Anthem still has a path to greatness despite early reviews - CNET

Commentary: As the tepid reviews rolled in after launch, I understood where people were coming from, but I couldn't square them with my experience.

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Fortnite season 8 is about to begin, here's what you need to know - CNET

We only have a few clues about what Fortnite season 8 will bring, but judging from the past, we're about to see some big changes.

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Cohen says Trump knew about WikiLeaks' dump video - CNET

Former Trump attorney Michael Cohen tells Congress he witnessed a call giving the president a heads-up on the leak of Democratic Party emails by WikiLeaks.

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BlackBerry lawsuit accuses Twitter of patent infringement - CNET

Suit accuses Twitter of co-opting mobile messaging technology.

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How to watch SpaceX, NASA launch Crew Dragon to ISS this weekend - CNET

Tune in for the SpaceX Demo-1 mission and witness history in the making.

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Galaxy S10: Here's what photos from the camera look like - CNET

OK, the Galaxy S10 Plus to be specific.

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Confused by USB names? Get used to it as USB 3.1 becomes 3.2 - CNET

The group behind the technology is trying to simplify labels, though.

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The 2020 Jaguar XE gets its first major visual refresh - Roadshow

The updated XE debuts at the Geneva show and goes on sale this summer.

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2020 Mercedes-Benz GLC gets more power, more tech at the Geneva Motor Show - Roadshow

The updated GLC300 will arrive in the US later this year.

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Apple confirms earlier rumor of layoffs at its Titan self-driving car program - CNET

Cupertino is reportedly laying off 190 employees, effective April 16.

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Apple's streaming TV service: Release date, price and shows to expect - CNET

Just where is Apple putting that $1 billion investment in TV programming? Apple may reveal its plans March 25.

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Senate demands Google CEO answer for hidden Nest microphone - CNET

Congress wants Sundar Pichai to follow up on its questions by March 12.

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Samsung Galaxy S10+ now receiving first software update

Highlights: The Samsung Galaxy S10+ is getting its first software update The update enables the user to remap the Bixby button It also enables a new feature called Instagram Mode   It’s only been a few days since the global launch of the Samsung Galaxy S10+ and we’re already seeing a software update roll out to it. According to a recent report by Sammobile, the new Samsung flagship is getting an option to remap the Bixby button and a feature called Instagram Mode, apart from a list of bug fixes and stability improvements. Owners in France and Germany have reportedly already received the new update. Let’s review the known list of changes and additions in the Galaxy’s new software update. The most notable change is the ability to remap the Bixby button on the side of the phone’s body. It can be reprogrammed to launch an application of your choice, such as Facebook or WhatsApp. Samsung has been criticised in the past for removing the Bixby button remap feature from the software of some of its models. Users should appreciate its return on the Galaxy S10+. The software update enables Instagram Mode, a feature that allows users to capture and upload images directly to Instagram Stories from the device’s native camera app. According to Samsung CEO DJ Koh, Instagram Mode on the new Samsung Galaxy flagship delivers “the best Instagram experience on the market.” The update also brings a number of bug fixes and stability improvements, including improved fingerprint recognition and the overall stability of the default camera app. The top-of-the-line variant of the Samsung Galaxy S10+ is powered by a 7-nanometre Exynos 9820 chipset and 12GB of RAM. Internal storage is 1TB, with an option to expand it by 512GB. The Galaxy S10+ runs Android 9.0 Pie out of the box and ships with a 4,100mAh battery. Its display measures 6.4 inches diagonally and has a maximum resolution of 1440 x 3040 pixels. The Samsung Galaxy S10+ is expected to launch in India on March 6 at a starting price of Rs 73,990. Inline image courtesy: Sammobile   Related Read: Specs Comparison: Samsung Galaxy S10+ vs Apple iPhone XS Max

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Porsche Macan to go fully electric

Highlights: The next generation of Porsche Macan will be all electric, announces Porsche It will share the Porsche Taycan's 800-volt architecture Porsche predicts half of its models to be electric by 2025   The Macan is Porsche’s top-selling luxury crossover SUV. It’s been around in the market since 2014 and is now about to receive a major transformation. According to a news release sent out by Porsche, the next generation of the Porsche Macan will be fully electric. The big SUV joins the recently announced Taycan in this new electric revolution, on which Porsche will be investing six billion euros by the year 2022. According to Porsche, the decision to build the next-generation Macan at the company’s Leipzig plant was taken in early July last year. The German car maker believes the Macan “fires the starting pistol for electrification” of cars at Porsche. Like the Taycan, which—in turn—shares its architecture with the Audi e-tron GT, the Macan will use a newly developed 800-volt architecture. By 2025, Porsche expects fifty percent of all its vehicles to be electric. “Over the next ten years we will focus on a drive mix consisting of even further optimised petrol engines, plug-in hybrid models, and purely electrically operated sports cars. Our aim is to take a pioneering role in technology, and for this reason we will continue to consistently align the company with the mobility of the future,” commented Oliver Blume, Chairman of the Board of Management at Porsche AG. About two years ago, the German car maker expanded its production facility at Leipzig to double its production rate. The factory currently pushes out 90,000 units every year for global markets, as opposed to the 40,000 units it pushed out when the plant began operation in 2014. Recent news around the electric Porsche Taycan suggested that it would get a Turbo version at the time of its launch. It will be a 600-horsepower performance variant that’s expected to cost about Rs 90,95,000 in India. If Porsche follows the same variant separation strategy with the other electric cars in its stable, the Macan too could get a Turbo version. The name Turbo once referred to variants with turbocharged engines but has now evolved to refer to the top-end version in any Porsche model, electric vehicles included. Cover image courtesy: Porsche AG   Related Read: All-electric Porsche Taycan to get a 'Turbo' variant, will start from $130,000

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Xiaomi Redmi Note 7, Note 7 Pro, Redmi Go to launch today: How to watch live and what to expect

The Xiaomi Redmi Note 7 will be launched in India on Thursday. The company is hosting an event in New Delhi to unveil the mid-ranger that is already available in China. Like with every Redmi Note device, Xiaomi plans to cut ahead of the competition this time as well. The Redmi Note 7 offers a 48-megapixel camera on the back, which Xiaomi hopes will set the phone apart from the rest. The company is also expected to announce the Redmi Note 7 Pro and the Redmi Go at the event. Over the course of the past few months, multiple leaks and rumours have given us an idea how the Redmi Note 7 Pro will turn out to be. Before the phone launches in India, here’s everything you need to know — How to watch the Xiaomi Redmi Note 7 launch live? The Redmi Note 7 launch is expected to start at 11:30AM. The event will be streamed live on Xiaomi’s social pages on YouTube, Twitter and Facebook. Digit will also go live from the event, so you can tune into our Instagram page to get all the action. What does the Redmi Note 7 offer? The Redmi Note 7 went official in China a month ago. The phone offers a 48MP Samsung GM-1 sensor on the back coupled with a 5MP depth sensor for portrait photos. On the front, there’s a 13MP selfie camera, housed in a waterdrop notch. There’s a 6.3-inch LCD display with Gorilla Glass 5 on top. The phone is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 660 SoC and is offered in three RAM/storage variants. Xiaomi is expected to launch the phone in 3/32GB, 4/64GB and 6/64GB variants. Xiaomi also claimed the phone to have exceptional durability thanks to the protective glass on both sides. The phone also packs a 4,000mAh battery and now finally supports fast charging. The Redmi Note 7 is expected to come in a range of gradient colour finishes including red, blue and black and twilight gold. Will Xiaomi launch the Redmi Note 7 Pro? At the China launch of the Redmi Note 7, Xiaomi did tease the launch of the pro variant. After that, Lu Weibing, Redmi General Manager, shared the Redmi Note 7 Pro will be announced after the Xiaomi Mi 9. The Mi 9 launched on February 20 and the timeline adds up. Furthermore, we have seen multiple leaks of the phone detailing the specs and features. Based on the latest leak by smartphone leakster @ishanagarwal24, the Redmi Note 7 Pro is expected to bring the flagship Sony IMX586 sensor with 48MP resolution and a 1/2-inch sensor size. If the recently launched Honor View 20 is anything to go by, the camera offers a good amount of detail and has features like pixel-binning to improve low-light photography. The form factor is expected to remain the same as the Redmi Note 7 — A 6.3-inch display with a waterdrop notch. However, under the hood, the phone is expected to pack the Snapdragon 675 SoC, which we saw debut in the Vivo V15 Pro. Based on our performance comparison, the chipset is much more powerful than the Snapdragon 660, sometimes even beating the Snapdragon 710. What about the Xiaomi Redmi Go? The Xiaomi Redmi Go is an Android-Go device made for the entry-level segment. It’s Xiaomi’s first smartphone with Android Go and is expected to run a toned-down version of MIUI. The phone went official with a 5-inch HD display and a Snapdragon 425 SoC under the hood. The phone is based on Android Oreo (Go Edition) and offers 1GB RAM and 8GB of expandable storage. On the back is an 8MP camera while the front houses a 5MP selfie shooter. The phone packs a 2,200mAh battery. Redmi Note 7, Redmi Note 7 Pro, Redmi Go Price The Xiaomi Redmi Note 7 was launched for an astoundingly low price of RMB 999 in China which roughly converts to Rs 10,000 in India. While the phone certainly won’t be priced that cheap, considering import duties that Xiaomi has to pay for the components, we expect the phone to be priced under Rs 15,000. The Redmi Note 7 Pro with the 48MP Sony sensor is expected to fetch a higher price. We expect the price to be around Rs 16,000. The entry-level Redmi Go is expected to be priced below the going market price of other Android Go phones like the Samsung Galaxy J2 Core and the Nokia 1. WinFuture reports the phone will be priced under 80 Euros in Europe, which rough converts to Rs 6,400 in India.

