IT News Head Lines (AnandTech) 21/04/2014

The AM1 Kabini Motherboard Preview: Analyzing the Hardware
One of AMD’s primary feature points for the AM1 Kabini platform was the introduction of low-cost motherboards. The promotional material provided gave a suggested AM1 combined price of $60. Now after release the cheapest APUs are $31 for a dual core and $35 for a quad core. This should mean motherboards from $29 and up. Today we take a brief preview of nine motherboards currently on sale, which start at $33.

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Galaxy S5 Follow-Up: Water Resistance, Adobe RGB Testing and More

 

A Closer Look at Water Resistance

Recently on the podcast, Anand mentioned that I was looking at how the Galaxy S5 performed when running benchmarks underwater. This ultimately started after the initial Galaxy S5 review was finished, as I started to test just how well the IP67 functionality worked. For those unfamiliar to how the Galaxy S5 achieved this ingress protection (1 meter depth for 30 minutes), the phone has effectively been designed from the ground up to prevent water ingress.
First, a rubber gasket on the back cover helps to keep out water from critical areas of the phone, as seen below. While the photo doesn't show it very well, there's another snap in the area enclosed by the rubber gasket to ensure that a tight seal is created.

Second, the USB port has a water-sealing cover that latches tight to keep water out, as seen below in the closed position.

Finally, the entire phone has effectively has two midframes, one on the display assembly and the other serving as a mounting point for the logic board. This means that all the screws are hidden underneath the display assembly, which is glued on, as seen below in iFixit's teardown. The entire phone stays tightly assembled, without any risk of screws backing out and making it possible for water to enter the phone.

While it was an interesting party trick to pour water all over the phone, ultimately the most interesting aspect would be examining how water would affect the performance of the Galaxy S5. Doing such a test would also be a good way to verify that the phone would be able to handle submersion. As shown by our T-Rex rundown tests in the Galaxy S5 review and by the graph below, the HTC One (M8) noticeably pulled ahead of the Galaxy S5 in performance by the end of the test. We attributed the difference in sustained performance to the difference in the build of the two phones. The M8's metal unibody chassis simply does a better job of removing heat from the Snapdragon 801.

As Anand said, I ultimately didn't find much in the way of interesting results for our standard benchmarks. Instead, what ended up being interesting is the battery rundown test. Most of the results ended up being the same or less than what Anand published for the Galaxy S5 review. At any rate, analyzing the T-Rex rundown test proved to be the most useful in terms of data. For reference, these tests were conducted at around 68-70 degrees Fahrenheit or 20-21 degrees Celcius ambient air and water temperature, which came out of the tap. Both tests were run for around 25 minutes to ensure that the IP67 rating wasn't exceeded. This ultimately means that FPS differences will be somewhat difficult to see until late into the test, but the trend is noticeable, as seen by the graph below. With a few more runs, I'm sure this would be more apparent, but in the interest of having a Galaxy S5 to test against other phones in the future, I'll have to hold off for now. At any rate, the water-cooled version of the Galaxy S5 seems to maintain a steady ~28 FPS, which effectively means that the phone doesn't throttle at all given room temperature water.

While the FPS plot doesn't seem too show much, looking at the graph of battery temperatures seems to show the major difference that water cooling can make, especially for a smartphone that is made to be passively cooled by ambient airflow. Unfortunately, this data isn't quite as neat, as I haven't found a utility that dumps data from temperature sensors into a CSV file. At any rate, the trend is obvious enough. In the images below, the right screenshot shows battery temperature when running T-Rex in air, while the left screenshot shows the battery temperature when running T-Rex in water. The GS5 in air appears to peak around 35 degrees Celcius given the conditions, a delta of around 15 degrees Celcius from the ambient temperature, while the GS5 in water appears to peak around 22-23 degrees Celcius, or only a degree or two above ambient temperatures at best.

