Huawei P9 confirmed to feature dual cameras, hints at Leica tech

The Huawei P9 launch event is all set to kick off on 9 April after official invites were sent out. Now it looks like the rumoured dual cameras are certain to appear too.

Following a series of leaks culminating in a massive reveal on Oppomart yesterday, Huawei has now sent out a teaser showing the dual cameras. The image, above, shows the dual lens camera system inside the P9 name. But it goes further.

The image, you’ll notice, also features a slither of red on one of the lenses. This very likely is the Leica red and makes a nod to Huawei’s recent announcement that it partnered with Leica to work on the P9 camera.

The Huawei P9 camera is rumoured to feature a 12-megapixel dual lens system with OIS and laser autofocus. Where Leica fits into all that is still unclear at this stage.

Huawei is expected to launch a P9, P9 Max and P9 Lite on 9 April.

The flagship P9 Max is rumoured to feature a 6.2-inch QHD display, Kirin 955 octa-core with 4GB RAM and 64GB storage, 3000mAh battery and a $699 price.

The P9 should feature a 5.2-inch 1080p display, Kirin 950 octa-core with 3GB RAM and 32GB storage plus a 3000mAh battery and $499 price.

The P9 Lite is expected to have a 5-inch 1080p screen, Snapdragon 650 processor, 2GB of RAM and 2500mAh battery plus a $299 price.

Expect to hear full details at the launch event on 9 April.

READ: Huawei P9: What’s the story so far?

New Sky VR Studio kicks of with Team Williams F1 VR experience you can watch online

Sky has announced that it is backing virtual reality big time with a series of VR shorts. These start with a virtual reality Formula One experience to kick off the new F1 season this weekend.

The broadcaster, which was one of the first commercial backers of 3D in the UK, has confirmed it will be creating a dedicated Sky VR Studio. This will produce over 20 pieces of VR content across the next couple of years.

“Over the coming months, Sky will transport fans of sports, movies, news and entertainment to locations around the world, offering a truly unique perspective on major events,” the broadcaster told Pocket-lint as we got to try out the first piece of content.

Sky’s first VR film

The first piece of fully immersive VR content is a two minute short film featuring the Team Williams Formula 1 team. It shows them testing in Barcelona.

The short, which isn’t restricted to simple point of view camera angle, enables viewers to see the pit lane, team garage and track in 360-degrees.

A second F1 VR experience, Ted’s Notebook, takes you on a backstage tour of the pits. It features an interview with Lewis Hamilton amongst others.

Both shorts were produced in conjunction with Formula One management and the Williams team. They will be made available via the Facebook 360 Video platform from tomorrow, Friday 18 March.

READ: Best VR headsets to buy in 2016, whatever your budget

The full VR experience will also be available on the Oculus platform, so viewable on the Samsung Gear VR and Oculus Rift headsets.

Team Williams F1 VR: What’s it like?

Having previewed the new footage ourselves, alongside other previously shot bits of VR video, it’s clear Sky is still trying to discover what works and what doesn’t in this new filming format. It is early days after all.

While some shots work well, such as those taken in the pit during fueling, quick jump cuts and a floating camera can be really jarring at times. It can take a few seconds to get used to each segment.

A second viewing enabled us to enjoy the experience a lot more. It’s clear that having a seasoned director, who has been shooting virtual reality content for over five years, helps produce content that is a lot better than just sticking a couple of bolted-together GoPros on a rig.

When we asked Richard Nockles, the creative director at the new Sky VR studio, about shooting a point of view experience he told us that he likes to see VR video more akin to the theatre than cinema.

“You are basically trying to create scenes that the audience wants to explore,” he said. “POV is great, and insightful, but we like the ideal of using talent to take the audience to the heart of somewhere they haven’t been before. If you were to always film in POV, you lose some of the scene, and so we’ve found that switching between the two can be quiet interesting.”

Virtual reality is in the early stages of development

Neil Graham, the man in charge of the new studio added: “We are at the early stages of our VR development, we are trying to build on the philosophy of trying to bring our viewers closer. It’s not just about the view, it’s about the feeling.”

Later in the year, Sky will look to distribute content through a dedicated Sky VR app.

“Over the coming year, Sky VR Studio will drive the creation of cinematic, fully immersive VR content, producing more than 20 individual films, across a unique range of Sky content – from major cultural events in news to some of the biggest sporting events on the planet,” said Graham.

Sky has been dabbling in virtual reality for some time, investing in US VR start-up Jaunt in 2013 as well as creating news footage of the migrant crisis and shooting from the red carpet at the UK premier of Star Wars: The Force Awakens.

The company says it plans two other bits of VR content in the coming months. These include a unique perspective on heavyweight boxing, taking viewers inside the ring as Anthony Joshua bids for a world title. The other follows Team Sky as the cycle team set sights on retaining their Tour de France crown.

