Xiaomi’s new smartphones feature embedded fingerprint scanners and dual lens cameras

Chinese smartphone manufacturer Xiaomi has taken the wraps off two new smartphones, the Mi5s and Mi5s Plus, both of which come with their own headline grabbing features.

They follow the release of the Mi5 Pro, which we’ve previously had some hands on time with, and we were impressed with its build quality and capabilities. It could comfortably rival most other flagships and cost a fraction of the price. 

With the two new smartphones, Xiaomi is looking to do the same again by packing in similar features to the ones we’re seeing on phones such as the iPhone 7 Plus. 

• Xiaomi Mi5 Pro: Smartphone star causes a stir

Xiaomi Mi5s

The Mi5s, which is the smaller of the two smartphones with a 5.15in full HD display, has what Xiaomi is calling an Ultrasonic fingerprint scanner. This sees the scanner embedded into the glass on the front of the phone and use Qualcomm’s Sense ID scanning technology. It means that the scanner will be able to recognise your fingers and thumbs in a split second, and even still work if they’re wet or moist. We were able to demo the technology back in March and found that the wetter our fingers were, the better the technology worked.

Sense ID sends ultrasonic soundwaves into your finger to not only measure your unique print, but the depth of the ridges within it to further enhance security.

While the scanner is embedded into the screen, it doesn’t mean you can place your finger anywhere to unlock it, you’ll still need to rest your digits on a specified area.

Elsewhere the Mi5s has a 12-megapixel Sony camera on the back, with a 1/ 2.3in sensor and f/2.0 aperture, which on paper trumps both the iPhone 7 and Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge. On the front you’ll find a 4MP snapper for selfies.

A 2.15GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 821 processor with 3 or 4GB of RAM keeps things running smoothly and the Mi5s is powered by a 3200mAh battery which benefits from Qualcomm QuickCharge 3.0 technology.

UK pricing and availability has yet to be announced, but Chinese prices convert to $299 for the 3GB/64GB model and $344 for the 4GB/128GB.

Xiaomi Mi5s Plus

The second phone released by Xiaomi is the Mi5s Plus, which doesn’t have the fignerprint scanner, but it does gain a dual-lens camera. It’s a similar system to the one found on the Huawei Mate P9 wherein one lens captures colour images while the other does black and white. If you’re taking colour images, the Mi5s Plus will use both sensor to, in theory, enhance the final photo.

Given the Plus in the phone’s model name, it’s a larger model with a 5.7in full HD display, but it runs on the same Snapdragon 821 processor with 4GB or 6GB of RAM. It will be priced at around $344 for the 4GB/64GB model and $389 for the 6GB/128GB model. Both phones will be available in gray, silver, gold and rose gold.

Spotify’s Daily Mixes use your listening habits to make playlists

Spotify has been keen on adding new discovery features to its service for a while now. Today, the streaming option announced yet another tool that keeps your playlists fresh. The new feature is called Daily Mixes and it compiles six different playlists that are constantly updated based on your listening habits. Each mix contains over a dozen songs and more tracks load as you listen so you don’t have to worry about running out of material.

Sitting atop the “Your Library” section of the Spotify app, Daily Mixes are a combination of tunes by the artists you listen to on the regular and other material you might not be as familiar with. As you might expect, there’s the option to “heart” a song to add it to your collection or “ban” a track to keep it from popping up in future playlists. Unlike the name suggests, the Mixes aren’t updated daily per se. Spotify says the name implies that you can enjoy them daily and while the track order may shuffle every day, the data that selects the songs will be updated on a weekly basis.

Daily Mixes are divided by genre. For example, I have playlists for hardcore, hip hop, indie rock, electronic, metal and hard rock. Most of those are an equal mix of artists that I listen to often (or at least from time to time) and new songs that I hadn’t heard of yet. Not all the songs are new releases, so there’s a blend of old and new in each list as well.

These new playlists work a lot like Pandora stations or Spotify’s own radio feature, only now the queue is automatically compiled for you and you can start wherever you want. You don’t even have to pick an a specific artist to get started. Spotify says the new playlists will be “consistently refreshed” and feature “near endless playback” to make listening to music on a daily basis a bit easier. Just like those aforementioned stations, Daily Mixes are based entirely on what you’re listening to and get better the more music you play.

