Samsung’s Surface Pro rival, the Galaxy TabPro S, hits US and UK

If you had your eye on the Surface Pro 4, but wanted something a little less Microsoft-branded, Samsung’s got an alternative just for you. The company’s Galaxy TabPro S is available to order in the US and UK as of today for $899 and £849, respectively. Originally unveiled at CES in January, the hybrid Windows 10 tablet packs a 12-inch Super AMOLED display (2,160 x 1,440) into a lightweight, magnesium alloy frame. It’s certainly a more premium build than Samsung’s typically known for, as we noted when we first set eyes (and hands) on the device earlier this year.

For the money, you get an Intel 6th generation dual-core Core M clocked at 2.2GHz, 4GB RAM and a 128GB solid state drive. Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be an option on either online store to beef storage up to 256GB nor is there an available LTE model (that’s still TBD), meaning it’s WiFi-only for now. Powering the entire affair is a 5,200mAh battery rated for over ten hours that you’ll have to recharge using the slate’s USB Type-C port. Oh, and it comes with a pack-in keyboard so you’re at least spared that extra expense. We’ll have a review coming soon, so stay tuned and try to hold off on that impulse purchase.

Source: Samsung, (2)

The next big thing in smartphones is uncertainty

You’ve probably noticed something about smartphones. They haven’t been exciting lately.

Chances are, your current smartphone looks and works a lot like your last one. Your next will probably seem pretty familiar, too. But there are signs that smartphones, and the ways we use them, could be about to significantly change — even if no one can quite agree on exactly how.

From some perspectives, it’s inevitable that we’d be seeing a noticeable change in smartphones by now. As venture capitalist Chris Dixon noted in a recent essay, major shifts in computing tend to occur in 10- to 15-year cycles: the home PC era throughout the ’80s and early ’90s, the internet era from the mid-90s into the 2000s, and the mobile era that we’re currently in.

While you can point to single events that firmly established those new eras, they’ve each also been bookended by a more ragged edge where different technologies mixed and jockeyed for position. There was “mobile computing” before modern smartphones. Although most tend to see smartphones as an evolution of the traditional cellphone, they owe just as much to other mobile devices like personal digital assistants, pocket PCs and portable media players.

Those each did some of the things that smartphones can now do (some more than others), and it was only when smartphones were able to do enough of those tasks, with an acceptable number of trade-offs, that they went mainstream. The combination of those features — an internet-connected mobile device with a decent camera, for instance — then opened up a host of new possibilities that had been impossible.

If you accept the 10- to 15-year rule, that means we’re about a year away from the early edge of a transition to something else. Even setting it aside, you don’t have to look far to see that the tail end of the first decade of the smartphone era has some parallels to the more experimental and less certain years that preceded it.

There was some evidence on display at Mobile World Congress last month. While smartphone makers introduced plenty of the usual fare — new phones that are slightly better than last year’s — there was also a noticeable willingness to experiment, and all the uncertainty that comes along with it.

For LG, that means changing not only the way people use smartphones but also the phones themselves. Its new modular G5 not only works with other devices but can also turn into a variety of other devices. So far, that includes fairly modest changes like a module that turns the G5 into more of a full-fledged camera and one that makes it an audiophile-grade media player. LG says that additional add-ons are in the works, though, and it’s hoping other companies will diversify the range of modifications even further.

Modular components are something Google has also explored with its Project Ara smartphone, as have more DIY-oriented initiatives like Seeed’s RePhone — an open-source kit that lets you build your own smartphone or other cellular-equipped device — something that would have seemed like a wild concept a few years ago.

HP has even revived a slightly older idea for a modular smartphone of sorts with its new Elite x3 Windows phone, which promises to replace a laptop or desktop computer when connected to a monitor and keyboard.

And, of course, everyone from Apple to Samsung has already bet on smartwatches and other wearables to one degree or another — devices that, for the time being, are designed more to augment and complement smartphones than replace them.

The most complete vision of a different future for smartphones, however, may come from Sony.

It had some new smartphones to show off at MWC, but it got more attention for the other products it introduced. One, the Xperia Ear, is a tiny earpiece that promises to let you leave your phone in your pocket more often and instead interact with it using voice commands. Another, the Xperia Agent (still something of a concept, Sony says), is a stand-alone device that similarly lets you interact with an intelligent virtual assistant. It’s a lot like Amazon’s Echo but is amped up with a built-in camera and a projector for displaying information.

