The nexpaq brings modules to your smartphone case
The Nexpaq
The nexpaq, made by Nexpaq, Inc. is a case that incorporates removable physical modules to customize and add features to a smartphone. Here is the video from its Kickstarter. With the nexpaq, all you need to do is put your phone in it, slide in your chosen modules, and start the app that controls them. All modules can be checked through the app, which automatically updates when new modules are added.
Currently, there are cases for the iPhone 6, Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge, and the Samsung Galaxy S5.
Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge, Black Sapphire 32GB (AT&T)
Display: 5.10-inches
Camera: 16-MP
Processor Speed: OCTA Core 64-bit
Additional images:
Price: $814.99 $299.99
Modules are fully compatible between iOS and Android, and nexpaq states that they “work across multiple generations of phones.” That means in theory, modules will work on other smartphones, including those that have not been released yet, provided nexpaq cases are made for them.
The Modules
As of now, there are 12 modules available:
Developer Kit and Hardware App Store
The company’s Kickstarter includes the option to obtain a developer kit. It says this will be key in creating a hardware app store (like Google Play or the App Store but for modules) that will allow users and developers to collaborate and make new modules. Since already there are modules for temperature and humidity, a breathalyzer, and a laser, the possibilities could be endless with the nexpaq.
The post The nexpaq brings modules to your smartphone case appeared first on AndroidGuys.
AT&T updates data throttling policy on legacy unlimited plans
Late last year, despite claims that throttling on legacy 4G plans was not automatic, users discovered that AT&T was in fact throttling data speeds whether the network was congested or not. The carrier promised to change the policy sometime during 2015 and it looks like the time may have come based on a change to some information on their web site.
According to AT&T, once a user with a legacy 4G plan exceeds 5 GB of data usage, their speed may be reduced at times or in areas where they are “experiencing network congestion.” This change mirrors the way AT&T handles unlimited data use on 3G/4G plans, although those plans see the limit kick in at only 3 GB of usage.
Despite this slight loosening of restrictions on unlimited data usage, AT&T likely hopes this will still be enough to encourage customers to switch over to new plans that have data caps.
source: AT&T
Come comment on this article: AT&T updates data throttling policy on legacy unlimited plans
Larry Page’s asteroid-mining firm launches its first satellite in July
Planetary Resources hasn’t had much success getting its asteroid-mining business off the ground, in a very literal sense — it lost its first satellite, Arkyd-3, in the Antares rocket explosion last year. It’s about to get a second try, though. The Larry Page-backed company has announced that its craft’s follow-up, Arkyd 3 Reflight (aka Arkyd 3R), is scheduled to launch from the International Space Station in July. While the vehicle will spend just 90 days sending self-diagnostic info before it falls to Earth, it’ll serve as a useful test run before the more ambitious Arkyd 6 starts wielding its scientific instruments in December. No, this isn’t the long-promised space telescope, but it’s an important early step.
Filed under: Science
Via: Space.com, ExtremeTech
Source: Planetary Resources
Giant phones are finally a big deal in the US
Extra-large phones have been hot stuff in some countries for a long while, but not so much in the US. The country must have had a change of heart in the past few months, however. Kantar Worldpanel estimates that gigantic devices jumped from 6 percent of American smartphone sales in the first quarter of last year to 21 percent in early 2015. Why? If you ask Kantar, the launch of the iPhone 6 Plus was partly responsible — it racked up 44 percent of all supersized phone sales despite being just a few months old. The analyst group isn’t saying much in public how other brands were doing, although it’s safe to say that category pioneer Samsung grabbed a large slice of the pie thanks to high-powered behemoths like the Galaxy Note 4.
Android still rules the roost worldwide, although there’s signs that this is changing ever so slightly. Google’s mobile OS was the top choice in the five biggest European countries with a 68.4 percent share, but the iPhone grew its stake by 1.8 percent. The biggest leap was in China, where Apple’s gangbuster iPhone sales saw it grow from 17.9 percent of the market in early 2014 to 26.1 percent a year later. Reportedly, that’s due in part to Apple courting more than just well-off buyers. While Android still dominates the budget space (35 percent of European Android buyers said price was a major factor), it doesn’t have the free rein that it enjoyed in the past.
Photo by Will Lipman.
Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile, Apple, Samsung
Source: Kantar Worldpanel (1), (2)
Chrome add-on helps you see the web if you’re color-blind
The web isn’t always a great a place to visit if you’re color-blind — in fact, you may not properly see the Chrome logo above. Thankfully, Google may have a way to fill in some of that missing picture. It recently released a Chrome extension, Color Enhancer, that tweaks the browser’s colors to help overcome partial color blindness. All you do is walk through a basic calibration process, and the add-on does the rest. This isn’t the most complicated addition in the world, but it could make a big difference if it helps you spot web objects that would otherwise go unnoticed.
[Image credit: AP Photo/Mark Lennihan]
Filed under: Internet, Software, Google
Via: Francois Beaufort (Google+)
Source: Chrome Web Store
Google Rolls out Optical Character Recognition in over 200 Languages
Improvement in Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology is one of Google’s lesser-known projects, at least to lay consumers. In reality, many of us have been using OCR for years without knowing what it actually is.
