Keitai: Make your smartphone more secure with these top tips
Make your smartphone more secure
Another seven days has passed and that can only mean one thing - it's time for the next instalment of Keitai (formerly 7 days in phones)! This week we teach you how to secure your smartphone, Winston gets a text and Mel B (a.k.a Scary Spice) ends up in jail.- Catch up on Keitai (formerly 7 days in phones)
Make your smartphone more secure
1. Enable the lock screen
It's mobile security 101. Every smartphone these days gives you a range of lock screen options, whether it's a password, pin, pattern, fingerprint or even your ugly mug - but it's left up to you to enable.
Dive into settings as soon as you get your new mobile and set it up post haste! Passwords and fingerprints (if your phone has a digit scanner) are the most secure options - but any level of security is better than none.
2. Stick to the dedicated app store
Don't let the temptation of banned apps, or paid ones for free, from third party vendors get the better of you. They could be putting anything into the download, and you've no way of verifying it before it's too late.Only download applications from the App Store, Google Play or the Windows Store, as Microsoft, Apple and Google vet the apps to make sure they're not crammed full of malware and Trojan horses.
3. Location, location, location
Your phone almost certainly has GPS built in and Apple, Google, Microsoft and BlackBerry all offer some level of 'find my phone' and remote wipe/lock service, allowing you to find out where it's gone if it gets lost or stolen.
Just make sure you've got location settings enabled, otherwise it's bye bye smartphone.
4. Be my guest
Rocking a hot new handset that all your mates want to see, but worried about the saucy snaps residing in your gallery?Some smartphones now offer a 'guest mode', giving others access to core features such as the camera, games and video playback - but locking them out of your gallery and dirty text messages.
5. Get your SIM locked up
If your phone gets stolen and you've already got a lockscreen set up, the thief can still whip out your SIM card and stick it in another phone so they can make calls to the other side of the world at your expense.A SIM lock will prevent the sly dog from doing this, as they'll need to tap in a pin before the SIM will function.
Txt Spk
Winston screeched to a halt. The oh so familiar tone still ringing in his ears, but in reality it had stopped some time ago. He let out a disgruntled snort, he knew he was close.Suddenly his mechanical ears pricked up. He could hear something - it wasn't the ringtone, no this was a different noise, but just as familiar. 'brzzz, brzzz ... brzzz, brzzz ... brzzz, brzzz'
The literal cogs spun in Winston's cyborg brain... where did he know that sound from? Then it hit him.
"TEXT MESSAGE!" he screamed, exploding into a gallop towards the sound. The flaming torches on the wall became a blur, his gaze fixed dead ahead on a white glowing light on the floor.
As he approached he noticed the glowing object was slowly spinning itself round with every vibration - could it be? It was! A Nokia 3310.
Tears of joy streamed down his face, he couldn't remember the last time he'd laid eyes on this mobile marvel. The screen read "1 message received." Winston prodded the 3310 with his hoof - it took six attempts to hit the lozenge "Read" key, but he got there.
"Hello Winston. It's been a while. TB"
#scarfguy
The iPhone 6 launch was a big deal, but not for the reason you may think. Sure Apple launched its two biggest smartphones to date, but we already knew all about them thanks to the numerous leaks in the preceding months.No, the real hero of the event was Tommy from Super Evil Megacorp (at 19:40) - or as he's more affectionately known on the web, 'Scarf Guy'.
Enjoy.
Scary press shot of the week
Fun fact: This image was taken just before Mel B (a.k.a Scary Spice) stepped into the ring with Godzilla.
Obviously there was only one winner, and to celebrate Mel B grabbed her tablet (one of the big screens from Piccadilly Circus, London), scaled Big Ben and played online bingo until she was bankrupt.
From there things turned nasty and she ended up using her one phone call at the police station to ask Baby Spice to come bail her out.
We can happily say Scary Spice is now on the road to recovery. Phew.
Retro video of the week
Nothing says "buy some cell phones from us, please!" like a badly stitched fox puppet that looks like it's going to die and a bemused and embarrassed presenter (stand up comedian Lucy Porter, fact fans) who probably still gets Vietnam-like flashbacks to this awful time.
Cringe at Lucy comparing herself to a Siemens C35i in a positive way! Watch her dance awkwardly to the Motorola V2288's built-in FM radio! Enjoy the mangy fox puppet's ecstasy at the thought of getting an Ericsson T10 which comes with vibrating alerts! Imagine that - a phone that vibrates to let you know you've got a notification!
If he didn't have a hand up his puppet hole, who knows how excited he'd have got!
Proper stuff from the site
- We've explored what the future holds for smartphone batteries
- Then we got nostalgic about the Motorola Razr V3
- There's a battle going on inside your smartphone
- Apple might have leaked the iPhone 6C on its own site
- Spotify entered the fitness and video arenas
- Oh, and Google IO is just around the corner
Read More ...
Will Hollywood ever embrace VR?
The trials and tribulations of VR cinema
It seems next year will be the big one for virtual reality. HTC's Valve-sponsored Vive is hitting the shops right at the end of 2015 with the Oculus Rift and Sony's Morpheus getting released early on in 2016.But what does that mean for your home cinema - are movies in VR a real possibility?
Well, yes they are but it's far from simple. So, what then are the issues that might surround movies in VR?
The technology is still quite limited
One of the things you have to remember about VR movies is that to make a film in 360 degrees, you need to shoot in 360 degrees. The problems with that specifically are explored in a moment, but to record video in that way is a challenge with current cameras.Any real video shot for 360 degrees looks quite low resolution today. You can see this with the demo clips on something like Gear VR.
What they lack in resolution though, they make up for in spectacle. Being able to look around in full motion video is really very cool.
With camera sensors evolving all the time it probably won't be long before we shoot in 8K and can use that to create much better 360 degree video.
Shooting in 360 degrees is hard
If you've ever seen how a movie is made then you'll know the process couldn't be less suitable for 360 degree presentation if it tried. A talking head shot, where two actors are chatting on camera, for example, might make for a good VR viewing experience but in movies these scenes are usually shot with one or two cameras.
Person A acts their part of the scene, from start to finish. Then the camera positions are changed and person B shoots all their lines in the scene. After editing, these two look like they were shot at the same time, but they might not even have been shot on the same day.
That works for normal movies, but making that for VR would be a challenge.
It would be more like theatre. Not impossible from an actor's point-of-view, but technically tricky. How do you hide all of the equipment needed to make a movie?
It's a tough one. Of course, you could still shoot both parts separately and stitch them together later, but that will make for a complicated and expensive process.
Movie directors are paid to tell a story
The big problem with taking any movie, and turning it into a VR extravaganza is that directors have a vision. Try telling David Fincher that you're going to need him to shoot a 360 degree film so the slack-jawed public can have a look around the set when they should be focusing on the actors, and he'll have some sort of fit.That's not to say that movies can't have a big part in VR, but those movies will need to be carefully considered and scripted with that subject in mind. In the past, we've seen the sort of nonsense that comes out of new technology.
DVD for example promised seamless branching, which would allow us to select different outcomes to on-screen events. There's a really good reason all movies aren't now interactive - it's just not of interest to anyone.
You can't force technology on movies, we've seen that with 3D, and that had the buy-in from lots of high-profile directors. The fact is, 3D is a fraction of the effort of VR, and it still caused endless problems and didn't gain any public traction.
There are alternatives to 360-degree movie-making...
There's an interesting middle-ground
Rather than making a fully immersive, 360 degree movie there's another solution that works surprisingly well: you simply watch movies on your VR device as you would with a TV.There are lots of advantages to this. You get a massive picture that dominates your vision, you can have excellent 3D, if you're interested in that, and you can even select how large you want the film to appear in front of you.
Want the sensation of a massive IMAX screen? No problem, you'll just have to look around a bit more.
There's also the possibility of hooking up with your other VR-toting buddies in a virtual cinema environment too. VR is such an isolating technology having something to combat this, especially in what has traditionally been a relatively social, shared activity, could be a very good thing.
Though the first person to mod in support for throwable popcorn might not be that popular...
New audio technology coming to phones - that we have seen, thanks to Qualcomm - shows just how good surround sound is going to get with headphones soon. It appears likely that within a few years we'll be having a movie experience at home that's better than any cinema, and with loads of great advantages over a regular TV.
Oculus VR has the solution
The best hope for VR movies comes, unsurprisingly, from Oculus itself. It has set up a movie studio called "Story Studio". It has even produced a film called Lost, which has already been shown - and was well-liked - and it has plans for more movies this year and next.These are animated features, so can be rendered on the fly as you're watching them.
This means there's no lack of resolution, they can be rendered at the full display resolution, giving amazing quality. It also means you can have things interact with you while you watch.
Perhaps not a fully immersive experience, but a way to guide you to look at certain things.
If Oculus Rift, Project Morpheus and Vive sell, then this could be a boon industry. It won't be long before big names want to be involved, and it's this that is where VR entertainment will start.
VR is likely to come with some high costs
For gaming we already know that you need a top-end PC to power Oculus Rift. Only Nvidia and AMD's highest-powered GPUs will be fast enough and you need a lot RAM and CPU power too.The good news is that VR movies will likely need less power.
Of course that will depend enormously on how they work. If you want good quality, we're still talking about displaying a lot of pixels and your hardware will need to be able to decode very high resolution video, which has its own challenges. Perhaps less than games, but it's still going to need some power to work well.
Conclusion
So, what's the future for VR home entertainment?Well, games are good to go. We've seen them work, and they're amazing. VR animation is shaping up too. Reports by those who have seen Lost from Oculus' Story Studio are good.
It's an exciting and immersive experience and it will bring something new to entertainment.
If you're hoping that all movies will be shot in 360 degrees, then you're in for a disappointment. The issues here are huge. It's technically difficult, it will be hard to get existing directors to consider it and it won't actually add much to a normal movie experience.
Perhaps we'll see something of a compromise.
Perhaps movies shot in IMAX will allow us to look around the frame slightly, and give us more control. We might see more of the sort of thing that Samsung's Gear VR had with the demo clip from The Maze Runner giving us an image that wrapped around us, for a more immersive feel.
One thing's for sure, VR is exciting and will hopefully be a big part of entertainment over the coming years.
We probably won't be wearing VR headsets for movie night, but we may well have new experiences with VR content that runs in a linear manner, as movies do. They will, however, need to be quite different to traditional films to really work.
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Google has a tiny plan for the Internet of Things
Google's ready to take over just about any device that connects to the internet whether or not it has a digital screen.
First reported by The Information, Google is working on a new OS codenamed "Brillo" that is incredibly small and will need just 32MB or 64MB of RAM to run successfully for it to be able to be squeezed into even the smallest of Internet of Things (IoT) device.
It's expected that the new OS will be released under the Android banner with the group working on the initial development of the OS linked to the Android unit that develops the world's number one mobile OS.
Android part of the plan
Indeed, if it is launched with the Android moniker then it will mark a sharp departure from the latest Android build that demanded at least 512MB of RAM to be able to function correctly. The move will allow Google to take a piece of the smart home pie by letting its OS to run everything from smart fridges and light bulbs to locking mechanisms, thermostats and micro-sized wearables.By building an OS specific to the IoT, it positions Google as one of those that will be at the centre of smart homes of the future and we can expect to hear a lot more about its plans at the I/O developers conference next week.
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Did Microsoft threaten facility closures because of tech reforms?
Microsoft and a handful of other technology companies threatened to shut down facilities across a swathe of constituencies if IT reforms were passed by the Conservative government, according to one former government worker.
First reported by The Guardian, Steve Hilton, a former chief of strategy for Prime Minister David Cameron, explained that executives from Microsoft called Conservative MPs in various areas of the country to say they would close down facilities in their areas in IT reform went through.
