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15
Oct

A swarm of alien satellites may explain one star’s strange behavior


There’s something extremely odd about KIC 8462852, a star 1,481 light-years away from Earth. It demonstrates irregular, seemingly unnatural, flickering patterns — usually, scientists detect a faraway planet by measuring the regular drops in brightness that occur as it passes in front of its sun, but KIC 8462852 is different. It exhibits extreme drops in brightness, up to 22 percent at one moment, and there appears to be no pattern to the light show. For comparison, a planet the size of Jupiter normally drops in brightness by just 1 percent as it crosses the sun, according The Washington Post. The star’s weird behavior remains unexplained, but scientists have a few ideas about its origins — including a massive alien structure.

The alien theory is a long-shot, according to Yale University astronomer Tabetha Boyajian and Penn State University researcher Jason Wright, but they think it’s worth considering in KIC 8462852’s case. Wright helped develop a protocol for spotting alien civilizations, The Washington Post reports, and he says the flickering around this star could be “a swarm of megastructures” built to collect solar energy.

“Aliens should always be the very last hypothesis you consider, but this looked like something you would expect an alien civilization to build,” Wright says.

Researchers are considering other natural explanations for KIC 8462852’s dimming, including monstrous crashes along the asteroid belt or another giant collision in the star’s neighborhood, resulting in unpredictable debris patterns. Or, a group of comets orbiting the star could have been disrupted by another star passing by, sending ice and rocks flying and explaining the dips in light. There are issues with all of these explanations — for example, it would be nearly impossible for us to catch the comet theory in action on a telescope that’s only been active since 2009. Nearly impossible, a lot like spotting an alien megastructure orbiting a planet. And remember, the light we receive is old, meaning any potential structures around KIC 8462852 were there back in Earth’s 6th century, The Washington Post says.

Wright, Boyajian and Andrew Siemion (director of the SETI Research Center at the University of California, Berkeley) plan to aim a huge radio dish at KIC 8462852 to see if it emits radio waves indicative of technological activity, The Atlantic reports. The first observation is scheduled for January, with a second next fall.

[Image credit: ESO/M. Kornmesser]

Source: The Washington Post, The Atlantic

15
Oct

Facebook explains the tech behind its 360-degree videos


Facebook made 360-degrees videos viewable on the News Feed back in September, but it was apparently no easy feat making it possible. The latest post on its Engineering blog explains the problems they had to deal with, including the difficulty of stitching footage together without producing distorted images. To prevent making videos look like they came out of a warped nightmare, the engineers created a video filter that uses a common CG method called “cube mapping.” It works by dividing a frame into six squares to form a cube: the top and bottom 25 percent of the frame are compressed into two images, while the middle part that makes up 50 percent of the frame is divided into four.

Now, that six-image frame is still flat. So, what the filter does is wrap it around a virtual sphere inside a cube, with each square expanding to fill the cube in every direction you can view: up, down, left, right, front and back. That allows Facebook to render each frame with 25 percent fewer pixels than the original video, making the finished product easier to view from our end. Fewer pixels also mean faster processing times and smaller file sizes, which are essential for the social network to be able to produce 360-degree videos quickly. In fact, its engineers decided to split the job across several powerful machines, which the company can definitely afford, for faster encoding.

While these 360-degree videos are perfectly viewable without VR glasses, they indicate the arrival of more content on the website optimized for virtual reality. Mark Zuckerberg revealed earlier this year that the company’s focusing on VR tech, as he believes it’s the “next major computing and communication platform.” Not to mention, FB dropped $2 billion last year to acquire Oculus VR. No doubt he’d want the News Feed to be more immersive, especially since the consumer version of Oculus Rift will be available for purchase in Q1 2016.

As for what’s next for the team, Facebook engineers Evgeny Kuzyakov and David Pio had this to say:

Of course, hurdles remain. We haven’t cracked automatic detection of 360 video upload yet — right now the false-positive rate inhibits our ability to fully implement this. Facebook’s scale is so large that even a 0.1 percent false-positive rate would mean we would incorrectly declare thousands of regular videos as 360 video. That’s a specific example, but there are a lot more broad, exciting challenges to tackle as well. Higher resolutions, 3D video, and 360 video optimized for virtual reality are all part of the near future of this space. It’s an exciting time to be working on video. We hope you enjoy the experience we built today and look forward to launching more in the future.

Source: Facebook Engineering

15
Oct

Valve wants the Steam community to build its own controllers


Valve is all about fan service. And with “over 125 million active users” in its Steam base, that’s a lot of varying expectations to meet. This month, the secretive Bellevue, Washington-based video game developer (Portal, Half-Life) is about to finally bring to market a suite of its Steam Machines, a console-like living room solution for its PC-gaming base. The hardware rollout’s been a long time coming for Valve — the original Steam Machine announcement was made back in September 2013 — but at least one aspect of it has been very public: the evolution of the Steam Controller. And its design is about to, quite literally, be put in the hands of consumers.

“Anytime we’ve let the community get involved in the construction, the creation, the modification of things we’ve created, it always worked out fantastically,” says Valve designer Robin Walker, speaking at the company’s headquarters. “It was always better. It would be utterly bizarre if, for some reason, that wasn’t the case for hardware.” Slideshow-330222

Two years ago, when Valve first unveiled its preliminary design for the Steam Controller, the company arranged for a limited beta, giving out 300 prototype units to the lucky chosen few of its Steam user base. While feedback from that beta no doubt informed the many iterations Valve ushered out over the past couple of years, much of its original vision has been left out of the final design. The current retail version of the Steam Controller includes two clickable trackpads (one with an integrated d-pad “to support backwards compatibility” with the Steam catalogue and one for high-precision aiming); standard A, B, X, Y buttons; left and right shoulder buttons and triggers; two clickable pads on the back; and a left thumbstick. Valve’s ideal, however, would look a bit different. Namely, it’d lose the left thumbstick, something it’s included as a legacy feature. Adds Walker: “The [inclusion of the] thumbstick was another one where a lot of this is about transition and so when people sat down and had no thumbstick … that transition was harder. … We hear from people that’ve used [the controller] a bunch. A lot of times they often hit the point where they say they just prefer to use the pads all the time.”

“Anytime we’ve let the community get involved in the construction, the modification of things we’ve created, it always worked out fantastically”

— Robin Walker, Valve

Valve would also like to bring back the clickable, high-resolution touchscreen introduced in the first prototype. “Active screens on the controller — we think, probably long-term — will be something that’ll be interesting,” says Valve designer Erik Johnson of future Steam Controller iterations. Although, that said, both Johnson and Walker acknowledged the difficulties in directing a player’s attention to and away from that controller-mounted screen.

The good news is that Steam users that aren’t quite pleased with Valve’s final controller design won’t have to grin and bear it when it’s released this month. The company’s aware that there’s no one form factor ideally suited to the hands of its massive Steam base and so it’s looking to crowdsource the design and even provide the components. “We want to empower the community to get to the point where the community starts doing these things,” says Johnson. “So things like creating a workshop for the form factor … we’ll provide all of the CAD files, so if you wanna get in there and start messing with things. Long term, I think we’d like to sell you all of the electronics inside as a separate thing if you wanna do that because you wanna go and build a completely different-looking one, but you don’t wanna have to worry about the electronics.”

It’s an ambitious initiative, no doubt, which is why Valve aims to take it slowly, dealing with the reception of its first batch of Steam Machines and controller before delving into a community-focused hardware push sometime next year. “We have kind of an unusual approach to how our manufacturing with this works, and it’s mainly around flexibility. So if we decide that … the controller is going to evolve in some direction, it’s pretty straightforward for us to change the way that we’re building them,” says Johnson.

