Huawei Mate 9 renders confirm Leica branded dual camera
The dual lens camera on the Huawei Mate 9 has been the subject of much speculation in recent months. First came a leak showing off the dual camera setup, albeit in a different configuration to the Huawei P9, then came the news of a 12-megapixel or 20-megapixel camera. But throughout those leaks and rumours, we were unsure if the Mate 9 would have Leica camera branding like its P9 sibling.
However a new leak on Chinese site Weibo shows the Mate 9 will in fact have Leica branding, on a new set of rendered images. Lecia’s logo can be seen in between the two lenses and they claim to have an aperture of f/2.0, which improves upon the P9’s f/2.2.
- Huawei Mate 9 and its dual camera appear in new leaks
It’s no real surprise to see Leica appearing on a second Huawei phone since the two companies have agreed a partnership and have opened a jointly operated research and development centre at Leica’s headquarters in Wetzlar, Germany. The collaboration has been formed to produce a “wide range of photographic and mobile device applications” as well as “computational imaging, augmented reality and virtual reality solutions”.
It seems Huawei is taking the camera technology inside its smartphones incredibly seriously and it’s not just some marketing ploy to attract customers.
The leaked slides picked up by Weibo also give away three tiers of the phone with varying amounts of storage and memory, with different colours reserved for each tier.
The entry level model will have 4GB of RAM, 64GB of storage and will be available in graphite, silver and gold. The next phone will have 4GB of RAM, 128GB of storage and will be available in graphite, white, gold, rose gold, while the top level model will have 6GB RAM, 256GB storage and have six colour options: graphite, white, gold, black, rose gold and brown.
- Huawei Mate 9 could have a 20MP dual camera and blow P9 out of the water
- Huawei Mate 9 now due in November?
- Huawei P9 review: The flagship and the folly
The Huawei Mate 9 was initially expected to be released in December but that’s now been brought forward to November. Whichever month it’s released in, we’ll almost certainly see it before Christmas.
Your health insurance might score you an Apple Watch
Apple will exclusively provide its Watch, iPad and iPhone products to Aetna for new app-oriented fitness tracking program, the US insurance giant announced. A cornerstone of the project is health tracking, so Aetna will subsidize the cost of a Watch for select customers and offer it free to its 50,000-strong workforce starting next year. Apple will also help Aetna develop new apps around medication reminders, billing (with Apple Wallet) and care management.
Aetna provided a clue as to how the Watch would be used by writing that its own employees “will participate in the company’s wellness reimbursement program, to encourage them to live more productive, healthy lives.” It could presumably also also collect detailed health and fitness data to help refine its actuarial tables and other insurance data, assuming user opt-in.
Aetna will be the first major health care company to subsidize a significant portion of the Apple Watch cost, offering monthly payroll deductions to make covering the remaining cost easier.
Apple also has a ResearchKit program that helps scientists relate heart-rate and other health data to cancer, heart disease and other maladies. It recently signed up the first major drug company, GlaxoSmithKline, which will use it for a rheumatoid arthritis study.
Apple has been working hard to getting its HealthKit app into the US health care system, so Tim Cook is understandably “thrilled” with the cozy relationship. An Aetna spokesperson told Ars Technica that “Apple will have employees devoted to providing support to Aetna on this initiative [and] … will also have a dedicated employee unit focused on this collaboration.” The Watch Series 2 may have convinced the insurer to get onboard, since it’s more focused on health and fitness than the original model.
Via: Ars Technica
Source: Aetna
Qualcomm dives deeper into IoT with two new Snapdragon chips
Snapdragon processors have long been a staple in Android mobile devices but they will soon spread to more than just smartphones. Qualcomm Incorporated announced on Wednesday morning that it is not only producing a pair of new chips, the 410E and 600E, designed specifically for embedded and IoT devices. It is also teaming with Arrow Electronics to make these stand-alone processors available to small and medium-size manufacturers.
The 600E is a 1.5GHz quad-core chip with Bluetooth 4, an 802.11 a to ac radio and GPS capabilities. It’s geared towards more resource-intensive applications like 3D graphics rendering. The iViz ultrasound machine from Fujifilm Sonosite utilizes the 600E, for example. The 410E, on the other hand, runs at 1.2Ghz with a Adreno 306 GPU (compared to the 320 in the 600E). It supports Bluetooth 4.1 but only supports 802.11 b/g/n and GPS. So while it doesn’t have quite the same graphics chops as the 600E, the 410E’s low power draw makes it more suitable for IoT devices like the Open-Q 410 Wearable Camera Reference Design from Intrinsyc.
