Daily Roundup: alleged Windows Phone 8.1 leak, ARM’s Cortex-A17 processor, and more!
You might say the day is never really done in consumer technology news. Your workday, however, hopefully draws to a close at some point. This is the Daily Roundup on Engadget, a quick peek back at the top headlines for the past 24 hours — all handpicked by the editors here at the site. Click on through the break, and enjoy.
Samsung Galaxy S5 teaser
Samsung’s next-generation Galaxy S5 handset is set to launch at this year’s Mobile World Congress. And though we have relatively few details on the device itself, the company’s event invitation hints at a couple of new privacy and fitness features. Click the link for details.
Windows Phone 8.1 leak
A Reddit user claims to have grabbed the above screenshot from a developer preview of Microsoft’s Windows Phone 8.1 SDK. Though we don’t see any hints of the rumored Action Center or Cortana virtual assistant, the image may provide new insight into Redmond’s unification of Windows Phone and Windows RT. Read on for more.
Google acquires NASA hangar
Google has many interesting irons in the fire (robots, barges, et cetera), but its latest endeavor is no less intriguing. One of the company’s subsidiaries, Planetary Ventures, took ownership of NASA’s “Hangar One” with plans to transform the enormous building into an educational facility. Follow the link for more information.
ARM announces new Cortex-A17 processor
ARM plans to bring even better speeds to the mid-range smartphone and tablet markets with its new Cortex-A17 processor. And while there’s no release date just yet, we can expect to see a huge push for the A17 come 2015. Click on through for details.
HTC’s next flagship phone spotted with on-screen buttons, familiar design cues
We hope you’re ready for a rather interesting month for smartphones. Judging from the teasers, announcements and leaks, nearly all the major mobile players have something big to show in Barcelona next week. What you’re looking at above is HTC’s own next big thing, a new flagship smartphone that’s doing the rumor rounds under the codename of M8. Looks familiar, right? However, there’s already some notable changes, including an increase to three Android buttons, which are all now part of the screen. Having said that, according to mob.hr’s leak, a bar with HTC branding means the screen will still takes up the same proportion of the phone’s surface. Thankfully, the M8 appears to be made of metal just like last year’s One, with the same micro-drilled holes for the speakers. According to this leak, expect a flip-top cover to go along with it too — presumably with peep-holes for both of those rear-facing cameras.
Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile, HTC
Source: Mob.hr
Pebble engineer explains why its Android app isn’t ready yet
iOS users have been enjoying the new Pebble app store for the past week, but the Android version of the app is still MIA. Sure, you can download the beta if you sign up to be a developer, but if you’d rather wait for the final product, it’s still in the works. What gives? Pebble engineer Keon Wong wrote a bit about the subject on the company’s official blog about the process involved. The Cliff’s Notes version is that there are two factors at play: one is how complex it can be to develop an Android app, and the other is a lack of resources.
Wong explains that the team has to make the app jive properly with several environments of the OS, such as Bluetooth, Javascript runtime, the internet, background processes, several versions of Android and hundreds of different devices with different specs. This isn’t unlike what many developers run into when writing apps for Google’s mobile OS, but Pebble’s complications with engineering run a couple layers deeper than most others because it’s an accessory that involves its very own app store.
Next comes the matter of available resources, which Wong explains is because Pebble has had a small team working on the Android app for a long time. “In order to ship a high quality, reliable Android experience that will work for many thousands of users across the myriad of devices and operating systems, we need engineers working on the Android app who are both fantastic engineers and great Android developers.” This is where existing devs come in handy — the more feedback Pebble receives, the better. The bad news is that the team doesn’t have an ETA on Android release as of yet; on the bright side, however, the company apparently needs a few extra hands to help out, if you’re on the hunt for a job.
Filed under: Cellphones, Wearables, Mobile, Google
Source: Pebble
iOS 8 ‘Healthbook’ App Depicted in New Mockups
Several concept images for the rumored “Healthbook” app that may be included with iOS 8 were today published on design site Behance. According to 9to5Mac, the site that shared the original Healthbook rumors, the app mockup “vaguely” resembles the actual app that Apple is working on and thus gives some hints at what such an app might look like.
