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– via The Verge
Samsung’s earnings this past quarter have been exactly as downbeat as the company predicted: operating profit is down 60 percent and income from sales is now 20 percent smaller than a year ago. In other words, Samsung’s spending more money to generate smaller revenues. This has all been down to Samsung’s most lucrative and important mobile devices business, which has been struggling to adapt to a new competitive environment. Addressing the need for radical change, Senior VP Kim Hyun-joon from Samsung’s mobile division has today expressed the company’s intention to “fundamentally reform [its] product portfolio.” Seeking greater cost efficiency, Samsung will look to standardize components used across devices and will continue to compete “for each price tier.”
Sony recently announced plans to also reorganize its mobile efforts, though its focus appears to be on more premium, high-end devices whereas Samsung looks set to maintain a wide portfolio while taking a different approach to how it structures it. Kim admits that Samsung’s “high-end smartphone sales result was somewhat weak” in the past quarter and the company’s earnings report describes the impact of the new Galaxy Note 4 as only “marginal.” There’s plenty of work ahead for Samsung, but if the company lives up to the promise made today, 2015 will be a fundamentally different year to the repetitively iterative products the company has been serving up in recent times.
– via Tech Crunch
What if you could shoot those cool 360-degree, swivel-around photos you see on ecommerce sites or in The Matrix with just your smartphone? Then you’d be using the 3DAround camera app that launches next month from Dacuda, which gave TechCrunch an early peek. Simply hit record, revolve your camera phone or tablet around an object, and 3DAround stitches together all the photos into a 3D image the viewer can spin at will.
Dacuda is famous for itsPocketScan app that lets you wave your camera over a document to get a digital image of it without a bulky scanner. Now Dacuda’s 25-person team and 5 years of experience are combining to make your phone a 3D scanner that always gets the perfect angle…because it gets every angle. For starters, it’s going to add some 360-spice to a ubiquitous but often boring type of photograph.
“It’s a really good time for this kind of tech because Apple just opened up the camera APIs” Dacuda founder and CTO Dr. Alexander Ilic tells me. “We need pretty much low-level access to controlling exposure time, focus, and more.” That’s just what Apple allowed with iOS 8.
Illic says the inspiration for the app came from watching food blogger friends take dozens of photos of plates of grub from different angles and struggle to decide which was best. He thought “Why can’t you just go around the whole thing, so you don’t have to worry about the perfect shot with a single angle.” Originally he figured that would require a camera with expensive 3D sensors, but in fact, newer iPhones are capable if given the right software. That’s where Dacuda comes in.
Spun out of top Swiss engineering school ETH Zurich by students from the university and MIT, Dacuda’s expertise is in image stitching. It’s backed by Wellington Partners, Swiss bank Schwyzer Kantonalbank, and Austrian entrepreneur Hans-Peter Metzler.
The 3DAround app extracts depth and structure information from a success of rapid-fire photos to create the 360-degree views. You’ll be able to interactively view the swivel-able photo through the 3DAround app or WebGL-equipped browsers like Chrome, and share some version of the images to Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterst
The app will launch for free next month on iOS 8 devices for the iPhone 5 on up. While some phones like the HTC EVO now have stereoscopic double cameras that can take slightly “3D” photos, 3DAround looks like the real deal. We’ll have hands-on coverage once the app launches, so check back to see us spinning around some delicious food.
– via Techo Crunch
Lenovo has completed the $2.91 billion acquisition of Motorola from Google today. The deal, which was announced in January, comes just three years after Google itself shelled out $12.5 billion to buy the phone-maker.
Now a Lenovo subsidiary, Motorola will continue to be based out of Chicago with offices worldwide. Motorola Mobility President Rick Osterloh will retain in his position following the deal, with Liu Jun, Lenovo’s executive vice president and president of its Mobile Business Group, becoming chairman of the Motorola board.