What’s more, Qualcomm also announced that it is pairing with Arrow Electronics. This partnership will enable the chip maker, which normally produces processors by the millions for customers like Samsung, to now offer these two chipsets in far smaller numbers. That’s going to allow small- and mid-size companies to incorporate them into their devices without needing enormous production runs — in fact, they’ll be able to order as few as 100 at a time. Plus, Qualcomm is guaranteeing that they’ll produce these two models at least through 2025 so developers won’t have to worry about needing to swap them out for newer iterations any time soon.
BlackBerry is done making smartphones
In BlackBerry’s latest quarterly financials released today, the company revealed it’s getting out of the hardware business once and for all, choosing instead to “outsource that function to partners.” It’s not a huge shock given BlackBerry CEO John Chen has foreshadowed the cut and run several times. Earlier this year, he warned that if hardware wasn’t making a profit by September it would be time to call it quits, and he’s kept his word after the Mobility Solutions division posted an $8 million loss for this past quarter. This doesn’t mean we’ve seen the last of BlackBerry handsets, though; they just won’t be produced in-house anymore.
Developing…
Source: BlackBerry
Apple Increases iPhone 7 Component Orders for Q4 2016
Apple has increased its part and component orders for the iPhone 7 series this year, with orders for the fourth quarter said to be between 20 and 30 percent higher than expected (via DigiTimes).
According to sources from Taiwan-based touch panel makers General Interface Solution (GIS), which is a subsidiary of Foxconn, increased touch panel orders from Apple mean the supplier will see revenues grow significantly in Q4 2016.
Initial demand for Apple’s iPhone 7 series has been high, with excitement for the company’s jet black color option and its larger dual lens camera-equipped handset leading to long wait times as regions struggle to re-stock following the first wave of orders.
Some analysts believe the timing of Samsung’s exploding battery problem is leading a number of consumers returning defective Note 7 devices to choose an iPhone 7 over a like-for-like replacement. According to one online poll conducted by SurveyMonkey, 26 percent of Note 7 owners plan to use their refunds to switch to Apple’s flagship phone, while 35 percent said they would keep the refund, without specifying what phones they would use in the future.
Those numbers compare to 21 percent who said they would swap for a different Samsung model, while only 18 percent said they planned to get a rectified Note 7, which remain in short supply.
Samsung claims its own data shows a much higher retention rate, and says about 90 percent of Note 7 owners had chosen to get a direct replacement, after the corrected devices became “widely available”. So far, more than 60 percent of defective devices in the U.S. have been exchanged, the company said in a statement.
Shipments of iPhone 7 units are expected to reach 80 to 84 million units in the second half of this year, compared to 85 to 90 million iPhone 6s devices shipped in the latter half of 2015, according to original design manufacture sources.
Related Roundup: iPhone 7
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Public Skeptical of Self-Driving Cars Despite Race to Perfect Technology
Despite accelerating hype surrounding the possibility of self-driving and fully autonomous vehicles in the near future, most Americans would rather drive themselves.
That’s according to the results of a new study published today that aimed to assess public opinion on the subject. The survey commissioned by Kelley Blue Book showed that out of 2,264 U.S. residents polled, 64 percent said they need to be in control of their own vehicle and 62 percent said they enjoy driving.
The results also revealed that 80 percent of participants believed people should always have the option to drive themselves, while a third of respondents said they would never buy a fully autonomous car.
When asked if they would live to see a world in which all vehicles are fully autonomous, 62 percent of respondents answered no. Baby boomers were the most resistant to the idea (72 percent), followed by Gen X (64 percent) and millennials (60 percent). Gen Z (ages 12-15) respondents were the most optimistic about a future of cars with no drivers, with only 33 percent believing such a scenario unlikely.
“This shows that while many of us have been reading a lot about progress being made on self-driving cars of late, to most people it’s still like a flying car, something out of The Jetsons,” said Kelley Blue Book senior analyst Karl Brauer. “But we also learned that while it’s hard to get people on board, any level of exposure changes perceptions quickly.”
The poll showed that most people aren’t familiar with the term “autonomous vehicle” – one with no steering wheel or pedals, and no way for a human to intervene – and are wary of such technology. Meanwhile, just over half of respondents preferred to have full control of their vehicle, even if that made roads less safe overall, while 49 percent said they would be willing to cede some control to a computer if that meant having a safer roadway.
The poll results will be seen as a challenge for companies hedging their bets on an emerging market for self-driving vehicles. Ford, BMW, and Volvo aim to offer autonomous cars for sale within the next five years. Google and Uber are actively researching the area, while Lyft recently claimed that private vehicle ownership would be phased out in major cities by 2025, largely because of self-driving vehicles.
Although Apple’s vehicle plans seem to be in flux, the company does have hundreds of employees working on a car project. Following Bob Mansfield’s takeover of the car initiative earlier this year, Apple is said to have laid off dozens of employees as part of a “reboot” that will see focus shifting towards the development of an autonomous vehicle system.
