up to 15 days in smartwatch mode, 44 hours in GPS-only mode, and 12 hours utilizing multi-band GPS and LTE LiveTrack. Conversely, the MicroLED model has a notably reduced battery life of 10 days in smartwatch mode.

In summary, the Garmin Fenix 8 Pro is a feature-laden smartwatch that suits outdoor enthusiasts seeking dependable connectivity and cutting-edge display technology. While the MicroLED model delivers outstanding brightness and imagery, prospective buyers should weigh the compromises regarding battery performance and cost.

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YouTube Introduces Tighter Regulations for Premium Family Plans akin to Netflix

YouTube is initiating a new policy to restrict Premium advantages for family members who do not live in the same household. This update impacts users of the YouTube Premium Family plan, which permits the sharing of the subscription with up to five individuals for about $23 monthly. Users included in a Family plan but not residing with the family manager are being notified that their membership will be paused. These users have 14 days to verify their eligibility to retain Premium advantages; if they fail to do so, they will forfeit these perks but will still be part of the family group, gaining access to YouTube with advertisements.

This policy aligns with Netflix’s 2023 strategy, which mandated that account users be physically associated with the same household. While YouTube has mandated that family members be within the same household since 2023, it is now applying this regulation more rigorously. The enforcement is still limited, with only a few mentions on social media and Reddit. This initiative comes after YouTube launched Premium Lite and began testing a two-person Premium plan, potentially driving more sign-ups for various subscription levels.

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Samsung’s Galaxy Tab S11 Ultra Debuts as a Possible Laptop Alternative

Samsung’s latest tablet series finally makes dual-screen multitasking effective.

(Image credit: Brady Snyder / Android Central)

Key Information

  • The new Galaxy tablet series from Samsung includes Gemini Live for instantaneous assistance, enhancing the usability of AI as a functional tool.
  • The redesigned DeX Extended Mode facilitates a genuine dual-screen experience with an external display, allowing the creation of multiple tailored workspaces for various tasks.
  • Both devices are powered by a new 3nm chipset, with the Ultra version being Samsung’s slimmest tablet to date at only 5.1mm thick.

The newest and most advanced tablets from Samsung, the Galaxy Tab S11 and Galaxy Tab S11 Ultra, have arrived, designed to simplify work and creative endeavors with innovative AI functionalities.

Arguably the most notable enhancement is the addition of new AI features within One UI 8. These tablets are intended to comprehend and respond to your actions, whether typing, speaking, or observing something on the display. A prominent feature, Gemini Live, enables engaging dialogues about on-screen content or even tangible items viewed through the camera.

Additionally, there’s Drawing Assist for refining sketches, Writing Assist to enhance your tone, and a floating AI overlay that you

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