"You just have to fight them off. I can give you specific examples: the thing I mentioned about IT contracts. Maybe there is someone here to confirm this from Microsoft? When we proposed this, Microsoft phoned Conservative MPs with Microsoft R&D facilities in their constituencies and said, 'we will close them down in your constituency if this goes through'," he said when talking about how the government deals with lobbyists.
Hilton went on to say that they "had the same from other tech companies" before adding that "you have to be brave" because it is the right thing to do. It isn't the first time that someone has mentioned Microsoft's lobbying activities either.
"A day or two before we were going to give a speech, a couple of backbench MPs called the office – they said Microsoft had called them saying if we went ahead with the speech on open standards, open architecture and open source, they would cut spending or maybe close research and development centres in the constituencies of the MPs they had called," former Downing Street aide Rohan Silva told a conference in 2014, according to Computer Weekly.
Never the same again
Silva added that once George Osborne was informed he asked for Microsoft to contact him directly, however, no call was ever forthcoming and the relationship with the public affairs department "was never quite the same".Microsoft was one of the most vocal opponents of the government's decision to adopt the open document format in 2014 before it relented earlier this year to allow the format to be used inside Office 365. It declined to comment on either story.
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StubHub's new app is an entertainment planner, not just a ticket system
Online ticketing marketplace StubHub has just given its mobile app a big overhaul to bring more personal new features and a better user interface to smartphones and tablet.
StubHub wants to reduce the time you spend browsing listings by bringing relevant events to you, based on preferences and events you've been to in the past — if your favourite band is in town then the new mobile app should keep you in the loop.
"Those apps have been very transactional, and we do that really well," Brigitte Ricou-Bellan, General Manager International at StubHub, told TechRadar. "But I think part of our strategy is about being more than that. We want it to be a place where people can start their journey in finding the bands they love."
StubHub's mission is to move away from being a last-stop solution for ticket buyers and more an end-to-end experience.
The update also brings more content that revolves around live shows. StubHub is integrating the iTunes store to let you listen to snippets of songs, while ESPN sports content will keep you updated on game scores. Helpfully, the app will also offer restaurant and parking information to make it a tad easier to plan any night out.
Finally, the improved mobile ticketing feature makes it easier for you to wave your phone (or your Apple Watch) to get past the bouncers and into an event. Apple Pay is integrated as well.
Digital tickets please
StubHub's new app goes hand in hand with its Apple Watch app, which is already out and available for people to use. The best aspect is probably the geo-fencing feature that pings you whenever there's a nearby event featuring your favourite band, actor or sporting team.
"We've really improved the UI," said Ricou-Bellan. Indeed, the app was designed on an actual Watch and not an iPhone screen, like many of the third party apps were before launch.
StubHub's new app is available on both iOS and Android now.
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Review: Updated: Lenovo Yoga 3 Pro
Introduction
The Yoga 2 Pro was arguably the finest convertible Ultrabook money could buy when it launched in late 2013 - and it continues to impress today. It was sleek, packed a best-in-class QHD+ display and could transform into a multitude of positions depending on how you wanted to use it.- Update 21/5/2015: Lenovo has swapped the Intel Core M5Y70 on the original Lenovo Yoga 3 Pro for a newer Intel Core M5Y71. The latter has a slightly higher base/boost clock speed (1.1/2.6GHz vs 1.2/2.9GHz) so you get a bit more oomph. This hasn't trickled to the UK though till now. The company has also cut the price of the cheaper model from £999.95 to £799.95 in the UK after a £200 cashback offer with places like John Lewis offering a three-year warranty. Note that there is also a new BIOS update that was rolled out only a few days ago.
On the flip side, its battery life, unwieldy tablet mode and lack of 802.11ac Wi-Fi meant that there was still plenty of room for improvement. By addressing these concerns, I could see Lenovo returning with a smash hit on its hands.
On paper, the Yoga 3 Pro promises to be just that, with one look at the spec sheet revealing a machine for fans of both convertible machines and Ultrabooks in general to lust after.
Broad appeal?
One of the first devices to arrive with Intel's new Core M "Broadwell" processor, which succeeds the company's battery-sipping Haswell architecture, it has catwalk-thin dimensions and comes in a trio of colours: Golden, Orange Clementine and Light Silver.It has a designer (and not to mention brave) price tag to match, starting at $1,299 (£1,299) for the entry-level model with a 256GB SSD. That rises to $1,699 (UK and AUS price TBC) for the top-spec offering, which doubles storage capacity and comes with the Pro, rather than regular version of Windows 8.1.
Cost also varies (somewhat inconsistently) depending on which colour you choose; you can view the full line-up on Lenovo's website.
There are a few notable competitors in that price bracket. One is Microsoft's Surface Pro 3, which will set you back $1,299 for the 256GB / Core i5 version, and Apple's 13-inch MacBook Pro with Retina, which costs the same for the 128GB / Core i5 model.
Then there's the Yoga 2 Pro that, following a price drop that has seen it fall to just $849 (around £530, or AUS$969), now represents serious value for money. Although it's engineered towards gaming, another option to consider is the Razer Blade, which we reckon is one of the best-crafted Windows laptops of all time.
Flexi-time
One of the Yoga 3 Pro's most striking features is its watchband hinge, which has been crafted from more than 800 individual pieces of aluminium steel, according to Lenovo.There are now six hinges, compared to the Yoga 2 Pro's two. They add a retro twist to an otherwise modern design, and in addition to oozing elegance they occasionally emit the sort of satisfying clink you might hear when slipping on an expensive timepiece.
Windows 8 Ultrabooks have for some time struggled to escape the shadow cast by Apple's MacBook Air, but Lenovo has found a way to stand out without aping the Cupertino company's well-familiar design aesthetic - and it's refreshing to see.
This stylistic choice is timely in more ways than one having arrived during a year that has seen the tech industry pay more attention to fashion trends (in the case of wearables like the Apple Watch, anyway - others remain stoney-faced at the idea.)
But it's not fashion for fashion's sake: the new hinge design makes the device sturdier than the not-exactly-flimsy Yoga 2 Pro, and Lenovo says that it also enabled its engineers to slim the device down to the point that they did.
Flipping tech
That hinge allows you to flip the lid 360 degrees into one of four different modes: standard Laptop, Tent, Stand, and Tablet. Next to Laptop mode, Tent is perhaps the most useful because it takes up the least room on the surface area and makes it easier to interact with Windows 8.1 apps.
I took the Yoga Pro 3 on a trip and found that the Tent position allowed the device to double as an attractive alarm clock when positioned on the hotel's bedside cabinet.
The other modes have their uses too; Stand provides the same benefits as Tent while providing more rigidity, and Tablet, a bugbear on the Yoga 2 Pro due to that device's thickness, is easier to handle on the Yoga 3 Pro due to it being thinner, lighter and slightly longer in the body than the outgoing machine.
Specifications and build quality
The Yoga 3 Pro gets a QHD+ display, which totes the same 3200 x 1800 pixel resolution found on the Yoga 2 Pro. You'll want to adjust the magnification settings in Windows 8.1 to 150% or higher make fonts and text clearly legible.Sticking to higher resolutions gives you more desktop real-estate to edit multimedia files and snap documents side-by-side. In some scenarios it can be a real productivity boon, but overall the resolution still feels like overkill at 13 inches.
One option is to lower the resolution to 2048 x 1152 (16:9), a notch under the native resolution, which keeps everything looking sharp while remaining readable with magnification set to 100%.
The display's 300 nits is sufficiently bright for indoor use, but slightly too dim for outside conditions. It's an IPS panel with very good viewing angles - a crucial factor for a device designed to be used in many positions.
The Yoga 3 Pro is one of the most portable Ultrabooks around, coming in 17% slimmer and 14% lighter than the Yoga 2 Pro, by Lenovo's measurements.
It weighs just 2.62 pounds, making it lighter than the 13-inch MacBook Air's 2.69 pounds, and it's slightly thicker along the middle of the left and right edges, as opposed to the tapered design of Apple's machine.
It's roughly the same weight as Samsung's Series 9 900X3C, and only the ageing Toshiba Portege Z930/Z935 and Sony Vaio Pro 13 come in lighter in the 13-inch category, at 2.50 pounds and 2.34 pounds respectively.
Build inequality
The Yoga 3 Pro measures 13 x 9 x 0.5 inches (W x D x H), and it's astounding just how svelte, portable and slim Lenovo has made it.It can easily be picked up from any edge with the lid at any angle with ease; however, doing so can expose the Ultrabook's questionable build quality, raising the question of whether Lenovo has made it too thin.
The lid possesses an alarming amount of flex along the left and right-hand edges, and picking it up using the frame's bezel produces a rippling, discoloured effect.
At no point did I feel like the lid would snap, or even that it might cause substantial damage, but the undesired effect made me constantly aware of the need to be gentle when flipping it into different positions.
The Ultrabook's base also suffers from slight flex when force is applied to the left and right areas of the clickpad, an action that makes it creak more than a pensioner's knees.
I'm in the thinner = winner camp when it comes to Ultrabooks, but there is an argument that it can be detrimental for devices to be too slim, especially if it's at the expense of build quality, and Lenovo treads a fine line with the Yoga 3 Pro.
The Yoga 3 Pro is made of a smooth plastic with a dimpled effect on the base and under the display frame. Both the lid and base have a tapered edge, which helps keep it steadfast when in tent mode and prevents it from slipping.
Picking the machine up when the lid is closed is another matter. Lenovo made the decision not to include a recessed section or lip along the machine's front edge, and as a result attempting to open it from the front can be a maddening experience - even with two hands (forget using one - the lid is simply too light).
I eventually clocked on that it's far easier to open the lid by placing my index finger on each of the machine's sides to hold it steady and using my thumb to prise it open. Is it a big deal? No. Could it have been easily avoided? Without doubt.
Ports and connectivity
The Yoga 3 Pro is an impressive feat of engineering, but sacrifices clearly had to be made for it to be so thin at the expense of its I/O capabilities.Due to the watchband design, there is no room for ports at the rear of the device. Instead they have been lumped into the thicker middle section along the machine's left and right-hand edges.
On the left-hand side is a power port, which doubles as a USB port. The power connector itself has a slightly curved lip to prevent you from plugging into another USB port, which could damage the laptop.
Next to that is a USB 3.0 port and a full-size SD card connector. Unfortunately not enough room remained for a full-sized HDMI port, so you'll have to make do with using an adapter. It's not a huge deal, but slightly irritating if you output to a HDMI monitor regularly.
The standout communications protocol onboard is 802.11ac Wi-Fi, which was sorely missing from the Yoga 2 Pro. I found that connectivity held solidly throughout my time with the review model. Bluetooth 4.0 is also present for pairing speakers, peripherals and other devices.
Performance and battery life
Benchmarks- Cinebench (Multi-Core): 13.3fps
- 3D Mark 11
- Ice Storm: 25,839
- Cloud Gate: 2,738
- Sky Diver: 1,406
- Fire Storm: 329
- PC Mark 8
- Home: 2,165
- Work: 2,704
- Battery life test
- Power saver: 5 hours 15 mins
- Balanced: 4 hours and 30 minutes
- High Performance: 2 hours and 57 minutes
- TechRadar Light Use battery test: 7 hours and 10 minutes
Under the hood is Intel's Core M-5Y70 CPU, which is clocked at 1.1GHz (turbo boost to 2.6GHz). As I've mentioned, it's based on Intel's Broadwell architecture, which brings the benefit of allowing manufacturers to make their Ultrabooks fanless (and thinner and quieter as a result). The Yoga 3 Pro isn't fanless, but it still runs very quiet. You'll occasionally hear its internal fan whirring away under heavier CPU or graphic-intense workloads.
