Fisker teases an electric sports car with a 400 mile range
Henrik Fisker is back in the news with another electric car company. Fisker Inc. (not to be confused with Karma Revero) is the latest venture from the famed designer. Aside from claims that the electric sports car will travel over 400 miles between charges, there won’t be anything to see until halfway through next year, according to a report from Bloomberg. “It will definitely be something that when you see it, it will look completely different,” Fisker (the person) tells the publication. “It will be sporty and spacious.” He hopes to take on the Tesla Model S with the first vehicle, which he describes as a spiritual successor to the 2012 Karma.
More than that, the company has plans to release a mass market model for under $40,000 in the future. Sounds familiar, no?
Additionally, the automaker is producing its own batteries under the Fisker Nanotech banner. Reuters reports that the batteries will make use of graphene — the material that’s capable of everything from treating spinal cord injuries to being brighter e-paper — to hit those lofty range goals.
The batteries themselves will apparently have some lithium in them, but won’t be like the lithium-ion cells like what’s in the Model S. And that’s where Fisker says the company’s future is: selling the tech to other manufacturers.
“If you want to reach true mass-market potential, we need probably, eventually, an OEM,” Fisker says. “We are having very superficial discussions right now with a couple of them.” Tesla, on the other hand, has its battery partner Panasonic building battery cells in the Gigafactory.
Now to see if Fisker’s historical smoke scares the likes of Detroit away or not.
The Original Fisker is back. I am very proud to be launching Fisker Inc. With a game changing battery technology.. pic.twitter.com/8RHvUWSqTq
— Henrik Fisker (@FiskerOfficial) October 4, 2016
Source: Bloomberg, Reuters
A look back at Google’s Android flagships: the Nexus family
Android purists have always had the same response to new smartphone announcements from the likes of HTC, Samsung or LG. “I’ll just wait for the next Nexus.” And why not? For years, Google’s Nexus line served both as its official flagship products and as public reference devices for the latest in Android phones and tablets. Now, Google has replaced the brand with a new top dog: the Pixel. At first blush, it’s everything users loved about the Nexus line and more — but before we close the casket on Google’s first series of smartphones, let’s look back and talk about what made the Nexus brand so special.
For the uninitiated, the Nexus line could often be described as “Google’s iPhone,” but the truth was more complicated than that. Unlike Apple, the folks in Mountain View didn’t dictate every aspect of the device’s design — choosing instead to farm out the hardware part of the Nexus equation to a series of different manufacturers. Nexus devices have been designed and built by Asus, Huawei, HTC, Motorola, LG and Samsung. All of them were top of the line (or least great bang for the buck) at their launches. But, physically they share almost nothing in common. Google’s choice to partner with different manufacturers for each model made every Nexus unique. Not every design was a hit with fans, but the appeal of a Nexus phone wasn’t necessarily the hardware. It was software.
Buying a Nexus was a way to get the “pure” Android experience — a smartphone unsullied by manufacturer- or carrier-specific features and tweaks. If you bought a phone from Samsung, for instance, you’d either have to get used to its TouchWiz customization layer or be clever enough to flash a custom ROM to the device. Nexus phones were almost always the first devices to get updates too. Buying a Nexus meant no longer waiting months for the latest version of Android to arrive. It didn’t just take updates out of the authority of phone carriers either: Google sold Nexus phones directly to the customer. No subsidies, no contracts, just great smartphones for a good price. For phone and tablet users who wanted to be on the bleeding edge, it was a dream come true — but the brand wasn’t perfect.
In 2012, Google’s Nexus line had its first legitimate flop with the Nexus Q, an odd, media-streaming ball that simply didn’t do enough to justify it’s price. For $299, the Q streamed movies, music and TV over a myriad of high-quality connection options — but it was severely limited. Content had to be on Google’s servers to work, and more robust functionality could be had for less with the $99 Apple TV. Google quietly pulled the Q from market, eventually replacing it with the (much cheaper) Chromecast.
