IT-Code-News: IT News Head Lines (AnandTech) 09/06/2014

Humble Weekly: Liebesgrüße aus Deutschland

Okay, pardon my potentially horrible German (and a James Bond reference for good measure!), but it was worth a shot. The latest Humble Weekly Bundle includes up to twelve games, all from German developers. The core bundle has a "pay what you want" price ($1 or more for Steam codes; DRM-free version of five of the seven core games are available for any donation), with three more games if you beat the current average price ($3.81 right now), and finally two additional games if you donate $9 or more. I'm used to seeing Child's Play Charity and the American Red Cross as the standard donation options, but this week the two charities are Doctors Without Borders and Make-A-Wish, so if you'd like to help those causes it's another reason to pick up some of these games. Here's the short list, ordered alphabetically within the pricing tiers:

Beatbuddy: Tale of Guardians (75%, 08/2013 – $1+): puzzle-platformer with a world that responds to the soundtrack, with rhythm/adventure elements thrown it for good measure.
Crazy Machines 2 (72%, 06/2008 – $1+): solve increasingly challenging/complex puzzles by building Rube-Goldberg-inspired machines.
Galaxy on Fire 2 (63%, 08/2012 – $1+): open-ended space shooter/simulation with an optional story you can follow; updated graphics relative to the original iOS release.
The Great Jitters: Pudding Panic (~60%, 05/2014 – $1+): a port of a popular iOS game, you guide a scared blob of pudding down the rails of a ghost train – try not to faint! (Reviews of the original iOS version are very positive, but the PC port is so new that I haven't seen any reviews yet. Personally...I rate it about a 60%; it's a weak port, with no resolution support above 1024x768 and the gameplay with a mouse is undoubtedly not as compelling as with a touchscreen.)
The Guild II Collection (~61%, 10/2006 – $1+): this collection includes the original medieval strategy/RPG "life simulation", along with the two follow up games Pirates of the High Seas (63%, 2007) and Renaissance (56%, 2010). You can choose from a number of professions and then life out your life in the game world.
Spirits (~60%, 02/2012 – $1+): a puzzle/action game with concepts similar to Lemmings, if you go that far back. Guide the autumn leaves home by altering the way the wind blows and changing the ground.
Tiny & Big: Grandpa's Leftovers (75%, 06/2012 – $1+): a 3D cell-shaded puzzle-platformer where you manipulate the environment with various tools to try to recover a lost relic (Grandpa's Underpants); this was part of another recent bundle, but if you missed it you can pick it up here.
ArcaniA – Gothic 4 (63%, 10/2010 – BTA): an open-world RPG in the vein of the Elder Scrolls series, this fourth installment moves to more tropical island environment.
The Book of Unwritten Tales Digital Deluxe Edition (82%, 10/2011 – BTA): this is a classic-style point-and-click adventure game from the Unwritten Tales series, originally funded/launched via Kickstarter. This includes a "making of" booklet and original soundtrack as part of the "Digital Deluxe" package; not to be confused with the later installment in the series, the Critter Chronicles.
Risen (77%, 10/2009 – BTA): if you've finished reading all of the Elder Scrolls and beaten Gothic and you're still looking for more open-world RPG adventuring, you might want to check out the world of Risen – it's good for another 50+ hours of gameplay.
Giana Sisters: Twisted Bundle (~80%, 2012-2013 – $9+): this is a two-for-one bundle that gives you the original Giana Sisters: Twisted Dreams (77%) and the Rise of the Owlverlord (84%), with the latter providing seven new levels. Giana Sisters is a platformer (and another game that started at Kickstarter), with the key mechanic being that switching between the two "sisters" alters the entire game world.
The Night of the Rabbit: Premium Edition (75%, 05/2013 – $9+): last but not least, this is another point-and-click adventure that involves you following a white rabbit to the world of…no, not Wonderland, Mousewood! Help young Jerry fulfill his dream of becoming a magician, and in the process save Mousewood.

I think the "beat the average" portion of this bundle is a pretty easy sell, as you get ten games and at least a few of them should be worthy of your time. The $9 tier isn't too bad either, provided you don't already own one or both games. I grew up playing quite a few point-and-click adventure games but the genre lost me as I grew older; with young children of my own now, however, getting some family friendly fare that might stretch their brains a bit is always welcome. I'm not sure I'd rate the bundle as "wunderbar", but "gut genug" in this case was sufficient to help me part with some of my money. And as an added bonus for making it this far, I already own Tiny & Big ~~as well as Risen~~, so the first two people to ask me for a game code can get a Steam gift code from me.

Gallery: Humble Weekly: Liebesgrüße aus Deutschland

Computex 2014: ECS’ Z97I-Drone mini-ITX motherboard and UHD/4K60 AIO

Cruising by the ECS booth this year yielded a couple of elements I was not expecting. We have visited ECS booths in years gone by, but this time they are coming to market with a mini-ITX motherboard update. The Z97I-Drone motherboard is designed to be a lower cost Z97-series motherboard, with five SATA ports and an M.2 slot for WiFi/Bluetooth only. I’ll be honest – I have not seen many WiFi modules based on the M.2 standard. There is also an Intel I218-V NIC and six USB 3.0 ports.

Moving around the booth I came across a 4K all-in-one. I could not remember if I had seen a 4K AIO before without MST, but I enquired into the refresh rate, expecting it to be 30 Hz. To my surprise, it was 60 Hz. So this is a 24-inch, 4K, 60 Hz display, which I also found out was running an Intel i7-4790S CPU, a 3.2 GHz quad core model with hyperthreading. ECS is offering this as an OEM for anyone who wants to stick their name on it and sell it. I should have asked if the panel comes pre-calibrated, but it does come with space for two 2.5” drives or one 3.5” drive.

Gallery: Computex 2014: ECS’ Z97I-Drone mini-ITX motherboard and UHD/4K60 AIO

Computex 2014: Thermaltake Core V1, a Windowed mini-ITX for $50

Speeding by the Thermaltake booth at Computex and our contact showed us the new Core V1, an exciting mini-ITX case where the top, sides and bottom of the case are interchangeable. The case comes with one windowed panel and three vented panels, but users should be able to purchase more windowed panels to make their rig see though, or replacing panels becomes easy and cheap. The front panel of the case is easy to remove, and features a 200mm fan.

The case is also large enough for two 120mm fans on the rear, and due to the nature of the design, the space for a GPU extends into the front of the case for longer graphics cards. It also supports ATX PSUs and it can even be made to house a water cooling loop:

It will not fit their new 540 radiator (3x180mm) though:

The Core V1 has space for two side-mounted 3.5” or 2.5” drives, but with adaptors it will fit four 2.5” drives. The Core V1 should be available within a matter of weeks.

Computex 2014: MSI’s New ECO Motherboard Range

As part of their display at Computex, MSI was showing a new element to their range based on low power systems. The ECO range, in a white and green, is aimed at low power scenarios, and MSI seem to focus on micro-ATX sizes for H81 and B85 chipsets.

One of the main elements to this is the MSI software, allowing users to disable unused PCIe and USB ports, or disabling fan headers. We saw the early versions of this software on the Z97 MPower Max AC, but the ECO software is more extensive in terms of options.

There still has to be a number of features on the motherboards in order to sell, but MSI is interested in comments regarding the range.

Computex 2014: X99 and USB 3.1 at MSI

Back in 2011, that year’s Computex offered the opportunity to play ‘spot the X79’ motherboard, and there ended up being a significant number of models on display before launch. Fast forward a number of years and ‘spot the X99’ is in full swing, although there seems to be less opportunity. Only one motherboard manufacturer had an X99 motherboard on outward display to all press and the public, so when we went through MSI’s booth, we had a look.

Aside from the lack of a rear panel, there is clearly USB 3.0 and a number of SATA 6 Gbps ports to play with. The spec list to the side mentions DDR4-2666 (OC), showing that 2666 MHz is an overclock frequency for the memory. There also seems to be a reference to an M.2 x2 support, SATA Express support, and an Intel I218-V Ethernet.

Also at the MSI booth was a motherboard featuring a USB 3.1 controller.

The Z97-G55 SLI used the ASMedia ASM1142 Controller that requires two PCIe 2.0 lanes, which puts more pressure on PCIe lanes given the new storage technologies implemented on the 9-series that also require PCIe lanes.

Gallery: Computex 2014: X99 and USB 3.1 at MSI

Advatronix Cirrus 1200: a Storage Server Under Your Desk
The Advatronix Cirrus 1200 tries to distinguish itself from the average tower server offering with a cube shaped desktop that has many hot pluggable hard disk bays. Will the low power, low noise, and low latency storage be enough to convince potential buyers to invest in such a solution? Read on for our full review of this storage server.

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Computex 2014: Galaxy Showcases GTX 750 Ti Darbee Edition

In the realm of photo and film-editing, post processing can make the difference between bad looking media and something epic. The depth of post processing on an image or a video is usually dictated by the level of expertise of the editor or the budget, which might suggest that things could be better. Darbee is a known company that deals in media post-processing in real-time, whereby I have a couple of friends who swear by their custom boxes that use clever manipulation techniques (based on blur-and-subtract algorithms) to bring their home media system to life. What Galaxy has done is combine one of their GPU designs, the GTX 750 Ti, with a Darbee IP, to allow an all-in-one image enhanced graphics card.

The system takes a standard reference design GTX 750 Ti, extends the length, and uses an add-in card containing an Altera Cyclone IV FPGA as well as some other ICs.

The effect is output only on one HDMI port due to the hardware limitations, but users can adjust the depth of the effect from 0% (none) to 100% (full) with the included software. At current the GPU is not equipped for SLI over cabling, however I requested an edition to come to the US, allowing users to hook up three cards and run them all in SLI with the effect on three HDMI panels.

