Sony Xperia X and Xperia XA hit the UK with pricing and release date

The Sony Xperia X and Xperia XA mid-range phones are hitting the UK shops with pricing at last. They’re here to replace the Xperia Z line once and for all.

The death of Sony’s Xperia Z leaves space for the new Xperia X range. While the X Performance is the top model for this range, which is yet to hit the UK, the Xperia X and Xperia XA are mid-range and upper-mid-range smartphones that aim to take on the affordable yet well powered Huawei’s of the world.

The Sony Xperia XA will cost from £239 while the Xperia X will be £499, the variation of which is reflected in the specs.

The Sony XA features a 5-inch 720p display, MediaTek Helio P10 processor with 2GB of RAM and 16GB storage plus microSD expansion. There are 13-megapixel and 8-megapixel cameras plus Android 6.0.1 in the package, which will begin shipping from Amazon on 10 June. This comes in black for £279 or lime gold or white from £239.

The higher end Xperia X has a 5-inch display with 1080p resolution, Qualcomm Snapdragon 650 processor backed by 3GB of RAM and 32GB storage. The rear features a hybrid autofocus 23-megapixel camera and there’s a 13-megapixel selfie snapper in the front. This is expected to ship from 20 May.

US release dates and pricing have not been announced yet.

READ: Sony Xperia X Performance

Hover Camera is a safe and foldable drone that follows you

“Follow me” is an up-and-coming feature on consumer drones, and then you’ve also got those that are foldable for the sake of portability. Very few devices carry both advantages, but Beijing startup Zero Zero Robotics has already gone further with its Hover Camera. As the name suggests, this drone is mainly for aerial photography and videography, but what makes it even cooler is the fact that its propellers are fully enclosed by a strong carbon fiber frame, thus making it the safest drone we’ve ever played with. As you can see in our hands-on video after the break, you can literally grab it whenever you like without sacrificing any of your fingers to the drone gods.

The Hover Camera comes in at only 238 grams, which is just below the FAA’s limit for mandatory hobbyist drone registration. It’s small as well: When the propeller wings are folded, it’s about the size of a VHS cassette tape. Once you open it up, you’ll see all four propellers with brushless motors, all of which are apparently developed in-house. A company rep point out that to enable precise control in such a small device, off-the-shelf components just wouldn’t work.

Likewise, the A.I. algorithm is also built from ground up, and it relies on Qualcomm’s Snapdragon Flight platform which is running at full speed all the time. Despite this, Zero Zero Robotics’ design is able to reuse some of the downward airflow to cool the chipset; and a single charge will last for about eight minutes, after that you can easily swap out the battery at the top.

For these reasons alone, MQ Wang, CEO of Zero Zero Robotics and a PhD graduate at Stanford University, isn’t worried about his product being copied. “It’s a lot harder to build things of this size versus bigger things. Something of this size needs to be built from ground up… We use a completely proprietary algorithm, as we’re squeezing every single drop of juice out of the Snapdragon 801; and we don’t use open source code because it’s not good enough.”

The main camera at the front takes 13-megapixel stills as well as 4K video, and it comes with a dual-tone flash which might come in handy. Since it’s only on a single-axis gimble, it uses electronic image stabilisation which is still being fine-tuned. There’s also a downward-facing 3-megapixel camera and a sonar underneath to help stabilise the drone itself. Wang said you can expect the Hover Camera to achieve similar level of image quality as modern high-end smartphones.

The Hover Camera doesn’t come with a controller; it’s all done with your fingers and a couple of virtual buttons in the mobile app, as long as you’re connected to the drone’s WiFi hotspot. A single finger drag controls the camera’s pitch and the drone’s yaw, and a two-finger drag controls the altitude and horizontal direction. There are also two dedicated buttons for moving forward and backward. Obviously, the app provides a live video stream, and it also lets you grab a 720p copy of the 4K videos stored in the drone’s 32GB internal memory; you’ll need to use a micro-USB 3.0 Type B cable to transfer the original copies to your computer.

At the moment, the app offers a few features: there’s the self-explanatory 360 Pano mode, along with face tracking and body tracking. To start the tracking modes, simply toggle video recording mode in the app, and once you see a bracket locked onto you, just start recording. The tracking worked well when I walked around either indoor or outdoor, but once I started running, it struggled to catch up. As you can see in our hands-on, video quality is also not quite there yet at the moment, but the company promises that all will be fixed by the time this device launches. You can also expect more cool features like gesture control and orbiting mode to be added later, though there’s no word on when these will be made available.

Zero Zero Robotics has yet to reveal a price for the Hover Camera, but it’s aiming for somewhere below $600, which seems pretty reasonable given its capabilities and materials. The beta trial is now open and if all goes well, we’ll be seeing this drone hitting the market some time this summer, followed by a whole range of other robotic products from this ambitious startup of some 80 people.