The results speak for themselves in this case, and while this is ultimately a bit impractical from an ease of use standpoint, it definitely is possible to do, and leads to some interesting possibilities from a custom ROM/overclocking standpoint. As always, it's worth going over why these results were observed. In short, while the water was effectively at the same ambient temperature as the air, the difference in heat dissipation and throttling was noticeable, even just ten minutes into the test. This is because of water's properties compared to air that make it especially well suited to moderating temperatures. The first is thermal conductivity, which means that heat from the phone is transferred more quickly into the surrounding environment. The second is water's high specific heat capacity. This means that the water requires a great deal of heat energy to increase in temperature, which means that the environment around the phone is also less likely to heat up. Finally, the relatively high density of water relative to air means that more water can be in a given volume than a given volume of air, which means that more particles have to be heated before the temperature of the surroundings will increase.



In short, all of these factors make water a much better coolant than air. While the real world use cases for this would be few and far between, it definitely does make for a neat effect and helps to reduce the impact of thermal throttling on benchmarks. It's not hard to think of places where the water resistance would come in handy though, especially when it comes to using the device while taking a shower/bathing or while at the pool. However, based upon the build of the phone, it is still inadvisable to take it to the beach as the sand and salinity of the water would likely cause corrosion of the sealing measures and damage the phone.

Revisiting the Fingerprint Scanner

Back when I first used the fingerprint scanner, I effectively said that it was only usable with two hands, and required slowly swiping the finger down the sensor in a consistent manner, but after sufficient experimentation, I've managed to figure out how to actually get it working with one hand. Of course, the key is always to make sure that the finger is enrolled properly. This basically means that swiping the same way one would unlock the phone is absolutely crucial. The big issue here is that the enrollment process seems to be far less selective of which prints it will accept than the actual unlock process itself, which means it takes trial and error to establish whether the enrolled fingerprint will actually make it possible to unlock in the same manner. Various issues like make the fingerprint sensor an enormous friction point in the whole experience, as attempting to unlock until the maximum number of attempts is reached is not uncommon, and there are often noticeable delays between swiping and an indication of success or failure of the fingerprint scanner.

At any rate, it is satisfying when it works on the first try, as in those cases it beats a pattern lock as shown by the gif above, on the right. However, the times when failure after failure occurs, it's frustrating enough to switch back to a pattern lock or no lockscreen at all. An example of this can be seen by the gif on the top left. I'll continue to look into trying to get the fingerprint sensor to work, but as it is, there is significant room for improvement. Perhaps a software update will help to resolve some of the issues present, but some issues, such as the reduced tactile feel of the home button and awkward swiping gesture cannot be solved by software. While I'd still prefer having the fingerprint scanner to not having the fingerprint scanner, this is the first time that I've actually gone back to using a standard pattern lock on a phone with a fingerprint scanner for any period of time.
Quibbles with usability aside, I question the security of this fingerprint scanner, as in my experience there's no need to enter in a password if I reboot the phone, and even if I exceed the number of allowed attempts, on my unit I find that getting another attempt is as easy as turning the screen on and off again with the power/sleep button.

Display: Professional Photo and Adobe RGB

As some other websites and readers have mentioned, Pro Photo is apparently meant to target Adobe RGB, rather than sRGB. While I've discussed why gamuts larger than sRGB can be a problem on an OS like Android that doesn't support ICC color profiles, this doesn't mean that I object to a display that supports gamuts larger than sRGB. If anything, this will be the only way to push the industry forward to a wider color gamut standard in the long run.
As always, all of our display tests are run using CalMAN 5 with a custom workflow.
For this display characterization, I deliberately chose not to look at grayscale again as I've already discussed those results in the Galaxy S5 review. As a quick recap for those that haven't seen the review, the Galaxy S5 has good white point in grayscale, however there's a noticeable green tint to all whites and grays, likely because it lets Samsung hit much higher brightness values.

In the saturation sweep, Pro Photo is approximately as accurate in Adobe RGB as Cinema mode is in sRGB. However, looking at the saturation sweep shows some severe issues with calibrations of red, green, cyan, and magenta. Each of these colors have different sets of issues, so it's worth going over each of them. In the case of red, there's a bit of overshoot at 100%, and it seems to have offset every saturation as a result, making everything redder than it should be. In the case of magenta, there's no issue with saturation compression or going noticeably beyond the gamut, but it's skewed towards red. The issues with green and cyan are mostly similar, and likely constrained by the native gamut of the AMOLED phosphors, as it seems both are within the Adobe RGB gamut, and while 20-60% saturation is generally linear, 80% and 100% have been compressed quite closely together, likely an attempt to compensate for the lacking native gamut. Cyan is also noticeably skewed towards the green side, especially at 100%. As always, the hope is that Samsung will continue to improve calibration and introduce mechanisms to compensate for OLED aging to maintain color accuracy. Overall though, for a mobile display it's great that it even comes close to Adobe RGB, as most LCD displays generally cannot go far beyond sRGB.