15
Oct

The Alienware Steam Machine: finally, a gaming PC for the living room


I laughed when the rumors started back in 2012: “Valve is building a PC-based game console for living rooms.” Sure it is, I thought. Imagine my shock when “Steam Machines” turned out to be real. The project promised a bizarre, revolutionary controller, a Linux-based operating system designed specifically to play PC games and in-home game streaming for titles that required Windows to run properly. The proposal was unbelievable, but it’s finally here; it’s real; and it will ship to customers in early November. As of today, I have an Alienware Steam Machine nestled in my entertainment center that delivers on almost everything those original rumors promised. Let’s talk about that.

Note: Valve says it plans to continue rolling out software updates ahead of the Steam product family’s official launch on November 10th. We plan to update our story as these new features come out. We will also hold off on assigning the Alienware Steam Machine a numerical score until the final hardware goes on sale.

Hardware

If the Alienware Steam Machine looks familiar, it’s probably because it has the exact same chassis as another PC built for the living room: the Alienware Alpha — the unofficial Steam Machine Dell launched without Valve’s support late last year. Dell classifies these PCs as different products, but they’re mostly separated by their operating systems: Windows 10, for the Alpha and SteamOS for the Alienware Steam Machine. Today we’re looking at the latter, Valve-sanctioned Steam Machine, but both rigs have a great chassis: It’s compact, subtle and fits right in with everything else in your entertainment center.

Visually speaking, the Alienware Steam Machine is a simple thing: a glossy black square with a matte black top and a few simple LEDs — one behind the power button and another highlighting a triangle-shaped bisection of the chassis corner. A Steam logo glows out from this triangle-shaped cut, marking the only design tweak that separates the Alienware Alpha from the Valve-sanctioned Steam Machine.

Want connections? You got ’em. The Steam Machine has two USB ports on the front, two more in the rear, HDMI output, optical audio out and an Ethernet port. Just like with the Alpha, there are two other connectors here, as well: an HDMI input for piping a cable box through the Steam Machine interface (no, it won’t capture video or stream your other consoles to Twitch) and a fifth USB port hidden under a panel on the rig’s undercarriage. Don’t get too excited: That extra USB slot is already spoken for. The console ships with the Steam Controller’s dongle pre-installed in the secret compartment (sit tight, we’ll be talking about that very soon).

In general, Steam Machines are a difficult thing to define. Too often, we describe it as a “game console” for PC gaming, but it’s more complicated than that. A Steam Machine isn’t just a simple piece of hardware designed to play games on a TV; it’s an ecosystem of disparate parts that come together to create a versatile platform you can use to play games on your TV.

Put simply, a Steam Machine is made up of three main components: a gaming PC, Valve’s Linux-based SteamOS and the paradigm-defying Steam Controller.

The Alienware Steam Machine earns its name by the simple virtue of having all of this in one package. It presents itself as a consumer game console — which is the idea — but as we move forward, don’t lose sight of that bigger picture. This is a normal, powerful gaming PC loaded up with a special version of Linux and controlled with a bizarre gamepad. It’s not a game console, but that’s what’s amazing about it: It feels, acts and performs almost exactly like one.

The console masquerade

Truth be told, I didn’t expect a lot from the Alienware Steam Machine when I first turned it on. To me, it was just a collection of things I’d seen before. SteamOS’ TV-friendly interface has existed for years as the desktop app’s “Big Picture” mode. Almost every version of the Steam Controller I touched over the years felt like an awkward prototype. Not even the hardware was new to me — the Alpha came close to mimicking the feel of a game console, but the illusion was incomplete. I couldn’t imagine it all coming together into one cohesive whole, but it does. I almost can’t believe it.

The Alienware Steam Machine is everything that Windows-based PC “game consoles” aren’t. It’s easy to set up, easy to use, extremely reliable and practically idiot-proof. Let me invoke the Alienware Alpha one more time to illustrate this: When I booted up Dell’s original media-center gaming PC for the first time, it presented me with a “grab your mouse and keyboard” Windows 8 setup screen. It was awful. The new machine? It showed me a simple outline of Valve’s Steam Controller, asked me to press a single button and then effortlessly led me through signing EULAs, adjusting TV settings, setting up the internet and logging into Steam. It was easy.

The recently redesigned Big Picture mode that makes up the SteamOS interface is a huge improvement over Steam’s previous TV-scaled layout. The core elements of the menu are presented front and center in large buttons: Store, Library and Community, all of which can be selected using the gamepad’s joystick. Diving into any of them brings up a list of deeper options on the screen’s left side, while a dynamic layout of games and content is plastered on the right.

From there, everything is extremely self-explanatory. The Library menu, for instance, shows your games as wide billboards on the right with options like “recent,” “installed” and “favorites” on the left. Pop in into any of those menus, and a filter menu will peek out from the right side of the screen, enticing you to search or sort your library with various attributes: controller, supported, installed locally, etc. When you settle on a game, the menu morphs again, moving the title’s banner to the upper-left corner of the screen and underlining it with more options. These allow you to play or manage your game (another sub menu that offers controller configuration, launch options, and so on). There’s also a list of community content for the title (screenshots, artwork, videos, live broadcasts, etc.).

This feels like a console experience because it is a console experience — it never betrays itself as a Linux desktop PC rigged to run in Steam’s Big Picture mode. Pop-up windows and errors don’t leave me wanting for a mouse and keyboard. Like a game console, it just works — without troubleshooting. For the most part, the interface “just works” too.

SteamOS’ Big Picture mode may be the best version of the TV interface Valve’s made to date, but there are definitely a few areas that still need work. I specifically had problems with the Store. Steam’s online marketplace is enormous, fun to browse and fairly well-organized, but on SteamOS, it’s also incomplete. Valve says there are over 6,000 games available to purchase on Steam, about 1,500 of which are compatible with the Alienware Steam Machine. If you’re using SteamOS at the time of this writing, though, you can only view a few hundred of them.

Right now, SteamOS only lets users browse curated lists of featured and recently released games. These limited lists are organized by “top sellers,” “recently updated” and “popular new releases,” but they only make up a tiny fragment of the available library. The menu has no advanced options for sorting through titles, and will only bring up a non-featured game if you search for it manually. I had to visit Steam’s website via the console’s built-in web browser to add BioShock Infinite, Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel, Left 4 Dead 2 and Spec Ops: The Line to my library. All of these games are natively compatible with the Alienware Steam Machine, but none of them showed up in the store menu. That’s a problem.

SteamOS feels very close to a real console menu, but its interface is still in development. As I was writing this piece, Valve pushed a beta update to my device that changed the layout of the store and introduced a bug that caused it to display Windows-only games that aren’t compatible with the Alienware Steam Machine. Two more updates arrived after that, fixing various UI issues. For now, it’s a waiting game: Valve has told us that the system will be getting several major updates before its official November launch. With any luck, they’ll sort out these issues and deliver a more complete experience before the product ships (we’ll let you know).

A console controller for PC games

I may have had my doubts about Valve’s plan to build a PC platform for the living room, but the company’s Steam Controller had my attention from day one. Valve had designed a prototype gamepad that eschewed every convention we’ve come to expect from modern game controllers. It didn’t have analog sticks; it had clickable touchpads that promised to replace a PC gamer’s mouse. Instead of face buttons, it had a large, high-resolution touchscreen. Valve even put extra buttons on the back of the gamepad’s grip. It was new. It was weird. It was exciting — but it was a little too bold.