After speaking to a few friends about the technology, an interesting point came to pass. AMD and NVIDIA are currently in a battle for performance. It would not take much for one of these to invest into the Darbee post-processing ecosystem and incorporate it into their technology, thus giving an improved feature set to the brand. However, it was also mentioned how much effect Darbee has on a calibrated display. We now have a contact for Galaxy, so I will see if Ryan has time to look at a sample.

Gallery: Computex 2014: Galaxy Showcases GTX 750 Ti Darbee Edition

Google Announces Project Tango Tablet Dev Kit with Tegra K1 and 3D Capture/Tracking

Google recently announced their new Project Tango Development Kit, a 7" tablet with a unique twist. At present this is a device for developers, scientists, and other research-oriented groups more than something for end users, but as with most Google projects the end goal is obviously to help create something that will end up being a useful addition to a retail product. You can read more about Project Tango, but the main point of interest is that the devices contain hardware and software that allows them to track and map 3D environments. Google states that the sensors make over a quarter million 3D measurements every second, updating its position and orientation in real-time.
It seems like if Google gets enough of these things running around the world, they could combine all that data into an impressively detailed 3D map of the entire world (well, the populated parts at least). Google Earth could certainly benefit from that sort of data, but there are plenty other uses for such technology as well. NVIDIA's blog on the subject notes that games could map out your living room (or yard, office, neighborhood, etc.), or a real estate agent (or architect) could use it to create a 3D model of a house/building and provide a virtual walkthrough for clients. Uses in the robotics field are another option, and robotics research has already seen great benefits of integrating Microsoft's Kinect sensor into various designs.
Along with the new information on Project Tango comes the announcement of the latest development kit hardware. (Note that this is the second Project Tango device; the first was a smartphone.) Compared to many tablets currently out there, the specs are quite impressive: NVIDIA Tegra K1 SoC, 4GB RAM, 128GB storage, and of course all the sensors needed to track motion and map environments. Basically, imagine a tablet/smartphone with Kinect-style sensors integrated into the product. (Update: Mantis Vision just announced that they will be providing the core 3D engine for Project Tango.) The device itself is a 7-inch tablet, though the screen resolution wasn't divulged, and it will be running the latest version of Android (KitKat 4.4).
If that sounds enticing, there are two more items you'll need to know: first is that the development kits will be made available "later this year", so this is not yet shipping hardware. Second, the cost of the development kit is $1024 (a nod to computer geeks and our infatuation with powers of two, I suppose). NVIDIA sent along two rendered images of the Project Tango tablet, showing black and white casings.

Best Smartphones: Spring 2014

The major product launches for this spring are now behind us. This gives us the opportunity to evaluate the current smartphone market and identify the best smartphones in that market. We’ll break this down into a few categories, as well as cover Android and Windows Phone separately. If you’re on iOS, or leaning that way, then there’s not much to say as clearly the iPhone 5S is the current high-water mark for iOS phones. Only devices that are currently available will be on this list. Those devices that have been announced but not yet released will be eligible for the next version. We're hoping to add this as a regular feature going foward, so please don't hesitate to send us feedback. Timing of course will depend on product launches and appropriate test time with the devices.
We test a lot of smartphones at AnandTech, and as far as I can tell there has yet to be a perfect product. Generally compromises are made on some aspects of the device. There is no way we can cover every single way anyone can use a device, so when it's named the best, that doesn't mean it's the best for everyone, but hopefully it's the best for the majority. Devices named the best will always have their flaws, and if those flaws fall right into your requirements, it may not be the best device for you.
We'll break each operating system group into four segments which are flagship, phablet, mid-range, and low cost. Flagship models will be the ultimate device from each manufacturer, and in theory should have no compromises. The phablet category is for the extra large screen phones, generally at or around 6" in display size. Mid-range phones will be compromised somewhat to reach a lower price point, but should still be a powerful, fully featured device. Finally, the low cost segment will be for the phones which are low cost, but still deliver a good smartphone experience.

Android

Let’s start off the discussion with Android. This year there has been another move to the next biggest and best SoC, which in this case is the Qualcomm Snapdragon 801. While only a speed bump in actual clock speeds of the four Krait cores, the entire SoC got many small improvements, including eMMC 5.0, and a new silicon revision which resulted in a SoC which was more powerful, but also easier on the battery.

Flagship Device: Samsung Galaxy S5

This was likely the hardest category to choose right now, and for all of the wrong reasons. It was a close competition between the HTC One (M8) and the Samsung Galaxy S5, but right now the edge is going to Samsung. The HTC is far and away better in the design department. It also has much better speakers and audio amplifier than the GS5, but unfortunately the HTC camera is only OK, and on a flagship device, that’s not good enough. The display accuracy of the HTC is also still a disappointment, especially when the competition is starting to calibrate their displays. So enough about HTC. What gives the edge to Samsung right now? Obviously the display is better calibrated. The camera, at 16 MP and with ISOCELL, takes better overall images, but does lose to the Ultrapixel on the M8 in low light scenarios. The GS5 can also shoot 4k video, which while not important to everyone, it’s a tick box that’s unfilled on the HTC with only a 4 MP rear shooter. And while I’m not a big fan of plastic doors on charging ports, the door does factor into the IP67 rating of the GS5 for dust and moisture protection. Add in the bonus of a removable battery, and the GS5 just squeaks past the HTC One.
Like I said – it was very close, but only because neither device has it all. If the speakers on your smartphone are more important to you, then the HTC wins hands down.

Samsung Galaxy S5
	Specifications
Height	142 mm
Width	72.5 mm
Depth	8.1 mm
Weight	145 g
CPU	MSM8974ACv3 2.45 GHz (Quad Core Krait 400)
GPU	Adreno 330
RAM	2 GB LPDDR3
NAND	16/32 GB NAND microSD
Camera	16MP (5132 x 2988) Rear Facing with 1.12 µm pixels, 1/2.6" CMOS size, 31 mm (35mm effective), 2MP FFC
Display	5.1” 1080p SAMOLED HD
Battery	10.78 Whr
Price	$749 (16 GB) Currently N/A (32 GB)

Phablet: Samsung Galaxy Note 3

Samsung has another win here with the Galaxy Note 3. The S Pen is a key feature of the Note series, and it’s well executed. While the Note hasn’t been refreshed to the latest Snapdragon SoC, it still packs in a Snapdragon 800, and with everything else you’d expect from a device like this – 802.11ac Wi-Fi, a good (but not amazing) camera, and of course the 5.7” 1080p display. Following in Samsung tradition, the back panel is removable which gains access to the microSD and removable battery.

Samsung Galaxy Note 3
	Specifications
Height	151.2 mm
Width	79.2 mm
Depth	8.3 mm
Weight	168 g
CPU	MSM8974AB 2.3 GHz (Quad Core Krait 400)
GPU	Adreno 330
RAM	3 GB LPDDR3
NAND	16/32 GB NAND microSD
Camera	13MP Rear Facing with 1.12 µm pixels, 1/3.06" CMOS size, 31 mm (35mm effective) F/2.2 4k30, 2MP FFC
Display	5.7” 1080p SAMOLED HD
Battery	12.1 Whr
Price	$570 (16 GB) $600 (32 GB)

Mid-Range: LG Google Nexus 5

It’s tough to compete against someone who’s not out to make money. That’s certainly the case here, and Google’s Nexus 5 wins for best midrange phone. It’s a lot of phone for the money, with the 5” 1080p display, Snapdragon 800, and a decent camera. Google might have some competition in this space though with another company that’s decided it’s not out to make money, but the OnePlus One is not officially available yet so we won’t compare it right now.
Where else does the Nexus 5 do well? The display is well calibrated out of the box, there is 16 GB of internal NAND with an inexpensive upgrade to 32 GB, and it’s fully unlocked.

Google Nexus 5
	Specifications
Height	137.84 mm
Width	69.17 mm
Depth	8.59 mm
Weight	130 g
CPU	2.26 GHz MSM8974 (Quad Core Krait 400)
GPU	Adreno 330
RAM	2 GB LPDDR3
NAND	16/32 GB NAND
Camera	8 MP with OIS, AF, LED flash, 1.3 MP front facing
Display	4.95" 1920x1080 HD IPS LCD
Battery	8.74 Whr
Price	$349 (16 GB) $399 (32 GB)

Low Cost: Motorola Moto G

Affordable is the name of the game here. Motorola has proven you can get a good smartphone for a low price with the Moto G. For $179 off contract, you get a 4.5” display at 1280x720, Snapdragon 400, 8 GB of NAND, and all in a very nice chassis that feels great in the hand. If you’re willing to spend another $20, you can get bumped up to 16 GB of NAND. It’s a lot of phone for the money, and clearly you are giving up features on a device with a price like this, such as a great camera, but battery life is good, performance is good, and the price is low. The LTE version costs $219, but drops the NAND back to 8 GB, however it does offer microSD expansion whereas the regular Moto G doesn’t offer expandable storage.

Motorola Moto G
	Specifications
Height	129.9 mm
Width	65.9 mm
Depth	11.6 mm
Weight	143 g
CPU	MSM8x26 1.2 GHz (Quad Core Cortex A7)
GPU	Adreno 305
RAM	1 GB LPDDR3
NAND	8/16 GB NAND
Camera	5 MP w/AF, LED Flash, 1.3 MP FFC
Display	4.5" LCD 1280x720
Battery	7.9 Whr
Price	$179 (8 GB) $199 (16 GB)

Windows Phone

On the Windows Phone side, things are a bit easier. Although Microsoft is trying to change this, right now the market is Nokia, and pretty much nothing else. Luckily for Windows Phone fans, that’s not really a bad thing since Nokia has made some nice devices. The Windows Phone side is generally behind Android on hardware specs, although with the latest releases it’s only slightly behind with the best devices offering Snapdragon 800 rather than the 801 of the most recent Android devices. Let’s take a look at the picks.

