The HTC Re camera: An AC editor roundtable
Here’s what we think about HTC’s RE camera now that we’ve used it a bit.
When HTC announced the RE camera in the fall of 2014, plenty of people were curious. HTC is branching out and building “lifestyle” products (their words, not mine) and started with an accessory that was odd-looking, yet intriguing. It didn’t look like a handheld camera (or even a GoPro), but it had a 16-megapixel wide-angle lens and a promise of being able to take great pictures. We all had to try it.
Fast forward a few months, now that we all have had a while to give the RE camera a real-life workout, and it’s time we gave our long-term impression about the handheld camera that looks like an asthma inhaler.
Strap in and have a read.
AppCampus graduate Future Factory lands in the Windows Phone Store, free for a limited time
Future Factory is a new Windows Phone action adventure game that has you dealing with a factory filled with crazy robots. The Windows Phone game is filled with enemies to fight, dangerous traps to avoid and plenty of weapons to upgrade and buy.
Future Factory is an AppCampus alumnus and in just tinkering with the game for a short time, it makes a very nice first impression and to celebrate the game’s release the developers are offering it free for a limited time.
Google I/O 2015 invites start rolling out
Google has started sending out invites to its I/O 2015 developer conference this evening.
If you happened to throw your hat into the registration pool last week you may want to check your inbox.
Specs vs Experience | The Friday Debate Podcast 009
The flagship reviews and some technical difficulties kept the Friday Debate Podcast from releasing on time – but to be fair, we recorded this on Friday so it still makes sense! Jokes aside, we have Lanh filling in for Andrew this week as we talk about the age-old battle between specifications and user experience. With phones like the Moto E coming along with all of these high profile releases from Samsung and HTC, we talk about whether the general usage experience really needs high end specifications. We also ponder how raw specs drive perception of a phone. And finally, we touch upon the Uh Oh program that was just recently announced by HTC in which users can get a brand new phone when their current One M9 fails or gets damaged.
It’s a pretty packed episode, so make sure you tune into this episode #9 of the FDP!
The Friday Debate Podcast by Android Authority – discussing topics in Android every week.
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Moto E Review
HTC Uh-Oh
Samsung Galaxy S6 Review
HTC One M9 Review
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Joshua Vergara
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Jonathan Feist
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Recorded on March 20, 2015 – Hosted and Produced by Joshua Vergara
Cyanogen CEO: We’re putting a bullet through Google’s head
You may have heard Cyanogen’s name around the web today, after the company announced it had received $80 million in funding from Twitter Ventures, Qualcomm, Telefónica Ventures, Rupert Murdoch and several other big-name investors. In hopes to scale up in a big way, Cyanogen says it will use the funding to “hire talent and accelerate the development of its open OS platform.” In recent months, Cyanogen’s outspoken CEO Kirt McMaster has voiced his dreams to create a “Google-less Android”, which he hopes to one day bring to the masses.
It’s no secret that McMaster has a problem with Google and its alleged “tyrannical” control over Android. In fact, in a recent interview with Forbes, the CEO goes as far as saying “We’re putting a bullet through Google’s head.” That comment isn’t to be taken lightly, especially since the company obviously has big investors backing them up. No matter the feasibility of Cyanogen’s plans, that’s a bold statement.
Cyanogen hopes to create revenue-sharing deals with developers to integrate application services deep into the Cyanogen OS.
So what’s the first step in creating a Google-less Android? We’ve heard a lot of talk from McMaster in the last few months regarding his big plans, but up until now, we haven’t heard many details about how he actually plans to achieve his goals. In the same interview with Forbes, some details were outed regarding the company’s future hardware partners. Blu, the Miami-based hardware manufacturer, is said to create the first phone running the Google-less Cyanogen OS, that will be released later this year. Blu’s CEO explains that the details have yet to be ironed out, but he hopes that the new Cyanogen phone will use the Amazon Appstore, the Opera web browser, Dropbox and Microsoft’s OneDrive for cloud storage, Nokia Here for maps and Spotify for music consumption. It will also feature Bing for web searches and Microsoft’s Cortana for a voice assistant. “When these other apps are deeply integrated into the phone, most of the time they perform better than the Google apps”, says Blu CEO Samuel Ohev-Zion.
