Android

Meet Michele Angela Navarro Okol: Siargao Island’s first ever Miss Universe Ph bet

Michele Angela Navarro Okol She walks, talks with grace and her petite figure and soft-spoken nature may immediately offer an impression thatbefits the shy, pretty, girl next door criterion. She is Michele Angela Navarro Okol, a 20-year consistent 1st honor dean’s lister taking up Political Science in oneof Manila’s top universities and the first ever…

Published 5 years ago in
Meet Michele Angela Navarro Okol: Siargao Island’s first ever Miss Universe Ph bet

Michele Angela Navarro Okol

She walks, talks with grace and her petite figure and soft-spoken nature may immediately offer an impression thatbefits the shy, pretty, girl next door criterion.

She is Michele Angela Navarro Okol, a 20-year consistent 1st honor dean’s lister taking up Political Science in oneof Manila’s top universities and the first ever official representative of the Island of Siargao (dubbed the Surfing Capital of the Philippines) to enter the Miss Universe Philippines pageant.

Behind her grace (which complements her beautiful face and those expressive eyes) and approachable front, you’llstart regarding her with respect the minute she speaks up.

Angela immediately captures your attention with her unique approach in life, how she celebrates her individuality and her plans to live up her God-given mission on earth.

For one, when asked her “why” in joining the country’s Miss Universe Pageant, others may be quick to quip “world peace” or other social, political and “Mother Nature” concerns.

But Okol who experienced bullying in her teens for being “too big or healthy” for her age, is taking this big step with a mission to tell her story and be an empowering force to advocate self-acceptance and love and, like her, encourage more people to turn their life around for the better. “A better you contribute to a better world.”

Thrift-flipping stylist

If some ladies her age prefers expensive brands to wear, the official representative of Siargao Island prefers to buy clothes and accessories from thrift stores and give them new meaning and style in what is known as “thrift flip.”

Okol, channels her artistic inputs on her daily garb and wear through “thrift flipping’ or “reworking.” What started as her love for sewing (since age 12), transitioned into a passion and now a purpose because “thrift flip”– for her, “is sustainable fashion.”

“My humble contribution to curb the adverse effect of large amounts of waste and harmful gasses that factories create/emit to the environment.”

Bent to make her humble contributions to save the environment, Okol also buys deadstock fabric to make clothes.“A lot of times, what’s being mass produced isn’t completely sold; ergo, these unsold materials just end up being stocked or thrown away.”

Her take on social media

She looks at social media with both its benefits and one’s responsibility in equilibrium. She believes that as convenient as social media seems, there are, of course, also consequences when misused such as cyberbullying, invasion of privacy, “cancel culture,” and online fraud, to name a few of the internet’s dangers when not used properly.

“People need to find a balance between their social physical and social online life. Many of us have become too immersed in these gadgets to see beyond the screens and socialize how we used to. In all things, there should be balance for too much of anything will inevitably lead to poor results.

Okol, with 98 others made it to the official list of candidates vying for the Miss Universe Philippines crown.

This young lass, raised by a long line of soldiers and airmen honing discipline, is excited about her Miss Universe Philippine pageant experience.

She would like to focus more on the fun side plus the learnings and opportunities that the Miss Universe pageant experience will bring to her plate.

From Binibining Pilipinas, who holds the franchise from 1964, the Miss Universe franchise in the Philippines was officially granted to a new organizing body in 2019, with Binibining Pilipinas Universe 2011, Shamcey Supsup-Lee as its national director.

Under the new organization, a separate, standalone pageant is now responsible for the selection of the future Miss Universe Philippines titleholders from 2020 onwards.

If you wish to support Okol’s Miss Universe Journey, simply download the Miss Universe application (or Android: https://bit.ly/3rxx5pv, for iOs: https://apple.co/3i6bxNI) and vote for her.#
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Android

Get the best of Bleeding Green Nation on the new SB Nation app

It’s a big day for Bleeding Green Nation. Today, the SB Nation app is live, and it’s the best way to follow the Eagles. You can download it by searching SB Nation for iOS or Android. A year ago we made some big changes to our community, including offering fewer ads and the addition of

Published 4 days ago in
Get the best of Bleeding Green Nation on the new SB Nation app

It’s a big day for Bleeding Green Nation. Today, the SB Nation app is live, and it’s the best way to follow the Eagles.