Flagship Device: Nokia Lumia 930 (Icon)

Right now, the flagship Windows Phone is an easy choice. The Nokia Lumia 930 is a 5” 1080p phone packing a quad-core 2.2 GHz Snapdragon 800. This phone is sold as the Lumia Icon in the USA, but globally it’s known as the 930. As with most Nokia high end phones, the camera is excellent, with a PureView 20MP rear shooter which can deliver lossless zoom and high quality photos. It also contains four patented High Amplitude Audio Capture (HAAC) microphones for high quality stereo recording. The device comes with 32 GB of internal storage, but unfortunately has no microSD card support. With 2 GB of RAM, Qi wireless charging, and a svelte polycarbonate body, this device almost has it all when compared to other Windows Phone devices with the one glaring omission of no Glance Screen support despite the AMOLED display. Still, it’s an easy pick.

Nokia Lumia 930 (Icon)
	Specifications
Height	137 mm
Width	71 mm
Depth	9.8 mm
Weight	167 g
CPU	MSM8974 2.2 GHz (Quad Core Krait 400)
GPU	Adreno 330
RAM	2 GB LPDDR3
NAND	32 GB NAND
Camera	20 MP PureView OIS 1/2.5" F/2.4 Dual LED, 1.2 MP FFC
Display	5" AMOLED 1920x1080
Battery	9.2 Whr
Price	$599 (32 GB)

Phablet: Nokia Lumia 1520

Also an easy selection is the Windows Phone phablet. The Nokia Lumia 1520 was the first Windows Phone device to utilize the Snapdragon 800, and with it’s also the first 6” device running Microsoft’s phone operating system. Since the only other 6” device is the lower spec Lumia 1320, we have a clear winner. The 1520 shares a lot in common with the later released 930 including the SoC, but as an added bonus the 1520 supports microSD cards in addition to the 16 or 32 GB of internal NAND. The display on the 6” phone is LCD rather than AMOLED on its smaller brother, but it does support Nokia’s Glance screen for notifications when the display is off. All 1520s other than the ones sold by AT&T also include built in Qi wireless charging.

Nokia Lumia 1520
	Specifications
Height	162.8 mm
Width	85.4 mm
Depth	8.7 mm
Weight	209 g
CPU	MSM8974 2.2 GHz (Quad Core Krait 400)
GPU	Adreno 330
RAM	2 GB LPDDR3
NAND	16/32 GB NAND microSD
Camera	20 MP PureView OIS 1/2.5" F/2.4 Dual LED, 1.2 MP FFC
Display	6" IPS LCD 1920x1080
Battery	12.9 Whr
Price	$575 (32 GB)

Mid-Range: Nokia Lumia 1020

There is more competition in this range of devices than anywhere else. Unfortunately, there haven’t been any updates to any mid-range devices since summer last year, so now’s not a great time to buy a mid-range Windows Phone. The HTC 8X was a launch device for Windows Phone 8, and has a fantastic feel in the hand, and Nokia launched a couple of successors to the Lumia 920 which could be considered as well such as the lightweight 4.5” Lumia 925, but my selection (bearing in mind I already said it’s not a good time to buy) is the Lumia 1020. Launched in July 2013, there is still no other phone on the market that packs as much camera into a smartphone, so if this is your price range, you may as well go for that. The Lumia 1020 comes with a massive camera both in size, as well as pixel count. At 41 MP, and 1/1.5”, it’s simply way larger than any other smartphone camera on the market today. Internals though are decidedly last generation with a Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 (dual-core Krait, 1.5 GHz), 2 GB of memory, and 32 GB of storage with no expansion options. The AMOLED screen is a 1280 x 768 resolution and supports Nokia Glance. Wireless charging is absent on this model, but can be added with a case. It’s not the most powerful phone in the world, but it does have a fantastic camera.

Nokia Lumia 1020
	Specifications
Height	130.4 mm
Width	71.4 mm
Depth	10.4 mm
Weight	158 g
CPU	MSM8960 1.5 GHz (Dual Core Krait)
GPU	Adreno 225
RAM	2 GB LPDDR3
NAND	32 GB NAND
Camera	41 MP PureView OIS 1/1.5" F/2.2 Dual LED/Xenon, 1.2 MP FFC
Display	4.5" AMOLED 1280x768
Battery	7.6 Whr
Price	$440 (32 GB)

Low cost: Nokia

The low cost segment is also tricky, but it basically boils down to two devices. First is the Lumia 520. The Lumia 520 kind of took the Windows Phone market by storm last year. With an asking price often times well under $100 off contract, it quickly became the number one selling WP8 device by a large margin. However, I’m giving the pick to something that’s slightly less compromised, and only slightly more money. The Lumia 630 is a just launched phone, packing a Snapdragon 400 quad-core Cortex A7 at 1.2 GHz, a 4.5” display with ClearBlack (a polarizing layer on the screen to improve both sunlight readability, and overall black levels), and an optional dual-SIM model. Internal storage is 8 GB, with microSD expansion. RAM on this device is a lowly 512 MB, which will restrict some apps from running on the device, and there is no LTE available on the 630. You can get LTE on the slightly more expensive 635. At $159 MSRP for the 630, or $169 for the dual-SIM model, it’s a great way to get into the Windows Phone world for a low price. I’m picking it over the 520 for a few reasons. First, it’s got a better SoC even though they have the same amount of RAM. Second, it has the ClearBlack polarizer, which is missing on the 520 and really makes a big difference in black levels as well as readability outside. Third, it’s only slightly more money.

Nokia Lumia 630
	Specifications
Height	129.5 mm
Width	66.7 mm
Depth	9.2 mm
Weight	134 g
CPU	MSM8x26 1.2 GHz (Quad Core Cortex A7)
GPU	Adreno 305
RAM	512 MB LPDDR3
NAND	8 GB NAND microSD
Camera	5 MP 1/4" F/2.4 Dual LED, No FFC
Display	4.5" IPS LCD 854x480
Battery	7 Whr
Price	$159 (Single SIM) $169 (Dual SIM)

Please note that all prices quoted are either MSRP, or current sale prices from major retailers. All prices are quoted off-contract, and local prices may vary.

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Computex 2014: AMD Demonstrates First FreeSync Monitor Prototype

Our very own Anand Shimpi just got off of the Computex showfloor for a bit after paying a visit to AMD’s booth. Among the items AMD is showing at Computex is the current status of their FreeSync project, whose base feature of Adaptive Sync was recently added to the DisplayPort 1.2a standard as an extension.
First announced at CES 2014, FreeSync is AMD’s take on variable refresh monitors, utilizing some variable refresh functionality first designed for embedded DisplayPort (eDP). At the time AMD was showing off the concept on laptops (due to the need for eDP) but are back at Computex with an update on the project.
Here at Computex AMD is showing off the first prototype monitor that is FreeSync capable, which interestingly enough is based on a retail monitor that was hardware capable and could be converted with updated firmware. AMD’s actual demo hasn’t changed – they’re still running the fan blade demo we saw at CES 2014 – but it’s now running on external monitors. The monitor in question operates with a fairly narrow range of rates of just 40Hz to 60Hz, which for the purposes of a prototype is good enough to showcase that the technology works, though it is narrower than the refresh ranges AMD is expecting for retail monitors.
At this point AMD is emphasizing that while they were able to get FreeSync up and running on existing hardware, owners shouldn’t be expecting firmware updates as this is very unlikely to happen (though this is ultimately up to monitor manufacturers). Instead AMD is using it to demonstrate that existing panels and scalers already exist that are capable of variable refresh, and that retail monitors should not require significant/expensive technology upgrades. Meanwhile AMD is also holding to their earlier projection of 6-12 months for retail monitor availability with retail prototypes expected around September, which puts final retail availability potentially as early as very late this year, but more likely into the first half of 2015.
Finally we have a video interview of the FreeSync demo in action. It bears mentioning that YouTube is limited to 30fps, so while we can give you some idea of what FreeSync performs like it’s not a fully capable representation. That will have to wait for closer to release when we can sit down with a high speed camera.

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The AnandTech Podcast: Episode 29 - Computex 2014 Mobile Show

After a month off the AT Podcast is back once again. This time we have our recent AnandTech Mobile Show in podcast form.
Recorded live from Computex 2014, on this episode Anand Shimpi & Ian Cutress discuss recent developments at WWDC, Computex, and in the mobile market. Anand & Ian kick things off with a discussion of LG's new G3 phone, along with side discussions on ideal phone sizes and finishes. Then on to Intel's recent Baytail tablet announcements and Rockchip partnership. This is followed with an in-depth discussion of various WWDC happenings, including iOS 8, OS X Yosemite, Apple's Metal API, Continuity, and mobile gaming in general. Wrapping things up is a look at the mobile market in general, along with Intel's Computex announcement, the Core-M.

The AnandTech Podcast - Episode 29

Featuring Anand Shimpi & Dr. Ian Cutress
iTunes

RSS - mp3, m4a

Direct Links - mp3, m4a
Total Time: 48 minutes 10 seconds
Outline h:mm

LG G3 - 0:00

Side Discussion: Phone Size - 6:30

Phone Finish - 12:00

Intel Baytrail Tablets - 14:10

Intel Rockchip Partnership & SoFIA - 18:30

Apple WWDC Recap - 24:30

Apple Metal API - 27:00

Mobile Gaming - 30:30

iOS/OS X Continuity - 37:00

Cloud Storage - 40:20

WWDC In Conclusion - 42:30

Intel Core-M: 45:00

The AnandTech Mobile Show: Computex 2014 Edition

Yesterday Intel held a press briefing to go over some of the PC client and mobile news from the show, but after the briefing Intel gave us access to their stage and camera crew to film our mobile show. I didn't make it out to Taipei until after WWDC, but Ian and Kristian have been on the ground all week covering the show. Ian joined me on stage for a quick recap of a lot of what's new in mobile. We went over Ian's experience with LG's G3, Intel's new Bay Trail Entry SKUs, the Rockchip deal, Core M, the WWDC news and a discussion about deeper gaming experiences in mobile.
Check out the show in the video below:

Computex 2014: X99 on Display from ASRock

ASRock hosted a VIP media function at Computex yesterday and we were lucky enough to get front row seats. The main talking point of the day was the new 9-series motherboards, including a couple of new models aimed at the cheaper end of the overclocking market due to the release of Intel’s Pentium Anniversary Edition (an Intel spokesman at the event called it Pentium-AE, which I guess puts an official easy name into the zeitgeist). The more interesting element of ASRock’s display was a pair of X99 motherboards on show, the Extreme4 and Extreme6.

