Garmin Fenix 5 brings fitness finesse in smaller sizes

Garmin has unveiled a new range of three Fenix smartwatches. For the first time, the Fenix 5 series offers three unique styles and sizes without compromising on the tech and capabilities. 

The Fenix 5 has a 47mm case, but a new design that makes it more compact than the previous models. You’ll be able to buy it in a selection of styles and colours.

• Garmin Fenix Chronos is about as smart as sportswatches get

The addition of new QuickFit band design means you’ll easily be able to swap the band out for a metal, leather or silicone strap of your choice. There’s also a Fenix 5 Sapphire which costs more, but replaces the mineral glass lens with a sapphire lens which is far more scratch resistant.

Garmin also made a Fenix 5S, which is said to be designed for “female adventurers”. With its 42mm case it’s sleek and smaller than the Fenix 5. It’s going to be available in silver, with either a white, turquoise or black silicone band. 

Like the 5, it will be available as a Sapphire model, and these will ship in black with a black band, champagne gold with a grey suede band or champagne gold with a metal band. Each Sapphire model comes with an extra silicone band too, for those times you don’t want to wreck your fashion-focused strap. 

• Best smartwatches and fitness trackers of CES 2017: What to expect

As for the 5X, that’s undoubtedly the beast of the bunch. It measures in at 51mm and comes loaded with TOPO US mapping and bespoke cycling and running navigation features and maps.

One of these features lets you put in how far you want to run or ride, and then suggests routes for you, and can show you different points of interest on the way. 

You’ll also be able to configure the 5X to show you various data snippets on top of the mapping screen so you don’t have to interact with the watch during a run or bike ride, and still see both the maps and your stats. 

All three watches in the series are designed to be worn all day every day, tracking daily activities, specific workouts and heart rate monitoring. They can be worn as regular, daily smartwatches as well as being custom built for exercising. 

All three have a 3-axis compass, gyroscope and barometric altimeter for measuring altitude and movement as well as GPS and GLONASS for accurate location tracking, even in tough conditions. 

• Best smartwatches to look forward to in 2017

They each have batteries to meet those demands too. The Fenix 5 can get up to two weeks of battery life in smartwatch mode and 24 hours in GPS mode.

Due to its smaller size, the Fenix 5S has a smaller battery which can still get through eight days in smartwatch mode or 13 hours in GPS mode. The 5X fits in between those two with its 12 days battery life in smartwatch mode and 20 hours in GPS mode. 

Garmin

To complement its new range of watches, as well as its existing products, Garmin also announced that more useful apps are landing on its Connect IQ Store. 

The Uber ETA app will show the estimated arrival time of a hailed Uber ride on your wrist, once it’s been ordered from the mobile app. 

There’s also a GU Energy Labs data field to remind cyclists through the Edge device when to consume their next GU Energy Gel during races or training sessions.

There’s a Strava Live Suffer Score data field for monitoring time spent in different heart rate zones and an AccuWeather Edge Minutecast widgets supplying real-time hyper-local weather updates.  

The Fenix 5 series will be available to buy at some point during the first quarter of this year. The Fenix 5 and 5S will cost $599 (around £490), with the 5X and sapphire crystal-coated versions of the 5 and 5S costing $699 (around £570). 

Canon PowerShot G9 X Mark II looks great, but has a surprising omission

Canon has taken the wraps off the PowerShot G9 X Mark II, updating the 2015 forebear, but keeping the same retro good looks. 

The big focus of this compact camera – which remains properly pocketable – is the 1-in type sensor at its heart, larger than many other compact cameras out there. There’s a front control ring too, meaning that there’s plenty of control for photographers who want to squeeze a little more out of this dinky camera.

As a proper compact camera, it has a 3x optical zoom lens, offering 28-84mm (35mm equiv) and has image stabilisation offering 3.5 stops of hand-holdability. That, combined with the maximum F/2.0 aperture should mean you can grab those lower light shots without blur.

There’s a 1-in type sensor at the heart with 20-megapixels and backed by Canon’s Digic 7 image processor and plenty of smart features, like an auto ND filter and timelapse to help you get interesting shots.

That all sounds great from a stills shooting point of view, where we’d expect to get great quality results from this high-end compact as we did with the original Canon G9 X, but there’s a real limitation on video.

The G9 X Mk II offers Full HD video up to 60fps, but it misses out on 4K video capture, something that the smartphone in your pocket has probably offered for the past year or more.

However, there is connectivity, with Bluetooth and Wi-Fi on offer, meaning you can connect to that aforementioned smartphone and share your pictures instantly, wherever you happen to be in the world.

The Canon PowerShot G9 X Mark II will be available from February 2017, and it winds the price up to a pocket-bothering £450.

Harman’s Ignite platform helps your car talk to your house

Whether you want it or not, your car is getting smarter. Between GPS, satellite infotainment systems and cloud-based services like OnStar, automobiles are becoming increasingly connected to the world around them. Here at CES, Harman unveiled a cloud-controlled development platform that aims to be a one-stop shop for controlling all of the devices and features in and outside the vehicle.

