Samsung working on bendy phones, one will fold like a compact

Samsung is said to be working on bendable phones, with form factors currently not available on the market.

It has previous released a curved handset before, the Samsung Galaxy Round, which had a concave screen, while the Galaxy S7 edge has a wrap around display like its predecessor. But the devices talked about now will be able to bend as a design feature.

Bloomberg claims its sources revealed that a couple of bendy phones are in the pipeline. One will fold in half “like a cosmetic compact” and another transforms from a 5-inch smartphone into an 8-inch tablet.

Both are said to be coming in 2017.

Samsung has actually demonstrated similar concepts in the past. OLED displays offer the ability for flexible screens and the company has previously suggested that future form factors could make more use of that talent.

According to Bloomberg, that could now be on the cards as the Korean firm looks to get one up on Apple.

Analyst Lee Seung Woo, who works for IBK Securities in South Korea, believes that it might not be Apple that will be rocked by Samsung bendable smartphones. “This product could be a game-changer if Samsung successfully comes up with a user interface suitable for bendable screens,” he said.

“Next year is a probable scenario. Their biggest obstacle was related to making transparent plastics and making them durable, which seems resolved by now.”

Google’s Project Ara modular smartphone: Everything you need to know

Project Ara is Google’s vision for making truly customisable smartphones. If there’s one thing we know from the current smartphone market, it’s that there’s no such thing as a “one size fits all”, but having a device with bits you can swap out and replace takes us one step closer to that. 

For a while it seemed Google’s ATAP division had all but neglected the project, but then it came back at I/O 2016 with a full live demo, and it’s almost ready to be released to the public. Since it was first announced it has seen some fairly major changes, but the original spirit remains. 

Project Ara: Framework

What started off as a concept to allow users to change any part of the device they could think of has turned into something a little more realistic. Sadly, for the tech nerds among you, Google won’t let you change any of the core internals. That means you won’t be able to swap out the processor, RAM, antennas or storage to beef up its performance.

Instead of buying an almost completely empty exoskeleton and then purchasing various models, the “exoskeleton” or frame will already have a built-in battery, processor, antenna, radios and memory components, as well as a non-removable display.

The frame itself has been built with long-lasting latches and connectors to ensure that modules stay secure. In fact, Google says the connectors are capable of lasting 10,000 swap-out/in cycles without dying.

On the software side, Google’s ATAP team has developed Greybus to support instantaneous module connections that are power-efficient and with data-speeds up to 11.9Gbps. That basically means that any information transferred between a module and the phone’s brain will be very quick, leaving you with a responsive and fluid experience, as if they’re meant to be there.

Google ATAP YouTube

Project Ara: Modules

What started off with the dream of having a phone that could last forever has turned into a modular phone more in line with the LG G5 and, if rumours are to be believed, the upcoming Moto Z, but far more adaptable than either of those two.  

Although the core internals won’t be interchangeable, Project Ara will still allow a number of key hardware modules to be removable. You’ll be able to choose from different camera modules, add on multiple loudspeakers, expandable storage and even snap on a more powerful battery.

In its “What’s next” promo video, Google shows off the ability to customise the device to make it more optimised for musicians by swapping in multiple loudspeakers and a more powerful microphone, as well as the option to add in modules designed specifically for health and fitness tracking.

More trivial options include a kickstand, a monochromatic secondary display for showing useful info (like the weather), a tiny compartment for storing the odd TicTac, and different colour modules made from various materials purely to match what you are wearing, or make it feel different. Whether you want a splash of colour, a real wood panel, or some concrete; customisation is key.

In short: Ara still wants to be the phone that can suit you, wherever you’re going and whatever you happen to be into.

Although it may not seem like it, possibly the most important feature of the modules is that they’re “hot-swappable”. That means you’ll be able to remove them, and swap in new ones without having to reboot the phone. Users won’t even need to go hunting for drivers to download so that a new module works. It’s true plug-and-play.

Even more impressive is that the modules can auto-eject with a simple voice command. “OK Google, eject the loudspeaker”.

