The new Lifeproof Fre case for the iPhone and 7 Plus ships on November 11 in a variety of colors. Those prices seem a little elevated considering earlier models once started at $80. But on the plus side, with the headphone port gone, you don't have to worry about that little gasket you had to screw into the case to cover the port (or unscrew it to access the port). Lifeproof sent me an early sample, and it's interesting to note how the case channels the sound of the iPhone 7's bottom speaker up to the top of the case and also allows for access to the microphone (some people think the iPhone 7 has two speakers on the bottom but it's really a speaker on one side and a microphone on the other).

The iPhone 7 and 7 Plus may be waterproof, but that hasn't stopped Lifeproof from putting out waterproof cases for them, Now that the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus are waterproof, there wouldn't seem to be as strong a need to put them in a waterproof case, But as Lifeproof, now under the OtterBox umbrella, gets set to ship its next-generation of waterproof cases no bad days viii iphone case for the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus, it's emphasizing its Fre cases' "360-degree protection," which includes a built-in screen protector, Available now for preorder in a variety of colors, Lifeproof's iPhone 7 and 7 Plus Fre cases cost $90 and $100, respectively, They are scheduled to ship on November 11..

Then the Ara project was abruptly shelved. But now, all three of those men work for Building 8 -- a secretive new division of Facebook. There, they've been joined by an impressive list of heavy hitters that reads like a who's who of the tech world: Motorola, Tesla, Apple and Amazon, in addition to that contingent of Google ex-pats. Rafa Camargo holds up an Ara prototype in 2015. So what, exactly, is this superteam of designers, engineers and manufacturing experts working on? Nobody outside of Menlo Park knows for sure, but the hires -- and at least one under-the-radar acquisition -- seem to indicate two things: it's mobile, and it may be modular.

Whatever it turns out to be, building hardware at this scale represents a major shift for Facebook, The company's first attempt at hardware -- a 2013 joint venture with HTC that became known as the " Facebook phone" -- was a fiasco, discounted to 99 cents mere weeks after its debut, Since then, no bad days viii iphone case though, the company has doubled down, first with its $2 billion purchase of VR headset maker Oculus in 2014, and now with what appears to be a far more ambitious hardware endeavor with Building 8, Originally, it sounded like Building 8 was a skunkworks where Facebook could prototype a whole bunch of new technologies -- like 360-degree video cameras -- and figure out the fastest way to get them into consumers' hands, usually through partnerships..

Building 8 isn't an actual building; Facebook's Menlo Park offices are numbered 10 through 20. (Building 20 not pictured.). That's what Facebook CTO Mike Schroepfer suggested to the The Wall Street Journal, and it's what was widely assumed when Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced he'd hired Regina Dugan to lead Building 8. Dugan is the former head of both the US Department of Defense's DARPA research arm, and Google's Advanced Technologies and Projects (ATAP) research lab. Zuckerberg suggested, in an April 2016 blog post, that Building 8 would pursue "augmented and virtual reality, artificial intelligence, connectivity and other important areas" -- which sounds pretty sciencey, to be sure.