Earlier this year, Google started pushing for more control over the hardware aspect of the devices — aiming to create a phone that was wholly Google. Today, we know that device as the Pixel. It still has stock Android. We can still count on it to be a high-quality device. It’s almost everything we ever loved about the Nexus line… but today, a small piece of Google’s old identity dies. There’s still an extremely small chance we’ll see the name resurface in the form of a tablet, but in case we don’t — here’s to you, Nexus. You had good run.
Simple robot roams around using just a ball motor
Robots don’t have to be overly complex to perform more than basic tasks. Carnegie Mellon University researchers have created SIMbot, a human-sized cylindrical robot that gets around with only one moving part besides the robot itself: the ball at its base. It’s a spherical induction motor that uses a combination of magnetic fields and clever math to move in any direction, including turning around in a complete circle. That not only allows for a much simpler (and thus more reliable) robot, but also permits very tall robots that won’t easily tip over. You can even push SIMbot and watch it roll back into place.
Ball robots like this would only be useful in limited situations — just ask Sphero how well its robots climb up stairs. However, it’s easy to envision refined versions of SIMbot’s technology proving useful in security robots. They’d both spend less time in the repair shop and have a better time navigating humans that aren’t above the occasional shoving match. The Carnegie team also sees ball robots serving as guides, carrying packages and even helping you out of your chair. Don’t be surprised if you eventually see these machines roaming hospitals and offices.
Via: ScienceDaily
Source: Carnegie Mellon University
AI can help you find a programming job
Artificial intelligence isn’t just helping you work more effectively… it can help you find work, too. Sourced is running a job service that matches programmers with employers by using a “deep neural network” to scan open source code for relevant qualities. And it’s not just about understanding whether or not you can write well in a given language, either. The AI can even look for coding styles that match the methods of a given company, so you may land a position simply by fitting in more gracefully than anyone else.
Of course, the approach doesn’t rely exclusively on algorithms. You’ll still have to talk to Sourced on the phone, and you’ll need to clear interviews like any other job seeker. The AI is more about getting your foot in the door, about proving that you’re up to the challenge without having a human read your code first. And the strategy appears to be working. Sourced is almost profitable after just two years since starting operations, and it’s planning to expand from its small European base (Berlin and Madrid) to include offices in the UK, US and elsewhere in Europe. There could well be a day when recruiters come knocking with little effort on your part — they’ll just know that your programming talents could be better-served elsewhere.
Via: TechCrunch
Source: Source(d)
Jenn-Air JJW380DP review – CNET
The Good The $5,300 Jenn-Air JJW380DP double wall oven works with the Nest Learning Thermostat to cool off your home automatically when the oven starts cooking. The Culinary Center helps you bake some delicious food by picking the right cook settings for you.
The Bad This is an expensive oven, and it doesn’t bake as evenly as you would expect at that price. The app can be slow in talking to the oven.
The Bottom Line This double oven’s smarts make it an appliance worth pining after.
Visit manufacturer site for details.
Until now, ovens haven’t played nice with other smart-home products. Manufacturers have added Bluetooth, NFC (near-field communication), Wi-Fi and even tablets to their stoves. They’ve created apps that have ranged from somewhat useful to headache-inducing. And for the most part, these ovens aren’t talking to any other gadgets.
More smart ovens
- GE Profile Built-In Double Convection Wall Oven PT9550SFSS
- Dacor DYRP36D
- LG LDG4315ST
The $5,300 Jenn-Air JJW380DP electric double wall oven is the first oven we’ve tested that talks to other smart home products outside the kitchen (GE Appliances recently announced that its Wi-Fi large appliances will work with Alexa, Amazon’s virtual assistant; we’ll review one of these stoves soon). The Wi-Fi-connected double oven works with only one other device, but it’s an important one: the Nest Learning Thermostat, the popular, smart heating and cooling control system. This connection means that you can set a rule for your Nest to adjust the temperature of your home when one of the Jenn-Air ovens reaches a certain temperature.
The Jenn-Air double oven has a few more worthwhile tricks when it comes to cooking your food well. The unit has a built-in Culinary Center that sets cooking temperatures and makes suggestions for certain dishes based variables such as the cut of meat you are cooking and the type of pan you’re using. And the oven turned out delicious food when I cooked with our usual test recipes and when I used the Culinary Center.