Unfortunately, the move to Broadwell has had a negative impact on processing power compared to the Yoga 2 Pro. Last year's Ultrabook scored around 1,000 points more in PC Mark's Home and Work benchmarks. The Yoga 2 Pro's HD 4400 also scored slightly higher than the Yoga 3 Pro's HD 5300 in 3D Mark's more demanding Fire Strike and Cloud Gate benchmarks. However, the newer entrant performed better in the Ice Storm test, which simulates light gaming use to test the GPU.
The system runs cool most of the time. When it does begin to warm up under heavier loads, heat is concentrated to the top right-hand corner of the base, and I never found it to heat up to the point where it was uncomfortable.
Other specs include 8GB of RAM and a 256GB SSD from Samsung, which make for a nippy machine that boots up and shuts down almost instantaneously. Performance in Windows 8.1 apps is smooth, with the Yoga 3 Pro able to handle anything you can find in the Windows Store.
Graphics duties are taken care of by Intel's integrated HD 5300 solution, meaning only modest gaming is on the menu. Games running Valve's Source Engine (such as Team Fortress 2, or Half-Life 2) will manage a healthy 40 - 50 FPS on lower resolutions with details turned down. A more demanding title in Skyrim, on the other hand, only managed an average (and borderline unplayable) 30FPS on 1280 x 720.
Most tasks on the desktop can be undertaken without any sign of slowdown; 1080p videos play with a hitch (including when outputted to a larger monitor or TV), and medium-sized images in GIMP around 300MB in size can be scaled and resized with delays into tens of seconds, rather than minutes.
Battery strife
The Yoga 2 Pro's middling battery life was one of the main pain points of last year's outing, and poor performance has once again reared its head on the Yoga 3 Pro.The move from Haswell to Broadwell was expected to increase efficiency, and while Lenovo states nine hours of continuous use, you won't hit that unless you use the machine very conservatively.
Our Light Use battery test: viewing websites, holding a couple of Skype calls, watching a few YouTube movies, editing documents and images (and so on) allowed the battery to run for just over seven hours. That was with Lenovo's battery power management panel set to 'Power Saver', brightness on 75%, keyboard back-lighting, Bluetooth and Wi-Fi all switched on.
For further analysis, I also ran PC Mark 8's punishing Home Battery Life test under all three of Lenovo's power management settings, with brightness set to 100% and Bluetooth and Wi-Fi switched on.
As expected, all three yielded lower results then the manual Light Use test, with particularly dismal results from the High Performance setting. Where the Yoga 2 Pro managed roughly 3 hours 10 minutes under the same conditions, the Yoga 3 Pro went for just 2 hours and 57 minutes.
This is not an Ultrabook that will go anywhere near all day if you want to use the display on full beam. Whether this is down to Lenovo's poor battery management software or Intel's Core M processor will become clear when more Ultrabooks based on Broadwell hit the market.
On the plus side, charging times aren't so bad. Set Lenovo's charging assistance software to Normal Mode and juice is restored up in around 2 hours 30 minutes. A second option, Conservation Mode, will top up from empty in around four hours but is less taxing on the battery level, which Lenovo reckons can help extend battery life if frequently used.
Keyboard and clickpad
I was impressed with the Yoga 2 Pro's keyboard, and the Yoga 3 Pro's is a more-than-solid offering with well-spaced chiclet keys that possess a decent amount of travel. It's here that the laptop's thin profile comes in as an advantage.Because it sits so low, it almost feels like you're typing on the surface that it's resting on, allowing the wrists to rest at a comfortably low position. Its keys are once again shaped like those from Lenovo's Thinkpad line of devices, with a square top edge and rounded bottom.
Once caveat in this area is the lack of a F-row of keys, which is a curious and frustrating omission for an Ultrabook with a "Pro" moniker. There's plenty of room between the top of the keyboard and the hinges to squeeze one in, and the empty space winds up looking a little barren.
Even if a F-row wasn't included, pushing the keys higher up the keyboard would have allowed Lenovo to make the clickpad slightly larger. As things are, it's merely adequate, with a smooth texture that's a magnet for fingerprints.
I occasionally found that clickpad's sensitivity was a little on the low side and failed to register swipes if not enough pressure was applied. Clickpads, like keyboards, are subjective, and I prefer ones that are rock solid and highly sensitive (in terms of physical pressure required, not the cursor speed in Windows).
The MacBook Pro line has led the line in this area, and those on Fujitsu's Lifebook line of business Windows 8.1 notebooks tend to perform similarly well. As someone who has become accustomed to a MacBook Pro clickpad, I often became frustrated at the Yoga 3 Pro clickpad's imprecise nature.
Multimedia and apps
The Yoga 3 Pro's speakers are typical of most 13-inch laptops: loud enough to fill a small room, but sorely lacking in bass, so a dedicated external set will be required if you're planning on using it to provide the soundtrack at parties.Out of the box, the speakers suffered from a crackling, distorted sound with the volume cranked up. This was fixed by going into Windows 8's Device Manager, uninstalling the Realtek audio driver and rebooting. That driver was replaced with a HD audio driver entry, and the crackling completely disappeared.
On the front of the Yoga 3 Pro's frame is a 720p webcam, which produces a video image clear enough for Skype calls and is comparable to a mid-range smartphone camera.
In terms of bundled Lenovo software, the company has given its adaptive "Harmony" software, which is designed to adapt to how you would use the machine over time, a short in the arm. Reading an e-book, for example, will see it automatically change the brightness and colour temperature according to environment lighting.
It can also apply a sepia-like on-screen filter to writing apps such as Evernote, which is designed to simulate a book's page. I found it more distracting than useful, though I don't doubt that it would reduce eye strain when used for hours at a time.
Verdict
The Yoga 3 Pro is undoubtedly a stunner: it's almost perilously thin, offers supreme portability and is genuinely useful in certain scenarios when flipped into its various modes. If you value those attributes above all else, there is nothing out there quite like it.Such originality is a dual-edged sword, because you'll have no choice but to pay through the nose to get it. Moreover, questionable build quality, poor battery life and lower performance than last year's model are overbearing negatives that you should be aware of before pledging your hard-earned.
We liked
The Yoga 3 Pro is thin and light with a strikingly original design, making it arguably most attractive Windows 8.1 Ultrabook out there. Its display isn't one of the brightest we've laid eyes on, but its QHD+ resolution means that text, images and UI elements look pleasingly crisp and provide plenty of desktop real-estate for productivity or general tasks, in addition to light gaming.Its excellent IPS display means that content can be easily viewed from all angles and shared with a friend when flipping the convertible into one of its four different modes.
For those that like to be productive, the lack of an F-row of keys only slightly detracts from what is an excellent keyboard to type on. It's satisfying to use thanks to its incredibly low profile and decent sized, well-spaced chiclet-style keys.
It may not be an absolute beast in the power department, but a fast-performing SSD means that you're never waiting long for it to boot up and shut down, and Windows apps open and close in a snap.
We disliked
It can't be escaped: this is a fairly pricey Ultrabook with only very average battery life. Sure, if you set the display to 25% brightness and read a couple of websites a day then you may well hit those nine hours that Lenovo promises, but is that the experience you want on something that costs upwards of a grand - and then some?Not only does the Yoga 3 Pro have poorer battery life than the Yoga 2 Pro, our benchmarks show that it's less powerful too - in both the CPU and (in more taxing conditions) graphics departments.
It's incredibly pretty and portable, but that thinness has been achieved at the expense of build quality. The lid is overly flexible and highly sensitive to LCD discolouration no matter how or where you grab it. It's also awkward to open in the absence of a recessed lip.
You may fall in love with that superb keyboard, but only if you can get along with not having a dedicated row of F-keys. And while the clickpad operates smoothly enough, it becomes caked in fingerprints too easily and is slightly finicky with how much pressure it wants you to apply.
Final verdict
The Yoga 3 Pro ultimately fails to live up to its high price tag once you get past the attractive exterior. There are too many drawbacks for it to be recommended to anyone other than the style conscious crowd and those who must have the latest model at any cost.On the other hand you can look past its caveats and simply want one of the thinnest and lightest Windows 8.1 machine on the market for everyday computing tasks - whether that's browsing the web, light gaming or productivity work - you'd be hard pressed to find find anything like it.
But before you put your hands into your pockets, it's worth noting that the Yoga 3 Pro is one of the first Core M devices to race out of the traps, and others are expected to follow soon. Thinner and lighter is set to become the norm, and with fanless designs on the horizon, we should expect to see even more experimental models that won't break the bank in the near future.
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Review: Microsoft Lumia 640 LTE
Introduction and design
The Microsoft Lumia 640 is among the first in a new breed of Windows Phones. With a larger screen, more RAM and a different design language from its predecessor, this is Microsoft stamping its logo (literally) on the Lumia range. And what a change this proves to be.The old Nokia did things a little differently. Budget devices made by the Finnish firm were notoriously bare-bones; this could be seen in the decision to omit Gorilla Glass and limit RAM in models such as the Lumia 520 and 630, among others.
Value was added for the consumer through access to services such as MixRadio and HERE Maps. Microsoft takes something of a different tack.
Those who purchase a Microsoft Lumia 640 will receive several sweeteners, such as 30GB of free OneDrive storage and a one-year subscription to Office 365. These in themselves are nice, especially for the price. However, when paired with a phone that rivals (and exceeds) the ever-popular Moto G in many areas, even in its newer incarnation, heads will start to turn.
When it comes to specs, the Microsoft Lumia 640 does not disappoint. The device has a 5-inch, 720p screen with 294 PPI, a quad-core Snapdragon 400 processor clocked at 1.2 GHz, 1GB of RAM and 8GB of internal storage. These are exceptionally healthy specifications for the £130, $250 (around AU$320) SIM-free price point.
Though these specifications might appear exceptional, the competition is quite fierce. Devices such as the Honor Holly, Moto G (2014) and EE Kestrel all offer unique advantages at the same price point, while also being able to access the more than one million apps available on the Google Play Store.
As such, the question is, can an Office and OneDrive subscription sell the Microsoft Lumia 640? Will this be the budget hero device that Windows Phone needs?
Design
When I received the Microsoft Lumia 640, I was not especially impressed. My review device was constructed of a glossy cyan plastic, which was unpleasantly reminiscent of older Samsung devices.I don't have the greasiest fingers in the world, however after five minutes of using the Lumia 640, it looked as if I had wiped it with a pepperoni pizza.
Luckily, the back cover of the device is removable, allowing you to switch in a number of different options, meaning (mercifully) that matte covers are available for those who might want them, along with other suitably 'Lumia' options, including black and orange.
Coming from a smaller device, as I had, it took a little while before I was confident enough to use the phone one-handed. The glossy plastic back meant the phone had a tendency to skate across tables with reckless abandon, so a case might be a wise investment for some.
Though well-balanced in the hand, the shell itself does not feel especially sturdy. Coming from a device such as the Lumia 435, which could sink a ship, the Lumia 640 LTE does not impress overly.
Looking at the side of the device, the black of the inner portion was clearly visible through the plastic, looking as though it might crack easily were it to fall.
Once the back has been removed, access is given to the Micro-SIM slot, the removable 2500mAh battery and the MicroSD slot, which takes cards up to 128GB in size.
The sides of the Lumia 640 LTE are clean and uncluttered, and in the traditional Lumia fashion everything of note is thrown to the right of the phone. No sharp edges are to be found, and using this phone either one- or two-handed is a pleasant and comfortable experience.
