Panasonic Lumix GX85 Release Date, Price and Specs – CNET

The GX85, shown here with the new DMW-FL200L flash and video light.

Lori Grunin/CNET

If the Panasonic Lumix GX85 is an update to any camera currently in the company’s mirrorless-interchangeable lineup, it’s really the G7, even though that model is still current and less than a year old. But with an $800 price for the kit, an electronic viewfinder, fast continuous shooting and 4K video, it fits right into that camera’s demographic: an enthusiast-friendly model with a feature set that should also appeal to families and travelers at a reasonable price. Plus, it has a more attractive design.

Panasonic’s GX85 looks functional, but the…
See full gallery

1 – 4 of 12

Next
Prev

I don’t yet have prices for Australia or the UK, but its US price with the 12-32mm f3.5-5.6 power-zoom lens directly converts to £560 and AU$1,050. Keep in mind that Panasonic rarely offer the consumer models as body-only in the US, but frequently does in other regions. That lens is compact, especially for its 24-64mm equivalent focal length, and essentially turns the camera into an oversized point-and-shoot. It’s slated to ship at the end of May.

Panasonic also announced a new flash, the $230 DMW-FL200L (GN20), which has a tilting head for bouncing light, and an LCD array for continuous video lighting. It also supports wireless control and triggering. The back has a retro design, all dials rather than an LCD; it’s basic, but easy to understand.

In addition to some hardware that Panasonic debuts in the GX85, it incorporates all the latest Panasonic features, including 4K burst modes and post focus as implemented in the ZS100.

What’s new

• Sensor. Although it’s still 16 megapixels, not the new 20.3MP sensor that’s in the GX8, it’s a new version of the Four Thirds-size sensor that forgoes an antialiasing filter (aka OLPF). Cameras use them to blur edges slightly, which removes some color artifacts (moire and false color) that would normally appear, but you sacrifice sharpness. The new version of the company’s Venus image-processing engine which is in the GX85 has moire-reduction built in to compensate.
• Stabilization. This model uses hybrid stabilization, a combination of 5-axis sensor-shift (which Panasonic calls BIS, for Body Image Stabilizer) plus optical stabilization if a supporting lens is attached (similar to Olympus’ Sync IS). It’s definitely a useful feature. Unlike Olympus’ implementation, though, Panasonic lenses with OIS will be able to support it via a firmware update.
• Vibration-reduced shutter. Panasonic claims its new electromagnetic shutter mechanism, which swaps springs for electronics and is made of lighterweight carbon fiber, reduces shutter shock by about 10 percent. In practice, that should mean sharper photos at slower shutter speeds.
• Wi-Fi update. With this camera, Panasonic introduces password-free connection between the camera and your mobile devices.

My take

Overall, it sounds like a solid mix of features and performance specs, though there are some potential pitfalls. First, the battery life: it’s rated at 290 shots, which is low even by ILC standards. The sensor is also a wildcard, since it’s the first AA-filter free one for Micro Four Thirds. And I suspect some potential buyers of this camera would prefer a flip-up display for selfies and groupies. Still, not compared with similarly priced direct competitors like the Olympus E-M10 Mark II.

Panasonic’s marketing will stress the video aspects of the camera, which makes sense given that it’s the only ILC in its price range with full 4K video support; the Samsung NX500 does and is still available, but it lacks a viewfinder. Plus no one knows what’s up with Samsung’s camera division these days.

Comparative specs

LG G5 review – CNET

The Good The LG G5’s unique modular design lets you swap in fun accessories. It has (two!) great rear cameras, expandable storage and a replaceable battery — a rarity in high-end phones.

The Bad Although you can swap out some parts, there aren’t enough to make this feature compelling. You can only access the phone’s app drawer in a specialized theme.

The Bottom Line This is the phone to get if you want a removable battery, but it fails to live up to its world-changing Swiss Army Knife potential.