OCR is the technology that enables Google to digitize text captured in image format and make it legibile from the computer’s perspective. So if you’ve ever uploaded a scanned PDF or other image file to Drive, then asked Drive to “Open with – Google Docs,” Google employs OCR, opening a new version of the document that displays the original image and then the extracted text.
The big news today is that OCR has now been rolled out to over 200 languages and 25 writing systems, which is pretty dang awesome. Even if at the end of the day, Google is a company that harvests our data to sell to third parties in their quest to not be evil™, and even if OCR supports that mission, this is the sort of altruistic endeavor that gets little notice but deserves much.
And because I’m feeling saucy, I’ve provide a complete list of the supported languages below. You’re welcome.
Acehnese, Acholi, Adangme, Afrikaans, Akan, Albanian, Algonquinian, Amharic, Ancient Greek, Arabic (Modern Standard), Araucanian/Mapuche, Armenian, Assamese, Asturian, Athabaskan, Aymara, Azerbaijani, Azerbaijani (Cyrillic; old orthography), Balinese, Bambara, Bantu, Bashkir, Basque, Batak, Belorussian, Bemba, Bengali, Bikol, Bislama, Bosnian, Breton, Bulgarian, Burmese, Catalan, Cebuano, Chechen, Cherokee, Chinese (Mandarin; Hong Kong), Chinese (Simplified; Mandarin), Chinese (Traditional; Mandarin), Choctaw, Chuvash, Cree, Creek, Crimean Tatar, Croatian, Czech, Dakota, Danish, Dhivehi, Duala, Dutch, Dzonkha, Efik, English (American), English (British), Esperanto, Estonian, Ewe, Faroese, Fijian, Filipino, Finnish, Fon, French (Canadian), French (European), Fulah, Ga, Galician, Ganda, Gayo, Georgian, German, Gilbertese, Gothic, Greek, Guarani, Gujarati, Haitian Creole, Hausa, Hawaiian, Hebrew, Herero, Hiligaynon, Hindi, Hungarian, Iban, Icelandic, Igbo, Iloko, Indonesian, Irish, Italian, Japanese, Javanese, Kabyle, Kachin, Kalaallisut, Kamba, Kannada, Kanuri, Kara-Kalpak, Kazakh, Khasi, Khmer, Kikuyu, Kinyarwanda, Kirghiz, Komi, Kongo, Korean, Kosraean, Kuanyama, Lao, Latin, Latvian, Lingala, Lithuanian, Low German, Lozi, Luba-Katanga, Luo, Macedonian, Madurese, Malagasy, Malay, Malayalam, Maltese, Mandingo, Manx, Maori, Marathi, Marshallese, Mende, Middle English, Middle High German, Minangkabau, Mohawk, Mongo, Mongolian, Nahuatl, Navajo, Ndonga, Nepali, Niuean, North Ndebele, Northern Sotho, Norwegian (Bokmål), Nyanja, Nyankole, Nyasa Tonga, Nzima, Occitan, Ojibwa, Old English, Old French, Old High German, Old Norse, Old Provencal, Oriya, Ossetic, Pampanga, Pangasinan, Papiamento, Pashto, Persian, Polish, Portuguese (Brazilian), Portuguese (European), Punjabi (Gurmukhi), Quechua, Romanian, Romansh, Romany, Rundi, Russian, Russian (Old Orthography), Sakha, Samoan, Sango, Sanskrit, Scots, Scottish Gaelic, Serbian (Cyrillic), Serbian (Latin), Shona, Sinhala, Slovak, Slovenian, Songhai, Southern Sotho, Spanish (European), Spanish (Latin American), Sundanese, Swahili, Swati, Swedish, Tahitian, Tajik, Tamil, Tatar, Telugu, Temne, Thai, Tibetan, Tigirinya, Tongan, Tsonga, Tswana, Turkish, Turkmen, Udmurt Ukrainian, Urdu, Uzbek, Uzbek (Cyrillic; old orthography), Venda, Vietnamese, Votic, Welsh, Western Frisian, Wolof, Xhosa, Yiddish, Yoruba, Zapotec, and Zulu.
The technical side of this is beyond my pay grade, but if you want to learn more, check out the link below and your dreams will be filled with Hidden Markov Models (HMMs) and Python code.
All in all, the ability to convert what is effectively “background noise,” as Google describes it, to textual content that’s recognized by a computer is hugely useful, especially as the latest language rollout supports more developing countries.
Also, Old High German and Old Norse are supported, as well as Old English. Maybe it’ll turn out we had Beowulf wrong all along.
The update works on the desktop and mobile app versions of Drive.
Source: Google Research Blog
Come comment on this article: Google Rolls out Optical Character Recognition in over 200 Languages
Games in Motion aims to make jogging fun with Android Wear
Sometimes when you want to relax after a long day, it’s difficult to choose between your daily workout or video games. The good news is that Google has a way for you to do both at the same time.
