Galaxy S8 may feature an ‘all-screen’ bezel-less display

Get ready for a bezel-less panel on the Galaxy S8.

Following on from rumors that Samsung is ditching the home button on the Galaxy S8 (as well as the 3.5mm jack), Bloomberg is now reporting that the phone will feature an “all-screen front” with a bezel-less display:

The bezel-less displays will provide more viewing real estate while a virtual home button will be buried in the glass in the the lower section, the people said, asking not to be identified because the details haven’t been released. The new phones will only come with wraparound displays using organic light-emitting diode technology, the people said.

Samsung Display is said to have invested significant resources into creating a panel with a display area ratio exceeding 90%. The panel will feature a fingerprint sensor that’s embedded within the glass, negating the need for a dedicated home button.

It looks like Samsung will also retain the 5.1-inch and 5.5-inch form factors with the Galaxy S8, and the company will stick to offering a combination of Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 835 and its in-house Exynos SoC for various markets.

The Galaxy S8 won’t be the first to feature a bezel-less panel. Xiaomi has that honor with its revolutionary Mi Mix, but the phone is sold in limited quantities in China. If Samsung decides to go bezel-less with the Galaxy S8, it will be the first company to do so at scale.

Bluetooth 5 is here with double the speed, four times the range of Bluetooth 4.2

Next-gen Bluetooth will be rolling out in the coming months.

Bluetooth 5 was announced in June, and today the Bluetooth Special Interest Group revealed that the spec is now finalized, making it ready for adoption. The new standard offers double the bandwidth, four times the range, and eight times the broadcast message capacity of Bluetooth 4.2.

Increased bandwidth leads to lower latency, and more range means that the connection to a paired device won’t cut out after five feet. The SIG claims that with Bluetooth 5, you’ll get whole-home coverage, and far less interference with similar wireless technologies. You’ll also be able to transmit more data using the protocol thanks to the increase in message capacity.

Commenting on the launch, the SIG’s executive director Mark Powell talked about how Bluetooth 5 can benefit the nascent IoT market:

Bluetooth is revolutionizing how people experience the IoT. Bluetooth 5 continues to drive this revolution by delivering reliable IoT connections and mobilizing the adoption of beacons, which in turn will decrease connection barriers and enable a seamless IoT experience.

This means whole-home and building coverage, as well as new use cases for outdoor, industrial, and commercial applications will be a reality. With the launch of Bluetooth 5, we continue to evolve to meet the needs of IoT developers and consumers while staying true to what Bluetooth is at its core: the global wireless standard for simple, secure, connectivity.

The first consumer products with Bluetooth 5 will make their debut early next year.

The 2017 iPhone 8 may be called iPhone 7S after all

We’ve been reporting on news and rumours surrounding the 2017 Apple iPhone for a while now, with many of them saying the next iteration of Apple’s smartphone will be a major redesign to coincide with its 10th anniversary.

• Apple iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 Plus: What’s the story so far?

Well, Taiwanese suppliers have now thrown a huge spanner in the works and said that we’ll see none of the predicted features next year. That includes a curved OLED screen, glass body, a home button replaced by an embedded fingerprint scanner and wireless charging. Instead, 2017 will now apparently usher in the arrival of the iPhone 7S and iPhone 7S as is now customary since the iPhone 4S.

The suppliers are saying we won’t get the super-specced iPhone until at least 2018 because the features Apple wants won’t be ready in time for a September 2017 unveiling.

The same suppliers also say the only real difference between the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7S will be the processor, changing from an A10 chip to an A11, which will be smaller thanks to a 10 nanometer fabrication process.

With this new information, we’re not sure who to believe. A jump straight to iPhone 8 is out of the ordinary for Apple, but we can see why the company would do it, and several different analysts, all of whom have been reliable in the past, have been pointing to an iPhone 8 for September 2017.

• Apple iPhone 7 Plus review: Big changes from the big iPhone

It also seems strange that Apple would only change the processor chip for a new phone. Some people already think the current iPhone 7 doesn’t represent a huge upgrade over the 6S, so they’re almost certainly going to think the same with the 7S if that’s the case.

We’ll take this one with a pinch of salt for now, and will update you with any further news as and when we hear it.