These boards, I was told, are near final production units. In fact they had a PVT model running DDR4 on the show floor, but not at their booth, so we will have to keep an eye out for that. From looking at these motherboards, storage is now fully SATA 6 Gbps, USB 3.0 is now native and we still have 40 lanes of PCIe 3.0.

The new socket is definitely LGA2011-3, with a slightly new protective plate over the socket. We have quad channel memory, with X99 at two DIMMs per channel. I have seen some other LGA2011-3 mockups elsewhere on the show floor (which I can’t write about, unfortunately), with three DIMMs per channel, although this might be restricted to server motherboards.

I eagerly await X99 and Haswell-E, especially with the wealth of DDR4 on display this year.

Gallery: Computex 2014: X99 on Display from ASRock

Computex 2014: GIGABYTE’s Liquid Nitrogen Memory Overclocking Motherboard, Z97X-SOC Force LN2

Taking a track day car to an event for regular road vehicles seems a bit unfair from the point of view of the regular drivers, however in order to be the best you need to end up with specialized components. Eventually you end up competing against other purpose built machines in order to be the best. Up until this point in the motherboard space, we had seen extreme overclocking on commercial products. Now we have that track racer for extreme overclocking in the GIGABYTE Z97X-SOC Force LN2.

The big thing to notice is the lack of CPU mounting holes. This allows the memory slots to be closer to the CPU for improved signaling, but it also means that cooling is limited to copper pots for liquid nitrogen cooling.

The base design is a regular Z97X-SOC Force, and it was used in the Intel OC Challenge event at Computex by the GIGABYTE team. GIGABYTE’s team, featuring in house overclocker HiCookie as well as Dinos22, sin0822 and Sofos, won the highest LN2 frequency and LN2 memory frequency results to take home a cool $5800.

GIGABYTE do plan on selling the Z97X-SOC Force LN2 in the market, although the initial limited run will be 100 units only. Should these sell out and generate enough interest, GIGABYTE may create some more. Pricing has not yet been announced.

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Computex 2014: ADATA Shows XPG Z1 DDR4 At 3200MHz

I spent quite a bit of time at ADATA's booth this year as I had a meeting with their president along with the directors of their SSD and memory marketing teams. I'll be doing separate articles of those discussions along with the other products I saw at their booth since there was a lot of information to digest, so for now I'll just cover the DDR4 as that was definitely the most interesting part.
Similar to Crucial, ADATA's big thing to show was their DDR4. ADATA is one of the few OEMs that will be ready with their DDR4 once Intel's X99 platform ships and they will have a relatively wide range of products available. Their DDR4 solutions will start at 2133MHz and will go all the way to up to 3200MHz, which is 200MHz faster than what Crucial will be releasing at launch. The latency rating for the 3200MHz will be CL16 but at 2133MHz and 2400MHz ADATA will offer latencies of as low as CL12. ADATA also emphasized that they have focused on the overclockability, so it will be interesting to see what kind of speeds can be reached. Kits of 8GB (2x4GB) and 16GB (2x8GB) will be available and you should expect to see them hit retail as soon as the X99 does.

ADATA also had some enterprise DDR4 at their booth with capacities of up to 16GB at 2133MHz (CL15). There was also a very low-profile version with a maximum capacity of 8GB, which is mainly aimed for blade servers and other environments that are very space conservative.

What was really interesting was their 32GB DDR3 module. There is some patented technology behind this from another company that has a strategic alliance with ADATA but I'll cover that in more detail when I get back home since it really requires a more in-depth look.

Stay tuned for more news of what ADATA had on display at their booth, including some SandForce SF3700 coverage!

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Computex 2014: Crucial Shows Ballistix Elite DDR4

Obviously one of the biggest topics of Computex this year is DDR4. Crucial will be bringing their DDR4 to the consumer market under the Ballistix Elite brand with speeds of 2666MHz and 3000MHz in the beginning. The modules themselves will be 4GB or 8GB at first, although kits will range all the way to up to 32GB (4x8GB). The latencies are still up in the air as the product isn't finalized yet but from what I have heard the latencies will be about CL15 at first, although it's certainly possible that there will be different models with different latencies available. Availability is slated for August but pricing has yet to be announced.
The big thing about DDR4 is that it comes with a lower voltage of 1.2V compared to 1.5V that DDR3 uses by standard. That will result in lower power consumption, which ultimately means longer battery life for mobile devices. In addition, DDR4 is also bringing higher speeds because right at the beginning we are going to see products at 3000MHz, although Crucial told me that they have been able to get the modules to run at up to 3200MHz, so we might see even faster modules pretty soon. DDR4 will also bring support for higher densities (4Gb vs 1Gb), which will allow bigger for higher capacity DIMMs. While Crucial's offerings will be limited to 8GB at launch, they (well, Micron) has quad rank server DIMMs that go to up to 32GB but only at 2133MHz.
In addition to DDR4, Crucial also had the MX100 at their suite. We already reviewed the drive earlier this week when it officially launched, so there isn't really anything new to share, but Crucial was able to tell me that they are working on an SSD toolbox that should be available within a few months (I was told around September). This has been one of the only things missing from Crucial's SSDs, so it's great to see that they are responding to the public demand. The supply of MX100 should also be a lot better than the M500 when it launched, meaning that you shouldn't see any sold out tags at every retailer.

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Apple Reveals iOS 8 at WWDC

Recently, Apple launched the latest iteration of iOS for its devices such as the iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch. No hardware was announced but there's still a great deal to talk about. While iOS 7 brought major, sweeping changes in the UI side of things, iOS 8 is very much targeted at refining the operating system and adding new features. The first and possibly most emphasized point throughout the presentation was continuity. Apple continues to emphasize the importance of their ecosystem advantage, and it's especially clear here with the amount of integration that iOS has with OS X. Key features include Handoff, SMS and calls through iPad/Mac, along with automatic WiFi hotspot creation and connection.

To break things down in this area, we'll start with Handoff. In short, this feature is designed to make it possible to start writing an email, calendar event, or message on a Mac or iPad, and then continue writing without interruption on an iPhone or the other way around. This is definitely a useful feature, and while there are some potential concerns with battery life this is avoids some of the friction involved with transitioning from one device to another. However, to my understanding this requires all of the devices to be on iOS 8 and OS X Yosemite in order to work properly.

The next part of the puzzle is SMS and calls through iPad/Mac. While a similar feature has existed on Android in the form of Airdroid, it was never a natively integrated feature that way that this is. While they didn't provide specifics on how the feature works and what the limitations are, it's reasonable to infer that this works over WiFi and therefore is limited by the range of an AP or a direct connection. In short, by communicating to the iPhone or another voice-enabled cellular device on iOS 8, it's now possible to send and receive text messages with seamless integration of chat history, and the same also applies to voice calls as well. This is a solid extension upon iMessage for both iPad and Mac that was first introduced with iOS 5 and Mavericks.

Many applications also fall into the continuity theme. For example, Photos and iCloud have been integrated in order to allow seamless syncing of photos across devices, whether Mac or iOS. While much of the iCloud syncing is made to work with Windows devices as well it isn't clear whether these more seamless integration features will happen for those on Windows.

Finally, WiFi hostpot creation and connection is pretty simple in this case. If your iPhone and iPad/Mac are all linked together, you no longer have to manually create a hotspot on the iPhone or type in a password on the iPad/Mac to gain access to the personal hotspot. Instead, you can connect by simply tapping on your phone in the WiFi menu of an iOS 8 iPad or Yosemite Mac, and all of the other steps are skipped automatically.

Possibly the second most important emphasis this time around was extensibility. For a while now, Apple has been criticized by some for the sandboxed nature of applications. This sandboxed system means that it's difficult for one application to pull data from another. Apple has introduced a host of new features that will solve this problem. First, iOS 8 will introduce a new API that allows one application to use data from another. There's no specifics on this aspect, but it sounds very much like the intents system in Android from a user perspective. However, it's likely that Apple's implementation isn't quite the same. Apple showed off these features in first party applications, which included demos of third party photo editors in Apple's Photos application. Another demo featured Bing in Safari doing a live translation of the webpage without losing focus in the application. Overall, there's a great deal of promise in this move, and it'll be interesting to know how Apple did this while maintaining the sandboxed security system.

Within that same thought, extensibility also means that third party keyboards can be fully functional on iOS. In short, applications like SwiftKey and Swype can now replace the stock iOS keyboard although there's a disclaimer that keyboards with internet access could track keystrokes and upload them to another location over the internet.

Apple has also tried to integrate widgets into iOS 8 without fundamentally reworking how the UX works. In short, there are third party widgets now, but they are integrated into the Today page of the notification drawer, rather than on SpringBoard. Apple showed off some interesting possibilities for this, such as an Ebay widget that allowed bidding straight for the widget and live updates to scoreboards for sports.

Apple has also opened up TouchID to third party developers. This means that TouchID can be used in place of a password in just about any situation. Apple stressed that no data is ever exposed to third party applications so it's not possible to view stored features through this API.

While Samsung was first to announce their health platform, it seems that Apple is the first to truly implement that vision. HealthKit also fell under the theme of extensibility. This is because its key feature set was focused upon allowing multiple health applications to all place their data into a single application that can present all recorded health measures at once. Apple emphasized the value that this application would provide to doctors, and by partnering with Epic Systems and Mayo Clinic, they've created systems that can automatically inform a doctor when various measures of health go out of specification for a specific person. This allows for faster response to potentially unhealthy situations. This will all be accessed through the Health application, which will first appear in iOS 8.