LG phones often play it safe, but this modular G5, which lets you swap out some parts, is all risk. I love the innovation (no other company has gotten this far with a modular phone), but unfortunately the device falls short on execution.

Swapping out parts means you turn off your smartphone each time, and there just aren’t enough modules right now to make this truly captivating. (LG is selling two components, but they don’t pique my interest all that much.) Maybe if there were more inspired modules, and more partners on board lining up cooler add-ons (I love the idea of a swappable camera lens, for example), I could be more excited about the G5 — or at least more forgiving of its growing pains.

But it’s not all bad news. Forget the modules and the device is the best handset with a removable battery, which is becoming a rarity in the phone world. Its aluminium build looks and feels great, and the two cameras on its back are a pleasure to use.

Overall, the G5 still isn’t as good as Samsung’s Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge when it comes to processing speed and battery life, but it’ll work very well for all the things you really need to do: take photos, browse the internet, and watch videos throughout the day.

(For more on the G5’s hardware specs and how it compares to other flagship handsets, scroll to the end of the review.)

LG’s elegant and unorthodox G5 (pictures)
See full gallery

1 – 5 of 19

Next
Prev

Design: This is not your modular fantasy

When LG first showed off the G5, it made a big deal of it being the first phone with modular capabilities. This ability to swap out and customize certain hardware parts has been a longtime fantasy for mobile users. Like building a personal computer, you can upgrade certain components that are important to you or fit a certain need. For example, if you’re going somewhere where you’re going to take a variety of photos, you might want to swap out your handset’s stock lens for a fisheye or macro lens.

To use the feature, you’ll need to push the small button on the device’s left edge. The bottom of the G5 will pop out, allowing you to yank the attachment off the battery, clip the battery into the new module and push it all back together. Because the battery is attached to the bezel, the handset powers down every time you swap something out. This isn’t a huge deal, but it takes time to fire up the phone after a switch, and if you swap parts often throughout the day it can be a power drain.

The G5’s bottom bezel can be removed and swapped out for another accessory.

James Martin/CNET

Google attempted to make a modular handset with its Project Ara, but development on that stalled. The fact that LG got this off the ground is a win, but the feature is limited for now because there are only two accessories (so far) that take advantage of it.

One is called the Cam Plus. It’s a camera grip that has a physical shutter button to record and capture video, and a zooming wheel. It also has a built-in battery, which you can use on top of the phone’s battery for extra juice. The other accessory is the Hi-Fi Plus, a portable digital-to-analog converter (DAC) that boosts audio playback for high-definition sound files. Because the Hi-Fi Plus includes an audio grill, a USB Type-C port and a 3.5mm headphone jack, you can leave it attached to your G5 and use it all the time.

The LG Cam Plus camera grip, which can attach to the handset.

James Martin/CNET

Swapping out the bottom bezel was a bit difficult at first. The pieces fit tightly, and the unlock button that lets you to detach the chin lies flush with the surface of the device, so I had to dig my nail in to press it. After a while, I got the hang of it and got faster at swapping the parts out. That doesn’t mean I ever got to the point where I could walk around, stop and switch out the bezel casually. There’s still some wrangling involved, and due to the sheer fear that I’d accidentally fling the top part of the handset across the room when I pulled out the chin, I felt compelled to find a place to sit down to switch out the parts.

With these two official add-ons and no plans to make more, LG will need to rely on third-party developers to expand the usefulness of the phone’s current modular features. As a top-tier handset in and of itself, the G5 is a great device. But solely in terms of modularity, it has a ways to go.

VR headsets, robot balls and snap-on phone…
See full gallery

1 – 5 of 29

Next
Prev

Software: Making a few compromises

You know the saying, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”? Well, LG tried to fix it.

On the refreshed user interface for the G5, LG buried the option to have an app drawer (the grid of icons that holds all of a user’s apps). A bunch of other Android phone-makers (like Huawei and Xiaomi) do something similar by getting rid of the drawer altogether, but if you aren’t used to it, it can drive you crazy.