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Lite OS could be Microsofts answer to Googles Chrome OS

Highlights: Microsoft's new Lite OS could take on Chrome OS It will share its core with Windows 10   Rumours of a Microsoft equivalent to the well-established Chrome OS have been making rounds on the internet for a few weeks now. It has been referred to in the past as “Windows Lite” but it appears we have an accurate name now. Brad Sams of Petri believes Microsoft’s new operating system will be called Lite OS and is currently codenamed “Santorini”. Microsoft is reportedly working very hard to bring the software out as soon as possible. When it releases, Lite OS will target Chromebooks, which are mostly entry-level laptops that run Chrome OS. Though Lite OS is expected to be launched as a standalone operating system for PCs with basic specifications, it’s believed to share its core with Windows. The Petri writer went so far as to develop a mockup of Lite OS’ user interface. “The mockup I created at the top of this post is an accurate portrayal of what the OS looks like in its current iteration. Despite the updated UI, the OOBE (Out of Box Experience) is still similar to that of Windows 10,” writes Sams. While it may appear as if Microsoft is splitting its Windows 10 operating system into two streams (one for light users and another for heavy users), Sams is convinced that that’s not the case. Lite OS will eventually cover most of the functionality found in Windows 10 today. Lite OS is predicted to run only Universal Windows Platform (UWP) apps and Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) at the moment but may include support for traditional Win32 applications in the future. This isn’t Microsoft’s first attempt at creating a Windows spin-off that’s designed to run on entry-level PCs. Windows RT was born out of Windows 8.1 in 2012 in an attempt to cater to “thin and light PCs that have extended battery life and are designed for life on the go”. Windows RT was received rather badly during its time but there is a chance Lite OS will win where Windows RT failed. For beginners, both the quality and quantity of UWP apps on the Microsoft Store have increased. Also, Microsoft is working hard to make many traditional Win32 applications UWP apps. With any luck, laptops under the Rs 25,000 mark could ship with Lite OS in the near future instead of DOS or Linux. Inline image courtesy: Petri   Related Read: Windows 7 support to end in a year, Microsoft says

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Samsung Galaxy M30 with Exynos 7904 processor, triple rear cameras launched in India

Highlights: Samsung Galaxy M30 launched in India. The smartphone features the new Exynos 7904 processor. It comes equipped with a triple rear camera setup.   After teasing and revealing some aspects of the Samsung Galaxy M30, the company has launched the phone in India. It is the third device in Samsung’s M series of handsets and it brings a triple-rear camera to the sub 20k price segment. The Galaxy M30 is expected to go up against the Xiaomi Redmi Note 7 smartphone, which will launch tomorrow in India and is priced in the same range as the Redmi Note 7 is rumoured to be placed in. Highlights of the phone include a large 5000mAh battery and the new Exynos 7904 octa-core processor that it is powered by.  Samsung Galaxy M30 Specifications The Samsung Galaxy M30 is powered by the Exynos 7904 octa-core processor that is clocked at 1.8Ghz. It is the newest SoC by the company, which is debuting in a device. The phone comes in two variants. One with 4GB RAM, coupled with 64GB of internal storage and another with 6GB RAM with 128GB of onboard storage. The handset features a 6.4-inch Full HD+ Super AMOLED Infinity U display and will be available in Gradation Black and Gradation Blue colour models. The device sports a dedicated slot for microSD card and supports memory expansion till 512GB. It is backed by a large 5000mAh battery. Coming to the optics, the Galaxy M30 sports a 13MP + 5MP + 5MP triple rear-camera setup. Here, the 13MP sensor is the main camera with an f/1.9 aperture lens, while the 5MP sensor assists in capturing bokeh images. The other 5MP sensor is paired with an f/2.4 lens that enables shooting ultra-wide images. On the front, the device comes equipped with a 16MP sensor that is coupled with an f/2.0 aperture lens. It runs on Samsung Experience 9.5 and comes with Widevine L1 certification. It sports a fingerprint sensor on the rear and also comes with face unlock.  Samsung Galaxy M30 Pricing and Availability  The Samsung Galaxy M30 is priced at Rs 14,990 for the 4GB RAM, 64GB storage variant and is priced at Rs 17,990 for the 6GB RAM, 128GB version. It will go on sale via Samsung Shop and Amazon at 12 PM on March 7 in Gradation Black and Gradation Blue colour models.

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Samsung Galaxy M30 launching at 6PM today: Expected specs, pricing and all you need to know

Highlights: Samsung Galaxy M30 launching today in India at 6 PM. The company confirms it will feature a 6.4-inch Infinity U display, 5000mAh battery. The phone is expected to go up against the upcoming Xiaomi Redmi Note 7.   Samsung has been teasing the launch of its Galaxy M30 smartphone from some time now. It has now revealed that it will be launched at 6 PM today and hours ahead of the unveiling, the company has also revealed some of its specs. This comes after a dedicated microsite for the phone went up on Amazon, confirming that it will be available via the online retailer. Additionally, the tipster Ishaan Agarwal tweeted that the Galaxy M30 will go up for sale from March 5. The new smartphone is the company’s third device in its M-series lineup, which consists of the Galaxy M10 and Galaxy M20 smartphones.  Samsung Galaxy M30 Specifications As we mentioned earlier, the company has confirmed some specs of the Samsung Galaxy M30. The device features a 6.4-inch Infinity U display and is equipped with a triple rear camera. As per previous reports, the phone is expected to sport a Super AMOLED panel with a 2220X1080p resolution and the triple rear camera is speculated to feature 13MP (F1.9) + 5MP (F2.2) + 5MP (F2.2) sensors. On the front, it might feature a 16MP sensor with f/2.0 aperture.  Are you ready to feel the power? Rock the game with stunning 16.21cm (6.4”) Super AMOLED Infinity U Display, Triple Rear Camera & huge 5000mAh battery. Unveiling on 27th Feb at 6pm. Click: https://t.co/57ny7G2uk3 & https://t.co/ApWs8OavHH to get notified. #GalaxyM30 #IM3XPOWERD pic.twitter.com/SF01qGKaaG — Samsung Mobile India (@SamsungMobileIN) February 27, 2019 The Galaxy M30 is also confirmed to launch running on the new Exynos 7904 processor and 6GB RAM. There will be a 128GB internal version and it might also be launched in a 4GB RAM variant, coupled with 64GB of internal storage. Samsung has also confirmed a massive 5000mAh battery on the Galaxy M30 and the images reveal a rear-mounted fingerprint sensor. The phone will also support 15W fast charging and comes with a dedicated microSD card slot. Samsung Galaxy M30 Expected Pricing The Samsung Galaxy M30 is expected to go up against Xiaomi’s Redmi Note 7, which will be launched tomorrow in India. Going by the specs, the Galaxy M30 could be priced starting at Rs 15,000 in the country, however, we can’t be sure till the official announcement is made.  Related Reads: Samsung Galaxy M30 to launch on February 27 in India Samsung Galaxy S10e First Impressions: Compact and uncompromising Samsung Galaxy Fold unfolded in a 4-minute long video    

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Upcoming OnePlus flagship wont feature wireless charging, confirms Pete Lau

Highlights: Wireless charging won't debut on the upcoming OnePlus flagship, Pete Lau confirms. OnePlus believes the tech is not fast enough to match the 'Warp Charge' speeds. The next OnePlus phone is expected to be powered by the Snapdragon 855. OnePlus still believes wireless charging is at a nascent stage, and as such, the technology won’t feature in the upcoming OnePlus flagship, Pete Lau confirmed to CNET. Instead, the upcoming flagship, probably named the OnePlus 7, will come with Warp Charge, which Lau believes is “one of the best” in the industry. Until wireless charging is capable of delivering similar charging speeds without heating up, OnePlus won’t consider introducing the tech in its phones. However, Qualcomm did give a boost to the wireless charging standards by debuting Quick Charge for wireless charging at MWC 2019. Lau also stated OnePlus is working on making wireless charging faster without heating up, but didn’t reveal a specific timeline as to when we can see that in action on a OnePlus device. It’s also unlikely that OnePlus will adopt Qualcomm’s Quick Charge standards, given its Warp Charge speeds are much higher in comparison. The company did confirm the next OnePlus device will launch with the flagship Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 under the hood. The rest of the specs remain unknown, but it’s expected the phone will come with an Android 9-Pie based OxygenOS UI. A recently leaked photo even suggested the phone could be all-screen on the front, with a pop-up selfie camera. OnePlus also showcased its 5G prototype at the Qualcomm booth at MWC 2019. It’s covered in a case and one can only see the device’s screen. It’s confirmed to be powered by the Snapdragon 855 SoC and uses the Snapdragon X50 modem for 5G connectivity. The 5G flagship is expected to launch in May 2019 and could be priced $200-$300 higher than the previous OnePlus flagship. Related Reads: OnePlus 7 alleged live image leak shows off a notchless display OnePlus 5G prototype showcased at MWC 2019 OnePlus partners with Qualcomm to begin 5G trials in India, announces "5G Apps of Tomorrow" challenge

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Specs comparison: Samsung Galaxy M30 vs Galaxy M20

Samsung is all set to unveil its M30 in India today at 6 PM. As per the company, the phone will come with a 6.4-inch Super AMOLED display and a triple camera setup on the back that will also have an ultra-wide angle lens. The phone packs 5,000mAh battery that supports 15W fast charging. We are comparing the device with the Samsung newly launched Galaxy M20, which comes with a dual camera setup on the back and a display with a water drop notch. So, let’s compare these two phones on the basis of Samsung’s M30 expected price and specifications.    Display The Samsung Galaxy M30 is tipped to feature a 6.4-inch FHD+ AMOLED Infinity-U display. On the other hand, the Galaxy M20 sports a 6.3-inch display that offers a resolution of 1080 x 2340 pixels.  Processor, RAM, and storage Both the smartphones are powered by an Exynos 7904 octa-core processor, which are paired with 4GB RAM and 64GB internal memory that is expandable to up to 512GB via a microSD card.  Cameras The Samsung Galaxy M30 is expected to come with a triple camera setup on the back. It is tipped to feature a telephoto lens, a wide angle lens, and an ultra-wide angle sensor as well. On the front, the phone is rumored to come with a 16MP sensor. On the other side, the Galaxy M20 has a dual 13MP + 5MP camera setup on the back along with an 8MP unit on the front for clicking selfies.  Price  The Samsung Galaxy M20 is available in India at a price of Rs 12,990, while The Samsung Galaxy M30 will launch today in India at 6 PM. 