It’s not as ambitious as it was, but it sounds fun, and it is actually achievable.

Google ATAP YouTube

Project Ara: Potential and future versions

As with many great products, the potential for Project Ara could be huge, particularly in business and hospitals where developers could create bespoke modules for the device. Google already has a list of hardware partners lined up ready for launch, including the likes of Samsung, Sony Pictures, E-Ink, Toshiba, Harman and Panasonic, among others.

In a hospital, for instance, healthcare professionals could be equipped with phones with built-in highly sensitive sensors for on-the-fly heart rate monitoring, or even a blood sugar level sensor to save diabetes sufferers from having to cart around their monitoring gadgets.

Google wants module makers to build technology we’ve never seen in a smartphone. Whether that be well-known brands we’ve already heard of, or ambitious developers with great ideas.

The current version of Project Ara, which recently got demo’d at Google’s I/O conference in San Francisco, has six spaces for modules. All slots are generic, and any module fits in any of the spaces. Some of them, like the E-Ink secondary display are square, and take up two spaces. Others, like the camera and loudspeaker take up just one space.

Perhaps more vital is that Project Ara is still future-proof, to a certain extent. Current modules will fit future frame designs and products, and future modules will fit the existing framework.

With this being the case, it’s clear Google isn’t restricting Ara to just smartphones. It wants to make a “truly modular computing platform”, so who knows what else the team at Google’s ATAP division is looking into.

Project Ara: Release date

At long last we have a release timeframe to look forward to. Project Ara development kit units will be shipped out from the end of 2016, with a consumer model being targeted for early next year. With any luck we might actually be able to buy this thing in 2017.

We don’t know exactly how much it will cost, or if it will be available through more traditional retail stores. The likelihood is that Google will sell the hardware directly through its own store, along with a selection of modules, which will undoubtedly increase in numbers following launch.

Background: Phonebloks and Motorola beginnings

Project Ara was originally rooted in Motorola, when it was owned by Google, under the Motorola Advanced Technology and Projects group. When Google sold Motorola to Lenovo in early 2014, Google was able to keep the group under its Google Advanced Technology and Projects Group (ATAP).

Google is known for its crazy projects, so maybe it’s for the best the Project is sticking around in Mountain View.

Project Ara

Project Ara was inspired by the Phonebloks initiative, a similar project that wants to make “a phone worth keeping”. The Project Ara team has said it will partner in some aspects with Phonebloks to build Project Ara, but it doesn’t sound like a full-on partnership. 

READ: Google to sell Project Ara smartphone modules through online store

Project Ara: Software

The latest Android operating system will be modified slightly to make it suitable for the Ara. With it being a Google project, it will resemble pure, stock Android but with a few under-the-hood tweaks to optimise it for the modular hardware. The project’s team leader. Paul Eremenko, has promised the Android team is working to make sure the Ara phone is a priority and gets the latest updates.

Tester kits have been available for some time from Google, which the company has been dishing out in waves to make sure it has the widest input when perfecting the phone.

Philips AmbiLux PUS8901 review: Projector-laden 4K TV is mad, but brilliant

When we first clapped eyes on Philips AmbiLux, back in 2014, we thought the engineers responsible had lost the plot. Sure, we’ve always had a soft spot for Philips Ambilight, the LED edging that casts puddles of coloured light onto surrounding walls, but AmbiLux goes several steps beyond by using a full-blown projection system.

AmbiLux is currently only available in 65PUS890 form, as a 65-inch 4K UHD TV, but it’s not unreasonable to assume a wider number of screen sizes will offer the technology before the year is out. Big scale or not, however, what we first considered a crackers idea transpires to be rather beautiful. And rather expensive.

Philips 65PUS8901 AmbiLux 4K UHD TV review: Slim-line design

It may come with a backpack of projectors, but the 65PUS890 is fashionably thin. There’s an ultra-slim black bezel with a chromed trim wraparound, while the back panel is stylishly white. The set stands on arty “Bladewire” feet which are not adjustable, so plan your TV furniture accordingly.