Writing on Motorola’s company blog, Osterloh made a point of explaining that it will be business as usual despite the change in ownership:
“The iconic Motorola brand will continue, as will the Moto and DROID franchises that have propelled our growth over the past year. We will continue to focus on pure Android and fast upgrades, and remain committed to developing technology to solve real consumer problems. And we will continue to develop mobile devices that bring people unprecedented choice, value and quality.”
Yang Yuanqing, Chairman and CEO of Lenovo, spoke of the companies’ bold ambition:
“Today we achieved a historic milestone for Lenovo and for Motorola – and together we are ready to compete, grow and win in the global smartphone market. By building a strong number three and a credible challenger to the top two in smartphones, we will give the market something it has needed: choice, competition and a new spark of innovation.”
Microsoft’s $7.2 billion acquisition of Nokia closed earlier this year and was almost immediately followed by a downscaling program that will ultimately see 18,000 redundancies before the end of this year. Motorola shed thousands of jobs under Google’s parentage — 4,000 in August 2012, over 1,000 in October 2012, and 1,200 in March 2013 — and the fact that Osterloh says Motorola will maintain its global offices suggests that there are no immediate job cuts.
IDC’s latest report ranked Lenovo fourth on smartphone shipments in Q3 2014, with fellow Chinese company Xiaomi ranked higher than it (third) for the first time. In addition to buying Motorola, Lenovo has more plans up its sleeve after it revealed this month that it will launch a Xiaomi-like smartphone business for the Chinese market in 2015
– via The Verge
It’s all touch all the time.
Microsoft has been experimenting with projectors for years, but HP is bringing a PC to life today complete with a built-in projector and multi-touch capacitive touch mat. Sprout is HP’s latest PC design, and it ditches the mouse and keyboard in favor of a system that is built purely for touch interactions. There’s a traditional 23-inch touchscreen display, but at the base of Sprout is an interactive touch mat that you use to control projected objects and applications.
The projector itself hangs over the top of the all-in-one like a desk lamp and it’s equipped with a 4-camera system thanks to Intel’s RealSense 3D camera, a 14.6-megapixel high-resolution camera, a HP DLP projector, and an LED desk lamp. The system will let people scan and manipulate 2D and 3D objects directly into the PC, and you can even use a stylus to draw on the touch mat and move scanned objects around. You can type onto the mat with a software keyboard projected on your fingers within touch-optimized apps, and the majority of interactivity starts with the mat. HP has created a number of apps for Sprout, and it appears the system supports gestures and the ability to manipulate multiple layers within apps. Behind the scenes it’s all powered by Windows, 1TB of storage, and an Intel i7 processor, so it’s a regular powerful PC.
Sprout adapts its projections on the touch mat based on the app from anything like manipulating photography to playing on projected piano keys. HP invited a number of creatives on stage today during its device announcement, showcasing different ways to use the rather unique PC. It’s clear Sprout is aimed directly at the creative industry, just weeks after Microsoft and Adobe teamed up to make Photoshop a lot more touch friendly. HP has worked closely with Microsoft, 3M, Intel, and Texas Instrument for various components of the system, and the PC maker has obviously invested a great amount of time in Sprout. HP is launching its Sprout PC on November 9th for $1,899.99, and the system will be demonstrated at select Best Buy and Microsoft Stores this weekend.
– via The Verge
Google’s approach for rolling out the latest version of Android, Lollipop, is a little different. There are the usual things we see every year — a new Nexus phone and a new Nexus tablet — but instead of a big event, the company is posting details in blog posts and on the main Android site. So if you’re tracking the rollout closely, you probably have a sense of what’s new and what’s cool in the OS. If you’re not, though, getting a sense of what Lollipop is actually like and what it actually does isn’t easy.
Luckily, we got a chance to sit down with some Google execs last week to get a walkthrough of the coolest features. We won’t know everything until we actually have a chance to use the final version, but there are some clever additions we saw last week. Here are some of our favorites.