Final Thoughts

After getting to spend more time with the Galaxy S5, I've been able to get a more nuanced view of the device. The more time I spend using both the Galaxy S5 and One (M8), the more mixed I become on both. Ultimately, neither is truly better than the other. Both phones definitely feel too big now, especially compared to the One (M7) and Galaxy S4, which were phones that I found to be perfectly usable and not significantly harder to use than the 4.3"-screened phones of 2011 and and 4.8"-screened phones of 2012. I sincerely hope that the size creep occurring here comes to an end now, or even regresses.
For the Galaxy S5, there are various issues that remain irritating. Despite being able to use the fingerprint sensor with one hand, it still regularly fails for no apparent reason. The display's strange green tint to whites and grays is noticeable, and TouchWiz feels noticeably slower than Sense 6 despite turning off the S-Voice home button toggle and doubling the animation speed. The water resistance measures also noticeably reduce the amount of heat that the phone can dissipate, which effectively nullifies the gains made by the higher CPU bin. It's also a bit disappointing that Samsung continues to push 1.1 micron pixels without OIS in the camera module to try and compensate for lower sensitivity.
Despite these issues, the Galaxy S5 remains a solid choice. The closest competitor, the HTC One (M8), is equally imperfect, although addressing this is best left to another article. In general, it seems that this year, the major Android flagships will all be flawed in their own ways, for better or worse. It certainly doesn't make sense to upgrade this year if you already have a flagship that launched in 2013, although other OEMs may surprise us at some point further down the road.


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SilverStone ML04 & ML05 Slim HTPC Cases Review
Silverstone is well-known among technology enthusiasts, and while they offer a great selection of technology-related goods, cases and virtually everything enclosure-related are their specialty. The company offers a very impressive selection of such products, and for variety we decided to have a look at their low-profile HTPC products; even then, Silverstone had over a dozen from which to choose, and we settled on the ML04 and ML05. Read on for our full review....


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AMD Q1 2014 Quarterly Earnings Analysis

AMD hosted their quarterly earnings conference call this afternoon to announce their financial results for the quarter ending March 2014. While they still reported a GAAP loss of $20 Million ($0.03 per share), year over year results showed a strong revenue gain of 28% and a substantial 86% increase in net income (though still a small loss).

AMD Q1 2014 Financial Results (GAAP)
	Q1'2014	Q4'2013	Q1'2013
Revenue	$1.40B	$1.59B	$1.09B
Net Income	-$20M	$89M	-$146M

Gross margins were 35% for the quarter which was flat compared to Q4 2013. These margins are in-line with AMD’s stated goals, and while they’d no doubt appreciate greater margins right now, the long term plan is to be profitable with these margins.
Non-GAAP numbers were slightly higher, with a small profit of $12M, or $0.02 per share.

AMD Q1 2014 Financial Results (Non-GAAP)
	Q1'2014	Q4'2013	Q1'2013
Revenue	$1.40B	$1.59B	$1.09B
Net Income	$12M	$45M	-$94M

The biggest decrease was in the Computing Solutions (CPUs & APUs) segment, where there was a decrease of 12% year-over-year, however the Graphics and Visual Solutions (GPUs & custom SoCs) segment had a huge year-over-year increase of 118% mostly due to semi-custom SoC production. This isn’t surprising with the very high sales of the Xbox One, and more so the PS4, both which have AMD silicon at the heart of their platform.

AMD Q1 2014 Computing Solutions Division Financial Results
	Q1'2014	Q4'2013	Q1'2013
Operating Income	-$3M	-$7M	-$39M

GPU operating income also increased year-over-year up $75M with the release of the popular Radeon R7 and R9 products and strong Average Selling Prices of those devices. Sequentially, GPU operating income fell $30M due to a decrease in semi-custom SoC sales. This isn’t surprising, since the PS4 and Xbox One both arrived in Q4 2013 – complete with the major production ramp-up and stockpiling that a console launch entails – and were a large boost to AMD’s sales numbers for that quarter.

