Hands-on with the LG Watch Urbane Luxe: Android Wear, deluxe
The new Watch Urbane Luxe has a fancy name and comes in a fancy box. But is it fancy enough to justify a $1200 price tag?
At IFA 2015 in Berlin, we’ve met up with LG, who showed us the latest variant of their well-received Android Wear smartwatch series. The Watch Urbane Luxe takes what it’s pretty much a standard Watch Urbane, adds a coating of 23K gold, and an elegant alligator leather band, at a price tag that’s more than three times the regular version’s.
Developed in collaboration with the US-based Reeds Jewelers, the Urbane Luxe will be available exclusively in the US (at least for now) and only 500 units are set to go on sale. This is a very limited edition device, and LG and Reeds hope that the exclusivity will add some additional cachet to what is already a special piece of design. Each device features a serial number and comes in a nice lacquered wood box that does well to complement the Luxe itself.
Why 23K gold, you may ask? According to LG, 24K is just too soft to work as a resistant coating, so the gold is alloyed with a tiny proportion of other metals to give it strength. LG was keen to note that the Apple Watch is just 18K, though the Luxe is just coated with gold, not made of solid precious metal like Apple’s premium Apple Watch version.
The alligator band features a gold-plated “deployment clasp” invented by Cartier, which supposedly adds quite a bit to the smartwatch’s final price. The clasp looks interesting and it’s easy to adjust and use, once you figure out the mechanism, but truth be told, only watch aficionados will care about it for more than a few minutes.
Other than the revamped exterior, the Watch Urbane Luxe is the same device we’ve come to know: Android Wear running on a 1.2GHz quad-core Snapdragon 400 processor and 512MB of RAM, with a 1.3-inch P-OLED circular display with a 320 x 320 resolution and a 410 mAh.
The Watch Urbane Luxe is yet another experiment from a company that hasn’t been afraid to experiment with new ideas in the wearables department (just look at the webOS Watch Urbane LTE). It remains to be seen if the results of this experiment will warrant more adventures down the path of luxury from LG or its competitors.
Stay tuned for more IFA 2015 coverage!
Samsung’s next-gen SmartThings home hub goes on sale
The next generation of SmartThings hardware is now available after a lengthy delay. Samsung purchased the home automation company just over a year ago, but was optimistic when it said the next-gen hardware would arrive in April. The hub, sensors and app (available on iOS and Android) are now good to go, however, along with developer tools to get other companies on board. The new hub improves on the last version in a couple of key ways. It no longer needs an internet cloud connection to function, and can run autonomously for 10 hours on a battery if the power is cut.
With a more powerful CPU, the new SmartThings Hub no longer needs cloud computing to handle video and sensor monitoring chores. That allowed Samsung to introduce a new “Smart Home Monitor” feature that will give users a continuous video livestream and trigger the system to record video following pre-programmed events. Those include things like the activation of motion sensors, or tripping of smoke, fire and leak detection devices. The Smart Home Monitor features will launch in beta, however.
https://player.vimeo.com/video/138101882
To control the system and see video feeds, users will get updated iOS or Android apps.They’ve been redesigned to help you arrange sensors and devices by room, and program actions like turning on lights, unlocking doors, turning off alarms, or combinations of all those things. SmartThings now supports around 200 devices, including Amazon’s Echo, and has announced new partners including Honeywell, Yale, D-Link, Bose and others. It also supports devices that use the Zigbee and Z-Wave standard. The SmartThings Hub is now available from Samsung and Amazon for $99, with sensors priced from $30 to $55. UK residents can also nab the hub at Currys PC World for £99, or a starter kit including the hub and several sensors for £199.
Filed under:
Household
Tags: cameras, D-Link, IFA2015, InternetOfThings, Samsung, Sensors, SmartHome, SmartThings
T-Mobile has no plans to carry the Sony Xperia Z5 line
Sony announced their new flagship lineup at IFA 2015 on Wednesday. Among them are the new Xperia Z5, Z5 Compact, and Z5 Premium. The lineup is notable for featuring one of the only flagships on the market with a screen smaller than 5″ (The Z5 Compact) and the first phone with a 4K screen (The Z5 premium). But if you were hoping to pick one of these up at T-Mobile, you may be out of luck.
Sony hasn’t been the most popular phone manufacturer in the United States partially due to lack of advertising but also because of a rocky relationship with carriers. We’ve seen a few releases on T-Mobile and one on Verizon Wireless but they’re far from the likes of Samsung, LG, and Apple who have people lining up on launch day to pick up their device. Hopes were high that T-Mobile would be carrying the Z5 lineup since Big Magenta carried the Sony Xperia Z3 and the Sony Xperia Z1 before that but it looks like that won’t be the case.
