Get instant temperatures with Robocat’s Thermodo
How many times have you looked at your Google Now or other weather related service to see the temperature only say it’s 80 degrees out when it felt like a scorching 100 degrees or more? Well Robocat’s Thermodo aims to warm up the thermometer playing field by giving users an instant temperature.
After opening the package, I found some pretty nice contents. There were two small brown sleeves as Theremodo comes in two flavors, the standard edition and the premium edition. The differences between the two are pure aesthetics. The regular edition of Thermodo is a nice black plastic version. The premium version is a nicely engraved metal version that looks beautiful. Functionality between the two are the same, but to be clear, for review purposes, we used the premium edition. Inside the packaging there was also a pretty cool Robocat sticker and an extension cable meant to give some distance between your device and the Thermodo to increase the accuracy due to internal heat given off from your device.
The accessory is easy enough to hook up to the phone. You either just plug it into the headphone port or plug it into the extension cable and then the headphone port. After installation all that needs to be done is to open up the app for Thermodo.
I will admit, upon launching the service initially, I was not impressed. The temperature was changing frequently. This however ended up being my fault as my Galaxy Note 2 was not supported. Please make sure that you check their supported devices before purchasing one as not all phones can work with Thermodo. Luckily, I have a Nexus 5 and it is a supported device, so I gave it all another round.
There are two basic ways you can run the thermometer as I mentioned earlier, so I’ll give a quick runthrough of both methods.
The first one is plugging the Thermodo directly into the Nexus 5. If you do this, it is recommended to go into the settings and turn on the option for it to compensate for the device heat. I did this and set it on warm. My first thoughts are that Thermodo did not seem accurate as the temperature was constantly changing. The temperature keeps going up and did not stop at all, but just kept increasing, even after about 5 minutes. The reason I think this is happening is because as my cell phone is turned on, the cell phone is slowing heating up, which is causing the Thermodo to turn up.
In comparison, when I hooked Thermodo into my Nexus 5 via the extension cable, the temperature was stable. It was showing a solid 82.2 degrees, fluxuating every now and again to an 82.1 or an 82.3 but pretty much in the same area. This seemed much more accurate for us and I would agree that it is probably around 82 degrees right now in my home, unfortunately.
Despite the shortcomings when Thermodo is connected directly to the smartphone, the device worked superbly when using the extension cable. Thermodo is a great tool for weather enthusiast or outdoorsmen who need to know the real temperature for various reasons. You can get the Thermodo for $29.99 via their website or Amazon.com. The Premium Thermodo is available for $44.98 also on their website or Amazon.com.
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Grab the Samsung Gear Fit for only $99
Hurry folks, Amazon are selling the Samsung Gear Fit for only $99. At half price of the normal $199 price tag, this is a great deal if you want to take advantage of Samsung’s fitness tracking platform.
The Gear Fit features a 1.8-inch curved Super AMOLED display, Bluetooth LE connectivity, a heart rate monitor, and is dust and water-resistant. A 210 mAh battery is also thrown in that will last three to four days per charge with typical usage or five days with low usage. The wearable device will track your steps and can show you your phone’s notifications when paired with the latest Galaxy phones.
If you pick one up , let us know what you think of it in the comments below.
Source: Amazon
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Download and try out the new (slightly laggy) Android L Calculator
The novelty of Android L has somewhat waned over the last week (probably due to Independence Day swinging by), but that doesn’t mean that people have stopped working on ways for other people to try parts of the new previewed operating system. We’ve seen the “Heaps Up” notifications ported to devices, as well as the Android L keyboard as a standalone app for all devices (rooted or not), and today we get to take a look at the Android L calculator thanks to XDA member, virjog. According to virjog, the calculator was converted from demo code on the Polymer Project site into an apk which you can download below:
It’s not a perfect port; the calculator seems to lag quite a bit (at least, it does on my Note 2 with Android 4.4.2) and the scientific functions seems to be broken or inoperable. That said, standard arithmetic seems to be working and it’s enough to get an idea of how the new Material Design aspects have been incorporated into Android L. If you download it and manage to get it working well on your device, let us know what device you tried it on and what version of Android you have.