PaRappa the Rapper coming to a smartphone near you, time to jump, kick…

There’s a lot of talk about Mario’s mobile debut at the minute, with Super Mario Run to be released for iPhone and iPad on Thursday 15 December, but there’s one games character coming to smartphone that has us even more excited.

Not content with giving us a remastered, 4K version of the original PaRappa the Rapper for PS4 early next year, Sony is bringing the hip-hop pooch to mobile too. We’re not yet sure if it will be the full PaRappa experience, as on PlayStation One all those many moons ago, nor do we know whether there are plans to release the app outside of Japan, but just the thought has us jigging around like Sunny Funny on a cake rush.

• Best PS4 game trailers for 2017: The Last of Us 2, new Uncharted, PaRappa The Rapper and more

The game will be part of a push by Sony Interactive Entertainment’s mobile games publishing arm, ForwardWorks, to bring classic PlayStation characters to mobile in different forms. Hot Shots Golf, Wild Arms and Arc The Lad are also titles planned for the start of 2017.

After the unbelievable success of Pokemon Go and undoubted interest in Super Mario Run, who can blame it?

We’ll bring you more on PaRappa’s smartphone outing when we know more, but in the meantime you can watch him in all his PSOne glory with an entire playthrough video below. Naturally, it contains many spoilers.

Windows 10 desktop apps are coming to mobile thanks to collaboration with Qualcomm

Microsoft and Qualcomm have announced a new partnership that will mean device manufacturers can build Windows Mobile devices capable of running full Windows 10 desktop apps.

• 10 features you’ll love in Windows 10
• Microsoft Windows 10 Creators Update: What’s new?

Microsoft has already tried doing a similar thing before with Windows RT, but the first device to be released as part of the project, the Surface RT, was a bit of a flop. While the hardware was decent, the fact it couldn’t run full desktop apps and didn’t have mobile versions of some popular apps meant it was a little bit useless.

Thankfully that’s now all set to change and now Microsoft is ready to release products with the best of both worlds: “For the first time ever, our customers will be able to experience the Window they know with all the apps, peripherals, and enterprise capabilities they require, on a truly mobile, power efficient, always-connected cellular PC”.

Microsoft added: “hardware partners will be able to build a range of new Qualcomm Snapdragon-powered Windows 10 PCs that run x86 Win32 and Universal Windows apps, including Adobe Photoshop, Microsoft Office and popular Windows games”.

These new mobile devices that are capable of running a full Windows experience will be primarily targeted at non-power users. Those who want Windows in an affordable, light and mobile device.

New devices can be expected as early as next year and will likely use a Snapdragon 835 processor, although Microsoft has already demonstrated Windows Enterprise running on a mobile device with a Snapdragon 820. The more powerful 835 processor should make things even quicker and more power efficient.

BBC tests 4K iPlayer with ‘Planet Earth II’

For four glorious minutes, Brits will be able to watch Planet Earth II in 4K. The broadcaster is releasing some “experimental footage” in the ultra HD resolution today, which viewers can watch until “early next year” on a small number of Panasonic TVs. It’s a short clip, featuring a frog in a luscious jungle and a jaguar stalking its prey. The new footage also uses Hybrid Log-Gamma (HLG), a form of High Dynamic Range (HDR) which promises sharper and more colourful images. The BBC says the test clip is an “early but important step” towards offering 4K full-time on iPlayer.

Planet Earth II, like its predecessor, has some stunning cinematography. From back-rubbing bears in the Canadian Rockies to cliff-diving penguins on Zavodovsky Island, the show has captured some extraordinary scenes. With this in mind, it’s no surprise the BBC has chosen the documentary series for its 4K test. We would have preferred a full episode — the entire season, even — but we’ll take four minutes over nothing at all. If you bought a 4K TV on Black Friday, or suspect you’ll be unwrapping one this Christmas, the footage should be perfect for impressing family and friends.

Here’s the full list of compatible TVs, via the folks at Wired: Panasonic, CX680 Series, CX700 series, CR730 series, CX800 series, CR852 series, CZ950 Series, DX902 Series (65,58,50), DR852 series (65,55), DX802 series (58,50), DX750 series (65,58,50), Dx720 series (58, 50), DX700 Series (58,50), DX680 Series (55,49,40) and DX650 series (55,49,40).