AMD Q1 2014 Graphics and Visual Solutions Financial Results
	Q1'2014	Q4'2013	Q1'2013
Operating Income	$91M	$121M	$16M

Total debt combining long term and short term was up slightly at $2.14B, however Cash, cash equivalents, and marketable securities were hovering around the $1B mark which is where AMD wants to keep its cash reserves. This is in addition to making the final payment to GlobalFoundries of $200M for its previous wafer commitments for 2012, as well as fixing prices for their 2014 wafer purchases.
AMD is expecting a 3% revenue increase (plus or minus 3%) for the 2^nd quarter this year.
Overall this is a decent quarter for AMD. Consensus earnings for Q1 was $0.00 per share non-GAAP, which AMD beat at $0.02 per share. AMD shares are up 5.96% in after-hours trading at this time.
Going forward, AMD is expected to bring its ARM 64 bit server architecture out this year, and is hoping to make inroads in the profitable server market.
Rory Read – AMD’s president and CEO – must be pretty happy with the new fiscal outlook. There was a time in 2012 where people weren’t sure if AMD was going to be able to pull through but strong GPU and SoC sales, coupled with cost savings in the CPU division have brought AMD back.


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Newegg Opens Business to the UK and Australia

As a consumer, more competition can be a good thing. Competition in manufacturing brings innovation and might help drive core pricing down, whereas competition in selling pits retailers against each other to see who will accept the lowest profit margin. In the US, Newegg is a big name when it comes to computer components and pre-built PCs, but also sells hand blenders, sporting goods and toys. It also allows third-party sellers to get in on the act, and as such you can navigate to Newegg to purchase a dust pan and brush.
For users outside the US, sometimes Newegg’s deals seem almost ridiculous. Part of that is because of the different tax regime, but sometimes there are US only parts (laptops spring to mind) that are unavailable elsewhere. Back at Mobile World Congress in February, I met with Newegg. I was told (with glee) that Newegg would be coming to Europe and other regions over the course of the next few months. Last week the official announcement was made: Newegg is now selling to the UK and Australia. If I log in to Newegg today I can get UK pricing:

All promotional codes I can find seem to work with any UK purchase. There are some initial downsides, mostly related to import tax. The price you see on the product page is not necessarily the price you pay.
In the UK, when importing goods from outside of Europe, the government (via the postal service) will levy up to a 20% tax plus an admin fee. For those in the US, normally the price we see is the price we pay in the UK, so that might come as a shock to UK buyers. Eligible items will show as above with the pricing and an ‘add to cart’. Shipping, as you might imagine coming from the US, is not free. But moving through to the checkout adds the following:

As you see here, the K6000 is normally £3500, but reduced to £2989.90 due to a Newegg sale. The tax and duty comes to £600.37, with £13.94 shipping and discount code brings the total to £3544.40, just above the original price. The way Newegg will work is that they will charge the consumer in advance for taxes and duties so that items will not be held in customs and delivery targets can be met. Hopefully this will be met by the delivery services and any discrepancies will not cause issues to the buyer. I notice that tax from the shipping cost is not taken into account. I have been charged tax on shipping to the UK before, and I discussed this with Newegg.  Newegg stated that the aim is to include all the costs at the point of sale, such that items are quickly sent through to the buyer.
Distance selling is stage one of Newegg’s expansion, with further stages to come. These stages should be centered around selling to the rest of Europe, as well as locating a warehouse in the region. Newegg has not given me any definite indication of what the plans are or timeframe for such plans, but the end goal is to bring what is sold in the US to the global market.
One question that I have seen asked since this news was released is whether the market (in the UK at least) needs another retailer.  This goes double for one aiming to sell long distance. Without a specific deal at Newegg, most items (or the several I had looked at) work out around the same price (due to taxes) but take a few days longer to post, and thus it makes more sense to purchase locally. For those rare items that we cannot get in the UK, at least there is now an outlet. But with SCAN, OverclockersUK, Aria, Dabs, eBuyer and even Amazon in the mix, it might be hard for Newegg to gain a profitable foothold beyond distance selling.
Currently Newegg is offering a small selection through the website, with aims to expand the offering during the course of 2014.  This will include access to Rosewill, Newegg’s in-house brand. More information can be found via Newegg’s blog post about the expansion.