This Jenn-Air double oven does have a few drawbacks. Plenty of households won’t be able to put down $5,300 for an appliance, and there were some inconsistencies in the way the top oven and bottom oven bake. And I admit that Jenn-Air’s partnership with Nest is a one-trick pony. But the usefulness of that trick, the double oven’s pronounced cooking skills and Jenn-Air’s ambitious jump to connect the kitchen to the rest of the smart home make it worthwhile to add the Jenn-Air JJW380DP to the top of your wish list.
This double wall oven works with the Nest…
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Turn up the oven, and it turns down the thermostat
The Jenn-Air brand is owned by Whirlpool, a manufacturer that has made big moves in advancing its products’ presence in the smart home. The company’s smart Whirlpool brand products include app-connected washers and dryers, a dishwasher that will connect with Amazon Dash replenishments and a range that, like the Jenn-Air JJW380DP, will connect to Nest. Whirlpool also announced that it would partner with a Silicon Valley startup for the software in its Jenn-Air smart ovens.
Chris Monroe/CNET
The Jenn-Air double wall oven establishes just how seriously its parent company takes its smart large appliances and how they work with other smart products. The oven’s Nest capabilities are impressive and easy to set up within Jenn-Air’s iOS- and Android-friendly app. After you set up a user account and connect the oven to the app, you select “Works with Nest” from the settings menu. You can opt for the app to notify you if the oven is on when the Nest is set to away, the setting you use when you’ve left your home. This provides a virtual answer to the question, “Did I leave my oven on?”
You can select the temperature you want your Jenn-Air to reach before it changes the temperature of your Nest. You can also select by how many degrees you want the Nest to adjust.
Screenshot by Ashlee Clark Thompson/CNET
The highlight of the Nest connection is that you can enable a rule to change your Nest’s temperature setting based on the temperature of the oven. For example, you could have the Nest lower its setting by 2 degrees Fahrenheit every time the Jenn-Air oven reaches 350 degrees Fahrenheit. During testing, the Nest quickly adjusted its settings as soon as either of the double oven’s cavities hit the temperature at which I wanted it to adjust. And the Nest automatically returned to its original temperature settings once I turned the oven off.
On the surface, this doesn’t sound like a very fancy feature. But if you’ve ever been busy in the kitchen, you know that it can get hot. The Nest’s automatic adjustment of your house’s temperature would make cooking a little more pleasant without having to leave the room to adjust the thermostat. Now, you can only set one rule at a time between the Nest and the Jenn-Air, which is limiting if you want different adjustments for higher temperatures. But this compatibility is effective, and I look forward to seeing it expand.
Google Home Release Date, Price and Specs – CNET
OK, Google, game on.
At today’s event in San Francisco, Google showed off the retail ready version of the company’s smart speaker — Google Home. With a conversational voice assistant built-in, Google Home acts as a secretary, a music hub, and a smart home controller. Once you plug it in, it’s always listening, so you simply have to be within shouting distance and say, “OK, Google,” and your wish becomes its command.
You’ll be able to buy Google Home for $130 starting November 4. The purchase will include six free months of YouTube Red, the site’s ad-free service, which costs $10 per month normally. Home’s price converts to around £100 and AU$170, but no word on if it’ll be available yet beyond the US.
Google’s Pixel hardware event
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If the Home’s many features sound familiar, it’s because Google Home is functionally quite similar to a popular product we already know and love — the Amazon Echo. Launched as “a Star Trek computer for your home” the Echo surprised us with just how useful it was. Say the word and the Echo could call a cab, tell a joke, or turn on the lights in the kitchen.
Given the Echo’s success, Google’s launch of a device designed to compete with the Echo is less surprising. Apple’s supposedly doing the same in the near future. But after the impressive demo today, Google Home looks primed to stand toe to toe with Amazon’s awesome assistant. Here’s everything it can do and why, as an Android owner and smart home advocate, I’m eagerly awaiting entrance into Google’s Home.