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Spotify India Free vs Premium: Comparing the two tiers

Highlights: Spotify officially launched in India. It offers free and premium subscription plans to users. Here’s how the two tiers compare.   Spotify has finally officially launched its services in India and it comes in both, free and premium, plans. The service can now be used in the country as a web app, desktop app, on iOS and Android devices without needing a VPN. The company has also priced it competitively as it starts at almost the same price as Apple Music, at Rs 119 per month, for users who have never opted for Spotify Premium previously, but what extra do you get when going for the premium account subscription over the free one? Which one would suit you better? These are some of the questions one will find answers to in this article, along with some more information on the newly launched online music streaming service.  Spotify Free VS Spotify Premium Same as many other music streaming services in India, Spotify also enables users to create a free account to stream music from. There is no charge levied on free account holders, however, one will encounter ads between songs. Ads are a basic way for any music streaming service to generate revenue and free Spotify users in other countries also encounter ads every four or five songs when listening to music. Additionally, they can only skip six songs in the span of an hour and Spotify employs shuffle play that disables users to select what they want to listen to and if one wants to listen to a particular track, they can add it to the queue and hope it comes on. Fortunately, Spotify has not implemented track skip limit or Shuffle Play in India, which means users here can skip and play the songs, all they want. However, upgrading to a premium Spotify account means there won’t be any annoying ads between songs. Additionally, there are some perks only a premium user gets to enjoy like the ability to download and listen to music offline and bumping up the audio playback quality to 320kbps. These features will help users to save up on data since the internet connectivity in India is still patchy in many areas.  So, does it make sense to upgrade to Spotify premium? Well, it depends. If you are someone who can’t bear ad interruptions while listening to music, or want to save data by downloading songs when streaming offline, then it makes complete sense to go for the Premium subscription. Additionally, keep in mind that Spotify is well known for using algorithms to curate playlists for users based on their mood. This is the key highlight of Spotify and we ourselves are impressed by how quickly the app learns from a user’s listening habits and plays favourable tracks accordingly. Spotify is offering a 30-day free Premium tier trial so that one can try it before shelling out Rs 119 per month for the service. Interestingly, the app’s premium service can also be availed for one day or a week, along with the regular one month, six months and one-year prepaid plans. For students, Spotify premium is available with a great discount as it starts at Rs 59 per month, just Rs 1 shy of what Apple Music offers for students.  Related Reads: Spotify officially launched in India, Premium plans start at Rs 119 per month  

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OnePlus partners with Qualcomm to begin 5G trials in India, announces 5G Apps of Tomorrow challenge

Highlights: OnePlus to start 5G trials in India with Qualcomm. The company will also be one of the first to bring a device powered by the Snapdragon 855 to India. OnePlus also announced the "5G apps of Tomorrow" challenge.   Even without releasing a new device, OnePlus has a big presence at this year’s MWC in Barcelona. The company is showcasing it’s 5G prototype device at the Qualcomm booth in the tradeshow where a company executive is demonstrating how cloud gaming will look on 5G. However, the 5G device that OnePlus has announced it will launch this year will be restricted to a select few markets for now where 5G is commercially available. In another announcement, OnePlus said the company has teamed up with Qualcomm to start 5G trials in India. 5G is still a distant dream in India as the spectrum allocation for the next-generation wireless networks is still due to happen. Even OnePlus didn’t delve deep into what the partnership means as of now. OnePlus reportedly began researching on 5G in 2016 and a year later in 2017, the company partnered with Qualcomm to develop a 5G-enabled device. Later in 2018, the company managed to set up a successful 5G connection to Qualcomm’s labs in San Diego. The company also announced it would be one of the first OEMs to bring the Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 chipset to India. Apart from this, OnePlus announced its “5G Apps of Tomorrow” challenge for Android developers, in partnership with Qualcomm. The winners of the challenge will receive 20,000 euros in cash along with other supporting resources. You can participate in the challenge by heading to OnePlus.com/5G. The microsite is open from today and closes on March 26. The winners will be decided by a panel of executives including the CEOs of OnePlus and EE, along with a community vote. Furthermore, the top 5 ideas of a 5G-enabled app will receive a paid-for trip to the OnePlus HQ in Shenzhen to sit down with Pete Lau to discuss their ideas, a OnePlus 5G device, access to 5G experts on the OnePlus forums, access to EE’s test environment and financial support for a year. Related Reads: OnePlus 5G prototype showcased at MWC 2019 OnePlus prototype device successfully sent out a tweet on a 5G network

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Energiser Power Max P18K Pop smartphone features 18000mAh battery, triple rear cameras

Highlights: Energiser Power Max P18K Pop has been announced at MWC 2019 The smartphone has a whopping 18,000mAh battery The device has a triple camera setup at the back and a dual front popup camera If battery life is of utmost importance to you then you can consider the Energiser Power Max P18K Pop. The 18K in the name doesn’t stand for 18k gold, rather the massive 18,000mAh battery that is powering the device. Yes, the smartphone has an 18,000mAh battery and as you can imagine, this makes the phone extremely thick. To put things into perspective, the smartphone is 3 to 3.5 iPhones thick. The battery on the Energiser Power Max P18K Pop is said to last for 200 hours of video playback, or 50 days of standby time. Energizer also says that the device supports fast charging. This is great but remember that the phone will take 8 to 9 hours to reach full charge.  Speaking of the specifications of the smartphone, it is powered by the Helio P70 chipset coupled with 6GB of RAM. At the back, the smartphone has a triple camera setup, which consists of a 12MP+5MP+2MP setup. The front has a dual selfie camera which is a 16+2MP popup camera. When it comes to storage, the device has 128GB built-in storage. It also sports a fingerprint sensor. The P18K is a dual-SIM smartphone. It has a 6.2-inch, Full HD+ display with an aspect ratio of 18:9 and is running on Android 9 Pie out of the box. According to Android Authority “The Power Max P18K Pop price will be set at 599 euros (Rs 49,000 approx. directly converted) when it’s launched in Europe this June”. There is no information on whether the device will make its way to india.  Having a smartphone with a 4,000, 5,000 or even a 5,300mAh battery is quite common. We have seen a few exceptions bringing in a larger battery, but an 18,000mAh battery is a first. Energiser may be trying to solve the battery problem in smartphones, but a lot of smartphone makers have taken a different route this year at MWC 2019. Samsung, Huawei, TCL and more have shown off their foldable phones at the event. And while these are all prototypes, some of the companies expect to ship these foldable phones to customers in 2019 itself. Could foldable phones be the next big evolution to smartphones? Also Read: MWC 2019 roundup: Every 5G smartphone announced at the event All the foldable smartphones announced so far at MWC 2019 MWC 2019: Meet Nubia Alpha, a 4-inch wearable smartphone

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Poco F1 now receiving Widevine L1 certification via MIUI Beta OTA update

Highlights: Poco F1 is now receiving the Widevine L1 certificate via a MIUI Beta OTA update. The DRM certificate will allow Poco F1 users to stream content in HD. However, the phone reportedly still can't stream HD content on Netflix. Standing true to its words, Xiaomi’s POCO F1 will soon receive the Widevine L1 certification via an OTA update. The certification is presently being rolled out via a MIUI Beta update to Poco F1 users who have signed up for the Beta program. With the Widevine L1 certification, Poco F1 users will be able to stream premium content in HD resolution. However, even after the update, the HD streaming is restricted to Amazon Prime Video and Hotstar. The smartphone is reportedly yet to receive certification for streaming HD content on Netflix.    Poco India General Manager, C.Manmohan revealed the news via a Tweet that states —    "Guys! You asked for it, we got it. #POCOF1 is now Widevine L1 certified. We have started rolling out an OTA update (version - 9.2.25) for beta users . Once the beta test is complete, we shall roll it in the upcoming stable updates. We really appreciate your patience.”   It was earlier assumed the Widevine L1 certification couldn’t be done via an OTA update as the unique key required to enable the feature needed to be installed via a certified PC. However, Google made an update in the way Widevine certification is received have allowed OTA provisioning since the middle of 2017. That was right after the time the OnePlus 5T was asked to be sent to the service center to get the upgraded DRM license. You can read more about how the process works here.    However, despite getting the upgraded certificate, the Poco F1 won’t be able to stream HD content on Netflix as Netflix reserves the right to allow devices to stream in HD, despite having the required Widevine L1 certification.    The update will be pushed out to all the users, once the beta testing of the feature is complete, according to POCO. Presently, the Poco F1 has Widevine L3 which only allows streaming in 540p on Hotstar, Amazon Prime Video and Netflix.   Related Reads:   Poco F1 is not the only smartphone to block HD streaming, no Xiaomi device can stream Netflix in HD

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Experiencing the ‘living heritage of humanity’ at the Kumbh Mela 2019: Separating fact from fiction

The tribute UNESCO paid to the Kumbh as the living heritage of humanity is what I saw at Prayagraj.

The post Experiencing the ‘living heritage of humanity’ at the Kumbh Mela 2019: Separating fact from fiction appeared first on Firstpost.

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SBI has found fraud worth Rs 7,951.3 crore involving 1,885 cases in April-December: RTI reply

In an RTI reply, SBI said, the first quarter reported 669 cases of fraudulent activities amounting to Rs 723.06 crore, the second quarter saw 660 cases involving an Rs 4,832.42 crore

The post SBI has found fraud worth Rs 7,951.3 crore involving 1,885 cases in April-December: RTI reply appeared first on Firstpost.

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India-Pakistan LIVE NEWS updates: Captured IAF pilot Abhinandan will be returned only when India reduces hostilities, claim reports

India-Pakistan LIVE NEWS updates: Pakistan government sources have told News18 that the timing of Wing Commander Abhinandan's return depends on border hostilities and when they end. "Pakistan will definitely return Wing Commander Abhinandan but India must engage on reducing tensions and hostilities," News18 quoted Pakistan sources as saying.

The post India-Pakistan LIVE NEWS updates: Captured IAF pilot Abhinandan will be returned only when India reduces hostilities, claim reports appeared first on Firstpost.

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Bohemian Rhapsody to get limited release in China, but reportedly without homosexual content

Even as Bohemian Rhapsody gears up for its China release, Twitterati wonders if the film's LGBTQ content would be edited out

The post Bohemian Rhapsody to get limited release in China, but reportedly without homosexual content appeared first on Firstpost.

