The Pico Neo is a dumb VR headset with a smart controller

We’re still not sure what the future of VR looks like. Oculus, HTC and Valve are focusing on systems based around powerful gaming PCs. Sony will use its PlayStation 4 as a standardized base for PSVR. Samsung wants you to slot a flagship phone in front of your eyes. Chinese company Pico has a different idea. Its Pico Neo is an all-in-one system that offers an Oculus-like headset, but gets all of its computing power from a controller.

Inside that controller is a chip you’d find inside a flagship many smartphones: the Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 SoC. That means you’re getting a quad-core 2.2GHz CPU, an Adreno 530 GPU and a Hexagon 680 DSP. That’s paired with 4GB of RAM and 32GB of storage (expandable by MicroSD).

The headset itself has a pair of 1,200 x 1,080 panels (one for each eye), which matches the resolution of the HTC Vive and Oculus Rift. Those panels refresh at 90Hz; on pare with the Vive and Rift, but slower than PSVR, and 102-degree field of view — less than the Vive and Rift, but more than PSVR. While specs don’t tell you much about a device’s quality, on paper the Neo matches up with its contemporaries.

This all sounds pretty good so far. But then you look at the controller itself. It’s… pretty simplistic, offering a SNES-like layout with a D-pad, four action buttons and a pair of shoulder bumpers. Pico has added a little more flexibility with the super successful backtouch feature from the Vita, and also movement sensors, but the decision to not include analog thumbsticks is strange given VR experiences are almost universally in three dimensions.

There are analogs on the optional add-on TrackingKit and Beacon, which appear to be a straight clone of Sony’s PlayStation Camera and Move controllers. It’s not clear where you’re supposed to stash the controller with the processing power inside while you’re holding onto them.

One advantage the Pico Neo has over the Vive, Oculus and PSVR is freedom of movement: with a 5000mAh battery inside, you can apparently get 3 hours of gaming or video playback untethered, after which you can use a Quick Charge 3.0 charger to top up.

One disadvantage it has is compatibility. The Pico Neo is unlikely to see widespread support. It’s based on Android 6.0, so you’d expect a reasonable amount of games can be played, but it’s not clear if head tracking or controller support will require additional coding from developers. Pico says you can also just plug the headset into a PC to play more games, but support there also seems questionable — and it kind of negates the main selling point of the Neo in the first place.

The Neo Pico will launch this summer for 3,399 Yuan ($525) with controller and headset, or 1.899 Yuan ($295) if you just want the headset to use with a PC. We can’t imagine many gamers are going to be dissuaded from their Rift, Vive and PSVR headsets by the proposition, but it’s an interesting idea that we might see implemented by other companies soon.

Via: Liliputing

Source: Pico, GeekBuying

Google Inbox can keep up with your changing calendar

Ever struggled to keep up with a calendar event as people email changes in their plans? You won’t have to panic after today. Google is updating Inbox with a smarter approach to Google Calendar events that pools together all the emails from an event and shows changes in one place. If someone can’t make it or the time changes, you shouldn’t be caught off-guard.

The update will also be handy if you’re the sort to email yourself web links instead of relying on read-it-later services. There’s now an option to share links to Inbox, giving them a special place in the email app. It takes advantage of native sharing features on Android or iOS, and Inbox’s Chrome extension will handle the same duties when you’re on the desktop web. And lastly, the new Inbox is much better at handling newsletters — it’s easier get a peek at those recap messages, and they’ll minimize once you’ve had a look.

Source: App Store, Google Play, Chrome Web Store

Dear Veronica: Yes, the Earth is round

I can’t believe I even had to type that as a title. But apparently it’s a thing on the internet to believe that we live on a flat planet. Whether or not they’re trying to troll us is unimportant; what’s important is that Dr. Kiki Sanford is back to tell those dummies to prove it, with SCIENCE!

I also take a look at what could be causing your “ghost” Twitter notifications on your phone, and let a snacky fan know that it’s ok if he brings food into the theater. I won’t tell.

Microsoft stops making the Xbox 360

It’s the end of a gaming era: Microsoft has stopped making the Xbox 360, a little over 10 years after the console first reached shelves. As the company explains, the problems of making a decade-old product are “starting to creep up” — it’s just not worth the effort to keep the venerable system around. Microsoft will continue to sell consoles and games while supplies last, and Xbox Live support (including perks like Games With Gold) will carry on for the foreseeable future. However, it’s reasonable to say that it’s almost exclusively about the Xbox One from here on out.

