Xiaomi all set to launch next-generation Mi TV on March 24, FHD and 4K models planned
Xiaomi is getting ready to introduce new products in its Mi TV lineup next week.
All eyes on you: LG’s AKA series is about to turn heads overseas
The pillars of the AKA community.
Last year, LG released its AKA product line exclusively in its home country of South Korea. The quartet of devices are seemingly simple on paper, with mid-range specs across the board. Their unique point however stems from the unique “identities” each one carries. There is Wooky in white, who speaks slang, Soul in dark blue who loves beer and music, Eggy in yellow who is a romantic at heart, and finally Yo-Yo in pink whose crash-diets cause her weight to… fluctuate. This intricate couple of pairs will be releasing in Hong Kong, China, Singapore, Taiwan, and Turkey in the coming months. Pricing has not been set, but we expect something similar to the $460 they retailed for in Korea.
Each phone comes with a sleeve-type cover that activates the persona, which can be seen via the eyes that appear on the screen while sleeping. In addition to the standard affair of contents bundled with the product, each comes with a “Art Toy” mini figurine of the character the phone embodies as well as stickers you can use to decorate it with.
Specs are as follows:
- CPU: 1.2GHz Quad-Core
- Display: 5.0-inch (720X1080) HD IPS
- Memory: 16GB / 1.5GB RAM / microSD slot
- Camera: Rear 8.0MP Laser Auto Focus / Front 2.1MP
- Battery: 2,610 mAh (removable)
- Operating System: Android 4.4 KitKat
- Size: 138.7 x 71.9 x 9.9mm
- Weight: 135.5g (without font slide cover) / 157g (with front slide cover)
- Network: 4G LTE
- Connectivity: Wi-Fi / Bluetooth 4.0 / NFC / A-GPS / USB 2.0
In its press release, LG has indicated the four phones are being enhanced beyond their original concept by the inclusion of an “emotional UX element”. Additional unique features for the AKA series include the ability to customize the character’s eyes with various pairs of glasses and eyebrows. The aforementioned “Art Toy” figure can be used with the included Snapshoot app to digitize the character into selfies for potential photobombs of an otherworldly nature.
Check out the cool features and optional accessories on the bottom!
To expand on the potential marketing prowess, LG has ordered an animated AKA YouTube video series beginning today (March 20th) called Rotary Park.
While the AKA series caught our interests when first announced in November for its unique take on smartphones, it was largely assumed they would remain exclusive to Korea. While it’s unclear as to if the international roll-out is a product of the series’ individual success or simply LG’s, we will definitely be watching their reception closely. Will you?
SEOUL, Mar. 19, 2015 — LG Electronics (LG) will begin the first overseas rollout of its fun and customizable AKA smartphone starting in Hong Kong next week followed by China, Taiwan, Singapore and Turkey with additional markets to be announced as they are confirmed. Originally designed for the domestic market, AKA was first introduced to Korean customers at the end of 2014, where it has seen healthy sales and positive customer feedback for its originality and sense of humor.
AKA is available in four different personas, from Eggy in yellow who falls frequently in love, the ever-so-impulsiveWooky in white, the soft-hearted and music-loving Soul in navy and Yo-Yo in pink who is always on a diet. The characters’ personalities are an integral part of each phone as they are woven into wallpapers, widgets and ringtones. In addition to each AKA’s interactive, animated eyes, owners can customize their phones with stickers (provided), markers or paint, for a true DIY experience. This customer-centric thinking helped AKA win an iF Design Award for its unconventional approach to smartphone design.
With a global audience in mind, LG tweaked the AKA lineup by adding an emotional UX element. Some of the additional features include customizable glasses and eyebrows for each pair of eyes. Another unique UX feature is the included Art Toy figurine, which can be digitized and integrated into the phone’s user experience. Snapping a photo of the accompanying figurine with AKA’s Snapshoot tool creates an animated 3D version of the figure that appears alongside selfies. Other camera features come straight from LG’s premium handsets and include Laser Auto Focus, Touch & Shoot and Gesture Shot.
To celebrate AKA’s overseas rollout, LG is collaborating with TUBA Entertainment, the creators of the popular Larvaanimated series, to produce a new series called Rotary Park. The first episode of Rotary Park will debut on March 20 on YouTube (www.youtube.com/user/TheRotarypark).