Cyanogen hopes to create revenue-sharing deals with developers to integrate application services deep into the Cyanogen OS. Vikram Natarajan, Senior VP of Global Partnerships and Distribution at Cyanogen, says the deals will take a number of different forms, from distribution to in-app purchase agreements to customized services for specific countries. He even says that in some cases, Cyanogen will share revenue from those deals with OEMs that are struggling to narrow margins.
It’s very possible that this rumored Blu device won’t ever come into fruition.
Between developing a hardware partnership, locking in $80 million worth of funding, and boldly speaking up against the Google mothership, one would think Cyanogen’s path to success would be smooth sailing from here on out. But in the past, Google has been known to put pressure on partners that wanted to create a forked version of Android. Most notably, Google seemingly strong-armed Acer into canceling the launch of the CloudMobile A800, a mobile device running the Android-based Aliyun OS. Aliyun was a forked version of Android, incompatible with Google services, that had very little to do with Google. The smartphone was ultimately put to rest, likely because of Google’s warnings that the launch of the device would jeopardize Acer’s Android partnership.
With that said, it’s very possible that this rumored Blu device won’t ever come into fruition. Google may not be able to scare away Cyanogen with the same argument it used for Acer back in 2012, but it doesn’t seem likely that McMaster’s plans to create a Google-less version of Android will actually offer up something more substantial than what Android can offer today. The entire situation between Cyanogen, Blu and Google is quite muddy at the moment, so we’ll need to wait and see what comes in the future.
What are your thoughts on McMaster’s plans for Android? If the first Cyanogen phone without Google will be made by Blu, do you think it has a chance to make it in the mass market? Or will all of Cyanogen’s bold claims and plans ultimately blow up in their face? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.
A Look at ioSafe and Synology: Two Storage Solutions for Protecting Data From Any Disaster
Many of us keep backups of our data on hard drives, using Apple’s Time Machine, but how many of us keep multiple copies? And copies that are protected from not only disk failures, but also natural disaster? Estimates suggest 30 percent of people have never backed up their data, and the number of people who keep multiple backups is even lower.
With World Backup Day coming up, we teamed up with ioSafe and Synology to explore the consumer-oriented backup options they offer and to demonstrate the importance of keeping several copies of your data by simulating the effects of a house fire on the hardware.
If you’re not familiar with ioSafe and Synology, ioSafe is best known for its disaster proof solutions, producing a range of hard drives that can withstand fire and water damage. Synology is known for its line of DiskStation NAS devices and for its DiskStation Manager software, which can be used for hassle-free backups, personal cloud storage, and more.
We traveled to Seattle to meet up with ioSafe and Synology to test out a Synology BeyondCloud NAS paired with an ioSafe Solo G3, a multi-backup solution that protects data from all kinds of damage, from hard drive failures to a house fire. We checked out some of the things you can do with the setup and then we set it all on fire.
If you want to jump right to the good stuff, aka the fire, watch the video below. We filmed everything so you could see how the ioSafe G3 held up and watch the data recovery process. After watching the video, you can read on for more details on how the Synology BeyondCloud and ioSafe G3 work together and what you can do with them.
Make sure to scroll down to the bottom of the post — we’re going to be giving away a complete backup solution consisting of a 3TB Synology DiskStation BeyondCloud NAS and a 3TB ioSafe Solo G3.
Australian Apple TV Owners Gain Access to Netflix Channel, Service [iOS Blog]
It’s March 24 in Australia and New Zealand, which means Netflix is now live in the country as promised. New Netflix subscribers in Australia and New Zealand will be able to access Netflix content on their Apple TVs, through the Netflix channel that is now available.
Netflix plans in Australia are priced at A$8.99 for single-stream access to standard definition content, A$11.99 for two-stream high-definition access, and A$14.99 for four-stream Ultra HD access. All new Netflix subscribers in the two countries can sign up for a one-month free trial.
At the current time, it appears that content available to Netflix subscribers in Australia and New Zealand is somewhat more limited than content available in the United States. Movies like The Wolf on Wall Street, Silver Linings Playbook, World War Z, and The Croods are available on Netflix in the U.S., but are not available in Australia and New Zealand.
According to The Sydney Morning Herald Australian Netflix has several thousand fewer titles than the U.S. version of the service, but it has 693 shows that are not available in the U.S. or Canada.
Netflix has said that content available in Australia will improve in the near future as it continues to add additional shows and movies.