I like the app drawer, as this iPhone-like layout means I can’t organize my homepages exactly how I want. If you want the drawer back, you’ll have to dive into Settings and launch a totally different layout called EasyHome. (Hat tip to Techno Buffalo for pointing this out.) Unfortunately, the EasyHome theme enlarges the font size on your home screen (that you can’t adjust) and gets rid of the dashboard, which is a row of up to five apps that you can choose to display on the bottom of your home page.

The device’s Home layout (left) without an app drawer, and the simpler EasyHome layout (right) which has an app drawer but removes the bottom dashboard of apps.

Lynn La/CNET

Basically, you have to choose between having a dashboard and no app drawer, or an app drawer with no dashboard and really big text. Neither choice is ideal.

Luckily, there are some software goodies to help counterbalance this. One is the always-on display. Like the Galaxy S7, the screen continuously displays the time, date and any missed notifications on the display, even when the handset is sleeping. Because the information is “always on,” you won’t have to wake it up or wave your hand over the screen (like on Motorola phones).

The feature is useful, and it does save me a tap whenever I want to check the time. However, it’s limited when compared to Samsung’s always-on feature. With the Galaxy S7 you can choose different clock faces and there’s a monthly calendar option. On the G5 you can add a “welcome message” but that’s pretty much it. And while its always-on text is visible in sunlight, it’s not as bright as on the S7.

Camera: Two cameras are better than one

The G5 has two cameras in the back: a 16-megapixel camera with a standard 78-degree wide lens and an 8-megapixel camera with a wide-angle, 135-degree lens. The wider lens lets you capture more space within each frame.

At first I wasn’t too excited about this. I thought a wide-angle lens made more sense on the front (like how the LG V10 had it) so you can include more people in your group selfies. Turns out that having a wide-angle lens on the back is useful if you’re more into sweeping landscapes than selfies (which I am). And because you can seamlessly switch between the lenses by zooming in and out on the camera’s interface, it’s easy to quickly snap two versions of every scene I wanted to capture.

Every time I took a regular photo using the standard camera, I’d pause, then zoom out even wider for the wide-angle version “just in case” I liked that photo better. It became a little addictive.

Facebook’s tool for blind users can describe News Feed photos

Facebook has launched a new tool for iOS that can help blind, English-speaking users make sense of all the photos people post on the social network. It’s called automatic alternative text, and it can give a basic description of a photo’s contents for anyone who’s using a screen reader. In the past, screen readers can only tell visually impaired users that there’s a photo in the status update they’re viewing. With this new tool in place, they can rattle off elements the company’s object recognition technology detects in the images. For instance, they can now tell users that they’re looking at a friend’s photo that “may contain: tree, sky, sea.”

The engineers at 1 Hacker Way trained their object recognition tech by feeding it millions of images as examples. This kind of machine learning is called neural network, and it was how Google taught AlphaGo the ancient game of Go and how one of our editors trained his computer to write Engadget articles. The team then made sure that alt text describes photos in a specific order, starting with (the number of) people, then objects and then scenes in the background.

People tend to post mostly images on Facebook these days to the point that browsing the News Feed has become a very visual experience. Someone who can’t see all those could feel excluded, but this technology could help “the blind community experience Facebook the same way others enjoy it.” While the tool is only available for iOS and only in English right now, the social network plans to release it on other platforms and in other languages in the future.

Via: TechCrunch

Source: Facebook (1), (2), (3)

You can now sit through Star Wars: The Force Awakens with your friendly Sphero BB-8 unit

Sphero has updated the company’s BB-8 app, which enables the little friendly droid to enjoy Star Wars: The Force Awakens. The connected droid will be able to react to content on-screen with a combination of sound and motion. The new feature, titled “Watch With Me” prepares BB-8 for the movie, which can now be purchased on Blue-ray.