The Ignite platform, as Harman calls it, is “an end-to-end platform that enables connectivity, device management, application enablement, analytics and managed services capabilities.” With this platform, manufacturers will be able to add a slew of smart features to vehicles like allowing them to interact with each other, as well as your smart home and city infrastructures as well.

For example, when you pull into your driveway, your car’s and home’s independent IoT systems would be able to seamlessly communicate, opening the garage door, turning on the house lights and turning off the security system. It could also allow vehicles to communicate and swap telemetric data while on the road, accelerating the adoption of self-driving vehicles.

In fact, as the new sharing economy takes shape, OEMs will be able to enable fleet-wide car sharing and ride sharing schemes where user profiles are stored in the cloud and downloaded to “blank” loaner cars. This would allow fleet operators to personalize things like seat position, destinations and radio settings before drivers get in the car. Additionally, the platform will also help better manage fleets of vehicles by uploading telemetrics and vehicle analytics to the cloud for central management so cars can be taken in for service before they break down on the side of the road.

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

Fisher-Price built a stationary bike for your toddler

Fresh air? Sunlight? Who needs that mess when your kid can get all the exercise they need while exploring the Great Indoors? Here at CES, Fisher-Price debuted its Think & Learn Smart Cycle. If you think it looks like a tiny $150 SoulCycle bike with a tablet stand, you’re right.

According the to the company’s surveys, preschoolers watch around 19 hours of video content a week and spend roughly 20 percent of their playtime using electronic devices. So why not let the little ankle-biters burn off some energy while playing with their gadgets on a slightly larger gadget? This isn’t the first rideable that Fisher-Price has released — the company has been producing tricycles, push cycles and Power Wheels for years — nor is it the company’s first foray into STEM-based learning, but it is the brand’s first stationary bike.

The Smart Cycle connects to a tablet via Bluetooth and runs four educational apps (focused on literacy, STEM, math and social studies), which are driven by the kid’s pedaling prowess. Each of these apps cost $5, though Smart Cycle Mission to Tech City comes free with the bike. The system is compatible with Android, iOS and Amazon Fire devices.

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

Fancy developing an app for your sex toy?

Everything’s a platform these days: Facebook, Twitter, Uber and more want developers to build software on top of their systems. But that rarely happens for sex toy manufacturers, who rarely have the knowledge, desire and customer base to bother. OhMiBod is looking to change that by offering coders the opportunity to build their own applications for its blueMotion vibrators.

OhMiBod’s Suki Dunham believes that the announcement is an “exciting achievement for sexual health technology.” She envisions folks adding gamification features for a new way to make bedroom action more competitive. Alternatively, the devices could be integrated with dating platforms like Tinder or Grindr to enable people to introduce themselves to each other in a more interactive way. Imagine if, before your first real-world hookup, you’d had long-distance, or teledildonic, sex with your would-be partner without leaving the app.

Outside of OhMiBod, the list of sex toy companies that have opened development platforms is slender at best. One factor that you probably haven’t considered is the role that patent licensing plays in the space. For instance Comingle, the open-source sex tech platform, was attacked by a patent troll as it was about to launch its first toy to the public. A similar thing happened to RealTouch Interactive, the home of America’s first digital brothel, which was forced out of business by patents. Let’s hope that OhMiBod can fly the flag for hackers and coders everywhere and avoid any such costly litigation.

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

AT&T to conduct 5G streaming tests with DirecTV Now

In a simultaneous test of wireless broadband and net neutrality, AT&T will test its upcoming 5G tech with DirecTV Now video streaming. Trial customers in Austin, Texas will be able to stream the services on a variety of devices over fixed 5G connections at several sites. The goal, the carrier said in a press release, is to see how “wireless millimeter wave technology handles heavy video traffic.

AT&T has already done 5G tests in Austin with partners Intel and Ericsson, but DirecTV now streaming is bound to push the tech harder, depending on the number of participants. Also known as “mmWave,” it can deliver theoretical speeds of 1Gbps (gigabit per second) and up, so it should be up to the job.

DirecTV customers can do unlimited streaming over AT&T’s normally capped wireless networks, so 5G will make that a lot more feasible for both the carrier and its clients. However, the FCC has frowned upon such “zero-rating”by AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile, saying it “denies unaffiliated third parties the same ability to compete over AT&T’s network on reasonable terms.” In other words, it goes against the “open and free” principals of net neutrality.

AT&T reportedly said it would abide by net neutrality rules if the FCC approved its purchase of DirecTV, but ironically, it’s trying to flout those rules using … DirecTV. In a letter last month, it told the FCC that stopping its zero-rated DirecTV service would “deny consumers a service they value … and curb the disruptive potential of Data Free TV, all in the name of preserving profit margins for individual DirecTV rivals.”