Holding a conversation
When it was first demoed at Google’s annual I/O developer conference in May, Google Home showed the promise of conversational capabilities. The family in the video talked to the speaker, and Home used context from previous questions to inform subsequent answers. It was awesome, but it was just a demo.
Today, we saw it in more detail, and it certainly looks like Google Home can respond to you in a much more active way than Alexa. Using the new Google Assistant, the Home can manage your shopping list and send it to your Pixel phone. It can use Google’s search to tell you Adele’s real name. Then, if you ask, “How many Grammys has she won?” It’ll know who “she” is and respond accordingly.
Google Home also lets you customize the color of the base.
James Martin/CNET
The Home even uses Google Maps to give you traffic info about your route to work. And with a command, Google Home will give you a tailored morning briefing with your schedule, the traffic, and whatever news is important to you. With the full power of Google’s search engine behind it, today’s demo showed in detail how flexible Google Home could be.
Playing music
Adding to that flexibility, once you get over having a conversation with the cylinder on your counter, you’ll be able to control the Home with a capacitive touch panel. You can ask Home to play music for you, and it’ll stream songs from Google Play, obviously, as well as popular third-party apps like Spotify, Pandora, iHeartRadio, TuneIn and others. Google’s promised awesome sound quality from the Home itself. And you can turn the volume up using a voice command, or with the touch panel on top.
It sounded great playing Shakira’s “Try Anything” during the demo. Once we get our hands on it, we’ll put it side by side with the Echo to see which sounds better in a real-world environment.
The Home has a robust speaker, and can command your TV or your own sound system.
James Martin/CNET
Impressively, you don’t even have to know the exact name of the song you want to play with Google Home. Saying, “Play the song from ‘Zootopia’ by Shakira” is enough, and Google will search to help you out and play what you want.
Plus, the Home itself might not need to sound better than the Echo to be a better music hub. You can use it to command the Chromecast Audio streamer you have plugged into your speaker, the Chromecast video streamer plugged into your TV or any Google Cast-enabled speaker. You can send YouTube videos or your pictures to your TV. You’ll soon be able to launch Netflix and control it with Home. Or say the word, and your favorite song will pour out of your own audio setup, and even better, you can sync the Home and any of those Chromecast devices for whole home audio.
Only the Home that hears you best will respond.
James Martin/CNET
If you have multiple Google Homes, only the one that hears you best will respond to your voice commands to prevent overlap. That’s another advantage Home has over the Amazon Echo, but that advantage might not last long, as Amazon’s working on a similar upgrade.
You can use Amazon’s platform to plug into your favorite speakers with the Dot, but Amazon doesn’t have any way to sync multiple devices. Multidevice audio could be a big win for the Google Home, then, if it works as promised. And that’s a pretty safe bet, since Chromecast audio can already stream to multiple speakers at once.
Connecting your home
Most exciting for me, though, is Google Home’s potential as a smart-home control point. At launch, the Home will work with Nest, SmartThings, Philips Hue and IFTTT. You’ll be able to set the thermostat, turn on the lights and control your SmartThings switches. Hopefully, you’ll be able to create customized commands through IFTTT, as that’ll open up all sorts of possibilities. When Alexa first launched an IFTTT channel, it only had prepackaged options, but custom commands are available now.
More from Google’s event
- Google Pixel phones, Daydream View and Chromecast Ultra: Everything Google just announced
- Google’s Pixel, Pixel XL are superphones set to take on iPhone 7
- Pixel hardware event is really about software
- See all of our Google coverage
A single point of control that anyone in the family can command makes whole home smarts much more feasible than traditional smartphone controls. With a smartphone, you often have to wrangle multiple apps to control multiple devices, and giving access to your family is a whole other headache. When you have to jump through a bunch of hoops just so your significant other can turn off a light, the smart home doesn’t feel so smart.
Google Home, then, might help usher this field of technology ripe with potential into the mainstream. The Echo laid out a handy road map for mastering this function. Amazon sought out a few big name integrations such as Philips, Lifx, IFTTT, Belkin, Ecobee — even SmartThings and Nest. Then, the company opened up the API and invited developers to craft skills for the Echo on their own.