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Narendra Modi says ‘India will live as one,… grow as one, fight and win as one’ amidst tensions with Pakistan

Modi remarked that "India will live as one, work as one, grow as one, fight as one and win as one". He also said that today he sees a new India which is much stronger, full of enthusiasm and has the will to do and die for the country.

The post Narendra Modi says ‘India will live as one,… grow as one, fight and win as one’ amidst tensions with Pakistan appeared first on Firstpost.

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Samsung Galaxy A50, Galaxy A30, Galaxy A10 launched from Rs 8,490 onwards

Samsung's 2019 Galaxy A series price in India starts at Rs 8,490 for the Galaxy A10 2GB RAM model

The post Samsung Galaxy A50, Galaxy A30, Galaxy A10 launched from Rs 8,490 onwards appeared first on Firstpost.

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Afghanistan vs Ireland, LIVE Cricket Score, 1st ODI at Dehradun

Follow live updates and full scorecard of the first one-day international between Afghanistan and Ireland at the Rajiv Gandhi International Stadium in Dehradun.

The post Afghanistan vs Ireland, LIVE Cricket Score, 1st ODI at Dehradun appeared first on Firstpost.

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Captain Marvel: Brie Larson, Samuel L Jackson, Orlando Bloom, Gemma Chan attend London premiere

Marvel Studios’ Captain Marvel is produced by Kevin Feige and directed by Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck

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Captain Marvel: Kevin Feige says Brie Larson’s superhero is MCU’s strongest, possibly more powerful than Thanos

Captain Marvel, starring Brie Larson, is the first female-led Marvel Cinematic Universe film.

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New Zealand vs Bangladesh: Neil Wagner’s fifer helps Kiwis dominate first day despite Tamim Iqbal’s ton

The first day of first Test likely will still be remembered more for Tamim Iqbal's masterful batting than for Neil Wagner's pugnacious bowling, though it ensured New Zealand ended the day in a commanding position.

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Huawei P30 and P30 Pro press renders leak in full

Huawei is launching its P30 flagships in Paris next month. There might be one month until the unveiling, but press renders already leaked, revealing the key features of the Huawei P30 and Huawei P30 Pro. Huawei P30 Pro in Black, Twilight, Aurora The Huawei P30 Pro will have four cameras and is expected to bring 10x hybrid zoom - telephoto lens, coupled with a 5x zoom. The setup is quite unusual, with one shooter, likely the ToF sensor positioned aside from the three main snappers. We also see the curved edges of the front - looks like Huawei P30 Pro will adopt the Mate...

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Razer Phone 2 dropping to $499 for a limited time; Android Pie also rolls out

The Razer Phone 2 is finally receiving the Android Pie update. Those with an unlocked variant of the Razer Phone 2 should begin to receive the OTA notification as of February 27. Since this phone runs mostly stock Android with minimal customizations, most of the changes and updates are those that come with the vanilla version of Android Pie. The gesture "pill" is now an alternative to the traditional nav bar. In addition, the update brings Adaptive Battery features, new volume controls, a new power menu, access to the Digital Wellbeing app. As for video, the Razer Phone 2 will...

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More vivo iQoo leaks: hands-on video and labeled graphic

Just this last week, we began to learn more about vivo's sub brand: iQoo. Just today, we heard about a benchmark score and a few screenshots showing that the phone charges in 47 minutes. The brand's first smartphone release is coming very soon and there are two more new leaks with a labeled graphic of the device and a snipped of a hands-on video that leaked. The video part of the leak was reposted in a tweet which shows parts of a hands-on video made by a Chinese outlet. The video shows the phone in two different colors: blue and red. We also see some close-ups of the triple cameras and...

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Samsung Galaxy S10+ review

Punch out a hole in the display, add an extra camera on the back, do the mandatory yearly updates to the internals and you'd end up with a Samsung Galaxy S10+ - that is, if you started out with an S9+ if it wasn't obvious. Only that would be oversimplifying it, and we'd rather explore the nuances.

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Samsung Galaxy S10+ teardown reveals tiny under-display fingerprint scanner

We finally get to see the insides of the Samsung Galaxy S10+. And on the contrary to most new phones, this one has a lot to show. The teardown begins the usual way with some pre-heating and prying up. The good news is that the screen and the back plate both attach to the mid-frame so you can easily change the screen without the need of a full disassembly. That's at least what we could gather from the first video. With the disassembly process advancing, more cool things start to pop up. It appears that Samsung has applied a thick thermal paste and some sort of heat sink along with...

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Amazon reveals Samsung Galaxy M30 pricing and availability in India

The Samsung Galaxy M30 will go on sale in India starting March 7, 12PM IST. The phone will be available in two variants; the 64GB model with 4GB RAM is priced at INR 14,990 ($210) while the 128GB model with 6GB RAM is priced at INR 17,990 ($252). The information was revealed today by Amazon India, which will be the online retailer for the smartphone. You can sign up to receive a notification when the phone is up for purchase. The Galaxy M30 is a new mid-range smartphone from Samsung with a 6.4-inch FHD+ AMOLED display with a teardrop notch. It runs on the Exynos 7904 chipset with...

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Xiaomi Mi 9 availability in Europe expands to the Netherlands

Xiaomi Mi 9 was introduced at MWC 2019 in Spain, Italy, and France with an attractive price tag of €450 for the 6/64 GB variant, going as high as €499 if you opted for the version with 128 GB storage. The company does not have a Mi Store in the Netherlands, so it is up to retailers to offer the device, and that's what local company Belsimpel is doing. The Dutch retailer is offering the Xiaomi Mi 9 with 6 GB RAM and 128 gigs of storage for €549 with immediate shipping. The retailer is also offering subscriptions with the device. If you go for TELE2, you'll get 20 GB data per...

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Lenovo Z6 Pro will be a 5G-capable smartphone with HyperVision camera

Even though most of Lenovo's handsets at this year's MWC in Barcelona were already introduced at least a month prior to the congress, a Lenovo representative was nice to give us a sneak peek into what the company has in store for us in the near future. The spokesperson began with some short-term and long-term predictions of how 5G connectivity will change the way we interact on the Internet. He said that high-resolution videos and images would dominate the web in a few years, so Lenovo is gearing up to meet the market's demand. The upcoming Lenovo Z6 Pro smartphone will not only be...

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vivo iQOO fully charging under 50 minutes, leak shows

Vivo's recently announced sub-brand iQOO will launch its first smartphone on March 1. The company has already confirmed some of its features - one of which is the 44W fast charging. And, some snapshots that have leaked online show us that this charging tech will fully charge the phone under 50 minutes. These snapshots show the battery level on vivo iQOO smartphone going from 1 to 100% in 46 minutes. It charges up to 50% in 16 minutes but takes almost double time to go from 50 to 100%. Well, this is the natural behavior across the majority of the fast charging technologies as their...

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Asus reveals which Zenfones will be updated to Android 9 Pie

Asus has unveiled the official 2019 roadmap for the Android 9.0 Pie updates of its Zenfone lineup. Unfortunately, the timing doesn't get any more specific than "2019". A couple of those - the Zenfone 5 flagship duo - are already running the latest Android version. Another one, the ROG Phone was spotted doing test runs, so its update can't be far away. Here's the full lineup:       Product Name Model Updated?       ZenFone 5 ZE620KL Yes       ZenFone 5Z ZS620KL Yes       ASUS ROG Phone ZS600KL ...

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Sony Xperia 10 and 10 Plus available in Europe, Xperia L3 too

The Xperia 10 duo was supposed to go on sale on Monday, just after it was unveiled. Well, they are not on time, but they are here now. The Sony Xperia 10 Plus (Dual SIM) can be yours for €430 in mainland Europe. The UK gets the single SIM version instead, that's for £350. The smaller Sony Xperia 10 (dual SIM) is €350. The UK once again gets the single-SIM model instead, priced at £300. Sony Xperia 10 Plus • Sony Xperia 10 • Sony Xperia L3 The entry-level Sony Xperia L3 launched alongside those two. It's €200 (dual SIM) and &poud;170 (single SIM) in mainland Europe and the...

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GSMA names Mate 20 Pro best phone, Google's Night Sight most disruptive tech

Now that the Mobile World Congress is at its penultimate day, it's time for GSMA to issue the Global Mobility of Employees (GLOMO) awards. The GLOMO awards cover a wide spectrum of the industry so we'll focus on what matters to us - Mobile. Starting with the best smartphone. A panel of judges chose the Huawei Mate 20 Pro. For Best Overall Mobile Consumer Innovation GSMA gave the nod to Epic Games for their Fortnite Franchise. Samsung won the Best Wearable Mobile Technology for its Galaxy Watch. Google won the award for Disruptive Device Innovation for Night Sight, which...

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Possible Huawei P30 Pro camera samples posted by company's product manager

Bruce Lee - no, not the actor, the Product Manager at Huawei - posted four photos of a new 5G cell tower near the MWC venue in Barcelona. The cell tower was set up by Huawei and Vodafone, but the photos are much more interesting than the tower itself. There's speculation that the photos were taken with a Huawei P30 Pro. The vanilla Huawei P30 is expected to get the triple camera of the Mate 20 Pro while the P30 Pro should have a new quad camera. They go from what appears to be an ultra-wide angle shot to a zoomed in view (the last image almost certainly uses digital zoom)....

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Samsung Galaxy S10+ first software update rolling out

The Samsung Galaxy S10+ is just a few days old but it's already getting a software update to fix some critical software and security issues. And more importantly, it allows you to remap the Bixby button. According to the changelog, the update fixes several small and critical vulnerabilities tied with Android OS in general and Samsung's own firmware. It also takes care of some annoying issues with the default Camera app and improves the accuracy and speed of the under-display fingerprint reader. We've had our fare share of problems with the new tech and we are eager to see how Qualcomm's...

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Redmi Note 7 fails spectacularly at an actual durability test

Redmi Note 7 arrived with an impressively low price and 48 MP camera, and expectedly sold in 1 million units in just 30 days. The company president shared plenty of scripted videos from China where the device was getting abused, but today JerryRigEverything posted its durability test, revealing many weak points of the $150 smartphone. The bend test revealed the weak spots of the plastic frame are around the power key and next to the SIM tray. A phone might bend accidentally if sit on it while it is in your back pocket, rendering the LCD of the Redmi Note 7 useless. The back is covered...