In a statement announcing the new devices, Sony’s Hiroki Totoki said that the company wants to “change how you access information and interact with friends and family in a closer, natural and more meaningful way.” He was more blunt in an interview with The Wall Street Journal, saying, “People have become too obsessed with smartphones,” and that Sony effectively wants to wean people off them.

If that vision sounds a little familiar, it may be because it’s a lot like the one seen in the Spike Jonze movie Her, in which the main character interacts with an artificially intelligent operating system primarily through an earpiece. The smartphone-like device in the movie is used sparingly in comparison, serving as a camera so the AI can “see,” and turned to for things like looking at photos. As far as science fiction goes, that’s not so farfetched, and many see something similar to it happening sooner rather than later.

A survey conducted by Ericsson ConsumerLab last year suggested that AI will be what finally ends the “screen age” and that this shift could happen in as soon as five years. “Smartphone users believe AI will take over many common activities, such as searching the net, getting travel guidance and as personal assistants,” the report said, noting that “these are areas already being addressed by current generation AI interfaces in smartphones.”

The survey pointed to virtual reality as another technology that could pull some tasks away from our smartphone and computer screens, and augmented reality devices like Microsoft’s HoloLens and the still-mysterious Magic Leap promise to do something similar. At the same time, as with smartphones, they could also enable far more new things that aren’t possible at all on regular screens.

Other developments suggest that the smartphone itself might be becoming less important than underlying software and services. The recently introduced Nextbit Robin smartphone isn’t all the way there, but its cloud-based storage hints at a future in which phones are less limited by hardware constraints — something that could accelerate when 5G networks finally become a reality.

And while Amazon’s Echo devices may not seem much like smartphone alternatives at first glance, they’re not so far off when you look at how people use them. Whether it’s Alexa, Siri or Google Now, we’re approaching a point where the measure of a device may not be the apps it can run but the intelligent agent to which it provides an interface and, by extension, the network of other devices and services that it interacts with.

According to Jonas Damon, the executive creative director of the design firm Frog, the influence of those and other technologies won’t make smartphones more feature-packed and complicated devices but simpler ones.

“I’m super excited about our phones becoming simpler as our environment becomes more instrumented,” he said when asked how he saw smartphones changing over the next five years.

“We’ve had to centralize so much technology into our phones because our environment is still largely analogue,” he continued.

“In the next five years, all kinds of products and structures will get sensors, machine vision will become more ubiquitous, and machine learning will start to automate things for us. We’ll be able to put our phones down and enjoy living in a heads-up, responsive environment. If phones get simpler, the devices will change as well: they will last longer because yearly hardware upgrades will become unnecessary, they will get smaller as users require less screen space, and they will become more beautiful as they become more permanent.”

Tjeerd Hoek, Frog’s vice president of software experience, further added, “Smartphones today are really just dumb connected tools, which often prioritize features few people want. Even when the features are great, they can require incomprehensible interactions to use.”

As Hoek sees it, “Smartphones have the potential to become a proactive and intelligent assistant that users can delegate tasks to easily.” He continued:

“This delegation will be underpinned by the increased diversity of sensors, and improved integration between connected devices, network analytics, processing and intelligence based on data from the connected device ecosystem. Combined with detailed contextual awareness about the user’s location, past behaviors and preferences, better feedback mechanisms will allow users to direct the device as it performs autonomous tasks for them.”

A lot of those bits and pieces are already here. At least some are bound to have an effect on smartphones. It’s the how and the when that are still uncertain, and that period of uncertainty is where things start to get a little weird.

Already, many are pointing to smart earpieces like the Xperia Ear and an AI-driven future like the one in Her as the inevitable next step in computing. We’ll still have smartphones and computers and TVs — and maybe AR or VR — but we’ll be able to easily move from one to another with an intelligent assistant bridging the gaps among them.

Companies betting on that future will adjust their smartphones accordingly. Screens may get smaller again, sensors to make the AI more aware of your environment might become a bigger priority and seamless connectivity to other devices could become more important. But not everyone sees AI as an imminent paradigm shift.