Via: Wired

NASA starts testing more fuel efficient jet engine tech

A group of engineers have developed a new jet engine tech that can improve planes’ fuel efficiency by four to eight percent, and NASA has begun testing it out. They created a new type of engine propulsor — composed of the fan and a part called the inlet, which directs air into the engine — designed to be embedded into a jet plane’s body. Jet engines are typically placed away from the aircraft’s surface, because of a highly distorted film of air called the boundary layer that envelopes the plane as it zooms through the sky. This new type of jet engine propulsor takes advantage of the boundary layer instead.

As NASA Glenn engineer David Arend explained:

“Studies backed by more detailed analyses have shown that boundary layer ingesting propulsors have the potential to significantly improve aircraft fuel efficiency. If this new design and its enabling technologies can be made to work, the boundary layer ingesting (BLI) propulsor will produce the required thrust with less propulsive power input. Additional aircraft drag and weight reduction benefits have also been identified.”

Since the boundary layer’s distorted flow can wreck fans, the team from United Technologies Research Center and Virginia Polytechnic and State University had to create much stronger ones. Over at NASA’s Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, the engineers also had to spend years modifying the facility’s wind tunnel to be able to fit the system. This is the first propulsor designed to ingest the boundary layer to ever be tested, so Glenn Center’s engineers have to put it through a battery of tests to make sure it works. They’ll be testing it under different wind speeds and varying boundary layer thickness to see how those factors affect the “propulsor’s performance, operability and structure.”

Source: NASA

Moto M is coming to India on December 13

The Moto M is a premium Moto G4 Plus with a metal back.

Lenovo has sent out invites to the media for the launch of the Moto M in the country on December 13. The phone is essentially a premium variant of the Moto G4 Plus with a metal body.

The Moto M made its debut in China last month with a 5.5-inch Full HD display, 2.2GHz octa-core MediaTek Helio P15 SoC, 4GB of RAM, 32GB storage, microSD slot, 16MP camera, 8MP front shooter, 4G with VoLTE, Wi-Fi ac, Bluetooth 4.1, NFC, USB-C, and a 3050mAh battery. It is likely to be powered by a Snapdragon SoC in the Indian market. On the software side of things, the phone runs Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow.

No word on pricing, but it should retail for under ₹16,999. Considering the 32GB variant of the Z2 Plus sells for ₹17,999 and offers much better hardware, it makes sense for Lenovo to price the Moto M slightly lower.

Cancer consumes fat to feed its metastatic march in mice

Stopping cancer in its tracks may be easier than we thought and possible without debilitating rounds of chemo and radiation therapies. All we have to do is take away its energy source. Researchers at the Institute for Research in Biomedicine at the Barcelona Institute of Science and Technology in Spain have discovered that a cancerous cell’s metastasization — the process through which the disease spreads throughout the body — relies heavily on the presence of a single molecule which allows the cells to absorb lipid fats from their environment.

See, metastasizing is an extremely energy-intensive venture. Most cells are biologically programmed to self-destruct if they break free from their surrounding tissue, in fact. However, for a cancer cell to spread not only does it have to survive the trip it must immediately adapt to the new tissue, adjust its protein expression to the new environment and begin propagating before it’s attacked by the immune system. In the December edition of the journal Nature, the Barcelona team reports that it discovered this process runs on fats. And to absorb that energy source, the cancer cell uses a molecule called CD36.

The team found that when antibodies blocked the CD36, the cancer cells were unable to absorb lipids and therefore unable to metastasize. Unfortunately, it didn’t do anything to slow the original tumor’s growth but being able to keep it from spreading is still a big deal. And, going back through their medical literature, the Barcelona team found a correlation between the strength of CD36 expression in a patient and a worse medical outcome. The findings held true for bladder, lung and breast cancers in people as well.

The team is currently developing antibodies that will inhibit the expression of CD36, though they expect their work to take at least four more years before it will be ready for human trials. But their initial findings are promising. The prototype antibodies completely destroyed 15 percent of the metastasized cells they came in contact with and shrank the remaining tumors by at least 80 percent.

That said, if you have been diagnosed with cancer, don’t do anything drastic like unilaterally switch to a low-fat diet. You’re not a doctor and these guys haven’t confirmed anything in humans yet. Always follow the direction of your oncologist.

Source: Nature