Super Retro Boy Release Date, Price and Specs – CNET

If you have a bunch of old Game Boy games gathering dust, the company Retro-Bit has something for you. It’s the Super Retro Boy — a 2017 take on Nintendo’s Game Boy. And at CES in Las Vegas, there was a working prototype that was so fun to play that it left a directional pad indent in my thumb.

The Super Retro Boy is not a Game Boy clone. Rather the hardware has captured the soul of the Game Boy while making some improvements, like a 10-hour internal battery and a backlit display. It can play all the games for the original Game Boy as well as the Game Boy Color and Game Boy Advance — you just need the cartridges.

At CES, I got to play a prototype of the Super Retro Boy — and it was fun.

Patrick Holland/CNET

A spokesperson for Retro-Bit explained how the Super Retro Boy came about. He said it’s all about video game console licensing. More importantly when those licenses expire. This allowed Retro-Bit to work on its own portable console that could play Game Boy games. The project took about a year.

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The Super Retro Boy comes in black or white and will cost $80 (which converts to £65 and AU$110). Retro-Bit is projected to ship it in August 2017.

HTC U could be all about personalisation, massive video leak reveals

HTC could be turning its attention to personalisation in 2017 a new video leak reveals.

Shared by @evleaks via Twitter, the information comes from what appears to be a promo video for HTC, in which the company explains that your phone should be as individual as you are, like your choice of clothes or the music you like. 

HTC has often targeted a younger audience with this sort of message, turning to different designs and finishes to make the phone stand-out from rival devices.

HTC 2017? pic.twitter.com/ppONWlT5Mr

— Evan Blass (@evleaks) January 8, 2017

The video shows some styles that HTC has used before, like the micro-splash style of some 2016 Desire models, but focuses on three main approaches: chemical, super fibres and litmus. 

Exactly what these three different techniques will result in isn’t exactly clear, but the message is about individuality. Whether this means that you’ll get the choice to customise your phone as per the Moto Maker service, or just that the finishes of HTC’s 2017 phones are all unique thanks to the methods used to apply them, isn’t clear. 

The most distinctive appears to be super fibres. Although little is detailed, it looks as though it’s a finish rather like some Libratone speakers, using fabrics. Whether you’ll be able to get a Harris Tweed-backed smartphone we’re not sure and we suspect that any fibres might be laminated or set in resin to protect them.

The litmus option looks a lot like the graduated anodised finish that HTC has used before on the HTC One S, revealed here applied to a handset that clearly carries HTC Vive branding on the rear, and sporting dual rear cameras.

That’s a whole different story – which you can read about here – but things currently aren’t clear on exactly what HTC is planning in 2017.

What we do know for certain is that the company is announcing something “U” related on 12 January, and that may well circulate around personalisation.

• HTC Ocean: What’s the story on HTC 11?

HTC Vive smartphone revealed: Could this be HTC’s new flagship?

We didn’t see this one coming, but the emergence of an HTC Vive handset in a video leak could see a shift in focus for HTC in 2017. 

HTC Vive has been well received as a leading VR solution and there’s some sense in having a Vive-branded handset, especially when mobile VR is something that’s very much on the agenda too thanks to platforms like Google Daydream. 

The HTC Vive handset appeared in a leaked promo video from HTC that’s talking about personalisation. Coming from @evleaks, a well-established source for accurate leaks, there’s little detail about what handsets we should expect, but it seems to follow the rumours of three handsets launching from HTC in 2017.

Carrying a codename of HTC Ocean, the picture of HTC’s plan is more confusing that any previous year, but it could be that rather than launching the HTC 11 as predicted, that HTC’s flagship handset is actually the HTC Vive model we’re looking at here.

HTC 2017? pic.twitter.com/ppONWlT5Mr

— Evan Blass (@evleaks) January 8, 2017

There’s little to see from the video, except that there’s dual cameras on the rear and that it’s finished in a style that HTC is calling “litmus”.

HTC is planning to make an announcement on 12 January that will surely bring some clarity to its plans for the year, but currently we’re left with more questions than answers.

• HTC Ocean: What’s the story on HTC 11?