Some companies will no doubt continue to churn out familiar-looking smartphones for years to come. But, as some recent announcements have shown, many others see the present as a time to experiment and take risks. Some may make integration with VR headsets a priority as the technology advances, others may see smartphones as a module that becomes the core driver of a range of other devices and others are no doubt working on even wilder concepts that no one sees coming.

As long as there’s disagreement about how things will ultimately play out, there’s going to be more diversification among smartphones than we’ve seen during the past decade of consensus. All of that is exciting for people who have been bored with years of iterative upgrades — and undoubtedly a little unsettling for the smartphone makers betting their future on ideas that may not pan out.

[Images: LG G5, Google Project Ara, Sony Xperia Ear, Nextbit Robin, Amazon Echo / Alexa, Sony Xperia Ear]

A VR experience transported me to a live soccer game

The virtual reality space is still a work in progress. While there are already many use cases for it, from gaming to education, developers continue to find new ways to fiddle with the technology. A pure example of this is Virtually Live, a startup designing immersive VR experiences for live sports. Here’s the gist behind its project: Once you’ve strapped on a virtual reality headset, you can follow games in real-time and feel like you’re close to the action.

To convey that sensation, Virtually Live uses computer-generated imagery of players and stadiums, plus tracking information provided by Stats, which has deals with some of the “top” European football (soccer) teams in the world as well as the NBA. My demo was powered by an HTC Vive, and took me into a match between English Premier League rivals Manchester United and Manchester City. I had a few options once I set foot in that world. One of them was to watch the game’s broadcast on a screen, or hear audio from it, inside a virtual VIP suite. But, if I wanted to do that, I may as well just do so on my big-screen TV, not a VR headset.

Now, what I did find bizarre was the ability to transport myself anywhere within Etihad Stadium, Manchester City’s home venue, including the field during the match and across the different seat levels. It’s obviously not the same as being physically present, but I can see how some people would enjoy an experience like this. Namely, those who can’t make it to games on a regular basis or simply want something different than the traditional television-viewing experience.

Right now, Virtually Live doesn’t have a licensing deal with the EPL, so it legally can’t offer what I experienced to the public. That said, the company did recently strike a partnership with the Scottish Professional Football League, which gives it the rights to do live broadcasts in VR for soccer games out of that country. I also tried a single-seat car racing demo, however I’m not allowed to say what series it relates to due to ongoing negotiations between it and Virtually Live. But the idea here is the same, save for the fact you’re in the driver’s seat and can get live stats from official races, as opposed to being on a soccer pitch.

Virtually Live, which will be compatible with the HTC Vive and Oculus Rift, is expected to launch on April 2nd. And even though the experience isn’t perfect, it definitely has potential to be entertaining, especially if gets the support it needs from professional sporting leagues around the globe.

Breaking down PlayStation VR with Adam Boyes

PlayStation is banking big on virtual reality. It’s the only major console manufacturer to build its own VR headset, PS VR, which is exclusive to the PlayStation 4 and is set to launch in October for $400. Sony expects to release roughly 50 PS VR games by the end of the year and it has 230 development teams working on experiences for the headset. This ecosystem — the hardware, software and hype — doesn’t materialize overnight.

For one, Sony had to refine its relationship with independent developers.

“We really learned some great lessons in PS3,” PlayStation’s VP of Publisher and Developer Relations Adam Boyes says. “We weren’t as developer friendly, and so we changed a ton of our policies to make it easier and I feel like we built a great base toward PS VR with PS4. We gave out a lot of dev kits to developers, and then when PS VR started getting internally talked about, we went to a bunch of sort of key people.”

PS VR isn’t all indie, though. Electronic Arts, Lucasfilm and DICE are bringing Star Wars: Battlefront exclusively to Sony’s headset. It’s a huge name and should be a big draw for some console players on the fence about virtual reality. But, these major partnerships don’t come easily.

“In general, bigger businesses always usually are a bit slower to make decisions,” Boyes says. “Big publishers that have a big investment in big development teams, they usually have to build their strategy and they have a two-, three-, four-, five-year sort of road that they’re building on. Whereas, a lot of the smaller developers that are making this amazing content, they’re able to, in a team of three, four, five people, crank out something that’s really great.”

