Three’s smartphone app for calling and texting over WiFi now available
Three and EE jostled for attention last month when they announced, on the same day, their customers would soon be able to make calls and send texts over WiFi connections. While EE is working on a fancy system the user will be all but oblivious to, Three’s following O2′s lead with an app that does the necessary handover work. Slightly ahead of schedule, Three’s inTouch app has now launched for Android and iOS devices — just in time to take advantage of the carrier’s newest customer perk: free Tube WiFi. As you’d expect, calls made and messages sent over WiFi are deducted from your normal monthly allowances or pay-as-you-go credit. Unfortunately, inTouch won’t work in countries not covered by Three’s Feel at Home free roaming service, but it’s something the network is looking into.
Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile
Source: inTouch (Android), (iOS)
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Sony rejected EA Access for the PS4 because it’s not worth the money
EA revealed its new Access subscription service for the Xbox One yesterday, which lets you play a bunch of EA titles, take advantage of discounts and get upcoming games early in exchange for a small monthly (or yearly) fee. While it might’ve looked like a platform-exclusive partnership with Microsoft, Game Informer has learned that Sony actively rejected EA Access for the PlayStation 4. “We evaluated the EA Access subscription offering and decided that it does not bring the kind of value PlayStation customers have come to expect,” Sony said, adding that the success of PS Plus “shows that gamers are looking for memberships that offer a multitude of services, across various devices, for one low price.” And, just in case we hadn’t got the message, Sony’s statement concluded: “We don’t think asking our fans to pay an additional $5 a month for this EA-specific program represents good value to the PlayStation gamer.”
It appears, then, that Sony would rather not support a service of questionable value than leave that decision up to PS4 owners. As we said yesterday, Access doesn’t seem particularly overpriced, especially if you’re a fan of EA’s sports game franchises — you can always drop $5/£4 for a month, grab a discount code, try out the new FIFA early, and revisit an old title to while away a weekend without any long-term commitment. But perhaps Sony would rather those gamers get acquainted with the PS Now rental model instead.
Via: The Verge
Source: Game Informer
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Is Snapchat really worth $10 billion?
While competitors are busy cloning Snapchat in an attempt to replicate its success, Evan Spiegel and co. have continued to forge their own path. The company is already experimenting with new features in an attempt to generate revenue, but it’s also apparently talking to some big hitters to ensure it can keep growing until those profits come. According to Bloomberg, Snapchat is currently in talks over a new round of funding with investors, which include Yahoo-backed Alibaba, that if confirmed could value the company at an incredible $10 billion. It’s a significant figure, not only because it puts it on par with both Dropbox and Airbnb, but it’s around three times the amount Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook is rumored to have offered to acquire the company last year. Not bad for a service that’s known mostly for evaporating text and photo messages. Snapchat is understandably keeping quiet about its latest round of talks, and the figures could well change before its latest round of funding closes. Regardless of what happens, it appears Snapchat’s decision to hold out and grow the service was the right one.
Filed under: Cellphones, Internet, Software, Mobile
Source: Bloomberg
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Movidius wants to change the way your smartphone sees the world
Despite the promise of Google’s Movidius-equipped Project Tango, there are still no depth-sensing, SLR-stomping smartphones on the market. But Movidius thinks that could change soon, thanks to its brand new chip: the Myriad 2 vision processor unit (VPU). “The Myriad 2 is going to provide more than 20x the power efficiency of the Myriad 1, and enable camera features that were not possible before in mobile devices,” CEO Remi El-Ouazzane tells me. If you’ll recall, Tango‘s original tech brought faster focus, improved depth of field, near-optical zooming and higher light sensitivity to smartphone cameras (and now, tablets). It also let researchers scan a room in 3D to provide interior navigation, among other cool tricks.
However, processing a Teraflop of image data a per second burned a lot of power with the project’s original Myriad 1 chip. The Myriad 2 consumes 500mW of power while processing up 2 Teraflops per second of data — a twentyfold gain in processing efficiency. (For reference, the Snapdragon 805 reportedly uses 3-4 watts.) With 12 “lanes” or cores, it also supports 6 HD cameras at once and can process 600-megapixels per second. With significantly more horsepower and much less battery draw, that means the new VPU could be installed in most smartphones, not just purpose-built devices like the Tango smartphone or tablet. Movidius says that the Myriad 2 could function as a standalone processor in certain devices, or act as a co-processor to a mobile CPU.
As far as Google’s Project Tango goes, there’s no word yet if it will switch from the Myriad 1 to the new chip. But Google has already announced a partnership with LG for a consumer Tango device next year, and will likely want the improved technology. Though El-Ouazzane wouldn’t confirm the new processor for Tango, he pointed out that Movidius had a “very strong relationship with the Project Tango team.”
Depth sensors, lenses and a vision chip will improve picture taking without making smartphones huge, but the benefits don’t stop there. Wearable and panorama cameras like the Centr camera (another Movidius partner) are other potential product categories. The Myriad 2 excels in stitching 360 degree images from multiple lenses, and the extra battery efficiency would be particularly useful in small wearable devices.
Consumer versions of Tango-like devices would also open up a lot of far-out applications. On top of the scary realistic Matterport scanner (above), Movidius also pointed to the zSpace 3D display, a device that uses high speed gesture recognition to let you manipulate virtual objects in 3D (below). Your smartphone could also become as adept as a Kinect at motion and gesture sensing, opening up richer and deeper gaming and virtual reality applications. El-Ouazzane brought up Amazon’s Fire Phone with Firefly as another example of the type of consumer-leaning object recognition apps we could see with the Myriad 2 (though he added that Movidius is not working with Amazon). To enable such apps, the company created a new SDK that makes it much easier for developers to access the Myriad 2′s bag of tricks.