As expected, you’ll need to have a copy of Star Wars: The Force Awakens already purchased and ready for viewing. For those who may be on their first run of the latest instalment, the app will also display relevant information on-screen to help those who may struggle to follow the main plot.

As an added bonus, should you not have BB-8, you can snag the Sphero unit for just $129 through April 10.

Sphero BB-8

• Read Our BB-8 Review
• Sphero BB-8 News
• Join the Discussion
• Where to Buy BB-8

Amazon Best Buy

Barclays finally supports Apple Pay in the UK

Almost nine months after the launch of Apple Pay, Barclays and Barclaycard have confirmed that its customers will be able to use Apple Pay from today.

The new service, which goes live in the UK straightaway, will give millions more UK consumers the ability to conveniently make payments using iPhone, Apple Watch and iPad at over 400,000 contactless locations in the UK, across the London transport network, as well as when shopping within participating retailers’ apps. 

Barclays, who has been pushing its own payment solutions over those from others, is the last major UK bank to join the Apple Pay system.

In stores Apple Pay works with iPhone SE, iPhone 6, iPhone 6S and Apple Watch. When paying for goods and services within apps, Apple Pay is compatible with iPhone SE, iPhone 6, iPhone 6S, iPad Air 2, iPad mini 3, iPad mini 4 and both iPad Pro models.

The Apple Pay announcement is also likely to mean that Barclays will support Android Pay at launch, although the company hasn’t confirmed whether that is the case or not.

Barclays joins Bank of Scotland, First Direct, Halifax, Lloyds Bank, M&S Bank, MBNA, Nationwide, NatWest, Royal Bank of Scotland, Santander, Tesco Bank, TSB and Ulster Bank – all of which already offer Apple Pay.

“We are passionate about helping customers access services and carry out their day to day transactions in the way that suits them. As part of this, we have developed a range of digital innovations that allow people to choose how, when and where they bank and make payments. Adding to the existing choice, from today both Barclays debit and Barclaycard credit card customers can use Apple Pay to make payments with their Apple device across the UK,” said Ashok Vaswani, CEO Barclays UK.

Earlier in the year the bank had told some customers that it would be launching Apple Pay services by the end of March.

READ: Apple Pay explained: What is it and how does it work?

Rwanda will get drone-delivered medical aid in July

In July, a fleet of fixed-wing drones will start dropping precious medical supplies to 21 hospitals and clinics in western Rwanda. These autonomous drones are made by an American startup called Zipline, which signed a contract with the country’s government in February. They’re designed to follow a flight path stored in a SIM card, fly to a clinic and drop their payload attached to a paper parachute from a low altitude before going back to their base. The machines can carry up to 3.5 pounds of blood and medicine, and each one can make 50 to 150 deliveries a day, flying around 180 miles an hour.

It might sound odd that Rwanda will have an established a drone network before the United States, but it makes sense for the country to deliver lifesaving cargo using drones. In developing nations, you often have to deal with unpaved — or even lack of — roads, heavy traffic, lack of access to transportation, among other things. With a drone network in place, a clinic can send a text message, and a drone could be there in 30 minutes if it’s within 90 miles of the UAVs’ homebase. That said, a startup called Flirtey recently made the first FAA-approved drone delivery in Nevada, so the industry is at least making some progress in the US.

Rwanda plans to expand its drone network’s capabilities to benefit the country’s economy. Zipline founder William Hetzler told The New York Times that the country wants to become “a technology hub for East Africa and ultimately the whole continent of Africa.” As for Zipline, Rwanda is just the beginning; it will deploy its drones to other developing countries within this year.

Source: The New York Times, The Atlantic, Zipline

Barclays finally rolls out Apple Pay support

If you’re a Barclays customer and you’ve been waiting since last year for the bank to support Apple Pay, we have some good news. The company announced today that the NFC payment technology has been enabled on Barclays and Barclaycard accounts, allowing customers to pay using their iPhone, Apple Watch and iPad at more than 400,000 contactless points around the UK.

