Moto Z and Moto Z Force hands on
At the end of the keynote, just when it started to seem like the announcement may not even happen at all, Lenovo took the wraps off of the latest Motorola flagships to great dramatic effect. All the rumors and leaks that have led up to this launch have been true for the most part, and there are certainly some aspects to get really excited about.
A new moniker in tow, what do the latest high-end offerings from Motorola bring to the table? We find out, as we go hands on with the Moto Z and the Moto Z Force!
As the name would suggest, the Moto Z takes things a couple of (alphabetical) steps ahead of the previous Moto X flagship line, by bringing modular capabilities into the mix. The great news here is that Motorola has managed to do so in a far simpler and easier to use iteration that what we’ve seen from LG. The very noticeable connectors on the back allow for various components and covers to be magnetically attached to the phone with a snap, and everything is truly plug and play here, without the need for the phone to be restarted, or to remove and swap the battery. Before diving into the various attachments that are currently available, let’s take a look at the phones themselves.
Both smartphones feature 5.5-inch AMOLED displays with Quad HD resolutions, resulting in a pixel density of 535 ppi. This makes the devices quite large, not helped by the distinct top and bottom portions up front that house a multitude of sensors, but the overall footprint isn’t that much more than most other smartphones with similarly-sized displays. The Moto Z is also one of the thinnest smartphones around, with a thickness of just 5.2 mm, while the Moto Z Force does have a little more girth to it, likely to accommodate the additional layers that help make the display shatterproof.
Under the hood, both smartphones come with a quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 processor, clocked at 2.15 GHz, and backed by the Adreno 530 GPU and 4 GB of RAM. This processing package is the current gold standard when it comes to 2016 flagships, and with the performance of other high-end smartphones this year being very impressive, we can certainly expect more of the same from the Moto Z and Moto Z Force. You also get the usual suite of connectivity options with these devices, including NFC, that can be useful for its application in mobile payment systems.
Given how thin the Moto Z is, it isn’t surprising that the camera module on the back does protrude quite significantly. However, when a cover, or MotoMod, is attached to the phone, the camera ends up sitting flush with the extended body of the phone, which makes for another nice reason to pick up one of the stylish shells that Motorola has on offer.
The additional thickness that is found with the Moto Z Force also allows for more room to pack in a larger 3,400 mAh battery, compared to the 2,600 mAh unit found with the Moto Z. The Moto Z Force also comes with the faster quick charging capabilities, with Motorola claiming that you can get 50% of the battery life back in just 15-20 minutes. Of course, the Moto Z does come with its own fast charging, but it won’t be as fast as what is available with the Z Force.
Other differences between the two include the camera, with the Moto Z Force featuring a 21 MP rear camera, compared to the 13 MP camera of the Moto Z, and of course, the display of the Moto Z Force is also shatterproof. The Moto Z Force does make for a compelling device, but the ultra-thin Moto Z is what you may find more attractive at first glance.
As mentioned, both devices feature different primary shooters, but the camera app remains the same, and is quite intuitive and easy to use. The cameras seem to work well from what we were able to see so far, and we can’t wait to put them through rigorous testing in upcoming reviews and camera shootouts to see whether they manage to stand out from the crowd in this highly competitive aspect of the smartphone experience.
The Moto Z is an extremely thin phone, and the Z Force isn’t that much thicker either, and not unexpectedly, there has to have been some compromises made in order to achieve these aesthetics. In this case, this comes in the form of a lack of the headphone jack. Instead, what you will get is an adapter that plugs into the USB-Type C port, and that is how you will be able to use this device with regular headphones and earphones.
On the software side of things, Motorola keeps everything very simple and familiar, with the devices boasting an almost stock iteration of Android 6.0 Marshmallow. Everything is where you’d expect it to be, and Motorola’s useful additions make a return as well, including Active Display, various motion gestures, and more.
Of course, the big story with the Moto Z and Moto Z Force has to do with their modular capabilities. As mentioned, the implementation is far simpler, and doesn’t require the battery to be removed, or have the phone be rebooted. The peripherals just snap on to the device via the strong magnetic connectors, and you are good to go as soon as they are in place.
For starters, there are a number of stylish covers, or shells, available, and considering how thin the Moto Z is, it almost feels like its needs these covers to really round out the look and feel in the hand. There are covers that bring a little more functionality to the table as well – including battery cases made by Incipio and a pico projector – that does make the devices quite thick, but allows for an easy to way to share information from your phone.
