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While I am not a New Yorker (I live in the quiet mountains of Colorado), when I do go to Gotham I always pre-load a MetroCard.  The card is your ticket, literally, to getting around the various subway lines of the city.  It was introduced in the 1990s, replacing the coin token system, and it has been a reasonable way of getting through the system.  But New York’s Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) also feels the cards are outmoded for today’s world.

MTA has thus turned to NFC, or Near Field Communication.  Through a $573 million contract, the MetroCard will be replaced with NFC at turnstiles.  This will allow users with NFC enabled credit and debit cards as well as Android Pay, Samsung Pay and Apple Pay users to pay for a fare simply by tapping their phone to the terminal.  The new system will be very similar to the system that is used by the London Transit Authority for the Underground in London.

The new system will begin rolling out in late 2018 and by 2023, the MetroCard will be phased out completely.

2017 is quickly shaping up to be the year of Huawei.  The Chinese company has reported that in the first three quarters of this year, they have shipped over 100 million phones.  That is a 19% year-on-year increase which by any measure is impressive.

That growth has also raised the company’s revenue by some 30% through September 2017.

Huawei has cemented their claim to the number two phone brand in the world with these figures.  Back in the summer, the company passed Apple to take the #2 position behind Samsung and they are closing the gap to the top spot – but it is a big gap.

They company has a wide portfolio of devices in the market, be it their recently announced flagship Mate 10 device or their more entry and mid-market devices under the Honor brand.  The company is pushing in all of the right areas with their software development too with Artificial Intelligence deeply embedded in the company’s Android build, EMUI 8.0.

To say that BLU had a miserable summer would be an understatement.  The Miami based company was hit with several privacy concerns and malware issues on their phones which, at one point, was so bad that Amazon removed their products from their site.

Yeah, it was bad.

But BLU has rebounded with a vengeance.  They have patched up all of their issues, committed to more scrutiny of their firmware build and have even come out with a few new phones.  The latest, the BLU VIVO 8L, was released yesterday and it is Today’s Deal.

The 5.3″ VIVO 8L is on an introductory price of $149.99 on their Amazon storefront and will work with GSM carriers here in the US.  Here is what you get for that price.

The phone is powered by the MediaTek 6753 octa-core processor that is clocked at 1.2GHz.  It is coupled with the Mali-T720 GPU for graphics performance.  Onboard is a healthy 3GB of RAM and it comes with 32GB of Storage built in but that can be expanded up to an additional 64GB thanks the the MicroSD slot.   Powering all of this is a 4000mAh battery that supports Quick Charge technology.

As for cameras, the main camera is a 13MP shooter with Sony optics while the front facing selfie camera is a whooping 20MP shooter with screen flash.

Nokia has opened up a beta program for Nokia 8 owners to give the upcoming Android Oreo build a test drive.  The news came via Twitter from HMD Global’s Juho Sarvikas.  Mr. Sarvikas is the company’s Chief Product Officer.

Announcing Nokia phones beta labs! Be the first to test #AndroidOreo on #Nokia8 (physical Oreos not included!) https://t.co/91uhqstnnm pic.twitter.com/GNiNrK31B0

— Juho Sarvikas (@sarvikas) October 25, 2017

As a general rule, once these types of major updates hit the public beta realm, they are pretty well baked. But, the keyword here is “beta”.  There are likely still bugs to be found and other issues so if you are not comfortable with that, don’t download the update.  For those that do and find it unstable to the point of needing to revert back to Nougat 7.1.1, Nokia has confirmed that you will be able to do it.

Full details on how to join the beta can be found on the Nokia Beta Labs site.