Valve spent the next two years trying to make the Steam Controller feel a little less alien. Today, it’s a balanced combination of innovation and familiarity: a single analog stick, four face buttons, standard shoulder and trigger toggles, two rear-facing grip buttons and two big haptic touchpads. It’s probably the biggest deviation in traditional gamepad design since Sony introduced the DualShock Analog Controller in 1997, and I love it.
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Most of the Steam Controller’s components feel exactly as you would expect: It has a top-flight analog stick, responsive face buttons and good triggers — but the flagship feature is definitely those weird touchpads. These slightly concave surfaces allow the controller to work as a surprisingly precise mouse. It’s not just a 1:1 mouse control, either: The Steam Controller cleverly emulates the momentum of a track ball. If you drag a thumb over the surface slowly, the cursor will move with deliberate, precise motion. Flick that same thumb and it will accelerate and gradually slow down. Haptic engines under the touchpads lend a tactile feeling to the entire experience. It feels good. Great, even.

This kind of control opens doors for mouse-only PC titles. Games that rely on cursor control like Shadowrun Returns and Papers Please are suddenly playable without a mouse and keyboard. I found myself playing Civilization: Beyond Earth in my living room. In first-person shooters and action games, the Steam Controller offers me a more sensitive mouselook-style input than I’ve experienced with a traditional gamepad.

It’s exactly what I want in a hand-held PC game controller, but I won’t lie: The learning curve can be brutal. Those touchpads are incredibly sensitive, and using them in first-person gaming feels wildly different than pushing against the consistent pressure of an analog stick. Appropriately, it’s more like using a mouse and keyboard — flicking quickly in one direction or another to look around and picking up and repeatedly moving the “mouse” (or in this case, your thumb) to achieve certain movements. It takes time and patience, and won’t come easy to everyone.

The Steam Controller also relies heavily on Valve’s software. Every game now has a “configure controller” submenu that allows the user to customize the gamepad to their liking. Want to adjust the sensitivity of the trackpad? Looking to disable the requirement to “click” the left pad down to register a directional pad input? Need to remap a button with an obscure keyboard toggle to get the control to feel right? You can do all that here — there are dozens of options to tweak.

You can also select from three default templates — a gamepad-emulation mode, keyboard (WASD) with mouse and a hybrid mode that blends gamepad controls with the higher-precision camera allowed by mouse control. These three profiles were enough to make most of my Steam library playable, but they aren’t perfect: The gamepad mode does a pretty poor job of emulating the right thumbstick, resulting in a control scheme that feels unnatural and slow. The hybrid mode fixes this for most titles, but some simply don’t play nice with simultaneous gamepad and mouse inputs — those will need to be configured using the WASD mode. This usually works, but it means any on-screen prompts you see in the game will be for a mouse and keyboard. Like I said, it’s not perfect.

Many games come with a default or recommended profile, but watch out: Some of them are wrong. If a game requires dual-analog controls and recommends using the gamepad-emulation mode, it’s usually an awful experience. You can adjust the sensitivity curves of the emulated stick, but more often than not there’s a “community” profile made by another user that has already solved the problem. Oh, did I not mention? Any controller profile you make can be shared with the community — and these crowdsourced profiles are usually the best available.

Also, I think it’s a little telling that almost every game I played that recommended “gamepad” mode from the publisher also had a community profile titled “Alienware PAX” that swapped out the right-stick emulation for high-precision mouse control.

When it works, though, it’s phenomenal. Valve has baked native Steam Controller support into some of its own games, and they’re excellent. Portal 2, for instance, has controller profiles that automatically remap certain gamepad buttons to fit your situation. If you’re in a level, the Steam Controller adopts one setting; if you’re in a menu or the game’s puzzle editor mode, it’ll adopt another.

These native profiles are a game changer — replaying Portal 2 with the Steam Controller has been an absolute joy. The sensitivity curves are just right, while the jump and use functions of the rear-facing paddle buttons feel natural. Valve even included an optional motion-control profile that lets you tilt the gamepad to control the camera, similar to the aiming mechanic Nintendo uses for Splatoon. It feels great, like Portal 2 was made for the Steam Controller.

If true native Steam Controller support becomes a PC gaming standard, I’ll never touch my Xbox 360 gamepad ever again… but in the meantime, I’m not getting rid of it. I was perfectly happy to use the Steam Controller for most of the titles in my library, but every now and then one wouldn’t play nice with hybrid gamepad mode and also didn’t feel right in WASD-keyboard-and-mouse mode. In these rare cases, reverting back to the Xbox gamepad worked best. Luckily, the Alienware Steam Machine natively recognized my wireless Xbox controller dongle. With any luck, I won’t need it in the future, but I do right now.

The Steam Controller is pretty handy for text entry and web browsing, too. No, really — pull up a text-entry field in SteamOS’ Store search or web browser, and the system will let you use the dual touchpads to touch-type text. Simply drag your finger across the pad, use the on-screen cursors (one for each pad) to select a button and click down to select it. After years of smartphone text messaging, it feels completely natural, and it’s my new favorite “game console” mechanic for text entry. The right touchpad also works like a real mouse in the web browser and the left works as a scroll bar. For the first time in my life, I’m comfortably browsing the web on my television. It’s nice.

Finally, there’s one killer feature the Steam Controller and the Alienware Steam Machine are missing: The ability to power on the console using just the controller itself. This is a standard feature for every other device in my entertainment center, but the Alienware box just can’t do it. This isn’t a surprise: Most desktop PCs can’t be powered on from a device over USB, but some devices can be put into sleep mode and woken up by a remote controller. As far as I can tell, that’s not an option here, either. If you want to play Steam, you’ll have to get off your couch and turn the machine on yourself. How tedious.

Gameplay and performance

Okay, so the Alienware Steam Machine has the right operating system and the right controller — but does it have the right components? Can it keep up with today’s consumer game consoles and still pass muster as a gaming PC? Most of the time, yes.

My $749 test unit costs a pretty penny more than the highest-priced console on the market, but it has a lot to offer. The flagship Alienware Steam Machine packs in a Core i7-4785T CPU, 8GB DDR3 memory, a 1TB 7,200 rpm hard drive and a customized NVIDIA GTX 860M graphics chip with 2GB of video RAM. That turned out to be enough power to run almost everything in my SteamOS-compatible library on high visual settings at a decent frame rate.

Most games automatically configured themselves to medium visual settings by default, hovering at 45 frames per second or higher, depending on the title, but I found the system could push most of them a little further. Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel happily bounced between 35 and 50 fps (depending on how much action was on screen) on maximum visual settings, and both Shadow Warrior and Spec Ops: The Line eclipsed 50 fps with the dials turned to 11. BioShock Infinite dipped just below 30 fps on Ultra, but maintained a solid 40 average when tuned down to “very high” settings. I had similar results with Serious Sam 3, finding Ultra to be just a tad too much, but High ran just fine. It should be no surprise that Valve’s own games also ran great on the first official Steam Machine: Left 4 Dead 2 and Portal 2 had no problem hitting 60 fps on their highest visual settings.

Even The Witcher 2, one of my library’s heavier hitters, ran moderately well, managing to stay above 30 fps on high settings and comfortably hitting the 40s on medium. Simpler offerings like Civilization: Beyond Earth had no trouble hitting playable frame rates on maximum settings, and the machine also shrugged off the plethora of indie titles available for SteamOS + Linux.