You could certainly see this move coming. Microsoft has been big on Xbox 360 backwards compatibility for the Xbox One as of late, and falling Xbox One prices have reduced the incentive to pick up a 360 as your budget gaming system. Moreover, even those developers that bent over backwards to bring games to legacy consoles are dropping support. All told, there isn’t much reason to stick to the older hardware outside of playing classic games on their originally intended platform.

Still, it’s sad to see the end of the Xbox 360. It’s Microsoft’s most successful system to date, having shipped over 84 million units (as of June 2014) and bringing a temporary end to Sony’s lead in the North American console market. It was where key franchises like Gears of War got their start, and existing series like Forza Motorsport or Halo really came into their own. And like it or not, some of its failures were as memorable as its successes — who can forget the notorious Red Ring of Death (which seemed like it would kill most early units at one point) or the beleaguered HD DVD add-on? Console technology has advanced considerably since the 360 first arrived, but it’ll be missed all the same.

Source: Xbox Wire

Samsung team-up aims to improve your mobile payments

If you’ve ever tried paying with your phone at a store, you know that the experience is often only as good as the payment reader — a sketchy terminal could lead to you pulling out a credit card in embarrassment. Samsung thinks the industry can do better, though. It’s partnering with some of the larger point-of-sale device makers (such as Verifone and Ingenico) to guarantee “maximum compatibility and universal acceptance” for Samsung Pay. The hope is that this will boost the adoption of mobile payments simply by giving you a better time when you tap-to-pay, with fewer errors that make you rethink the whole concept.

While Samsung is naturally hoping that this gives its own payment technology a boost, the effort could also help competitors like Apple Pay and Android Pay. Right now, the mobile payment world is small in part because many stores just aren’t equipped for it — Samsung Pay’s trick of simulating a card swipe is more of a workaround than a permanent solution. If the partnership works well, it could improve the experience for anyone who wants to use their phone for shopping.

Source: Samsung Newsroom

The best portable vaporizer for most people

By Mark Smirniotis

This post was done in partnership with The Wirecutter, a buyer’s guide to the best technology. Read the full article here.

After looking at 30 top models and testing eight, we chose the Grenco Science G Pen Elite as our favorite vaporizer for under $200. This pint-sized vaporizer produces vapor that will convert any smoker and is easy to use, thanks to high-end features like a combination of convection and conduction heating in a ceramic chamber, precision temperature control, a clear display, and Micro-USB charging.

Who is this for?

There was a time when cannabis was smoked in secret, in joints. Today, it’s bought in shops and it isn’t smoked at all—it’s “vaped.” A vaporizer doesn’t actually create smoke. Instead, it heats up material to the temperature just before combustion and releases active compounds for you to inhale without the carcinogens and tar of regular smoke.

If you’re completely new to cannabis, a portable vaporizer feels like something you can bring to a dinner party along with a bottle of wine. Compared to smoking, using a vaporizer will give you a cleaner taste, less lingering odor, and more efficient use of your material.

If you’re a patient looking to medical marijuana for symptom relief, portable vaporizers offer additional benefits over the alternatives. A vaporizer that works with ground material (i.e., cannabis flowers) offers the ability to reproduce dosages by way of precision temperature controls. Their effects are easier to control than with edibles, and the material they use is more universally available than vaporizers that use concentrates such as extracts or oils.

How we picked and tested

The vapes we tested, clockwise from bottom left: Grenco Science G Pen Elite, Vapium Summit, Kandypens K-Vape Micro DX, Grenco Science G Pro, Firefly 2, Pax 2, Crafty, Arizer Air. (Zippo lighter for scale.)

We set out to find a reliable, pleasing vaporizer that was easy to use and didn’t cost more than a casual user could rationalize. That meant finding the right blend of features such as heating type, size and style, controls, and overall design. We searched for convection heating, which transfers heat through the air and is generally preferred for better flavor without the risk of combustion, but kept in mind that conduction heat, transferred between two solids, can still do the job at a much lower price.

Our research also helped convince us that $200 was a crucial price threshold for less experienced users—but we didn’t consider the cheap, plastic models associated with the pen-style category. (In practice, we’ve found these sub-$100 models to be so unsatisfying that they make smoking seem like a better option.)

In downtown Los Angeles one Friday afternoon, we hosted a panel of five medical marijuana patients, all with different experience levels, to test our eight finalists and debate every aspect or flaw—for over five hours—before settling on our favorites.

Our pick

At about 4¼ inches long and 1¼ inches in diameter, the Elite is smallest of any vaporizer we tested except for the PAX 2.