Finally, there is a JBL speaker that can also be snapped into place, and provides for a very enhanced audio experience. The speaker and the projector also come with built-in batteries that are utilized first, before these accessories start drawing any power from the phone itself.
So there you have it for this first look at the Moto Z and Moto Z Force! Overall, we are very impressed by what we’ve seen so far from Motorola’s latest flagships. There have been some trade offs made, such as the removal of a headphone jack in favor of a thinner profile.
The Moto Z and Moto Z Force do have some key differences between them in terms of features and specifications, but both feature the same modular capabilities, and with the execution far better this time around, this may be the innovative step forward that we were looking for.
What do you think of these two handsets and do you plan to buy either? Let us know your views in the comments below!
Amazon might launch a paid music-streaming service that works with Echo
Apple Music and Spotify might soon face heavy competition from Amazon.
According to CNBC, Amazon will announce a standalone music-streaming service. It’ll launch this summer or autumn, offering up a catalogue of songs for $9.99 a month. Amazon, which already offers a music service to Prime subscribers, is apparently still inking deals with labels. But the idea is – with this new service – people might find Amazon’s Echo speaker more appealing.
Echo is loaded with a voice assistant called Alexa and can do things like search the web, place Amazon.com orders, and play tunes from a limited pool for Prime subscribers. By launching a standalone streaming service that not only works with Echo but also has a richer catalogue, Amazon might be able to grow the Echo’s customer base and increase interactions with the speaker.
The New York Post also claimed earlier this year that Amazon was working on an entirely new music-streaming service. Amazon reportedly held meetings to discuss licensing music for a subscription music service that would rival Spotify and Apple Music. Again, that rumoured service was thought to be different from Amazon Music, which offers roughly 1 million songs to customers as part of a $99-per-year Prime subscription.
Steve Boom, Amazon’s vice president of digital music, was apparently helming plans for the all-new service. Keep in mind that Amazon would be making a late entry into this space. Spotify already boasts more than 30 million songs, and Apple launched its service last year with a massive marketing campaign.
It’ll therefore be interesting to see if Amazon’s yet-to-be-named music service manages to carve out a spot for itself.
Gawker Media files for bankruptcy thanks to Hulk Hogan and Peter Thiel
A few weeks ago, it was revealed that Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel, a co-founder of Paypal and current Facebook board member, was bankrolling Hulk Hogan’s lawsuit against Gawker Media. (Got all that?) Despite the fact that Gawker has vowed to appeal the massive $140 million judgement against it, the company today has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. The media company is now entertaining bids to buy the company, and Recode reports that publisher Ziff Davis has already put in a bid in the $100 million range.
The ins and outs of this situation are complex and varied. The Hulk Hogan lawsuit came about after the Gawker blog posted Hogan’s sex tape. The wrestler said it was an invasion of his privacy; Gawker’s argument at a very high level is that free speech and Hogan’s status as a public figure should have protected the company from such a lawsuit.
However, things in the case got even weirder following the jury’s $140 million judgement against Gawker Media. It was revealed that Thiel had been bankrolling the entire lawsuit because of a personal vendetta against the blog after it published an article on his sexual orientation way back in 2007.
Today’s Chapter 11 filing is a direct result of the combined efforts of Hogan and Thiel to take the company down. The filing revealed that Gawker has assets between $50 and $100 million, compared to liabilities in the $100 to $500 million range — with the lawsuit being chief among them.
Filing for bankruptcy gives Gawker and its founder Nick Denton time to restructure the company without having to immediately shut down (or pay the jury damages in the Hogan case). That said, it seems unlikely Gawker will be sold off until the lawsuit is resolved in one way or another — it’ll likely be a tough sell while it’s still in the middle of this legal battle.
Another unique aspect of Hogan’s lawsuit is that other tabloid-style blogs like TMZ and Perez Hilton have thus far managed to avoid being singled out because of their sometimes-questionable reporting styles — Gawker, however, happened to cross paths with the wrong billionaire.
Source: CNBC, Recode
France fines Uber for illegal ridesharing
You may love Uber for enabling your wild drunken weekends, but there’s clearly no love lost between the ride-hailing app and the French government. After a slew of suspensions and protests, a French court has slapped Uber with an 800,000 euro fine (about US$900,000), claiming its UberPOP service caused “durable disruption” of the transport sector.