The games that ran poorly surprised me: Shadow of Mordor struggled to hit playable frame rates at my television’s native 1080p resolution until I dialed back its graphics options to their lowest settings. I don’t know if the game is simply more resource-intensive than I realized, if it’s poorly optimized for PCs or if it’s just a bad Linux port.

Installing, running and playing games on the Alienware was usually a seamless experience — jumping directly from the SteamOS menu into a game. Most of the time, this led to a smooth, console-like gaming experience, although there was the occasional hiccup. The Witcher 2 doesn’t launch straight into the game, and requires the user to click “play” in a launcher program before starting in earnest. To navigate this quirk, I had to press the Steam Controller’s “home” button to change profiles multiple times.

A few games also suffered from weird stuttering despite running well at high specifications: BioShock Infinite, Spec Ops: The Line and Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel would all occasionally drop a few frames, causing the game to look like it was “hanging” for a quarter of a second every few minutes. Weird.

Right now, our test unit represents the absolute best Steam Machine that Dell has to offer — if you want more power, you’ll have to upgrade it yourself. Fortunately, that’s pretty easy: Four screws on the bottom of the tiny case are all you need to remove to get access to the Steam Machine’s RAM, HDD slot and LGA 1150 CPU socket (compatible with Haswell and select Broadwell processors. Sorry Skylake fans).

Getting less power is pretty easy too: Dell sells a $649 model identical to our test unit, save for a downgraded Intel Core i5 CPU. Dropping down to the $549 build will saddle you with a Core i3 CPU and one fewer internal wireless antenna. A bottom-dollar $449 unit is available as well, shipping with the Core i3 processor, 4GB of RAM and a smaller 500GB HDD. Fortunately, all configurations share the same NVIDIA GPU.

The library

Knowing that the Alienware Steam Machine can play modern releases (with a few caveats) is great, but that alone isn’t enough to say if it can compete with traditional consoles or other gaming PCs. In an industry where content is king, are there enough Linux games available on Valve’s platform for SteamOS to thrive? It depends on your perspective.

In a strictly numerical sense, SteamOS has tons of games — over 1,500 titles available to download and play right now, today. In a more qualitative sense? Maybe don’t bank on a Linux-based Steam Machine as your only game console. Not yet, at least.

That’s not to say there aren’t lots of great games available for SteamOS and Linux — every single one of the titles I listed above ran natively on the system — but there are definitely fewer multiplatform AAA titles on the Linux section of Steam’s marketplace than you might find on Windows, Xbox or PlayStation. Worse still, some games that were promised to launch on Linux alongside Windows and consoles missed their mark: The Batman: Arkham Knight Linux port failed to surface when the game re-launched on PC and The Witcher III: Wild Hunt is still absent from Steam OS five months after its Windows release.

On the plus side, Valve carries a lot of weight in the gaming industry, and it has a vested interest in convincing developers to port big-name games to Linux. It’s extremely probable that we’ll see an explosion in Linux-compatible releases over the next several years. In the meantime, SteamOS’ Linux library offers one extra advantage: It’s unique. There are literally hundreds of distinct, fun, independent and lesser-known titles lurking in the Steam marketplace that simply aren’t available on Xbox One or PlayStation 4.

Not enough? Okay — Valve has one more trick up its sleeve, but it requires another computer: Steam In-Home Streaming. This feature has been around for a while, but now it’s baked directly into the SteamOS ecosystem. If you have a Windows PC anywhere on your network running Steam, you can pipe its games to the Alienware Steam Machine to fill in the holes in the Linux library. This trick tends to work better over Ethernet, and the whole thing depends on the health of your local network, but it’s a good stopgap for folks with another gaming machine. Already have another gaming PC but don’t want a Linux game console for your entertainment center? You may want to look at the Steam Link — it’s cheap; it comes with a Steam Controller; and it’s designed specifically for users who want to stream their gaming PC to their TV without adding a whole new computer to the network.

Early thoughts

I used to laugh when I saw Linux users scramble to build compatibility layers to play “real” PC games. I chuckled when Valve CEO Gabe Newell lambasted Windows 8 as a “catastrophe for everyone,” proffering Linux and SteamOS as a viable alternative. It seemed so far-fetched, so silly. Truth be told, I’m still laughing — but now it’s because I’m enjoying myself. The Alienware Steam Machine has some growing pains, but it’s fun. Lots of fun.

The first commercial Steam Machine isn’t quite an idiot-proof console just yet, but it’s close. In fact, it’s close enough I’m thinking about recommending it to friends hesitant to step into the world of PC gaming. It’s fun and easy to use. The issues it has are minor and simple to troubleshoot. It still needs some major patches and more games support, but Valve seems dedicated to providing that support. I’m looking forward to seeing how the company updates SteamOS before its official November 10th launch. Be sure to check back between now and then, as we plan to update our story as new features roll out.

15
Oct

Valve’s Steam Link: better than a 50-foot HDMI cable


http://www.engadget.com/2015/10/15/valves-steam-link-review/

Steam Machines are finally here — real gaming PCs designed to live in your entertainment center and play the role of hardcore gaming console. There’s just one problem: I’ve never wanted one. Don’t get me wrong: Valve’s quest to drag PC gaming into the living room is awesome, but I already have an incredibly powerful gaming rig in my office. I don’t need a second, redundant machine in front of my couch. On the other hand, I’m an insane person who drilled holes in his wall to run 50 feet of cabling from his gaming PC to the back of his television set.

There’s an easier way, according to Valve, and it’s called the Steam Link. This $50 micro PC was announced at GDC earlier this year with one express purpose in mind — piping high-end PC gaming over a home network on the cheap. That sounds pretty good, but can it outperform my power drill and various lengths of cable?

Note: Valve says it plans to continue rolling out software updates ahead of the Steam product family’s official launch on November 10th. We plan to update our story as these new features come out. We will also hold off on assigning the Link a numerical score until Valve begins shipping final hardware.

Hardware and setup

The Steam Link isn’t much to look at: It’s a simple black box that’s the same size as a US passport and a little thicker than a wallet. Picture a portable hard drive etched with a tiny Steam logo on its top, and you’ve got the look down pat. There isn’t much in the way of connectivity here, either: The Link’s back edge features just two USB ports, Ethernet, HDMI output and a tiny hole for an AC adapter. An extra USB port can be found on the Link’s side, but that’s all there is to it. The device doesn’t even have an LED light to indicate if it’s powered on or off. It’s extremely discreet, and disappears behind my television as easily as a Chromecast or Roku box might.

Setup is pretty simple: All I had to do was plug the Link into the wall, connect it to one of my TV’s spare HDMI ports and snap in an Ethernet cable. That was it — the Link automatically powered on (and turned my TV on via HDMI-CEC), and then connected to the internet and updated its firmware. Nice.
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The Link’s main menu doesn’t offer much, but at least it’s easy to navigate. Only three options appear on the device’s home screen: Start Playing, Settings and Support. There’s not much to the Start Playing and Support sections (one starts Steam’s In-Home Streaming feature and the other simply redirects to a support site), but the Settings menu actually has quite a few options. Here, you can adjust the display for overscan compensation, change your WiFi and network setting, tweak language preferences, check for firmware updates and choose among three streaming quality options: fast, balanced and beautiful. I left the rig to its default “balanced” setting; if this box is going to beat out my absurdly practical wire-through-the-wall approach, it’s going to need to “just work” without a second thought.