You can download it by searching SB Nation for iOS or Android.

A year ago we made some big changes to our community, including offering fewer ads and the addition of the Feed. Today, we want to give you even more community tools and fewer ads with this app. It will make starting and joining conversations here as simple as posting to your favorite social media platform.

You can check out the video below showing off some of the useful features of the app, and we’ll dig into them below.

Why should I download the app?

The app will be the easiest way to interact with everybody else in the community:

  • All your favorite teams’ posts in one dedicated feed
  • Notifications when someone replies or recs your post
  • New game thread section, with an experience that’s smoother and faster
  • Fe

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Android

Get the best of Canal Street Chronicles on the new SB Nation app

It’s a really exciting day for Canal Street Chronicles. Today, the SB Nation app is live, and it’s the best way to follow all the latest Saints news. You can download it by searching SB Nation for iOS or Android. A year ago we made some big changes to our community, including offering fewer ads

Published 4 days ago in
Get the best of Canal Street Chronicles on the new SB Nation app

It’s a really exciting day for Canal Street Chronicles. Today, the SB Nation app is live, and it’s the best way to follow all the latest Saints news.

You can download it by searching SB Nation for iOS or Android.

A year ago we made some big changes to our community, including offering fewer ads and the addition of the Feed. Today, we want to give you even more community tools and fewer ads with this app. It will make starting and joining conversations here as simple as posting to your favorite social media platform.

You can check out the video below showing off some of the useful features of the app, and we’ll dig into them below.

Why should I download the app?

The app will be the easiest way to interact with everybody else in the community:

  • All your favorite teams’ posts in one dedicated feed
  • Notifications when someone replies or recs your post
  • New game thread section, with an experience that’

Read More

Continue Reading
Android

The Galaxy Z Flip 8 is at its best when there’s friction

What do you want from a flip phone when it’s closed? A simple interface, perhaps notifications and a widget or two, for handling the basics? Or a fully fledged Android experience shrunk down for the Flip form factor? For years, Samsung has insisted on the former, even as some fans — and Razr rival Motorola

Published 1 week ago in
The Galaxy Z Flip 8 is at its best when there’s friction

What do you want from a flip phone when it’s closed? A simple interface, perhaps notifications and a widget or two, for handling the basics? Or a fully fledged Android experience shrunk down for the Flip form factor? For years, Samsung has insisted on the former, even as some fans — and Razr rival Motorola — have pushed for the latter. With the Galaxy Z Flip 8, Samsung has given in.

Although the Z Flip 8’s hardware is almost unchanged year-on-year, Samsung has fundamentally rethought how this phone is meant to be used when shut. The cover screen feels more like a regular Android phone, with easier access to the full versions of every single app, letting you browse social media, watch movies, and play games without ever opening the phone. Not every app works well on a tiny square screen with two cameras in the middle of it, but even when they don’t, that friction between me and the distractions of my phone still feels as much a feature as a bug.

8

Verge Score

Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 8

$1200
$1200

The Good

  • Runs any app on the cover screen
  • Thinner and lighter
  • Reliable battery

The Bad

  • Mostly a rehash of last year’s phone
  • Still vulnerable to dust
  • $100 more expensive than the Z Flip 7
$1200 at Amazon$1200 at Samsung$1200 at Best Buy
How we rate and review products

Everything exciting about the Z Flip 8 lies in its 4-inch cover screen, which is now more versatile than ever thanks to a homescreen redesign. Swiping down from the top left now brings up your notifications, while swiping from the top right instead shows a cover-screen-optimized version of the Quick Settings panel. Immediately, this feels more like a phone.

More exciting is what happens when you swipe up from the bottom: you get an app drawer. By default, this is populated with a selection of Samsung’s own apps that are optimized for the square screen, plus a “Labs” section with third-party options including Netflix and WhatsApp. But right below that, Samsung has included an easy prompt to install MultiStar, the Good Lock module that lets you run any app you’d like on the outer screen.

Samsung used to bury the option deep in the phone’s settings, only to be found by those who knew to look for it. The bottom of the app drawer isn’t quite front and center, but it’s much more prominent than it used to be.