The power button and the volume rocker have a decent travel and a nice click to them, meaning everything is easy to find.
A single Micro-USB slot is tidied away on the bottom of the device, while the ever so slightly roughly hewn 3.5mm headphone jack is on the top, as might be expected.
On the back of the Lumia 640, there is a single rear-firing speaker, a neatly displayed Microsoft logo, a single LED flash and the 8MP rear-facing camera.
The front of the device contains the 5-inch screen, a 0.9MP selfie camera and the usual additions of a call-speaker and microphone. With Gorilla Glass covering the front panel, the oleophobic coating immediately makes itself known, feeling very pleasant to the touch.
Overall, this is a utilitarian but nice device for the price. Though Microsoft doesn't take any great gambits with the design, the phone is light, well balanced and pleasant to use both one- and two-handed.
Key features
Screen
It is interesting to see how far phone screens have progressed in the budget range. Whereas a few years ago, spending less than £200, $300 on a smartphone doomed you to excessive pixelation, now things are very different.
The Moto G (2013) wowed the world with a 720p screen at a less than flagship price several years ago, and now the Lumia 640 joins the club.
With a 5-inch panel, the Lumia 640 certainly sports a comfortable amount of real-estate on which to consume media and play games.
And at 294 PPI, though not quite 'Retina' in its quality, the screen should please everyone (pixel peepers aside). Web browsing was an enjoyable experience, as was viewing HD video.
In the best Lumia tradition, the abilities of the Microsoft Lumia 640's panel do not end there. As mentioned, the Gorilla Glass protection makes using the device a very easy experience.
The nice 'ClearBlack' polarisation filter used previously by Nokia has been applied, meaning that the device has very nice black levels for an LED screen; this makes it easy to use outdoors.
As it is an IPS panel, viewing angles are also excellent. Unusually, for a budget device, the Lumia 640 LTE sports both double-tap to wake and the ever-useful Glance mode, which is configurable to allow for a number of different notifications to appear.
Automatic brightness is also a nice addition, seeing as this was omitted on the Lumia 630; this makes daily use a little easier, while extending the battery a little.
Nokia always had a strong reputation for the quality of the panels it produced, and if this is anything to go by, Microsoft intends to continue the tradition in style. The screen on the Lumia 640 LTE is one of its main highlights, and is easily one of the best available at this price point.
Office suite
Since Satya Nadella became CEO in 2014, Microsoft has made a strong play for its cloud services. Lumia owners have long had access to Office and OneDrive; however, with the Lumia 640 Redmond has made its strongest push.
Included with the Lumia 640 LTE is a free one-year subscription to Office365 and 30GB of free OneDrive storage. On paper, this is an enormous saving, and it definitely adds value to the device.
OneDrive is certainly a pleasure to use. I found that pictures I took uploaded to the cloud with a minimum of fuss, easily beating Dropbox for speed.
The same was true when accessing files online; the service was consistent and functional, if not remarkable in any regard.
It has long been a necessity for Windows Phone owners to deal with OneDrive in one form or another if they wished to make use of cloud storage, and with 30GB free it is likely that many more will make the jump.
As for the Office 365 subscription, this is where things become a little more difficult. If you are a business owner, the ability to easily sync Word, Excel and Powerpoint files, along with editing them on the go, will no doubt be attractive.
For the average user, however, productivity is as sexy as ever, but Excel will most likely struggle to sell phones. Despite this, it is a nice addition. The Office app for Windows Phone is laid out sensibly and has a number of basic editing options, which remain a little more advanced than their Android and iOS counterparts.
Though typing a 3,000-word essay on a 5-inch screen is as attractive a proposition as ever, for basic tasks on the go, it is more than sufficient. As Microsoft clearly wishes to demonstrate, this is a phone for business as well as pleasure. However, the divide can sometimes be a little too stark.
Windows Phone 8.1 Update 2
The Microsoft Lumia 640 and the Lumia 640 XL are the first devices to arrive toting the latest update for Windows Phone – the drably titled Windows Phone 8.1 Update 2.Typically, when Windows Phone has been updated, exciting names have been dreamt up, and with the new software came a number of new features. Yet, with Windows 10 on its way later in the year, all focus has been diverted to the task at hand, and this latest update has suffered as a result.
Windows Phone 8.1 Update 2 brings with it a number of bug fixes and stability improvements, and one feature that has been missing from Windows Phone from the start: the ability to pin setting options to the Home screen.
In the past, users had to be content either arranging and using the notification tray or swiping through to the settings menu if they wished to access options such as Wi-Fi or mobile data. Aside from a few third-party app options that could solve the problem partially, this could mean on occasion that using Windows Phone was a pain.
As such, I immediately pinned brightness, Wi-Fi and mobile data to the Home screen, which made general use far easier. Windows Phone 8.1 Update 2 also comes with a rearranged setting menu.
Windows Phone no longer has an endless list of random settings, and different options are grouped according to their functions.
I am something of a Windows Phone veteran, and I found these changes all much to my liking. And though newcomers to the mobile OS may find these changes to be simple common sense, they will most likely be welcome nonetheless, making this a quiet triumph.
Cortana
What is there to say about Cortana that has not already been said?Microsoft's virtual assistant has been available for Windows Phone owners in the UK since the rollout of the Lumia Denim update in late 2014/early 2015, and it is safe to say that she has been met with a mostly positive reception.
Combining some of the personality of Siri with some of the pre-cognisance of Google Now, along with a little Microsoft secret sauce, Cortana is generally a pleasure to use.
Cortana can perform web searches, compose messages, create reminders – everything that has become the bread and butter of voice assistants everywhere.
In addition to this, she can also interact with select third-party apps, although this function must be baked in by developers, and as such support is somewhat limited at present.
Everything Cortana knows about you is bundled into her 'notebook', which also contains a list of all of her permissions. Here, in a nice departure from the relatively opaque confines of Google Now and Siri, it is easy to control the information that Cortana can access about you.
Though it isn't possible with the Lumia 640 LTE to turn on 'always listening' voice activation, as it is with the likes of the Nokia Lumia 930 and the Lumia 1520, by pinning a tile to the Home screen, I found Cortana to be useful.
Though she is limited to searching through Bing, Cortana is fast becoming the big-value add-on that Microsoft so clearly wishes the service to be.
Performance and battery life
With the Lumia 640, Microsoft has held true to one of the proudest traditions of the 600 range: a healthy processor. Purring away under the hood of the polycarbonate slab is a quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 processor, clocked at 1.2 GHz. This is the very same processor found in the Moto G (2013), and as such is a tried and true performer.I found that swiping around the OS was a pleasant experience. The usability of Windows Phone at the lower end of the price spectrum has often been touted as excellent. Approximately 50% of this general impression is based in reality – in my experience the operating system masks app loading times with myriad animations.
As such, it is a pleasure to say that, on the Microsoft Lumia 640, I did not find this to be the case. The best test of OS responsiveness is a measure of the 'app rehydration', or app refresh times when multi-tasking.
When loading apps such as Spotify from sleep, there was functionally no delay, whereas on a device such as the Nokia Lumia 540, this could easily be upwards of five seconds. The Lumia 640 is a scorcher, at least when swiping around.
Happily, this general level of performance continued into gaming performance. Whatever I threw at it, the device mostly took it in its stride. Games such as Subway Surfers, Sparkle 2 and Timberman ran without a hitch.
Though Windows Phone has often lagged behind in the processor department when compared to supercharged Android phones such as the Samsung Galaxy S6 and the HTC One M9, at least in the budget range Microsoft appears keen to catch up.
Battery life
To put it simply, the battery life of the Microsoft Lumia 640 is excellent.With a relatively low-resolution display, a power-sipping processor and the efficient Windows Phone OS, the ingredients were all there for the success of the Lumia 640.
When matched with a large 2500mAh unit, all of these factors virtually guarantee that the device will last comfortably through a long day of work and play.
Unplugging the device at around 7:30am, listening to a few hours of Spotify, catching up with a few shows on BBC iPlayer Radio, browsing the internet for around an hour on HSDPA+ and whiling away dull moments with a little gaming saw the battery drop to around 45% by 6pm.
Leaving the device unplugged throughout the night, I saw a further 2% drop, leaving ample charge for the next day.
In all, regardless of your use case, this device has great battery life. And, as a bonus for those who travel frequently, and power users, it is removable, allowing for 'hot-swapping' a new unit in to top things up.
To help last through the day, Windows Phone comes bundled with a battery saver app, which comes with a powerful power-saving option. When activated, this allows background tasks to be shut down completely, except for whatever app is being used directly, limiting connectivity significantly, but proving useful in a pinch.
For me, activating this option dependably added around two to three hours to battery time. Typically, this gave an estimated 28 hours of power, and with power saver it increased to 31. Though it doesn't include any fancy greyscale power-saving options, as found on the Samsung Galaxy S6, this is a dependable and practical alternative.
Overall, I was very pleased with the battery life of the Microsoft Lumia 640 LTE. I came to the device with high expectations, given its screen, processor and the size of its battery unit, and yet was pleasantly surprised.
The essentials and camera
The essentials
One thing, among many others, that Nokia phones were always known for was the (relatively) crystal clarity of voice calls its devices were capable of.Throughout the Lumia line, this has been something of an understated, but crowning feature, and happily the Microsoft Lumia 640 continues in this tradition.
Calls made from the device were pleasantly loud and rounded, and callers remarked on the quality at the other end. Though not quite up to par with the likes of 'HD' voice calls offered by some network providers, the Lumia 640 is a pleasant call-making device indeed.
Radio performance also proved to be something of a high point, with clear HSDPA+ performance across the Bath, Bristol, Swindon and Cardiff areas. This proved to be true even in areas where I have often found it difficult to gain reception.
Pages loaded quickly on the baked-in Internet Explorer browser, though the app has some issues with 'pop-in'. Microsoft has tinkered with the code behind this to mimic Safari, and as such performance is similar on many sites to Apple's native browser.
With a configurable reading mode, desktop mode and many other settings, the browser is moderately customisable, which will no doubt please tinkerers. And with a bottom-mounted address bar, one-handed use is a very practical option.
Aided by the generously spaced keys of the on-screen keyboard, along with the fluid and reliable gesture mode and predictive text functions, the Windows Phone typing experience remains a joy. This remains true even in the face of increasingly serious competition in the Android space from the likes of Swiftkey and Swype.
The rear-facing speakers on the device produced a satisfying level of volume, with noticeable distortion not making itself known until the highest levels.
Finding apps on Windows Phone remains something of a problem. If they are available at all, apps are often a little more limited or buggy than their counterparts on other mobile operating systems, very rarely receiving updates.
Lastly, but not least, GPS performance on the device was acceptable. No matter where I found myself, getting a lock and navigating elsewhere was always a quick experience, with little in the way of jitters or lag.
Camera
With higher-resolution sensors quickly becoming the norm, even at the lower-end of the mobile market, on paper the 8MP sensor of the Lumia 640 fails to impress.
Yet, in most real-life situations, the camera unit in the Lumia 640 is a strong contender for the best snapper in the budget space.
In good lighting, the sensor produced strong levels of detail, along with colours that had a pleasing 'pop' without excessive saturation.
Coming with Windows Phone 8.1 Update 2, the Microsoft Lumia 640 is also privy to another exciting feature that first made its debut on higher-end phones in the Lumia line: 'Rich Capture'.
For the uninitiated, this is simply HDR (high dynamic range) but rebranded. When activated, this allows the camera to compensate for high levels of contrast; for example, pulling more detail out of dark shadows on brightly lit days.