After a few days with Daily Mixes, the playlists seem useful at times when I have trouble deciding exactly what to play. I’m a big fan of both Discover Weekly and Release Radar for learning about new artists and keeping up new material from all of the acts I listen to often, but I don’t think I’ll use Daily Mixes quite as often. It’s still early though, so that may change. Spotify’s focus on discovery continues to provide its users with ways to keep their listening habit fresh. Multiple options mean you can find the one that you like best.

If you want to give the new feature a shot, it’s available now on Spotify’s Android and iOS apps for both paid and free users. New to Spotify? You’ll need to use the service for about two weeks before Daily Mixes will show up for you. For faithful desktop users, the tool will be rolling out to other platforms “soon,” so hopefully you won’t have to wait too long to employ the new goods there.

Wink’s new smart home hub is slimmer and more powerful

Every person who’s tried to smarten up their home knows the woes of dealing with multiple hubs for each brand’s products. Wink tried to solve that problem two years ago with its original Hub, and is now launching a successor that not only looks much better and is 25 percent slimmer, but also offers a simplified setup and pairing process thanks to a new app. The Wink Hub 2, basically a control panel for all your connected devices, will be available for $99 in late October at Amazon, The Home Depot and Walmart.

The new Wink Hub 2.0 packs a more powerful WiFi radio that supports both 2.4 and 5GHz networks. It also sports an Ethernet port for wired Internet connections that are more reliable, and will be compatible with a large number of common smart home protocols such as Zigbee, ZWave, Lutron Clear Connect, Kidde and Bluetooth Low Energy. The device also got an improved processor and eight times more memory for better performance, and it’s protected by what Wink calls industrial-grade security that checks, every time you run the hub, that all the files onboard are the same as they were out of the box.

One of the Hub 2’s coolest new features is its ability to run schedules and robots. The former lets you set actions to happen at specific times of day, such as turning on the lights in the evening and turning them off every night to pretend like you’re home. Robots let one connected device trigger a series of actions in other products when activated. These programs can be stored to the hub’s local memory so they’ll keep running in case of internet outage.

The new app automatically detects your Hub 2 when it’s plugged in for the first time, and will walk you through what the company says is a “drastically simplified” setup process. Plus, if you’re porting over from an existing Hub, the Wink app saves all your linked products, personal settings and automations to transfer over to the new one easily.

While the previous Wink Hub had some hiccups along the way, the company appears to be focusing on simplifying the user experience to the point where making your home smart could eventually be dummy-proof. Wink’s compatibility with Amazon’s Echo may also give home automation fans more reason to invest, but if you’re not looking to install more than two different connected appliances, Wink’s platform agnostic benefits may not appeal to you.

DoorDash delivers voter registration kits to your home

It’s important to register to vote if you want your voice to be heard this election, but there’s no denying that it can sometimes be time-consuming. You can’t always register online, and it’s all too easy to balk at printing forms or signing up in person. Well, DoorDash wants to take all the headaches out of the process — the delivery service is teaming up with Rock the Vote to offer registration kits on-demand for September 27th (aka National Voter Registration Day). Much as you’d order a bite to eat, you can have registration forms, information sheets and prepaid envelopes sent to your door just by making a few taps. You’ll have to live in Chicago, Denver, Los Angeles, New York City or San Francisco to see the option in-app, but that’s about the only barrier to exercising your civic responsibility.

Source: DoorDash

Blue’s new microphone is a compact option for recording on the go

Blue Microphones’ gear has been the go-to choice for novice podcasters and audio pros for years and now the company has yet another option for mobile recording. The new device is called the Raspberry: an iOS and USB microphone that offers plug-and-play audio tracking without the headaches of a lengthy setup process. The ease with which you can be up and running has become a key feature for Blue’s gear so it’s nice to see that continue with this new offering.

