Ultimate Ears UE Roll 2: Rock ‘n’ roll reprisal

The UE Roll, the discus-shaped rugged Bluetooth speaker, is back for round two.

The UE Roll 2 takes the same dinky shape as the original waterproof speaker, but crams in 15 per cent more sound and better wireless range to 100-feet, according to the company. All without changing the exterior design.

It comes with some jazzy design options, too, just as you can see from our hands-on pictures of the speaker which we were sent ahead of the official announcement. Don’t worry, though, there are simpler colourways too.

Core to the UE Roll 2’s design is a bungee cord loop, which is neatly tucked away underneath. This can be used to attach to various objects for a tight fit, plus it’s rugged enough to stretch out considerably. So whether you want to loop it around a bike frame, a lamp-post or a chair leg, you can get creative.

The UE Roll 2 is waterproof (IPX7 certified) and every product comes complete with the UE Floatie – a rubber ring-like inflatable that can join the in the pool to act as the Roll 2’s floating stand – which was a separate accessory for the original product. Bonus.

Available this very month, the UE Roll 2 will be priced £79. Which is less cash than the original was at launch, despite the extra sound, range and Floatie included.

Breathing batteries can make smartphones last all week on a charge

Another day, another battery breakthrough. This time it’s lithium-air batteries that have had an advancement which could mean cells that last five times longer than current ones.

Dr Kyeongjae Cho and his team at Dallas University have discovered a new catalyst for lithium-air batteries that can enhance capacity, theoretically, up to ten times. Until now researchers had been hitting a wall, which Cho hopes can now be circumnavigated to help progress in lithium-air battery developments.

The result should be batteries that will work in smartphones and cars, giving a far greater life and range. An electric car should be able to manage a 400-mile range while a smartphone could last a solid week, on a single charge.

The lithium-air batteries effectively breath oxygen to power the chemical reactions. This means they don’t need to store an oxidiser like current lithium-ion batteries do. That means more room for a greater energy density, theoretically 10 times that of lithium-ion, and comparable to gasoline.

These lithium-air batteries, requiring less materials, would not only be one fifth of the weight of current batteries but would also be one fifth of the cost to produce.

Thanks to the newly developed catalyst, dimethylphenazine, the batteries should have a higher stability and voltage efficiency now.

The downside? This is a research breakthrough meaning it could still be a good five to ten years before we start to see these batteries in our gadgets and vehicles.

“This is a major step,” Cho said. “Hopefully it will revitalise the interest in lithium-air battery research, creating momentum that can make this practical, rather than just an academic research study.”

READ: Future batteries, coming soon

Sony Cyber-shot RX1R II review: Full-frame fun and foibles

When it first launched at the end of 2012, the Sony Cyber-shot RX1 was a camera like no other. Its full-frame sensor and fixed 35mm lens made it a distinctive shooter for the high-end market. Sure, it had its imperfections, but that large sensor gave it inevitable qualities that helped it stand out compared to, say, the Fujifilm X100.

Since, there have been launches such as the Leica Q to give Sony more than a little to think about. Having already put out an “R” model – an RX1 minus an optical low-pass filter (OLPF) – the Japanese company’s supposed comeback king, the RX1R II, relies heavily on a bump in resolution. Some 42-megapixels of it. Add a built-in pop-up viewfinder and the Mark II is a camera with few comparisons.

But does a bigger resolution mean it’s best in class? Or has the RX1R Mark II held onto some of the bad habits of the earlier models? We’ve been using one for a week to get a taste of just what it can do.

Sony RX1R II review: Design

There’s a growing trend for fixed-lens cameras, the RX1R II joining the “no zoom” fray with, well, the very same lens as its predecessors: a 35mm f/2.0 Zeiss optic. That’s a mid-wide focal length, a classic choice for street photographers, complete with aperture control ring and manual focus ring that are great to use.

It’s a fairly chunky wedge of a camera too, that all-metal build bringing its weight to just over half a kilo. That might sound heavy, but in camera talk that’s code for quality and reassurance: it’s built to last. Except, perhaps, for the rear screen coating which we somehow managed to put some marks on during a drive (it was in a bag with another camera – but no Gorilla Glass like coating on cameras, as there is on phones, is a modern day oddity).

