First Machines Using Kaby Lake Processors Coming This Fall, but MacBook Pro Not Likely Among Them

At today’s Intel Developer Forum, Intel CEO Brian Krzanich and other Intel execs showed off its 7th Generation Core, Kaby Lake. While information shared on Kaby Lake was limited, there was an on-screen demo of two machines equipped with Kaby Lake processors, shown editing 4K video and using built-in graphics to play popular Blizzard game Overwatch.

Kaby Lake is hardware accelerated for the HEVC Main10 profile, meaning it can “play the highest quality 4K premium content on the market today without a hitch.” An HP two-in-one laptop on stage was used to edit 4K video and a Dell XPS laptop was used to show off Overwatch, which ran seamlessly on the machine thanks to Intel’s efforts to “push the boundaries of processor graphics.”

For those unfamiliar with Kaby Lake, it is the third chip manufactured using Intel’s 14-nanometer process, following Broadwell and Skylake. It’s a semi-tock with optimized microarchitecture, offering support for Thunderbolt 3, native USB 3.1, and DisplayPort 1.2.

According to Krzanich, Kaby Lake processors are already shipping to Intel’s manufacturing partners and will launch in new devices coming this fall, something we already knew following a July earnings call. Krzanich did not provide a further breakdown on when chips appropriate for some of Apple’s machines long overdue for updates will launch.

Intel often launches low-power 4.5W Y-series chips and 15W U-series chips first, neither of which are suitable for use in the machine that people are most curious about, the MacBook Pro. According to an old Intel roadmap, Kaby Lake chips appropriate for use in the MacBook Pro, the iMac, and the Mac mini won’t launch until the very end of 2016 or the beginning of 2017, meaning any Apple machines released in the fall of 2016 may be limited to Skylake chips.

Rumors suggest the MacBook Pro is getting a major overhaul this year, with a slimmer design, Touch ID support, and a built-in OLED touch panel. There’s no specific word on a launch date, but it is expected sometime after the September iPhone event and before the end of the year, pinpointing October or November.

During today’s event, along with touching on its 7th Gen processors, Intel outlined Project Alloy, a “merged reality” open source hardware project described as “the next version of VR,” allowing objects from the real world to be brought into the virtual world and vice versa. On stage, this was demonstrated with a dollar bill that was used to manipulate a virtual object. Intel also announced TXL labs, a production studio “dedicated to pushing the limits of technology for production,” and a new drone platform.

Tags: Intel, Kaby Lake
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We unbox the Galaxy Note 7!

The first thing you’ll see if you buy a Galaxy Note 7.

Want to see what everything is like inside a brand new Galaxy Note 7’s box? Well, we have just the video for you. Overall things aren’t so different from the Galaxy S7 edge box, but materials have changed a bit, and of course the USB-C port on the Note 7 necessitated some cable and adapter changes inside.

Not only do we have a full retail box from the Galaxy Note 7 here (a T-Mobile version, for what it’s worth), but it’s also nicely packaged up in some special edition packaging with other goodies — and though you won’t be getting this full giant box treatment when you buy your own Note 7, you won’t want to miss taking a look at it here.

Check out our full unboxing video above, and see what all is inside for you to get excited about when you buy your own Galaxy Note 7.

Samsung Galaxy Note 7

• Samsung Galaxy Note 7 review
• The latest Galaxy Note 7 news!
• Here are all four Note 7 colors
• Complete Galaxy Note 7 specs
• Join the Note 7 discussion in the forums!

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Samsung Galaxy Note 7 review: Biggest and best

Samsung takes the spirit of the Note down to the Galaxy S line, and it’s a hit.

The quick take

Even though the Note 7 doesn’t immediately strike you as an altogether stand-out device like its predecessors, it’s still an amazing phone that stands atop others available today. The Note 7 takes the Galaxy S7’s formula of minimizing gimmicks in order to offer a fantastic core smartphone experience, and does so with very few, if any, missteps. It checks all of the boxes, and goes above and beyond expectations in just about every way. It’s the best Galaxy Note to date.

The Good

• Beautiful hardware
• Industry-leading display
• Great camera
• Unique S Pen features

The Bad

• Still too big for some hands
• Very expensive
• Carrier bloatware still horrible
• No U.S. unlocked model

The best Samsung phone of its time?

Samsung Galaxy Note 7 Full review

When Samsung came out ahead of the Galaxy Note 7’s unveiling and announced that its latest Galaxy Note would skip a numerical generation to fall in line with the Galaxy S7 and S7 edge launched earlier this year, it was a great bit of foreshadowing. The combination of weeks of leaks and that subtle announcement of the bump past Note 6 and straight to Note 7 should’ve given us a good idea that we were going to see a Galaxy Note 7 not unlike the Galaxy S7 edge that came just six months earlier.

And then, that’s pretty much what we got.

The Galaxy Note 7, part of the Note line that historically has been in its own class, generation after generation incapable of really being compared directly to any other phone, now shared a large portion of its specs, design and DNA with a non-Note phone. The Note fans immediately reacted negatively, worried that if they were to buy a Galaxy Note 7 they wouldn’t necessarily be on the bleeding edge of technology, differentiated with a mound of new specs and features beyond that of what Samsung or any other company could pack into a phone. Reaction from the general populous, though, was set to be a bit more realistic — simply seeing a beautiful phone with all of the features they wanted, badged with a name they associated with really nice smartphones.

Yes the Galaxy Note 7 is very much a part of the Galaxy S7 and S7 edge family, no longer on a disparate path. The number 7 appended to its name sets that expectation, the outside reaffirms your suspicions and the experience solidifies them. But that isn’t a bad thing, and it doesn’t mean there isn’t a ton to get to know about the Galaxy Note 7, including how it indeed still differentiates itself from the world of high-end Android phones, Samsung or otherwise. I’m here to tell you just where the Note 7 fits in this world — read on.