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The name of the new USB standard changes to USB 3.2 Gen 2x2

The tech industry has a chronic problem when it comes to naming things - it starts confusing and keeps getting worse. This brings us to USB 3.2 Gen 2x2. The standard was announced in 2017 but this change in branding is a new plot twist. USB 3.1 is no more, just like USB 3.0 doesn't exist. Instead there's USB 3.2 Gen 1 (5Gbps, formerly USB 3.0), USB 3.2 Gen 2 (10Gbps, USB 3.1 originally) and USB 3.2 Gen 2x2. So not only is the USB-IF erasing the names of the old standards from existence, it can't even count up to 3 without getting weird. Okay, in some ways it makes sense. USB 3.2 Gen 2x2...

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Samsung starts mass producing world's first 512GB eUFS 3.0 storage solution

Not long after the announcement of the new Samsung Galaxy S10-series, the company is moving forward with another big announcement. One would argue that it's just as important for the whole mobile industry. We are talking about the first 512GB eUFS 3.0 storage delivering great performance gains over the previous generation. The new 512GB eUFS 3.0 chips are already in mass production and outperform the eUFS 2.1 chips twofold. The executive vice president of Memory Sales and Marketing at Samsung Electronics went even further and said that the new standard finally catches up with today's...

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New Xiaomi Black Shark appears in a hands-on photo

Xiaomi's gaming smartphone series Black Shark is expected to have a new addition to the portfolio in the next month or two. We know it runs Snapdragon 855 with 8 GB RAM and Android Pie, and now we have a leaked hands-on photo of the device. #Xiaomi #blackshark Xiaomi Black Shark 2 leak pic.twitter.com/1IPPT8qTgi— Xiaomishka (@xiaomishka) February 27, 2019 The Black Shark 2 (name is yet to be confirmed) follows the design of the first Black Shark and the successor Black Shark Helo - dark with tight green lines. The dual camera will be positioned in the upper left corner, and even if...

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Samsung, Huawei agree to settle two-year old patent dispute in U.S. court

China's Huawei Technologies and South Korea's Samsung Electronics have agreed to settle a two-year old patent dispute in the United States, court documents show.

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BlackBerry sues Twitter for patent infringement

The lawsuit said Twitter wrongly sought to compensate for being a "relative latecomer" to mobile messaging by co-opting Blackberry's inventions for such services as the main Twitter application and Twitter Ads, infringing six of the company's patents.

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How to locate your ‘silent’ iPhone

Here’s our guide, that can help users find their iPhone even when it’s silent.

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10 things about how LinkedIn is used for 'sextortion' scam

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Facts not fears should decide Huawei's future in Europe, say analysts

Facts not fears should decide the future of telecoms network security in Europe, industry leaders and policy chiefs said this week, brushing off US calls for a ban on Chinese vendors.

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Samsung, Huawei agree to settle two-year old patent dispute

China's Huawei Technologies and South Korea's Samsung Electronics have agreed to settle a two-year old patent dispute in the United States, court documents show.

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Bharti Airtel teams up with Nokia to upgrade its data centres

Finnish telecommunication giant Nokia on Wednesday said Bharti Airtel would deploy solution from Nokia's Nuage Networks to upgrade its data centres.

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DoT to "carefully study" if China's Huawei can be a threat to India

As Chinese telecom gear makers face heat globally over alleged security risks, Department of Telecom (DoT) Wednesday said it will "carefully" study the issue on which many countries have raised concerns.

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India must make its own chips for data security, says Telecom Secretary

She was speaking after the unveiling of India's first indigenous semiconductor chips by a Bengaluru based company, Signalchip.

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India-Pakistan tensions: Check these 7 things before believing the WhatsApp messages you get

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How to select channels on Airtel Digital TV under the new TRAI rules

According to the new TRAI rules, users can choose their own channels and build a custom pack for their DTH connection. We have already described the method of customising the channels on Tata Sky DTH connection. Now, we are here with Airtel DTH guide on how to select new channels based on the new TRAI rules.

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Google makes AI grammar checker available for all G-Suite users

US Internet giant Google has said its artificial intelligence (AI)-based grammar checker, corporate web tools and services are available for all users of G Suite, to help them improve writing.

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Sunil Bharti Mittal on number game with Reliance Jio, data tariffs, challenges of 5G and more

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New trailer for Dark Phoenix doesn’t bode well for the X-Men

The latest trailer is out for what could be the final installation in this iteration of the X-Men franchise — and things don’t look great (either for our heroes or for the franchise).

The Dark Phoenix saga is one of the most famous (and well-loved) narrative arcs in the comic book series long history, and one that would always prove tricky to reproduce on the big screen.

Setting aside the split over the rights to the franchise (which was owned by Fox, while Disney owned the rest of the Marvel Cinematic Universe), the Phoenix saga in the comics depends heavily on some plot elements that have yet to be introduced to the MCU.

Fox is only getting this second shot at recreating the storyline because the first time it was attempted it was a colossal mess.

After two strong showings (both creatively and at the box office), Fox’s latest foray into the wild world of the Uncanny X-Men team hit a stumbling block with the messy and misguided “Apocalypse”.

There’s still the individual narrative arcs of characters like “Logan” and “Deadpool”, which were both successes at the box office.

However, the franchise needs a good box office showing to sustain it. At least it has the beyond stellar cast of James McAvoy as Professor Xavier, Jennifer Lawrence as Mystique, Michael Fassbender as Magneto, plus “Game of Thrones” star Sophie Turner, who’s returning as Jean Grey.

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Go-Jek’s Get app officially launches in Thailand as Southeast Asia expansion continues

Go-Jek is extending its reach in Southeast Asia after its Thailand-based unit made its official launch, which included the addition of a new food delivery service.

Get, which is the name for Go-Jek business in Thailand, started out last year offering motorbike taxi on-demand services to a limited part of Thai capital city Bangkok, now the company said it has expanded the bikes across the city and added food and delivery options. Get’s management team is composed of former Uber staffers while CEO Pinya Nittayakasetwat was recruited from chat app Line’s food delivery business.

Over the last two months, Get claims to have completed two million trips in the past two months. There’s no word on when Get will add four-wheeled transport options, however. On the food side, Get is claiming to have 20,000 merchants on its platform but there are some issues. Rumming through the app, I found a number of listed restaurants that didn’t include menus. In those instances, customers have to input their dish and price which makes it pretty hard to use.

Grab is the dominant player in Thailand, where it offers taxis, private cars, motorbikes, delivery and food across eight markets in Southeast Asia. Go-Jek rose to success in its native Indonesia, where it began offering motorbikes on demand but has expanded to cover taxi, cars, food, general services on-demand and fintech. Its investors include Google, Tencent, Meituan and Sequoia India.

That’s the same playbook Grab is using, but Go-Jek is taking its time with its market expansions. Thailand represents its third new market beyond Indonesia, following launches in Vietnam and Singapore. The Philippines is another market where Go-Jek has voiced a desire to be present — it has even made an acquisition there — but regulatory issues are holding up a launch.

Regional expansion doesn’t come cheap and Go-Jek is in the midst of raising $2 billion to finance these moves. It recently closed $1 billion from existing investors, and Deal Street Asia reports that it could raise as much as $3 billion for the entire Series F round. That’s likely in response to Grab’s own fundraising plans. The Singapore-based company closed $2 billion last year, but it is looking to increase that total to $5 billion with a major injection from SoftBank’s Vision Fund a key piece of that puzzle.

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How Disney Built Star Wars, in real life

From the moment that Disney announced its acquisition of Lucasfilm, the question on every fan’s mind was “when will they build Star Wars in real life?”

While most assumed that they would do it eventually, they probably weren’t aware that in 2013 even as work began on the first movie of the ‘final’ trilogy, work also commenced on the early planning of Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge. That initial team of a handful of people would eventually grow to over 4,000.

Over the course of the past 5 years, Walt Disney Imagineering has been hard at work making the world of Star Wars a reality on Earth. In two locations, California and Florida, Black Spire outpost on the planet of Batuu is now under construction. It’s an enormous several-billion-dollar bet that people will want to visit a place very similar to the ones that they’ve seen on the screen for decades.

In some ways, this project seems like the safest bet ever. The confluence of rabid fans of Star Wars and disciples of Disney’s particular flavor of amusement park alone feels like it could fuel the demand for the two park additions for years. But the ambitions of Walt Disney Imagineering staff and Parks management are stratospherically high for what is the largest single land expansion ever in a US Disney park. And the financial results required from these additions will require Disney to draw not just the loyalist crowd, but to convince a wide and deep array of park visitors to spend the day in a hyper-faithful reconstruction of a fictional far away galaxy.

To do this, Disney’s Imagineers have spent over five years planning and two years building the outposts that will open this year in its two US parks.

Last week, I got to spend three days talking to those Imagineers, partners from Lucasfilm and management about the inspiration, planning, tools, design and construction efforts. I also visited the construction site of Star Wars Land in Disneyland, California to take in the size, scale and environment of Batuu and its two major attractions.

“We’re really being very ambitious with what we do with Star Wars,” says Disney Portfolio Executive at Walt Disney Imagineering, Scott Trowbridge. “This location is over 14 acres. It is basically a small city in our parks. All the amazing architecture…the ships, the aliens, the droids, the creatures, everything that makes Star Wars Star Wars, all coming together so that our guests can have an opportunity to live that dream of living their Star Wars story.”

At risk of being too susceptible to marketing speak, I’d have to agree with this particular statement. What is being built here has little parallel in terms of immersion and ambition in an amusement park or out. And it’s going to blow Star Wars fans, casual and involved, away.

The nuts and bolts

If you’re familiar with what Disney has said about its “Star Wars lands” so far, then some of the following might be a refresher, but I think that some context about what they’re trying to build is important before we talk about the how.

Covering 14 acres individually at both Disneyland, Anaheim and Disney’s Hollywood Studios in Florida, the lands are pieces of the planet Batuu, and they host Black Spire Outpost, a village with shops, eateries, villagers and a First Order advance post. Outside of the village, you can also find the Resistance encampment with its ad-hoc infrastructure, rag-tag starfighters and equipment. The lands house two major attractions — Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance and Millennium Falcon: Smuggler’s Run.