Everything that will work with Google Home
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As a result, Alexa’s smart-home capabilities are robust. The Echo makes it easy for anyone in the family to control whatever device they’d like. Alexa’s smart-home prowess is a big part of the reason we’ve liked the Echo and the Dot so much and why we’ve made them an integral part of the CNET Smart Home.
Google Home will have some catching up to do on this front, and that’ll be a tall task, since Amazon adds more and more capabilities to the Echo seemingly every day. The Home will get one advantage right away from Philips Hue — you’ll be able to change the colors of Philips bulbs with a voice command. You can’t do that with Alexa right now — you can only turn bulbs on or off or dim them up or down.
No doubt Google can use the reputation of its brand to entice developers to expand its smart home capabilities further. And for those of us waiting for the smart home to come closer to fruition, a heated competition between Google and Amazon can only be a good thing.
Outlook
The Home’s $130 price significantly undercuts the $180 Echo, but Amazon just released a $50 version of its trimmed-down smart speaker — the Amazon Echo Dot. The Dot has all the smarts of the Echo, and plugs into your own sound system. The Home itself won’t be able to do that. You’ll have to buy a separate $30 Chromecast Audio streamer, bringing the $160 total to over three times the price of the Echo Dot.
The Home, then, has its work cut out for it to oust Alexa from her place as the best smart-home assistant, especially given Alexa’s robust catalog of capabilities. With the Home’s ability to hold a conversation, sync to multiple devices, and leverage Google’s brand and Works with Nest to build a smart-home platform, we could be in for a spectacular battle for smart speaker supremacy.
Check out all of today’s Google news.
Update, 11:52 a.m. PT: Added hands-on video from CNET’s Sean Hollister.
Google Daydream View Release Date, Price and Specs – CNET
Google’s aiming to take the next step forward in virtual reality, but it’s happening on a phone…via an affordable accessory.
Yes, there’s a new Google Pixel phone. But that phone is the first Daydream VR-ready phone, too. And together with Daydream, it will try to challenge what Samsung and Oculus have done with VR over the last couple of years.
Here’s what you need to know:
It doesn’t work with all phones. The first Google Cardboard fold-together headset showed that VR, or something like it, can happen on nearly any phone if you’re patient with limitations. Daydream is different. It’s a step-up type of technology. It’s smoother, better-looking, and supports its own motion-controlled remote. Google plans for Daydream to run on a certain set of phones with certain specs and displays. But Pixel is the first compatible phone out of the gate. More Daydream-ready phones are coming, though.
Google
It doesn’t track you walking around, but it has a motion-tracking controller. Like Samsung Gear VR, it’s something you’re meant to sit down in a comfy swivel chair and use, or stand and turn with. It doesn’t track the space around you, so you can’t go for a VR walkabout like you can with the higher-end Oculus Rift, HTC Vive and PlayStation VR. You can’t even lean closer to objects (we tried).
But Daydream has its own little controller with motion controls — and when we tried it out, we were super impressed with how fast and precise it was. Google says it used nine-axis inertial sensors, a Bluetooth Low Energy connection and a lot of fine tuning to get the remote to work this well. It felt good enough to write with, and swinging around a magic wand or mouse pointer was no problem.
The controller nestles right into the inside of the headset, held in with an elastic band, so you don’t need to worry about where it goes when it’s not in use.
Street View in VR with Daydream.
CNET
It has a comfy design. Google says it’s worked with clothing manufacturers to develop breathable microfiber materials for a cozier fit. The fabric-covered headset is sleek and small, more like the PC-connected Oculus Rift (also famed for comfy fabrics) than Samsung’s phone-connected Gear VR. According to Google’s Clay Bavor, it’s lightweight (30 percent lighter than similar devices) and comfy. It’s designed to fit over eyeglasses, too.
Strangely, it doesn’t have a top strap, so you have to cinch up the rear elastic, ski-goggle like band fairly tight to keep it pressed against your face. But once it’s there, it feels more like a pillow against your face than an tough electronic contraption. Google says the inner fabric is made of seven different layers of different density foams, laminated together, to be both soft and rigid.