About this review

I (Andrew Martonik) am writing this review after a week using a T-Mobile (G930T) version of the Galaxy Note 7, which was provided to Android Central by Samsung for review. The review was conducted using the T-Mobile network in the greater Seattle, WA area. The phone arrived on software version UVU1APGC, and was not updated during the course of the review.

Pretty pictures

Samsung Galaxy Note 7 Video review

Before I get deep into the details writing about the Galaxy Note 7, I encourage you to check out a full video review recap of the phone. Check it out above, get a feel for the phone, and then follow along as I break down all of the details of the latest Galaxy Note!

More change than you think

Samsung Galaxy Note 7 Hardware

To dismiss the Galaxy Note 7 out of hand (or … in your hand?) simply because it bares an initial resemblance to the Galaxy S7 edge is taking the easy route. Samsung has simply improved this metal-and-glass design with each iteration — this is the largest generation-to-generation design change yet, and easily the best executed as well.

The Note 7 lost a considerable amount of metal in its frame compared to the Note 5, and it’s immediately noticeable when you pick it up. Whereas the Note 5 very much felt like a primarily metal phone that simply had its back replaced with a piece of glass, the Note 7 feels like a glass phone with only a necessary amount of metal sandwiched in between the panes.

The new curved display and mirrored curved back encroach on the now much-thinner metal strip along the sides of the Note 7, and the theme continues onto the top and bottom where the metal no longer extends up and over the glass but instead recedes to let the glass take over the edge. You won’t find bevels on the top and bottom of the metal anymore, either: just a smooth, gently rounded edge that meets up with the metal seamlessly.

And though there’s less material here, what’s left there is stronger than any previous Samsung phone — the Note 7 uses a 7000 series aluminum for its frame, some of the hardest you can get and the same used in the iPhone 6s. Not only is it tougher to scratch and ding in daily use, it’ll also cut down on flex in the body of the phone.

Now, I have to talk about the color options available for the Note 7. The model I’m reviewing here, black onyx, is far and away my favorite of the bunch. The black-on-black design is so sleek, so monolithic and so stealth that I honestly can’t imagine buying the silver, gold or blue coral versions, as nice as they may be in their own right. This color combination is a perfect match for the smoother, simpler hardware the Note 7 offers. It also shows Samsung’s willingness to mix things up with the color of both the glass and metal, as each of the four (three in the U.S.) available colors has a different anodization process applied to the aluminum — a nice treat.

Samsung’s design team talked at length about the symmetry of the Note 7 at the phone’s launch event in New York City, and it’s something that actually makes a notable difference in how compact the phone feels. The smaller amount of metal on the sides of the phone paired with the dueling glass curves let the phone nestle deep into your palm, making it a bit less awkward to reach across what is still a very large phone.

	6.04 in153.5 mm
2.91 in73.9 mm		0.31 in7.9 mm
5.96 oz 169 grams

• Display:
  • 5.7-inch SuperAMOLED
  • 2560×1440 (QHD) resolution
  • Gorilla Glass 5
  • Dual curve screen
• Cameras:
  • 12MP, f/1.7, OIS rear camera
  • 5MP, f/1.7 front camera
• Battery:
  • 3500 mAh battery
  • Non-removable
  • Fast Charging
  • Wireless charging
• Chips:
  • Snapdragon 820 processor
  • 4GB RAM
  • 64GB storage
  • microSD card slot

It’s absolutely gorgeous, and easier to handle than previous Notes

Because of these subtle design changes, I find the Galaxy Note 7 easier to use and manipulate in one hand than the Galaxy S7 edge, which I consider a huge win. This is still a big phone, no doubt, but I think at this point people generally know that they’re getting into some sort of trade-off situation where they’re getting a larger screen — and its associated benefits — in turn for slightly decreased usability.

Over time more and more people seem to be fine with moving to a larger screen, and Samsung has at the same time met them from the other side with a more compact device. Very much in the same vein, consumers are willing to take trade-offs in order to have a more beautiful phone in their hands and on the table in front of them.

The hardware changes integrated into the Note 7’s design have accomplished mightily on both fronts. It’s a great-looking smartphone, at any size, and while it clearly isn’t designed 100% from a functional standpoint, it strikes a wonderful balance.

Same wonderful display

Oh Samsung, you spoil us so much with these SuperAMOLED displays. You just can’t do better when it comes to a smartphone screen, and no other company comes close. The 5.7-inch 2560×1440 screen (with due credit to Samsung’s software tuning) is so amazingly bright and colorful, with great viewing angles, that I can’t really ask for much more at this point. Daylight visibility is best in class, and Samsung’s software does a good job with automatic brightness control in other situations to boot.

Samsung’s SuperAMOLED continues to destroy the competition

But the magic of the panel itself isn’t the only reason why the Note 7 offers such a great viewing experience. You also have the curving of the screen on both sides, something of course introduced back on the Galaxy S6 edge but has been done much more subtly on the Note 7. With a tighter radius and overall smaller curve when compared to the Galaxy S7 edge, the screen curves simply provide a functional narrowing of the device, without the downside of accidental palm touches and missed swipes. The visual effect the small curve provides is fantastic as well, in that it really gives the feeling that the Note 7 barely even has bezels on its sides.

And of course the Note 7 is also the first phone to incorporate Corning’s Gorilla Glass 5, which as is the case every year steps things up with even more robust scratch and shatter resistance. This is hardly a “shatterproof” phone, and believe me it will pick up scratches over time, but it never hurts to have increased damage resistance on a phone that has two huge panes of glass with curved edges.

The move to USB-C

On the face of it it seems like such a small thing for the Note 7 to ship with a USB-C connector instead of the tried-and-true Micro-USB. Nobody could’ve blamed Samsung much for sticking with Micro-USB considering its long legacy of accessories that use the port, but seeing such a big company finally shift to the new USB standard is great — particularly as it likely means that all of its phones going forward will use USB-C.