Outside of the themes of continuity and extensibility, Apple has also iterated on other parts of the iOS 8 platform. The new Photos application adds automatic image interpretation for more seamless editing, so editing levels is now a simple slider that simultaneously adjusts settings such as exposure, brightness, contrast, shadows, highlights, midtones, etc. This is definitely a great way to bring photo editing to the masses, as while such options are still accessible the vast majority aren't particularly interested in learning how to adjust multiple sliders to achieve a desired effect. Apple also emphasized that all edited photos can be instantly viewed on all other iOS and Mac devices through their respective Photos applications, using iCloud integration as previously mentioned.

Siri has also been upgraded, and with iOS 8 it will support Shazam song recognition features, along with iTunes purchases. Apple cited the example of buying a song that was recognized through Shazam on Siri as a key use case for this feature. It's also possible to do live dictation of text through Siri, and with 22 new languages available for dictation. Hotword detection is also introduced here, although it doesn't appear that Siri can be activated with the screen off. Apple may add screen-off hotword detection in a future product, although I wouldn't hold my breath.

China also received a special section, with new vector maps and turn by turn navigation in Apple Maps for China. There's also support for the lunar calendar, and improved predictive input for the Apple default keyboard, along with better weather data in the Apple application.

Spotlight search is also updated with new information provided with searches. Spotlight now presents results from both internet and local sources, and there are a lot more features for specific use cases. If this sounds like the result cards from Google Search, this is effectively a feature with similar intent. However, Apple has done more to integrate the results into the search application rather than a web view, and third party application data can be pulled into the search results to present more actionable information.

Outside of these smaller changes, Apple also announced Family Sharing, a system that allows up to six people to share applications, books, music, movies, and other media without an additional charge. The key requirement here is that all of the devices have to share the same credit card on file to avoid abuse. Apple also went further with the family theme, and added in a feature that requires purchases from a "child" device to be approved by a "parent" device to avoid a situation where a child spends large sums of money on in app purchases without prior approval.

Apple has also introduced actionable notifications to improve the current system. While a minor feature, it's very much a useful touch and sorely needed. This means that it's now possible to respond to incoming messages without leaving the application in use. The multitasking menu has also added new recent contacts on top of the list of active applications to allow fast access to certain contacts for phone, texts, and video calls.

Messaging also improves, with a new details section that allows you to share your location for certain amounts of time, leave group threads as desired, and also set turn off certain threads from notifications for a designated amount of time. There's also a new attachment view that lets you see all the photos and similar attachments in one view instead of scrolling through a thread, and voice messages/video messages are seamlessly integrated with automatic deletion to save space, although it's still possible to save it if desired.
Overall, Apple has definitely done a great job with iOS 8. We're excited to see how well this update plays out in the coming months in the context of the broader mobile OS landscape, and also to see what else will be discovered from beta to public availability. While hardware wasn't talked about at all for this presentation, it doesn't seem as necessary as some make it out to be.

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Liveblogging with the Surface Pro 3

While we don’t have the full Surface Pro 3 review up yet, I’d figure that it’s worth posting some thoughts on it. For those that didn’t follow our WWDC 2014 live blog, around an hour before the event Anand handed me the Surface Pro 3 review unit to write the text portion of that article. While I’ve used a Surface Pro 2 before, this was my first encounter with the Surface Pro 3, and I decided to try and use it for the liveblog.
In short, it was surprisingly usable, although there are a few caveats. These issues basically come down to a lack of polish, as I encountered some strange bugs throughout the day as I tried to write things down.
The first and single most irritating issue is the trackpad, which has a tendency to activate while typing. This usually means that I would end up clicking a previous line and an entire sentence would be inside of another word in a sentence. This broke the flow of typing quite often.
Second, I often encountered another odd issue that seemed to force the alt-key to be constantly activated, which meant I couldn’t write text, and fixing this required removing the keyboard dock and then attaching it again.
Third, the kickstand is noticeable due to the thin area that it distributes weight upon. This puts pressure on a specific area which can leave marks, although I didn’t have a problem with this. I also noticed that the wake latency isn’t as fast as an ARM-based tablet, although it’s certainly not the 10-20 second wake latency that I’ve come to expect on my hard drive-based desktop.

Other than some bugs, the experience with Surface Pro 3 was far better than I expected. It was far and away faster than typing on a tablet, although some of the bugs kept me from typing as quickly and accurately as I would on a laptop. The display size was generally comfortable as well, although Chrome’s lack of HiDPI support was definitely a major disadvantage to comfortable reading. The weight of the tablet was surprisingly low, and didn’t really bother me at all. The thermals of the unit were also under control, with no noticeable hotspots on the tablet. I suspect that web browsing isn’t a particularly intensive load in this case, as I don’t recall hearing the fan either.
The adjustable kickstand is also great for finding comfortable positions, and I never really felt that the tablet was at risk of falling off of my lap or on to my fingers. The magnetic strip above the type cover was also great to help elevate the keyboard, although I found that this is mostly helpful in cases where the loss in keyboard rigidity isn’t noticeable. I also didn’t struggle with the new placement of the Windows home button, and I found that swipe gestures didn’t suffer from this new placement. I’m still not the biggest fan of Windows 8.1 and the lack of a start menu out of the box, but I still found the OS to be usable.
Ultimately, I’m a big fan of the hardware. Microsoft just needs to fix some bugs.

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Computex 2014: Update on SandForce SF3700 & A Live Demo

One of the key things I have been looking forward to at Computex is hearing more about the third generation SandForce controller i.e. the SF3700. I just stopped by at LSI's suite and finally have some new information to share. First off, LSI said that the controller will be shipping to OEMs in H2'14 but ultimately product releases will depend on the OEMs' schedules. I believe we might see some products shipping in Q4'14 but I'm afraid that most OEMs won't have their drives ready until early 2015 (CES?).
The firmware development is still ongoing and LSI told me that they have just started optimizing the write performance of the firmware. In other words, it's not even ready for final validation, which means that the OEMs can't fully validate their products yet because the firmware is not final. That's why I doubt we'll see any retail products shipping this year and none of the manufacturers I've talked to so far have given me any timing for their SF3700 products.

Performance wise LSI is focusing on mixed read/write performance. While the PCIe drives shipping today (like the Samsung XP941) provide great read and write performance, they aren't optimized for workloads that consist of both reads and writes. In other words, the drives are more optimized for benchmarks as those usually test one or the other, whereas real world workloads will always have both. This is an area we definitely need to investigate more -- we've been doing this for the enterprise for a while but we will likely be bringing it to the client side soon as well.

LSI showed me a live demo of the SF3700 with 128KB 80/20 read/write configuration. This time there wasn't any secretive or fishy stuff going on like at CES when Kingston had a live demo of the drive and we were allowed to see Iometer in action along with all the preparations (well, there wasn't any to be honest, they just clicked start). Based on the graph in the previous picture, SF3700 is clearly the highest performing PCIe SSDs when it comes to 80/20 read/write as the Plextor M6e and Samsung XP941 are only hitting ~250MB/s. Obviously this doesn't show the big picture and there are a lot of other variables when it comes to testing but the performance is certainly looking promising.
Furthermore, the SF3700 should bring much improved performance with incompressible data. I wasn't able to get any details other than that LSI is implementing an option to disable compression so the drives will perform the same regardless of the data type. While I think compression definitely has its advantage (higher performance, more over-provisioning...), I can see this being a big deal for some OEM customers who need their components to perform consistently in all workloads.

Lastly, the last week's acquisition. As it's still so recent news, there aren't much details to share. LSI did say that the acquisition won't change the state of SF3700 at all and it will be licensed to OEMs like all previous SandForce controllers but the future after that is still up in the air.

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AMD Launches Mobile Kaveri APUs
A couple weeks back, AMD briefed us on their upcoming mobile Kaveri APUs. We've known for a while that mobile Kaveri was coming, and after five months the wait is over. Besides providing us with details of the new APU models, we were given some hands on time to run any benchmarks we wanted on a prototype Kaveri laptop. Read on to find out what to expect from mobile Kaveri, and whether it can help AMD gain some needed market share in the world of laptops.

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Computex 2014: Samsung Launches TLC-Based 845DC EVO for The Enterprise

While this is technically not a Computex announcement, Samsung is launching their TLC NAND based 845DC EVO today. This isn't Samsung's first TLC based enterprise SSD as a while ago they announced the PM853T but that drive is OEM only and is thus mostly limited to Samsung's large OEM customers, whereas the 845DC EVO will be available in retail for small and medium data center use.
Essentially, the 845DC EVO is just the retail version of the PM853T as everything from the NAND to the controller and firmware are similar. Samsung is only disclosing that the drive uses 10nm-class NAND, although I'm fairly certain that it's the same 19nm process as found inside the 840 EVO. I hate to admit that I don't know the exact controller inside the drive because PM853T was never sampled to media but I do have samples of the 845DC EVO, so once I get back from Taipei I will open up the drives and see what's inside.
I don't have the full data sheet yet but Samsung's press release mentions that the drive is capable of up to 530MB/s sequential read speeds and 87K IOPS random read, which are quite typical for a SATA 6Gbps drive. The endurance goes all the way to up to 600TB, so while that is not MLC level, it's still pretty good given that we are dealing with much lower endurance TLC NAND (e.g. the 800GB Micron M500DC does up to 1.9PB) and the drive is more geared towards the read-centric enterprise market (e.g. web servers).
The pricing is very competitive in the enterprise segment. The 845DC EVO will be available in capacities of 240GB, 480GB and 960GB with MSRPs of $250, $490 and $969 respectively. I'll be reviewing the drives in detail once I get back, so stay tuned for our in-depth review in a few weeks.

