The Kolibree smart toothbrush uses AI to help you clean your mouth

Be honest, you probably don’t brush your teeth quite as often or as thoroughly as your dentist recommends. But that’s ok, with the Kolibree Ara AI-enabled smart toothbrush, you can keep up with your daily dental routine and know exactly where you’ve missed.

The Ara uses a suite of 3D motion sensors — including accelerometers, gyroscopes and even a magnetometer — to track which parts of your mouth are getting cleaned, and which are not. This data is then transmitted back to your smartphone’s Kolibree app via a Bluetooth 4.0 connection. Even if you aren’t online or can’t sync the brush and phone, the Ara’s onboard memory will record the date, time duration and mouth areas that you’ve cleaned until you can. After every session, the Kolibree app will display a readout of which spots you’ve sufficiently scrubbed. The system will also email you a weekly report to the same effect.

The Ara is available for both iOS and Android. It will retail for $130 when it goes on sale in March but can be preordered from the Kolibree website at a discounted price of $80 until then.

Click here to catch up on the latest news from CES 2017.

This wearable uses tiny needles to analyze glucose levels

There are a lot of things that suck about being diabetic. At the top of the list is having to prick your finger several times a day to check your glucose level. Yes, I’m speaking from experience. Continuous glucose monitors that constantly beam stats to your phone via Bluetooth are already on the market and the FDA just recently approved the first automated insulin system for type 1 diabetics. However, biomedical company PKvitality has a different solution. And it’s one that you wear on your wrist.

Sensors for continuous glucose monitors (CGM) use a small needle and are typically worn on the stomach. While they don’t usually get in the way, you still have to be mindful it’s there. PKvitality’s solution is the K’Track Glucose wearable that uses a so-called SkinTaste sensor and tiny needles to check glucose levels. A removable sensor under the gadget uses a group of 0.5mm needles to collect and analyze the interstitial fluid surrounding tissue cells. Those cells absorb glucose from your bloodstream and can provide a lot of data about what’s going on inside your body.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to to try the K’Track for myself here at CES to compare it the readings my CGM collects. I did see a working model in action and from start to finish, the collecting and analysis took less than a minute to complete. It’s certainly more convenient that a finger stick, but it’s tough to say how much added benefit it provides over existing CGMs. The company says it will cost much less, with the tracker priced at $150 and each sensor, which lasts about a month, set at $100. Some quick math tells you that’s around $1,350 a year without factoring in things like insurance.

What’s more, PKvitality has a second version of K’Track that measures lactic acid, heart rate and VO2 max levels during a workout or other physical activity. That K’Track Athlete model is worn on a strap around the arm, much like people wear a phone or music player at the gym. It’s more expensive though, with a price of $200 for the gadget and $150 for each sensor that also has to be swapped out once a month. Both versions of the K’Track beam data to iOS and Android apps, too.

It could be a while before anyone has a chance to find out, too. PKvitality says it plans to begin the medical approval process in the coming weeks. The wearables do go into your skin, after all. Right now, the plan is to bring the K’Track devices to market sometime in 2018.

Mona Lalwani contributed to this report.

Click here to catch up on the latest news from CES 2017.

Samsung’s QLED 4K TVs look better thanks to metal Quantum Dots

Here’s the truth about most premium non-OLED 4K TVs today: they all look pretty good. But it’s the small differences between them that makes it tough to choose a new 4K set. As we move into 2017, prepare for those differences to get even more subtle. Case in point: Samsung just announced its new “QLED” 4K lineup at CES, which offers brightness, color and other improvements over last year’s high-end SUHD lineup. Basically, it’s yet another stab at making LED TVs approach the picture quality you’d get from an OLED set.

At the heart of the QLED line — which includes the Q9, Q8 and Q7 sets — is a refined metal Quantum Dot material. That lets the TVs to show off a wider range of color. Samsung says the QLED sets can display 99 percent of the DCI-P3 color space, and they can also show off full color volume no matter their brightness. Up until now, you’d typically lose color accuracy as you pumped up your TV’s brightness.

The QLED models also feature a peak luminance between 1,500 and 2,000 nits, whereas last year’s SUHD models topped out at 1,000 nits. That means bright areas of the screen will pop even more, especially with HDR material. The new Quantum Dots also allow the sets to produce deeper black levels than before.