It’s handling the transition in the right way, it seems, as well. You’ll find a USB-C to Micro-USB adapter in the box with your Note 7, and Samsung has released a new version of its Gear VR headset that adds (among other features) a swappable plug that lets it work with both old and new Galaxy phones. For now its other accessories like batteries still charge up over Micro-USB, but these will start to come with adapters in the box as they eventually transition to USB-C also.

The benefits of USB-C like the fact that it’s reversible and can carry more data are easy to understand, but that still won’t overcome the feeling amongst some owners that moving to USB-C from their legacy of Micro-USB accessories will be a pain. Years of buying phones with Micro-USB ports has left many of us with a pile of cables, batteries, docks and plugs that are now useless, and that’s going to be a realization that may hurt Samsung a bit — but it had to rip the band-aid off at some point, and it might as well be with a phone that people are already spending $850 on. You can afford a couple new cables.

Return of the microSD card slot

After Samsung took a 180-degree turn with no expandable storage and instead offered internal storage options up to 128GB in its 2015 flagship phones … customers spoke in words and with their wallets: “We want an SD card slot back.” Whether it was technically or philosophically the “correct” move for Samsung is irrelevant — removal of the SD card slot from its 2015 flagship Galaxy phones was a failure. That much is clear now, and the SD card slot is back.

With 64GB internal, even fewer people will need the SD card slot

Functionally, things pick up right where they left off on the Note 4 when it comes to adding an SD card to the phone. Despite running Marshmallow there’s no Adoptable Storage option here — the SD card simply acts as a standalone volume to store media and some apps if you choose.

It’s a good way to fill up a card on your computer and transfer files over to your phone for viewing or listening, but is altogether a second-class experience in terms of actively using it for media you create on the Note 7 itself. There are confusing (and entirely necessary) restrictions on which apps and parts of apps can be moved to the SD card, as well as usability hurdles when it comes to capturing photos and videos directly to the card.

With the Note 7’s bump up to 64GB of internal storage there are even fewer people who will need an SD card, so I would caution you to just give the phone a try and see how much you fill it up before buying an SD card just because it has the capability. After installing all of my usual apps, I still had 45GB free.

Waterproofing

This is the very first waterproof Galaxy Note. And it shouldn’t come as a surprise, as this has really been one of the pinnacle features that Samsung has hung its hat on since launching to a widespread customer base earlier this year with the Galaxy S7 and S7 edge.

Just like those phones (and the “Active” ones before them), the Galaxy Note 7 has what’s called an IP68 rating, meaning it can handle both dust and water under some pretty standard situations. The big one is water resistance, where the phone can handle 30 minutes submerged in up to five feet of water. While that doesn’t mean it can replace your GoPro camera, or serve as a “rugged” phone, it will absolutely handle a drink being spilt on it at dinner or taking a quick dunk in the shallow end of a swimming pool.

Over the course of this review I exposed the phone to plenty of water and it just kept on going, including giving it a shot at recording video under water, which it actually accomplished nicely unlike my previous tests with the Galaxy S7 edge. I think every single high-end phone should be resistant to water in some capacity, and it’s great to see Samsung continue to carry the feature on its best phones.

A stealthy update

Samsung Galaxy Note 7 Software

It’s easy — and understandable — to focus on the hardware story in the Galaxy Note 7, but Samsung also took this launch as an opportunity to roll out a pretty considerable software redesign as well. Having Android 7.0 Nougat and all of its associated software update headaches on the horizon it would have been completely understandable to save these changes to coincide with that large platform release, but we get them early here built into Android 6.0 Marshmallow.

A fresh look to TouchWiz

The biggest visual changes come down to the launcher, notification shade and settings area. The launcher is quite similar, but has once again changed the look of the default icons and folders — I have to say they’re at least improved, if still a bit forced, though I still prefer Google Now Launcher’s overall look.

The notification shade is both simpler and more compact, with a flat white background acting as a canvas for thin lines and iconography in grey and light blue. It now takes an extra swipe to access screen brightness, but the buttons are still configurable and provide extra information when tapping them before going into the full settings screen, not unlike the way we see things done in Nougat.

The cleanest and simplest version of TouchWiz yet

The simple white background and limited combination of grey and muted colors continues into the settings area, which has taken a miraculous turn toward simplicity. Rather than dealing with a seemingly endless scrolling list or group of tabs, the Note 7’s settings almost fit on a single page without scrolling. They’re all rolled up into broad categories like “Connections,” “Display” and “Device maintenance,” with the most commonly used features in each section listed under the header. The settings within each category are more logically listed, and most categories have a “Looking for something else?” list at the bottom with suggestions for similar settings that are now found in other areas.

Better colors, more compact displays and simpler overall layouts receive two big thumbs up from me, even though they’re still joined by lots of duplicative Samsung apps and carrier bloatware to wade through. If Samsung could also scale back on that front, I would be even happier with the software. But even as it stands now, Samsung has quietly made a set of really great changes to the interface we interact with dozens of times a day, and it’s worthy of applause from me.

New features

I greatly appreciate the visual cleanup of many parts of the interface, but going beyond that Samsung has also added or revamped several system-level features as well.

First is a proper “blue light filter,” which of course plays to the popular notion of reducing the amount of blue light you’re viewing from screens and how it affects your sleeping habits. The blue light filter can be toggled on at any time, with an adjustable intensity, to make your screen a bit warmer when you want to reduce eye strain. But more importantly, you can set it to change temperature on a custom schedule or even let it automatically come on at the local sunset time and turn off again at sunrise. Together with automatic brightness, I found it a nice automatic way to help my eyes transition to nighttime viewing.

A few new features that you don’t notice on Day 1, but are great to have

Samsung has also doubled down on its Power saving mode, which now has customizable levels to extend your battery while keeping the features you want most turned on. Before turning on Power saving mode, you can select to limit max screen brightness between 80 and 100%, set the screen resolution to HD, FHD or QHD, limit device performance overall, and prevent background network usage from apps. With each parameter you’ll get an estimate of how much battery you’ll save by enabling it, and once you set your custom profile you can turn it on and off as you see fit. This is much better than the all-or-nothing Power saving mode before, and will give enthusiasts plenty of ways to tweak things.