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Connections are generous. There are four HDMI inputs, all of which test positive for HDCP 2.2 compliancy – which means you can use them with external 4K sources, such as UHD Blu-ray, the Amazon Fire TV box and Sky Q (when its 4K services launch). There’s also a SCART, component with stereo phono inputs, an optical digital audio output, Ethernet and three USB ports. Tuners include Freeview terrestrial and generic HD satellite.

The screen is Bluetooth equipped, for the remote control, and supports dual-band Wi-Fi. The zapper is a weighty affair, with a slightly hit-and-miss touchpad and a keyboard on the reverse. There’s a dedicated Netflix button (of course) and integrated microphone for Google Search.

The 65PUS8901 is not just a smart looker though. The connected platform of choice here is stock Android, bolstered by a Philips curated content shelf, offering BBC iPlayer and recommendations from Netflix and other services. Sony, the other big TV brand to back Android, helpfully has a YouView overlay with access to all main channel catch-up services, but there’s nothing “on top” for the Philips: you’ll have to make do with YouTube, Dailymotion, Deezer and BBC News & Sports apps instead, plus whatever’s left in the Opera store.

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The set’s media file playback functionality is good. We were able to play most files on a networked QNAP server running Twonky, including AVI, WMV, MKV, MOV, MP4, plus MP3, WMA and FLAC audio.

Philips AmbiLux 65PUS8901 4K TV review: Project the light fantastic

The AmbiLux system uses nine Pico projectors arranged in a half-circle on the 65PUS8901’s back panel. When setting-up the screen you’ll need to ensure the screen is exactly 9cm from a wall. Any more and the projected light show is spoiled by the shadow of the hub.

There are multiple light modes, which can follow video or sound. You can have the TV extend the live video image (albeit in deliberate fuzzy vision) across the entire width of your wall (Extreme, stretching some 3m), or filter it with Dome, Standard, Cube, Tunnel or Relax treatments, all of which are variations on a theme. The sheer vibrancy of the AmbiLux light show is often thrilling. Hues are vivid and the effect dramatic. In Extreme mode you can just about make out the live video being mirrored on the wall.

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Alternatively, there are seven audio “moods” which pump and pulsate to the beat of any music, making them a good choice for live concerts or tracks being played by the screen’s media player.

But the AmbiLux treatment doesn’t work for everything of course: it’s essentially an over-the-top light show, so moody movies hardly benefit. Games might seem a natural bed fellow, but again content needs to be appropriate – we found AmbiLux an unwanted distraction with first-person shooters that require considerable concentration (as if Overwatch isn’t manic enough), but more casual games like Home Grown look just fabulous, with great swathes of colour enhancing the ambiance.

While there is no classic Ambilight mode on the AmbiLux, you can bathe walls in a static colour: Hot Lava (red), Deep Water (blue) Fresh Nature (green), Warm (yellow-ish) White and Cool White being the options. While there is some compensation offered for different coloured walls, plain white is always going to work best.

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Like other Ambilight TVs, the AmbiLux set can also be integrated into a Philips Hue lighting ecosystem.

Philips AmbiLux projector TV review: Picture performance

Visually, the 65PUS8901 is something of a mid-ranger, but that sounds more disparaging than intended. At 65-inches it’s a great size to appreciate the pixel density of 4K – Ultra-HD means there’s no visible grid structure, so even upscaled HD looks cinematically smooth.

The fine detail available from native 4K content is wonderful. The grit on Matt Damon’s space suit in The Martian (via 4K Blu-ray, no less) looks utterly believable. Similarly, period drama Marco Polo (available via Netflix 4K) has almost three-dimensional depth (there’s no actual 3D support here, the TV is 2D only).

Remember though, when using the set with an external 4K source, you’ll need to manually enable the HDMI inputs, either for 4:2:0 colour subampling or upsampled 4:4:4.