As for the fears that VR will end up going the same way as 3D, Sky doesn’t thing that will happen: “I’ve never watched a piece of 3D content that has got me as involved as some of the VR films I’ve seen or we’ve created,” Graham told Pocket-lint.

“3D doesn’t transport you, it merely added an extra layer of pretty. That’s not the same with VR.”

Success or not, what is clear is that although Sky has created a new studio to focus on VR content it is still very early days for the format.

Is 2016 the year of VR?

“Is 2016 the year of VR? Probably not,” Nockles added. “It’s the year we got to know what it was, but it will probably be 2018 before it really takes off.”

This newb may be the best smartphone of 2016: 6GB of RAM, 10-core processor and more

The Vernee Apollo might not be a smartphone or even brand you’ve heard of before, but it could be a household name soon enough. This could be the most powerful smartphone for 2016.

Vernee is a Chinese manufacturer that’s not been around for long but is already making huge claims for its Apollo smartphone. If the claimed specs are accurate and it arrives soon the other smartphone manufacturers better watch out.

For a start the Vernee Apollo is going to feature a 10-core MediaTek Helio X20 processor and, get this, 6GB of RAM. To call this fast would be an understatement.

The high-end specs don’t stop there though as the screen should also impress at full QHD resolution and 5.5-inch size. But, crucially, it’s going to feature a 3D Touch style pressure sensitive touchscreen like that found in the iPhone 6S.

Vernee

The camera will be Sony’s 21-megapixel sensor with an 8-megapixel front-facing selfie snapper. There’ll be plenty of room to store those large pics on the 128GB of internal storage.

The entire handset is going to be a metal unibody build with a USB-C port for high speed charging and data transfers. It should also run pure Android Marshmallow without any skins.

The Vernee Apollo is set to launch in China this April. Expect a price and possible international shipping details released nearer to that time.

READ: Huawei P9: What’s the story so far?

Oppo R9 is a fancy mid-range phone for selfie addicts

How many megapixels does your pretty face deserve? 16 apparently, according to a couple of new Android smartphones from Oppo. The freshly announced R9 and R9 Plus are the latest addition to the Chinese company’s mid-range line, featuring a powerful front-facing camera with Samsung’s 16-megapixel ISOCELL sensor and a bright f/2.0 aperture, along with Oppo’s new and improved beautification plus selfie panorama modes. These will no doubt be a big hit amongst ladies in Asia, but that’s not to say men can’t enjoy the occasional selfies, either (yes, I’m very much guilty here).

The R9 series comes in a finely sandblasted aluminum body in either gold or pink, and they also boast super slim bezels — just 1.66mm on the R9 and 1.76mm on the larger R9 Plus, thus making it easier to grip their what would otherwise be larger bodies. There’s also a fingerprint reader, but unlike the one on last year’s R7 Plus, this time Oppo decided to place it on the front instead of the back, making it more convenient to unlock the phone while it’s lying on the table. What remains unchanged is Oppo’s dual Nano SIM tray design, with the second SIM slot doubling as a microSD slot, should you require more storage space. On the software side, the R9 runs on Oppo’s new ColorOS 3.0 which is based on Android 5.1.1, but hopefully we’ll get something newer by the time it hits the overseas markets.

Despite the near-identical looks, the R9 and R9 Plus pack rather different internals. Underneath the R9’s 5.5-inch 1080p AMOLED screen you’ll find MediaTek’s 2GHz octa-core Helio P10 chipset, along with 4GB of RAM and 64GB of storage, a 2,850mAh battery and a 13-megapixel f/2.2 main camera. While Oppo’s insane SuperVOOC rapid charging technology has yet to leave the lab, you can still enjoy the regular VOOC on the R9 series, which lets you go from zero to 70 percent in just half an hour. It’s also worth noting that unlike Quick Charge 2.0/3.0 and similar standards, VOOC uses just the common 5V instead of higher voltages, meaning the device doesn’t get hot easily while being charged.

As the name suggests, the R9 Plus has a bigger 6-inch AMOLED screen of the same resolution, as well as Qualcomm’s 1.8GHz octa-core Snapdragon 652 chipset, 4GB of RAM, 64GB of storage (128GB version to follow) and a massive 4,120mAh battery. Even the main camera is better: It uses Sony’s 16-megapixel IMX298 sensor and features the same f/2.0 aperture as the front camera. Given the similar specs, let’s hope that the performance on these two imagers are more or less consistent.

There’s no word on when the R9 and R9 Plus will be available outside China just yet, but for your reference, they will be launching locally on March 24th and April 12th for 2,799 yuan (about $430) and 3,299 yuan (about $510), respectively. Sure, these prices aren’t quite as competitive as those from Xiaomi nor OnePlus, but as one of the top 10 smartphone brands globally, we have a feeling that these new phones will still sell well.