Tap and Go: Android has never been particularly good at transferring your settings and apps from an old phone to a new one. It’s always been a crap shoot as to whether all your apps would actually be downloaded from the Play store, to say nothing of your home screen and wallpaper. That’s partially Google’s fault, but it’s also a difficult problem to solve because of the diversity of hardware and software in the Android ecosystem. “Tap and Go” is a small step towards resolving that. If you have two Lollipop phones, you can pair them with NFC and the old phone will then use Bluetooth to send over all the details of what your phone should have installed over to the new phone.
Ok Google: Several of the enhancements on Lollipop were inspired by Motorola. The first is the ability to say “Ok Google” even if your phone is in standby mode. Your phone will wake and then you can use voice to search, send texts, and more. It requires compatible hardware, though, and so far we only know for sure that the Nexus 6 and Nexus 9 support it.
Double tap to wake: Speaking of waking up your Android device, you can just double tap the screen of the Nexus 9 tablet to wake it up. Like the advanced “Ok Google” command, it requires compatible hardware. We also hear it works on the Nexus 6.
NEXUS GETS SOME OF THE BEST FEATURES FROM THE MOTO X
Ambient Display: Another feature that’s made it over from the Moto X is the idea of displaying bits of information on your screen as it comes in without turning the whole thing on. On the Nexus 6, it’s much more advanced — basically you get black and white versions of what would normally be on the lock screen anyway. It requires an OLED screen to work, so for now it seems like this is going to be a Nexus 6-specific feature.
Face unlock: Android’s face unlock feature has never really worked all that well. It’s kind of magical that it can recognize your face, but it’s often slow and usually needs really good lighting conditions to work. In Lollipop, Google has tweaked it so that it starts running silently as soon as you turn on your screen. Since you can interact with notifications on the lock screen now (see below), the idea is that you’d power it on, mess with a few notifications, and by the time you’re done Face Unlock has already kicked in and unlocked the phone.
Lock screen notifications: As with the iPhone, Android Lollipop will put notifications right on your lock screen. But on Android, the notifications on your screen are basically the same as those that appear in the drop-down notification shade. Why does that matter? Because on Android, you get a lot of control built-in to those notifications. You can archive email, tap reply, expand notifications to see more information, and so on. Now, you can do it directly on your lock screen. As a small bonus, if you have apps with sensitive information that you want to see notifications from but don’t want to display their contents, you can set them to be “redacted” when they show up on the lock screen.
Priority Mode: But the best notification enhancement in Lollipop is something Google calls “Priority Mode.” It’s a little bit like “Do Not Disturb” on iOS but it seems much smarter here. You can easily choose which apps can still disturb you when in Priority Mode (the rest won’t bug you). Even better, when you set it, Android gives you the option to set a duration before it goes back into normal notifications. That way, you won’t forget to switch it off. There’s also a total silence mode that will turn everything off — including alarms.
Guest Mode: Android has allowed multiple user accounts on tablets for awhile, but in Lollipop there’s a new option called Guest Mode that works on both phones and tablets. The idea is that it creates a clean, safe, and disposable workspace that anybody can use. Your guest can even quickly log in to their account to check email. You or your guest can get rid of the data inside the guest account at any time.
THE NEXUS 9 IS EASY TO HAND TO YOUR KIDS
Pin Apps: Sometimes Guest Mode is too much work, and all you really want to do is launch a game and hand your phone to your kid — but not let them leave that game to mess with your email. Lollipop has a new feature (enabled in settings) that adds a pin to each card in the mulititasking view. When you tap it, that app won’t let you leave without entering a passcode. It’s similar to the “Guided Access” feature in iOS, but a little easier to use.
Improved Quick Settings: Quick Settings have been reorganized again, and they’re a bit easier to figure out now. Plus, the brightness slider you’ll find there is a little bit smarter: by default it responds correctly to ambient light at any brightness level. Speaking of sliders, the volume slider that pops up when you hit the volume key is also smarter: it has the buttons for the various Priority Notification modes right there.
Overview: The multitasking view now has a new name, Overview, and a new Material Design look. Each app is a big card, stacked up, and you can scroll through many more recent apps than you used to be able to. But the best feature is that any app can create multiple “cards.” So, for example, when you compose a new email your inbox is still in the overview, so you can switch back and forth between tasks in a single app.