Beyond the screen improvements, though, Samsung has also implemented some useful practical upgrades. All of the QLED sets rely on a new “Invisible Connection” fiber optic cable, which connects to a breakout box for inputs. Together with some fairly thin power cables, you’d be able to hang them from your wall with very little visual clutter.

And speaking of hanging things on your wall, Samsung developed a “no-gap wall mount” for the QLED lineup, which lets you mount them on your wall seamlessly. Instead of having the mount’s hardware stick off of the wall, Samsung embedded it inside the back of the TVs. The mount itself is a fairly thin mechanism (and yes, you’ll still need to mount it properly on wall studs), and it can easily tilt the TVs in different angles. Samsung claims the new mount will let you hang up your TV on your own. You don’t even need to worry about leveling, as it’ll automatically adjust the TV to sit perfectly straight.

It’s always nice to see steady improvements in the 4K world, but honestly I’m more interested in the other ways Samsung is trying to make our home entertainment lives easier. There are still plenty of problems to solve, after all.

Faraday Future unveils an actual car

It’s happened. Faraday Future has unveiled its high-tech electric FF 91 SUV. Interested parties can place a $5,000 (refundable) deposit on the car right now with it going into production in 2018. With an range of 378 miles (it has a 130kWh pack), all-wheel drive, all wheel turning and 1,050 horsepower it’s clearly got the Telsa Model 3 in its sights.

In addition to going really fast (zero to 60 in 2.39) and having a long rang, the FF 91 is filled with displays, cameras and seats that recline like a first class airline. The company has also followed the weird doors without going full gullwing with rear suicide-doors and a Lidar puck that pops up from the hood when the FF 91 is in autonomous mode. But Faraday really wanted to note that it’s cars are entertainment systems.

The car has multiple modems for non-stop broadband and two WiFi hotspots. With a person’s personalized FFID, the car will know exactly what you want to watch or listen to when you enter the vehicle.

The car also wants to take care of you once you leave the vehicle as well. At the unveiling event, the company demoed a self parking feature that let’s drivers get out of their FF 91 it drives off in search of a space in a parking lot. It’s pretty cool for people that love the mall.

After a tough few months of reports that the car company was have trouble acquiring additional funding and the loss of some key executives, today’s unveiling couldn’t have come at a better time for the startup. On stage, senior vp of engineering and R&D Nick Sampson said, “we’re not stopping with automotive. We’re a technology company reformatting the future of mobility.”

At the event the company showed a video of the first phase of its Arizona factory. With the FF 91 going into production in 2018, the automaker says that its Variable Platform Architecture means it can build any size vehicle by extended or shortening the battery pack and center frame.

Unfortunately for the FF 91, there’s no actual price for the car or word on what sort of trim packages it’ll have. But at least it’s an actual car. Now we just wait to see if makes into the garages of drivers. The company seems ready for the challenge. At the end of the event, Sampson said, “despite all the naysayers and skeptics, we will persist.”

Click here to catch up on the latest news from CES 2017.

Source: Faraday Future

Motiv crammed a full fitness tracker into a ring

Fitness trackers are a dime a dozen at this point, with Fitbit dominating the market. But as long as wearable gadgets have been in vogue, the concept of a “smart ring” has made the rounds in various forms. Here at CES, it looks like Motiv is the closest yet to cracking the puzzle of building a ring that’s worth wearing. Motiv’s ring is basically a tiny Fitbit: it packs in a heart rate sensor and can track your steps, sleep and “active minutes” with a goal of getting its users to be active for at least 150 minutes per week.

The ring itself is very light, fairly unobtrusive and comes in grey and rose gold. Motiv says its has an “ultralight titanium shell” that felt a little cheap to me — hopefully it’ll prove to be durable. The battery is charged with an included magnetic charging dock that plugs into any standard USB port; Motiv is actually including two so you can throw one on your keychain and forget about it.

Naturally, the ring syncs to a smartphone app where you can get data on what it measures. The ring has heart rate tracking built-in; that’s how it knows when you’re working out hard enough to count minutes towards your daily activity goal. A Motiv spokesperson said that the ring uses active minutes because it’s a less abstract goal than 10,000 steps or a certain amount of calories burned, and it does seem like something with the potential to encourage slightly more active exercise. But it also works as a pedometer if you’re used to tracking steps over other metrics.

All this data is stored in the app, which uses a card interface to keep you updated on your goals, showing you high-level overviews of your day and week. If you want to dig down into the data, though, the app lets you scan minute by minute to see exactly what were you up to, whether you were awake or asleep.