I backed out to the main menu, selected “Start Playing” and watched the Link automatically find my gaming PC over the wired network. It found my Windows tablet too, actually — any device on that network that’s logged into Steam locally will show up here. It’s pretty convenient, but my media tablet is kind of a joke when it comes to playing games. I selected my custom-built gaming tower instead.

The first time I connected the Link to my gaming rig, it offered me a one-time passcode to enter on the host computer; after that, it connected automatically, without hesitation. This actually surprised me a little: when I use Steam In-Home-Streaming to push my gaming PC’s content to my tablet, Steam requires me to log into the desktop client on both devices. The Link didn’t need me to log in at all; it just pulled up the Steam Big Picture interface and gave me control of the PC from my couch.

Performance

As I launched my first Steam Link-streamed PC game, something seemed a little off. Visually the game looked okay, with very light artifacting visible on only the brightest colors on screen — but the experience seemed a little slow. I dove into Steam’s In-Home Streaming settings and found an option to display stream performance data in real time. Despite my powerful rig, strong network and hardwired connection, the Link only displayed the video feed at an average rate of 30 frames per second. That’s not good enough. I went back to the Steam’s streaming menu and kicked the stream quality up to “beautiful.” No change. I knocked it back down to “fast.” Nothing. What was I doing wrong?

Eventually, I stumbled across a checkbox labeled “enable hardware encoding,” and everything changed. The Link immediately started to stream video at almost the same frame rate as my PC. The stream was sharper, with less artifacting. Try as I might, I couldn’t find a perceptible difference between when I pressed a button on my gamepad and what happened on screen.

A quick trip to Google taught me that Steam In-Home Streaming has supported hardware encoding from Intel and NVIDIA gear for a while, but it can cause issues for folks without the correct equipment and it’s not usually enabled by default. Still, it’s hard to complain: Even without the encoding feature, my network piped a pretty solid looking frame that bounced between 30 and 45 fps. That wasn’t fast enough to keep up with the racing game I used in my initial tests, but it would be plenty for slower-paced games. It also wasn’t a hard problem to fix.

That said, it dawned on me that my setup may be a little too perfect. My PC is running a CPU with a compatible Intel hardware encoder, with two NVIDIA GTX graphics cards running in SLI on top of that. Worse (or rather, better) still, both my gaming setup and the Steam Link were wired directly into an ASUS RT-N66U router. Of course it was working — my house is the ideal showroom testbed for Steam’s In-Home Streaming service. I decided to try and make things a little more fair. What if my router wasn’t so close to both my television and my gaming rig? I’d have to use WiFi. So I did. I noticed an immediate difference.

Removing the Link from my physical network and connecting over 2.4GHz WiFi didn’t seem to change the frame rate of Steam’s video feed, but it had a definite effect on audio and visual quality. It was still a playable experience, but every now and then the game’s audio would stutter, or the stream would hang for a brief moment. The graphics also seemed to suffer a little color fidelity, like a faded wash of video artifacting was always threatening to pop up. Upgrading to my router’s 5GHz connection helped a little, but the experience still wasn’t on par with what I saw over Ethernet. It wasn’t bad, per se — it just wasn’t as good.

I ran a few additional tests — attempting to stream from one of my Windows-based media tablets and an old ThinkPad — and confirmed the glaringly obvious: Steam in-home stream quality is heavily reliant on the capabilities of your home network and your host computer.

Gameplay

When Steam In-Home Streaming works (and it works perfectly on my network), playing games over the Steam Link is a lot like playing games on Alienware’s Steam Machine or in the desktop app’s Big Picture mode. Most of the time, it just works… but not all the time. Once or twice, my PC gave me an error that either broke the experience, or simply wasn’t present when I performed the same task on a SteamOS-based PC. Early on in my testing, for instance, I encountered a pop-up window asking for administrator privileges, which somehow disabled my Steam Controller’s ability to manipulate the mouse cursor, forcing me to walk to my desk to dismiss the window. It only happened once, but it happened. I guess not even the Link and Steam Controller can overcome the foibles of gaming on Windows.

I also had some inconsistent control issues; the native Steam Controller support Valve baked into Portal 2 refused to work on my Windows PC for some reason, despite working flawlessly on Alienware’s SteamOS console. Non-Steam games were happy to stream through to the Link if I added them to my Steam game library, but I could never get the dual-touchpad controller to play nice with these titles.

These issues were frustrating, but hardly unique to the Steam Link: Almost every issue I had persisted when I reverted back to my extra-long HDMI cable. These aren’t Steam In-Home-Streaming problems; they’re just regular Steam problems. The platform has come a long way in terms of getting Windows on my big-screen TV, but it’s still a work in progress. It probably always will be — Microsoft’s desktop OS has never felt at home in the living room.

At the end of the day, I could only identify two problems I could blame on the Steam Link. Sometimes, after disconnecting from Steam In-Home Streaming, my PC would crank up some internal brightness setting and become unreadable — forcing me to reboot to restore normal visual parameters. I also experienced some odd audio issues while streaming to the Link that I could never sort out: Every now and then, the PC-streamed audio would be significantly quieter than the ambient menu noise the Link played before I started streaming. Hopefully, Valve will be able to patch these kinds of glitches before the Link hits the consumer market.

Early thoughts

At the end of the day, all I really want is an easy, reliable way to put my gaming PC in my living room without actually physically moving the hardware in there. In the past, this meant running excessively long HDMI cables through my home’s walls, under its carpets and behind bookshelves. This worked for me, but the install process was tedious and frustrating — and an absolute nightmare to troubleshoot when a cheap cable shorted out on me.

The Steam Link, on the other hand offers a potentially less crisp image, but the difference is negligible when stacked against how much easier it is to set up. There are still some inherent drawbacks to using your PC as a game console — namely those Windows errors and some inconsistencies with what, when and how Valve’s Steam Controller works. Still — installing my stupid cable took me over an hour. I had Steam’s little streaming box up and running in less than 10 minutes. For $50 (or $100 with a Steam Controller), that’s a tempting proposition.

The next time my HDMI cables give me trouble, I’ll probably abandon them for the Steam Link. It’s just easier for me. If you have a reliable, fast home network, it’ll probably be easier for you, too.

15
Oct

Satechi Wireless Gamepad helps gamers play on smartphones and tablets


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One of the big challenges for gamers trying to use smartphones and tablets to enjoy their favorite titles has been control methods. With the variety of sensors in mobile devices, like gyroscopes, game developers have been able to introduce some unique features to games based on movement and the form factor lends itself to play outside of the living room or bedroom. However, the lack of buttons on a smartphone or tablet means controls have to be modified for a touchscreen, which can be quite a challenge. Satechi thinks they have a solution with their new Satechi Wireless Gamepad that brings traditional controls to mobile devices.

The Satechi Wireless Gamepad is a Bluetooth-enabled controller that includes 14 buttons, two joysticks and a directional pad, all of which should look quite familiar to gamers. Satechi has integrated a spring holder into the device that is designed to hold a smartphone in place so users can keep their eyes on the screen and their hands on the controls.

The Satechi Wireless Gamepad is compatible with iOS iCade games and other titles on the platform, and a whole host of games available on Android including some you may not think need a separate controller, like Angry Birds. The device will also work with Windows based devices as well.

The Satechi Wireless Gamepad is currently listed for $39.99 and can be purchased directly from Satechi or through Amazon. Check out the full press release below for more details and information.