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MSI GT70 Review: GTX 880M Edition
MSI has had the same core designs for several of their high-end laptops for at least a couple years now; specifically we’re talking about the GT60 and GT70 series. There have been updates and tweaks to the internal components, but the chassis remain largely the same as before – for better or for worse. The latest update brings NVIDIA’s new GTX 800M parts into the picture, and today we have the GT70 equipped with the top-of-the-line GTX 880M. What sort of performance increase does the new GPU bring, and what about Battery Boost? Read on for our full review.


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HTC Hires Former Samsung Marketing Chief Who Developed "Galaxy" Brand
Paul Golden was also one of the people behind the "fanboys" campaign, now he lends his talents to HTC

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NASA Finds "Habitable Zone" Planet Sized Similar to Earth
No signs of life yet

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Google Knocked by Analysts, But Shows Strokes of Brilliance in Q1 2014
Lower mobile click fees and rising compensation costs trouble, but Nest, Titan Aerospace acquisitions excite

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Volvo Exec: Each Volvo Sold in U.S. Could Be Sold With Plug-In Hybrid Powertrain
It's using its Scalable Platform Architecture to do so

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A Bug's Life: Female Cave Bugs Have Penises, Penetrate Males for Three Days
International team discovers bizarre and bewildering secrets of insect reproduction

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UK Teachers Want Parents to Cut-Off Their Children's Internet, Tablet Use at Night
They say students lack the motor skills or can't pay attention in class because of tablet overexposure

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Mounties Arrest 19-Year-Old Who Delayed Canada's Tax Filing w/ Heartbleed
Hacking effort set Canada's tax collection back a week; now the youth behind it faces tough consequences

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Nissan Introduces EZ-Charge Cards for New LEAF Owners, Offers Free Charging
"No Charge to Charge" will launch alongside the EZ-Charge card on July 1, 2014

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Sony to Unleash Social SHAREfactory Feature in PS4 Update 1.70
The update is "coming soon"

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Quick Note: Chrome Remote Desktop App for Android Launches
Android users can get Chrome remote access via a new app

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Report: Apple Plans to Integrate Shazam Song Finding Functionality into Siri
Shazam integration expected with iOS 8

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Google Street View and reCAPTCHA Get Smarter with New Algorithm
Algorithm will help Google make Captcha easier for people while securing websites more effectivly

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Bring Your Own Battery: LG Isai FL Likely is G3, First U.S. Quad-HD Android
QHD may be power hungry, but it may make tiny text a bit more readable -- cue the inevitable debate

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Mt. Gox CEO Refuses to Come to the U.S. in Financial Crimes Probe
Meanwhile Tokyo Court rules that Mt. Gox can't be rehability, and that Mr. Karpelès must be investigated

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Mark Zuckerberg: Facebook Home Reception Slower than Expected, Social Graph Will Pick Up
Zuckerberg said Facebook is still innovating

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SpaceX Leases Apollo 11 Launchpad for 20 Years
SpaceX will lease Launch Complex 39A at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida

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Project Moonshine: Google's Plan to Flatten Android App Icons Leaks
Android is looking to follow in Windows Phone's footsteps with new update

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Quick Note: Toyota Attempts to Erase “Boring” Image with ’15 Camry SE Hybrid
Toyota's Camry gets all emotional

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Mazda Bringing SKYACTIV Tech to Miata, Trims 220 Pounds from Chassis
Mazda puts the Miata on a diet

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Apple, Microsoft, and Major U.S. Wireless Carriers Embrace Smartphone "Kill Switch"
Verizon Wireless and other major companies have joined the voluntary program

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Lenovo Outs New Flex Notebooks, Desktop PCs
Lenovo's Flex 2 notebooks have swiveling screens

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4/16/2014 Hardware Reviews
DailyTech's roundup reviews from around the web for Wednesday

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Samsung Launching Android Wear Smartwatch, High-end Tizen Smartphone This Year
Samsung exec says Android-powered smartwatch is coming

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Direct Auto Sales Bill Fizzles Out in Arizona Senate; Tesla Motors Will Try Again
This could put a damper on the Gigafactory location for Arizona

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