The Raspberry is attached to its folding stand so you don’t have to worry about extra piece. That stand provides some extra protection when the gadget is packed away. It also helps minimize any desktop vibrations that can cause problems when you’re trying to record. In addition to the USB port, there’s a headphone jack for monitoring audio as well as a volume knob on the side. There’s also a handy gain control on the opposite side to adjust input level. That gain knob actually doubles as a mute button: Push it in to save yourself the trouble of editing out a cough later.

Inside, Internal Acoustic Diffuser (IAD) technology focuses on a voice or instrument and reduces any background noise. Blue says this feature makes the Raspberry well-suited for a range of environments and that it works well up close to a speaker’s face or positioned in the center of a table. In terms of design, this mic carries Blue’s trademark retro design touches. The aesthetic is just enough so that it’s not overdone with a mix of aluminum and soft leather. This is also the smallest combination iOS and USB mic Blue has made in the last few years. The Spark Digital was quite compact, but it required a detachable stand. Even with the stand built on, the Raspberry is considerably smaller.

Blue’s Raspberry will work with any recording app and thanks to Lightning and USB cables included in the box, you should have no trouble getting started quickly. The compact microphone is available now for $200 from Amazon, Best Buy, B&H and other retailers where Blue’s products are sold.

Powered prosthetics turn mundane tasks into monumental feats

Lukas Kalemba was walking home with some friends after a night of partying and drinking in Dortmund, Germany, in 2003. While crossing a bridge along the way, he stopped to rest but lost his balance and fell over. In an attempt to break his fall, he instinctively reached out and grabbed a wire that stretched across. It kept him from falling 20 feet to the ground immediately but the wire sent a high-voltage current through the left side of his body, causing irreparable damage to his leg.

Kalemba became an above-the-knee amputee when he was 19 years old. He was in an induced coma for three weeks until the doctors brought the pain down to a manageable level. “The first time I noticed it was in the hospital when I stood up at night to go to the toilet,” he says. “I wanted to stand on my left foot [but] I crashed on the floor.”

Still heavily medicated at the time, he slowly came to terms with his new reality. “It was hard for me when I first realized I was missing something,” he says. “I didn’t know what to do or how my life was going to look like in the future. … The doctors said I was really lucky that I survived and nothing was damaged inside, no heart issues, that I ‘just’ lost my leg.”

Now, 12 years later, Kalemba is a regular prosthesis user who is competing in the Cybathlon, an international competition for people with disabilities who are using technologies to enhance their daily lives. He will wear and pilot a prototype from Össur, one of the largest manufacturers of noninvasive orthopedic equipment and lower-limb prostheses, where he now works as a prosthetic technician.

The company, headquartered in Reykjavik, Iceland, is one of the global leaders for prosthetic legs. And with the recent acquisition of Touch Bionics, a Scottish company that manufacturers bionic arms, Össur now houses some of the most innovative prosthetic technologies for both lower and upper limbs. The company also has a long history of supporting and sponsoring Paralympians. Now for the Cybathlon in Zurich next month, it’s sending four pilots, including Kalemba, to compete in the powered-leg-prosthesis race that will see competitors stand up from a couch without support and walk on an inclined ramp before climbing a flight of steps at the end.

One of the most popular products from the Icelandic company is the Power Knee, which has an internal motor to re-create the movements of the missing joint in the leg. The machine responds to a user’s movements and provides the right force needed to complete a task. Every time Kalemba wants to stand up wearing the Power Knee, he moves forward to shift some of his body load onto the joint. The motor backs the shifting weight with its own force to push him up.

“I almost don’t need my energy to lift me up,” says Kalemba, dressed in a pale blue shirt and jeans at his home in Reykjavik. “The leg does it for me.”

That kind of automated movement replicates the actions of a natural knee and reduces the effort required to walk on a passive prosthetic leg, but it takes practice to avoid triggering unintended movements. “Sometimes the knee extends accidentally,” says Kalemba. “If you want to go closer to the dinner table, it’s almost the same movement as wanting to get up. So it pushes you up.”

“Going out and meeting friends again was the hardest thing at the beginning. … You fall more often, you feel insecure and uncomfortable.” – Lukas Kalemba

Kalemba is an experienced prosthesis user who spends hours testing both new and old prosthetic legs on a treadmill, a wooden ramp or the stairs around the Ossur campus. But the powered leg that he will use in the obstacle course at the Cybathlon has never been tested. The prototype that the team at Ossur — led by David Langlois, who oversees the Power Knee operations — has been built especially for the competition and is not expected the become a commercial product for at least a few years.