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In Standard mode, there’s genuine shine to its images. There’s the usual wide selection of image presets too: Personal, Vivid, Natural, Standard, Movie, Photo, plus ISF calibrated Day and Night modes. The screen has vibrancy to spare throughout, and the fine detail and nuance in its images is a real treat.

The set currently does not support HDR (High Dynamic Range) content, but a firmware update is promised to fix that at some point. We think the screen should lend itself to effective HDR, as it’s above average in terms of brightness, plus that background projection will further enhance the screen’s apparent white levels, we suspect. The viewing reality of HDR is surprisingly close to the often derided Vivid mode, and here that preset is enjoyably garish. By way of contrast, the Movie mode is old school dull.

The implementation of Philips’ Perfect Natural Motion video processor here has only limited value. While it combats horizontal panning judder, it adds unwanted motion artefacts. Some might like the icy smooth sheen it brings, but for movies we preferred it switched off. The consequence of that though is the loss of motion resolution.

If the panel does have an obvious limitation then it’s black depth. Not only does it not go deep dark, there’s a limit to shadow detail revealed by Philips’ Micro Dimming Pro backlight system. In the opening sequence of Star Wars The Force Awakens, where Poe Dameron sits around the fire, his shadowed jacket looks oddly hollow. Conversely, the laser-toting stormtroopers are dope.

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Off-angle viewing is also limited. Sit left or right of the screen and you’ll notice a dramatic drop off in contrast and colour.

Audio has always been a strong point of Philips TV design, even during the flatscreen era, and with AmbiLux the set sounds perfectly acceptable for everyday viewing. Rated at 30W all up, there’s more than enough volume on tap to make Game of Thrones sound epic, so no need to rush out for a soundbar.

Verdict

Overall, there’s much to like about AmbiLux. From a hardcore AV point of view, there are better ways to spend £4,000 if you want a leading 4K UHD TV, but that’s not exactly the point here. This TV is a lifestyle proposition; a showman and focus point in the home.

TV-meets-extreme-lighting sounds as though it makes little logical sense as a design concept, but the AmbiLux viewing experience is defiantly enjoyable. It isn’t suitable for everything, of course, and the installation requirements are demanding, not least the need for a clear wall that allows the Pico projectors to strut their stuff.

In a world of cookie-cutter televisions, the Philips AmbiLux PUS8901 stands-out as something genuinely different and exciting. If you’ve got the cash and the space, anyway.

Suunto Spartan Ultra multisport GPS watch dares you to find a sport it can’t track

Suunto has updated its multisport watch line with a new do-it-all device that promises to track everything you’re doing. The Suunto Spartan Ultra epitomises everything the Finnish company stands for.

Suunto, meaning “bearing, heading or direction” has been all about precision tracking for years – a company that started in 1936. The latest Suunto Spartan Ultra wants to use that GPS expertise but also combine daily tracking and community smarts to offer more.

The Spartan Ultra can withstand water submersion to 100 metres, making it dive friendly. It’s tough too thanks to a glass fibre reinforced polymide casing, a sapphire glass colour display and grade 5 titanium or stainless steel bezel options.

When it comes to tracking, the Spartan Ultra is equipped with GPS, barometric altitude sensors, a digital compass, FusedAlti, FusedSpeed, accelerometer and optional heart rate monitor. That means it can track triathlon, swimming, cycling, running, adventure racing, snow sports and more. These break down into various modes for race day or training – so for a runner you could pick basic mode, interval mode, trail running mode and more.

All that tracking also means visual feedback on metrics like training load, recovery status and even daily step and calorie counting.

Everything works on the watch and, for a more detailed view, in the Suunto Movescout app right there on a connected smartphone. This offers a new heatmap mode which shows where training of others has happened – allowing you to find new routes to train for specific needs.

The Suunto Spartan Ultra will come in four styles: Suunto Spartan Ultra All Black Titanium, Suunto Spartan Ultra Stealth Titanium, Suunto Spartan Ultra White and Suunto Spartan Ultra Black. The Titanium will be £585 while the standard Ultra will be £545. If you want a heart rate sensor with either, that’s an extra £40.