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Ask the Experts: Krisztián Flautner VP of R&D, ARM
Late last year we did an installment of Ask the Experts with ARM's Peter Greenhalgh, lead architect for the Cortex A53. The whole thing went so well, in no small part to your awesome questions, that ARM is giving us direct access to a few more key folks over the coming months.
Krisztián Flautner is Vice President of Research and Development at ARM, and as you can guess - he's focused on not the near term, but what's coming down the road for ARM. ARM recently celebrated its 50 billionth CPU shipment via its partners, well Krisztián is more focused on the technologies that will drive the next 100 billion shipments.
Krisztián holds PhD, MSE and BSE degrees in computer science and engineering from the University of Michigan. He leads a global team that researches everything from circuits to processor/system architectures and even devices. And he's here to answer your questions.
If there's anything you want to ask the VP of R&D at ARM, this is your chance. Leave a comment with your question and Krisztián will go through and answer any he's able to answer. If you've got questions about process tech, Moore's Law, ARM's technology roadmap planning or pretty much anything about where ARM is going, ask away!

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Computex 2014: SanDisk Announces Extreme Pro SSD

Continuing our Computex coverage, SanDisk is launching their new flagship Extreme Pro SSD today here in Taipei. SanDisk is targeting the enthusiast and professional crowd with the drive by promising the most consistent performance in a consumer-class SSD along with an industry-leading warranty of 10 years (!).

The Extreme Pro supports SanDisk's nCache Pro technology, which should be similar to SanDisk's regular nCache technology found in other drives but with more focus on consistency rather than peak performance.

SanDisk isn't disclosing the controller under the hood but given SanDisk's history with Marvell, I'm pretty confident that the controller is either Marvell 88SS9187 or 88SS9189. The NAND is SanDisk's 1Ynm, which in layman terms means SanDisk's/Toshiba's second generation 19nm node also known as A19nm.
The Extreme Pro will be available later this month through SanDisk's retail partners and the MSRPs are $189 for 240GB, $369 for 480GB and $599 for 960GB. We will be meeting with SanDisk here at Computex and are hoping to get more details, so stay tuned for updates!

Intel Keynote at Computex 2014: 14nm Core-M, SoFIA, Devil’s Canyon, DC P3700 and RealSENSE

While we were unable to run a live blog of the Intel Keynote this year, there were still a number of interesting announcements made by Renée James, President of Intel. First job of a Keynote is to explain part of the past and the future, and we were told that the scope of the ‘Internet of Things’ is predicted to be in the region of 50 billion units by 2020. Intel’s specific focus in the semiconductor part of the equation Moore’s Law, and as a result they showed us the first device with a 14nm part, the ASUS Transformer T300 Chi that we saw yesterday at the ASUS Press Conference. Jonney Shih from ASUS was on the Intel stage showcasing the T300 Chi.

The heart of the 14nm processors is under the new Core-M branding. While clock speeds and core counts were not mentioned, the ‘Core’ part of the name means that this should be a Broadwell derived component. Echoing what CEO Brian Krzanich said earlier in the year, Renée confirmed that Core-M would be in the hands of end-users by the holiday season.
Also on show were tablets based on the Core-M technology, in the 10W range but also fanless.

As part of Intel’s LTE strategy, Mr Shih also demoed the ASUS Transformer Pad 303 with integrated LTE, showing HD streaming of a film.
Intel’s SoFIA platform, the combined quad-core Atom and 3G modem for entry and value markets, will be shipping in Q4. This is the primary purpose of the deal with Rockchip, with derivatives of SoFIA being sold by both parties. Intel’s strategy in this is to get into more markets more quickly and spread the brand.

As an enthusiast, news about Devil’s Canyon being launched was expected, and Intel delivered a brief statement regarding the top SKU having four cores at 4 GHz, as well as the Pentium Anniversary model. Details about these processors came through Intel’s PR channels, but we are still awaiting a retail date. Review samples should be with us when we get back from Computex.

Another element to the presentation was the official launch of the Intel DC P3700, an enterprise SSD for datacenters.

Intel also showed their RealSENSE camera - a camera with a 60 fps depth map sensor to allow interaction in real time. As part of the RealSENSE ecosystem, Intel is releasing an SDK kit with a camera and offering a $1m prize for the best app created with the device. It actually looks like an upgraded kinect sensor.

The onscreen demo of RealSENSE was a laptop with the camera installed and an avatar moving in real time. The software was programmed to track fifty different elements and muscles of the face, including the direction in which the eyes were looking.

Gallery: Intel Keynote at Computex 2014: 14nm Core-M, SoFIA, Devil’s Canyon, DC P3700 and RealSENSE

Some Thoughts on Apple’s Metal API

Though it seems like Apple’s hardware divisions can hardly keep a secret these days due to the realities of mass production, the same is fortunately not true for their software divisions. Broad strokes aside, Apple managed to pack in a number of surprises in their OS X and iOS presentations at WWDC yesterday, and there’s nothing that ended up being quite as surprising to me as the announcement of the Metal API for iOS.
Later this week Apple will be holding their Metal developers sessions, at which time we’ll hopefully get some further details on the API and just how Apple intends to have developers use it. In the meantime with the preliminary Metal programming guide posted over on Apple’s developer website, I wanted to spend a few minutes musing over yesterday’s announcement, how Apple ended up developing their own API, and what this may mean for users and game developers.

Why Low-Overhead APIs?

First and foremost, let’s quickly recap just what exactly Apple has announced. Metal is Apple’s forthcoming low-overhead/low-level graphics and compute API for iOS. Metal is primarily geared towards gaming on iOS, and is intended to offer better graphics performance than the existing OpenGL ES API by curtailing driver overhead and giving developers more direct control over the GPU.
As our regular readers are no doubt well aware, Metal is the latest in a wave of low-level graphics APIs to be introduced over the last year in the GPU space, joining the ranks of AMD’s Mantle and Microsoft’s DirectX 12. In the case of Metal, as has been the case of all of these APIs, the idea is rooted in the fact that while high level APIs provide a number of important features from libraries to hardware abstraction, the overhead from this functionality is not worth the benefits, especially in the hands of highly seasoned programmers who have the experience and the means to go close-to-metal and bang on the hardware directly. The situation facing developers in these cases is that at a time when GPU performance growth is rapidly outpacing CPU performance growth, the API and driver overhead has gone from problematic to intolerable, leading to developers wanting to access the hardware directly.

How The Low-Level Mantle API Benefitted DICE's Frostbite Engine

Metal in turn is the API through which Apple will provide this access. By peeling back the driver and API stack to the bare minimum, developers get to tell the GPU exactly what they’re doing and how they want it done, bypassing large chunks of CPU-intensive code that would previously do this for the developer. Whenever we’re talking about these low-level APIs it’s important to note that they’re merely ways to improve efficiency and are not miracle workers, but when faced with the most applicable bottleneck, the draw call – what’s essentially a single function call for the GPU – the increase in throughput can be remarkable. We won’t spend too much more time on the why’s of Metal, as we’ve written much longer outlines on low-level APIs before that don’t need repeated here, but it’s important to establish a baseline for evaluating Metal.

Are SoCs Draw Call Limited?

Upon hearing Apple’s Metal announcement, perhaps the greatest surprise was that iOS developers were in a position where they needed and could benefit from a low-level API like Metal. In the PC space we’ve been seeing low-level APIs rolled out as a solution to the widening gap between CPU and GPU performance, however the SoC class processors in Apple’s iOS devices are a very different beast. As one would expect for a mobile product, neither the CPU nor the GPU is high performance by PC standards, so why should a low-level API be necessary.
The answer to that is that while SoCs are lower performance devices, the same phenomena that has driven low-level APIs on the PC has driven them on mobile devices, just on a smaller scale. GPU performance is outgrowing CPU performance on the SoC level just as it has been the PC level, and even worse, SoC class CPUs are so slow that even small amounts of driver overhead can have a big impact. While we take 4000 draw calls for granted on desktop hardware – overhead and all – it’s something of a sobering reminder that this isn’t possible on even a relatively powerful SoC like the A7 with OpenGL ES, and that it took Metal for Crytek to get that many draw calls in motion, never mind other CPU savings such as precompiled shaders. If Apple intends to further gaming on iOS (and all signs are that they do), then capable programmers are going to want low level GPU access to maximize their graphical quality, the same as they do on the desktop and on game consoles.

Apple Metal Thread Model (Note that no Apple SoC has more than 2 CPU cores yet)

Ecosystems & Portability

But on that note there’s quite a bit that goes into providing developers with these kinds of tools, which puts Apple in a very interesting position among hardware and OS vendors. Of the other low-level APIs we’ve seen so far – AMD’s Mantle and Microsoft’s DirectX 12 – the former is an API established by a hardware vendor who has to ride on top of other companies CPUs and OSes, and the latter is an OS vendor who has to ride on top of third party CPUs and GPUs. Apple on the other hand is in the enviable position of being as close as anyone can be to offering a fully vertical ecosystem. Apple designs their own CPUs, configures their own SoCs, and writes their own OS. The only portion of the chain that Apple doesn’t control is the GPU, and even then the company has exclusively used Imagination Technologies’ PowerVR GPUs for the last 7 years with no signs of this changing. So for all practical purposes Apple has a closed ecosystem that they control from top to bottom, and can design for accordingly.
A closed ecosystem in turn means that Apple can achieve a level of OS, hardware, and programming language integration that no one else can achieve. Metal doesn’t need to take into consideration any other GPU architectures (though Apple in all likelihood has left it generic enough to be portable if the situation arises) and the OS around it can be tailored to the API, rather than making the API fit within the confines of the OS. This doesn’t necessarily mean Apple is going to make significant use of this integration, but it will be interesting to see just what Apple does do with so much control.