Material Design: The best and most obvious feature in Lollipop comes last. It’s a complete redesign that we already got a good look at this past summer, but there are new designs pretty much everywhere. One example: the contact card. Android adds a dynamically-created color overlay to each photo based on an accent color from the photo itself. Red lipstick, red overlay. Orange sweater, orange overlay. It’s a nice touch.
This article was updated to reflect that double tap to wake reportedly works just fine on the Nexus 6. We regret the original error.
– via The Verge
Q: What new in iPad Mini 3?
A: A touch ID ….. sorry but it’s the same as old one
For the past few years, most of the technology world has ruled by a cold, hard truth: to get the best thing, you pretty much had to get the biggest thing. Every Android phone was bigger than the last, and the smaller ones were always disappointing. Apple, though, staunchly resisted this trend. The iPhone is smaller than competing phones — even the new iPhone 6 is smaller than your average Android flagship — but still very much top of the line. And last year, the iPad mini 2 (née iPad mini with retina display) was “every inch an iPad,” in Apple’s own words. And it was true: the iPad mini 2 was spec-for-spec identical to the larger Air. With Apple’s products, you could get the smaller thing without compromising.
This year? Not so much. The difference between the iPad Air 2 and the iPad mini 3 is stark. The Air is thinner and faster than last year’s model, and has a new kind of display technology that looks much better. But other than Touch ID, which uses your fingerprint to unlock the iPad, the iPad mini 3 is identical to its predecessor.
It’s a disappointment, and not because Apple released an average tablet instead of the miniaturized super tablet I’d been hoping for. No, it’s a disappointment because for the past year there was one “best” tablet, the iPad, and you could pick the smaller one if you wanted. This year bigger, it seems, is better again.
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It’s tempting to just point you to last year’s review of the iPad mini 2 and call it a day. And in fact you should read it: everything we said a year ago still applies. But times change even though the iPad mini’s hardware hasn’t — and the times have actually been surprisingly kind to this device.
Apple has released a tablet with last year’s camera, last year’s screen, last year’s processor, last year’s everything. Yet it still feels competitive with the other small tablets on the market. Whether you praise Apple for making something so great a year ago or damn the entire industry for taking a flyer on this form factor is up to you. The correct answer is probably to just do both.
THIS YEAR, BIGGER IS BETTER
The iPad mini 3 doesn’t feel staid or old, if only because the competition in the small tablet game still hasn’t caught up. The metal and glass design works as well this time around as it has since the original iPad mini, evoking a sense of quality that’s missing from the array of plastic and faux leather Android tablets it’s competing with.
Touch ID is the only new hardware feature (if you don’t count the gold color option). If you’ve been using an iPhone with Touch ID, you’ll no longer feel that moment of cognitive dissonance when resting your finger on the home button doesn’t unlock the iPad. I feel like Apple deserves more credit than it’s gotten for Touch ID — it’s remarkable how fast and how consistently it works, especially compared to fingerprint readers on other phones and tablets. If Apple Pay manages to take off, you’ll also use it to quickly make purchases in apps — but you won’t be able to use it to pay at a physical store.
Our review of the iPad mini with Retina display (now called the iPad mini 2) from last year. Not much has changed.
I can still nitpick about the hardware, but the nits I’m picking aren’t new. Because of its 4:3 screen, I still find the iPad mini a touch wide for one-handed use. It can feel just a little too heavy during extended reading sessions. Positioning the stereo speakers right next to each other on one end of the tablet still feels like an odd choice — especially when you find yourself muffling them with your palm.
Really, most of the complaints I have are only in comparison to the iPad Air or to some ideal smaller tablet I wish Apple had made instead of just rehashing last year’s model. Last year’s A7 processor still handles most apps and video fine (though truly intensive games will drop frames). The Retina screen is plainly great, even if it isn’t fully laminated and anti-glare like what you’ll find on the Air 2. That iPad has easily the most immediate, you’re-touching-the-icons screen an Apple device has ever had, and it’s viewable outdoors. Those things matter just as much as pixel density, and the iPad mini 3 doesn’t quite measure up.