Via: Engadget Chinese

Source: Oppo

Intel’s first ‘Skull Canyon’ NUC has Core i7 power

If you’re considering an Xbox One or PS4 for gaming and entertainment, Intel has another proposition for you: The first Skull Canyon NUC (next unit of computing) mini-PC. It fits a sixth-gen Skylake Core i7 CPU, Thunderbolt 3, DDR4 RAM support and dual M.2 SSD slots into an 8.5-inch long case. The Iris Pro graphics 580 may turn off gamers, though Intel points out that you could add a high-end discrete graphics card like the AMD R9 Fury by attaching a Razer Core expansion box to the Thunderbolt 3 port. For use as an entertainment device, you can easily hook up a 4K monitor — three of them, in fact.

Price-wise, it’s a large step up from the latest gaming consoles, though. The bare NUC is $650, and Intel says a typical build with 16GB RAM, a 256GB SSD and Windows 10 would run $999. Should you go for external discreet graphics via the Razer Core (now on pre-order for $500), and an NVIDIA GTX 970 graphics card (the minimum for an Oculus Rift and HTC Vive) you’re in for another $850. That makes the total investment $1,850 and you could easily build a better PC yourself for that price.

However, NUCs do have their place. If you don’t have a lot of space and are fine with the Iris Pro graphics, you’ll get a reasonably powerful gaming PC and extremely competent media server. The NUC goes on pre-order at Newegg in April for $650 and will ship in May 2016.

Source: Intel

Swimming like a penguin is a different kind of virtual reality

This week in “People Looking Awkward in VR tech” features me in a headset and giant, fluffy, penguin wings. Part of a VR showcase touching on the potential applications of what everyone’s talking about, this is an elaborate penguin robot controller. A penguin bot, located miles away, floating in an aquarium tank, will flap its fins when you do, so once you get the rhythm down, you can swim like a penguin. (And make a robot do the same — if connectivity holds.)

The wings/fins/controller is covered in a fleece material and, alongside the head-mounted display, you get strapped into it before the fun starts. The company running the event, Recruit, is supporting a university student team, TryBots. The students had already built a functioning penguin robot, and with Recruit’s help, have added cameras and these fleece remote controls.

Because it’s a sensation we haven’t experienced, it cleverly avoids the pitfalls of still-developing VR tech.

Behind the facade of adorable penguins,this a telexistence demo — the real-time sensation of being at a place other than where he or she actually exists as well as being able to interact in that environment. However, unlike other demos we’ve seen that try to broadcast a human presence, here you’re a penguin. Swimming in water, trying to chase a yellow fish. As is de rigueur for HMDs, you can swing your head around to take a look at the entire aquarium. (Fortunately, there’s no real, actual penguins for me to bump into or freak out.)

Because it’s a sensation we haven’t experienced, it cleverly avoids the pitfalls of still-developing VR tech. And because you’re “swimming” in water means response times matter slightly less, and the tension built into the wings as you flap them offers resistance, whether it’s accurate or not. Without anything similar to compare the experience to, it feels less jarring than other VR setups that can be easily compared to real-life ones — like riding a bike.

There are gyroscopes built into the wing unit mean that steering is done by arching your body, and your movement path is similar to a jet fighter, curving through the water. You can also flap a single wing but I didn’t progress much when I tried… and possibly why penguins use both.

Source: Advanced Technology Lab

Google Docs lets you limit access with an expiration date

In business, many people collaborate with clients, contractors and other small companies for a short length of time. You might want to give them access to some of your documents — a list of your team’s contact details, for instance — and then revoke access once the job has been wrapped up. Well, Google is now starting to offer that feature to Google Apps customers that use Drive, Docs, Sheets and Slides. So when you share a file with someone, you’ll also get the option to set an expiry date. Handy.

There is one caveat, however — the person that’s limited by the expiry date can only have view access. So if you want to given them permission to actually edit a Google Doc, you’ll still need to go in and lock them out the old fashioned way at the end of the project. Still, for enterprise customers this should be a useful tool, and one more reason to consider Google’s productivity suite over Microsoft Office. We just hope this eventually rolls out to all Google users, and not just those with Google Apps accounts.

Source: Google Apps Update (Blog Post)

This is how HTC will sell the Vive to the British public

HTC’s Vive VR headset is almost upon us. Pre-orders went live on February 29th and the first units should be heading to early adopters’ doorsteps on April 5th. One question has long lingered in the back of our minds, however. How does HTC plan on selling this product to the masses? Well, aside from gaming conventions and traditional advertising, the company is organising some hands-on booths inside brick-and-mortar stores. In the UK, that involves a few Currys PC World locations (Leeds, Reading and Tottenham Court Road in London) and PC specialists Overclockers (Newcastle-under-Lyme) and Scan Computers International (Bolton).