If you’re new to Apple Pay, adding your Barclays card is simple. Open Settings on your iPhone and then select Wallet & Apple Pay. Once there, you will likely be asked to enter your iCloud password and can then begin the process of either confirming your existing Apple account details or adding the necessary information. In our test, the bank required a text message to confirm the card but the whole process took less than a couple of minutes.

Although Barclays CEO Ashok Vaswani has commented on the launch, noting that the bank is “passionate about helping customers access services and carry out their day to day transactions in the way that suits them,” there is no word on why it took the bank so long to support the technology. After all, it did say it would roll it out by March 27th at the latest, but missed its own deadline. With Barclays now on board, all of the major UK banks now support Apple Pay, but support will not be so unanimous for Google’s own payment system, which will hit Britain in the coming months.

Source: Apple Pay (Barclays)

Microsoft wants you to hack together a ‘Halo 5’ app

Sure, you’ve been making multiplayer levels with Halo 5: Guardians’ Forge mode, but now Microsoft wants you to create something different for the game. Like a web app or something along those lines for the stats coming from its online gametypes. Last year near Halo 5’s launch developer 343 Industries released an API in beta, and now it’s added access to “raw match events endpoint” data that the studio says will offer a wealth of info on each kill from any match. That’s including, but not limited to, Gamertag of the rival, weapon used in the kill, where it was in terms of the game’s play clock and map coordinates for where it went down.

And in an effort to incentivize developers, there’s a hackathon with some really neat prizes including a 1:1 scale Needler replica, an Anubis replica helmet and 47 gold Req Packs for the grand prize winner. 343 says that entries will be judged on originality, polish and functionality. There are only three winners (something tells me if it were still a Bungie thing there’d be seven) and the contest runs through May 16th.

Source: Halo Waypoint

Barclays Finally Supports Apple Pay in United Kingdom

Barclays appears to have enabled much-anticipated support for Apple Pay in the United Kingdom during the early morning hours on Tuesday.

A growing number of Barclays customers on Twitter have been successfully able to add their debit or credit cards from the large British bank to Apple Pay since shortly after midnight local time.

Screenshot courtesy of MacRumors reader James Richards
Barclays was notably absent from the list of banks and participating issuers supporting Apple Pay when the mobile payments service first expanded to England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland in July 2015.

Barclays cardholders can set up Apple Pay through the Wallet app on iOS 8.1 or later. Bank-issued cards can be scanned or added manually by tapping the “Add Credit or Debit Card” option. Follow the on-screen verification steps.

Apple Pay is also supported at Bank of Scotland, First Direct, Halifax, HSBC, Lloyds Bank, M&S Bank, MBNA, Nationwide, NatWest, Royal Bank of Scotland, Santander, Tesco Bank, TSB, and Ulster Bank in the United Kingdom.

Related Roundup: Apple Pay
Tag: Barclays
Discuss this article in our forums

Panasonic Lumix GX80 preview: ‘GX8 mini’ adds 5-axis stabilisation, loses low-pass filter

With the Lumix GF8 not arriving on British shores, we were beginning to wonder if Panasonic had bailed on the smaller-scale and more affordable compact system camera concept. But that’s not the case, as the latest Lumix GX80 stands to prove.

If you’re looking for a relatively small-scale system camera that you can grow into, then the GX80 offers aplenty – from a tilt-angle screen to a built-in viewfinder. In many senses, having handled this latest Lumix, it feels like the little brother to the bulkier and more advanced GX8; or an echo of the earlier GX7 with some new features.

But just because the GX80 is smaller doesn’t mean it’s totally trimmed back on the features. Sure, the viewfinder is fixed in position and the tilt-angle LCD screen isn’t vari-angle like on the GX8 – but it still has both key features on its features list.

That LCD viewfinder is solid too, delivering 2,764k-dots of resolution over a 0.7x magnification (the panel is a fair bit smaller than that of the GX8, but that’s to be expected).