What do you think of Material Design so far? Do you think this is a good direction for Android to be going in? Let us know what your thoughts are.
Source: XDA
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Is this Xperia Z3′s about screen?
About a week ago we shared alleged images of Sony Xperia Z3 and Z3 Compact smartphones. Now we have some software leaks when it comes to Sony’s future flagship phone.
Alleged about screen from Xperia Z3 has leaked (image below). Model mentioned on this screenshot is D6653 which should be the model number for Sony’s upcoming flagship device. We can also see that the device is supposedly going to sport a Snapdragon 801 chip which is in high demand lately and will run on Android 4.4.4 KitKat.
We’ll let you decide if you believe this to be true or not and if we get any more information we’ll make sure to share them. The device is expected to launch in September during IFA, so let’s wait and see what we get.
Source: XperiaBlog
Via: PhoneArena
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Qualcomm briefly takes down Android code for CyanogenMod, Sony and itself
The Android community just got a big (if brief) scare. In the space of a few days, Qualcomm has both made and retracted a Digital Millennium Copyright Act request that took down 116 code repositories (many of them Android-focused) that were allegedly using the chip maker’s confidential technology. As it turns out, quite a few of the targets were legitimate users running the company’s open source software. And you’ll definitely recognize some of the names — the move shut down code bases maintained by the CyanogenMod custom ROM team, Sony and even Qualcomm itself. Suffice it to say that the removal would have created a lot of headaches if you wanted to modify Android for the many, many devices with Snapdragon processors.
As for the cause? Qualcomm isn’t commenting on what led to the slip-up, but it tells Android Police that it will be taking a more cautious approach from now on. In addition to closely reviewing code, it will be “reaching out collaboratively” to find a peaceful solution to any disputes before the legal notices start flying. It won’t be shocking if some of the original request recipients still find themselves in hot water, but Android tinkerers can rest easy for at least a little while.
Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile, Sony
Via: Android Police
Source: Ausdroid
Verizon bound LG G3 Vista leaks
About a month ago we came across a report which said that Verizon will start selling LG G3 on July 17. Well, now we have some new info regarding Verizon and LG G3, at least in some form.
Let me explain, a new report came in containing an image of a phone which looks like an LG G3, but the leaker calls it LG G3 Vista. This image comes from a known leaker @evleaks and it resembles the G3, but there are some differences. The phone seems to lack a metallic look-alike finish on the back, this looks way different. That’s not the only odd thing when it comes to this leak though, the phone seems to lack dual LED flash on the back as well. Original LG G3 has it, this one on the other hand has only one flash on the back. Everything else seems to be in place though.
The question remains, is this going to be LG G3 under a new moniker with a different pattern on the back and with only one LED flash, or are they going to change the insides of the phone as well. Who knows, I guess we’re just going to have to wait for Verizon to release the thing and then we’ll see, if we don’t get more reports in the meantime that is.
Source: @evleaks
Via: TechnoBuffalo
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NASA gives the go-ahead to a rocket designed for deep space exploration
For the past few years, NASA’s been working on a powerful rocket called the Space Launch System meant for missions to the moon, Mars and other places far from our planet. While the rocket’s not quite ready to take Bruce Willis to an asteroid, it’s at least getting nearer to a launch pad — the agency has just finalized a $2.8 billion deal with Boeing to start building its core stage and developing its avionics system. The deal went through recently after the core stage passed its critical design review, where 11 experts inspected 3,000 of its artifacts. A core stage, by the way, is the middle part of a rocket that makes up most of its body: the one Boeing’s building for the SLS is a 200-foot tower that’ll store cryogenic liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen to fuel the engines.