Source: Zero Zero Robotics

TalkTalk relaunches TV Store with lowest price promise

TalkTalk may’ve already renamed the video streaming service it acquired from Tesco last summer, but today marks something of a formal relaunch. The TalkTalk TV Store, formerly known as Blinkbox under Tesco’s wing, still serves exactly the same purpose. Like Amazon Instant Video, the Sky Store or Wuaki.tv, users can rent or buy movies and TV shows to watch on multiple devices, no subscription required. The most important change today is pricing, with TalkTalk now claiming to be the cheapest place to catch new releases like Star Wars: The Force Awakens. While that’s technically true, TalkTalk has simply matched Amazon’s pricing, so they share the title together.

The TalkTalk TV Store is open to all, and available on PCs, smartphones, tablets and LG/Samsung smart TVs. Existing TalkTalk broadband and/or TV customers get a few added conveniences from now on, however. First off, they can use their existing TalkTalk login details for the service, and any rentals or purchases will simply be added to their usual monthly bill. This kind of persistent account also means those with a YouView set-top box in their living room can start watching something on the big screen and pick up where they left off on a smaller one. Just a couple of features that make the store a little more compelling than Amazon’s alternative, if only for existing TalkTalk customers.

Source: TalkTalk

E-cigarette ads are encouraging teen vapers, CDC finds

Surprise! The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has found a link between the popularity of vaping and e-cigarette advertising. In short, a greater exposure to vape-related ads increases the likelihood that a young person will pick up the habit. The findings are based on a questionnaire answered by 22,000 middle and high school students in the US. The responses were collected in 2014, so the situation might have evolved since then, but it shows a clear correlation between vaping and the volume of advertising found online, in print, on TV and in stores.

The CDC has expressed some concerns with the findings. Director Tom Frieden argues that children shouldn’t have access to any kind of tobacco, “including e-cigarettes.” He also believes that e-cigarette marketing “look eerily like the ads” that used to sell cigarettes decades ago, focusing on “sex, independence and rebellion.” Traditional cigarette ads are now vastly different due to strict government rules in the US. Frieden says the “unrestricted marketing” that e-cigarettes currently enjoy could easily “reverse decades of progress in preventing tobacco use among youth.”

The situation could change, however, if the Food and Drug Administration, which currently regulates cigarettes and other forms of tobacco, is allowed to bring e-cigarettes under its authority. Some will argue, however, that the increase in vaping isn’t a problem, given that some research has suggested e-cigarettes are healthier than their traditional counterparts. The technology’s impact on personal health remains a bit of a mystery, however, as new and often conflicting reports arise. The main problem is that vaping is still a new trend — it’s hard to know the long-term effects until, well, people have been doing it for a longer period of time.

Via: The Verge

Source: CDC

Giroptic’s 360-degree waterproof camera starts shipping

With the tech world suddenly going nuts for 360-degree video, Giroptic may have picked the perfect time to start shipping its 360cam to backers and anyone who preordered the camera. The waterproof camera will available to for everyone else to buy May 24 for $500.

The camera uses three fisheye lenses to cover its orb of video or photo and is waterproof up to 30 feet. It delivers 2k video and 4k images that are stitched together by the hardware before being transferred to your smartphone and saved on the microSD card.

The pear-shaped camera launches with optional accessories. A lightbulb bulb adaptor makes it an always-on security camera. For those hoping to create live 360-degree videos, the ethernet base will give you the throughput to broadcast directly to Facebook or YouTube.

Source: Giroptic

ICYMI: Fire starting drone, Stanford bird studies and more

Today on In Case You Missed It: A prototype for a fire-starting drone was deployed in Nebraska last week, dropping small balls of accelerant to create a controlled burn over grasslands. The idea is that future firefighters could use UAVs like the University of Nebraska-Lincoln model to stop an out of control wildfire with drone-created fire breaks, or for other uses.
Stanford engineers are also getting in on the UAV action, but in the most Earth Mother of ways. They’ve just built a one of a kind wind tunnel and are putting birds through their (voluntary, working for food) paces in it, using slow motion cameras to track how their wings automatically adjust. The end goal of the study is to design better drones, based on what the birds automatically do in the wind.

And Shell has designed a city-car concept that would be all gas, but get 107 miles a gallon.

If you’ve recently gotten a VR headset, you’ll enjoy this amazing video making the rounds. As always, please share any great tech or science videos you find by using the #ICYMI hashtag on Twitter for @mskerryd.

Apple Forecasted to Report First Quarterly Revenue Decline Since 2003

Apple is set to announce its financial earnings results for the second quarter of the 2016 fiscal year at 1:30 p.m. Pacific, and the consensus among analysts is that the iPhone maker will report its first quarterly revenue decline in over a decade.

Wall Street analysts project that Apple will report revenue of around $52 billion, or nearly a 10-percent decline compared to the year-ago quarter. Today’s earnings results are based on the three-month period between December 27, 2015 and March 26, 2016.