According to sources, the mockups are “vaguely” the right idea. Of course, Apple is likely testing multiple different user-interfaces for this software, and since we are several months out from an official introduction, things can and likely will change (even drastically)…
Healthbook, which is a health-related app reportedly in iOS 8, is said to pull in health-related data from several sources, including Apple’s much-rumored sensor-laden iWatch and the iPhone itself. Healthbook may be able to manage and track weight loss and monitor and store fitness statistics like steps taken, calories burned, and miles walked.
Rumors suggest it can also monitor vital signs like blood pressure, hydration levels, and glucose levels, aggregating information to provide an overall picture of health. As pictured, the app is said to have a card-style design much like Passbook.
Along with commenting on the Healthbook mockups, 9to5Mac has reiterated some information on both the Healthbook app and the iWatch to refute a report from MobiHealthNews earlier this week that tempered some of the expectations surrounding Apple’s iWatch.
While MobiHealthNews cast doubt on the iWatch’s ability to sense glucose and hydration levels, 9to5Mac argues the device may indeed have those abilities as the Healthbook app is able to read glucose-related data and track hydration. It will not, however, track stress or women’s health/pregnancy as previously reported.
While many aspects of the iWatch and the Healthbook app remain unknown, iWatch rumors do generally agree the device will include several important health-related sensors able to track elements like sleep and exercise. As 9to5Mac points out, Apple has some significant hurdles to overcome with both hardware design and regulatory bodies, so it continues to be unclear what the final device and its accompanying app might include.
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Twitter’s latest test channels Pinterest and Facebook in profile redesign
That mobile-esque redesign Twitter pushed out last month? Forget about it: the microblogging is already testing another skin for user profiles — and it looks really familiar. Select users are reporting that their Twitter profiles look now look like a cross between Google+, Pinterest and Facebook, complete with large header photos (up to 1500 x 1500 pixels), left-aligned profile images and flat content cards representing each tweet. The entire redesign is a jarring departure from the Twitter norm, but it’s that last element that proves to be the most disruptive: rather than piling up in the normal vertical fashion, the new card layout allows tweets to lay side by side, a fundamental change in how Twitter displays content. There’s no word yet when or if this profile will available to the majority of Twitter users, but be warned: change is upon us.
[Thanks, @Ben_Haizlip!]
Filed under: Internet, Facebook
Source: Mashable
Must See HDTV for the week of February 11th: Winter Olympics, House of Cards
For the next couple of weeks it will be all-Winter Olympics, all the time, but what about TV that’s not curling, speed skating and some combination of skiing and shooting? Fans of Netflix’s House of Cards have had Valentine’s Day circled for quite a while now, since that’s when season two will make its streaming debut. Non-Olympic sports fans have NBA All-Star weekend and the beginning of Daytona 500 qualifying to look forward to, while games can check out World of Tanks on xbox 360 and Far Cry Classic on Xbox 360 and PS3. Check after the break for trailers plus our weekly listing of what to look out for in TV, Blu-ray and gaming.