Uber plans to appeal the charges, and said it is “disappointed by this judgment,” as it stopped UberPOP service last summer. The “POP” portion of the company’s app uses cars owned and driven by non-professional drivers, while UberX and UberBlack employ professionals.
An Uber spokesperson said its service in France will not be affected, and that it currently uses more than 12,000 professional drivers to serve 1.5 million passengers there.
The Paris court has ordered Uber to pay 400,000 euros, suspending the other half of the fine barring further incidents. According to Reuters, Uber’s legal officer told the court that the company made a 500,000 euro profit in 2014.
Two Uber executives were also fined between 20,000 and 30,000 Euros each for what the court deemed to be deceptive commercial practices, being accomplices in operating an illegal transportation service, and violating privacy laws.
France isn’t alone in its crackdown on Uber. Cities in Australia, Italy and Spain have already declared the UberPOP service illegal. In London and the Philippines, however, Uber has become legal after facing similar fines and suspensions. Uber clearly still has an uphill battle in many other countries, but its success in those two regions suggest that its challenges are ultimately solvable.
Via: ArsTechnica
Source: Reuters
Engadget moved to HTTPS because we love you
It’s been a long time, we shouldn’t have left you… without a secure site to connect to.
Security is (or at least should be) top of mind for everyone who uses the internet. We can’t go more than a week or two without news of another breach that has compromised customer or user information. In such an environment, securing websites is no longer a luxury — it’s a necessity. Which is why, after over a year of hard work by Engadget’s intrepid product team, we’ve made the switch to HTTPS.
But what does that mean? And, why should you care?
Let’s travel back to a simpler time. You’re in school, daydreaming about your crush sitting two rows in front of you, instead of listening to the insipid historical lecture spouting forth from your teacher’s face. You write a note meant to titillate and entertain that special someone, and have your classmates pass it your crush’s way. Your teacher sees this happening and intercepts the note. But instead of reading your witty and risque words (that would surely get you sent to the principal’s office), all teacher sees is a sheet of gibberish, thanks to the secret code you and the object of your desire share.
If the internet is history class, then you, dear reader are our crush (you look great by the way), and you can think of HTTPS encryption as our secret code. We want to make sure our notes reach you without anybody else being able to read them beforehand.
For a publication that writes a lot about technology, it’s important that we take steps to secure the ways that you connect to us, and HTTPS has really become online security 101. In other words, the least we could do in terms of security is encrypt the information we send and receive from you.
This is especially important to us as we continue to grow our user base. Currently, you can write product reviews, contribute stories to Public Access and comment on our stories. But we’ll be building more features and ways to interact with Engadget in the coming months, and we want to make sure that you can do so using a platform as secure as we can make it.
Twitter is experimenting with adding ‘Moments’ to your timeline
Twitter is testing adding Moments directly to your timeline. The feature that highlights trends and news items on the social network is appearing in a carousel post that can be swiped horizontally. While only an experiment right now, this early exploration of dropping into user feeds shows just how important the trending-topic element is to the company.
A small group of users in countries where Moments is already live (US, Canada, UK, Australia and Brazil), started seeing the test this afternoon on iOS and Android. The carousel of five topics appears similar to how ‘While You Were Away” works. The “Recommended Moments” box can be dismissed with a tap and appears less frequently the more you’re on Twitter. When a news item is tapped it expands to show you the event.
So far, the test has not shown up on Twitter.com.
Both the iOS and the Android apps already have dedicated Moments buttons. By adding the feature to user feeds Twitter is hoping to get more traction out its curated topics. The company is continually adding features hoping to make the service more attractive to new users.
When asked about the test a Twitter spokesperson told Engadget: “Moments are awesome for catching up with the latest stories unfolding on Twitter. Because we’re always working on new ways to bring the best content to our users, we’re experimenting with showing recommended Moments in the timeline.”
World’s first child-sized exoskeleton gets kids on their feet
The Spanish National Research Council, a.k.a. CSIC, has created a kid-sized exoskeleton designed specifically for children suffering from spinal muscular atrophy. Because SMA causes a loss of motor neurons, the patient’s body starts to wither away to the point where many child patients end up bedridden and unable to walk. Built from aluminum and titanium, the 26-pound machine uses five assistive motors in each leg to actually help the child keep active and avoid further complications from immobility.
Those leg motors include sensors to detect “the slightest intention of movement,” and an onboard computer then follows the child’s steps to create the smoothest mechanical gait possible. Because children are constantly growing and moving, the whole setup is designed with telescoping supports that get taller with the patient.