Although the perfect portable vaporizer doesn’t exist, the Grenco Science G Pen Elite comes close. It delivers on key features we look for in a portable vaporizer: foremost, vapor quality good enough that you’d never think of smoking instead, along with pocketable size, universal Micro-USB charging, acceptable battery life, and easy cleaning and reloading with minimal disassembly. Plus, the device has features you rarely see in the under-$200 price range, such as a digital display for battery life and precision temperature control. In a test of our eight finalists among a group of Los Angeles Wirecutter contributors with a range of vaporizer familiarity, the Elite impressed everyone with its straightforward controls, attractive design, rich finish, and pleasant flavors. While its vapor quality can’t compare to models costing twice as much, it was the one our testers said they would be most likely to buy for themselves.

For reliable vapor but less intuitive controls

The Summit has a boxy design but has nice touches such as a magnetized oven cover attached with a short lanyard.

Vapium Summit, priced similarly to the G Pen Elite, is a solid runner-up if our pick is out of stock. We prefer the Elite’s additional convection heating and ceramic chamber, but the Summit’s full-conduction metal chamber reliably produced a respectable vapor with good consistency and a warm, cooked flavor. The LED status lights display one of its eight temperature settings and change color to show the battery status—it’s readable, but not quite as intuitive as our pick. The Summit’s metal airway isn’t as easy to clean as our top pick’s, but the Summit does share the convenient inclusion of Micro-USB charging.

For great vapor and a no-frills design

The Arizer Air is seven inches long with the glass mouthpiece, and not exactly inconspicuous.

If you care more about vapor quality than portability, the best unit in this price range is the Arizer Air—it produced thick, flavorful vapor at a good temperature right out of the box, but the vapor is the only positive. The Arizer is bigger than our pick, with a flashlightlike metal-cylinder design that wouldn’t fit in most pockets. That’s topped by a two-inch glass mouthpiece that doesn’t look as subtle, feel as durable, or stay as clean as mouthpieces on other models we recommend. Two color-coded lights for temperature status and battery life made for the least intuitive interface of any vaporizer we tried. The Air recharges from a dedicated charge cord to a DC-in port (unlike our pick’s more convenient Micro-USB port).

A premium pick at a premium price

The Crafty’s twists off to reveal the chamber underneath.

The Elite, Summit, and Air are all in roughly the same price range, but if you can spend a lot more, the Storz & Bickel Crafty, which produces cool vapor with complex flavors every time, is a good choice. This was formerly our top pick—it’s still an excellent vaporizer, but newer products get results that will please most people at prices that are more than $100 less. The Crafty is bigger than the Elite, and while it can fit in some pockets, it’s more like a small smartphone than a large BIC lighter. The finned design and slim mouthpiece are eye-catching (which may or may not be a good thing). It also uses app-based controls that will have you searching for your smartphone just to check your vaporizer’s battery status—a feature that doesn’t add much and is inconvenient compared to the simple display and controls of the G Pen Elite. The Crafty is clearly the best vapor you’ll find in a pocketable package, but the drawbacks don’t quite justify the higher cost.

This guide may have been updated by The Wirecutter. To see the current recommendation, please go here.

Arduino clone is as small as an AA battery

What do you do if even the smallest Arduino boards (or their clones) are too big for your homebrew project? If you’re Johan Kanflo, you find a way to make them even smaller. His AAduino project turns the already miniscule Tiny328 Arduino clone into an even smaller computing device that’s about as big as an AA battery. Through creative wiring, it even fits inside a typical battery holder and draws power from the batteries in the remaining slots. He had to underclock the processor to extend to the battery life, but it’s otherwise as capable as its normal counterparts.

You aren’t about to buy a ready-made AAduino, but you don’t have to. Kanflo has posted instructions and schematics both on his own site and on GitHub, so you can replicate his invention yourself. This is mainly useful if you’re building an extra-compact gadget (Kanflo needed this for a radio node, for instance), but it shows that even daunting size requirements can be solved with a little ingenuity.

Via: TechCrunch

Source: Johan Kanflo, GitHub

LeEco’s Latest Android Smartphones Beat Apple to Removing the Headphone Jack

Apple’s intention to remove the 3.5mm headphone jack from this year’s iPhone 7 has been a well-publicized rumor since last November, with the widespread belief that the company would use a Lightning port to provide both charging and as a source for audio output on 2016’s iPhone. Today, however, Chinese company LeEco announced a line of smartphones that will beat Apple’s rumored removal of the 3.5mm headphone port, instead opting for a USB-C input (via Engadget).