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The screen is one of the major talking points of the RX1R II, as this 3-inch panel is mounted on a tilt-angle bracket so it can be used 45-degrees downward for overhead work or to as much as 109-degrees upwards for waist-level shooting. And we’ve so often used it for waist-level snapping, for low-lying subjects without losing the background and skyline. Still no touchscreen controls, or even the option for them, seems a bit in the past though.

From one screen to another, one that you probably can’t spot: a major feature of the RX1R II is that there’s now a pop-up 2.56m-dot, 0.39-inch electronic viewfinder included in the build, hidden from view until you crank down on the “Finder” switch to the left side of the LCD screen. It pops up into position, although – in a similar fashion to the RX100 III and IV models – you’ll need to push that screen inward and downwards to stow it. It’s a little miracle that such a panel is hidden, giving you the choice to use it as and when. Our only gripe with it is the diopter adjustment to the left side, which is fiddly to use and poorly placed because it gets “reset” if you need to utilise it in any adjustment format.

Otherwise the RX1R II is fundamentally similar to its predecessor models, including mode and exposure compensation dials up top, thumbwheel and rotational d-pad to the rear, and generally compact-like controls. Still no dial lock or “zeroed” light on the exposure compensation dial, though, which is a shame. The more apparent difference in the Mark II model is the addition of a fully continuous autofocus (“C”) option to the front selection dial, which is positioned to the lower corner of the camera.

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Sony RX1R II review: A lens to love?

The Cyber-shot RX1R II’s lens has all the hallmarks of top glass, that blue Zeiss logo to the side being one giveaway. This is the kind of stock reserved for the most capable of Sony pro lenses.

As we’ve mentioned there’s an aperture control ring, which reassuringly clicks between third-stops, from f/2.0 all the way down to f/22.

Beyond this ring there are two additional ones: a macro ring which switches the lens’ focus range from the 24cm-from-lens starting range down to a 14cm (at closest) “macro” focus; and a manual focus ring that’s positioned perfectly towards the front of the lens and rotates in a buttery smooth fashion.

It’s great to have such a wide aperture for depth of field control, especially with a full-frame sensor to match, but it’s not always ideal to use it wide-open. At f/2.0 the blurred background bokeh is wonderful, but the in-focus area is slight, which can be great but can also be limiting.

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Sony Cyber-shot RX1R Mark II review – sample image at ISO 500

Additionally there’s no built-in neutral density (ND) filter, which would be really useful when shooting in bright conditions with the aperture open. Sure, you can add a physical one onto the 49mm threat at the front of the lens, but that’s an additional cost and a slower process to realise.

So there’s heaps of good about the Sony lens and the images it can aid in rendering, but there’s also an outsider to consider here: the Leica Q, with its 28mm f/1.7 lens. The German-made competitor handles flare exceptionally well, while distortion is minimal. That’s one thing about even the Sony’s 35mm: it is prone to a touch of barrel distortion.

Sony RX1R II review: Performance

When we looked at the original RX1 camera its autofocus speed was reasonable but not ground-breaking. The RX1R II is faster than that but, again, in the context of the wider world of cameras it’s still not lightning fast. And given its £2,599 price tag it should be.

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Sony Cyber-shot RX1R Mark II review – sample image at ISO 400, -1.7EV

But that’s not to gloss over the changes on board. The Mark II model introduces a phase-detection autofocus system, something the previous two RX1 models lacked (using contrast-detection only). That’s where the added bump in speed comes from, and while it’s not at DSLR levels, it’s certainly fast enough.

Perhaps most importantly it’s a reliable focus system. We used the camera exclusively to shoot at the CES Asia show, snapping the latest gadgets and cars, where it proved itself admirably. The ability to focus with accuracy – whether using the macro or normal lens position – was key in such scenarios; even some compact system cameras (we’ve been using the Olympus Pen-F) can get confused with light reflections that the Sony didn’t struggle with.

That 35mm lens works well for arm’s length shooting, while being wide-angle enough to fit in broader scenes, almost irrelevant of lighting situations – the autofocus system is capable of catching subjects even in very low-light conditions. That, in part, is the bonus of a bright lens, which can let loads of light in for the autofocus system to utilise.