My big question about the Motiv is its manufacturing feasibility — we’ve been burned by smart rings before that just couldn’t figure out the battery tech necessary to work. Motiv’s spokesperson told me that the company designed its curved battery itself; he also said that the device is in production after a lengthy beta period. The model he was wearing appeared to be functional, so it seems like the ring should make it onto the market this spring as planned.

If you’re interested and willing to take a bit of a gamble on an unproven company, pre-orders for the $199 Motiv started today. To get the sizing right, Motiv will send buyers a kit with fake rings in it so you can try them on and see what fits best. The Motiv may not do anything differently than the Fitbit, but if you’re interested in having an extremely low-profile device this may be worth a look. Of course, we’ll need to put one through a full review to really recommend it, but on the surface the Motiv is intriguing at the very least.

Click here to catch up on the latest news from CES 2017.

A whirlwind tour of Faraday Future’s ambitious new SUV

“Just a quick reminder that there are no pictures during today’s tour.”

Faraday Future has had its share of bad press. Right before Christmas it invited a group of journalists to tour its headquarters in Gardena, California. The new company was unveiling its first real car at CES in a few weeks. But instead of wowing the world with it’s non-stop teaser videos, it was the company’s shedding of executives and reports about its financial turmoil that drew the most attention. Faraday needed to make a big impression ahead of CES while also ensuring that the technology-drenched FF 91 SUV and the secret sauce behind it were kept under wraps until its big press conference, scheduled for January 3rd in Las Vegas.

So after the PR team affixed stickers to the front and back lenses of my iPhone, they gave me and other reporters a tour of the facility. It ended with a ride in one of the company’s 12 prototype cars and a look at the final design. The ride was impressive and the design is striking. But as the day progressed it became clear that Faraday is cramming a ton of features into its first car. It’s hard enough to build an automobile but to make your first one this complex doesn’t seem like the best plan if Faraday is truly in such dire financial straits.

As we were led through the offices we were given a series of presentations about how it’s building its first the car. Faraday is extremely proud of how it used VR to design the vehicle (other automakers do that) and talked at length about how its computer-model simulations of impacts were nearly identical to real world collisions. That’s great when you’re figuring out how to build the safest frame without crash testing a bunch of prototypes.

Then it came time to discuss the features and boy does it have a lot of them. According to Faraday it will be the most connected vehicle in the industry. Think: multiple modems connecting to any and all available carriers for the best network speed. The idea is to get the best that carriers have to offer in an area so you can stream movies, games and whatever else you’ll need to be entertained in the car.

The vehicle will also have seamless entry via either your Bluetooth-enabled phone or facial recognition/iris detection. The latter will is possible thanks to a camera in the B pillar (the panel between the front and back door). Oh, and by the way, that external pillar will also have a display that will “illuminate with an owner confirmation sequence that brightens based on proximity.”

Once you’re in the car, a driver or passenger’s “FFID” will be used to adjust the chair, cue up their favorite music and movies, set the ideal temperature and driving style. That’s accomplished by even more facial recognition cameras. Faraday says the recognition information will be stored in the car for security reasons.

Once you do get rolling, there are some autonomous features the company will be releasing. One includes self-parking. An over-the-air update for the FF91 will eventually give the car the ability to drop you off at the front of a store and using Lidar, find a parking space. If you’ve ever been to a busy mall, this is a godsend. But it also requires Faraday to map out and verify parking lots for it to work.

All of this is being developed in house. Which on one hand is impressive for such a small company, but also means that it could run up the price of the vehicle when and if it goes on sale. The staggering number of features demoed during the tour made it difficult to even guess at the eventual price of the FF 91.

Continuing our overview, the doors will have radar and an internal braking system so when you open them, they won’t hit a wall or a pole. Instead of handles, the car has buttons. The combined motors (one in the front and one in the rear for all wheel drive) will output 1,050 horsepower. It has “mood” lighting across the front and sides to indicate to other drivers and pedestrians if the car is on driver, autonomous or ride sharing mode. It has a range of of 378 miles. The back seats lean back like you’re sitting in first class on a plane. (This list seemed to grow larger and larger as the tour progressed and it’s clear that this will be a very expensive SUV.)

Finally we were treated to a ride in one of the company’s 12 prototypes. The exterior was covered in camouflage while the interior was a jumble of computers, wires and exposed metal. We were then told of another feature. The car has four-wheel steering which automatically adjusts to different driving situations. At low speeds it has what looked like an impressive turning circle although the company wouldn’t share actual details.