A spokesperson has told CNET that the country’s third largest carrier has no plans to carry the device. If you’re a Verizon Wireless customer, things got a little more hazy for you too. Verizon was supposed to launch the Sony Xperia Z4v this summer. We haven’t seen it come out yet and now with the newest lineup announced it would appear that the Z4v would be obsolete by the time that it hit the shelves.
Sony releases their flagship on a roughly 6 month update cycle. This is somewhat normal in Asia but here in the States where 2 year contracts are still very much a thing, even though carriers appear to be doing away with them, it’s too fast for many to be comfortable with. Are you going to pick up a phone on a 2 year contract or agree to finance it over 2 years when there will be 3 or 4 revisions by the time you’re done paying on it?
Sony Mobile’s CEO recently said that they’ll never leave the mobile business. And that’s excellent news because they make fantastic hardware with near stock, or completely stock in some cases, Android but if they ever want to gain a foothold in the US, changes will need to be made.
The post T-Mobile has no plans to carry the Sony Xperia Z5 line appeared first on AndroidGuys.
Just add water and this squid-inspired plastic heals itself
While you’ve been busy scarfing down fried calamari rings, scientists at the University of Pennsylvania have been doing something else with squid. Namely? Studying the cephalopod’s ring teeth for a way to create a material that heals when water’s present, much in the way that those tentacle-bound choppers do. The way the report spotted by Popular Science tells it, the researchers were able to reproduce the type of proteins found in the self-healing squid teeth and trigger bacteria to make it in a lab environment.
To test just how strong the new material was, the scientists formed the protein into the shape of a dog bone and cut it in two with a razor blade. After pressing the two segments back together, dousing them with a bit of water and applying pressure, the pieces fused and were still as strong compared to before they were cut. Like PopSci notes, this type of material could be used to coat things deep-sea internet cables or perhaps help biomedical devices have a longer lifespan, but is still a ways off from primetime. That and it still needs to be tested against shark bites, of course.
[Image credits: Getty/Jeff Rotman (lead), Demirel Lab/Penn State (lab photo)]
Via:
Popular Science
Source:
Penn State University, Nature
Tags: bacteria, nature, protein, science, SelfHealing, squid, squidteeth, UniversityOfPennsylvania, upenn
Watch Samsung’s IFA 2015 press event here!
Samsung presumably has spilled the beans on its new Galaxy Note phones already. And it has a new smartwatch. And a new tablet. But there’s a hall full of baying tech journalists. We’re sure Samsung has more to tell us. You can watch it all go down right here. The show starts here in an hour at 11AM CEST here in Berlin, which translates to an early bird 5AM ET. Get your Nespresso or Keurig pod at the ready, because it’s Samsung and it likely has a few things to talk about. You’ll be able to watch on UStream or Samsung’s YouTube channel.
Filed under:
Cellphones, Laptops, Wearables, Internet, HD, Mobile, Samsung
Tags: hdpostcross, ifa, ifa2015, livestream, mobilepostcross, samsung, video
DJI’s adding autopilot features to Phantom 3 drones next week
DJI pleased Phantom owners recently when it announced that much-needed autopilot features would be coming to its most popular series of quadcopters, and the Inspire 1. Today, we learn when (September 7th) and how (via a good ole’ firmware update). The new flight features include Waypoints (map out a path in advance, and the quad will follow it), Point of Interest (the quad flies around a set object with the camera remaining fixed on it) and Follow Me (you can guess what that does — only coming to Phantom 3, not Inspire 1). There are also two features specific for the Phantom 3 Standard which make it easier to fly the quadcopter back to you should you lose your orientation — these are already available on DJI’s other craft. Finally, Phantom 3 Advance owners get a nice bonus, with the addition of a 2.7K (2704×1520) camera recording option — a solid bump up from 1080p.
Filed under:
Misc
Tags: autopilot, dji, drone, followme, inspire1, phantom3, quadcopter, waypoint
Snapdragon 820 processor has 2x performance and 2x power efficiency
Qualcomm announced today that their newest processor the Snapdragon 820 would feature their newest CPU Kryo. Kryo is Qualcomm’s first custom designed 64-bit quad-core CPU (Central Processing Unit). The 820 will combine the new powerful Kryo CPU and tightly integrate it with the Adreno 530 GPU (Graphics Processing Unit) and the Hexagon 680 DSP (Digital Signal Processor)
The Snapdragon 820 optimizes the different cores through a process called heterogeneous computing, which combines the different functional cores of the system-on-chip (SoC), like the CPU, GPU and DSP cores, to achieve previously unattainable performance and power savings, rather than using the same core for different tasks.