Samsung’s new Always On Display mode has also arrived on the Note 7, though it’s also picked up a couple of key advantages that make it more functional than what’s available on the Galaxy S7 and S7 edge. You get many of the same clock layouts, but now those layouts are accompanied by icons for all notifications that you receive — and you can double tap an icon directly on the “off” display to open the associated app. It’s nowhere near as useful as Moto Display, but it makes you a bit less guilty about burning some battery running Always On Display.

Even without a dramatically curved display, and with all of the extra software already on tap for the S Pen, Samsung still decided to graft the “Edge UX” software from the Galaxy S7 edge to the Note 7. After six months using the GS7 edge I still haven’t found a use for the edge screen, aside from occasionally finding it useful to quickly pull up a favorite contact to dial. Everything else it can offer me is less useful than just launching an app, and more hassle at the same time. Things haven’t changed on the Note 7, and I wouldn’t be surprised if people went a step further and turned off the edge screen software entirely — there are already great ways to interact with your apps without trying to reinvent the wheel and give you yet another launcher paradigm.

Better S Pen hardware, simplified software

The Galaxy Note 7 still offers easily the best stylus experience of any smartphone, though initially you won’t find too much different from the Note 5. But under the skin, you’ll find the S Pen has doubled its pressure sensitivity to 4096 levels, narrowed the point for more precise selection, and also notably improved the tracking speed on the screen. On the software side, you still have screen-off writing (even when using Always On Display) for taking quick notes, as well as Air Command for the most-used S Pen features, but where things change is the move from disparate S Pen apps to a single Samsung Notes app on the phone.

I’m not convinced S Pen usage is high, but this is the best possible experience

In Samsung Notes, you can take written notes, do quick drawings, work with images and pair those notes with voice messages — all functions that used to take up their own separate apps. Even if you don’t hop into Samsung Notes for explicit note taking, you can still launch Air Command to quickly write on the screen, or use one of the new S Pen features like the live translation tool, magnifier or GIF maker.

I still haven’t been able to work the S Pen into my daily life, but you’re getting it with the phone either way so you might as well give it a try. It’s great for signing documents and quickly annotating a screenshot when you need extra tools to get your point across, and for those kinds of every-once-in-a-while features, it’s nice to have around. There’s basically no downside to having it there, ready to go.

Still great

Samsung Galaxy Note 7 Cameras

While I warned against judging a book by its cover when it came to initial impressions of the Galaxy Note 7’s hardware, I don’t have such caution when it comes to its cameras. What we have on both the back and front of the Note 7 is identical to that found inside the Galaxy S7 and S7 edge — which, of course, is the combination we judged to be the best overall smartphone camera back when the phones were released.

Since the launch of the Galaxy S7 and S7 edge, the competition hasn’t produced anything better. And clearly Samsung was happy enough with its own progress to keep the exact same hardware in the Note 7, breaking the trend of the Note series offering some kind of imaging upgrade over the year’s Galaxy S. To bring you up to speed, that means a 12MP rear camera sensor with 1.4-micron pixels, an f/1.7 lens and OIS. On the front, a 5MP sensor also with an f/1.7 lens.

Image quality

Though this is a known camera setup, that doesn’t mean there aren’t things to point out when coming from even the Note 5, which was a great camera in its own right; the gulf is even larger when compared to the Note 4. When compared to the last Note, we’re looking at even better low-light performance this time around, with what could be described as a side-grade in daylight performance.

In daylight, there are really only two subtle weaknesses (if you can even call them that) to the Note 7’s camera. It sometimes over-processes dark portions of otherwise light photos, giving them some extra chroma noise and artificial smoothing that’s noticeable against the otherwise-sharp portions of the photo. The sensor also doesn’t inherently have an amazing dynamic range, leaving some colors looking a little dull when not shooting in HDR — this is really more of a personal preference, and is only noticeable with side-by-side comparisons to other phones.

Almost as important as the image quality is the speed at which the Note 7 captures photos, which is lightning fast and upholds the high standard put out by its predecessors. A double-press of the home button launches the camera in well under a second, and you can capture right away. Burst shots are quick, and what continues to amaze me is that there’s no difference in capture time between regular and HDR shots. Samsung’s cameras continue to do really well at choosing between standard and HDR when set in auto mode, and that’s where I left the camera a majority of the time.

Camera software

Just like many other aspects of the software, Samsung has taken a fresh, clean look at the camera interface. The experience is now a step simpler from what was already quite simple before, with even fewer buttons around the whole viewfinder — just the major toggles like flash and HDR are there, along with a dedicated video and gallery button on the opposite side.

Samsung is now emphasizing swiping in the camera interface, with a swipe to the left revealing a set of live filters to choose from, a swipe from the right bringing in the mode selector and a swipe down switching between the rear and front cameras. The app is extremely easy to use and is just as quick and responsive as ever. It just adds to the experience.

Actually using it

Samsung Galaxy Note 7 Daily use

Beyond the speeds and feeds, and talk about the different qualities of the hardware design, the Galaxy Note 7 is actually really great to use every day. Here are a few of my thoughts on the daily interaction with the phone.

Performance

The performance story with the Galaxy Note 7 is identical to my time using the Galaxy S7, which until receiving this phone was my most-used device on a daily basis. With so much shared between the two this comes as no surprise, and just like the GS7 I’m extremely happy with how quick the Note 7 is in daily use. Aside from a couple of initial wonky hang-ups in the settings that I experienced in the first couple hours of use, I haven’t had any sort of instability, jerkiness or unexpected slowdowns on the phone.