To play some of these games, users will need a PlayStation Camera and the console’s Move controllers — and these aren’t included in PS VR’s $400 price tag. The Camera costs between $45 to $60, depending on your retailer of choice, and a Move controller is $30 to $50. One day, Sony might bundle all of these items together, Boyes says.

VR is definitely the hot new thing, but it’s not the only conversation in the industry. Microsoft announced it would open up its network gaming capabilities starting with Rocket League, potentially allowing Xbox One and PS4 owners to play games online together. That is, if Sony decides to play along.

“We’re always open to that conversation,” Boyes says. Sony’s network has been cracked open for a while, he notes, allowing cross-play between PS4 and PC for games like Street Fighter 5 and Paragon.

“We’ve actually played nice with Microsoft,” Boyes says. “Not only do they publish Minecraft on the platforms, so they are a publisher of record, but also we’ve had importing from 360 to PS4 in Diablo — you can bring your characters over — and GTA 5.”

But, that’s not the same as allowing any online game to automatically play nice between PS4 and Xbox One. To that end, Boyes says, “I would never rule anything out.”

Here’s what to expect from Apple’s ‘Loop You In’ event

In just a few days, Apple is going to make headlines for more than just its hard line on encryption. The company invited the tech press to Cupertino on Monday to “loop” us in to the newest additions to its product lineup, and we’ll be there live-blogging and hands-onning and generally doing what we do best. Before we board our flights and check our bags, though, let’s take a few moments to run through all the things we expect to see (plus a few things we’re quietly hoping for).

The Locks

A new, smaller iPhone

If current iPhones are squeezing your pockets to the limit, stay tuned. All signs point to a smaller iPhone (the SE?) with a 4-inch display and a design that’s highly reminiscent of the old iPhone 5 line, just with more modern internals. Likely suspect: The A9-M9 chipset combination that currently powers the iPhone 6s. The 6s similarities don’t end there either, if the rumor mill is to be believed: The iPhone SE is said to have an 8 (or 12) megapixel camera that shoots Live Photos, along with a Touch ID sensor and NFC sensor for Apple Pay. MacRumors suggests that 3D Touch will remain a 6s-exclusive feature, though, and that the SE will get less RAM (just 1GB) and fewer storage options (16GB and 64GB) than Apple’s current flagship phones. Fair enough, as long as SE has a lower price to match.

A more portable iPad Pro

“Making things smaller” might well be the theme for Apple’s event on Monday. Expect to see a shrunken-down version last year’s iPad Pro fitted with a 9.7-inch display — because that enormous 12.9-inch screen surely wasn’t going to work for everyone. The new iPad will likely feature (among other things) a snappy A9X chipset, an impressive array of speakers etched into each corner and a Smart Connector to provide access for keyboard cases and other accessories. Oh, and according to leaked schematics we obtained, it looks like the new Pro will have an LED flash (because iPad photography is apparently a thing that needs encouraging). As you’d expect, though, this stuff requires just a little extra breathing room: The new iPad will be slightly thicker and wider than the Air 2.

The Likely

Software updates!

In case you hadn’t been keeping track, Apple has already pushed seven beta versions of iOS 9.3 to testers. At this point, we’d say the company is very close to pulling the final build out of the oven. And really, what better opportunity to show off new features like Night Shift (which changes the screen’s temperature when it’s dark) and Touch ID protection for Notes.app than with a new iPhone. Then again, iOS 9.3 is also said to pack an improved dashboard for Apple Health and expanded support for 3D Touch gestures on first-party apps, so there’s a little something for everyone here.

The Apple Watch should get a software update of its own too: watchOS 2.2 will allow people to pair multiple watches to a single iPhone, as well as search for nearby points of interest through an updated Maps interface. Apple has released six beta builds since January, so we’d be shocked if this didn’t get some sort of shout-out. Meanwhile, 9to5Mac suggests that we’ll also see relatively minor updates to Apple’s tvOS and OS X. While such updates don’t really fit in thematically, it’d be odd if Craig Federighi and his amazing hair sat this event out completely.