Blu-ray, Streaming movies & Games
- The Jungle Book
- Ender’s Game
- Sherlock (S3)
- The Best Man Holiday
- The Counselor
- The Americans (S1)
- Chicago
- World of Tanks (Xbox 360)
- Far Cry Classic (PS3, Xbox 360)
- The Last of Us: Left Behind DLC (PS3)
Monday
- 2014 Olympic Winter Games, NBC, 8PM
- Almost Human, Fox, 8PM
- The Bachelor, ABC, 8PM
- Hart of Dixie (wonter finale), CW, 8PM
- Switched at Birth, ABC Family, 8PM
- Bitten, Syfy, 8PM
- Top Gear (season premiere), BBC America, 8:30PM
- Questioning Darwin, HBO, 9PM
- The Following, Fox, 9PM
- Being Human, Syfy, 9PM
- Beauty and the Beast, CW, 9PM
- The Fosters, ABC Family, 9PM
- Lost Girl, Syfy, 10PM
- The Devil’s Ride, Discovery, 10PM
- Archer, FX, 10PM
- Castle, ABC, 10PM
- Intelligence, CBS, 10PM
- Chozen, FX, 10:30PM
- Don’t Trust Andrew Mayne, A&E, 11 & 11:30PM
- Inside Comedy: Jonah Hill/Alan Arkin, Showtime, 11PM
Tuesday
- Dads (season finale), Fox, 8PM
- 2014 Winter Olympic Games, NBC, 8PM
- 138th Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show, USA, 8PM
- Pretty Little Liars, ABC Family, 8PM
- New Girl, Fox, 9PM
- The Goldbergs, ABC, 9PM
- The Biggest Loser (season finale), NBC, 9PM
- American Experience, PBS, 9PM
- Face Off, Syfy, 9PM
- Twisted (winter premiere), ABC Family, 9PM
- Brooklyn Nine-Nine, Fox, 9:30PM
- Trophy Wife, ABC, 9:30PM
- Justified, FX, 10PM
- Killer Women, ABC, 10PM
- Opposite Worlds, Syfy, 10PM
- Cougar Town, TBS, 10PM
- Kroll Show, Comedy Central, 10:30PM
- Are You The One?, MTV, 11PM
Wednesday
- 2014 Winter Olympic Games, NBC, 8PM
- American Idol, Fox, 8PM
- Melissa & Joey, ABC Family, 8PM
- Opposite Worlds, Syfy, 8PM
- WWE Main Event, ION, 8PM
- Baby Daddy, ABC Family, 8:30PM
- Super Fun Night, ABC, 9:30PM
- Workaholics, Comedy Central, 10PM
- Men at Work, TBS, 10PM
- Nashville, ABC, 10PM
- CSI, CBS, 10PM
- Fleming: The Man Who Would be Bond, BBC America, 10PM
- Broad City, Comedy Central, 10:30PM
Thursday
- 2014 Winter Olympic Games, NBC, 8PM
- Nets/Bulls, TNT, 8PM
- American Idol, Fox, 8PM
- The Taste, ABC, 8PM
- Rake, Fox, 9PM
- King of the Nerds, TBS, 10PM
- Thunder/Lakers, TNT, 10:30PM
- Jerks with Cameras, MTV, 10:30PM
Friday
- House of Cards, Netflix
- NBA All-Star Weekend Rising Stars Challenge, TNT, 9PM
- 2014 Olympic Winter Games, NBC, 8PM
- WWE SmackDown, Syfy, 8PM
- Cold Justice, TNT, 8PM
- Enlisted, Fox, 9PM
- Banshee, Cinemax, 10PM
- Helix, Syfy, 10PM
- APB with Troy Dunn, TNT, 11:30PM
Saturday
- 2014 Olympic Winter Games, NBC, 8PM
- NBA All-Star Saturday Night, TNT, 8:30PM
- Atlantis (season finale), BBC America, 9PM
Sunday
- Dayton 500 Pole Qualifying, Fox, 1PM
- 2014 Winter Olympic Games, NBC, 7PM
- 2014 NBA All-Star Game, TNT, 8PM
- The Walking Dead, AMC, 9PM
- True Detective, HBO, 9PM
- Downton Abbey, PBS, 9PM
- Shameless, Showtime, 9PM
- House of Lies, Showtime, 10PM
- Talking Dead, AMC, 10PM
- Girls, HBO, 10PM
- Looking, HBO, 10:30PM
- Episodes, Showtime, 10:30PM
- Comic Book Men, AMC, 11:59PM
Filed under: Home Entertainment, HD
Join the Engadget HD Podcast live on Ustream at 8:45PM ET
It’s Tuesday which means it’s time for the Engadget HD Podcast. We hope you’ll join us live when the Engadget HD podcast starts recording at 8:45PM. We knew HBO made money but who knew it was that kind of money? We’ll discuss that, as well as a few Xbox items and our thoughts on Sony getting out of the TV business. Oh, and other top HD news. If you’ll be joining us, take a peek at the topics after the break — then do everything else you’ll need to do in order to be ready to participate in the live chat.