Another area which allows it to obtain better performance and efficiency is 14nm FinFET technology and it’s designed to reach speeds up to 2.2 GHz.
Along with the new Kryo CPU, Qualcomm is debuting their new Symphony System Manager. Symphony will manage the various cores to maximize efficiency. It will make sure that the right components are powered up and running at the right frequencies for the task that it is handling.
The post Snapdragon 820 processor has 2x performance and 2x power efficiency appeared first on AndroidGuys.
Bluetooth substitute can send data through your body
The king of close range communications between mobile devices continues to be Bluetooth. This technology has served us very well – its energy efficiency is hard to eclipse, and it can cover pretty good distances. UCSD (University of California San Diego) researchers have found a solution that may be better for some implementations, though.
So far it’s only a proof of concept, but this wireless transmission system could change the way we use accessories that are within immediate contact to our bodies. The engineering team discovered a way to transmit signals through a human’s natural magnetic field. To make matters even more interesting, this technology could prove to be more secure and energy efficient than today’s Bluetooth systems.
Bluetooth happens to be a great solution, but it still holds true that it is only optimal when there is a clean space between connected devices. Put something in between them and the handsets will have a harder time keeping communications, hence sacrificing battery life. It’s worth mentioning one of these obstacles could be the human body; why not take advantage of our mass, instead?
This technology is reported to work similarly to MRI scans, but with a much lower use of energy. Does it work? According to the team, path loss (the interference between devices) is about 10 million times better than with Bluetooth. This means connected devices would be able to avoid working as hard, allowing them to save more battery life.
“A problem with wearable devices like smart watches is that they have short operating times because they are limited to using small batteries. With this magnetic field human body communication system, we hope to significantly reduce power consumption as well as how frequently users need to recharge their devices.” -Jiwoong Park, UCSD Ph.D student and lead author
It may not be good for wireless speakers and other similar Bluetooth devices that require longer distances between products. I do see it possibly coming to smart watches, head phones and other wearables, though. The team also reassures that this is actually more secure, as possible attackers would need to get awfully close to you in order to tap into your connection.
Just keep in mind this is wireless transmission system is still in its infancy. It will be a while before we see it being used. That is, if the industry even decides to adopt this technology and make it a standard. Now, that is that complicated part of the equation!
Check out the first Moto 360 (2015) ad here!
Following the Moto 360’s (2015) unveiling earlier today, Motorola has just released its first promotional advertisement for the brand new smartwatch. In the minute-long clip, the Lenovo-owned company shows off the beautiful wrist adornment from all angles and demonstrates its notification and fitness tracking functionality.
Check it out after the break.
Click here to view the embedded video.
If you like the look of the Moto 360 (2015) and would like to pre-order either a 42mm or 46mm variant — hit the source link below.
Come comment on this article: Check out the first Moto 360 (2015) ad here!
You can now pick up a Galaxy Tab S2 9.7 from Sprint for $648
We previously reported that the Galaxy Tab S2 9.7 would be heading to Sprint this month and now the slate is available to purchase from the carrier. The device is up for grabs in either Black or White colorways and has a price tag of $648 off-contract or for 24 equal monthly payments of $27 on the operator’s Easy Pay Plan.
In terms of specifications, the Galaxy Tab S2 features a 9.7-inch QXGA Super AMOLED display, a 64-bit Exynos 5433 octa-core processor with four cores running at 1.9GHz and the other four at 1.3GHz, 3GB of LPDDR3 RAM, 32GB internal storage (expandable up to 128GB via microSD), an 8MP rear-facing camera and a 5,870mAh battery.
The slate runs the latest build of Android 5.1 Lollipop straight out of the box, skinned with Samsung’s TouchWiz custom user interface. It also comes pre-loaded with the South Korean company’s Galaxy Gifts application, which provides customers with exclusive access to a plethora of premium applications and services, including three months of Evernote Premium, 6 free months of Endomondo Premium and much, much more.
If you like the sound of the Galaxy Tab S2 9.7 and would like to pick one up from Sprint — hit the source link below.
Source: Sprint
Come comment on this article: You can now pick up a Galaxy Tab S2 9.7 from Sprint for $648
AIVAnet 