“AKA is the first smartphone that gives owners a blank canvas to express their own personalities via a customized user experience,” said Juno Cho, president and CEO of LG Electronics Mobile Communications Company. “AKA is about being creative and never losing sight of the things that make us young and interesting. This is a whole new direction in smartphone UX and we’re excited about where it may take us.”
Key Specifications:
￭ Chipset: 1.2GHz Quad-Core
￭ Display: 5.0-inch HD IPS
￭ Memory: 16GB / 1.5GB RAM / microSD slot
￭ Camera: Rear 8.0MP Laser Auto Focus / Front 2.1MP
￭ Battery: 2,610mAh (removable)
￭ Operating System: Android 4.4 KitKat
￭ Size: 138.7 x 71.9 x 9.9mm
￭ Weight: 135.5g (without font slide cover) / 157g (with front slide cover)
￭ Network: 4G LTE
￭ Connectivity: Wi-Fi / Bluetooth 4.0 / NFC / A-GPS / USB 2.0
￭ Color: White / Yellow / Navy / Pink
￭ Other: Art Toy / Stickers
New Interview Offers ‘Inside Look’ at Potential Origin of ResearchKit
ResearchKit, Apple’s new open-source medical framework, was one of the unexpected announcements during the company’s Spring Forward media event. Dr. Stephen Friend, one of the key members of the ResearchKit team, talked about the potential genesis of the project in a new interview with Fusion (via iMore).
In September 2013, nearly one and a half years before ResearchKit was unveiled, Friend was at Stanford’s MedX conference giving a talk about the future of medical research. He explained how he envisioned an open source system where users could upload their medical data to the cloud for researchers to use in trials.
Sitting in the audience that day was Michael O’Reilly, M.D., the former Chief Medical Officer and EVP of Medical Affairs at Masimo Corporation, a pulse oximetry company. O’Reilly had just left Masimo to join Apple, and wanted to build something that could “implement Friend’s vision of a patient-centered, medical research utopia and radically change the way clinical studies are done.”
After Friend’s talk, O’Reilly approached the doctor, and, in typical tight-lipped Apple fashion, said: “I can’t tell you where I work, and I can’t tell you what I do, but I need to talk to you,” Friend recalls. Friend was intrigued, and agreed to meet for coffee.
Shortly after his meeting with O’Reilly, Friend started making frequent trips to Apple’s HQ in Cupertino, meeting with scientists and engineers. He also organized a DARPA-funded workshop exploring how biosensors could potentially help doctors and scientists understand Parkinson’s Disease.
Euan Ashley, a Stanford University investigator behind the myHeart app, told Fusion that Apple largely acted as a “facilitator”, building the ResearchKit framework in the background as the researchers designed and built the first ResearchKit apps by themselves. However, Apple did go meet with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration three months before the Spring Forward event to talk about medical research and smooth over any potential regulatory concerns.
Friend noted that even though his open-source ideals didn’t totally mesh with Apple’s view on open source at the time, he wanted to work with them rather than competitors like Google and Microsoft because Apple is a hardware company that doesn’t need to sell data, and that he believed Apple when the company said it wouldn’t look at the data being used in ResearchKit.
However, both Apple and Friend decided not to make the true origin of ResearchKit clear to Fusion. It’s unknown whether the idea was Friend’s or if Apple was developing it before Friend joined the team.
Thus far, ResearchKit has been a success for Apple, receiving thousands of sign-ups less than 24 hours after it was unveiled. In that time frame, 11,000 people signed up for one of the ResearchKit apps, myHeart Counts.
The rest of the interview also provides a good look at ResearchKit and can be read at Fusion’s website.
Samsung to launch Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 edge in India on March 23
Samsung has sent out invites to the press for a media event in New Delhi, where the vendor is expected to launch its latest flagships.
A bookmarlet mends Netflix’s annoying horizontal scrolling on the web
Netflix on the web can be a tiresome experience, because the homepage’s horizontal carousels show only a smattering of titles at once. To see more, you have to patiently hover your cursor over the arrow buttons on either side, which slide in new movies and TV shows at a glacial pace. Offering a perhaps temporary fix, developer Renan Cakirerk has created a free bookmarklet that automatically expands all of the titles in each listed category. Once it’s activated, you can scroll vertically at your own pace and quickly find something to watch. There’s a good chance Netflix will take notice and shut it down, but hopefully in the process it’ll recognize the error of its ways and offer a similar option officially.
