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The sincerest form of flattery: Instagram Stories is a blatant copy of Snapchat Stories

Caleb Denison
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Instagram just laid down the gauntlet for Snapchat by unabashedly copying the social media app. In a rather bold move today, Instagram announced “Instagram Stories,” a blatant copy of Snapchat Stories, which lets users post wacky, annotated photo and video that disappears in about 24 hours. The content pops right up at the top of Instagram’s feed and in just about every way mimics the platform that made Snapchat famous.

And Instagram has zero problem with that. CEO Kevin Systrom told TechCrunch that Snapchat deserves all the credit, but that Instagram Stories is all about taking the format to a new network, and with their own spin on it. If there is a spin here, it’s that Instagram Stories is like Snapchat for adult users who don’t want to spread themselves too thin in the social media space.

Now Instagram users have one more toy to play with, and one more reason not to leave Instagram.

The best phablet ever?

Samsung today unveiled the Galaxy Note 7 at an event in New York, but we got our hands on the new phablet early, and DT’s mobile editor, Malarie Gokey, is saying it’s the best phablet you can buy. That’s pretty strong praise, but not surprising considering the Note 7 is basically a large-screen S7 Edge with a stylus.

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It’s got the S7’s smooth, symmetrical design, and all of its specs, with a dual-edged 5.7-inch super AMOLED screen with quad-HD resolution, a Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 processor, and 4 GB of RAM. And, dig this, it has both a fingerprint and iris scanner for security. There’s lots more to learn about and love, so check out our hands-on review to see if the Note 7 might be your next smartphone/ tiny tablet.

Xbox One S hits store shelves

Finally, today, the first version of the Xbox One S comes out today. The 2 TB version available now costs $400, offers 4K Ultra HD video playback, including Ultra HD Blu-ray disc playback and 4K streaming apps from the likes of Netflix and Amazon. All that 4K ability is really what makes the machine different this go-round. DT’s computing editor Matt Smith says it’s a great home theater device as well as being a solid gaming console.

Just to be clear, you don’t get 4K gaming – that’s going to take some hardcore hardware – but it is slimmed down a little bit – actually less than we expected — andit doesn’t have that annoyingly huge power brick anymore.

If you’re willing to wait, though, the 500 GB version will be available August 23 and it comes with the Halo Master Chief collection alongside Halo 5, which sounds like a killing deal, considering that’s just $50 more than you’ll spend on the original Xbox One.

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Samsung continues to struggle with what has turned out to be one nightmare of a smartphone release. As you likely know by now, there’s a problem with the batteries in some Samsung Galaxy Note 7 smartphones which can cause them to explode or catch fire, usually while being charged. Samsung was quick to issue a recall, but the problems persist, and the crisis is escalating.

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Samsung has indeed moved to recall their flagship phone, the Galaxy Note 7, amid reports of problems with the device’s battery, namely, it’s been exploding. Samsung had said it would replace any affected phones but stopped short of a recall, however, they have now issued a full recall for every Note 7 produced. A Samsung rep called the move “heartbreaking” but said they wanted to do what’s best for customers. We can certainly appreciate that.

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