The experimental powered leg combines the company’s popular motorized knee with an ankle that has its own internal motor. “It has ground contact sensors so it recognizes immediately where you’re putting load with your toe or heel,” says Kalemba. “Then the knee recognizes it and works with it. Both together give [me] the active power that I don’t have anymore because I don’t have my muscles anymore.”

Having lost a limb at an early age, it was hard for Kalemba to consider the use of a mechanical leg at first. He remembers being introduced to a sticklike alternative when he met the certified prosthetist orthotists (CPOs) at the hospital 12 years ago. He did not want to use it. But he eventually gave in and started using a basic mechanical leg with free-swinging motion that enabled him to move again.

“Going out and meeting friends again was the hardest thing at the beginning,” he says. “I wasn’t feeling safe on the knee when I had the mechanical leg. You fall more often, you feel insecure and uncomfortable. Maybe you want to go out but you don’t want to because you don’t want to fall in front of some kind of audience.”

But as Kalemba spent more time on a prosthetic leg, he learned to accept it as a part of his life. He did not become a football player as he had once planned, but he went on to become a CPO and moved to Iceland three years ago to test and give feedback on the prosthetic legs at Ossur.

“I can’t play football like I would if I had two sound legs,” he says. “[But] I try to make things better [as a CPO] not just for me but other people who are in the same situation as me.”

Even as he continues to contribute to the improvement of the technology at work, he doesn’t think the field of prosthetics is advanced enough. “It makes my life easier again but it’s not a benefit compared to my real leg yet,” he says. “Maybe […] if I could have a leg like the Terminator movies, that would be a huge benefit. But it’s still a minus point right now.”

The challenges that he points out validate the need for an event like the Cybathlon. The competitive platform has created a space that’s conducive to innovation within rehabilitative robotics like powered prostheses. “We would not be where we are right now with the powered leg [if it were not for the event],” he says. “It’s very hard to imitate the knee joint with technology. But we are really close and we are getting closer with every generation as we are evolving.”

***

Claudia Breidbach smiled as she looked around at the group of skydivers huddled on the floor of a small, seatless plane. A couple of minutes into her flight, as the aircraft swiftly gained altitude over the Sky High dropzone in Eschbach, Germany, she glanced at the altimeter wrapped around the prosthetic on her left arm.

At about 13,000 feet, when the sweeping farmscapes on the ground had started to look like a green mosaic in the distance, Breidbach made her way to the door. Seconds later, she lunged out of the plane with her teammate, Michael Sigl. The two, dressed in bright-orange jumpsuits, quickly found each other’s hands to make formations as they fell through the sky. They both spun around midair, held hands for a split second, then spun away from each other again. They repeated the free-fall pattern until it was time to release their parachutes and steer themselves back to the ground.

Breidbach is a competitive skydiver from Koblenz, Germany, who was born without a left forearm. When she decided to be a skydiver in 2008 after her first tandem jump, she quickly learned that she would have to fight for her spot in the world of parachuting. “When I [first] asked to be a competition skydiver, they said: ‘Claudia, you need two hands,’” she recalls, standing outside a hangar on the ground. “I said: ‘Hey, you need two hands, not me. Give me a chance.’”

Skydiving is a strenuous sport. It requires muscle strength, especially in the arms, to cut through the wind and create acrobatic formations in the sky. It can take years of training and hundreds of jumps to perfect. Over the last eight years, Breidbach has completed 680 jumps and participated in skydiving competitions across Europe. She’s now popularly known as the “one-handed skydiver” among her peers.

A training manager at Touch Bionics, Breidbach will soon represent the upper-limb prosthetics company at the Cybathlon in Zurich next month. As a pilot in the arm-prostheses race, she will use the i-limb quantum, a multidirectional prosthetic that she wears daily, to complete an obstacle course of otherwise routine tasks. Competitors will be asked to open jars, slice bread, spread jam, complete a puzzle and screw a lightbulb into a table lamp.