With Microsoft's example of the service, however, this also allows you to select 'how much' flash you would like in your low-light shots, improving performance somewhat. The sensor captures two images, one without flash and one with, and combines the two afterwards to achieve the most pleasing result.
Despite this neat trick, low-light photography is not a highlight of the device. Although there is a decent level of brightness in most shots, noise constantly rears its ugly head in almost every scene.
There's a single 0.9 MP selfie camera on the front of the device, and this – as might be expected – is perfectly acceptable for the odd Skype call, but not for much else. It is certainly not on a par with the likes of the 5MP wide-angle effort on the Lumia 535 and the Lumia 735.
Video is also of decent quality, with the camera handling differences in contrast well and with decent sound levels. Footage can be recorded in 1080p and 720p at 24, 25 and 30 FPS.
At such a low price, and with such competitive specifications in so many other areas, Microsoft might have been content to produce something merely average. However, the Lumia 640 is a good all-round smartphone snapper.
Camera samples
Click here to see the full res image
Click here to see the full res image
Click here to see the full res image
Click here to see the full res image
Click here to see the full res image
Verdict
Using the Microsoft Lumia 640 LTE was an experience that I did not expect to enjoy quite so much. Coming from a Nokia Lumia 930 as my daily driver, I was surprised at how much of the overall quality of the Windows Phone experience could be found at the lower end of the market.
We liked
With a 720p screen that boasts wide-viewing angles and a pixel density of 294 PPI, the Microsoft Lumia 640 is excellent for reading text on the web, gaming and watching movies on the go. Colour accuracy is strong, given that it is an LCD screen, and Glance mode is supported, along with double-tap, which are nice add-ons for the price.Boasting 2500mAh, the battery life of the Lumia 640 is consistently excellent. It is easy to make it through a full day of work with enough juice to spare for a gaming session on the commute, along with some reading along the way.
The 8MP rear-facing camera is excellent. In most situations, colours are accurately represented and detail is even throughout, with good sharpness levels present consistently. This is supplemented by the clever Rich Capture mode, which makes shooting in low light easier.
We disliked
Though the Microsoft Lumia 640 is an attractive device, the signature build quality of the Lumia line seems to have been found somewhat lacking, The plastic shell running around the device betrays its budget origins and doesn't feel as though it could take a knock as easily as its predecessors were able to.While the Snapdragon 400 is a strong performer, as Qualcomm releases newer chips not only in the 400 line, but others in its budget range, it is a shame to see Windows Phone stuck in the past once again. With the likes of the Moto E (2015) receiving the Snapdragon 410, along with all of its improvements, Windows Phone is once again in danger of looking as though it is stuck in the past.
And, as ever, the app situation on Windows Phone still lags behind. Apps are updated infrequently, if they are present at all, with the store lacking most of the vibrancy that has become a hallmark of the Android and iOS app stores.
Final verdict
Despite its somewhat cheap design and the occasional quirk, the Microsoft Lumia 640 is a remarkably well-rounded device. With an excellent screen, a nice camera, strong battery life and good general performance, this is a phone that should easily suit the lifestyles of most.This is Microsoft's challenge to the Moto G, and with sales of the latest device in the line failing to hit the heights set by its predecessor, the time is right to strike.
With 30GB of free OneDrive storage and a year's subscription to Office 365 for those who purchase the device, the Lumia is an easy sell for most people.
Despite this, two major question marks hang over the device, the first being Windows 10. Set to debut later this year, Microsoft's major update to its operating ecosystem will bring major changes, and whether these will wash away the tentative footsteps made by Windows Phone into the mobile market is yet to be seen.
The second is simply that of future proofing. As other devices are becoming cheaper and more powerful, especially the likes of the Honor Holly, for how long will besting the Moto G be a true measure of success?
For the price, unlocked and with access to 4G, along with all the other bells and whistles, this is a remarkably complete package from Microsoft, which bodes well for later in the year. This is a smartphone for anyone, and as such is well worth your hard-earned currency.
First reviewed: April 2015
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Week in Tech: Week in Tech: Laser eyes, Apple's home invasion, and a new era for Spotify
You know how the air feels when a thunderstorm is coming? This week's a bit like that, but we're expecting things with Lightning connectors instead of lightning bolts. Apple's about to unveil plans to control your home, car, wrist and the odd computer too, Spotify's getting into TV, Netflix is getting a new look and LG's covered things in cows.
Putting Apple into everything
Apple's coming for your house. It's been using an app called Home to control HomeKit-based devices, and that app could be part of the imminent iOS 9. We're just weeks away from Apple's developer conference, WWDC, and we're expecting to see new versions of OS X and iOS – versions that might use the San Francisco font from the Apple Watch for their default system font. We're expecting to see Apple TV (the box, not the much rumoured, quite unlikely and thoroughly canned TV set) as a HomeKit hub, an earlier-than-usual iPhone 6S launch and probably nothing about the Apple Car we know Tim Cook's working on in his garage."Watch firms watching each other's watches" watch
You'll never guess who thinks the Apple Watch is "spectacular". No, not Jony Ive: Eric Migicovsky, CEO of Pebble. He's quite happy to see the big guns of tech move into the smartwatch space, because Pebble's offering is different: "We're focused on keeping it simple, affordable and useful." Meanwhile Apple addressed some of the initial flaws in Watch OS 1.0 by releasing – yes! – Watch OS 1.0.1, but rumoured features such as Find My Watch and enhanced Apple TV controls won't appear this side of WWDC.New on Netflix: Netflix!
The Netflix interface is getting a big makeover, with the Web version getting it first and the many other Netflix-powered apps and devices getting it in June. It's faster, looks better, makes it easier to find information and generally makes it simpler to find the best Netflix TV shows.By jove, it's a FOVE
Good news for anybody who's always fancied blasting lasers from their eyes: the FOVE eye-tracking VR headset is coming to market, hopefully. Rumours of Microsoft interest didn't turn into anything concrete, so it's off to Kickstarter for a crowdfunding campaign. Eye-tracking isn't just a gimmick. It solves one of the biggest problems with VR, which is that you can't always focus on what you want to look at. By tracking your eye movements FOVE can tell where your pupils are pointing and adjust the display accordingly. If you fancy joining the Kickstarter it's $349 (£225/AU$440).Spotify and Deezer: more than just music
Big changes are afoot in the world of streaming: Spotify is getting a brand new version that includes not just music, but podcasts and even video content. It's also getting a running tool that will choose music according to how fast you're going, and which will turn up in Nike's Nike+ app later this year.Deezer's getting into podcasts too. Thanks to last year's acquisition of Stitcher, Deezer now offers more than 20,000 different podcasts and radio shows on the web and in its apps. It hopes to be a one-stop shop for everything aural, with freemium and premium services to take on Spotify, Tidal and Apple's Beats Music relaunch.
Is Windows Phone winning yet?
Mobile versions of Windows suffer from the app gap, with rivals Android and iOS packing thousands more apps into their respective app stores. Is the gap closing? David Nield says yes, but also no. While the big hitters are largely there, "to buy a Windows Phone is to shut yourself out from most of the interesting, newer apps appearing on the scene as well as pretty much everything Google makes."LG G4 vs G3: the cow starts now
Does the LG G4 offer anything new other than a leather case? We pitted the LG G4 against the LG G3 to find out. The leather isn't as nice as it looks in photos – it is "too thinly stretched over the back of the phone" – and the new processor is quad-core rather than octa-core like some other firms' flagships, but "it is indeed a more accomplished smartphone" and "has fixed some of the biggest issues with LG's last handset". That said, the G3 will be around for a while yet, and it'll cost a lot less. Our in-depth LG G4 review can help you decide whether you'd be better off with the outgoing model, or if the G4 will make you grin.
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In Depth: The past, present and future of smartphone batteries
The science of batteries
If you own a smartphone – and if you're reading this then chances are you do – then you'll be all too aware of the nightly ritual of plugging in your mobile to charge it ready for the morning. Few of today's top models can last more than a full day of steady use, with current lithium-ion technology struggling to keep pace with the growth in screen sizes and power requirements of our handsets.But why is battery technology lagging and why doesn't it seem to be getting any better? We've analysed the current state of the market to bring you the reasons why you have to charge your phone every night – and how that could change over the next few years.
A very brief, simplified science lesson: the lithium-ion battery inside your phone isn't fully lithium, and if it was, it would last a lot longer. Every battery has three main components: an electrolyte providing electrons, an anode discharging them, and a cathode receiving them.
In the rechargeable batteries inside today's smartphones, lithium is found in the electrolyte, but not in the anode, restricting the efficiency and lifespan of the blocks. If a viable lithium anode could be developed, our batteries would be lighter, smaller, faster to charge and longer lasting.
Graphite is used as the anode in today's lithium-ion packs, and scientists believe we're now reaching the limit of what it can hold. Silicon and lithium metal are both potential materials that can replace graphite, while some research teams are investigating the possibility of using sulfur as the anode.
It's not quite as simple as replacing one material for another though, as some are potentially dangerous, some can only stand a few hundred recharges, and so on. As it stands, the lithium-ion packs we have today are the best that modern science can offer in 2015.
It's not just phones: these issues are holding up the progress of battery-powered boats, cars and aeroplanes too, because larger lithium-ion batteries aren't terribly effective either.
That's not to dismiss lithium-ion's achievements, because the breakthrough technology has made the super-thin and ultra-light smartphones and tablets of today possible. However, it's starting to show its age.
Talking about the next step for battery technology is difficult to do, as even the scientists at the cutting edge of the field are learning as they go: that's why you'll see a particular super-battery technology get announced one year and fade away the next.
Follow up on next-gen battery stories from the past – as we did here – and in the majority of cases you'll find the technology didn't work exactly as the inventors thought it would, wasn't commercially viable, or was based on a hypothesis that turned out to be wrong.
In short, it's an incredibly complicated area of electronics, and progress is slow despite the best efforts of some of the world's brightest minds. Only last year conventional thinking on the processes working inside lithium-ion batteries was turned on its head by a new theory. That's potentially a lot of super-smart battery projects going back to the drawing board.
Trying to figure out the physics and the chemistry to power a next-generation smartphone battery is one of the trickier problems in science, so bear that in mind the next time you back a super-battery project on Kickstarter.
There's no shortage of people working on the problem though, and the potential benefits are huge – not just for consumer gadgets but for transportation, renewable energy, and all the areas of our lives where batteries are used.
Working towards future batteries
Battery technology is a complex science, so you're unlikely to see any breakthrough battery projects appear completely out of nowhere.Any progress that's made in the field has to be rigorously tested and examined before it can get close to our smartphones, and making sure it works and is safe is only part of the equation – it also needs to be commercially viable too.
Most of the papers and press releases you'll read about battery breakthroughs involve some kind of chemical tweak to get more energy out of the same battery over a longer time. These small improvements don't attract the same kind of headlines as flexible phone screens or a new smartwatch, but they're much more important for the future of our electronic gadgets.
Amprius is one of the companies working on the problem, and it has the backing of some top-level investors too (not least Google Chairman Eric Schmidt).
It started in Stanford University and received $30m in funding last year. The batteries Amprius is developing can store 50% more energy than today's blocks thanks to the use of silicon in the anode.
The founder of Amprius is Stanford professor Dr. Yi Cui, who is something of a celebrity in the field of battery research. We spoke to Wesley Guangyuan Zheng, one of the researchers working in Dr. Cui's lab, about what's around the corner.
"To overcome the physical limitation of current battery technology, we need to look for alternative battery chemistries that will have higher theoretical value," he told us. "Some of the new materials that have been explored include silicon and lithium metal for the anodes, and sulfur for the cathodes. These materials can potentially offer three-to-five times increase energy density as compared to today's lithium-ion batteries."