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Satechi’s New Wireless Gamepad Transforms iOS, Android and Windows Smartphones & Tablets into Full-Fledged Gaming Devices

SAN DIEGO – (Oct. 14, 2015) – The new Satechi Wireless Gamepad is the ideal accessory for smartphone and tablet gamers. The iOS, Android and Windows compatible remote gives users the traditional gaming experience they crave, without the hassle of cumbersome or inaccurate touchscreen controls.

The user-friendly, Bluetooth-enabled Wireless Gamepad boasts 14 buttons, two joysticks, and a directional pad. The integrated spring holder places the smartphone on a convenient viewing angle on the gamepad, keeping eyes on the game and both hands on the controls. Together, these two features provide users the ultimate gaming experience on any mobile device.

The Wireless Gamepad has three available modes, depending on the platform gamers are using:

  • iCade Mode for iOS is compatible with iCade classic games including PAC-MAN, Asteroids, Centipede, and Battlezone. It is also compatible with a plethora of modern games. Simply search “iCade” in the app store for a list of compatible games for iOS.
  • Android/Mouse Mode is compatible with a wide range of free apps from the Google Play Store including Angry Birds, Grand Theft Auto 3, MC4, Wild blood, Dungeon Hunter, Zombie, FC simulator, GBA emulator arcade emulator, SFC simulator, N64 emulator, Shadowgun, Sonic CD, Cordy, soulcraft, Zenonia4, 9 Innings 2013, Riptide GP, and more.
  • Joystick Mode for Windows devices is compatible with gaming services such as Steam (remapping of keys may be required) for endless game play of Dota, Metal Gear Solid V, The Phantom Pain, Grand Theft Auto V, Fallout 4, Mad Max, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, NBA 2K16, Left 4 Dead 2, Far Cry 4, Call of Duty: Black Ops 2, Borderlands 2, and more.

The Wireless Gamepad is available now in for $39.99 on Satechi.net and Amazon.com.

For more information on the Wireless Gamepad and all of Satechi’s award winning products, “like” Facebook.com/Satechiand follow @Satechi.

About Satechi:
Established in 2005, Satechi is fully committed to offering unique accessories that people can integrate with their electronics in their homes, cars, and on the go. Satechi offers a broad selection of accessories from FM transmitters, battery chargers and speaker systems to car mounts, stands and keyboards. For more information, please visit www.Satechi.net.

Come comment on this article: Satechi Wireless Gamepad helps gamers play on smartphones and tablets

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15
Oct

Minecraft Story Mode now available at the Google Play Store


Back in July, Telltale games announced that the ever popular Minecraft game was coming out with a Story Mode for Android. Well the day has come for all you fanatics of Minecraft! Minecraft Story mode is now officially available at the Google Play Store for $4.99. Since this is a story, Telltale games will be releasing this as a five part series. As a player, you get to drive the story through the decisions you make by what you say to people, how you say it, and what you choose to do in moments of action which will make this your story. Click the link below to install the game.

Here is the description from the Google Play Store:

THE ADVENTURE OF A LIFETIME IN THE WORLD OF MINECRAFT

In this five part episodic series, play as either a male or female hero named ‘Jesse,’ and embark on a perilous adventure across the Overworld, through the Nether, to the End, and beyond. You and your friends revere the legendary Order of the Stone: Warrior, Redstone Engineer, Griefer, and Architect; slayers of the Ender Dragon. While at EnderCon in hopes of meeting Gabriel the Warrior, you and your friends discover that something is wrong… something dreadful. Terror is unleashed, and you must set out on a quest to find The Order of the Stone if you are to save your world from oblivion.

Featuring the voices of Patton Oswalt (Ratatouille, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D), Brian Posehn (The Sarah Silverman Program, Mission Hill), Ashley Johnson (The Last of Us, Tales from the Borderlands), Scott Porter (Friday Night Lights, X-Men), Martha Plimpton (The Goonies, Raising Hope), Dave Fennoy (The Walking Dead: A Telltale Games Series, Batman: Arkham Knight), Corey Feldman (The Goonies, Stand by Me), Billy West (Futurama, Adventure Time), and Paul Reubens (Tron: Uprising, Pee-Wee’s Playhouse)

Minecraft: Story Mode (Playboard) | Minecraft: Story Mode (Play Store)

The post Minecraft Story Mode now available at the Google Play Store appeared first on AndroidGuys.

15
Oct

Samsung teams up with Montblanc and Swarovski for all your overpriced accessories needs


Montblanc Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge case

Following the release of Samsung’s latest flagships, the smartphone giant usually teams up with other premium brands to launch a selection of rather expensive accessories. This time is no different, Samsung has partnered up with Montblanc and Swarovski to release a selection of premium cases for its Galaxy S6 Edge+ and Galaxy Note 5 smartphones.

The Montblanc collection features two protective leather covers, ladled soft gain and extreme, for both the Note 5 and S6 Edge+, the latter of which also comes with a flip wallet pocket. The collection also features a limited edition selection of hard-shell covers that feature handmade tattoo designs from artist Mo Coppoletta. You can see a little about how these are made in the video below. Montblanc has previously worked with Samsung to design cases for the Galaxy S6 and Note 4 too.

Swarovski is another previous Samsung partner and has again created a small selection of hard cover cases encrusted with enough jewels to rival the Queen of England’s crown. Ok not quite, the Crystal Silver cover only boasts 1,300 little crystals while the Imperial State Crown features more than 3,000 precious stones (thanks internet), but it’s really not a bad effort. Swarovski will also offer an even more premium case as part of its Edelweiss collection, which will be available in November just for the S6 Edge+.

Swarovski Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge case

We don’t have any price or launch date details for the accessories just yet, but if they are anything like the last batch, they will all probably end up being rather expensive. The collection will be available to order exclusively online in select countries.

See anything that you like?

15
Oct

Five Shadowy Facts You Need to Know About Contrast and Its Protagonist Dawn


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Contrast, new on NVIDIA SHIELD Android TV, is a strange and atmospheric adventure set in 1920s Paris. Powered by the Unreal Engine, it casts you as Dawn and tasks you with helping young Didi get her family back together, with plenty of twists and magic along the way.

There’s more to Dawn than meets the eye, though; here’s our guide to what’s so special about her in Contrast, which is available now on Google Play for $14.99.

An imaginary friend

Your first hint that Dawn isn’t a normal person comes at the beginning of the game, when Didi’s mother comes into her attic bedroom. You might expect her to be taken aback at this strange woman hanging out in her daughter’s room, but no; she’s completely oblivious to Dawn’s presence, and believes Dawn to be Didi’s imaginary friend. It turns out that Didi is the only person who can see her; what’s going on there, then? Maybe she really is just a figment of Didi’s imagination, or perhaps the truth is a whole lot stranger.

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Where is everybody?

Just as strange is the fact that Didi is the only person that Dawn is capable of seeing. She might seem to be moving around in a largely empty world, but as quickly becomes apparent, there are people there; it’s just that Dawn can’t see them. She can, however, hear their voices and see their shadows, and it’s these shadows that make up a key part of the Contrast experience.

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Into the shadows

Dawn’s most important ability is that she’s not tethered to this boring old three-dimensional world. Given the right circumstances she can shift into a 2D plane and become her own shadow, which might not seem like a particularly useful power, but it’s an essential skill in Contrast. In her two-dimensional shadow world, shadows act like solid objects; Dawn can climb over them and run along them, enabling her to get to places that she wouldn’t otherwise be able to reach. The 2D plane’s also a handy way to get through glass doors and windows; as her shadow self, Dawn can simply walk straight through them.