The event might not have the adrenaline-pumping appeal of jumping out of planes, but it is another opportunity for Breidbach, who is the only female pilot in the powered-arm discipline, to indulge her competitive spirit. “I heard there was no woman in the [race] and I was like: ‘Hey, this won’t work. I’m here and I’d like to take part in the competition,’” she says. “I want to win but the biggest thing is to take part to show how we can do different tasks in our situation.”

Movements required in the race range from forceful to reflexive. For most people, picking up a knife or rotating a bulb is not a complex undertaking. But for anyone wearing a prosthetic arm, every movement requires a conscious thought. “You need to work with the power in your body and the muscles in your arm,” says Breidbach. “You carry the weight of the object and the weight of the prostheses. You need more force. When you open a can, it’s a combination of the force from the body and also the force in the hand.”

But for Breidbach, who has been using the i-limb for the past five years, the experience makes all of her tasks much more effortless and even enjoyable. For most of her life, she tried variations of prosthetic arms that left her wanting more. A static silicone version had aesthetic value but no flexibility. An early iteration of a motorized arm allowed some movement but would not let her type or hold her phone with her left hand. It wasn’t until she tried the Touch Bionics arm at a medical exhibition that she felt the impact of using both hands.

“It moves like a natural hand,” she says. “In the morning when I put on my hand, I think it’s my hand. I feel it rotating in my stump. I feel the movement of each finger. If something is hot or cold I don’t feel it but when I grab something I feel it and it’s amazing.”

With electrodes placed on her upper left arm muscles and the stump, the powered arm picks up the natural signals to initiate one of 24 grips. When she flexes her muscle on the outside of her arm, for instance, the prosthetic hand opens. A flex on the inside closes it again. “If I think about a rotation of the thumb, the hand rotates,” says Breidbach, as the semitransparent gray hand spins with a whirring sound. “It’s changed my life.”

Unlike other powered arms, the i-limb has a wide range of multi-articulating movements that can be done simultaneously. The hand creates gestures even when it’s spinning around. In addition to pre-programmed functions, a user can program 12 extra grips using an accompanying mobile app. Breidbach created her own for holding chopsticks. Now she can connect her arm to the app via Bluetooth or tap her Apple watch when she wants to eat sushi.

“For me this is not a prosthesis, it’s my hand.” – Claudia Breidbach

As someone who was missing a limb at birth, every time Breidbach programs the technology to form a new grip or encounters a new task, she learns how to move her left hand for the first time. “You need to think about all the smallest movements when you’re learning how to use it,” she says. “Not just to learn how to work with it but to do all the things in a different movement with two hands. At the Cybathlon, if someone lost an arm, they [already] know how to work with two hands. Sometimes I do many things with my shoulders, I don’t move with the arm because that’s how I always did it without the left arm and prostheses.”

As she continues to train for the Cybathlon, she’s learning to rely on her powered hand every day. Sitting outside her camper at the Sky High dropzone one morning, she poured hot water from a kettle into her pour-over coffee maker before slicing through an English muffin with a knife. She held a jar of strawberry jam in her prosthetic hand and used the knife to spread the bright pink preservative.

“For me, this is not a prosthesis, it’s my hand,” she said as she held her gray left hand with her right. “When I close my eyes at night and relax, the feeling doesn’t stop at my stump. I feel it all the way through my left arm. The first time I felt that, I had tears in my eyes.”

This is the third episode in a five-part video series called Superhumans, which follows the Cybathlon from start to finish. Watch out for the next episode on Tuesday, Oct. 3rd, right here on Engadget.

‘Dash Radio’ Debuts Filter to Toggle Between Clean and Explicit Lyrics in Real Time

Live radio station service “Dash Radio” recently announced the launch of a new filtering solution for toggling between clean and explicit lyrics in real time, a feature that’s “the first of its kind” (via The Verge). DJ Skee, the founder and CEO of Dash Radio, said that “it’s a complaint we’ve gotten since day one,” from parents who might want to listen to certain songs without the potentially explicit language common from some artists.