A BEAUTIFUL SCREEN, JUST DON’T COMPARE IT TO THE IPAD AIR 2
And even if the screen isn’t quite as good as what you’ll find on Samsung’s Galaxy Tab S, what’s on the screen is much better. iOS still has more and better apps than Android, over 675,000 of them to be exact. More than the quantity is the quality: the same app on an iPad is generally better, faster, and better-supported than its Android equivalent. It may not be the best iPad, but it’s still an iPad.
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Or maybe it’s not, which is to say maybe we need to think of the iPad mini as a different kind of tablet, one more akin to the iPod Touch than the iPad Air. Certainly the cheapest version (the original iPad mini without a retina display) fits into that category: a $250 knock-around device you’re happy to hand (or hand-me-down) to your kid. Because it’s pocketable, the only thing that the iPod does better is music — and music isn’t really as central to our devices as it used to be.
But at $399, it’s hard to justify that kind of use for the iPad mini 3. But it’s better than anything Android has to offer at this size — with apologies to the Nexus 9, which while impressive is a bit too big for people looking for a small tablet.
WOULD YOU REALLY SPEND $100 JUST FOR TOUCH ID?
So it’s not so much that I’m disappointed in the iPad mini 3, it’s more that I’m disappointed with the state of the small tablet in general — there’s simply no top-tier device if you want the smaller size. This iPad mini might be the best option, but “best option” for 7-inch tablets turns out to be faint praise.
The iPad mini 3 is still great, even if it’s not a great deal.TheiPad mini 2, on the other hand, is both — it’s nearly exactly the same device minus a huge chunk of the price tag. Really, right now is a stupendously good time to buy an iPad mini 2.
Photography by Sean O’Kane.
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More times than not, the Verge score is based on the average of the subscores below. However, since this is a non-weighted average, we reserve the right to tweak the overall score if we feel it doesn’t reflect our overall assessment and price of the product. Read more about how we test and rate products.
– via The Verge
No official announcement & Lenovo pops a wearable quietly.
Everyone wants a piece of the fitness tracker pie. Lenovo has quietly revealed its entry into the market, a Fitbit Flex-like device called the “Lenovo Smartband SW-B100.” It appears that the product has accidentally hit the web — there’s no official announcement from the company. Instead, a small product page has just popped up on the Chinese computer giant’s website. The page is somewhat transparent about the company’s goals for the device: “the Lenovo Smartband is for young people who take care of their personal health and are interested in new tech trend products.”
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From the product listing, the Lenovo Smartband offers a similar set of features as other fitness wearables. It will track your steps, distance traveled, calories burned, and heart rate. It can also keep tabs on your sleep habits. Unfortunately, this is not an Android Wear device. It appears the only notifications it show from your phone are phone calls, text messages, and calendar appointments. And the screen’s tiny enough that you likely won’t be able to see the text message itself on the device. There is, however, a neat little feature that will automatically unlock your PC when you bring the device near it.
There’s no word on price or availability — Lenovo didn’t immediately return a request for comment — but going off of Lenovo’s history, it’s very possible that this fitness tracker may never come to the US. Where ever it does go on sale, we know it’ll sync with Android and iOS apps, and it’ll come in both orange and blue. We’ll let you know when we find out more.
– via The Verge
Don’t Burn your hand, the LEDs project flames on pans
Since the dawn of man, we’ve associated flames with heat. But since induction stovetops don’t emit any flames, it seems like they’re just waiting to roast your hand. That’s why Samsung’s latest induction range has “Virtual Flame Technology.” A set of blue LEDs around the edge of each burner projects “flames” onto the side of your pots and pans. In addition to letting you know that the burner’s on, the “flames” actually increase in size to give you an idea of the relative heat. And, of course, since it’s an induction range, the burners only get hot if you actually have a metal pan on them. You will have to pay for the privilege, however: the range is part of Samsung’s pricey Chef’s Collection, and starts at $3,699.
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