A7 SoC Floorplan (Image Courtesy Chipworks)

Another interesting thing to see as Metal plays out is how Apple handles portability from OpenGL ES, that is if they try to handle it at all. On the whole, it’s accepted that a low-level API like Metal will have minimal portability from higher level languages such as OpenGL ES. The exception to this thus far has been that due to the fundamentally low level nature of shader programs, that shader programs have been more portable. In the case of AMD’s Mantle, for example, we have seen AMD specifically support DirectX’s shader language – HLSL – to make porting to Mantle easier. Shader programs are just one part of a bigger picture, but their growing complexity and low level nature means that there are still benefits to being able to port them among APIs even when the API commands themselves are not portable.
At least for the moment, Apple’s Metal programming guide makes no mention of porting from the existing OpenGL ES API. Looking at the Metal shader language and comparing it to the OpenGL ES shader language (GLSL ES), while it’s initially promising since both languages are based on C++, it’s also clear that for better or worse Apple hasn’t held back from eclipsing OpenGL ES here. Metal’s shader language is based on a newer version of C++, C++11, and consequently includes features not available in GLSL ES. Furthermore comparing the function libraries there are again a number of identical functions, and yet more functions that the two shader languages do not have in common. Portability out of Metal aside, it’s not at all clear whether GLSL ES shaders are meaningfully portable into Metal; if they aren’t then that means additional work for developers, a specific concern if Apple is trying to land console-like games for iOS devices. So it will be interesting to see how this plays out.
Of course Android portability is also going to raise a flag here, though at first glance it actually seems unlikely that this will be a concern. Without an equivalent API – and the OpenGL AZDO concept isn’t going to be fully applicable to OpenGL ES – the games that benefit the most from Metal are also the games least likely to be on Android, so while portability from Android looks far from easy, there also appears to be little need to handle it. Android portability would seem to be best handled by traditional porting methods using OpenGL ES, which retains its common API status and will be sufficient for the kinds of games that will run on both ecosystems.

Metal Computing

On a final note, while we’ve discussed graphics almost exclusively thus far, it’s interesting to note that Apple is pitching Metal as an API for GPU compute as well as graphics. Despite being one of the initial promoters of the OpenCL API, Apple has never implemented OpenCL or any other GPU compute API on iOS thus far, even after they adopted the compute-friendly PowerVR Rogue GPU for their A7 SoC. As a result GPU compute on iOS has been limited to what OpenGL ES can be coaxed into, which although not wholly incapable, it is an API designed for dealing with images as opposed to free form data.
The low-level nature of Metal on the other hand means that it’s a good (or at least better) fit for GPU computing, as the lack of abstraction for graphics makes it more capable of handling the workflows and data types of compute tasks. This is one area in particular where the Metal shader language being based on a subset of C++11 is a benefit to Apple, as it provides a solid foundation for writing compute kernels. None the less it remains to be seen just how adaptable Metal is – can it match the compute functionality of OpenCL 1.2 or even OpenGL 4.x compute shaders – but even if it’s only of limited use it means Apple is finally ready to approach GPU computing on iOS devices.

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Google Begins Android 4.4.3 Rollout

After initially posting factory images yesterday, Google has begun it's OTA rollout of its latest iteration of Android 4.4 KitKat. Android 4.4 launched in October last year alongside Google's newest smartphone, the Nexus 5. On the design front, Android 4.4 brought many refinements to the user interface by introducing the ability to enable translucency in areas such as the status bar and navigation buttons. In addition, the legacy blue parts of the interface like the status bar icons were replaced with more unified white elements. It also featured the new Google Experience Launcher which features much deeper Google Now integration with the ability to trigger voice search by saying “OK Google” on your homescreen.
Under the hood, Google brought about optimizations like ZRAM support which allows data for idle background applications to be stored in a compressed RAM partition to free up RAM for applications in use. A low-RAM API with more aggressive memory management to improve performance on devices with as little as 512MB of RAM was included as well. Google also introduced their new experimental Java runtime which they call ART. ART hopes to improve application performance over Android’s current Dalvik runtime, which uses just-in-time compilation, by using ahead-of-time compilation to compile Java bytecode into machine code at the time of install.
Shortly afterward, Google released version 4.4.1 and 4.4.2 which included substantial improvements to the Nexus 5 camera performance by focusing faster and having the camera software prefer faster shutter speeds. The algorithms for calculating white balance and color balance were also tweaked to address complaints about inaccurate color in captured images. Compatibility between the ART runtime and third party applications was also improved, along with many other bug fixes and security improvements.
Android 4.4.3 is mainly an update to fix outstanding bugs with Android Kitkat but there are a couple of tweaks to the user interface that come along with it as well.

One of the long awaited fixes of this release is for excessive battery drain that could occur when an application used a device’s camera as a result of a process called ‘mm-qcamera-daemon’ which controls the camera on Qualcomm-powered devices. After an app using the camera was closed the process would continue to run in the background and cause abnormally high CPU usage which resulted in increased battery drain and higher device temperatures than normal.
In terms of updates to the UI, Android 4.4.3 brings a new dialer application and changes to the people app. The new dialer features white keys with a different shade of blue that fits better with the overall design of KitKat itself. The black and turquoise of the dialer has seemed like a design outlier compared to Google's new applications for quite some time now and it's good to see Google continuing to unify the design of the Android OS. The new people application is mainly the same as its predecessor but it replaces the older grey contact photo icons for contacts you have not assigned a picture to with new colorful ones.

The update is currently known to be rolling out to Google's 2013 Nexus 7 with LTE, and it should reach other Nexus devices that support Android KitKat which includes the Nexus 4, Nexus 5, Nexus 7 (2012/2013 WiFi), and Nexus 10 shortly. Google Experience devices should receive their updates to Android 4.4.3 in the near future. Google is yet to post a summary changelog for the update and all the various bug and security fixes it includes but when it becomes available it will be added here. As always, Google’s update rollouts are done in stages and it may take some time for your device to receive it.
Source: Google Nexus 7 OTA via Android Police

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HTC Hits a Lower Price with the One (E8)

Today, HTC announced the HTC One (E8), a phone that is effectively aimed at providing the One (M8) spec at a lower price point. While the phone doesn’t keep everything, all the key features are still present. The major changes are effectively a move from the Duocam 4MP+2MP camera module to a single 13MP module. Based upon the F/2.2 aperture of this module, it’s likely that this is the same module found in the One mini 2 with OmniVision’s OV13850 sensor. In addition, the materials are changed, with a new plastic unibody design. This is one of the more logical areas to cut costs, as while metal is good from an MD/ID perspective, the cost can easily be an order of magnitude greater than plastic designs.

HTC has also taken the right direction by making two colors with matte finish plastic (Maldives Blue and Misty Gray in the photo above), which can go a long way to improving in-hand feel of the phone. Realistically, matte finishes tend to look better in the long run as well, as glossy finishes have more obvious scratches and tend not to show oil streaks and similar patterns from use. Unfortunately, the one area where HTC cut too deep was the loss of 802.11ac WiFi capabilities, which means that this shares a WiFi module with the One mini 2. This is likely to be a Qualcomm WCN3660 part. I've put a table of the specs below to compare the E8 with the M8.

	HTC One (E8)	HTC One (M8)
SoC	MSM8974ABv3 2.3 GHz Snapdragon 801	MSM8974ABv3 2.3 GHz Snapdragon 801
RAM/NAND	2GB LPDDR3, 16GB NAND + microSD	2GB LPDDR3, 16/32GB NAND + microSD
Display	5” 1080p LCD	5” 1080p LCD
Network	2G / 3G / 4G LTE (Qualcomm MDM9x25 UE Category 4 LTE)	2G / 3G / 4G LTE (Qualcomm MDM9x25 UE Category 4 LTE)
Dimensions	146.42 x 70.67 x 9.85mm max, 145 grams	146.36 x 70.6 x 9.35mm max, 160 grams
Camera	13MP rear camera, 1.12 µm pixels, 1/3.06" CMOS size, OV13850, F/2.2. 5MP f/2.8 FFC	4.0 MP (2688 × 1520) Rear Facing with 2.0 µm pixels, 1/3" CMOS size, F/2.0, 28mm (35mm effective) and rear depth camera, 5MP f/2.0 FFC
Battery	2600 mAh (9.88 Whr)	2600 mAh (9.88 Whr)
OS	Android 4.4.2 with Sense 6	Android 4.4.2 with Sense 6
Connectivity	802.11a/b/g/n + BT 4.0, USB2.0, GPS/GNSS, MHL, DLNA, NFC	802.11a/b/g/n/ac + BT 4.0, USB2.0, GPS/GNSS, MHL, DLNA, NFC
SIM Size	NanoSIM	NanoSIM

There are some other changes, such as moving the power button to the top-center position rather than top-left or top-right, which is probably the best compromise for ergonomics. The phone also ends up lighter than the One (M8) by 15 grams, which is mostly due to the weight of an aluminum unibody. The headphone jack and USB port remain on the bottom, and the volume rocker is still on the right side of the phone. The same sensor hub and pedometer remains, which means motion launch gestures will be available along with FitBit integration. The barometer also stays for weather information and faster time to lock for GPS. HTC is emphasizing that this phone retains the hardware that makes up the One (M8) while moving it to a lower, more competitive price point for those that don’t care for the metal unibody. This may prove to be an effective strategy, as it would offer a great value for the money in places where the One (M8) is priced around the same as the Galaxy S5 and other high end flagships, and bring price parity to areas where the One (M8) is priced above most flagships.
HTC has stated that China will be the launch market for this phone, but to expect worldwide availability for this phone at a later date. Pricing is around $447 USD / £267 / €329 based upon the price in China but may vary based on other markets.

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Intel Launches Devil’s Canyon and Overclockable Pentium: i7-4790K, i5-4690K and G3258

After what seems like a eon or two since the original announcement, Intel’s Renée James is formally launching the new Devil’s Canyon and Anniversary Edition Pentium processors. In response to enthusiast feedback, and the recent release of the Z97 chipset motherboards, these new processors are designed to improve the overclocking experience for enthusiasts until the next platform enters production.
In the same way as certain other electronic market segments, where the announcement and launch occurs a few weeks before launch, today is actually a paper launch as part of the Computex experience. Review samples for sites like ours should be arriving sometime this week when we can test and dissect the new parts, with a full retailer release later in the month. At present the date is still uncertain: we were hoping to get samples before Computex in order to present results today, but delays have pushed testing and release later down the line. This is in part due to the restricted timescale for these new processors, whereby VP Lisa Graff in a recent press call stated that the Intel engineers had fewer than six months from idea-to-launch.
Devil’s Canyon, the codename for the upgraded Haswell overclocking ‘K’ series SKUs, launches as two parts: an i7 and an i5.