Today Google announced Games in Motion, an open source game sample that will give developers ideas how to add more functionality to Android Wear, which in turn should put a little more leap in your step with missions during those long jogs.
With Games in Motion, those long jogs are still being recorded in the background, so you can still keep up with your latest statistics while gaming in the forefront.
The sample is written in the Java programming language using Android Studio, and there are some marvelous technologies at play:
- Android Wear bridges notifications from a phone or tablet to a paired Android Wear device. The notifications are stacked so we can show multiple stats at the same time.
- Google Fit API collects and processes fitness data and sessions. This allows us to use the fitness data to show user progress. All exercise sessions done in Games in Motion will be recorded to Google Fit as well.
- Google Play Games Services is used to create and unlock achievements.
- Several different Android audio APIs are integrated.
Overall, developers could have a lot of fun with this. It’s only a matter of time before we see the flood of zombie survival fitness missions available!
You can download the latest open source release from GitHub here. What do you think about Games in Motion? Could you see yourself taking advantage of this? Let us know in the comments.
source: Android Developers
Come comment on this article: Games in Motion aims to make jogging fun with Android Wear
What does the color of your new Galaxy S6 say about you?
The Samsung Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 edge were released in five colors initially which, outside of Motorola’s Moto Maker devices, is a relatively wide variety. With this many options, Samsung hopes buyers will find a color they are attracted to which may make sales a bit easier. A buyer’s color choice could also reveal a little bit about their personality according to British psychologist Donna Dawson.
Dawson recently provided brief profiles of the type of person who might select each of the colors Samsung makes available. Some of the highlights include:
- Gold Platinum – “People who choose gold as their preferred color are striving for prosperity, financial success and general contentment. They tend to be luxury-loving and enjoy the finer things of life, indulging whenever they can (sometimes even when they cannot!). They are outgoing, warm, and enjoy the company of others. They also tend to have strong intuition.”
- Green Emerald – “People who choose green as their preferred color tend to be balanced, loyal, hard-working, honest, benevolent and concerned for others. They tend to be (or aspire to be) good citizens with a highly-developed moral sense and a desire for simplicity.”
- Blue Topaz – “People who choose Samsung’s Blue Topaz as their preferred color are self-confident, fastidious, discriminating, sensitive, exacting, and intuitive. These people really need to be loved, and also long for personal security. The brightness of the color will attract people who are already self-confident.”
- White Pearl – “People who choose white as their preferred color tend to be status-seeking extroverts. Because white contains all the other colors, it is the other dual-natured color apart from black. It can represent wisdom, honesty and purity; but also brashness, an open nature and over-confidence.”
- Black Sapphire – “…the person who chooses black as their preferred color is striving to be recognized for their individualism, independence and their ability to stay aloof from the crowd, to play their cards close to their chest, and to be a leader. They are also hinting at their sexual allure and power, as well as their hidden depths.”
Based on your color preference for a smartphone, do you think Dawson’s descriptions are accurate?
source: Samsung
Come comment on this article: What does the color of your new Galaxy S6 say about you?
Qualcomm’s Quick Charge 2.0 isn’t enabled in the LG G4
Were you looking forward to using Qualcomm’s Quick Charge 2.0 on your new LG G4? Unfortunately, even though it is a Snapdragon-powered device, it does not support Quick Charge 2.0.
While the LG G4 does sport the Snapdragon 808 SoC, and Qualcomm says the chipset supports Quick Charge 2.0, LG did not enable the coveted feature this time around. While the LG G4 may not have the faster charging capabilities, the device still charges relatively fast, even though you may not have a full battery with only a few minutes on the charger.
It still has the usual 1.8 Amp capabilities, so you can still get a zero to full charge within two hours. If you absolutely need that extra battery life, there’s always the option of carrying an extra battery with you. If you really want to get your hands on Quick Charge 2.0, the good news is that the HTC One M9 supports it, although you’ll have to purchase a compatible charging cable, as it isn’t including with the One M9.
We could look forward to LG supporting it next year, although it’s highly possible the company just might not want to shell out gobs of money for the patent licensing. What do you think? Will you be getting the LG G4 still? Let us know in the comments.
source: Phone Arena
Come comment on this article: Qualcomm’s Quick Charge 2.0 isn’t enabled in the LG G4
Woman uses Pizza Hut’s mobile app to escape a hostage crisis
It’s sometimes too dangerous to call 911, but one Florida woman just found a potentially life-saving alternative: a food delivery app. When Cheryl Treadway’s boyfriend threatened to hurt her and her family if they left home, she used Pizza Hut’s mobile app to send a request for help under the pretext of ordering food. Thankfully, staff caught the message and sent police to Treadway’s home, getting the hostages out safely. This kind of stealthy, app-based plea won’t be as necessary once text-to-911 rolls out in earnest, but it’s good to know that it’s an option in dire circumstances.
[Image credit: AP Photo/Alan Diaz]
Filed under: Cellphones, Internet, Mobile
Via: Daily Dot
Source: WTSP
AIVAnet 