As we mentioned there’s the addition of a continuous autofocus “C” position to the front of the camera, pushing the camera’s improved ability to capture moving subjects. It’s an improvement compared to the earlier RX1, as we did successfully shoot cheetahs in Africa moving at a walking pace, but it’s not the RX1R II’s premier function. If you want to shoot a bird in flight or some such subject then you’ll want to look elsewhere really, plus 35mm is fairly wide-angle for such shots.

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It’s more the manual end of things where the camera works particularly well. It’s possible to switch on a MF Assist option from within the menus which magnifies the focus area to 100 per cent size, but, and integrally, there’s a focus peaking option that “paints” the in-focus area with a colour to verify. And that super-smooth manual focus ring is very precise and adjusts in just the right amounts per rotation, something some other analogue-to-digital lenses can’t manage.

The biggest problem we’ve found with the RX1R II in the performance stakes is just how paltry its battery life is. It’s poor, but no surprise given the 1,240mAh capacity (some flagship phones are triple that these days). We really don’t understand why Sony hasn’t opted for a larger and more capacious cell, as there’s seemingly room for it in a body of this scale. There’s no dedicated charger in the box either, instead the camera plugs in via microUSB – which sounds useful, but it’s slow, hard to tell whether the battery has been fully replenished, and makes using multiple batteries a right pain (we were lucky enough to have two – believe us you’ll need more than one).

Sony RX1R II review: Image quality

And so on to the big kahuna: image quality. It’s the area where the Mark II model steps things up considerably, because it’s got the same 42-megapixel full-frame sensor as you’ll find in the A7R II SLT (which is like an SLR, only with a translucent mirror, hence the acronym).

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Sony Cyber-shot RX1R Mark II review – sample image at ISO 100

In addition to using the RX1R II to shoot a tech show in China, we’ve also been snapping with it in the deserts of Namibia, and back home in the UK. The primary thing that we’ve noticed is just how well set for post-shooting crops this camera is. We’ve had subjects not fill much of the frame brought into perfect positioning with some clever cropping – and without impacting on the perceivable quality. Think about it: 42-megapixels is huge; it’s one of the reasons this camera demands its sky-high price tag.

But 42-megapixels isn’t particularly well-matched for shaky hands or slow shutter speeds, as it will pronounce softness. Not that we’ve found this to be a particular issue: frames are sharp, with only some optical fall-off towards the edges. Interestingly there’s a low-pass filter that can be toggled on or off to aid with sharpness – but the difference in results is slight to our eyes. How this works is perhaps most interesting of all: there’s a liquid crystal layer in the RX1R II’s low-pass filter that will only cause light to diffuse when electronically stimulated, otherwise light passes directly through. Clever.

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Sony Cyber-shot RX1R Mark II review – sample image at ISO 1600

But anyway, back to the actual images. There are a couple of oddities to call out. Colour, for starters, is sometimes off when using auto white balance (AWB), with the odd unexpected cool cast. We’ve had to spend a fair bit of time warming up some images that were too cyan, presumably as a result of indoor lighting. Distortion is the other point, which, despite an in-camera correction option, can be noticeable – we’ve had to add lens correction in Photoshop to some images.

If you’re expecting a 42-megapixel camera to be a low-light king then you might need to think again too. Saying that, we’ve been hugely impressed with just how much detail is held higher up the ISO range. We’ve shot at ISO 1600 and found no hugely adverse image noise to show. Push a stop beyond that, however, and you’ll start to spot how gradients aren’t nearly as smooth, with a mottled pattern to them. Actual colour noise is largely absent, though, and what is visible is slight and tends to be “hidden” because of the sheer resolution and scale of images. From ISO 6400 and above it’s a bit of an issue though, as our shot of the Shanghai TV tower shows.

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Sony Cyber-shot RX1R Mark II review – sample image at ISO 2500 f/2.8

What really sells the images is the pairing of this sensor with that lens. The potential for sumptuous, melty-like bokeh is great, or stop down for broader depth of field. It puts you in control. It also puts huge, great quality imaging potential in the palm of your hand – quality that’s a step beyond the 2012 original camera, in spite of the massive resolution bump, and minus the visible chromatic aberrations that we found present in the original too (must be updated processing at work here).

Verdict

At first glance the RX1R II might not seem that different to the original model. But there’s plenty new here: the ingenious little pop-up electronic viewfinder, the new tilt-angle screen mechanism and, of course, that sensor with huge 42-megapixel resolution. Oh, and the larger price: at £2,599 the Mark II is hugely expensive; although it’s cheaper than an RX1R with an added viewfinder accessory, we suppose.