Multitasking, shooting pictures, listening to music while browsing, managing lots of emails and Slack messages, and all of my other daily functions went off without a hitch, as you would absolutely expect to be the case for a phone with a Snapdragon 820 processor and 4GB of RAM. And because of that, I never once wanted to wander into the “Device maintenance” part of the settings, which houses a bunch of “powered by Clean Master” tools to free up RAM, “sleep” apps and “optimize” your phone. Much of it is unnecessary, and even the parts that are genuinely useful for troubleshooting are globbed together with other useless snake oil. In general, you’re not going to run into issues using the Note 7; and if you do, that Clean Master stuff isn’t going to help much.

Battery life

With an additional 500 mAh to work with compared to the Galaxy Note 5, the Note 7’s 3500 mAh cell keeps battery life solid but not exactly spectacular. Just as I found with the Galaxy S7 edge, which itself has a 100 mAh larger battery, the Note 7 can easily handle a full day of use — but it won’t necessarily always do it with battery to spare. On a particularly tough day that required a lot of screen on time (outdoors at 100% brightness), lots of podcast listening, photos and network usage all on LTE, my battery could last a solid 15 hours — but it’d be completely dead at the end. On a lighter day, with what I would consider my “normal” use, the Note 7 was good for a full 17 hour day without hitting the 15% battery mark, which is more like what I’d expect out of a big phone.

One big factor in battery life, over my course of a week using the Note 7, was whether or not I chose to have Always On Display turned on. The heads-up screen looks great and is even better than what’s available on the Galaxy S7, but adds a pretty considerable battery drain as well. In some informal testing I found it could easily drain between 5 and 10% of the Note 7’s battery over the course of the day, which is starting to get to the point where you should really make a conscious decision about whether it’s worth it. For what it’s worth, Always On Display is not turned on by default on my T-Mobile model; an unlocked model offered for review to our own Daniel Bader has it enabled by default.

Good for a full day — the question is how much you’ll have left in the tank

As I noted above when talking about the software, the new configurable Power saving mode can help eke out an extra hour or two if you find you’re draining down your battery quickly, which is extremely helpful. Even though I don’t necessarily think you’ll need it but once or twice a week when you start to get into the danger zone on battery by dinnertime.

Even though we’ve changed connectors to USB-C, there’s the exact same Adaptive Fast Charging tech inside the Note 7 as you’d find in the last-generation Samsung phones. That means it’s pretty darn fast, and compatible with Quick Charge 2.0 chargers. Samsung includes its standard Fast Charging power brick in the box, which has a USB-A connector on it so you can use any USB-A to USB-C cable you like.

Of course you’ll also find the same wireless charging setup as the last generation, including both Qi (which will you’ll find in most chargers) and Powermat (which you’ll find at the likes of Starbucks), as well as Samsung’s own “Fast Charge” wireless charging — the latter requires a specific charger from Samsung or one of just a handful of other companies, but they’ve been around long enough that they’re easy to find at a good price. And believe me, getting a Fast Charge wireless charger is worth it, especially if you’re placing your phone down expecting to get any sort of a quick top-up to the battery.

An iris scanner

As one of the new features that separated it from the pack, and reiterated the company’s focus on security, Samsung spent a notable amount of time at its launch event detailing the iris scanner technology in the Note 7. This is hardly a new feature in the world of phones, but it’s a first for a Galaxy device and it’s quite easily going to be the best-selling phone to ever have an iris scanner … albeit those sales will in no way be due to the iris scanner’s existence.

The scanner’s hardware is actually a two-part affair — the combination of a special camera and an infrared light on the front of the phone can read your irises to determine if you’re actually who you say you are. The setup process is simple enough, and lives right alongside the settings for your lock screen and fingerprints.

Right now, you can think of the iris scanner as being in the same position as Samsung’s early fingerprint scanners before Marshmallow brought universal fingerprint APIs: right now, the iris scanner can only unlock Samsung’s own apps, in addition to the lock screen (behind an extra swipe), Secure Folder and Samsung’s KNOX security system. On the face of it that seems rather annoying and limited, which it is, and Samsung is working to expand the use of its Samsung Pass API to get banks and other app makers on-board with the tech.

The iris scanner is a complete miss this year — but it has potential for future iterations

But here’s the important part of this whole situation: it doesn’t really matter how many apps support the iris scanner, because the scanner system itself just isn’t very good. From the get-go, the system is hyper-specific about how you hold the phone for it to recognize your irises properly — about 8 inches away from your face (but no closer, it warns), up at eye height and with your eyes open wider than usual for up to nine seconds. In other words: more than you want to deal with.

Beyond the oddity of how much extra work it takes to perform this every time you want your irises scanned, it just wouldn’t ever reliably recognize my irises — despite multiple re-trainings of the system. I don’t wear glasses or contacts, and tried in a variety of lighting conditions to no avail. At best I’d say the scanner recognized my irises about half the time within the nine-second limit before the scanner times out and asked me to enter a lock pattern or press my finger on the home button to authenticate. That’s … not very good. I’ll stick to the fingerprint sensor, thank you very much.

To me, the iris scanner has already failed as a feature in this current hardware and software iteration. But it’s the smallest of blemishes on an otherwise great phone, and the best part about it is that you’ll never have to worry about it getting in the way once you turn it off.

Worthy flagship

Samsung Galaxy Note 7 Bottom line

The similarities between the Galaxy Note 7 and the six-month-old Galaxy S7 edge have really clouded the vision of the Android enthusiasts who are thinking about what the latest Note brings to the table. Yes, there’s effectively zero reason to buy a Galaxy Note 7 if you already have a Galaxy S7 edge — but Samsung never expected you to make that purchase in the first place. The Note 7 is designed to be a fantastic upgrade for those who have at least a year-old phone, and who want to experience all of the new features that they’ve seen advertised on the Galaxy S7 and S7 edge but weren’t quite ready to buy at the time, or wanted a bigger phone that held the Galaxy Note brand.

And when you remember that the phone upgrade cycle amongst the broadest range of smartphone buyers is quite a bit slower than the enthusiasts, you can start to understand just how great of an upgrade the Note 7 will be for tons of people out there.