To achieve this, Dash Radio has built an entirely new system on its backend “to manage the multiple streams and libraries it takes to make a feature like this work.” To activate the toggle, all users need to do is long press on a Dash Radio station icon to switch between clean and explicit tracks. Dash Radio, at its core, is still a Pandora-like service, so on-demand music listening isn’t an option, although it doesn’t have any advertisements or commercials.

“The City” is the first station getting Dash Radio’s new language filter

After using the filter for the past week, I can tell you it’s pretty seamless. Simply long press on a Dash Radio station icon and it will instantly switch between clean and explicit versions.

“It’s been a complaint we’ve gotten since day one,” DJ Skee, the founder and CEO of Dash Radio told The Verge. “It’s like how do we make stations cool but also work in all different environments, and we think we have it. For the first time ever, we’ve found that solution. It’s something that nobody’s done and it’s something that in real-time people can control the filter. If your kids are in the car or your grandma, you can change it instantly and when you’re by yourself you can listen to it as unfiltered as you want.”

The service has over 80 radio stations hosted by partners including Snoop Dogg, Tyler the Creator, Isaac Hayes, and more, and the company is introducing the real-time filter into “numerous” live and pre-recorded radio shows as well. Dash Radio has filed a patent for its new explicit language live filter, and the company plans to introduce a set of parental controls in the future that lets parents create profiles for kids which specifically filter or outright block certain radio stations.

On Apple Music’s Beats 1 radio station, the company has decided to keep the music played there entirely clean, most likely for the express purpose of making it easier for users to listen around impressionable family members. Elsewhere on the service, parental controls allow parents to block any song tagged “explicit” from being played, but that’s the extent of Apple Music’s language filtering features.

Any user on Dash Radio’s iOS [Direct Link], Android, web, and car-based app will be able to try out the new feature. The first area of the service supporting it will be the hip hop station “The City,” and the company said that it plans for the new filtering tool to be available on every station by spring of 2017.

Tag: Dash Radio
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Former Apple Employees’ ‘RearVision’ Vehicle Camera Launches for $500

Vehicle accessory start-up Pearl, which was founded by three former Apple engineers, has begun shipping its “RearView” car camera system to the first round of pre-order customers, while also making the $500 device available to purchase for everyone else on its website. The company announced RearView back in June, focusing “on the existing install base” of people with older cars by introducing a high tech, attachable license plate accessory that connects via Bluetooth to an iOS or Android smartphone, displaying a 180-degree rear-view field of vision when backing up a car.

Pearl claims that RearView “installs in minutes,” thanks to a “theft resistant” camera frame for a license plate, and a simple dongle that’s plugged into a vehicle’s diagnostic port. The system also comes with a vent mount for the smartphone, so users can get a hands-free view each time they begin backing up their car. A few other features of RearView include:

Automatic Updates​ — Pearl RearVision is the one backup camera and alert system that will never be outdated. The Pearl App updates just like other apps on your phone, with new features and enhancement delivered automatically.
Dual HD Cameras​ – Advanced dual HD cameras deliver super-wide views of what’s behind your car, and Night Mode provides stunning clarity in low-light situations.
Intelligent Alerts​ – Audible and visual alerts warn you when objects, cars and people are in your path. It includes a range of alerts, from simple ripple at further distances to a firmer warning when an obstacle is close by.
Hands-Free ​- Dock your phone in portrait or landscape on the versatile Pearl Phone Mount. Included as part of the RearVision platform, the Phone Mount will also be sold separately at pearlauto.com.

One of the biggest features pushed by the company is RearView’s ability to “never be outdated,” thanks to persistent updates to its smartphone app. Specifically, Pearl stated that by the end of the year the app will gain the addition of back-up path lines, rich notifications on iOS, and app auto launch on Android. With today’s shipment announcement, the company said that because “response has been so great” to RearView, “it could take several weeks to fulfill every order” originally placed over the summer.

In addition to the announcement that RearView is heading out to pre-order customers, Pearl confirmed that it has partnered with Amazon and Crutchfield so that anyone interested will be able to purchase the RearView system on either website “this holiday season.” Those who would prefer not to wait can purchase RearView for $499.99 from Pearl’s website today, which currently has a 2-3 week shipping estimate for new orders at the time of writing.

Tags: Pearl, RearVision
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