"These materials each have their own issues and problems. For example, silicon and lithium metal experience large volumetric expansion during battery cycling and that causes degradation of the electrode integrity. Scientists have come up with many innovative solutions to the problem, and we are seeing some of these technologies getting out into the market, albeit at a small volume."
Despite the complex nature of the science involved, and plenty of promising theories that have had to be abandoned, there is hope for the future. "There are many groups around the world, including our lab at Stanford, working on these advanced electrodes," says Zheng.
"The landscape will depend on the breakthroughs in battery material development. At the same time, battery companies are also making improvements on the current lithium-ion battery technology. Therefore, we are going to see much cheaper and better batteries down the road."
A longer-lasting battery and a cheaper smartphone to boot? Sounds perfect.
Also working hard on potential battery improvements are academics at the University of California, Riverside. "With current developments in our laboratories, we are able to fabricate novel materials by engineering them at the nanometer scale – 100 times thinner than human hair – which can be used as active electrodes in li-ion rechargeable batteries," Professor Mihri Ozkanor of the UCR Department of Electrical Engineering explains to us.
Professor Ozkanor told us that her work could eventually boost battery lifespans, shorten charging times and reduce the size of battery packs. "Highly cost-effective and scalable starting materials such as our paper-like silicon material could improve the existing battery technology, and the advancement in new electrode materials such as ours, will change the existing landscape of batteries in our cell phones and in other portable electronics," she says.
Last year one of UCR's most interesting innovations was to use sand to extend battery life by two or three times, but the common refrain applies again: the technology is still in its infancy, and a lot more research is required.
Sakti3 is another battery research company that has hit the headlines recently, thanks to a $15m investment from James Dyson.
The secret sauce the startup uses hasn't been explained in detail, but there are claims it can double the life of current smartphone batteries by essentially replacing some of the liquid chemical mix inside a battery with a solid-state equivalent that's said to be much more effective.
By using solid-state technology some of the dangers (like battery explosions) are removed, and the batteries can be made thinner and lighter too. Whether or not Sakti3 can get any further towards the consumer market than its predecessors have done remains to be seen, but the investment from Dyson will certainly help.
Finding the balance
Even when scientists make improvements in one area of battery design, it may be limited or negated by another aspect of the technology, which is why progress can seem very slow. It's akin to upgrading one part of your PC only to find a different component then becomes the bottleneck in the system.For these various reasons efficiency savings in software and the electronics of our smartphones are likely to significantly extend battery life before there's any substantial improvement in the composition of the batteries themselves.
Microsoft has a different approach altogether. Its research team has floated the idea of splitting the smartphone battery in two, optimising one piece to provide quick bursts of power, and the other to keep your phone ticking over while it's not doing very much.
Microsoft Researcher Ranveer Chandra says that battery life improvements of 20-50% could be possible according to initial tests, but – and stop me if you've heard this one before – there's no estimate of when this might actually appear in a handset on the high street.
If you read up on the latest battery breakthrough news on the web, as we have for this article, you'll find a familiar pattern developing; most articles start with a declaration that a new discovery could make a huge difference to smartphone battery life, and end with an admission that more research and experimentation is required.
That's not to dismiss the valiant efforts of the scientists working on the puzzle – it just gives you some idea of the size of the task. You're not going to see an amazing new battery developed by a group of friends in a garage, for example.
Researchers from Nanyang Technological University in Singapore have been busy, too: their new and improved batteries use a titanium dioxide gel for the anode instead of graphite.
However, the improvements will largely be in how fast the batteries can charge and how many charging cycles they can withstand, rather than how long they can last between charges.
There are several alternatives to lithium-ion in development too, and it's possible that a different type of battery technology is going to power the smartphones of the future.
Right now though, there's a lot that's up in the air – and to explain each technology in turn would take ten feature-length articles rather than just one.
One of the technologies most likely to impact the market in the short-term is the use of lithium-sulfur batteries. They can – in theory – hold a lot more energy than lithium-ion batteries, but the challenge here is stopping them from degrading rapidly over successive charges.
The reality of the matter is that we're all still going to be charging our smartphones every night, for the next year or two at least. Take heart, though, because there are many people across the world working on the challenge of keeping our mobiles powered up for longer, and they are making progress.
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In Depth: What should we expect from the PS5 and the next generation?
PS5: what does the future hold for PlayStation 5?
The PS4 is barely out of its box in terms of a console life cycle and looks set for a potential 4K playback upgrade before the end of the year.But with so many recent advances - PlayStation Now, pre-loading games, YouTube streaming and PlayStation TV to name but a few - we're thinking about the future of black boxes under the television.
Is there one or are we just looking at Sony TVs shipping with a DualShock 4 from here on in rather than a PS5 console?
A PlayStation 5 will land in some form but what's most interesting is whether it'll be the big component packed box we've grown accustomed to heating our living rooms, a palm sized streaming device or an invisible power ever present on our televisions or even iPhones and iPads.
Gazing back 20 years to the original PlayStation and its successors – yes, you're that old – it's fascinating how little really changed until the internet explosion of the last few years.
Into each generation a whirring box under the TV was born, complete with disc support and a whole bundle of the newest components but it's only now, as we Remote Play content live to our PlayStation Vitas and play seamless online multiplayer in games like Destiny, that it really feels like the future has arrived.
When a PS5 comes a calling, this is the time for things to change. Or is it?
Discs are so 20 years ago
Now that PlayStation Now and streaming capabilities should be the norm by Christmas let alone in five years' time, shouldn't we scrap the disc drive already?We can hear it from here. Despite the magazine dropping the legendary demo disc in the middle of last year, ex editor of Official PlayStation Magazine, Ben Wilson disagrees.
"Steam on PC has taught us that disc drives are becoming less and less necessary, but I can't see them being phased out completely for a while yet," he says.
"People love their boxed products, and 'experts' have been predicting the 'imminent' demise of the CD for more than 20 years. Remind me how that one has turned out? There will always be those who prefer special editions and sexy packaging to invisible downloads, and it's those guys and girls who'll ensure disc drives live on within gaming in some form."
Looking at the ages of the people investing in technology (that's us remember, and let's be honest, we're not getting any younger) we do still have the desire to buy physical products despite their ready availability online.
But it's not just PlayStation (and better pricing on the PlayStation Store) that needs to evolve here. Our broadband speeds largely still leave much to be desired and a solid online infrastructure will have to be implemented before we depend solely on fibre-optic wires to get our gaming fix.
Adding an extra hurdle to a disc-less world, there's yet another reason why the upcoming preloading feature will be like a gift from the PlayStation gods. Size.
"I'd argue that the ever-expanding size of games would cause significant issues for a digital-only machine," says Matt Pellett, current editor of Official PlayStation Magazine.
"Both in terms of download times and the number of games people could store on their hard drive at any one time."
With the launch of Ultra HD Blu-ray, towards the end of the year, and their 50-100GB capacity, that's the sort of media we'll need our next next-gen games to be shipped on. With such huge game sizes it would be a struggle for all but the most advanced broadband connections to cope with.
Sony is quite likely to want to keep momentum going with the new disc format too and so it wouldn't be a huge surprise to see it wanting to do that with a UHD Blu-ray drive in the next version of the PlayStation.
Whether that's in a PS5 or a 4K update to the PS4 though is still up in the air.
PlayStation Now is the time
In swaggers PlayStation Now to fix all these problems. Game size? No problem. It's all in the cloud.Choice? In five years or so, Sony could have filled it with every game on their back catalogue. Is this enough? Or could this pose even more problems for the future of PlayStation?
"If we end up in a place where streaming games is the norm, like it has become in the movie/box-set rental market, then the console itself is under threat," says PC Gamer's resident tech expert Dave James. "And if there's no actual console, what do the developers target and what do they develop on and how does Sony make its money?"
So a physical console still seems the most attractive prospect here for Sony. PlayStation Now seems an excellent solution as an additional feature, especially for accessing games from previous generations, saving you blowing the dust off that enormous original PS2 you've not been able to say goodbye to.
Another matter is the thorny issue of cost. If we've shelled out for the newest console, what's the sting for the back catalogue?
"The big talking point of the PlayStation Now Beta has been the price-point," says Pellett.
"Sony needs to get this right in order to be as competitive in the streaming market as it is in the console hardware market. With Sony's library of games and the ability for people to revisit the games they can't play on PS4 – and in some cases can't buy these days – it could become a hugely important part of the PlayStation family."
The suggestion of the PlayStation family here is important. As we know, Sony will be shipping Sony Bravia TVs with PlayStation Now built in but this won't be a replacement for the PS4 or any future consoles.
Too much rests on the power from our home consoles as new tech appears on the horizon. Yes, we're looking at you Project Morpheus.
4K and the VR revolution
Project Morpheus looks like the future. No, really.The baying for an Oculus Rift consumer version has proved that virtual reality might just have a place in our living rooms after all and Sony's Morpheus announcement came just at the right time. Is the future of PlayStation inside a headset?
"Between PS Now and Project Morpheus, PlayStation 4 is well-placed to evolve dramatically in the years ahead," considers Pellett. "In five years we may well not only be buying our games in a different way, but the types of games we'll be playing in the first place could very well be different to what we're experiencing now."
So more shark based diving experiences then.
It seems clear that, like PlayStation Now, Morpheus is a strong addition to the PlayStation brand but an add-on to the main event which still happens to be that whirring console we can't get rid of. Yet as 4K televisions raise their ugly but oh-so-pretty heads, how can the PlayStation 4 cope with the extra processing power necessary for extra pixel production?
"Given the rapid price drops of 4K TVs, and the likelihood of increased adoption, I think Sony is going to need to produce a PS4K hardware update in the next couple of years to increase the GPU horsepower," says Dave James.
"With both latest-gen consoles battling to play native games at just 1080p there is no chance of them ever being capable of running at a native 4K resolution without a serious change in components.
"Given the processor manufacturer supplying the silicon design for both consoles is constantly iterating on that technology it should be relatively simple for Sony to upgrade the components, and as it will still be an x86-based platform it would be backwards compatible. But whether Sony would want to do that, creating a two-tier PlayStation 4 ecosystem, is tough to say."
A PlayStation 4.5, rather than a 5 almost makes sense, given Sony's clear investment in the development side of things.
"Speaking with different developers it's clear that PS4 has been designed with external studios at heart," explains Pellett.
"I've been assured it's the easiest console to develop for in PlayStation history, which is as good as an open-door invitation for teams to make games for PS4."
This strong investment in the development side of things means Sony clearly doesn't think their box is going anywhere anytime soon. Any successor is going to follow in this parallelogram's footprint.
The evolution of PlayStation
The PS Vita's Remote Play feature already hints at the miracles of new ways we can play but can features such as PlayStation Mobile extend the console experience even further?And can future PlayStation updates deliver that?
"The thing I most want is to see PlayStation Mobile on iOS," says Ben Wilson. "The issue, of course, is that it would require Sony and Apple to clamber into bed together, which isn't going to occur anytime soon.
"But perhaps by the time PS5 rolls around, and there's even more scope for cross-platform sharing, we will see a way in which you can start a Call Of Duty 21: Robots vs Zombies campaign on console in the morning, continue it on iPad in the afternoon, and compete it on your phone at 2am while the rest of the household snores in unison."
It appears that we can't escape this idea of a home console. As a processing hub, an independent gaming power not necessarily dependent on the internet, a unit to centre our experiences around and plug extra peripherals into and a centre of the PlayStation universe.
Why the PS5 could be the cheapest console ever
First published January 2014The PlayStation 5, whether you like it or not, will exist in some form or another and chances are it will look less like the future and more like what we already know.