At high speeds while changing lanes it turns the rear wheels in parallel to the front tires for a smoother glide across the road.

During my ride the driver made sharp turns left and right through an invisible obstacle course to demo how well the SUV handles. Then he gave me taste of the speed it’s capable of. Faraday boasts a zero to 60 in 4.44 seconds and while I didn’t have a stopwatch, it felt every bit as fast as a Tesla Model S P100D. While I’m unsure if the company can deliver its gigantic laundry list of bleeding-edge features, at least the car is capable of making adrenaline junkies happy.

As the day came to an end the final design for the SUV was unveiled. Except for the Lidar puck that emerges from the hood (something that will clearly set the company up for ridicule), it looks like a luxury automobile with a few concept car flourishes.

Because I wasn’t allowed to take photos, I stared at the vehicle trying to decide if the nearly 1,500 Faraday employees built the ultimate connected car or were just riding out the clock on a dream that could quickly disappear.

At the beginning of the tour Nick Sampson SVP of R&D and engineering said: “We don’t put ourselves across as an automobile company or a car company. We’re a completely different organization. We’re technology. We’re entertainment. We’re many more things.”

If everything goes south, he’s right about one thing: The company is entertainment.

Click here to catch up on the latest news from CES 2017.

Zuckerberg will meet the great unwashed in 2017

Given how often Facebook was in the news last year (and very rarely for anything positive), its commander in chief Mark Zuckerberg has a pledge for 2017: Mix it up with commoners. In a post on the social network, Zuckerberg says that his personal goal for 2017 is to “have visited and met people in every state in the US” by year’s end. By his count, he has 30 states left. Man, he travels fast.

“After a tumultuous last year, my hope for this challenge is to get out and talk to more people about how they’re living, working and thinking about the future,” he says.

Given that his company repeatedly (and erroneously) censored journalists, suppressed conservative-leaning news, helped proliferate fake news while routinely side-stepping any responsibility it has in the news cycle, it should be an interesting trip for the Harvard drop-out.

What types of questions will he ask his users? Is he going to hear about more than virtual reality, sonogram pictures and GIFs? If not, his conscience will be more than enough at ease. But if people start asking (and telling him) about real issues, things could get messy.

Last year, a Pew Research study showed that 44 percent of Americans consider Facebook their primary news source. When Zuckerberg invariably meets some of those people during this tour, and they have concerns about, say, violence being broadcast over Facebook Live, is he going to tell them to their face that he’s running a tech company, not a media organization? In his own words, he’s “looking forward to the challenge.”

Via: TechCrunch

Source: Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook)

CES 2017: Faraday Future Shows Off ‘FF 91’ Connected Electric Car for 2018 Release

Secretive electric car company Faraday Future today held a press event at CES 2017 where it unveiled its first production vehicle, the autonomous FF 91. The unveiling comes just as Faraday Future has been rumored to be “on the brink of collapse” amid financial difficulties and employee departures.

Faraday Future has been a bit of a mystery despite its ambitious plans to remake transportation with a fleet of intelligent electric cars. Unfounded speculation had at one point suggested Faraday Future might somehow be related to Apple and its Project Titan vehicle efforts, but Faraday’s partnership with Chinese electronics company LeEco, which has electric car ambitions of its own, proved otherwise.

Nick Sampson, senior vice president of R&D and engineering at Faraday Future, took to the stage tonight to discuss Faraday’s work over the past two and a half years on “reformatting the future of mobility” with a focus on disruption.

Sampson repeatedly teased Faraday’s work as “more than a car” and a “whole new species” before delving into some of the connectivity aspects of the FF 91 with fiber internet speeds and 802.11ac Wi-Fi in the vehicle and large HD screens to allow media, games, and other content to seamlessly transfer to and from the car. Each passenger has their own profile of content and other preferences that automatically syncs to whatever FF 91 they are in.

Faraday’s autonomous driving chief Hong Bae then took the stage to discuss how the FF 91 will use facial recognition to recognize the driver and continuously learn from your driving behavior while also taking into account weather conditions and other factors to forecast your needs and automatically adjust car settings for comfort, performance, and safety using the most comprehensive sensor system of any production vehicle. A combination of over 30 sensors including cameras, radar, retractable LIDAR, and ultrasonic sensors combine to enable these features.