Related Roundup: Apple Car
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BlackBerry DTEK60 passes through FCC, renders appear online
The BlackBerry DTEK60, the company’s 2016 flagship phone, could soon be with us. CrackBerry has found that the phone has arrived with the FCC and WiFi Alliance sites, where it has been registered as the BBA1001 with both, and the DTEK60 at the WiFi Alliance.
While there isn’t a lot of information to be gained from the phone passing through either, it does at least confirm its existence and that it’s nearing a launch date.
- BlackBerry’s next flagship, DTEK60: What’s the story so far?
- BlackBerry publishes full Argon specs online
German site WinFuture believes that launch date to be October 11th, in Canada at least. The site has also obtained some rendered images purporting to be the new phone that confirm the 5.5in touchscreen and absence of physical keyboard.
On the back there’s the expected 21-megapixel camera and a fingerprint scanner underneath it. The display looks as though it has slightly rounded edges All in all, it looks a lot like the Alcatel Idol 4S, which we expected given that BlackBerry has started using TCL Communications’ reference designs.
The DTEK60 is expected to feature a 5.5in 2560 x 1440 Quad HD AMOLED display, Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 processor, 4GB of RAM, 32GB of onboard storage and will come running Android 7 Nougat. WinFuture believes the new phone will cost around CAD 699 when it launches, which converts to $599 (£460), but given various import costs we expect it will cost closer to £500 when it arrives in the UK.
You’ll finally be able to buy a blast-free, safe Samsung Galaxy Note 7 from 28 October
Samsung will finally, officially sell the Galaxy Note 7 in the UK and Europe from 28 October, as long as safe shipments have arrived and all replacement devices have been issued by then.
The company confirmed the new on-sale date in a press release sent to Pocket-lint, but added that it depended on “full completion of the exchange programme”.
CEO of Samsung Electronics Europe, David Lowes, also urged customers who received phones from carriers before the recall to exchange their phones: “We have worked hard to bring replacement Galaxy Note 7 phones to Europe so we can ensure the safety of our customers and minimise their inconvenience,” he said.
“We would like to thank our customers for their patience and loyalty to Samsung and the Galaxy Note 7. For our remaining customers, we urge them to act now, exchange the device and get a brand new Galaxy Note 7 today.”
- Samsung Galaxy Note 7 review: Take note, this is the big-screen phone to beat
- Samsung Galaxy Note 7: How to determine if your replacement or new phone is safe
It has been a troubling and hugely expensive time for Samsung, although as the phone wasn’t to be fully released until 2 September in Europe, the main stock hadn’t yet got into customers hands.
The global recall has been more painful in the US and Korea.
Brighter news for Samsung is that the vast majority of early Note 7 owners were happy to simply exchange them for direct replacement.
Since the replacement programme began last week, 57 per cent of European Note 7s have been exchanged. And around 90 per cent of customers chose another Note 7.
Mastercard is offering free Tube travel with Android Pay
In a bid to boost mobile payments, Mastercard kicked-off a series of promotional events last year where it would pay for Londoners’ travel if they used its cards to tap in and out of the Tube with Apple Pay. It must have been a success, because today the card giant confirmed that it will do the same for cardholders with Android devices, allowing you to travel on London’s travel networks for free every Monday throughout October.
All you need to do is have a Mastercard loaded onto your Android Pay wallet and then use it to touch in and out, like you would an Oyster or contactless card. The offer is available on October 3rd, 10th, 17th and 24th and covers travel up to £30.50 across bus, Tube, tram, DLR, Tfl Rail, London Overground routes and most National Rail services in London. It even covers Emirates Air Line cable car and the MBNA Thames Clippers River Bus service.
If that wasn’t enough, Mastercard has also teamed up with Caffè Nero to offer a free coffee or hot drink on those dates. For both offers, you will need to pay for your travel and drinks initially, but Mastercard will refund the fare (which could take up to 28 days).
Source: Mastercard
IBM Watson’s new job: third grade math teacher
IBM’s famous supercomputer has accomplished many, many things these past years, from making movie trailers to saving a person’s life. Now, it’s also helping teachers make lesson plans by powering Teacher Advisor, a program IBM developed with the American Federation of Teachers. If you’re thinking “How hard could a grade school lesson plan be?” Well, have you seen Common Core mathematics? It’s not the same math from back in the day, and teachers who didn’t grow up with it might have a tough time conjuring up a way to make it more understandable. Watson’s Teacher Advisor can help them create exercises and lessons to make it easier for kids to grasp Common Core math.
According to The New York Times, the program will be available for free to third-grade math teachers later this year, but that iteration’s far from being the final one. IBM plans to continue developing it to add other subject areas and features that will make it useful for those teaching other topics and grade levels, as well.
Source: The New York Times
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