It autoconnects with phones. A top latch opens up, and the phone drops in. The phone auto-aligns and pairs, without plugging into anything. It uses little pressure sensors to tell where the phone is in relation to the headset, so it can line up the picture for each lens without much fiddling.
It comes in several colors. Slate gray will be available first, with Snow and Crimson colors coming soon. This is the first time I remember being offered a color choice in VR headsets.
The controller: two buttons, and motion controls. Comes included.
CNET
Google promises 50 apps by end of year, with hundreds to come. Apps like Hulu, Eve: Gunjack 2 and Google’s own suite of Photos, Street View, YouTube and other software will make Daydream apps a mix of games, entertainment and other things. Google also teased a “Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them” app based on the upcoming movie. But don’t expect all Google Cardboard apps to run in Daydream VR; these are a different class of apps.
It costs $79 or £69 and will be available in November. That’s lower-priced than Samsung’s Gear VR, and it also comes with its own motion controller. Google’s gone aggressive on pricing, which could make a difference in getting a holiday foothold. But having enough phones that work with it will also matter: not everyone is going to want to buy a Pixel phone.
CNET
Stay tuned for more impressions.
Update, 11:31 a.m. PT: Added hands-on video from CNET’s Sean Hollister and Lexy Savvides.
Google Wifi Release Date, Price and Specs – CNET
The Eero has just gotten a serious competitor — the Google Wifi router that was announced at Google’s launch event in San Francisco today.
This is the first Wi-Fi router — or router system — from Google and like the Eero it comes in three identical units. You only need one if you live in a small apartment, but the extra two will blanket a large home with Wi-Fi signal. Prior to this, Google has written software the OnHub routers that have hardware from TP-Link and Asus.
The new Google Wifi router.
James Martin/CNET
Google says the new Google Wifi system has a built-in Network Assist feature set that works using logic to optimize the connection, allowing Wi-Fi devices, like smartphones and tablets, to automatically connect to the closest unit and on the best channel at a given time. This means you can walk around the house without worrying about getting disconnected or even losing signal strength.
More from Google’s event
- Google Pixel phones, Daydream View and Chromecast Ultra: Everything Google just announced
- Google’s Pixel, Pixel XL are superphones set to take on iPhone 7
- Pixel hardware event is really about software
- See all of our Google coverage
What’s more, the system includes a free mobile app with built-in parental control, allowing you to pause (and resume) the internet connection to any connected device at anytime.
As far as hardware, Google didn’t yet reveal the specs of the Google Wifi. My guess, however, is the new router will use the latest 802.11ac standard, which is also used by the previous OnHub routers.
Google’s Pixel hardware event
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The best thing about the Google Wifi is its price, which is $129 for a single unit or $299 for a set of three. This is much less than the Eero, which costs $200 for a single unit or $500 for three. (The price for the UK and Australia have not yet been announced.)
You do have to wait until early December to get your own, however, but you can start preordering the Google Wifi starting in November. Check back then for its full review.
Google Pixel Phone and Google Pixel XL Phone Release Date, Price and Specs – CNET
Google decided it’s time to bring its phones out of their shadowy niche and duke it out directly with top manufactures such as Samsung and Apple. Welcome to the new Pixel phone era.
With premium features exclusive to Pixel phones and a sales plan that means you might actually find one in a store, the company is showing significantly more ambition than it did with the last six years of Nexus-branded phones.
The 5-inch Pixel and 5.5-inch Pixel XL are officially called “Pixel, a phone by Google” and have a “G” on the back, signifying how Google designed the phones on its own instead of tweaking another company’s product into a Nexus. Google is now the one picking components, providing support and promoting the phones.
Pixel, the first real Google phone, in pictures
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More from Google’s event
- Google Pixel phones, Daydream View and Chromecast Ultra: Everything Google just announced
- Google’s Pixel, Pixel XL are superphones set to take on iPhone 7
- See all of our Google coverage
So what does that ambition get you?