The entire land has been designed from the ground up to be immersive. The Disney cast members that inhabit Batuu will dress in authentic costumes and can pick and choose their own garments and accessories from a selection. They will be encouraged to have an understanding of the village, the various factions at play from the resistance to the First Order to the underbelly of smugglers operating there. The food is completely new, and it all has backstory as well. You won’t have pork ribs, you’ll have Kaadu ribs — the non-famous creature famously ridden by famously hated Jar Jar Binks. You’ll drink blue (and green) milk and cocktails at the seedy cantina (yes, with alcohol). The signage is all in-universe as much as possible, the products for sale have been created from scratch just for Batuu and will be sold nowhere else — and they all have a ‘found’ or ‘crafted’ vibe with minimal packaging.

The name of the game is transportive.

Transportation to Batuu

One of the over-arching themes throughout the discussions over the course of several days was the concept of transportation. How do you convey the feeling of being transported from the worlds of Disneyland and Earth to the world of Star Wars.

That begins with the decision to make the location for the lands a new planet.

“Why not make a place that is very familiar from the classic Star Wars films, a Tatooine, a Hoth, or one of those places? The answer really is we know those places, we know those stories that happen there, and we know that we’re not in them,” said Trowbridge. “This place, Black Spire Outpost, is an opportunity. It’s designed from the very get‑go to be a place that invites exploration and discovery, a place that invites us to become a character in the world of Star Wars, and, to the extent that we want to, to participate in the stories of Star Wars.”

 

One of the primary drivers for the decision was also to create some sense of equanimity between hardcore fans and casual attendees.

“I want to walk into this land and be in the same level as everyone else, from the really hardcore Star Wars fan to someone who knows nothing about Star Wars,” Managing Story Editor at WDI Margaret Kerrison recalls saying in the first pitch meeting she attended for Star Wars land. “I want to have that urgency to explore, to discover, to run around every corner, and to meet every single droid and alien in this land. I want to not feel like I’m at a disadvantage because I don’t know all the nitty‑gritty details as a hardcore Star Wars fan would know.”

Walking through one of the entrances to Batuu, guests should feel a bit of compression and then decompression, says Executive Creative Director, WDI Chris Beatty. Coming in from Frontierland, Critter Country or just outside Fantasyland, you’re presented with ‘laser cut’ rock tunnel that creates a blank slate that then opens up into a cinematically framed vista that varies depending on your entrance. For the middle tunnel, you get a peek at some of the architecture, for instance and then boom, you’re presented with ships in the foreground, buildings, tall ancient spires, ships perched atop the buildings, canopies sawing in the wind. Shot established, you’re in Black Spire Outpost.

There are several of these ‘reveal’ moments throughout the land. The first time you see the resistance encampment, your first glimpse of the Millennium Falcon. Photographic moments, but also establishing moments, grounding you in the place you’re in.

Having stood in that vantage, even with construction going on all around, I can tell you it’s incredibly effective. There is no hint or trace of the rest of the park here. The vegetation, the meticulous weathering and rockscapes and the eerily familiar yet newly remixed shapes of Star Wars buildings and accessories make you feel like this is another place that you know.

The land is constructed using a blend of familiar techniques and newly minted ones. In some ways, Disney’s Pandora – The World of Avatar at Walt Disney World and its in-theme dining, open spaces and rides feels like a test run for how far it could push themed worlds. Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge feels like an additive result of learnings from a land that has ‘native’ merchandise and foods and tries to keep as much as possible ‘in story’.

Before they could begin to build, though, Imagineers had to build the tools to do so.

Building Star Wars

Headquartered in the compound of low beige and salmon colored buildings making up Grand Central Business Park in Glendale, California, Walt Disney Imagineering (WDI) is a wonderland of mad tinkers, costumers, roboticists, simulations engineers and historians. The only Disney design and development organization founded by Walt Disney himself as WED Enterprises (and later sold to the Disney company in a somewhat controversial move for the time). Since then, it has proven to be so influential around the world through its application of theming and robotics that the term Imagineering is synonymous with the basic concept of world building.

One of the things that you have to understand about the way that Imagineering works is that they waste as little effort as possible. The imagination is always a hundred times more creative, complex and ambitious than the reality, and to even get a tiny chunk of that in front of guests Imagineers have to constantly find ways to work within constraints of time, space, money and, yes, the laws of physics.

In order to get the job done, they often build their own tools or cobble together solutions for problems out of a combination of off-the-shelf hardware and custom built components. It feels a bit odd to describe it this way, because there is certainly pride involved, but building for Imagineering is remarkably ego free. It’s not ‘our way or no way’ it’s ‘whatever works’. This commitment to making the illusion complete for the viewer no matter what the source of the solution is has led to some really fascinating advances from Disney R&D and Imagineering.

You only have to look at the procession from a couple of metal slugs attached to a servo through to full on humanoid stunt doubles to see what the kind of teasing out of technical applications to storytelling problems happen inside Imagineering.

For the Galaxy’s Edge project, one of the first problems to be solved was how to manage such a complex undertaking inside WDI and in partnership with Lucasfilm.

This was largely due to the major difference between this project and any that Disney has undertaken in the past: the intimate involvement of all departments from the beginning. People from props, set dressing, construction, merchandising, food, ride systems and technical departments all worked together from ideation onwards. On a normal production, they are typically brought in at various phases — but for Batuu, everyone had to be on the same page from the very beginning.

If Disney wanted this to be a truly immersive experience it had to feel organically integrated and the conversation had to be lengthy and continuous so that set design served vending and vending served story and story served ride systems and engineering. They all had to be in lock step.

One of the major tools Imagineering used to keep everyone on the same project page is their BIM (building information modeling) tool. The tool takes a combination of 2D plans, 3D models, infrastructure and set dressing information and combines them into one massive interlocking source of truth for all departments to pull from. Teams were able to drill down from an overview of the land in 3D to the design plans for a specific doorway control panel.

Basically, it’s foundational geometry from across the project that’s then fed into the Unreal engine and presented in 3D. Like a 3D world from a game, but it’s a real place with real plumbing, architecture and technology underneath.

“When we saw the level of complexity that we were faced with when we started this project, we understood that we would need to use all the tools at our disposal. What the plan was is that we would essentially build a digital replica of the entire project. We built the planet before we actually built the planet,” said Sanne Worthing, Manager of BIM & VDC Technology, WDI. “It allows the creative designers to make decisions. It allows our contractors and the guys actually out in the field to make decisions before they actually have to go through and do these things. It gives you a lot of planning time. It helps avoid some of the more complicated and costly problems out in the field.”

BIM allowed the teams to do everything from testing how things would interlock in 3D to seeing where cranes could be placed during construction. The BIM reconstruction also fed into a system that WDI built in virtual reality to simulate the park.

“Using Unreal, we were able to take from all different parts of our attraction and put the moving pieces together. That means putting in our media that we would get from ILM, our partners there, getting our animation for our animated figures. Every piece of our puzzle to create our attraction, we put into a virtual reality simulation,” says April Warren, Show Programmer for WDI. “We’re able to look at it and make quick iterations with our creative team to be able to find things that we wouldn’t find normally until we were in the field and solve those problems early, or to be able to find out something just wasn’t working for us creatively and we wanted to change that.”

WDI has been using its own VR simulation system for a while, I first saw it a couple of years ago when it was being fleshed out. It feels very similar to flying around inside a simulator. It allows the Imagineers to look at the land from all sides, swooping through projects and highlighting elements of various types from infrastructure to set dressing. More importantly, it allows them to get as clear a picture as possible of what it will look like to a guest on the ground. This includes sight lines that play to maximum effect, with forced perspective and seamless presentation while hiding things like heating and cooling units, conduits and ducts and regular Earth buildings.

“We do do a lot of work with sight lines, making sure that when you’re out in the land, where guests are moving through, that the experience is what we intend it to be. That we’re not looking at some ugly AC unit,” says Worthing. “Immersion, and making sure that people feel like they are immersed in this world is super important. BIM is one of the ways that we are able to do that.”

“There’s things from the BIM that have been super [helpful],” says Warren. “We’ve had some back and forth I would say trying to run a vehicle through an area and I go, “oh, there’s a piece of conduit there that I didn’t realize what going to be there, because I got from…BIM.” I can say, “Hey, can we remove that piece of conduit?”

“If we were in the field and we had planned this without that step, we could have been in trouble because we might have hit it.”

A saying that the Imagineers have, says Bei Yang, Technology Studio Exec, WDI, is that it’s “easier to move bits than it is to move Atoms.”

There is a daily review of packages added to BIM, which allows the ride and animatronics team to ‘walk’ inside the attraction regularly before it’s built.

“While we’re only building one building, I promise there are a hundred designs of that building that nobody will ever see,” says Jacqueline King, Producer on Millennium Falcon: Smuggler’s Run. “We get to go into them, and be able to make the best decisions, so that when we start putting rebar into the ground, you’re putting it in the right place. They talk about discovering those walls once you get out in the field later, but for the most part, we’re able to work out a lot of those early on, and completely change layouts to get the best results.”

In addition to using VR simulations driven by BIM, WDI has also begun using it for simulation of the actual rides, but more on that a bit later.

Once the construction pipeline was in place, it was time to start fleshing out the physical world of Batuu, including the architecture, set dressing, props, merchandise, food and inhabitants.

Designing Galaxy’s Edge

The design of Batuu extends across all of the major food groups of a Disney Park, but this time they were all designed in concert with one another. From the architecture and props to the costumes to the music, food and merchandise. It’s all imagined Star Wars from the ground up.

Disney does not have a standing construction crew, especially not one as large as 3,000 people. So, to make sure that their design work was executed by people that care, they brought in partners and started indoctrinating them in the process and the land’s purpose. And, most importantly, they listened to them and asked them to get involved in how to execute on the vision.

“It turns out Star Wars, there’s lots of pipes,” jokes Robin Reardon, Portfolio Executive Producer at WDI. “We drew lots of pipes, we modeled lots of pipes, there’s pipes. We met with a mechanical contractor and said, “We could make these from scratch, but hey, look, you do pipes.” He was so excited because, normally, the work of a mechanical contractor is up in the ceiling or inside the walls, and maybe you see a vent. [They were excited] that their work got to be on a stage, so that when they take their family in and say, “I did that. That’s part of the world. That’s part of what’s on stage,” it’s been fun. It continues to be. His whole team continues to be really enthusiastic about what they’re doing there.”