Apparently, the last time a major NASA vehicle passed muster during one of these reviews was back in the 1970′s, and it was none other than the Saturn V, which carried many astronauts to the moon. The agency plans to earmark $6.8 billion of its funds from fiscal years 2014 through 2018 for the project and hopes to conjure up a rocket that’s ready for an unmanned mission by 2017. If that happens, the SLS could start ferrying astronauts to big space rocks or even the red planet as soon as 2021.
[Image credit: NASA/MSFC]
Filed under: Science
Via: LA Times
Source: NASA
Terra Battle to be Hironobu Sakaguchi’s new free-to-play Mistwalker RPG
Hironobu Sakaguchi is known for many things, but he is most commonly referred to as the father of the Final Fantasy game series. Having left those games behind, Sakaguchi started his own studio called Mistwalker and has been successfully putting out fresh new RPGs, like Lost Odyssey, ever since. Mistwalker’s next RPG game, Terra Battle, was just announced at the Japan Expo in Paris and is already currently in development on iOS and Android. There’s not a whole lot of detail about the actual game, but it’s due out in September 2014, so there won’t be long to wait before we see it in the flesh.
Probably most interestingly is the fact Terra Battle will be free-to-play on the mobile platforms; we’re not quite sure how that translates into a RPG game, but I guess we’ll see soon enough. Mistwalker has since released the above image which shows us a rather large snippet of the art design that will be in Terra Battle; so far, so good. For fans of the Final Fantasy series, you may interested to hear that music composer, Nobuo Uematsu, has been mentioned as being involved with Terra Battle‘s musical score.
Having played Lost Odyssey, I can’t wait to see what Sakaguchi and Mistwalker has in store for the mobile platform. Are you excited for Terra Battle?
Source: Famitsu, Destructoid via Pocketgamer, Hardcore Gamer
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Google makes sure its founders will survive a Terminator assault
The Connor family may be doing a great job preventing Skynet from becoming self-aware and declaring war on humanity, but Google apparently isn’t taking any chances. The internet giant has quietly uploaded a “killer-robots.txt” Easter egg file that tells Terminators to avoid hunting down the company’s co-founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin. There’s more to this joke text than stopping murderous automatons from the movies, of course. It’s really there to mark the 20th anniversary of robots.txt, the document you put on a site to exclude pages from Google’s search crawler. However, it does make us wonder why Google didn’t see fit to save people like Andy Rubin or Sundar Pichai — surely it would expect those behind Android to get some mercy from androids.
Filed under: Robots, Internet, Google
Via: Search Engine Land, The Verge
Source: Google
‘Hunger Marketing’ strikes again: 50,000 Xiaomi MiPad tablets sold in under four Minutes
Just last week, we reported on a story where Chinese manufacturer, Xiaomi, managed to sell 10,000 of its Xiaomi Redmi Note smartphones in just on second, further perpetuating the legend of ‘Hunger Marketing’ that Xiaomi has become so good at. As a further affirmation of this marketing strategy, Xiaomi has done it again this week by offering 50,000 of its new Xiaomi MiPad tablets which sold out in the slightly slower, but still amazing, time of just under four minutes. The 16GB variant of the MiPad costs 1499 Yuan ($240 USD) and the 64GB version is 1699 Yuan ($270 USD), but if you’re thinking this is just ‘another cheap tablet’, you would be wrong.
Xiaomi CEO, Lei Jun, said earlier this week that they are ready to compete with Apple, and the MiPad is their answer to the iPad Mini. A 7.9-inch device with a resolution of 2048×1536 and is powered by the new NVIDIA K1 processor married with 2GB RAM. The rear camera is a 8MP shooter and the front camera is 5MP, and everything is powered by a 6,700mAh battery. The Xiaomi MiPad is probably one of the most cutting edge Android tablets out right now, but unfortunately Xiaomi has not mentioned any plans of bringing this device outside of its own region; here’s to hoping they change their minds.
What do you think of Xiaomi’s ‘Hunger Marketing’ tactics? And what is your opinion of the Xiaomi MiPad tablets? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.
Source: Xiaomi (MIUI) via Phone Arena
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