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Build your own platforms

Another feature of Dawn’s 2D abilities is that she can create her own pathways in the 2D world by manipulating shadows to her advantage. There are a few areas in Contrast where you’ll have to move shadows around; either by moving a light source to change the shadows cast by static objects, or by moving objects around in front of a fixed light source, you can create vast shadow walkways that can turn impassable chasms into a straightforward stroll. Dawn can also pick up objects in the 3D world and carry them with her into the 2D plane, either to use as makeshift 2D platforms or to move them to places that she wouldn’t be able to carry them to if she was stuck in 3D.

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Cutting a dash

Being able to switch between 2D and 3D isn’t Dawn’s only ability; she also has a special dash move that comes in handy at times. In the 3D world she can use it to get around quickly, and also to extend her jumps, even in different directions. Not only that, she can also use it to smash through breakable barriers and access new areas. She can dash to extend her jumps in 2D, too, but more useful is the ability to dash through thin shadows that would otherwise be impassable.

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The SHIELD version of Contrast also retains the full PC experience of the game including high-definition textures, advanced lighting, effects, and filtering. Multi-sampled anti-aliasing also provides impressively detailed high-fidelity imagery.

Contrast is now available to download on NVIDIA SHIELD Android TV.

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15
Oct

Moto X Style (Pure Edition) vs Apple iPhone 6s Plus


It’s obvious that large smartphones have seen a rapid growth in popularity over the years, and while big displays have more or less become the standard in the Android world, even Apple finally gave in to the trend last year with a Plus iteration of their flagship smartphone. Apple recently unveiled their latest 2015 flagships, with there once again being a larger version in the mix, and it’s natural to be curious about how this device fares against the best large screen smartphones that Android has to offer.

With this in mind, we pit the latest plus-sized iPhone against Motorola‘s flagship, in  an in-depth look at the Moto X Style / Pure Edition vs Apple iPhone 6s Plus!

Design

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As far as the design is concerned, neither smartphone features a dramatic departure from their predecessors, and in the case of the iPhone, the design language is identical, given that this is an “s” iteration. The Moto X Style also retains a lot of the design language of the Moto X (2014), featuring the same metal frame, an identical placement of the buttons and ports, as well as the significant curve along the corners and the rear. The difference in the style comes when looking at the signature Motorola dimple on the back however, which is now housed in a metallic strip that includes the camera and flash, and is also much smaller in size and takes on a more subtle look.

As mentioned, the iPhone 6s Plus features the same design language as the iPhone 6 Plus before it, but unlike previous generations, where Apple has typically made the “s” iteration thinner and lighter, the iPhone 6s Plus is actually slightly thicker and heavier than its predecessor. This is because the iPhone 6s Plus is now made with a stronger 7000 series aluminium, which makes it less likely to bend, and there is also an additional pressure sensitive layer below the display, needed in order to utilize the phone’s new 3D Touch feature.

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When comparing the two, the Moto X Pure Edition is thicker, but manages to be less tall and not as wide as the iPhone 6s Plus, despite the former featuring a larger display, courtesy of the very thin bezels the device features along the sides. This difference in size also means that the Moto X Pure Edition has the edge with regards to the handling experience, but both are still very large smartphones that do fall just outside the realm of comfortable one handed use.

One aspect that makes the Motorola flagship hard to beat is when it comes to the customization possibilities available to you. Moto Maker allows you to pick and choose your own color scheme, accent colors, and material for the back cover, and you also have the ability to add custom engravings and messages on the back, for that little bit more of a personalized touch. On the other hand, things are far simpler with the iPhone 6s Plus, with your choices limited to space gray, gold, and silver, with there now also being a rose gold version available for those who want it.

Display

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On the display front, the Moto X Pure Edition comes with a 5.7-inch IPS LCD display with a Quad HD resolution, while the iPhone 6s Plus features a 5.5-inch IPS LCD screen, but with a lower 1080p resolution. The display of the Motorola flagship is understandably the sharper of the two because of its higher resolution and resulting pixel density, which allows for a great media-viewing experience.

Of course, the display of the iPhone 6s Plus is no slouch either and looks fantastic in its own right, but some differences are noticeable when looking at the two displays side by side. The screen of the iPhone 6s Plus does get significantly brighter, and the colors are more natural, when compared to the more saturated color tones of the Moto X Pure Edition. This default saturated look may be more appealing to some, but if it doesn’t quite suit your tastes, you do have the option to change it, which can easily be done in the Settings.

Performance

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Judging purely by specs, the Moto X Pure (Style) certainly looks like it could easily trounce the iPhone 6s Plus, but let’s remember that there’s more to the story here. These two phones run on very different software, and Apple’s tight control over its ecosystem allows it to provide a level of optimization that Android OEMs just can’t offer. The subsequent result is that Apple can make due with much less aggressive specs and yet still offer flagship-level performance.

As far as their respective processing packages are concerned however, the Moto X Pure Edition comes with a hexa-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 808 processor, backed by 3 GB of RAM. In contrast, the iPhone 6s Plus features a dual-core Apple A9 processor, with 2 GB of RAM in tow, doubling the amount of RAM available with the previous generation of the iPhone.

Despite the significant difference on paper, there is barely any disparity when it comes to real world performance. Both devices perform extremely well, and both handle multi-tasking and gaming equally impressively. That said, the iPhone 6s Plus actually manages to outperform the Moto X Pure Edition when it comes to benchmark scores, with the former featuring much higher single core and multi-core scores when compared to the latter, when using Geekbench. The Moto X Pure Edition is certainly of the snappiest Android devices available in the market right now, but you are going to get an overall more consistent experience on the iPhone, when it comes to things like gaming.

Hardware

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When it comes to on-board storage, the Moto X Pure Edition is available in 16 GB, 32 GB, and 64 GB iterations, while the iPhone 6s Plus also features a base 16 GB model, but with the larger storage options being 64 GB and 128 GB. 16 GB is not a lot of storage with any smartphone, but is still a possible choice with the Motorola device, given that it also comes with expandable storage via microSD card, by up to 128 GB. With no expandable storage available with the iPhone 6s Plus, 16 GB of on-board storage may not be enough for a lot of users.

The iPhone 6s Plus doesn’t hold a candle to the Moto X Pure Edition when it comes to speaker quality however. The dual-front facing speakers of the latter not only get very loud, but also provides high quality audio, further enhancing the media-consumption and gaming experience. The speaker of the iPhone 6s Plus does delivery some decent audio as well, but considering that it is a single speaker unit mounted at the bottom, the audio experience is obviously not going to be the most impressive around.

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Neither device packs a whole lot extra on the hardware front, but the iPhone 6s Plus does get the leg up here with the addition of a a really good fingerprint sensor. Touch ID is faster than ever, and simply pressing the home button will instantaneously unlock the phone. The fingerprint sensor is actually a little too fast, which is a weird thing to complain about, but if you are trying to glance at your notifications in the gap between pressing the button to turn on the display and the device unlocking, you will likely not be able to. The obvious work around here is to use the power button to wake the device first before unlocking it, but is something you may have to get used to, depending on which device you switch from.

When it comes to the battery, the Moto X Pure Edition packs a 3,000 mAh battery under the hood, while the iPhone 6s Plus comes with a 2,750 mAh unit. The battery life is pretty good with both smartphones, with both comfortably allowing for a full day of use, which sometimes goes up to a day and a half with the iPhone 6s Plus. Where the Moto X Pure Edition has the advantage here is when it comes to charging. With Motorola’s Turbo Power charger, the Motorola device charges extremely fast and will get you back to full capacity in around 75 minutes. On the other hand, the proprietary lightning cable may not allow for any fast charging, but the cable is reversible, which sounds minor, but makes plugging in the device that much easier and more convenient.