The creative endeavors extended to the ground you walk on in Batuu. Paul Bailey, Show Systems Engineer at WDI, described the process of detailing the ‘dirt’ and stone surface you walk on in the land.

“Our world, where guests are this close to something, it’s got to be that next level. A good example of that is, droids move through our land. That’s part of the story that we’re trying to tell. We got access to one of the original Kenny Baker, New Hope, 1976‑1977 era droids. We took rubbings of the bottom of the droid feet. We turned that into a set of three files, which then, we turned into a set of 3D wheels. We built a little droid trolley, which Kirstin [Makela, Art Director] and team used.”

“I’ll set the scene for you,” says Makela. “You’re on a busy construction site, there’s lots of people around. There’s some people pouring hardscape concrete, all dirty and all their tools and their stamping. Then all of a sudden, one of them just jumps on this little trolley and someone else pulls them through the concrete, leaves a little trail of droid tracks.”

“It’s dead accurate,” says Bailey.

I saw the tracks walking through the land. They are dope.

Even the set dressing and props are ‘next level’ accurate.

“To start out, my first day on the job, I was put on a plane to go to England to visit the film set and work with the Star Wars film crew. I get to know a lot of the members of the art department, the prop guys, the art directors, learn how they made stuff for the films,” says Eric Baker, Creative Director at WDI. “One of the philosophies that they told me is they said, “We don’t use anything that you couldn’t buy before 1980 because the original films were made pre‑1980.” We spent a lot of time. A lot of the stuff we build is built on recycled goods. For example, Xerox machines were filled with thousands of parts that we used to build stuff. We would always try to find some of those pre‑1980.

“That’s how we started with that. Working with the set decorator from the films, I was able to put together a style that led the way and showed us how to build things the way they were built for the films. What we get to do is take this amazing village that these guys have built, these incredible buildings that have been designed and bring life to them through the story of the people that live there.”

The team says that they spent a lot of time stripping parts off of the same jumbo jets that the film team harvested for parts, and that not every part is pre-1980, most of the feature pieces are or they’re molded off of parts that are so that the look and feel is as close to the films as possible.

The costumes for the residents of Batuu are also a big departure from other Disney Parks. First of all, the residents of Black Spire Outpost choose their own outfits out of an ensemble of clothing parts, hats and accessories every day. This puts them in character and makes them feel more invested in helping guests to have an immersive experience.

These range from ponchos to sun hats to ventilated jackets and pants. The clothing is light-weight so that it wears well in the parks and is a cotton nylon blend to help with heat and colorfastness. The styling is fresh and cool with a natural fiber look and a layered vibe. Some of the clothing is even pieced together into a single piece to look like layering without actually having to layer in hot and sunny California or muggy Florida.

“One of the great privileges of costume design is our costumes and things we design and build, they literally touch the lives of our cast members,” says Costume Designer Joe Kucharski. “In addition to trying to help them build those personalities, we wanted to find options that would fit their body type, that would feel comfortable. We have introduced tops that are of a woven fabric, tops that are the knit fabric, things that are really breathable, so lots of different choices there that should really flatter.”

The Resistance, the First Order and the Rise cast members all have their own uniforms to keep with the theme.

Anima-lectric

As you’d imagine with any high profile Disney Parks property, Batuu will be home to a variety of animated robots, Animatronics, in Imagineering parlance. From droids to shop proprietors to ride pre-show characters, there are a lot of animated figures in Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge.

Since the 80’s, the hydraulics-based animatronics in Disney parks were based on the A-100 chassis. A sort of basic humanoid template. The animatronics on Batuu are all based on a new A-1000 series chassis, which can be configured in a variety of ways at a variety of sizes — with one major difference: electric motors.

Electric motors were pioneered in 2009 with the head of Mr. Lincoln. They’ve since been used in Enchanted Tales with Belle, Frozen Ever After and the Na’ve River Journey attractions. Rocket Raccoon in Guardians of the Galaxy Mission: Breakout is also an electric figure.

Unlike hydraulics, electric motors enable far more precise movements. They can start and stop nearly instantly, have less wind up and wind down times and make for more fluid transitions between directional movements. Plus, you cut the amount of cabling going to the figure in half by eliminating hydraulic lines. This cuts down on figure installation size and control cabinet size, allowing for more interesting placements in scenes that don’t have to allow for covering all of that stuff up and for easier maintenance.

The new figures are smooth, capable and really fun to watch in action.

Here are some of the major AA characters that will inhabit Star Wars land:

Hondo Ohnaka — A Weequay pirate introduced in Clone Wars, Hondo is now the proprietor of Ohnaka Transport Solutions and has been loaned the Millennium Falcon by Chewie for some “deliveries”. The animatronic figure itself is around 7 feet tall and uses the latest in electric motors instead of hydraulics. Hondo’s figure includes around 50 functions (movement points) total and is the second most complicated animatronic in Disney parks. The most complicated, for the record, is the Na’vi Shaman, mentioned above, which has 40 functions in its face alone, not to mention the rest of the body. We had the Shaman at our robotics event a couple of years ago, it’s incredible to watch. Hondo isn’t far behind, with fluid movements, smooth facial contortions and believable interactions between himself and his R5 droid.

DJ R-3X — You know him previously classified as RX-24, or Captain Rex, the pilot over at Star Tours. Now, he’s a DJ at Oga’s Cantina on Batuu. He plays music composed by the Imagineering team and a variety of artists from around the world. All of it is poppy and synth-ey and a bit 80’s, with some classic mixes of Cantina tunes gone by. His torso and arms move to work the controls and dance and he has a three hour cycle of music and dialog to keep patrons entertained. Fun fact, Lucasfilm Creative Executive Matt Martin says he has many, many pages of backstory about how Rex ended up on Batuu.

Dok-Ondar — An Ithorian trader, Don is renowned for his Jedi and Sith artifact collection. I was able to see Dok fully active in the Imagineering animation building and he looks incredible. The figure towers several feet above guests heads as he sits behind his counter and interacts with shop employees. The detail is lovely here, with a rich, smooth set of animations for hands and neck, his whole body rising up and down. The lips along his two mouths ripple as he speaks in a resonant stereophonic voice.

Nien Nunb — A Sullustun pilot famous for copiloting the Millennium Falcon on its mission to destroy the second Death Star in Return of the Jedi. On Batuu he will pilot the transport ship that you board during the Rise of the Resistance attraction.

One of the more minor but no less intriguing characters includes a Dianoga beast which will cameo inside of a water fountain, popping up out of the very murky looking (for show) water intermittently to surprise guests. You’ll also see a ton of animated creatures inside the Creature Stall including fan favorites like the Loth-cat and a Worrt. The Droid Shop is also set to be full of animated droids of all kinds, and its exterior will have droids interacting with guests via the PLAY Disney app and getting a refreshing lubricant bath.

Interestingly, I’m aware of some droid projects that Disney is working on that have not yet appeared in any official reveals. There is a lot more to come in the interactive figure department and Imagineering already has plans to expand Batuu with new experiences. I was also unable to get them to tell me whether the Loth-cat and other small creatures that will be featured here are part of the interactive semi-autonomous Tiny Life project I’ve written about previously.

The process of animating the figures has also been updated along with the chassis.

“One of the things that went so well on this project is that some of our software partners have developed tools that allow us to import and export data from design software into modeling and animation software,” says Associate Show Mechanical Engineer Victoria Thomas. “We’re able to give them a 3D representation of exactly what the figure is, exactly where the pivots are. They’re able to take that and animate in exactly how fast they want those joints to move. We’re able to get a lot of great feedback like, “Oh, well the shoulder pivot’s kind of off. Is it possible for you to adjust that?”

“Getting that feedback early in the process allows us to change, improvise and adapt and overcome anything that’s going on with the figures.”

The animations, like all of the other data that makes up the land, are hosted inside of BIM. That pre-visualization work saves a lot of heartache and physical fudging on the back end.

“Doing things early allows us to solve problems before they become serious problems. With the Hondo figure specifically, we were able to determine, “Oh, based on his show set and where he is, there’s not enough room for audio in his scene. He needs an onboard speaker,” says Thomas.

“In another scene, we were able to determine, “Oh, there’s large speakers in the scene where we expected a maintenance person to be able to access the figures. If those speakers are there, then you can’t maintenance the base frame.”

Because of BIM and pre‑visualization, we were allowed to do a lot of that. One of the other cool things is that we were able to get motion‑capture data on these figures initially as a way to prove out, how would a human move? How would this look natural? How can we make this look as organic as possible in order to improve the guest experience?”

The resulting figures are some of the best looking creations Disney can currently make, and they’re at the forefront of this pre-visualization work with electric-driven figures. It’s as absolutely close to a real-life Star Wars alien as you’re ever likely to meet.

But the denizens, though cool, aren’t the biggest attraction in Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge. That would be, well, the attractions.

The Rides

There are two attractions inside the land. Millennium Falcon: Smuggler’s Run (Falcon from here on out) and Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance (Rise). The Falcon is a simulator type ride that reads like a very, very advanced version of Star Tours that you can actually control in real time with a crew of 6 people. Rise is much harder to explain, and consists of multiple stages of ‘ride’ that, taken together, are best described as an “experiential” attraction.

Developing those rides involves some wild new technology, some known tech applied in new ways, and some really sky high difficulty levels to pull off correctly.

Rise and Simulate

For a while now, Disney has been using VR and augmented reality in various ways to help it design and test rides. At Imagineering in Glendale it has a big simulator room called The Dish to paraphrase myself from my earlier visits, This is a curved chamber that houses multiple high resolution projectors that functions, most simply, as a holodeck. Disney uses it to “see” rides and attractions as a group to make decisions about look and feel.

Users wear a ‘Bowler Hat’ that tracks their movements and walk around inside a space that changes and shifts to match perspectives. We flew through and around Batuu, getting to see, virtually, the vistas we would see the next day when we were at the land physically.