Whether you buy that argument or not is beside the point, AT&T said, since President-elect Donald Trump will probably roll back net-neutrality and other consumer-friendly legislation anyway. “Whatever judgment the bureau purports to pass on this program before January 20th will very likely be reversed shortly thereafter,” the company wrote.

Source: AT&T

A connected cooktop could keep you from burning breakfast

The world needs an app-connected hotplate like… well, I’m not sure if we need one, but we’re getting one regardless. FirstBuild, the company responsible for a $250 – $500 coffeemaker, is back at it with the Paragon setup. Promising precision cooking via an array of built-in sensors that automatically adjust the induction cooktop’s heat output automatically, FirstBuild hopes you’ll think the granular temperature adjustment settings on offer are worth the price of admission.

Whereas the Paragon sous vide Probe monitored and regulated the temperature of the liquid you were cooking with, the company’s Mat works with the Paragon cooking surface to keep your pan at an exact temperature. That means no more burning bacon because you accidentally set the rangetop to “high” instead of “medium high.”

The entire setup (sous vide probe, cooktop, mat) will set you back $349 via IndieGogo, with a $150 discount if you back it on the first day. Or you can use this handy-dandy link and get it for $199 beyond the campaign’s debut.

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

Source: IndieGogo

Canon’s latest premium point-and-shoot is the G9 X Mark II

Canon is refreshing its premium line of point-and-shoots with the PowerShot G9 X Mark II, a sleek camera with a decent set of specs. Notably, there’s a 1-inch 20.2-megapixel CMOS sensor and Digic 7 image processor, coupled with a 3x optical zoom lens (28-84mm) and a 3-inch LCD. You’ll also find an 8.2 frames-per-second continuous shooting mode, as well as WiFi and NFC for controlling the camera remotely. The PowerShot G9 X Mark II is expected to hit stores in February for $530/£450.

In addition to the new point-and-shoot, Canon also introduced three new Vixia HF-R Series camcorders, the R82, R80 and R800. They all sport a 57x zoom, optical image stabilizer, a 3.28-megapixel (1080p) CMOS sensor and a 3-inch LCD, with the main difference between them being the amount of built-in storage for each. The R82, R80 and R800 are priced at $450, $400 and $300, respectively, and will also arrive next month.

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

Mohu’s wireless AirWave antenna makes cord-cutting simple

We got a peek at Mohu’s wireless TV antenna last night, and this morning the company is releasing a few more details. The AirWave promises free TV “everywhere” across a variety of mobile and connected TV devices, since it catches the OTA signal and turns it into an IPTV stream for its app, sort of like a localized Aereo (RIP).

The antenna will cost $150 when it launches in “late” spring at Best Buy stores, and won’t require any kind of subscription package for access. All it needs is power, access to local TV signals and WiFi, then you’ve got TV and the viewing app has a guide that integrates TV broadcasts with content from various streaming services.

Mohu:

At launch, AirWave is compatible with the most popular video streaming devices on the market, including:

Amazon Fire TV and Stick

• Apple TV (current generation)
• Chromecast
• Roku’s entire lineup from Express to Ultra
• iOS
• Android
• Web

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

Source: Mohu

Car makers can let Alexa ride shotgun later this year

Amazon’s Alexa assistant can already communicate with some cars, but the conversations are a little one-sided. You can tell your home-bound Echo to start warming up your Hyundai on a frosty day, for example, or send directions to your BMW ahead of setting off; but when you’re on the road, you’re on your own. Later this year, though, car makers will be able to put Alexa in the passenger seat, giving drivers a virtual assistant that’ll put on some tunes, load up an audiobook and carry out many other tasks while their hands are stuck to the wheel.

This won’t be a result of individual car brand partnerships, however. Instead, Inrix is working to integrate Alexa into its OpenCar platform, which vehicle manufacturers can take and shape into their own, branded infotainment systems — similar to BlackBerry’s QNX platform, which could be powering your ride’s dash even if you don’t know it. Inrix acquired OpenCar early last year, and pitches it as an alternative to the more walled app ecosystems of Apple CarPlay and Android Auto.

Putting Alexa in the coveted shotgun seat should represent a serious improvement over existing voice-controlled systems — Volvo is trying to do the same with Cortana — but car manufacturers have to ally themselves with the OpenCar platform first. In other words, we’ve no idea what cars Alexa might end up riding in. Before Inrix snapped it up, OpenCar was working with Mazda, so that’s one potential customer.

Inrix isn’t exactly small fry in the automotive industry. The company already serves data like real-time traffic and parking information to connected cars from the likes of Audi, Lexus, Mercedes-Benz, Porsche and others, so it has the contacts. (Alexa will also be able to access this kind of info in the car and in the home as part of the OpenCar tie-in.) But as it stands, we’ll just have to wait and see which car makers jump at plug-and-play Alexa support later this year.

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

Source: Inrix