For now, it’s just a hunk of silicon until devices start to arrive. But El-Ouazzane is confident with the Myriad 2 and how it will change smartphone cameras and vision processing. “A lot of money was invested to get to this point. It’s going to be a dramatic departure from where we are today.” But we’ve heard that before: Nokia’s camera-centric phones didn’t set the world on fire, 3D camera phones never flew, and the multi-sensored Fire phone remains a huge question mark. But of course we’d all like to take much better photos and even scan our cat — smartphone tech is getting a bit dull.
Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile, Google
Source: Movidius
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FreedomPop’s free data and voice are now available on tablets
Many people can’t really justify buying a cellular-equipped tablet — why pay for more data when your phone probably does the trick? FreedomPop is undoubtedly aware of that thriftiness, as it just started offering its namesake free service on tablets. Whether you buy one of the carrier’s pre-supplied tablets or bring your own, you’ll get the same gratis 500MB of LTE data, 500 messages and 200 voice minutes as a phone customer. That may not make sense at first, but FreedomPop reckons that it’s important for apps that ask for a phone number. It’s much easier to hail an Uber car when you can supply some digits, for example. It could also serve as a backup if your phone’s battery dies, or if you’re nearing your limits on a capped phone plan.
The catch, besides the relatively low 500MB data ceiling, is the device selection. FreedomPop is selling only the aging Galaxy Tab 3 7.0 ($199) and original iPad mini ($319), and any tablet of your own will have to play nicely with the Sprint network that FreedomPop uses for LTE. You’re getting more free data than T-Mobile offers, though, and the phone functionality should be icing on the cake.
Filed under: Tablets, Wireless, Mobile, Sprint
Source: FreedomPop
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HealthTap Prime lets you video call a Doctor whatever the hour
Unless you’re rich, run a hospital or have medical professionals in the family, it’s not likely that you have instant access to a doctor whenever you need. That’s why HealthTap is joining the growing field of telemedicine apps that, for a monthly fee, will let you video chat with specialists as and when you require. HealthTap Prime will cost you $100 per month for the first person, with each additional person in the family requiring a $10 monthly surcharge. There doesn’t appear to be any limits on how many times you can contact a doctor with the service, but if you didn’t stop calling to ask if something looked infected, then expect to land on some sort of blacklist.
Filed under: Internet
Source: HealthTap
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Get in the loop with All Events in City [App of the Day]
There’s always that weekend where you’re free but there’s just nothing going on that you know of. Well there’s a handy little app out there called All Events in City that automatically finds your city, or you can manually choose one, and it will give you a list of events and all sorts of things… Read more »
The post Get in the loop with All Events in City [App of the Day] appeared first on AndroidGuys.
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Flickr’s new licensing program opens up opportunities for the chosen few
It looks like Flickr’s trying to keep pace not only with Instagram, but also with photography community 500px. The Yahoo-owned image hosting site has just launched a new program, which gives some users the opportunity to earn money from their snapshots through commercial licensing with publications and photo agencies. In addition, Flickr promises to give the the program’s members ample exposure by featuring their work prominently on Yahoo’s portals and other properties like Tumblr. The service’s new marketplace page also names The New York Times, Reuters, Gizmodo, Monocle, BBC and Getty Images as its program partners.
According to TechCrunch, though, this has caused friction between Flickr and Getty, as the latter used to curate Flickr content itself, and this program turns curation into an in-house task. Flickr didn’t say how much the licensing fees are and what percentage users will end up taking home on its blog post, but it did mention that the company will invite select users through Flickr Mail. If you don’t get an invite but would still like to give it a spin, you can submit your profile for consideration by signing up for updates on the marketplace. When that’s done, you can carry on crossing those fingers in hopes that Flickr finds you worthy.
Via: TechCrunch
Source: Flickr
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Experimental display lets glasses wearers ditch the specs
Engadgeteers spend a lot of their day staring at a screen, so it’s no surprise that nearly all of us are blind without glasses or contact lenses. But wouldn’t it be great if we could give our eyes a break and just stare at the screen without the aid of corrective lenses? That’s the idea behind an experimental display that automatically adjusts itself to compensate for your lack of ocular prowess, enabling you to sit back and relax without eyewear. It works by placing a light-filtering screen in front of a regular LCD display that breaks down the picture in such a way that, when it reaches your eye, the light rays are reconstructed as a sharp image. The prototype and lots more details about the method will be shown off at SIGGRAPH next month, after which, its creators, a team from Berkeley, MIT and Microsoft, plan to develop a version that’ll work in the home and, further down the line, with more than one person at a time.
Filed under: Displays, Microsoft
Source: MIT Technology Review
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Would you want a flexible, leather phone? A concept by Jonas Daehnert
Yes, we know; the concept is for a Windows Phone. However, with the advent of flexible smartphones almost upon us, it’s increasingly interesting to visit concepts that we may well be seeing more of in the future. The leather phone concept pictured above was created by designer Jonas Daehnert and incorporates the flexible display technology that is so wonderfully elusive and marries it with a stitched leather casing that looks a lot more genuine than the faux leather that Samsung has become so fond of.
Many of us wouldn’t mind a case made of leather, so why not make the whole phone out of the stuff? A leather phone would obviously have its benefits, including being durable and just as flexible as the display it encases. It’s definitely an intriguing concept, particularly when you think of what these more flexible devices will be made from, especially when it will need to provide at least the same level of flexibility as the display itself. Leather sure doesn’t seem like a bad choice.
Would you consider a phone that is made of leather? What other material would you suggest for a flexible display phone? Let us know your opinion in the comments.
Source: Phone Designer via Concept Phones
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