Razer’s new prototypes stolen from CES booth

While CES 2017 has drawn to a close, news surrounding the products unveiled at the world’s biggest consumer tech event continue to make the headlines. Take Razer, which had a very encouraging week after unveiling two new gaming prototypes (one of which won two Best of CES 2017 awards). However, things ended on a sour note after company CEO Min-Liang Tan confirmed that two of its concept products were stolen from its booth on the last day of the show.

“I’ve just been informed that two of our prototypes were stolen from our booth at CES today,” said Tan on his Facebook page. “We have filed the necessary reports and are currently working with the show management as well as law enforcement to address this issue.” It’s not known which products were involved in the theft, but Razer’s presence at CES 2017 was largely built around its new Chroma projector, dubbed Project Ariana, and a three-screened laptop that goes under the working title of Project Valerie.

Surprisingly, it’s not the first time that has been victim to sticky-fingered opportunists. In 2011, two experimental Blade prototypes were stolen from Razer R&D lab in San Francisco. Tan has also refused to rule out corporate spying: “We treat theft/larceny, and if relevant to this case, industrial espionage, very seriously – it is cheating, and cheating doesn’t sit well with us. Penalties for such crimes are grievous and anyone who would do this clearly isn’t very smart.”

Source: Min-Liang Tan (Facebook)

Rare red nova explosion could add a star to the sky in 2022

There is much still to learn about the universe, and red novas remain one of its mysteries. It’s thought these explosive events, named for their red glow, are the result of binary stars finally merging after eons of cosmic courting. That’s the prevailing theory, anyway, but the rare event has only been observed a handful of times. Our understanding of this stellar event, as well as the lifecycle of stars in general, could improve significantly if the prediction of Calvin College astronomer Larry Molnar proves true. He believes he’s spotted a duo of stars that are on the cusp of merging, becoming a red nova in 2022, “give or take a year.” It’s not just exciting for the research community, though, as the explosion should be so energetic that we’ll be able to see it in the night sky with the naked eye.

Molnar’s prediction comes after years of studying a star called KIC 9832227. His research has led him to conclude this is not only a binary star, but a “contact binary,” where the stars are close enough to share atmospheres. They are so close, in fact, that Molnar expects they are only a few years away from merging into a red nova. “It’s a one-in-a-million chance that you can predict an explosion,” says Molnar, and with this kind of advanced warning, astronomers have a unique opportunity to watch the event as it happens.

What’s more, we shouldn’t have to wait for a research paper or the documentary being made about Molnar’s work to come out to learn if the prediction was correct. Instead, all we’ll need to do is look up, specifically towards the Cygnus constellation. The amount of energy released by the red nova should add a new, noticeably bright star to the night sky, if only for a time.

Via: Business Insider

Source: Calvin College

Polaroid’s Pop is a friendly chunk of a camera

Polaroid’s just-announced Pop camera could be the most basic digital distillation of its iconic instant cameras we’ve seen thus far — but unfortunately, all the company had to show at CES was a non-working prototype. However, I was able to get a sense of just what we’ll be dealing with when the Pop ships near the end of the year. To sum up: it’s a big, chunky plastic camera that should be incredibly simple to use. There’s one button on the front, along with its 4-inch touchscreen, and that’s basically it. Camera lens is on the back, prints come out the top, and the bottom is a colorful plastic border with a wrist strap.

You can pull that colored area off to access the SD card slow, charging port and the place where you load up the paper. And that’s about all there is to it! I will say that it feels much bigger in the hand than I expected based on the press shots, and I do wonder if anyone would want to tote this thing around when our phones slip into our pockets so well.

Unfortunately, without turning on the screen we couldn’t tell just how good or bad the UI is, which is what’ll really make or break this thing. Until we can actually turn this thing on, it’s impossible to say whether it’ll be worth the $200 or so Polaroid is asking (the final retail price hasn’t been announced yet). For my money, I’ll just order prints online — but if you need to have immediate photographic evidence of your activities, the Pop may do just fine.

10 Years Ago Today: Steve Jobs Introduces the iPhone

Today marks the tenth anniversary of the day Steve Jobs introduced the original iPhone at Macworld in San Francisco. In what has become one of the most iconic moments in Apple’s storied history, Jobs teased the device as if it were three separate products: a widescreen iPod with touch controls, a revolutionary mobile phone, and a breakthrough internet communications device.