Apple itself projected quarterly revenue of between $50 and $53 billion, compared to $58 billion in the year-ago quarter, possibly signaling the end of over 50 consecutive quarters of year-over-year revenue growth dating back to 2003.

Tim Cook, CEO, already cautioned investors that iPhone sales will likely decline in the second fiscal quarter. That decline will be realized if Apple sells fewer than 61.2 million iPhones this quarter, which appears likely given most analysts expect sales to hover around the 50 to 51 million mark.

Apple’s quarterly revenue between 2005 and 2016 (Source: Statista)
iPhone SE sales will not be included in that total, as the lower-priced smartphone launched on March 31, five days after the quarter ended.

MacRumors will be providing live blog coverage of Apple’s earnings conference call with CEO Tim Cook and CFO Luca Maestri at 2:00 p.m. Pacific.

AAPL is trading slightly lower on the NASDAQ at around the $104 mark in pre-market trading ahead of today’s announcement.

Tags: earnings, Apple, AAPL
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Dropbox’s ‘Project Infinite’ Introduces Cloud Storage to Free Up Hard Drive Space

At Dropbox Open London today, the company announced “Project Infinite,” a new feature of the popular document transferring app that will save space on a user’s local hard drive thanks to the implementation of a new cloud storage feature.

With Infinite, both cloud files and locally saved files will cohabitate in the traditional location within Finder on Macs, letting users decide which take up storage space and which stay in the cloud.

Documents saved in the cloud will be marked with a tiny icon referencing their storage location, but there won’t be any kind of laborious download process if a user needs to quickly gain access to anything not directly saved on their computer. Cloud files will sync on demand when a user clicks on them, displaying them in the same way as locally stored files. If a file will be needed in a location lacking an Internet connection, users can choose to “Save local copy” and download the cloud file for later.

In Project Infinite’s introduction video, the company gives the example of a shared company Dropbox folder with upwards of 10 terabytes of data synced inside. On the desktop of one user, however, the folder is taking up just 28 megabytes of data thanks to the inclusion of cloud storage.

The company also mentioned that Project Infinite supports all platforms that Dropbox is available on, and even includes backwards-compatibility “on any computer running Windows 7 or higher, or Mac OS X 10.9 and up.” So a file saved by a team member on Windows 8, for instance, can be viewed as a placeholder cloud file on another user’s iMac, and then downloaded to their hard drive.

Project Infinite will enable users to seamlessly and securely access all their Dropbox files from the desktop, regardless of how much space they have available on their hard drives. Everything in the company’s Dropbox that you’re given access to, whether it’s stored locally or in the cloud, will show up in Dropbox on your desktop. If it’s synced locally, you’ll see the familiar green checkmark, while everything else will have a new cloud icon.

Dropbox’s aim for Project Infinite appears to be enterprise focused, but the company’s blog post mentioned that it has “more product announcements to come throughout the year,” following the launch of its new storage-saving cloud feature. Project Infinite is currently being tested among a select number of Dropbox sponsors, but no word has yet been given regarding a specific wide launch.

Tag: Dropbox
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Indian government mandates panic button on all phones sold in the country from 2017

The Indian government has announced that all mobile phones sold in the country from January 1, 2017 should come with a panic button that will allow anyone in need the ability to contact authorities with a single key. Built-in GPS is also a mandatory feature in phones going on sale next year. The move comes after the government has instituted a single “112” number for emergencies, including police services, ambulances, and the fire department.

For smartphones that cannot accommodate dedicated buttons — like the Galaxy S7 and the HTC 10 — manufacturers will have to incorporate a mechanism through which users can contact authorities by pressing the power button thrice in quick succession:

Smartphones without the facility of emergency call button by pressing the same for long time to invoke emergency call or the use of existing power on or off button, when short pressed thrice in quick succession.

The feature phones without the facility of panic button by pressing ‘numeric key – 5’ or ‘numeric key – 9’ to invoke emergency call.

From Communications and IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad:

I have taken a decision that from January 1, 2017, no cell phone can be sold without a provision for panic button, and from January 1, 2018, mobile sets should also have Global Positioning System inbuilt.

Technology is solely meant to make human life better and what better than using it for the security of women.

Starbucks releases keyboard packed full of caffeinated emoji

Starbucks has launched a new app for iOS and Android. The Starbucks Keyboard offers a unique way to share some emoji love with friends on various messenger platforms like Hangouts, WhatsApp, and more. Should you be a massive fan of hot beverages, this app will be ideal when it comes to expressing your espresso love with friends and family.

There’s everything from a unicorn sipping a coffee to official Starbucks logos. More emoji are said to be planned for the app as the year progresses. If your emoji fix has not been catered to by other offerings on the store, be sure to give the Starbucks Keyboard a try.