Unlike last year’s mid-range Nexus 5X and premium Nexus 6P, the Pixel phones are both top-shelf models. Google wants you to think of them as rivals to the most prestigious models out there, Apple’s iPhones and Samsung Galaxy models. They each have quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 821 processors — two cores running at 2.15GHz and two at a more battery-efficient 1.6GHz — with a boost from Qualcomm’s Hexagon technology for tasks such as image and audio processing. The phones have OLED screens, 4GB of memory and either 32GB and 128GB of storage space.
Starting at $649 in the US and £599 in the UK, the 32GB Pixel is about the same price as Apple’s iPhone 7 and Samsung’s Galaxy S7. The 128GB model costs $749 or £699, and the corresponding Pixel XL models cost $769 and $869, or £719 and £819. Preorders begin now, with the phone arriving in stores and online on October 20. (We’ll report back once we hear details on Australian pricing, but $649 converts to AU$850.) There’s no expandable storage.
Below the Pixel phones’ “G” logo is one of several accents showing where antennas can harness radio signals.
Stephen Shankland/CNET
Google went adverb-happy with the colors: “very silver,” “quite black” and “really blue.” Limited availability means only the US will get the blue version initially. The back of the phone is actually two-tone, with a glossy “glass shade” across the top to make antennas work better and a more ordinary bead-blasted metal finish across the bottom. Like the front display, the glass shade employs Gorilla Glass 4 for scratch resistance.
In the hand, the Pixel’s metal-and-glass body definitely feels a step above Google’s previous Nexus handsets, with fewer exposed seams. The smooth aluminum makes for a premium, iPhone-like feel, but with chamfered edges that make it a bit less slippery.
The blue is pretty flashy, but looks surprisingly attractive in person.
James Martin/CNET
And while the glass shade might look a little odd, it feels pretty good to the touch, adding a bit of tacky grip. The fingerprint reader also rests neatly under one’s index finger, like last year’s Nexus smartphones. And I particularly like how Google weighted these phones: they’ve got some nice solid heft without feeling too heavy like many all-metal phones, or so light (like the Nexus 5X) that they feel hollow.
A few features will help the phones stand out from other models powered by Google’s Android software. They’ll be the only ones to include Google Assistant, a new beefed-up version of Google’s conversational system to control the phone and answer questions — Google’s rival to Apple’s Siri, Microsoft’s Cortana and Amazon’s Alexa. It’ll also store all photos and video in original resolution for the life of the phone, shuttling older shots to cloud storage if you run out of room. And if you need to call Google’s support, a technician will be able to remotely control your phone. Android 7.1 — the latest version of Nougat — debuts with the Pixels.
Fans of the decades-old 3.5 mm audio jack standard will be happy to see one on the Google Pixel phone.
Stephen Shankland/CNET
Unlike the iPhone 7, the Pixel phones retain a 3.5 mm headphone jack — but Pixels come with no headphones, because really, don’t you already have some?
There’s no camera bump, but the Pixels aren’t the thinnest phone around. They’re slightly wedge-shaped, tapering from 8.6 mm at the top end to 7.4 mm at the bottom. The Pixel is 69.5 mm wide by 143.8 mm tall (2.73 by 5.66 inches), while the Pixel XL is 75.7 by 154.7 mm (2.98 by 6.09 inches). Screen resolutions are 1,920×1080 at 441 pixels per inch for the Pixel and 2,560×1,440 at 534ppi for the XL.
Based on a brief test, it seems Google has made good on its promise that the main 12-megapixel camera performs much faster than last year’s Nexus models — see CNET’s in-depth look at the Pixel camera for more detail. Another useful feature of Android 7.1 is that there’s no more long pause when you rotate the phone from portrait to landscape orientation. The company stuck with Sony for the camera’s sensor but promises faster autofocus. There’s no optical image stabilization like in the iPhone 7 — nor are there the dual rear cameras of the iPhone 7 Plus — but Google thinks its fast image processing will do the trick when trying to compensate for your unsteady shooting.
The front-facing camera has an 8-megapixel sensor, and twisting the phone back and forth switches to it from the main camera.