"Look at the evolution of PS3 from launch day to now, and then consider that the PS4 was designed from the ground up to evolve in the years after its release," considers Pellett. "Even with simple updates, the PS4 under my TV today is going to be unrecognisable to the PS4 under my telly in 2019 – despite being the same box."
While 4K TVs, Steam Machines and cool car tech are all well and good, by far the most exciting thing to come out of CES this week is the launch of Sony's PlayStation Now.
It's not only an exciting new gaming service, but also a mesmerising hint at the destiny of the PlayStation brand and the future of gaming in general. This is the beginning of a cosmic shift in the paradigm of gaming, and it's happening right here, right now. Be excited.
In case you missed the announcement, PlayStation Now is at first-sight a simple game-streaming service that will initially enable both the PS4 and PS3 to stream PlayStation 3 games over the internet.
You'll be able to select a game and begin streaming it immediately, meaning absolutely no delay in getting the game up and running. Instantaneous PS3 gaming, no loading times at all. Awesome!
But there's more. Lots more.
Game streaming functionality will later arrive on the PS Vita and, far more excitingly, Bravia TVs. Yep, using a DualShock 3 pad, you'll be able to play full-blown PS3 games, in HD, on your big TV, without the need to own a PlayStation console. Incredible!But wait. There's still more.
Eventually, PS Now will offer not only PS3 games, but PS1, PS2, PS3 and PS4 games - not only on the PS3, PS4, PS Vita and Bravia TVs, but also on third-party TVs, smartphones and tablets as well. All without needing to own a games console. Wow.
Games will be available to rent on a one-off basis, with unlimited Netflix-style monthly PSN subscriptions a payment model Sony is likely to pursue aggressively.
That's right, the future of gaming lays entirely in software, services and super-fast internet connections and not in expensive black boxes.
What it means for gaming
Play any PlayStation game on any device with a screen. All you need is an internet connection. Amazing.What this essentially means is that the days of paying $400 for PlayStation hardware are numbered. In fact, it's very possible that the PlayStation 5 (make no mistake, there will still be a PS5) will be a cheap-as-chips $50 set-top box that will do nothing other than stream content from the great PlayStation publishing cloud in the sky.
After all, who would pay excessive prices for a console that does nothing you can't do on your existing tech? Sony has never been able to make money from PlayStation hardware anyway, in fact it generally makes a loss. Woohoo cheap gaming for everyone!
Of course, this has long been mooted as a likely solution for gamers of the future. OnLive has already been streaming games for some time, and when Sony purchased Gaikai and it's game streaming technology in the summer of 2012, the writing was on the wall. But no one really knew what the plan was. Now we do.
So here we are, at the start of 2014 walking into a world where all Sony Bravia TVs could ship with a DualShock controller by default and offer access to every PlayStation game ever made. All you need is a robust connection, and that will certainly be the biggest obstacle to this tech becoming mainstream. That and the fact that PlayStation Now is initially only launching in a closed US trial with no worldwide launch date even hinted at. But it's coming...
The future of gaming
This news might miff some who've has just splurged a wad of cash on a PS4 or Xbox One, but don't worry - this cloud-based future is a way off yet. But it means the audience for games in the near future will be far, far bigger. It means graphics in games will no longer be bottlenecked by years-old console components.It means more and better PlayStation games. Possibly even cheaper games as developers battle for your game-hours. The possibilities of this future really are endless and they're up for discussion right now. What's certain is that it's great news for gamers like you and me.
The games console is dead. Long live PlayStation.
Tweet me your opinions or comment below!
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Mid extra-life crisis: Pac-Man goes to space for his birthday
Happy birthday Pac-Man, you large, yellow, ghost-chomping hero. Originally released on 22 May 1980, the game is 35 today, and publisher Bandai Namco is making sure we all know about it.
For starters there's a new update to the iOS app that brings with it multi-player functionality, a variety of new mazes and some in-game pro-tips to help you boost those high scores even further.
Pac-Man's creators have also decided to launch a 3D-printed model of Pac-Man into space via helium balloon. The stunt is a tie-in with the character's upcoming appearance in Sony's Pixels movie.
Stat attack
We've also been supplied with some stats about Pac-Man to mark the momentous occasion. 90% of Brits say they would instantly recognise Pac-Man, a sign of the game's enduring popularity.We assume the other 10% would mistake him for "partially eaten yellow pie".
Also turning 35 this year are Kim Kardashian West, Ryan Gosling, Channing Tatum and Kelly Brook. Dare we say Pac-Man is looking the best of the bunch as he heads towards 40?
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Is Microsoft about to buy BlackBerry?
Rumours are once again swirling that BlackBerry is being targeted for acquisition by major players in the technology industry.
According to a report by DigiTimes the recent success of BlackBerry, which has seen it return to profitability in the fourth quarter of 2014, has got some big names interested in acquiring it.
Some of the companies quoted by industry sources include Xiaomi Technology, Lenovo and Huawei. Outside of China, Microsoft is also reportedly interested, apparently commissioning investment companies to evaluate the possibility of taking over BlackBerry.
Berry picking
Although Microsoft's acquisition of Nokia hasn't exactly paid dividends for the Redmond company, it is apparently interested in BlackBerry to help strengthen its mobile technology division, as well as get hold of some possibly lucrative patents.As for the Chinese-based manufacturers, they might have trouble getting through regulatory agencies in the US and Europe.
Nothing concrete has been confirmed, so take this news with a hefty dose of salt. We've contacted both Microsoft and BlackBerry for comment.
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Review: Updated: HP ProLiant MicroServer Gen8 review
Introduction
The long-time baby of HP's ProLiant server family has finally been given a Gen8 makeover, with a smart new look and all-new internals to bring it up to current standards.Intel rather than AMD silicon becomes the order of the day here, with a choice of processor accompanied by up to 16GB of ECC-protected RAM, on-board RAID, a couple of Gigabit network ports and USB 3.0 support. It even gets an integrated HP Lights Out (iLO) management controller, further enhancing the appeal of this popular SME platform.
- Update 22/5/2015: Until the end of the month, you can buy that Gen8 server for £120 after cashback (or £180 sans), less than half its suggested retail price and by far the cheapest new server in the country (although you still need a hard disk drive and an OS). Since its release almost a year ago, there has been a raft of firmware updates with the latest being in April 2015. Well worth a quick update if you own one.
More than skin deep
Previous MicroServers were basic affairs that were clearly built to a price to appeal to enthusiasts as well as small business buyers. The new Gen8 model, however, is a much more substantial product with a great deal of attention to detail and the kind of quality feel corporate buyers look for.Some things, of course, haven't changed with the same cube format as before and a lift-off casing for ease of access secured by two thumbscrews.
The motherboard nestles in the base of the unit with the storage above, but the memory slots are easily accessible and the whole motherboard can be pulled out from the back if needed. More than that, HP has added clear labelling showing how to manage this and other hardware maintenance tasks - just as on bigger ProLiants.
Routine access to the storage is via a hinged front door, available in red, blue, black or silver, which can be locked from within the chassis to prevent tampering, plus space for a low-profile DVD drive in the top.
A single power supply with integrated fan is built in with another larger fan at the rear to keep the processor and storage cool. Unfortunately the end result is little too noisy for an open plan office - a cupboard or separate room would be better.
Features
As with previous models the new ProLiant MicroServers have just the one processor socket with three dual-core configurations to choose from, all now based on Intel chips.Ours was the so-called "Entry" model which meant we got a 2.3GHz Celeron G1610T (2MB cache, 35W TDP), supported by 2GB DDR3 memory. This we found selling online for around £300 (around US$510/AU$542) ex VAT while for £355 (around US$604/AU$643) you can get a "Base" model which replaces the Celeron with a Pentium G2020T (2.5GHz, 3MB cache, 35W TDP) at the same time doubling up on the RAM to 4GB.
Lastly, there's a Xeon-powered model with an E3-12202Lv2 processor (2.3GHz, 3MB, 17W TDP) plus 8GB of memory which we found advertised for £480 (around US$815, or AU$867) ex VAT.
Error correcting memory is specified across the board with just two DIMM slots available, just one of which will be populated on the standard models. The maximum you can configure is 16GB which is more than adequate for general file sharing but a little limiting if you've virtual servers in mind; something HP clearly anticipates as it provides internal USB and SD Card to enable the server to boot an embedded hypervisor from a flash memory device.
Alternatively, some buyers have ditched the slimline DVD drive and managed to fit an SSD boot disk into the space at the top of the server instead.
Storage options
Talking of storage, there are four slots to take 3.5in SATA drives cabled to an on-board HP Smart Array controller (a B120i). Disks aren't included in the price, however, and the B120i controller only supports RAID 0 striping or RAID 1/10 mirroring which means plugging another card into the single PCIe slot to get RAID 5. Easy to do, but the cost plus the lack of hot-swap support could rule it out for a lot of buyers.
As well as two front-mounted USB 2.0 ports there are two more at the back for a keyboard and mouse plus two USB 3.0 ports to either expand the storage or provide for fast backup. Two Gigabit Ethernet ports are also located just above and, for neatness, an optional fanless 8-port switch with port aggregation facilities (the HP PS1810-8G available for around £90 - around US$153, or AU$163 - ex VAT) which can be stacked underneath or on top of the new server.
Lastly, there's HP's integrated Lights Out remote management controller (iLO4) with its own dedicated networking interface on the back panel. Previously only available via on an add-in card, this now comes as standard, enabling the MicroServer to be monitored and managed over the LAN using an intuitive browser-based interface.
It's not something you use all the time, but it's great to have there on the MicroServer, making it just like the big boys of the Gen8 ProLiant family.
Verdict
We liked
The Gen8 makeover has turned the ugly MicroServer duckling into a fully-fledged ProLiant swan with a well-designed and superbly constructed chassis that inspires confidence from the word go.Add in the dual-core Intel processor, Gigabit networking and embedded hypervisor option and you have a competent server that can be put to all manner of uses from simple file and print sharing to email, web and even database hosting if wanted. It also makes a good platform for developers to test out their code.
We particularly like the remote management tools. Previously only available as an optional add-in, these are immediately accessible via a browser and incredibly easy to use, enabling you to both monitor server status and activity and manage the configuration. You will, however, need to upgrade the software license to get remote console and virtual media support.
We disliked
There wasn't a great deal we didn't like about the Gen8 MicroServer. The server has to be powered off to swap disks and only two of the bays are able to run at the full 6Gbps speed of the latest SATA drives, but neither is a major issue in the SME market.If using Windows, you do need to factor in the cost of an operating system, but that doesn't necessarily apply to Linux which can be used instead, Support for more memory would be nice, too, and we would have liked a quieter fan, but that's about it as far as the gripes are concerned.
Final verdict
Virtually unrecognisable compared to previous models, the Gen8 ProLiant MicroServer is a serious and very capable small business server in a compact yet reassuringly well-engineered format.All the hallmarks of the ProLiant Gen 8 brand are there, including support for Xeon processors, dual Gigabit networking and embedded hypervisor plus integrated Lights Out remote management as standard.
All in all, a very complete product with optional matching network switch, needing little more to finish it off.
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Huge 8K panels shipping from China this year
Thirty-three million. That's the approximate number of pixels Chinese display manufacturer BOE is jamming into its latest panels.
That's right, 8K screens are starting to do the rounds this year.
According to reports by Digitimes BOE recently showed off its 98-inch and 110-inch 8K panels and is looking to supply them to the Japanese market this year.
The new screens are rocking Advanced Super Dimension Shift (ADSDS) panel technology, which sounds like some serious quantum physics kinda extra-dimensional voodoo, but is actually another liquid crystal tech allowing the wee molecules to be rotated in a more efficient way.