Time Warner reveals how much money HBO makes, and why it’s not splitting from cable yet
Amazon Prime snags ‘Archer’ and five more Fox series, launches 10 free pilots
Hulu Plus adds new and classic CBS shows, boosts Kids offering with Fraggle Rock spinoff
You can now relive the Beatles’ US invasion on your Apple TV
Xbox One is getting a biographical show about Nas, of course
With Xbox, you can enjoy Bonnaroo from your couch
Xbox One’s first major update split in two, launching in February and March
Xbox One’s second big update focused on multiplayer ahead of Titanfall’s March arrival
Sony sells its VAIO PC business, is splitting TV arm into a separate company
LG cuts the price of its curved OLED TV to a vaguely reasonable $7,000
Comcast’s Xfinity On Demand now sells Warner Bros. movies and TV shows
Comcast is bringing its online Olympics coverage to Xfinity TV subscribers
Must See HDTV for the week of February 11th: Winter Olympics, House of Cards
Filed under: HD
Sony shows off its waterproof Walkman… by packaging it in a water bottle
If those ads showing swimmers rocking Sony’s new Walkman haven’t convinced you it’s really waterproof, then get this: you can buy one packaged inside a full bottle of water. “The Bottled Walkman” is currently being sold from vending machines across New Zealand in places like gyms, right beside neon-blue bottles of Gatorade. The idea behind the promotion is to get the device out of electronics stores and into the places target customers actually hang out. Of course, the shock value of being encased in liquid certainly makes the Walkman a bit more enticing than if it was sitting behind the front desk. The big question is, who wants to drink a bottle of water that’s had a Walkman sitting in it for days (or weeks) on end? Check out a video of the vending machine in action after the break.
Filed under: Peripherals, Wearables, Alt
Via: The Next Web
Source: Vending Times
Tip: Call mom (or your wife) quicker with Google Search
Do you ever have trouble finding numbers in your address book? Why not just ask Google Now to place the call for you?
If you’re not in the know, today Google dropped a little tip that can help you save time while keeping in touch with loved ones or help when you have your hands full.
Instead of desperately searching your contact list for that number, use the new functionality in the Google search app to pull up the contact information. While on the home screen (if you have a Nexus 5 or are running the Google Experience Launcher) or are in Google Now, simply say “Ok Google, call mom.” You can also send a text the same way such as by saying, “Ok Google, text mom” or “Ok Google, text Marissa.”
One last thing, if you don’t have mom or your wife setup in your phone, Google Now will help you with that as well so it works the next time.
The post Tip: Call mom (or your wife) quicker with Google Search appeared first on AndroidGuys.
Intel Pushing for Better Battery Life with a 40 Percent More Efficient GPU
Battery life on our phones and tablets are a pretty largely talked about topic. You see a ton of screenshots floating around forums, Twitter, G+ and others that show terrible life and outstanding life. Usually the outstanding life images are from a highly-modified device that has been rooted, flashed with a custom ROM and kernel. That isn’t for everyone though. Plenty of users just want a solid device out of the box that lasts 12 to 16 hours. Sure, there have been some devices that do that, the DROID RAZR MAXX comes to mind, so does the Lenovo Yoga 8. Intel has been making strides in the right direction with they Bay Trail and Haswell chips, but they aren’t stopping with just the processor when it comes to lowering power consumption.
Intel is now demonstrating a 22nm tri-gate GPU that they say is 40% more efficient and offers the same performance as the current GPU plus improves the performance when you need it. The GPU core is also designed to go into standby mode much quicker thus saving even more bits of juice.
“First, it is well known that the best way to reduce power is to reduce voltage, so Intel’s graphics cores are designed to take advantage of our 22nm tri-gate transistor technology which allows high-performance operation even as voltage is lowered. However even with these advanced transistors, some specialized circuits (such as memory arrays) inside the graphics core can still limit the minimum voltage (called Vmin) which can be used. Therefore this design demonstrates a new “selective boosting” technique which uses a slightly higher “boosted” voltage for key parts of Vmin-limiting memory arrays in the core. What does this accomplish? By dynamically boosting only small parts of the core, the rest of the core can go to even lower voltage – giving dramatic energy efficiency improvements.
There is a whole lot more tech behind it of course. Using techniques like adaptive clocking to reduce safety margin detecting and and keep droops out of the loop and various other things that I am extremely under qualified to even attempt to offer up.
At the end of the day, what is all means in a much more efficient GPU that can deliver the same, if not better, graphics to your devices screen. In short, making your battery last a whole lot longer. Hit up the link below to get the full story from Intel.
Source & Img: Intel Via Liliputing
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