The Galaxy Note 7 has immaculately designed and crafted hardware, an industry-topping display, top-end internal specs to satiate all but the most avid enthusiasts, and it’s all wrapped up in a water-tight enclosure. Even with all of that, Samsung still absolutely nails the biggest parts of the daily use experience — the software is quick, smooth and powerful, the camera is lightning fast and produces great photos, the battery offers ample longevity, and the S Pen is still the best smartphone stylus experience available today.

If you look at everything that the Galaxy Note 7 offers, I’m not sure what else you can honestly (and realistically, considering constraints and trade-offs of modern phones) ask for. It isn’t a perfect smartphone, but that has and never will be the case with any phone — what matters here is that the Note 7 provides a fantastic experience through and through. And despite its congruence with the Galaxy S series that classic Note fans may bemoan, it’s easily the best Galaxy Note that Samsung has ever made.

Should you buy it? Yes

The Galaxy Note 7 is the real deal, that much is clear. The only real question for you is whether it’s worth the big price and whether it’s a big enough upgrade over the phone you currently have. But no matter your situation, the Note 7 should at least be on your radar. And if you have the money to spend (or finance through a carrier), you should give it serious consideration as your next phone.

Where to buy the Galaxy Note 7

As you’d expect, the major U.S. carriers are all offering the Galaxy Note 7. It’s pricey, for sure, but each one offers some sort of financing option to help lessen the up-front cost. There isn’t a U.S. unlocked model at launch, unfortunately.

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The next wave of AI is rooted in human culture and history

Understanding humans is essential to the design and experience of a technology. For decades, major corporations have turned to social scientists for insight into human behavior, culture and history. At Intel, Genevieve Bell, a prominent Australian anthropologist with a Ph.D. from Stanford University, has been tracking societal trends across the world to help build technologies that are fine-tuned to the needs of the people who will interact with them.

Bell started working at Intel in 1998. She brought her anthropological research and fieldwork techniques to the world of microprocessors, wearables and artificial intelligence. Over the years, her formal role has evolved from director of user experience at Intel’s research lab to VP of corporate strategy. But regardless of the titles, her work has remained firmly focused on studying the patterns and complexities of human behavior across cultures. In her self-proclaimed role as a “full-time anthropologist and part-time futurist,” she examines the meaning of “intelligence” within the context of machines, while she continues to trace its cultural impact on humans and their relationships.

At a time when robotic helpers and virtual assistants are starting to infiltrate our personal lives, the need to assess the implications of this new kind of interaction feels more pertinent than ever. I recently called Bell to talk about the social impact of building relationships with our machines and the ways in which the story of AI is deeply connected to the history of human culture.

In what ways does the study of human societies and cultures drive technological innovation? And how does that translate into your work at Intel?

I think of it as this challenge where we have built machinery and then we say, “Here it is, now use it.” We need to have a more balanced approach, which is to have a robust understanding of people’s pain points and also their aspirations. What are they trying to get done? What are the barriers to that and what do they wish were possible? And conversely, what do they not want to have happened. With those things, you can develop a set of insights about what people care about, and that should be a part of the design process. It’s not just about designing technology but government services and infrastructure should have an eye on those things too.

At Intel, I would like to imagine that is part and parcel of how we do things. What are the experiences this technology can deliver? What can we make possible with our technology that wasn’t possible before? When you look at the range of places where Intel is engaged these days, you can see that. As we’re thinking about new technology objects, whether it’s wearables or other things like sensor technology that’s closer to the body, we think about what people want to get done. How do we build technologies that speak meaningfully to that? Even on our side, where we’re thinking about data and the cloud – we’re moving to a world where it’s more machines talking to machines – we need to be paying attention to, what are the consequences to all of that data movement? Paying attention to the experiences that technology could or should deliver, and also what are the barriers that you’re trying to remediate, are all part of what it means to think about people when you’re building technology.

How does your experience and work as an anthropologist inform your perspective of artificial intelligence?

My mom is also an anthropologist, and the joke in my family is that anthropology is less a vocation and more a mind-set. It’s a way of looking at the world that I don’t know how to escape from. I had an ex-boyfriend once tell me I was a terrible person to go on a vacation with. He said, “You treat vacation like fieldwork,” and I was like, “I treat life like fieldwork.”

For me, there are some key tenets to being an anthropologist that I bring everywhere. I want to make sense of something as a story. When I first started thinking about artificial intelligence, I wanted to know two things: What was the work that the phrase artificial intelligence was doing? So what was that language doing, and what did it privilege and erase? And then I wanted to know its history. Where did it come from? What are the other stories and narratives that it’s attached to? That leads you to ask questions about who coined the phrase and why?

As an anthropologist, I wanted to interrogate AI not just as a technical agenda but as a cultural category. I wanted to look at the intellectual history of it. I found myself reading [Alan] Turing and his incredibly provocative question: “Can a machine think?” And the whole notion of the Turing test — Is there a moment where we as humans can no longer distinguish ourselves from the machines? It’s a really interesting formulation both of a technical idea but also a cultural one. It’s also where you can see the cultural ambivalences and anxieties too. In the conversations in the press and public culture, AI is often accompanied by everything from the language around the robot apocalypse, the singularity, to the idea that they’ll replace or kill us, all depending on the narrative. I was interested in why those two stories were so tightly coupled. Why have the conversations around AI always necessitated this other conversation? Unpicking that was also a very anthropological endeavor.

Turing’s ideas are incredibly prominent in the narrative around AI. But there are also ideas generated and popularized by Hollywood. As someone who is examining the language and meaning of AI, how do you define it?

The language of AI is interesting. “Artificial” is a word whose oppositional points are things like natural, real or increasingly organic. In the 1950s, artificial was a really good word. It meant things like tidy and scientific and unmired by the messiness of biology. And intelligence is in the opposition to emotionality, affect, irrationality and stupidity. You start to see the notion that AI is rooted in, about something that would’ve been clean and tidy, uncomplicated by human emotions and irrationality and somehow pristine.