Camera

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Historically, flagships from Motorola and Apple have been at opposing ends of the smartphone camera quality spectrum, with Apple releasing great cameras year after year. As expected, Apple has introduced a few improvements to their camera experience with the iPhone 6s Plus, but this time around, Motorola promised a significantly improved one as wellm with the aim to at least bring its camera at par with the impressive competition out there.

With the Moto X Pure Edition, you get a 21 MP rear camera with a dual tone LED flash and phase detection autofocus, while the iPhone 6s Plus features an also upgraded 12 MP unit, with optical image stabilization on-board. This is a significant bump for both smartphones, and in the case of the iPhone, the new sensor finally allows for video recording in 4K. Another new feature the iPhone 6s Plus comes with is called “live” photos, which essentially records 1.5 seconds before and after a photo is taken. To see them, you use 3D Touch on the photo you took, and image will instantly come to life in the form of a short video.

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The front-facing cameras have also received upgrades on both smartphones, with both now featuring 5 MP units, compared to the 1.2 MP and 2 MP front-facing cameras seen with the iPhone 6 Plus and the Moto X (2014). The interesting part about the Moto X Pure Edition’s camera is the availability of a front-facing flash, included to help with taking selfies in low-light conditions. The iPhone 6s Plus may not have this, but comes with what Apple calls “Retina Flash,” which is basically the screen lighting up when you a take a photo.

Neither implementation is revolutionary, but Apple’s Retina Flash does work a little better at evenly illuminating the face, and isn’t as blinding as the front-facing flash on the Moto X Pure Edition. Another difference between these two front-facing cameras is that the Moto X Pure Edition camera is of the wide angle variety, which will allow you to fit multiple subjects into the frame, which isn’t possible with the iPhone 6s Plus.

The camera of the Moto X Pure Edition has proven to be very good this year, but when compared to the images of the iPhone 6s Plus, there is a big disparity in the way that both devices handle post-processing. The images with the Motorola smartphone are a lot more saturated and with more contrast, while the iPhone 6s Plus maintains a more natural look. Which one you prefer boils down to personal taste, but where the iPhone really outshines the Moto X Pure Edition is in dynamic range. There is a lot more detail to be found in darker areas like shadows, and highlights aren’t blown out like they are on the Moto X.

Things remain along the same lines when it comes to taking shots in low-light conditions as well. The photos with the Moto X Pure Edition aren’t bad by any stretch of the imagination, and there is certainly a huge improvement when compared to the camera of its predecessor. That said, the highlights are typically blown out, and there is quite a bit of noise reduction and over brightening being performed, which results in a much softer and grainier photo. For something that doesn’t feature OIS, this camera is a decent performer in low light, but definitely pales in comparison to the much sharper and cleaner looking images that the iPhone 6s Plus manages to capture.

Software

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As is the case with any Android versus iPhone comparison, you are looking at two completely different experiences and ecosystems on the software side of things.

With the Moto X Pure Edition, you get a near stock Android experience of Android 5.1.1 Lollipop, which helps keep everything running smoothly, and should also provide for speedy updates to future versions of Android. There are some really useful features baked in by Motorola though, such as Moto Voice, that lets you use a custom catch phrase to call on the device, even when the phone in an idle state. There is also Moto Display, Moto Actions, and Moto Assist, that allows for a variety of different features, like subtly peeking at your notifications, twisting your wrist to launch the camera, or automatically silencing your phone during any preset times.

With the iPhone 6s Plus comes iOS 9, and if you having been using iPhones previously, there won’t be too many surprises here. Everything remains largely the same aesthetically, and it is still the same grid of icons as it has always been, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, if you are looking for a pretty straightforward software experience.

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The most notable addition with the latest iPhones is the addition of 3D Touch, which lets you perform functions that Apple likes to call “peek” and “pop.” Keep in mind that 3D Touch isn’t the same thing as a long press, which still works as it would normally. With 3D Touch, you are physically applying pressure on the display, and this will allow for access to certain additional features and functions.

As an example, if you are in the Mail application, pressing down on a e-mail lets you take a quick glance at it without fully opening it, and pressing a little harder will take you into the full email, if you decide that it something you want to go through further. This can also be done with applications on the homescreens, so if you were to use 3D Touch on the camera app, you can quickly take a photo, record a video, and even take a selfie.

Moto X Pure Edition Vs iPhone 6S Plus-3

Most of Apple’s own applications already come with 3D Touch support, and while third-party app support is limited for now, that number will continue to go up as more developers update their applications. Even without a heavy amount of third-party support, there is still a lot you can do with 3D Touch, such as easily moving the cursor around by pressing down on the keyboard, or jumping into the multi-tasking screen by pressing the display and sliding from the side. It is quite fun to just poke and prod at things to see what works and what doesn’t, and from the looks of it, this feature certainly offers a lot of potential for Apple.

Specs comparison

  Moto X Style / Pure Edition iPhone 6s Plus
Display 5.7-inch TFT LCD display
Quad HD resolution, 520 ppi		 5.5-inch IPS LCD display
Full HD resolution, 401 ppi
Processor 1.8 GHz hexa-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 808
Adreno 418 GPU		 1.8 GHz dual-core Apple A9
PowerVR GT7600 GPU
RAM 3 GB 2 GB
Storage 16/32/64 GB
expandable via microSD up to 128 GB		 16/64/128 GB
no expansion
Camera 21 MP rear camera with phase detection autofocus, dual tone LED flash
5 MP front-facing camera		 12 MP rear camera with OIS
5 MP front-facing camera
Connectivity Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac
Bluetooth 4.1
GPS + GLONASS
NFC
microUSB 2.0		 a/b/g/n/ac
Bluetooth 4.2
GPS + GLONASS
NFC ( with Apple Pay only)
USB 2.0
Software Android 5.1.1 Lollipop iOS 9
Battery 3,000 mAh 2,750 mAh
Dimensions 153.9 x 76.2 x 11.1 mm
179 grams		 158.2 x 77.9 x 7.3 mm
192 grams

Gallery

Pricing and final thoughts

The Moto X Pure Edition is easily one of the most affordable flagship smartphones currently out there, and for just $400, you can get yourself a completely customized device. The iPhone 6s Plus, on the other hand, with set you back $750 for the 16 GB base model, and pricing goes up from there, based on your storage needs. The iPhone 6s Plus is definitely not cheap, but you do have the option of picking it up at a subsidized rate through network carriers, an option that isn’t available with Moto X Pure Edition.

Moto X Pure Edition Vs iPhone 6S Plus-21

So there you have it for this in-depth look at the Moto X Pure Edition vs iPhone 6s Plus! You of course, can’t go wrong with either smartphone, but what the Moto X Pure Edition brings to the table is customization, a clean software experience, and microSD expansion, all for a price point that is significantly cheaper that most other current-generation flagships. The iPhone 6s Plus will offer everything you’ve come to expect from previous iPhones, will adding and improving features like the camera and 3D Touch.

If you absolutely want an iPhone, the iPhone 6s Plus, is the best one that money can buy. On the flipside, for those that want the freedom provided by Android, and also want to save some hard cash, the Moto X Pure (Style) remains one of the best choices on the market.

Buy Moto X Pure

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