A slew of new Watch bands

While not as cool as Vic Gundotra’s potentially life-saving strap, the Apple Watch will probably get a handful of new bands as of Monday. We shouldn’t be shocked to see some new elastomer Sport straps in jaunty spring hues, and if we’re lucky we just might see another appearance from Hermés. Curiously, 9to5Mac is also fairly sure we’re going to get some “NATO” bands too — you know, those typically nylon ribbons that curl though a series of metal loops. And since Apple is such a sucker for puns, we wouldn’t be shocked if the “loop” in the invite were a reference to the black Milanese loop band that’s expected to appear. (Suffice to say, we hope there’s more to Apple’s choice of words than just that.)

The Long Shot

A new Apple Watch

It’s been year since Apple released the Apple Watch, and Apple’s all about those annual release cycles, right? While TechCrunch’s sources suggests that a slightly refreshed Watch with a FaceTime camera is coming soon, there’s no indication that it’ll actually get stage time next week. Then again, we’re happy for Tim Cook to prove us wrong (especially if Apple managed to squeeze in a better battery on v2).

Oculus founder on Rift, ‘Eve: Valkyrie’ and VR’s next steps

Bundled along with every Oculus Rift kit is a copy of Eve: Valkyrie, a multiplayer dogfighting shooter. So as soon as you take the headset out of the box, you’ll be able to strap it on and jump right into an epic space battle (after going through a bit of setup, of course). “There’ll be very few people who buy the rift and don’t at least try it,’ said Palmer Luckey, Oculus co-founder and CEO, at a journalist roundtable at GDC 2016. We had a chance to play a session of the game with Luckey as well as CCP Games CEO Hilmar Veigar, and talked to them about the Rift, motion sickness, those Touch controllers and where VR is going moving forward.

My experience with Valkyrie was pretty similar to what my colleagues Nathan Ingraham and Aaron Souppouris had last year. Getting launched into empty space with a boost rocket was simultaneously surreal and wonderful, and I needed to get used to looking around my surroundings simply by turning my head. Soon, however, I figured out that I could just look at a target to hone in a missile launcher and quickly got the hang of maneuvering my vehicle. Still, flying around in 3D space was pretty disorienting and I found myself “upside down” several times, giving me a tiny bit of vertigo.

“We’ve attuned the flight model to be super comfortable,” said Veigar, adding that the team has worked pretty hard to keep motion sickness to a minimum. “It helps that you have a fixed cockpit that’s in a relative motion point,” said Luckey. As for issues of fatigue, Veigar says that they’ve already seen players wear the headset for over 12 hours in a single session. “You should be able to use it for long periods of time without any issues,” said Luckey. “In our experience, people don’t stop playing because of any problem with the headset.” I also thought gameplay was pretty quiet, but Luckey assures me that in real-time multi-player settings, it can get pretty smacktalk-heavy.

Of course, Eve: Valkyrie is only one game that’ll be ready for launch; there are actually 29 others that will be available on March 28th, the same date that the first Rift units will ship. But while the roster of launch games for the Oculus Rift is an impressive one, what’s missing are titles that make use of the Touch, the controllers that lets you use your hands in games. That’s because the Touch is only shipping later this year — second half of 2016, to be exact (though if you pre-ordered the Rift, you’ll be first in line to get it).

This, according to Palmer Luckey, was deliberate. “We never planned on launching Touch with Rift,” said the Oculus founder and CEO. “We’ll have a very strong Touch lineup later this year.” Instead, he wanted the Rift’s launch to be focused on the folks who worked hard to develop games with the traditional gamepad. He said he didn’t want to force people to get a controller that not everyone would want and that he’d rather have a richer roster of Touch-compatible games ready to go. Still, it’s my opinion that the addition of hand movement is what makes VR really compelling (see the HTC Vive), so Oculus might want to hurry up the Touch launch a bit.

“People talk a lot about 2016 being the year of virtual reality,” said Luckey. “To a degree that is going to be true. But it’s not going to be all of a sudden everyone in the world is using virtual reality, or even that all gamers are using VR. There is going to be an adoption curve over time starting with more early adopters and PC gamers that own or are willing to buy a high-end PC.”

Veigar adds that 2016 is really more of a Year Zero in the VR timeline. Indeed, Luckey says that it’s really a multi-year process, as hardware gets cheaper and lighter, and as VR’s audience gets larger. So when will we see the next Rift? How often will the hardware be refreshed? “I can’t say, but somewhere between a phone and a console.”