Stephen Shankland/CNET
The fingerprint reader on the center of the back gets a new trick, too: if you swipe down on it, it shows your notifications even as it unlocks the phone.
The Pixels, like the Nexus models of 2015, use the newer USB Type-C port for data links and charging. When watching video or browsing the internet, battery life should be 13 hours for the Pixel and 14 for the Pixel XL. The batteries can’t be removed.
Google is leaning on HTC to assemble the phone. The Taiwanese manufacturer has a long history with Google, building the first-ever Android phone, the T-Mobile G1 “Dream” that debuted in 2008, and the Nexus One that inaugurated the Nexus line in 2010. Google has also partnered with Samsung, LG Electronics, Motorola and Huawei to build Nexus phones.
Android partnerships remain. But there’s no more pussyfooting around here — Google is competing directly against Samsung and other partners who use Google’s Android software.
Google Chromecast Ultra Release Date, Price and Specs – CNET
4K TVs are getting cheaper every day, and now 4K-capable devices to connect to those TVs are following suit. The cheapest so far is Chromecast Ultra.
This tiny device, available for $69 or £69 in November, promises better image quality than the current $35 Chromecast. (An Australian price wasn’t readily available but the UK price converts to AU$115.) That’s because it can stream the 4K and HDR video available from a handful of streaming providers, namely Netflix, YouTube and, coming in November, Google’s own Play TV and Movies store. The latter two only offer 4K, not HDR.
In theory 4K resolution provides a sharper picture than 1080p HD video, but in CNET’s tests the difference is subtle at best with Netflix and other streaming sources. HDR, aka high dynamic range, can provide a more dramatic improvement in contrast and color, depending on the video in question. Just don’t confuse it with HDR for phones (even Pixel phones with HDR+).
The dongle still hangs off your TV’s HDMI port, but now it has Ethernet too.
James Martin/CNET
Notably the Ultra is the first external streaming device to handle both HDR formats, HDR10 and Dolby Vision. Other HDR devices, including the $200 Nvidia Shield, the $100 Roku Premiere+ and the $70 Xiaomi Mi Box, are all HDR10-only. In our tests we’ve found that with TVs that do support Dolby Vision, the image is slightly superior to HDR10.
Of course, to get the benefits of 4K or HDR (in either format) you’ll need a compatible TV. You’ll also need to be watching a 4K and/or HDR TV stream, which are still restricted to a just a few shows, videos and movies. Such higher-quality streams require good bandwidth — 15Mbps or higher for Netflix, for example — and you’ll need to subscribe to Netflix’s $15 monthly plan to get access.
Aside from 4K and HDR, the Ultra is very similar to the current Chromecast, except that it’s only available in black. Both are tiny pucks with integrated HDMI cables designed to hang out of sight behind your TV.
One additional difference is the inclusion of an Ethernet port for wired internet, housed on the power adapter of the Ultra. That’s a nice addition given the higher bandwidth requirements of 4K video. The standard Chromecast is Wi-Fi-only, and both offer 801.11ac Wi-Fi. The Ultra is 1.8 times faster at starting streams then the current version, according to Google.
Chromecast requires you to use your phone, tablet or PC to “Cast” video from supported apps to the TV. The system is quite versatile and reliable in our tests, and app support is superb. One exception, however, is Amazon video. That popular service doesn’t work with the Cast system, so Chromecast can’t deliver its videos, which include a relatively large collection of 4K and HDR TV shows and movies.
In the past we’ve preferred Roku devices to Chromecast because they do support Amazon, and also offer an actual remote that we find more convenient to use than a phone. Roku’s least expensive player with 4K and HDR is the $100 Premiere+, and we look forward to comparing it to Chromecast Ultra as soon as we get our hands on review samples.
In the meantime, our review of the current Chromecast and the accompanying video (below) have some more details about how the device works.
New Chromecast keeps streaming cheap
Google’s Chromecast streaming device betters the previous version with improved Wi-Fi and a funky design, but the best part is the impulse purchase price.
by David Katzmaier
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