Automomous capabilities will also enable driverless valet that will allow the car to drop you off and park itself, and automatically return when you summon it via an app. A live demo showed the car cruising a parking lot on its own searching for a parking spot, eventually finding one, and then backing itself into the spot.

Peter Savagian, vice president of propulsion engineering, then arrived to discuss how the FF 91 is based on a “variable platform architecture” that will make it easy to develop vehicles of many different sizes and styles.

The FF 91 includes the most powerful electric propulsion system and largest and densest battery of any car, offering class-leading range and an open charging system that offers the fastest charging speeds of any car. With 130 kWh of power on board, the FF 91 can reach in excess of 378 miles of EPA adjusted range, making it competitive with traditional gas-powered vehicles.

On the power side, Savagian touted 1,050 horsepower with instant torque for “an insane amount” of power and teased a 0–60 time that compares favorably with the world’s fastest hypercars. A live on-stage demo then showed a Bentley Bentayga, a Ferrari 488 GTB, a Tesla Model X P100D in Ludicrous Mode, a Tesla Model S P100D in Ludicrous Mode, and finally the FF 91 launching from a dead stop.

A video then showed an official speed test where the FF 91 hit 2.39 seconds for 0–60, beating the Tesla Model S’s 2.50 seconds to become what Faraday says is the fastest production electric vehicle in the world, despite the fact the FF 91 isn’t yet in production.

Richard Kim, vice president of design, discussed how the FF 91 is the “world’s first all in one car model” with a drag coefficient of 0.25 to maximize range. Kim also highlighted the attention to interior design, where space was maximized for passenger comfort while offering the driving dynamics of a mid-sized car.

Kim then walked through a number of other features, including the lights, cameras, sensors, mirrors, capacitive buttons that replace door handles, and more, focusing on their integration into the design of the car. A few comments from LeEco founder YT Jia followed, and then a brief walkthrough some of the features and a photo op with Jia.

Wrapping up, Sampson discussed availability and pricing, noting that registration begins online at Faraday Future’s website. A refundable $5,000 deposit secures a car with estimated deliveries beginning in 2018, but final pricing was not announced. Additional details on the FF 91 will be released in the coming months.

Tags: CES 2017, Faraday Future, FF 91
Discuss this article in our forums

Swarovski to launch its own Android Wear smartwatch in 2017

Jewellery brand Swarovski will announce its own Android Wear smartwatch during BaselWorld in March. And it will have Qualcomm’s Snapdragon chipset inside, as revealed by the chip manufacturer at CES 2017.

Swarovski has long been associated with tech, with different companies adorning special edition versions of their phones and, even, other smartwatches with the firm’s trademark crystals. This is the first time that Swarovski is going it alone, however.

Other fashion labels have already started to move into the smartwatch sector, with Fossil, Diesel and Armani just a few. Swarovski will no doubt command a high price for its own device, we’re sure.

• CES 2017: All the announcements, TVs, laptops and more from the show
• Best smartwatches and fitness trackers of CES 2017: What to expect

BaselWorld in Switzerland is the world’s biggest trade show for watch manufacturers to show their wares. It seems an ideal venue for the announcement.

Qualcomm didn’t show an image of the watch, so not much is really known about it at present. But if it looks anything like the Swarovski crystal adorned version of the Huawei Watch from 2016 we know a few people that can’t wait to get their hands on one.

We’ll be reporting live from CES 2017 all week, with hands-ons, previews and the latest news here on Pocket-lint as it happens. Make sure you check back regularly.

Netflix has another app now, but it’s for DVD and Blu-ray movies

Last year, Netflix used its CES keynote speech to announce the launch of (nearly) worldwide access to streaming. This year it won’t take the stage directly, but ahead of the show it’s highlighting something a little more limited in appeal: an app built for its 4.2 million or so remaining DVD rental customers. These days the disc side of the business is billed separately and segmented over on DVD.com, but it’s reportedly still profitable. Managing your queue of discs (which often includes movies and TV shows that have left streaming, or never show up there at all), has been missing from official apps since it disappeared after an update back in 2011.

Beyond just managing what’s in your queue and in what order, it can also deliver notifications for when your discs have been returned to Netflix or a new one is being shipped out. Browse, search and recommendations, it’s all there, however at least right now, the app is only available on iOS. The number of disc subscribers keeps shrinking, but if Netflix ever adds Ultra HD Blu-ray to its catalog we’re sure there will be people ready to hang on as long as those envelopes keep coming.

Source: Netflix DVD Blog, iTunes