Both models are quad core parts, with the i7 featuring hyperthreading for a total of eight threads. The TDP has a small bump from 84W to 88W, while the official memory support stays at two channels of DDR3-1600. The i7-4790K represents Intel’s first ever consumer processor with a base frequency of 4 GHz (we have CPUs that turbo this high), but the turbo mode for this processor is actually 4-4-3-2, meaning that at single core loads the user will see 4.4 GHz and at full-core loads it will be 4.2 GHz. The i5 is more of a Haswell Refresh-like bump up from its predecessor, with the base frequency and turbo frequencies being moved up a notch.
Compatibility for these processors will be on all Z97 motherboards, and it should extend to Z87 if and only if the motherboard manufacturer has engineered the motherboard to cope with the increased power consumption and also release a relevant BIOS update. I would expect that all the major motherboard manufacturers should announce a full range of 9-series support and a most-of-the-range 8-series support, starting with the most popular products in the 8-series range first (as it all comes down to validation and rewriting BIOS code).
Aside from the base frequency increases, enthusiasts will want to know if the rumor regarding an upgraded package on the CPU is true. I can confirm that Intel has officially made the following changes:

The first upgrade is a new thermal interface material (TIM), which Intel is stating as a ‘next-generation polymer’. This would inevitably imply that the base material is silicone monomer, unless Intel has decided to do something fancy with a carbon-polymer based suspension. With this in mind, users looking to delid their CPUs might see a material the same color as the normal Haswell CPUs, but Intel is stating that this is a new material. One could estimate that another 5-15C shift might occur, allowing those CPUs that were temperature limited to get another 100-200 MHz than they would under the old system. However the issue regarding the height of the heatspreader above the die due to the binding agent has not been mentioned, which would lead me to suggest that it might not have been changed. Until we get a sample in house to test we will not know for sure, but I could perhaps hope that the amount of TIM under the heatspreader has also increased in order to facilitate heat transfer.
For the extreme overclockers using sub-zero cooling, Intel has reworked part of the power delivery around the FIVR to give a cleaner power delivery. Note that none of these changes suggest that any specific change to the underlying silicon die was made, however Intel will be examining the sales of these processors to determine their popularity and whether it is a feature to consider on future platform evolutions.
Also launched today is the new Pentium Processor Anniversary Edition, a fully unlocked 3.2 GHz dual core Pentium and 3MB of L3 cache.

I personally think Intel has missed a trick in not calling this new processor with a ‘K’ moniker, but the 8 on the end should point the CPU out against the myriad of other model names. At $72 for the bulk OEM pricing, this should allow the competitive overclockers to go almost crazy binning (testing to find the best ones) for competitions. The interesting point about the table above is the memory support, set at DDR3-1333. This means that Intel has used a lower bar of entry for the integrated memory controllers on the dies they produce, which might not end well for high memory clocking.

One point of contention for any user that has sought after a high overclocking Haswell CPU in the past is the silicon lottery, whereby CPUs are like chocolate chip cookies. Some cookies have many chips, others have fewer, but the ones made of pure chocolate are the best. Similar analogy to overclocking – some CPUs will hit higher frequencies at lower voltages than others. Haswell processors had a very large swing, with some of the lower performing CPUs (from 3.9 GHz Turbo) only managing 4.2 GHz on air/water cooling compared to the average (4.4-4.5 GHz) and the few awesome ones (5.0 GHz at 1.3 V). Many users tested a half-dozen or a dozen to get the best one of the bunch, and I fear that unless there has been a change at the silicon level, we may see the same with the Devil’s Canyon and Anniversary Pentium models.
CPU-Z screenshots of all three models have been released, confirming many of the details:

As I mentioned, the exact retail release date, as I am writing, is unknown. The embargo for this data is being released at the same time as the Intel Keynote at Computex which is where the official announcing of the new products is happening. Have a read of our live blog on the main page on the keynote to see if an exact date has been chosen! This post will be updated if we get this information.
When we return from Computex we will begin testing the new CPUs, with a plan to show some delidding and see how the new Devil’s Canyon and new Pentium compares to the regular Haswell CPUs both at stock and overclocked. Let me know in the comments if there is anything specific you would like to see in the review.

Gallery: Intel Launches Devil’s Canyon and Overclockable Pentium: i7-4790K, i5-4690K and G3258

AnandTech Participates in Roundtable Discussion with Intel and Supermicro about P3700 and NVMe

Earlier this evening, Intel announced a new family of NVMe based PCIe SSDs, including the P3700. I reviewed a 1.6TB version of the P3700 here. A few weeks ago I was invited to participate in a roundtable discussion with Intel and Supermicro about the P3700 and NVMe in general. Intel posted the video which I've embedded below:

The video is a bit higher level than what you'll find in our review, but it's short and we hit on a lot of the key points about the drive and NVMe in general. Check it out if you're interested in the future of SSDs and what NVMe has to offer.

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Intel SSD DC P3700 Review: The PCIe SSD Transition Begins with NVMe
In 2008 Intel introduced its first SSD, the X25-M, and with it Intel ushered in a new era of primary storage based on non-volatile memory. Intel may have been there at the beginning, but it missed out on most of the evolution that followed. It wasn't until late 2012, four years later, that Intel showed up with another major controller innovation. The Intel SSD DC S3700 added a focus on IO consistency, which had a remarkable impact on both enterprise and consumer workloads. Once again Intel found itself at the forefront of innovation in the SSD space, only to let others catch up in the coming years. Now, roughly two years later, Intel is back again with another significant evolution of its solid state storage architecture.

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Microsoft Tells Chinese Customers It's Not Helping U.S. Gov't Spy on Them
Microblog post contradicts claims by China's state-run media

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Meet the Japanese Supplier Behind Amazon's 3D Phone
Facial recognition technology could be used to mine a user's gender, age, and race

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Verizon Threatens to Sue Over Netflix Congestion Warnings
A frustrated Netflix won't back down from telling customers what it observes

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Quick Note: Developers Can Now Pre-order Microsoft's Kinect for Windows v2 Sensor
Sensor is priced at $199, will ship in July

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Tesla Motors May Get Reprieve in New Jersey Dealership Battle
Assembly Consumer Affairs Committee votes 4-0 to allow Tesla to sell cars directly to customers

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MIT Designs Powerful "Doc Ock" Limbs
Project aims to give manufacturing and construction industries a pair of extra hands

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Leak: Microsoft's Windows Phone Roadmap Solidifies
T-Mobile, Verizon, and AT&T to see a healthy flow of Nokia devices in 2014 and 2015

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Quick Note: Microsoft’s Xbox One Controllers Can Now Work on Your PC
Microsoft releases Windows drivers for the Xbox One controller

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Samsung, Barnes & Noble Collaborate on Galaxy Tab 4 Nook Tablet
Barnes & Noble now has a rebranded Galaxy Tab 4 in its arsenal

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Ditching Kinect Boosts Xbox One's Graphics Performance by 10 Percent
New Kinect-free edition unlocks memory bandwidth reserved for Microsoft's camera sensor

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Amazon to Unveil Its "3D" Smartphone on June 18
The moment has come for Amazon's first entry into the smartphone space

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Study Silences Controversy, Illuminates the Biochemistry of Laser Healing
Study shows that both in live rodents and culture human cells, lasers can trigger healing from dental surgery

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Report: Sprint Close to Purchasing T-Mobile US, Deal to be Announced in July
Bloomberg says the deal will be valued at $40/share

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Australian Startup Calls Out Apple for Stealing “HealthKit” Name
However, Apple's HealthKit is not an actual product name, and is simply an API

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Microsoft Teases HTC Partnership at Computex 2014
New phone will reportedly draw features from the Android HTC M8 and/or A9, be dubbed "HTC W8"

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Chinese OEM Shows Off $100 Tablet Running Windows 8.1 with Bing
8" tablet features an Intel Atom Z3735G processor

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China Threatens "Severe" Punishments for Google, Apple Over NSA Spying
America's top tech firms are seeing sales bans, service disruption, and government-supported piracy

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Ford Lightweight Concept Removes 800 lbs from Fusion Midsize Sedan
Lightweight materials bring the weight of the Fusion in line with the subcompact Fiesta

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Peloton Aims to Bring Adaptive Cruise Control to the Truck Industry
Ported consumer tech offers greater fuel efficiency gains for long-haul than any other tech, firm says

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Intel to Broaden Market for Fanless Tablets, Ultrabooks with 14nm Intel Core M
Intel announces its “most energy-efficient Intel Core processor” to date

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Sony Announces Mid-range Xperia T3 Smartphone with 5.3" 720p Display
The Xperia T3 features a stainless steel frame with a "mirrored" finish

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Quick Note: HTC One (E8) is the Cheaper, Plastic Alternative to the HTC One (M8)
OK, who came up with this naming scheme at HTC?

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Sunday, June 8, 2014

IT News Head Lines (AnandTech) 09/06/2014

Android

Flagship Device: Samsung Galaxy S5

Phablet: Samsung Galaxy Note 3

Mid-Range: LG Google Nexus 5

Low Cost: Motorola Moto G

Windows Phone

Flagship Device: Nokia Lumia 930 (Icon)

Phablet: Nokia Lumia 1520

Mid-Range: Nokia Lumia 1020

Low cost: Nokia

Why Low-Overhead APIs?

Are SoCs Draw Call Limited?

Ecosystems & Portability

Metal Computing

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