Of course, we had to go and check one out for ourselves. In London, we walked to the back of Currys PC World — the same location that houses the Google Store — and found a small area cordoned off with enormous Vive posters. A HTC employee took us through three games — Job Simulator, Google’s Tilt Brush and Space Pirate Trainer — for roughly 15 minutes. (Your experience might vary if there’s a long queue in the store). Once we finished the taster, there was an opportunity to ask questions about the Vive’s PC requirements and the physical space that’s needed to play.

While you can pre-order a Vive, that’s not the sole purpose of the booth. The demonstrations will, for many people, be their first exposure to VR, so there’s also an educational aspect. If Vive is to succeed, HTC needs to show what a premium VR experience is capable of, and why it’s worth £689. It’s a tough ask, but if virtual reality is going to take off, it’s these hands-on experiences that will ultimately prove and sell the concept to skeptics.

Apple GPU Supplier Imagination Technologies Announces Cuts Amid Slowing iPhone Sales

British microchip designer and major Apple supplier Imagination Technologies announced additional cost cuts this morning, following a significant restructuring program unveiled by the UK firm only last month.

The company, which supplies the PowerVR graphics architecture in Apple’s iPhones and iPads, said it would reduce its cost base by an additional £12.5 million ($18 million) by April 2017, on top of the £15 million in cost cuts announced in February. Two hundred staff now face redundancy as a result, adding to the 150 job cuts announced last month.

Tough trading conditions and a slowdown in iPhone shipment growth is said to be behind the decision, after the company posted an operating loss for the year to the end of April.

“This swift and decisive action will put us back on a sound financial footing and will enable us to have the necessary resources to further strengthen our three core businesses,” the company’s interim chief executive Andrew Heath said in a statement. “The ongoing operational review will identify clearly where we need to focus, building on our current strengths and allocating the right capital to ensure growth and attractive returns.”

Imagination Technologies has reported financial difficulties for several years, despite repeated expectations that iPhone sales would boost its revenues. Shares dropped 10 percent last year when the company reported a first-half loss, and nosedived as much as 18 percent when the restructure was announced in February. The company has also put its digital radio business Pure up for sale.

Apple has been a licensee and stakeholder in Imagination Technologies since at least 2008. The two companies have worked closely together over the years, with Apple being a key investor in the graphics firm since it raised its stake to roughly 10 percent in mid-2009. In 2014 Imagination announced an extended licensing agreement with Apple. However, it has been under pressure to reduce its dependence on Apple since at least 2012 because of declining average royalty rates.

Imagination announced the next iteration of its PowerVR Rogue graphics architecture at this year’s CES in January. The PowerVR Series7XT Plus builds on the Series7XT GPU used in the iPad Pro, with a focus on improved camera and vision processing capabilities for photography-based applications.

It remains to be seen whether the new chips will appear in Apple’s rumored ‘iPad Pro’ branded 9.7-inch tablet set to launch next week, the iPhone 7 expected this September, or indeed in any other future Apple devices.

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‘Apple Events’ Launches on Apple TV App Store Ahead of Monday’s ‘Let Us Loop You In’ Event

Apple today released a new “Apple Events” app on the tvOS App Store, which will be used to live stream its upcoming “Let Us Loop You In” media event set to take place on March 21 at 10:00 a.m. Pacific Time. This will be the first Apple Event live streamed since the fourth-generation Apple TV was released in October.

Apple Events app on fourth-generation Apple TV App Store (Image: hrhnick/Reddit)
Unlike on previous Apple TV models, the Apple Events app must be downloaded from the tvOS App Store on the fourth-generation Apple TV. As usual, second- and third-generation Apple TV users will likely have to wait until the Apple Events app automatically appears on their home screen. No software update is required.

The live stream will also be available on Macs and iOS devices through Apple’s event website. iOS 7 or OS X 10.8.5 with Safari 6.0.5 or later is required.

Apple’s spring event is expected to see the debut of the 4-inch “iPhone SE,” which is rumored to look nearly identical to the iPhone 5s. It will include an A9 processor, an improved camera, and NFC support for use with Apple Pay. The 4-inch iPhone will be Apple’s first small screen iPhone since 2013.

Also expected is a new 9.7-inch iPad, which may be branded as an iPad Pro instead of an iPad Air. It is rumored to be adopting features from the 12.9-inch iPad Pro, including a four-speaker design, a Smart Connector for connecting accessories, and display improvements for Apple Pencil support. New Apple Watch bands will likely be introduced. Existing bands will be available in new colors and there may be new product lines, like a rumored nylon band and a Space Black Milanese Loop.

MacRumors will provide live coverage of the event, both on MacRumors.com and through the @MacRumorsLive Twitter account.

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