Here’s how Netflix looks on the web normally:
Here’s how it looks with ‘God Mode’ turned on:
Filed under: Home Entertainment
Via: TechCrunch
Source: Netflix ‘God Mode’
HTC One M9 overheating issues supposedly fixed with software update
Remember when those thermal images leaked online that showed HTC was building a portable oven out of the new M9? Good news! It looks like a software update has fixed the fire hazard ahead of its April 10th launch date.
A post on reddit claims that HTC is pushing out an update to pre-release devices that brings thermal improvements and camera improvements. Thermal improvements aren’t something you see on changelogs very often, but in this case, it was a much needed fix. The device reportedly runs about 10 degrees cooler and never breaks 40 degrees Celsius, even when plugged in, but obviously results may vary a bit when it’s out in the real world.
Good to see HTC nipped this in the bud. Let’s just hope they didn’t do it by gimping the performance of the Snapdragon 810 to get those results.
source: reddit
Come comment on this article: HTC One M9 overheating issues supposedly fixed with software update
T-Mobile Nexus 6 updating to Android 5.1 build LMY47M
T-Mobile today announced that it’s started rolling out the Android 5.1 Lollipop to its Nexus 6.
However, perhaps more interesting than the rollout itself is that the build that T-Mobile lists for its Nexus 6 rollout, LMY47M, appears to be newer than (or at least different from) the 5.1 builds that we’ve seen so far.
Pebble pledges $1 million to development of smartstraps for Pebble Time
With the announcement of the Pebble Time, Pebble also briefly touched on what they’re calling “smartstraps.” These smart watch bands are basically just a platform so developers can create smartstraps that do different things and add a little functionality to the base Pebble Time.
Today, the company has opened a million dollar fund towards the development of these smartstraps and they’re showing off a few different early ideas from what others have already been working on. Pebble will be taking money from that fund to help back Kickstarter projects for smartstraps, so if you have an idea for one, get to work on a prototype.
The first concept is from Xadow, and it creates a completely modular watch band that you can swap out for things like NFC readers, barometers, and heart rate monitors, which should definitely add some length to the lifespan of the Pebble Time.
The second prototype is from Spark, and it might be a solution to a problem that doesn’t quite exist. The Spark Electron is a module that takes a SIM card so your Pebble can connect to mobile networks. On the bright side, you’d be able to use your Pebble without being tethered to Bluetooth’s relatively short range, but I’m not sure many people would pay their carriers extra per month for that convenience.
Regardless, these are the kinds of things Pebble hopes developers do for their smartstrap platform. With this new fund, it’s pretty likely we’ll see more of these by the end of the year.
source: Pebble
Come comment on this article: Pebble pledges $1 million to development of smartstraps for Pebble Time
This factory robot is small, precise and human-friendly
Picture a typical factory robot in your head and you’ll probably see a cold, unsympathetic arm performing relatively simple tasks. You may want to shake that image soon, though. Rethink Robotics has taken the wraps off of Sawyer, a smaller sibling to its earlier Baxter model that’s built for handling high-precision tasks that most machines can’t handle, such as testing circuit boards. The one-armed robot is designed to be as people-friendly as its predecessor, with a touchscreen for a face and software that lets you teach it by guiding it with your hands. The big improvements are in the arm itself. Sawyer is using new actuators and joints that make it smaller, faster and more precise, which should help with assembling or verifying lots of tiny parts.
You probably won’t be buying Sawyer yourself, since it’ll cost a hefty $29,000 when it ships in the summer. However, it could be a big deal in the electronics world, where manufacturers have been looking for ways to replace more overworked factory employees with automatons. Sawyer can not only handle duties that were once difficult for robots, but adapt to new challenges — the combination of learn-by-doing code and force-sensing joints helps it deal with the imperfect conditions of assembly lines. There’s a degree of irony to introducing a human-aware robot designed to replace humans, but that’s fine if it means that more people can take jobs they’d actually like.
Filed under: Robots
Source: Rethink Robotics
Cloud Raiders for Windows Phone gets war dragons and more in latest update
Cloud Raiders, the highly popular fantasy free-to-play action-strategy game from Game Insight, got updated today for Windows Phone with a bunch of new content and improvements. That includes the addition of dragons to the game.
AIVAnet 