Pocket-lint

If anything the GX80 goes large when it comes to new features, paving the way for future Lumix G-series cameras. Principal to its design is the removal of the low-pass filter (LPF) – a first in the G-series – a brand new electromagnetically-controlled shutter unit, and a new sensor-based 5-axis image stabilisation system.

It’s kind of surprising it’s taken Panasonic this long to remove the LPF from its system cameras. The filter exists to diffuse light slightly to avoid jaggies and negate moire and false colour in images – the last of which is a result of the standard colour filter overlay. By removing the filter there’s an uptake in sharpness by up to 10 per cent and, as many manufacturers argue, at the higher resolutions of today many of those issues are never issues at all – helped along by enhanced processing.

We’ve seen some print-outs of pre-production images from the GX80 and its results look a lot like the GX7 to our eyes. They’re natural with an ever so slight lift to resolution, but it’s a giant leap in overall quality. Still, we suspect this LPF-free approach will be Panasonic’s approach to all G-series models going forward.

The new shutter unit is one of the more interesting features of the camera because it’s so, so much quieter than the ones in the GX7 and GX8 – we’ve handled all three cameras side-by-side and the GX80 is the obvious winner (the GX7 has the most pronounced “draw” sound, the GX8 a more mighty “click”). This is because it works with electromagnetic coils rather than a tightly wound spring, using a different arrangement of shutter blades (still vertical-run).

Pocket-lint

It’s a double-edged sword though. The new shutter means a 90 per cent reduction in vibration compared to earlier Lumix models, which ought to help with slower shutter speeds, but it’s not capable of operating quite as quickly. So 1/4000th second is the maximum mechanical operation, compared to 1/8000th second in the GX8 and other cameras. Sync, too, is limited to 1/160th, rather than 1/250th as with many other G-series cameras. However, the electronic shutter caters for speeds up to 1/16,000th sec, which is super-fast (although still a whole stop slower than the GX8’s 1/32,000th sec – presumably just to put a point of difference between the two cameras, rather than being an impossibility to implement).

Also new is a sensor-based 5-axis stabilisation system, which can work in tandem with lens-based stabilisation for what Panasonic calls Dual IS. This system is developed in-house, rather than being a picking from Olympus or Sony – both of which use their own systems. It’s interesting that the system works with sensor and lens stabilisation systems, including while capturing 4K video (again, a first for Panasonic), because the tandem subtle movement of optical and sensor can avoid drifting into the unwanted territories of the available image circle. How well will it work? We’ve only used the 12-32mm collapsible lens under flickering fluorescent lights, so we’ll have to wait and see when paired with a more suitable range of lenses.

There’s more to say about 4K too, beyond video capture. As with all recent G-series Lumix cameras, the GX80 is going hard on the 4K Photo modes. Off the back of Christmas TV advertising we suspect there’s a lift in comprehension of what these modes are all about but, in short, it’s all about capturing 8-megapixel images at 30 frames per second – giving a huge breadth of shots to choose from. Options to reel off a second of footage before even pressing the shutter button are among our favourites. Additionally there’s a Post Focus mode to refocus a (tripod-mounted) frame after shooting – something we think has limited application really, as we’ve said before of other Lumix cameras.

Pocket-lint

Elsewhere the GX80 responds impeccably, just as we’ve come to expect from the latest Lumix G-series cameras. Its autofocus system is up there among the best available in the compact system camera category, and we’re particularly fond of the variety of AF options, including Pinpoint AF for precision focus. Light permitting a refresh rate of 240fps means heaps of data to pick from when acquiring focus.

Given the mass of new features, the GX80’s £509 body-only price seems fair considering its solid build, leather-like finishes and aluminium dials. It’s even available in silver (Jessops exclusive) and brown/tan (John Lewis exclusive) if black isn’t your thing. The best seller, we suspect, will be the £599 12-32mm kit option, or there’s a £729 twin kit option which adds the 35-100mm lens too.