Again, however, the camera isn’t quite perfection. The autofocus system, while new and laden with phase-detection points, still can’t outsmart a decent (and cheaper) compact system. There’s no touchscreen mechanism either, which feels limiting – especially when using the camera for waist-level or video operation. Oh, and the battery life is pretty awful (and no charger in the box is irksome).

Still, the RX1R Mark II gets lots right. Its build quality is second to none, its resulting images are huge and of great quality, that 35mm f/2.0 Zeiss lens offers heaps of control and potential, and it’s a camera with few to contest it. Problem is, for £300 more and you could own a Leica Q (if you can stand signing-up to the wait list anyway) or even snap up an A7R II SLT (without the lens).

Just as we felt of the original camera, we have a lot for the RX1R II. It feels special, it’s been a blast to use, but it doesn’t feel quite at the top of its game – well, not at this considerable price point anyway.

Samsung Galaxy S7 Active official specs leak: 4000mAh battery and more

The Samsung Galaxy S7 Active might not be official yet but that’s not stopped plenty of leaks already revealing the look and now the specs of the handset.

A complete spec sheet has been shown to Evan Blass at Venture Beat, it’s claimed to be an official list that reveals everything we can expect. The handset, like the S6 Active, will be an AT&T release.

The spec sheet reveals the Samsung Galaxy S7 Active will be a 5.1-inch AMOLED screened smartphone with 1440 x2560 resolution, just like the Galaxy S7. Unlike that, this one will run on a Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 processor but will have a hefty 4GB of RAM and 32GB storage.

The S7 Active should be a real goer thanks to a hefty 4000mAh battery that will keep the Android 6.0 Marshmallow OS ticking along nicely. The camera isen’t quite S7 level with a 12-megapixel rear shooter rather than the S7’s 16-megapixel offering.

When it comes to toughness the S7 Active features a 9.9mm thick build and weighs in at 185g. That extra width and weight means it should be able to withstand water submersion, like the S7 can, but also take a good knock too.

The Samsung Galaxy S7 Active is expected to be released on 10 June.

READ: Samsung Galaxy S7 review: The unsung hero?

Harmony of the Seas: 17 amazing reasons to go on the world’s largest cruise ship

Royal Caribbean’s Harmony of the Seas isn’t just another cruise ship, it’s the largest cruise ship in the world.

It isn’t all about size though, despite being a whopping 361-metres long, 66.4-metres wide and 227,000 tonnes in weight, it also has to be about substance, because what use is a massive boat if there is nothing exciting to do on it?

Luckily that isn’t a problem for Harmony. She has the power to make cruising something everyone will want to do, from your 6-year old to your 94-year old. We aren’t just making that up either, nanny Lint was very upset we didn’t take her with us.

There is everything from a jazz bar to a slide that is taller than Buckingham Palace onboard the ship. Not to mention many of the smart features that were onboard Quantum of the Seas and Anthem of the Seas, including the Bionic Bar – which never gets boring to watch – are also on the new ship.

Harmony of the Seas takes things to a whole new level when it comes to fun though. So if 16 guest decks, a 22 knots cruising speed and 4 bow thrusters aren’t enough to entice you, we found 17 other amazing reasons you might want to climb aboard.

Click here to head to the gallery for 17 awesome reasons to get yourself on board Harmony of the Seas.

Skylanders Battlecast: Hearthstone for half-pints

Skylanders Battlecast isn’t the first app-specific outing for Activision’s swathes of cartoon characters but it is one of the most intriguing.

That’s because as well as the free-to-play game that’s available on app stores now, it combines with physical, collectable cards in a similar way to the toys-to-life titles that inspire it.

The game itself is a battle card game. It is a free download and comes with a starter pack of cards so you can launch yourself in without having to invest any further. However, to acquire a better deck and, therefore, conquer the game more speedily, you can add booster packs of either physical or digital cards.

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The former is the better way for kids, we feel. For starters, they get collectable cards of their favourite characters and power-ups, including rare gold foil editions. Also, to get a card into your deck, you have to use the magic of augmented reality.

A physical card can be scanned using a phone or tablet camera and the character comes to life in 3D on the screen. That might have been seen a few times before, but it works really well on this occasion and kids will never tire of seeing their real-world objects transition into the digital.