The Big Picture: A baby star has a growth spurt
It’s trivial to see mature stars in action, but baby stars are another matter. They ‘only’ spend 150,000 years in their earliest formative stage, and they rarely give away clues that they’re around. That’s what makes the above pictures so important — scientist Emily Safron and colleagues have become the first to spot a very young protostar’s “outburst,” or the growth spurt that typically happens when the forming celestial body accumulates a lot of gas and dust relatively quickly. After poring over data from NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer satellite, the astronomers noticed that a future star that was once virtually invisible, HOPS 383, lit up in the space of just a few years; it got 35 times brighter between 2006 and 2008. You won’t see it finish growing up (it’s 1,400 light years away, for one thing), but it’s likely well on its way toward generating its own energy and officially joining the stellar ranks.
[Image credit: E. Safron et al./NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Toledo]
Filed under: Science
Source: JPL, IOP Science
New HTC One M9+ mock-up shows the phone compared to the One M9
Around the time we began seeing the first leaks of the HTC One M9, a number of rumors suggested that there was a second HTC phone under the One name that the company was planning to unveil. Dubbed the HTC One M9+, the device was rumored to carry a bigger display, higher resolution camera and even a fingerprint scanner. We’ve seen a few purported images of the device floating around the internet, but none that were officially outed from HTC. While we still don’t have any official images from the company, popular leaker @OnLeaks has unveiled some renders of the M9+ sitting next to the M9 proper.
From the image above, the M9+ looks extremely similar to the original One M9, but carries a few notable design differences. For starters, the M9+ sports an overall bigger chassis with the same BoomSound speaker and front-facing camera layout we see on the M9. But towards the bottom of the device we’re seeing what is potentially a home button that could double as a fingerprint scanner. If you can recall back to the HTC One max, that device also had a fingerprint sensor, though it was placed on the back of the device below the camera module.
Moving around to the back, the M9+ looks to feature the return of the Duo Lens Camera HTC included in its One M8 handset. The company ultimately ditched the Duo Lens Camera in the One M9, but it looks like it may be going back to that in the M9+.
Along with the release of this image, OnLeaks also outed some purported specifications of the handset. According to the tweet, the M9+ will feature a 5.2-inch display and will measure 150.9 x 72.5 x 10.15mm. Going back once again to the One max, the most notable feature of that device compared to its M7 counterpart was the jump to a big 5.9-inch screen. Differentiating from the M9’s 5.0-inch screen, a slightly bigger display size is clearly not what HTC is hoping will draw customers in.
It’s important to note that these are not official press images from HTC. The leaker stressed that he saw the M9+ prototype and made this image according to what he’s seen of the handset in the past. There has yet to be any confirmation that HTC is planning to release this device, so we may not even see the phone make its way to consumers’ hands. With that said, another popular leaker outed that the One M9+ would make its way to market sometime in late March/early April.
Of course, we’ll let you know if we hear any further information regarding the One M9+. Even though we don’t know anything for sure about the handset, do you think, based off of the image above, that a slightly bigger device with a fingerprint sensor could stray customers away from buying the flagship One M9? Let us know what you think!
Pioneer’s Android Auto-compatible NEX head units now available for purchase
Following the recent publication of the Android Auto app in the Google Play Store, Pioneer has just announced that its second generation NEX (Network Entertainment eXperience) head units are now available for purchase from a number of different retailers across the country. The 2015 NEX head units, which are both Android Auto and CarPlay compatible, were first debuted at CES 2015 a few months ago.
Three of the five 2015 NEX models are Android Auto-compatible, and include the AVIC-8100NEX, AVIC-7100NEX and AVH-4100NEX models. This is a completely new platform, so you’ll need to pay a hefty chunk of change to become an early adopter. The 4100 model, which is the least expensive, starts at $700. The 7100 unit can be yours for $1,200, and the 8100 is sold for $1,400. All of Pioneer’s second generation NEX units are now available from authorized Pioneer retailers across the United States. But remember, this is just the price for the head unit itself. Unless you know how to install these things on your own, you’ll likely need to shell out some more money for installation.
Of course, once the platform progresses over the next year or so, we should begin to see some more affordable head units become available. What do you think? From what you’ve seen out of the platform so far, are any of these Pioneer units worth your money?
AIVAnet 