But Disney has also been using VR in more radical ways to simulate their rides. Specifically, they’ve built a full ride-on vehicle that sits inside a warehouse on the Imagineering lot. It’s surrounded in a wide 100 foot long ring by traffic dividers and operates just like the trackless vehicles in Rise.

“We were able to test all of our vehicle motion early using VR,” says April Warren. “Imagine you’re on a vehicle, you’ve got your VR headset, and you are able to see what this attraction is going to look like in the future. We could do that all in real‑time. It was very exciting. I don’t think we could’ve made this attraction without this workflow. We broke the attraction to pieces and could ride it in the facility to really prove out that what we thought we were getting with our vehicle is what we were going to get in the attraction.”

“The great thing was when we got to the actual building things were all installed. We hadn’t been down there before, at least I hadn’t. To walk through that building knowing what we’d seen in VR and go, “Oh, my gosh. I know exactly where I am. I know how to get around this place because I have seen all of this before, and it looks exactly like what I thought it would look like.” It’s been super exciting.”

The rig itself is pretty wild. It’s built out to match the seat layout of the Rise of the Resistance vehicle itself. On board it has enough compute power to push out the visuals to headsets of everyone on board and a motor to run the vehicle around the floor perfectly in sync with those visuals. This gives you the illusion of the ride mixed with the real physicality of moving through space and feeling the pull — a process the imagineers who show us the rig call “Visceralization”. It’s the most bad ass VR sim rig ever.

Disney is clear to note throughout our visit to the sim center that they are not using it to develop VR rides. Rather they are developing physical rides using VR. An important distinction these days with VR becoming more prevalent in the parks.

The Rise of the Resistance ‘experience’ itself is much harder to categorize. On our site tour we got to go through what we are later told is about 1/3 of the total ride (a figure which boggled me). You approach through the Resistance area of Batuu, outside of the village gates. There are star fighters (an X-Wing, an A-Wing, both perfectly replicated from the films) which will be being actively worked on and primed at intervals throughout the day by Resistance members. you enter the queue and walk through chambers which advance from scrubland with railings made out of the ubiquitous Star Wars cabling through to ancient ruins that have been co-opted by the scrappy rebels.

The rooms advance to sections that are ‘laser cut’ through rock as they would be by an army trying to make due in natural and unnatural caverns. Rooms are piled high with equipment of medical, utilitarian and military origin. There is an armory with blasters and pilots uniforms in cages. A room merges the Fast Pass and Standby lines in a communications hub. The entire effect is wildly effective, giving you the feel of walking the cramped halls of a base from the movies.

This queue, by the way, features a low stone bench cut into a big section of the middle of it, allowing a place for families and kids to rest. A personal victory, Executive Creative Director John Larena jokes, as a dad with kids who knows what it’s like to wait in long lines.

From there, we’re led into a briefing room that will feature an animatronic BB-8 on a high cabinet that interacts with a video element of Poe Dameron, your escort on the mission. Other appearances will be made by a hologram of Rey and a message from Finn.

From there, you make your way across a landing pad as Poe’s X-Wing warms up to your right. You walk towards and board a U-Wing transport ship with a group of fellow passengers. A simulated takeoff and flight, facilitated by your Nien Nunb and Poe, commence with everyone standing troop transport style. You are quickly captured and pulled aboard a Star Destroyer.

Then, through some ride magic I won’t disclose here, your door opens to what is one of the most stunning ride reveals I can ever remember: a full size Star Destroyer hangar bay, complete with expansive black floor, Tie Fighters on loading racks and, yes, an absolutely enormous window opening up onto space outside with (eventually) a view of the First Order fleet.

After your moment of awe, you are split up into groups by First Order officers — played by real cast members in uniform by the way — and led down perfectly rendered corridors to a holding cell the spitting image of the one Poe Dameron was held in. At this point, you have an encounter with a nearby Kylo Ren and your adventure continues.

This is where we left off on our tour, and we hadn’t even made it to the vehicle portion yet, which features encounters with more First Order troops, AT-ATs and more that they have yet to reveal.

It’s an enormous attraction, with a sense of scale that goes beyond anything I’ve seen Disney do. And it’s only one of the two major attractions.

Flying the Falcon

The other, of course, is the Falcon ride. There have been tons of questions about this one, so I’ll try to sate some appetites.

Approaching the Falcon from one of the entrances to Batuu for the first time is a surreal experience. This is a full-size 110-foot version of the ship as you’ve seen it in the movies. It’s meticulously detailed and acts as a center-piece for the area. The ship will periodically vent out gas and Hondo’s tinkerers are constantly working on its engines. It’s a living thing inside the land, a character.

As you enter the maintenance bay, you pass into the queue inside Ohnaka’s Transport Solutions. Climbing gantries through a working shipping and machine shop, getting views of the Falcon from every angle. Until, finally, you burst out into the oh-so-familiar weathered ‘chiclet’ corridors of the Falcon herself. The holding area is the very well known common area of the ship with the chess board (not currently holographically active) and communications console. Everything in this space is meticulously accurate down to the bolts. Break out your magnifying glasses and soak it in, you’re on the Millennium Falcon.

From here, you’re handed boarding cards in groups of six and wait to be ushered down the corridor to your waiting cockpit.

The Falcon, as previously mentioned, is a simulator ride that puts you in the cockpit of the most famous starship in the galaxy. The cockpits (there are multiple that can be loaded at a time, but they won’t say how many) fit six people. Two pilots, two gunners and two engineers. You’re all responsible for how smoothly the Falcon completes its mission, but it always completes, one way or another.

The simulation is run on the Unreal engine and the mechanics are a much upgraded version of what powers Star Tours. Each cockpit has its own real‑time rendering system for a multi‑projection feedback hub across five screens that completely surround the cockpit seamlessly. Any decision you make as a member of the crew has to result in an action on screen, and it’s all real-time, so none of the major stuff is pre-rendered. While Disney itself was fairly cagey about what powers the ‘magic’ behind this system, Nvidia talked a bit about it last year.

“Walt Disney Imagineering teamed with NVIDIA and Epic Games to develop new technology to drive its attraction. When it launches, riders will enter a cockpit powered with a single BOXX chassis packed with eight high-end NVIDIA Quadro P6000 GPUs, connected via Quadro SLI.

Quadro Sync synchronizes five projectors for the creation of dazzling ultra-high resolution, perfectly timed displays to fully immerse the riders in the world of planet Batuu.

Working with NVIDIA and Epic Games, the Imagineering team created a custom multi-GPU implementation for Unreal Engine. This new code was returned to the Epic Games team and will help influence how multi-GPUs function for their engine.

“We worked with NVIDIA engineers to use Quadro-specific features like Mosaic and cross-GPU reads to develop a renderer that had performance characteristics we needed,” says Bei Yang, technology studio executive at Disney Imagineering. “Using the eight connected GPUs allowed us to achieve performance unlike anything before.””

The effect in person is wild, though we only saw a static-ish scene of the hangar bay.

Entering the cockpit was an out-of-body situation for me, I’m not ashamed to admit it. It’s wild how right it feels. The six seats all feature belts and the familiar weathered look. More importantly, each of them has a wide array of buttons either to the side or in front of them if you’re one of the pilots. Every square or rectangular button has a light up ring around it which will indicate which of them you need to press for the best result during your moments to act during the ride. The toggles have small LED indicators built into one end that do the same indicating job. I am happy to report that the large, satisfyingly chunky toggle switches and satisfyingly clicks buttons have been very well chosen and require enough force to push without stress but with satisfaction. They’re the right switches.

And yes, one of the right-hand pilot’s jobs is to pull back the lever to jump to hyperspace, and that pull is very satisfying.

This is how you will ‘control’ the falcon. Left and right or throttles for the pilots, depending on seats, and buttons to push to shoot down Tie Fighters or put out fires if those Tie Fighters get missed.

Though every flight will have its own permutations, you cannot ‘fail’ a flight on the Falcon. You just come through either pristine or more battered, depending on your efficiency. And the people of Black Spire Outpost will react to your team’s performance flying the Falcon — either you all do well or you all don’t.

“If our guests so choose, and they opt in, we will be able to have some level of persistent interaction with them, not only throughout their day as they accumulate experiences, but on the attractions or as they meet certain characters,” says Bob Chapek, Chairman of Parks, Experiences and Products. “Not only will we be able to remember that and then interact with the guest accordingly, but over the course of several visits, we’ll remember what they did the previous visit. As a result, we’ll have much more of a close, tight interaction.”

One big question mark that still remains undisclosed despite my inquiries, is how, exactly the proprietors or characters will remember this. They seemed to indicate that it was not the PLAY Disney app that would do this, so more yet to be revealed. Perhaps a system like the Magic Bands out in the Florida parks that has yet to be discussed.

The land is a ride

The way that Imagineering thinks of Galaxy’s Edge is that there are three main attractions. The 2 rides and the land itself. In addition to the 5 restaurants and 5 shops, there are two distinct biomes and the land is embedded with activities that are accessed through the PLAY Disney app. When you enter the land, it switches over to a Star Wars mode, allowing you access to several tools including Scan, Translate, Tune and Jobs. Through these, and dozens of bluetooth beacons located throughout Batuu, you can activate droids, download schematics from hacking ships, download secret messages from door panels and listen to transmissions from three factions inclined the First Order, the Resistance and the Smugglers. You can also translate some of the alien languages that are spoken or written throughout the land.

You can choose to complete jobs for these factions, and there is an over-arching meta game that allows you to use scannable to try to tilt the balance from the Resistance to the First Order throughout your visit — rewarding you with digital collectibles. There are even missions to complete in the app during ride queues. 1 in Smuggler’s Run and 2 in the Rise queue for both sides of the conflict.

The vision is that if you become aligned, for instance, with the Smuggler’s faction, you could even be called out by name by Hondo while in the queue for the ride. “Hey, is Matthew there?”

This is an absolutely enormous undertaking. And walking through the village of Black Spire or the outskirts showed us construction still very much underway. Disney is pushing hard day and night to finish what is going to be a massively big risk for it on the storytelling and immersion front. While the world of Star Wars seems like a gimme from a fan point of view, that attention also means that Disney has to get everything so right from the beginning. It’s telling that even on our tour, workers continued to cut, paint and plaster. Summer isn’t very far away and there’s a long way to go to Batuu.

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