LeEco also has its hands in product categories like smart TVs and electric cars, with offices in Los Angeles and Silicon Valley, but the company keeps most of its smartphone business focused locally in China. The new line of smartphones — dubbed the Le 2, Le 2 Pro, and Le Max 2 — will run the Android operating system, and users will be able to purchase either in-ear or over-ear USB-C headphones to go with the new phones. No specific plans were divulged, but LeEco noted that it intends to bring “at least one” of the devices stateside in 2016.

Image via Engadget
Similar to other Android devices like the Nexus 6P and the Huawei Mate S, all three of LeEco’s new devices have a rear-facing fingerprint scanner to allow access into the smartphone. Each version has a slightly curved backside that flows into chamfered edges and an edge-to-edge, “borderless” display, all housed in a metallic body.

The Le 2 and Le 2 Pro are analogues of the iPhone 6s Plus, featuring 5.5 inch, 1080p displays, but coming in slightly above Apple’s 2750 mAh battery at 3000 mAh. Understandably, the Le 2 Pro stacks up better against the Le 2 in a few categories: it has a 21-megapixel rear-facing Sony IMX230 sensor and 4GB of RAM, whereas the Le 2 packs a 16-megapixel rear-facing camera and 3GB of RAM. The Le 2 will cost 1,099 yuan ($170), while the Pro version will run for 1,499 yuan ($230).

The Le Max 2 has a bigger screen than the other two devices at 5.7 inches, and includes Qualcomm’s latest Snapdragon 820 processor, a more “advanced ultrasonic” fingerprint scanner, and a bigger 3100 mAh battery. That’s in addition to optical image stabalization, increased storage capacity options, and a total of 6GB of RAM. A 32GB storage option of the Le Max 2 (with a lesser 4GB of RAM) will cost users 2,099 yuan ($325), while the increased storage of 64GB (and 6GB of RAM) will sell for 2,499 yuan ($390). Pre-orders for all three smartphones began today in China.

Although nothing has been confirmed this far out from the iPhone 7 event, which will most likely take place in September, recent rumors have suggested Apple could ship Lightning-enabled EarPods with the smartphone to ready users for a new shift in headphone inputs. One report suggested recently that the company might even adopt Bluetooth-enabled headphones for the iPhone 7 to free up the Lightning port when listening to music, but still be able to charge the wireless EarPods through the iPhone when they run low on battery.

Read More: JBL Announces Noise-Canceling Headphones Powered by USB-C

Related Roundup: iPhone 7
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Apple Seeds Second iOS 9.3.2 Beta to Developers With Night Shift and Low Power Mode Update

Apple today seeded the second beta of an upcoming iOS 9.3.2 update to developers for testing purposes, two weeks after the release of the first iOS 9.3.2 beta. iOS 9.3.2 beta 2 comes nearly a month after the launch of iOS 9.3, a major update that introduced Night Shift mode and other feature improvements, and three weeks after the iOS 9.3.1 bug fix update.

The second iOS 9.3.2 beta is available for download over-the-air or from the Apple Developer Center.

Like iOS 9.3.1, iOS 9.3.2 is a minor update that appears to focus mainly on under-the-hood performance improvements and fixes for bugs that have been discovered since the release of iOS 9.3. According to Apple’s release notes, the beta features “bug fixes and improvements,” including a possible fix for a major Game Center bug that has plagued iOS users for months. No outward-facing changes were found in the first beta, but we’ll update this post with anything new discovered in the second beta.

What’s new in iOS 9.3.2 beta 2:

Night Shift and Low Power Mode – iOS 9.3.2 beta 2 brings the return of a much desired feature, re-enabling the ability to use Low Power Mode and Night Shift at the same time. Early iOS 9.3 betas allowed Night Shift and Low Power Mode to work simultaneously, but it was removed in iOS 9.3 beta 4. With iOS 9.3.2 beta 2, you can turn on Low Power Mode when Night Shift is on.

Related Roundup: iOS 9
Tag: iOS 9.3.2
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Apple Seeds Second OS X 10.11.5 El Capitan Beta to Developers

Apple today seeded the second beta of an upcoming OS X 10.11.5 El Capitan update to developers for testing purposes, two weeks after releasing the first OS X 10.11.5 beta and a month after releasing OS X 10.11.4, the fourth update to the OS X 10.11 operating system.

The new OS X 10.11.5 update, build 15F24b, can be downloaded through the software update mechanism in the Mac App Store or through the Apple Developer Center.

Like prior OS X El Capitan updates, the fifth update is likely to focus on security enhancements, performance improvements, and bug fixes to address issues that have been discovered since the release of OS X 10.11.4. No obvious outward-facing changes were found in the first OS X 10.11.5 beta, but we will update this post with any changes discovered in the second beta.

Related Roundup: OS X El Capitan
Tag: OS X 10.11.5
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