For me, artificial intelligence is a catchall term and it’s one that’s cycled in and out of popularity. It’s back at the moment. It’s an umbrella term under which you can talk about cognitive compute, machine learning and deep learning, and algorithms. It’s a catchall because it means everything and nothing at the same time. It’s a cultural category as much as a technical one. One of the challenges for AI is that it is always and already twinned with the cultural imagination of what it would mean to have technologies that could be like humans. And that’s a preoccupation that preexists Hollywood. Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein 200 years ago and that is in some ways one of the quintessential stories about a technology trying to be human. And that in and of itself is based on earlier stories like the Golem out of Jewish Kabbalism and the notions that thread through almost every major world culture and religion about humans trying to bring something to life and about the consequences of that, which are always complicated and rarely good.

“We talk about artificial intelligence, but we often don’t talk about artificial affect or artificial emotionality or morality or artificial souls. All of those are in some ways a part of our intellect.”

In most cultural traditions, the only people who get to make things come to life are gods, and humans shouldn’t do that work; nothing good will come of it. That’s been around for thousands of years. It doesn’t surprise me that artificial intelligence kind of echoes back to that history.

For me, it means a constellation of scientific, technical and regulatory agendas to develop a set of technologies that have the capacity for thought that mirrors a piece of human intellect but not all of it. In its most narrow sense it’s about technologies that will allow a certain class of decision-making. In its current instantiation, circa 2016, it’s a lot about pattern-matching and the capacity to look through data sets.

One of the challenges now is: What is the value of our humanity? Is what it means to be human reducible to our intellect? If so, what do we imagine intellect is? And if not, then what are we designing out of the system that we might actually want to have in the system? We talk about artificial intelligence, but we often don’t talk about artificial affect or artificial emotionality or morality or artificial souls. All of those are in some ways a part of our intellect. We don’t think about that because we sometimes have the capacity to drive intelligence down to playing chess or Go and the ability to doing a Q&A. Frankly, most people’s intellect is much more expansive and complicated than that.

In what ways do you think these mainstream ideas of AI get in the way of our understanding of it? Is there something you’d like to see changed in the narrative around it?

We frequently dismiss the fears without acknowledging that they are based in a little bit of truth. Humans have built technical systems for a long time, and they’ve often had unintended consequences. And sometimes those unintended consequences were quite difficult to live with. We built cars but it took us another 70 or 80 years to build safety equipment into them. We had cars long before we had seat belts or traffic lights and road rules. There is a piece there that says maybe when humans go, “Oh, that’s how I feel about that,” it’s not because they’re afraid of the science, they’re afraid of themselves.

What would happen if we took the fears seriously enough not to just dismiss them, going, “You’ve watched too many Terminator movies”? But actually took them seriously and said, “Here are the guardrails we’re implementing; here are the things we’re going to do differently this time around and here are the open questions we still have.” That’s an interesting way of doing it, but the other way is to be acutely aware that most science fiction, while based in fact, sells more when it’s dystopic and not utopic. So you have the distinct clash between scientists who are often techno-deterministic and optimistic and science fiction, which is techno-deterministic but pessimistic. How do you diminish the delta between those two things? How do you acknowledge the anxiety and not make it irrational while also moving people through it?

You often talk about the “preoccupation to make something like us, to bring something to life.” What are the cultural implications of doing that?

It’s different in various cultures. There are lots of stories in cultural narrative about who gets to bring things to life and under what circumstances. And those vary by cultural traditions, and there are also very different notions about what can be sanctioned and what can’t. Even within late-Industrial, post-Enlightenment West, our ideas about what can think has changed dramatically.

In the last 20 years, zoology has pushed those boundaries a great deal where we are now more willing than ever to allow that animals have many things that we once regarded as human. Capacity for logic, dreaming, intergenerational transmission of knowledge and language, tool-making – those were the things we thought made us human. There’s also stuff around symbolic and magical thinking in animals that has in some ways finally blown the boundary line. We’re now willing to acknowledge that all different species of birds recognize things, engage in pattern-matching and recognition. Studies of crows, in particular, suggest that.

“In most cultural traditions, the only people who get to make things come to life are gods, and humans shouldn’t do that work; nothing good will come of it. That’s been around for thousands of years. It doesn’t surprise me that artificial intelligence kind of echoes back to that history.”

Even in our own tradition we’re increasingly blurring the boundaries of what makes humans distinctive versus everything else. For a long time there was a bright line between what was human and what wasn’t. Frankly, if you think about the last 300 years, not all humans were on the bright side of that line. If you think about the way the West thought about the Aboriginal people in my country, 200 years ago, they weren’t fully human. If you think about the way most constitutional documents enshrined women, they were mostly human but didn’t have the capacity to vote. You know the idea of who is in and who is out of humanness is contested territory. Think about even the last 20 years around homosexuality or politics around gender and race, you can clearly see even the notion of who is human and who isn’t human amongst humans is complicated. One of the lines we have historically drawn is about the capacity for thought or intellect; that was one of the things that sanctioned an object to reflect about itself. We’ve credited different sorts of humans with that capacity over the years. What it means to be human is never as straightforward as it seems. We’ve been contesting that category for a really long time.

Particular challenges around AI are tied up with all of those stories, too. Part of the reason it feels tricky is that all of the pieces in that equation are not as stable as they appear. Reality is, we’ve had these internal debates about what’s human and what isn’t for a very long time, and this is one more complexity on top of that. To stabilize those debates, what people are doing is making the human piece easy, and it clearly isn’t.

A still from Frankenstein, 1931. Image: Universal Film Archive/Getty Images.

In constantly engaging with technologies, we’ve been building a new kind of social relationship. In what ways are we knowingly and unknowingly building that relationship through artificial intelligence? Using the voice, for instance. It’s a subtle but profound way to connect with a machine and it’s being used across devices now.