Cleverly, each card is individual, so once scanned it is locked to that specific player’s account. That means you can’t swap them with friends, but at least you’ll feel like it’s specific to you.

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As we’ve said already, you can buy packs digitally, but you miss out on the most fun part of the process.

You can also purchase digital cards with in-game currency, so parents need not worry that Skylanders Battlecast will cost them the Earth. Especially as there are around 300 actual cards to collect.

Once a card has been scanned and/or added to a player’s in-game collection, decks can be created to battle with. Before each bout, three Skylanders are chosen, each with different abilities and strengths, and the cards are used as benefits and powers to aid in a fight.

Activision

Fights are rendered in 3D but much like most card games on iPad, Android and the like, Battlecast is turn-based. You choose what cards you want to play, which Skylander to use for that round and away you go.

There are a couple of game modes to play. A single-player campaign is available, where you can fight your way through eight different elemental islands and 60 missions in total. There is also a Hearthstone-style PVP mode to battle online friends.

First Impressions

Skylanders Battlecast works so well for the franchise that it’s a wonder that it’s never been done before.

The Skylanders and their different talents work so well for a statistic-based card game. It is also beautifully presented so bouts are interesting to watch.

It won’t be a replacement for Hearthstone for older players. This game is more simple because it is aimed squarely at a younger audience. But there’s still plenty of fun to be had for adults too, especially when battling their own kids.

The collectable card system works very well and the AR scanning is a nice touch. We’d like to see some rules to be able to use the cards as part of a tabletop game too, to give them extra purpose, but apart from that we think Activision once again has a hit on its hands.

The Skylanders Battlecast game is available now for iOS, Android and Amazon Fire tablets, as a free download from the respective app stores. Skylanders Battlecast Battle Packs of cards cost £9.99 each, a Booster Pack costs £4.99.

Molekule’s air filter aims to purify your home with light

A startup believes its purifying technique can outperform traditional HEPA filtration across the board. Molekule’s eponymous air purifier uses a process called photoelectrochemical oxidation (PECO) to remove not only pollutants and allergens (i.e. purifying), but also viruses and bacteria (i.e. disinfecting). Rather than catching harmful things in a mesh (the HEPA method), PECO destroys them by using light to excite a nano-coated filter and start a catalytic oxidation reaction. The reaction breaks compounds down on a molecular level, turning them into their (harmless) base elements. Because it doesn’t need to “catch” particles, the PECO system can apparently remove particles 1,000 times smaller than HEPA’s limit.

Although this is its first commercial application, PECO is not new to science. The company’s founders are co-inventors of the tech, and both their and independent research has shown that it can be effective at both purifying and disinfecting air. One University of Minnesota Particle Calibration Laboratory study (highlighted by Molekule) showed PECO outperforming HEPA filtration in the removal of volatile organic compounds (VOC) and mold. A second study, performed by the University of South Florida Clean Energy Research Center confirmed the VOC finding under both lab and changing environmental conditions. Both institutes also showed PECO was specifically effective against acetone and toluene (two VOCs), E. coli, Staph and A. niger (black mold).

While the underlying technology seems sound, at least in the limited studies that have taken place, more independent studies are needed to gauge Molekule’s efficacy in real-world situations. It should also be noted that Molekule’s founder, Dr. Yogi Goswami, is a director at the University of South Florida Clean Energy Research Center, and PECO’s co-inventor. As such, he’s both an expert in the field and an obvious believer in the technology.

As for the device itself, it’s an attractive enough object: A silver metal cylinder with an air intake at the bottom and exhaust at the top. Beyond that, the only points of note are a brown leather handle and a circular touchscreen on top. It’ll link up with a companion app to allow for remote control and filter management.

Hopefully the scientific community will have more time to analyze Molekule’s claims before the device launches next year at $799. If you’re already convinced, though, you can pre-order from today at the reduced price of $499, which also gets you the guarantee of being among the first to receive a unit.

Like all air purifiers, there will be ongoing costs in the form of replacement filters. Rather than buying individual filters as and when you need them, you’ll pay $99 per year and be automatically mailed replacements once the unit detects it’s necessary. That’ll cover pre-filters (a basic mesh that picks up large pieces of dust etc.) that need replacing every three months or so, and the PECO nanofilter that lasts around a year.

Source: Molekule