You can run any app you’d like on the cover screen.
The Withings app scales badly: The graph takes up too much space to even show both axes, and it becomes impossible to scroll past it.
Google Maps works, but it’s busy and awkward, especially when you try to zoom in.
HBO Max works flawlessly, but it wouldn’t be my first choice to watch Lanterns.

You can still run apps in three forms: full-screen, with the cameras blocking part of the software; a square display that stops just above the level of the cameras; or a thin portrait-aspect ratio that letterboxes the sides. A small virtual button at the bottom of the screen lets you cycle through them.

Good performance isn’t guaranteed. Some apps, like Withings’ health tracker companion app, are almost impossible to use on the cover screen, with no configuration that leaves enough space for its graphs to fit. Google Maps is only a bit better — I love the idea of quickly checking my walking route without opening the phone, but there are so many floating interface elements that it’s unwieldy at best. Others work smoothly, but feel pointless: I can stream HBO Max on the tiny outer display, but I’d never want to.

But for other apps, the new cover screen options feel genuinely freeing. I can open Todoist and tick off a task, dip into WhatsApp to send a message, or open MyFitnessPal to log the snack I just ate. They’re quick actions that work well enough on the small screen, and because other apps — *cough* Instagram *cough* — don’t, I can dive into them without the risk of getting dragged into doomscrolling. That little bit of friction is just enough to save me from wasting 20 minutes I’ll never get back.

Like last year’s phone, the cover screen wraps around the cameras.
Like last year’s phone, the cover screen wraps around the cameras.

As for the hardware, little has changed. The Z Flip 8 is 0.6mm thinner and 8g lighter than its predecessor. This is the thickest of Samsung’s three current foldables, but it’s more compact than Motorola’s Razrs, its only real rivals.

Samsung didn’t upgrade the Z Flip 8 with the thinner, tougher titanium display stack found in the two new Z Fold 8 phones, which also means this has just as visible a crease as ever. It rarely bothers me, and is hard to see head-on, but you may feel differently. The IP48 rating is a more objective issue, and means that while this phone is mostly safe from water, it’s still vulnerable to dust.

Related

  • Samsung’s Galaxy Z Fold 8 feels like the future
  • Samsung’s Z Fold 8 Ultra is more of the same, but better than ever
  • Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 7 review: more of a good thing

On the inside, you’ll find the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 if you’re in the US, though my UK model runs Samsung’s Exynos 2600. Exynos chips get a bad rep, but performance has been smooth so far, and I have no real complaints.

This is the online-exclusive mint, but the phone’s also available in pink, cream, and gray.
It’s a little thinner and lighter than before, but not by much.
And the crease is still pretty noticeable compared to the two new Fold 8 phones.

As with the Z Fold 8 phones, Samsung switched to more energy-dense silicon-carbon batteries for the Z Flip 8. Unlike those phones, it didn’t actually increase the battery capacity, but instead used smaller cells with the same 4,300mAh capacity — the key to shrinking the phone itself. Still, battery life is solid, reliably lasting the full day with battery to spare. The charging — 25W wired, 15W wireless — is relatively unimpressive, and the only way to get Qi2 charging is still by using a compatible magnetic case.

Storage and RAM remain the same as on the Z Flip 7; the screens do too apart from small bumps to peak brightness, and the cameras are also identical to last year’s. The 50-megapixel main camera is impressive, and especially helpful since the form factor means you can use it for selfies too. The 12-megapixel ultrawide and 10-megapixel inner camera aren’t remarkable, but they get the job done. A slab phone at this price would have better cameras, and most likely a telephoto lens, but the lenses here are good enough.

<em>The main camera mostly gets good results.</em>
<em>It even handles moving targets like pets (and string) pretty well, though it did split the thread a little at the top.</em>
<em>Details and color still look solid in dark basement lighting like this.</em>
<em>The ultrawide is a little more basic.</em>
<em>Pushing up to the maximum 1srcx zoom shows the camera’s limitations.</em>

1/13
The main camera mostly gets good results.