I’m right there with you. Voice is a surprisingly intimate way of engaging with things. Text is one thing, and I’m willing to bet many of us type things we would never say. Much of the internet is predicated on people typing things they would never say. With voice, it’s not as simple as the only time we talk is to other people. We talk to gods when we pray; some of us pray out loud. We talk to our pets. Some people talk to their cars. But most of those other objects don’t talk back. Your pets may recognize your voice and alter their behavior; if they’re cats, usually not. But there’s a piece [of] those are intimate exchanges because of voice.

I got an Alexa [Amazon’s personal assistant] when it first came out last year and I was shocked at how it felt like a personal relationship because I was talking to it. I had asked Alexa to set an alarm, and when it went off I said thank you. I literally said to myself, “I just thanked a machine, good Lord!” I found that because she and I interact via voice it feels much more intimate. I’ve read up on how people are using it, I am by no means alone. There’s something about the voice interface that’s really interesting as a social experiment.

What’s fascinating there is I suspect you can get to relationships with technology without AI as the backbone, if you can have relationships and connection without it necessarily behaving like a human. If it did, you can imagine other values coming into play. Maybe it’s about emotional intelligence and not problem-solving intelligence. Imagine a point when Alexa or another similar object is back-ended by more data than she currently has. If she has spent enough time in my kitchen, then she knows enough about me to say: “You have an 8 o’ clock meeting, the traffic is terrible, you’re late! Get out of bed, get on the road!” She can start to be not so much bossy, but nurturing. So the frame there is not about recommendations, which is where much of AI is now, but is actually about nurture and care. If those become the buzzwords, then you sit in this very interesting moment of being able to pivot from talking about human-computer interactions to human-computer relationships.

Within the context of this new human-computer relationship, what should we be most aware or cautious of?

It’s the same things we are cautious of in all relationships. We already have different scales of relationships in our lives. [But] machines will not be humans, so this is a different kind of relationship. It’s a reasonable set of challenges for us as citizens and consumers but also for technologists and designers to think about things like: What’s the nature of this relationship, and what happens when you break up? Am I keeping my stuff or are you taking it back? How does that manifest itself as data? What are the values built into those things and how do you navigate different value systems? People who are designing AI will build into it assumptions about how the world will be. And, you know, there are places where we’ll need to ask: What is the vision of the world that is being enacted here?

Speaking of designing AI and building ideas into it, there’s been a lot of talk about the need for diversity. And recently at the AI Now symposium in New York, where you were a speaker, an interesting point was made about the inclusion and need for the female perspective. What are your thoughts on that?

In order to build the next generation of technology, you need to have as many points of view in the room as you can. For me, that is absolutely a call to say it’ll be good to have more women; in some places, it’ll be good to have any women. Not just more women, but also people who come from different economic and cultural backgrounds. People from different interdisciplinary backgrounds are hugely important for the next wave of technology. You need to have people who are historians and philosophers and even poets. There has to be this capacity to think differently about data, time, history and logic. It requires as many different ways of thinking as you can possibly tolerate. The reality is, managing that is hard. It is easier to have teams that look and think like you. There is less tension. But it also means there’s less debate. We need to be more willing to allow that it will be harder but that it is good and the outcome is infinitely better. So for me, it’s about: How do you ensure you have as much good thinking in the room and as much diversity of thought and lived experience and positionality as you can get? More women is just the start of that, and it’s a critical start. But I worry. We keep saying it’s important, but we don’t do enough about it.

McDonald’s hands out activity trackers with Happy Meals

For more than three decades, McDonald’s has handed out toys with Happy Meals. It’s been long argued that the gifts incentivize parents and children to eat more fast food, leading to health issues like obesity and diabetes. While we’ve seen more educational and surprising tech inclusions, like VR goggles, toys that promote fitness and physical activity have been very few and far between (although the company did once include a pedometer with special Go Active! adult Happy Meals back in 2004).

With the Olympics now dominating headlines, the fast-food giant is encouraging kids to get moving with a new “STEP-it” fitness tracker. Every Happy Meal sold in the US and Canada will include one of six wrist-worn pedometers that also blink slowly or quickly depending on a child’s activity. “Step-it is in line with McDonald’s general philosophy for Happy Meal toys, which is to make toys that encourage either physical or imagination-based play,” McDonald’s Canada Senior Marketing Manager, Michelle McIImoyle, explains to CityNews.

McDonald’s says that the toy will be available for four weeks, during which it will advertise the tracker on TV and include it in pre-roll ads on YouTube (presumably on kid-focused videos). It’s one of the main 2016 Olympic sponsors and is the official restaurant of the Games, so it makes sense to include the trackers and perhaps incentivize younger viewers to be active while US and Canadian athletes compete in Rio.

Via: Wareable

Source: CityNews.ca

Grovemade and Joey Roth team up on wooden desktop speakers

Grovemade has a knack for crafting tech accessories out of wood. For its latest product, the company teamed up with designer Joey Roth on a set of desktop speakers that are made from that natural material. You might remember Roth’s ceramic speakers from a few years back, among a collection of other audio and industrial designs. This time around, Roth lent his expertise to Grovemade’s Speaker System: a pair of desktop speakers with a horn design and 2-inch drivers that’s paired with a 2x25W amplifier. The speakers are made from solid maple and walnut to complete the look of the fully analog audio setup.

Working with wood is the key element to Grovemade’s overall product line. Whether it’s an iPhone case or a keyboard tray, the company knows a thing or two about working with the natural materials. For its Speaker System, each shell is machined in-house from a solid piece of hardwood with a hand from Autodesk’s Fusion 360 software. The pieces are then assembled with epoxy, sanded down to their final shapes and given two coats of oil to seal the wood. Stainless steel stands are covered in leather to mask any exposed hardware and giving the round speakers some solid footing for your desk.

Grovemade touts “an acoustically rich sound” that does justice to lows, mids and highs without the help of digital signal processing. If you want to put that claim to the test, you’ll have to hand over $599 for the walnut set and $499 for maple option. You won’t have to wait to grab a set though, as both are available now via the source link below.

Source: Grovemade