The watches will be available in August but more details will be announced in July, including battery life which currently is simply being called “competitive”.

READ: Garmin Fenix 3: Adventure ready for any sport

New algorithm may lead to a picture of an actual black hole

MIT grad student Katie Bouman and her team have developed an algorithm that could finally show us a photo of an actual black hole. See, all the black hole “photos” you’ve seen thus far, including the one above, are merely artist interpretations depicting what we think they look like. In order to capture, say, a picture of the supermassive black hole in the center of our own galaxy, we’ll need an enormous telescope with a diameter almost as big as our planet. Since it’s impossible to build something that massive, Bouman’s algorithm called Continuous High-resolution Image Reconstruction using Patch priors or CHIRP stitches data gathered by the Event Horizon Telescope array.

The EHT array is made up of several radio telescopes from around the world that can penetrate through galactic dust. Astronomers treat them collectively as one large, Earth-sized telescope by combining the data they gather. Problem is, the telescopes don’t receive data at the same time due to all the dust and dirt in outer space.

CHIRP can filter out all this atmospheric noise and fill out any missing data to create an image clearer than other algorithms can make. One of the study’s authors, Michael Johnson, told PopSci that scientists might ultimately “be able to make movies of materials being eaten by a black hole” using the algorithm. For now, we’d settle for an actual picture of the phenomenon and see how close Interstellar’s black hole is to the real thing.

Source: MIT, VLBI Reconstruction Dataset

Comcast brings its gigabit internet service to Nashville

Comcast announced that it’s beginning an “advanced consumer trial” of gigabit service in Nashville. It’s the second area to roll out the DOCSIS 3.1 cable modem powered speeds after Atlanta, and it doesn’t look like the policies have changed. Customers living in areas where it’s available can get the 1Gb down / 35Mb up speeds for $70 with no bandwidth cap… if they’re willing to agree to a 36 month service contract. Otherwise, a 1TB capped offering is available with no contract for $140 per month. As DSL Reports points out, the contract offering should keep customers tied up until whenever Google Fiber properly rolls out… almost as if it were planned that way.

Source: Comcast (Businesswire), Xfinity Gig & Multi-Gig Availability

Apple Patents Water-Resistant Speaker Port and Bone Conduction Earbuds

Apple was granted patents today that include a concept for water-resistant iPhone speakers and a bone conduction technology that could bring advanced noise cancellation to future earbuds (via AppleInsider).

The first application granted by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office is titled “Liquid resistant acoustic device” and details a protected acoustic port that uses a special mesh “umbrella” inserted between apertures in a device’s housing, similar to the design of the mesh-covered loudspeaker found in current iPhones.

If liquid enters through the housing apertures it immediately comes into contact with the umbrella and is directed away from the internals, although in some versions a small amount of liquid is allowed to pass through if the handset is under significant pressure, to avoid structural damage.

Apple’s invention also includes a second line of liquid defense, in the form of a “hydrophobic” coating applied to the outer surface of the iPhone housing and mesh umbrella, while a “hydrophilic” coating applied to the inside of the mesh works to draw liquid out.

As with all patents, whether or not Apple decides to use the invention in any future product remains unclear, although AppleInsider notes that a similar port design can already be found on the current Apple Watch.

Several rumors claim that the upcoming iPhone 7 could be properly waterproof, but it’s not obvious that the invention described above would meet the requirements of such a specification.

Another Apple patent was awarded today, called “System and method of mixing accelerometer and microphone signals to improve voice quality in a mobile device”. This one describes a headset that uses bone conduction technology to effectively filter out ambient noise.

The invention works by using accelerometers that detect vocal chord vibrations which reverberate through the user’s skull. Coupled with an onboard microphone, the system is able to measure output signals and effectively parse out ambient noise vibrations.

Output from both systems are processed through a noise cancellation unit which then outputs a clean signal for transmission.

Related Roundup: iPhone 7
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