The advantages of this technology is it's capable of dealing with incredibly high resolutions (lucky as we're talking about 7680x4320 here…) with low levels of power consumption. Another bonus of ADSDS - and why it's part of these big screens - is that it has a seriously wide viewing angle of 178º.
OLED on the other hand is still sat at a slightly more limited 160º viewing angle.
These first panels aren't really aimed at the home user however - BOE is looking to supply the screens with apps for medical, finance and transportation uses. That said, Japan's broadcast service, NHK, is reportedly looking to start trial testing of 8K content on its network some time next year with a full launch in 2018.
NHK though is also going to be filming the Women's World Cup from Canada in 8K next month. Teaming up with FIFA it will be showing various matches at public screenings in Japan, the US and Canada via 300-inch screens.
No wonder LG is stepping up its high-tech OLED plans - showing off a 0.97mm thin bendy display - with increasing technological competition coming from China…
But BOE is by no means the only player in the 8K market, with LG itself outing Apple's plans to release an 8K iMac sometime this year and Sharp showing off 8K panels at CES in January.
Via Digitimes
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Facebook just tried to sabotage your weekend plans
So many people on Facebook tried to use the innocuous pre-Bank Holiday phrase "What's everyone doing this weekend?" that it tripped the network's spam filters.
For a time, trying to ask your friends what their weekend plans are on Facebook Messenger triggered a security alert, saying "Our security systems have detected that a lot of people are posting the same content, which could mean that it's spam". A status update on the site itself simply came up as "Action blocked". The good news is that Facebook says it's fixed the problem now.
But that's not going to stop me blaming Facebook when I"m sitting sad and alone in my house on Monday writing tech news for fun while everyone else gets drunk in the park without me.
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Pebble Time is coming to a wrist near you on May 27
If you backed the Pebble Time smartwatch on Kickstarter then ready your wrist, as you'll be able to slap on the wearable soon after May 27.
With the smartwatch now rolling off the production line, that's when the company will begin shipping the device - although not everyone will receive a unit from day one.
If you pledged enough to get a model, you should get a tracking number no later than the middle of June, letting you know that your Pebble Time is on its way.
With over 78,000 people backing the Pebble Time you might have to wait a week or so to get yours, but hopefully you won't have to be patient for too long.
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This robot therapist can tell if you're depressed
Researchers at the University of Southern California are testing the capabilities of an experimental robot therapist called Ellie - she can listen to your problems, help you to open up and spot tell-tale signs of depression.
Right now Ellie and her SimSensei software are being tested on US veterans, and the early feedback is positive. Soldiers report that they're able to open up more, primarily because they don't feel they're being judged.
"This is way better than talking to a person," said one participant in the study, NBC reports. "I don't really feel comfortable talking about personal stuff to other people."
Smile like you mean it
Ellie studies the facial expressions and voice patterns of the people she talks with to assess their well-being. For example, while depressed people will carry on smiling, their smiles are shorter and not as full.Right now, Ellie is only at the testing stage. With funding from the US government, the software and hardware (which includes an Xbox 360 Kinect) could eventually be used to spot soldiers in the field who are close to breaking point.
"Ultimately, the program can give people a sense of safety," said study lead Gale Lucas. "A human therapist can encourage a sense of safety and make people feel anonymous, but they probably can never make someone feel as anonymous as they do talking to computer."
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Updated: Pebble Time release date, news and features
Release date, price and specs
Update: The Pebble Time will be shipping out to backers of its Kickstarter fundraising campaign from May 27.This watch has everything the Pebble Time has - timeline interface, voice input, color screen - but is "refined, made from premium materials, and designed for busy professionals who need to accomplish more during their day" according to Pebble. It comes with a silver, black or gold finish.
You'll be able to back the campaign for $250 (about £163/AU$320) until March 27, with the regular retail price set at $299 (about £195/AU$383). Anyone who's already backed the original Pebble Time can switch to a Steel one.
- Is the Pebble Time better than the Apple Watch? Find out in our versus!
The original Pebble wasn't even really a "smartwatch" when it debuted but it revolutionized wearables and set the standard for future smartwatches to come.
The Pebble Steel further cemented the company's standing as a legit smartwatch competitor by creating a sleeker model, but it didn't fully impress with usage.
Now, with Pebble Time, it seems like the public cries were heard, and most issues with the previous watches have been ironed out.
We've been lucky enough to get our hands on the newest wearable during MWC 2015 in Barcelona, Spain.
We're still working on a full review so in the meantime, here's everything we know about the Pebble Time.
Cut to the chase
What is it? A cross-platform smartwatch that plays nice with your iPhone and Android phones
When is it out? Starts shipping to Kickstarter backers May 27
What will it cost? Starts at $199 (£149, AU$199)
What is it? A cross-platform smartwatch that plays nice with your iPhone and Android phones
When is it out? Starts shipping to Kickstarter backers May 27
What will it cost? Starts at $199 (£149, AU$199)
Release date and price
The Pebble Time will start shipping on May 27 to Kickstarter backers, which puts it a month behind the Apple Watch release date. So far it's unclear when Time will show up on retailer doorsteps but expect it to soon afterwards.Backers will get a tracking number letting them know when they can expect delivery of their brand new Pebble Time watch. Shipments should be no later than the middle of June.
Pricing starts at $199 (£149, AU$199) which is the same as the Pebble Steel. However while the Kickstarter is still running you can grab the Time for $179 (about £115, AU$227).
It's far cheaper than the $250 (£200, AU$330) Moto 360 and the LG G Watch R, which costs $270 (£200, about AU$400). The iWatch will be the priciest wearable of the bunch, and starts at $349 (likely north of £223, AU$403).
Specs and battery life
The full array of specs haven't been released but a recent Reddit AMA revealed a few gems.The Pebble Time will have 64KB of RAM on board and an ARM Cortex M4 CPU running at 100Mhz, an upgrade from the original Pebble's M3. The additional processing power is essential in supporting a new microphone feature.
Full specs will be released later on alongside the Pebble Time SDK.
Four sensors built are built into the smartwatch, including a 3 axis accelerometer, 3D compass, ambient light sensor and the aforementioned microphone.
Pebbles are known for outstanding battery life and the Time is no exception. Like the previously used e-ink displays, the new color e-paper screen helps reduce power consumption, allowing the battery to last for seven days before the next recharge.
The e-paper interface also utilizes a color palette that's limited to 64 colors, yet it looks like it will be far easier to read than the usual smartwatch displays. The company also kept the physical buttons opposed to incorporating touchscreen capabilities.
Design
Bluetooth is of course included in the Time package with range supposedly better than the other Pebbles, reaching up to 50 meters or more.It's been noted the Time is similar in design to the Steel but even better. At just 9.5mm, it's 20% thinner than the original Pebble.
Similar to the Samsung Gear S, the scratch-resistant Gorilla Glass watch body will be curved, though it will be much smaller and fit more comfortably on the wrist. The bezel is made of stainless steel and will have three different watch case colors - black, red and white - with a black bezel for the former two colors and silver for the latter.
The Time will also come with a silicone watch band in the same colors above to match the watch case, but any 22mm strap can be swapped in thanks to a quick release pin.
Compatibility and features
Compatibility
Yet another reason why Pebbles have been so enticing is their cross-platform ability. The Pebble Time is compatible with iOS 8 and Android phones but unfortunately not Windows phones.
However, that still means you're not stuck with ndroid Wear smartwatches or the Apple Watch, which isn't even out yet.
Features
Pebble Time is fully compatible with all 6,500 existing Pebble apps and watch faces. The newest feature the Time will tout is the timeline interface.You can sync notifications, alerts, messages and apps in a chronological, scrollable timeline to pop up on your wrist - similar to Google Now on Android Wear.
If you disconnect from your watch, the timeline will still be on the Pebble Time. You'll also be able to store more than eight apps, though the number you can install will depend on the app's size.
Apps are cached in the watch so recently used ones will be readily available even if you're disconnected from you phone, though some apps may still require internet to work. Pebble CEO and founder Eric Migicovsky notes, "It just caches a smaller number of apps, but still way larger than you may reasonably need."
Like the other generation of Pebbles, the Pebble Time is water resistant. You can wear it in the shower, when it's raining and even swim with it on, but exact details on these capabilities haven't been released yet. It will probably match up with the previous 5ATM rating which allowed depths up to 50 meters (165 feet) without it frying.
Voice dictation through a microphone is another exciting new feature. You'll be able to take short voice notes and send voice replies through most Android apps like SMS, Hangouts, Gmail, Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp and hundreds more. iOS is a little trickier and so far only Gmail notifications work with voice dictation but more should be on the way. The Pebble devs have said they're still working out the kinks with Android and iOS,
Last but not least, Pebble Time features a "smart accessory port," which the company says will allow hardware developers to build "sensors and smart straps that connect directly to the watch" in the future.
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Uber brings self-driving taxis one step closer to reality
In a very short space of time, self-driving cars seem to have gone from far-off sci-fi concepts to actual vehicles driving around our highways and byways. Uber is the latest company to throw its hat into the ring.
The firm has recently opened an Advanced Technologies Centre at Carnegie Mellon University, so Pittsburgh residents can expect to see a lot more of these automobiles cruising around town in the near future.
Like Google's cars, Uber's research vehicles have a bank of scanners and cameras on top of the roof to spot obstacles, innocent bystanders and curves in the road. We don't know much about Uber's plans but thanks to the Pittsburgh Business Times we know that the future of self-driving taxis just moved a step closer.
Automatic for the people
"This vehicle is part of our early research efforts regarding mapping, safety and autonomy systems," Uber spokeswoman Trina Smith said in an email to the publication.The end goal is obvious: one day you'll be able to tap on your phone and a robot driver will come and take you to the airport or get you home after a heavy night out. With no need to make small talk it could be a win-win move for everyone (except current Uber drivers of course).
Uber has attracted criticism for apparently poaching staff working on robotics at Carnegie Mellon University, but the sharing economy outfit and CMU are describing it as a "partnership" instead.
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Fox announces all its new movies will be HDR friendly when they hit the home
Pinning its hopes on the next big generational leap in image quality, 20th Century Fox has announced it will be creating all its movies with high dynamic range (HDR) range support by the time they get into your home.
Combined with making sure all its films will be available in Ultra HD format the announcement of total HDR support is big news for the TV manufacturers.
We reckon HDR content is going to be one of the biggest drivers in getting people switching over to new ultra HD televisions like Samsung's 4K SUHD UE65JS9500.
The eight million pixels of a UHD TV are all well and good, but the extra visual fidelity offered by the HDR capabilities we've seen in the latest televisions makes us think that is going to be the tech with far more impact on our viewing experiences.
But we're still waiting for a final spec for the implementation of HDR, one of the reasons LG has held back on HDR support for its latest OLED TVs. Recent reports however have LG looking to provide a software update for its EG9600/EG960 OLED TVs to deliver HDR support for its flagship TVs.
Fox though is part of the UHD Alliance, a group of manufacturers and content creators looking to avoid hobbling the combined power of UHD and HDR with a format war.
The Blu-ray Disc Association has finalised its spec for the Ultra HD Blu-ray format, which will also come with HDR support, and the UHD Alliance is aiming to finalise its specifications to coincide with 4K Blu-rays rolling out at the end of the year.
Fox isn't just sitting on its laurels, waiting for it all to be finalised though, and is using a non-proprietary HDR spec to create masters of its latest movies, based on where the UHD Alliance is currently heading with its own designs.
The movie studio also isn't just remastering its new films though - it's making 4K HDR versions of already released titles like X-Men: Days of Future Past.
Via Hollywood Reporter
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