“We don’t make money from the hardware,” said Luckey. “We make money from the platform.” He pointed out that the team launched the Oculus platform first with Samsung’s Gear VR, and that the Rift hardware launch is really more of a secondary product.

“We’ve said in the past we’re not going to get a billion headsets on our own,” he said. “Eventually there’ll be a lot more headsets supported by our ecosystem.”

Researchers Uncover Multiple OS X and Safari Exploits at Pwn2Own 2016

The sixteenth annual CanSecWest security conference is underway in downtown Vancouver, British Columbia, and researchers participating in the Pwn2Own computer hacking contest have already discovered multiple vulnerabilities in OS X and the Safari web browser on the desktop.

On day one of the event, independent security researcher JungHoon Lee earned $60,000 after exploiting both OS X and Safari. Lee uncovered four vulnerabilities in total, including one exploit in Safari and three other vulnerabilities within the OS X operating system, according to security firm Trend Micro.

JungHoon Lee (lokihardt): Demonstrated a successful code execution attack against Apple Safari to gain root privileges. The attack consisted of four new vulnerabilities: a use-after-free vulnerability in Safari and three additional vulnerabilities, including a heap overflow to escalate to root. This demonstration earned 10 Master of Pwn points and US$60,000.

Meanwhile, the report claims that the Tencent Security Team Shield group successfully executed code that enabled them to gain root privileges to Safari using “two use-after-free vulnerabilities,” including one in Safari and the other in a “privileged process.” The researchers were awarded $40,000 in prize money.

The five participating teams earned a total of $282,500 in prizes on day one, including a leading $132,500 earned by the 360Vulcan Team, according to the report. Other web browsers and plugins that were successfully targeted include Adobe Flash, Google Chrome, and Microsoft Edge on Windows.

Apple representatives have attended Pwn2Own in the past, and affected parties are made aware of all security vulnerabilities discovered during the contest in order to patch them. Pwn2Own day two began today at 9:00 a.m. Pacific and will involve additional exploit attempts against OS X and Safari.

Tags: exploit, security, Safari, Apple security, OS X, Pwn2Own
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If Apple is Ordered to Unlock iPhone for FBI, Some Engineers Might Refuse to Help

Should the FBI win its ongoing legal battle with Apple, resulting in the Cupertino company being ordered to unlock the iPhone 5c used by San Bernardino shooter Syed Farook, some Apple engineers may decide not to cooperate with law enforcement.

Apple employees who might be called on to help the FBI are already considering their actions should Apple lose the case, reports The New York Times, following interviews with half a dozen people involved in the development of mobile products and security at Apple.

Apple employees are already discussing what they will do if ordered to help law enforcement authorities. Some say they may balk at the work, while others may even quit their high-paying jobs rather than undermine the security of the software they have already created, according to more than a half-dozen current and former Apple employees.

Accessing the iPhone in question would require Apple to comply with an FBI request for a new version of iOS that would both bypass passcode restrictions on the device and allow the FBI to enter a passcode electronically instead of manually. Apple has said it will take six to ten engineers a period of two to four weeks to develop the new operating system.

Should Apple engineers decide not to develop the software the FBI is requesting, it could significantly delay the FBI’s efforts to access the phone and it could result in legal consequences for those involved. As The New York Times points out, developing what Apple calls “GovtOS” would be difficult without the cooperation of key engineers, and Apple employees already have a solid idea who would be called on to help.

They include an engineer who developed software for the iPhone, iPad and Apple TV. That engineer previously worked at an aerospace company. Another is a senior quality-assurance engineer who is described as an expert “bug catcher” with experience testing Apple products all the way back to the iPod. A third likely employee specializes in security architecture for the operating systems powering the iPhone, Mac and Apple TV.

If Apple employees refuse to write the code for the software, Apple could potentially face hefty fines for non-compliance.

Apple will face off against the FBI in court next Tuesday, one day after the company’s March 21 event that will see the debut of the 4-inch iPhone SE and the 9.7-inch iPad Pro. Both Apple and the FBI have previously submitted several briefs arguing their sides.

Note: Due to the political nature of the discussion regarding this topic, the discussion thread is located in our Politics, Religion, Social Issues forum. All forum members and site visitors are welcome to read and follow the thread, but posting is limited to forum members with at least 100 posts.

Tag: Apple-FBI
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