CSIC’s “smart” approach is similar to the algorithm that SRI Ventures recently built into the Superflex soft exosuit, and with a little tweaking the algorithm could probably help extend the CISC suit’s five-hour battery life. Finally, the CISC is currently testing the exoskeleton with three child volunteers in Madrid and Barcelona, but in the U.S., Harvard engineers have teamed up with ReWalk Robotics to test and eventually market a similar, soft exosuit designed for adults with limited mobility.
Amazon reportedly working on a standalone music streaming service
CNBC is reporting that Amazon plans to launch a free-standing streaming music service, according to sources within the company. The as-of-yet unnamed service will reportedly launch in the late summer or fall, after the company finalizes its licensing agreements, and should cost $10 a month.
This move follows the company’s similar spinoff of Prime Video, which is available for $11 a month, and appears to be an effort by Amazon to diversify its subscription structure beyond Prime’s single annual fee. What’s more, this service will exist separately from Amazon’s current Prime music catalog
Though Amazon is already tardy to the streaming music party, the company could well steal a number of subscribers from both Apple and Spotify. Heck, Pandora’s shares have already dropped nearly 3 percent since this story first broke. Plus, the new Amazon service is expected to be tightly marketed alongside the company’s Echo speaker, which has been a breakout star for the company. The synergy between an Alexa-enabled Echo speaker and a streaming music service unencumbered by Prime’s hulking per year cost could prove a potent combination. It will be interesting to see how Google, which already offers an extensive streaming catalog and is currently working on an Echo of its own, will respond.
A third of the world can no longer see the Milky Way
If you never thought light pollution was a problem before, think again. New research claims that more than a third of humanity cannot see the Milky Way anymore, because artificial lights have made the night sky too bright to view the galaxy.
The study, called “The new world atlas of artificial night sky brightness.” claims that 60 percent of Europeans and almost 80 percent of North Americans can’t see the collection of stars and planets anymore. The planet has, according to the paper, been hidden behind a “luminous fog that prevents most of Earth’s population from having the opportunity to observe our galaxy.”
Singapore was deemed the most light-polluted country, and I am not surprised that my incredibly well-lit home country ranks so highly. San Marino, Kuwait, Qatar and Malta join Singapore on the list of places where people can’t see the Milky Way at all.
According to the researchers, light pollution causes myriad problems, from wasting money and energy, to a loss of biodiversity and culture. These problems can be “instantly mitigated (by turning off lights),” they say. This seems like a no-brainer, but the team is also proposing several bigger changes.
In addition to recommending people use the minimum amount of light for their tasks and strongly limiting blue light that interferes with circadian rhythms, the paper suggests installing shielding to prevent light from being sent at or above the horizon level.
If you live in one of the light-polluted regions and still want to see the Milky Way, consider trekking out to Chad, the Central African Republic or Madagascar, which the study says are the least affected. Or, if you don’t want to leave your desk, check out this giant zoomable image of the galaxy. You won’t have to turn off your lights.
[Image: Amr Dalsh / Reuters]
Via: The Guardian
Source: Science Advances
The NSA wants to spy on the Internet of Things
We already know the National Security Agency is all up in our data, but the agency is reportedly looking into how it can gather even more foreign intelligence information from internet-connected devices ranging from thermostats to pacemakers. Speaking at a military technology conference in Washington D.C. on Friday, NSA deputy director Richard Ledgett said the agency is “looking at it sort of theoretically from a research point of view right now.” The Intercept reports Ledgett was quick to point out that there are easier ways to keep track of terrorists and spies than to tap into any medical devices they might have, but did confirm that it was an area of interest.
When asked whether the entire Internet of Things — that is, everything from a kid’s WiFi enabled toy to someone’s biomedical device — would be a boon for the NSA or just a whole lot of digital noise to sift through, Ledgett replied, “Both.”
“As my job is to penetrate other people’s networks, complexity is my friend,” he continued. “The first time you update the software, you introduce vulnerabilities, or variables rather. It’s a good place to be in a penetration point of view.”
Earlier this year, the Director of National Intelligence James Clapper also said during a Senate hearing that internet-connected devices could be useful for “identification, surveillance, monitoring, location tracking, and targeting for recruitment, or to gain access to networks or user credentials.” Clapper’s office did, however, follow up that statement with the caveat that, “information obtained from a refrigerator, a washing machine, or a child’s toy” is no substitute for access to terrorists’ actual communications.
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