The question is whether it’s all good enough for the price, given Samsung has bumped the Z Flip 8 up to $1,199.99, a $100 increase. Z Flip 7 owners certainly shouldn’t upgrade, and anyone else should consider buying that phone instead, since the difference between the two is slight.

After all, the big upgrades are software, and unlikely to remain exclusive. Last year’s Z Flip 7 hasn’t yet been updated to One UI 9, but since its outer screen is almost identical, it seems likely to get the upgraded software, giving one less reason to opt for the new model. The Z Flip 6 and earlier, with their smaller cover screens, seem more likely to miss out. I’ve asked Samsung about its upgrade plans, but haven’t yet heard back.

Customizable Now Brief cards were added in One UI 9.
The camcorder-inspired video recording is still one of the phone’s best features.
If you find the full apps frustrating, various cover screen widgets are still available.

Most of the other software upgrades aren’t even Flip-specific. Customizable, AI-powered cards have been added to the daily Now Brief; My FanCam lets you crop video to focus on a specific subject; and Audio Eraser can now dim background noise and highlight dialogue in apps like YouTube and Netflix. You’ll find those features across all of Samsung’s new foldables, plus the new Galaxy S26 FE.

Modest as the Z Flip 8’s hardware upgrades are, it feels like a turning point for Samsung, which is mostly done trying to limit the ways people use the cover screen. Given the speculation that the short, wide Z Fold 8 could replace the Flip form factor as Samsung’s “small phone that unfolds to a big phone,” it makes sense to close the gap between them.

The Z Fold 8 is definitely bigger than the Z Flip 8.
But the Flip’s small, obstructed screen is less functional — for better or worse.
Open, the Z Fold 8 feels like a compact tablet.
While the Flip opens up to a pretty regular phone.

The Z Fold 8 is a more capable phone than the Z Flip 8 when closed, its squat screen more usable than the Flip’s tiny one, despite Samsung’s software upgrades. But I have a real soft spot for the Flip form factor, which is tiny and pocketable when closed and a normal, almost compromise-free flagship phone when open — and endlessly satisfying to flip shut.

More than that, I enjoy its frictions. I welcome Samsung’s move to make it easier to use full apps on the cover screen, but I also welcome that it will never be entirely successful. Some apps simply don’t work on a screen this size, and the Z Flip 8 is all the better for it.

Photography by Dominic Preston / The Verge

Agree to Continue: Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 8

Every smart device now requires you to agree to a series of terms and conditions before you can use it — contracts that no one actually reads. It’s impossible for us to read and analyze every single one of these agreements. But we started counting exactly how many times you have to hit “agree” to use devices when we review them since these are agreements most people don’t read and definitely can’t negotiate.

To use the Galaxy Z Flip 8, you must agree to:

  • Google Terms of Service
  • Google Play Terms of Service
  • Google Privacy Policy (included in ToS)
  • Install apps and updates: “You agree this device may also automatically download and install updates and apps from Google, your carrier, and your device’s manufacturer, possibly using cellular data.”
  • Samsung End User Licence Agreement
  • Samsung Privacy Notice
  • Samsung Terms and Conditions

There’s also a variety of optional agreements, including:

  • Provide anonymous location data for Google’s services
  • “Allow apps and services to scan for Wi-Fi networks and nearby devices at any time, even when Wi-Fi or Bluetooth is off.”
  • Send usage and diagnostic data to Google
  • Google Gemini Apps Privacy Notice if you opt in to using Gemini Assistant
  • Turn on Samsung offline finding
  • Samsung news and special offers
  • Samsung personalized advertising
  • Bixby personal data intelligence
  • Samsung customization service

Other features, like Google Wallet, may require additional ag

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Android

Elon Musk to launch XChat as part of push to build WeChat-like super app

Elon Musk’s social media platform X (formerly Twitter) said its instant messaging app XChat will launch on Apple App Store on April 17, as Musk pushes ahead with plans to build a super app similar to China’s WeChat. An Android release date has yet to be announced…

Published 2 months ago in
Elon Musk to launch XChat as part of push to build WeChat-like super app

Elon Musk’s social media platform X (formerly Twitter) said its instant messaging app XChat will launch on Apple App Store on April 17, as Musk pushes ahead with plans to build a super app similar to China’s WeChat. An Android release date has yet to be announced…
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