Apple began selling the iPhone six months later, and nearly a decade later, the company has now sold well over 1 billion of them to customers around the world. iPhone sales continued to rise on an annual basis until 2016, when the smartphone experienced its first-ever year-over-year sales decline amid a down year for Apple. Nevertheless, the iPhone remains Apple’s most successful product ever, accounting for 60% of the company’s overall revenue last quarter.

“iPhone is an essential part of our customers’ lives, and today more than ever it is redefining the way we communicate, entertain, work and live,” said Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO. “iPhone set the standard for mobile computing in its first decade and we are just getting started. The best is yet to come.”

Apple upended the mobile phone industry that was then dominated by earlier entrants such as Nokia and BlackBerry, two companies that are effectively out of the market today. Jobs poked fun at “smartphones” of the era, quipping they were “not so smart” and “not so easy to use,” while criticizing outdated hardware features such as physical keyboards and styli. In turn, he introduced revolutionary new features such as Multi-Touch to big rounds of applause.

Since then, Apple has improved the iPhone each year by adding several new features:

• 2008: App Store and 3G network support
• 2009: Video recording and Personal Hotspot
• 2010: Retina display
• 2011: Siri and iCloud
• 2012: Taller 4-inch screen, Lightning connector, and LTE
• 2013: Touch ID
• 2014: Larger 4.7-inch and 5.5-inch screens
• 2015: 3D Touch, Live Photos, and 4K video recording
• 2016: Waterproofing and dual-lens camera on iPhone 7 Plus

“It is amazing that from the very first iPhone through to today’s newest iPhone 7 Plus, it has remained the gold standard by which all other smartphones are judged. For many of us, iPhone has become the most essential device in our lives and we love it,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of marketing.

2017 is expected to be a big year for the iPhone, with rumors suggesting at least one new model will feature glass casing with a curved OLED display. The device may sport a nearly bezel-less edge-to-edge design with no physical Home button, but rather Touch ID embedded directly into the display as both patented by Apple and technologically possible. Other rumored features include wireless charging, facial or iris recognition, and a vertical dual-lens camera capable of 3D photography effects.

Tag: Steve Jobs
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Asus ZenFone AR preview: A solid introduction to mixed reality

The first phone to support both Google Tango and Google Daydream is here.

While at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show, Asus unveiled the ZenFone AR, which is technically the second Google Tango-enabled phone, but what makes it interesting is that it also comes with Daydream, meaning it can deliver not only augmented reality but also virtual reality experiences. And compared to the chunky Lebovo Phab 2 Pro, the first Tango handset, the 5.7-inch ZenFone AR seems much more more mobile.

The phone weighs 170g, which is 18g less than the iPhone 7 Plus, and it features a sleek, LG G4-like pleather back. The camera system, which ASUS has called the TriCam, is positioned at the top of the phone so that your fingers won’t get in the way of the motion-tracking sensor that has a fisheye lens. The phone’s main sensor is a 23-megapixel camera with a 0.03 second autofocus. There’s also a depth-sensing camera included.

With this trio, the phone can do augmented reality, shoot in RAW, and save up to 92-megapixel high-resolution photos by combining four 23-megapixel ones. It also offers 4K video recording and comes with four-axis OIS. We couldn’t fully test the phone’s camera abilities nor see if it can shoot in a variety of situations, as the show floor itself was well lit. We also couldn’t try out any AR, because the demo units ran an older version of Android that doesn’t support Tango. But it did have Daydream enabled inside, so of course we watched a few videos in virtual reality.

Pocket-lint

First Impressions

The phone has a Super AMOLED WQHD 2K display, which looked crisp and great, and thanks to the Snapdragon 821 processor and 8GB of RAM tucked underneath, the YouTube VR app we tested ran fast and smoothly. ZenFone AR also has a 3,300mAh battery — decent, considering AR and VR are known for being battery hogs. It also has up to 256GB of built-in storage, plus a MicroSD slot for adding up to 2TB more.

You also get USB-C charging, a standard headphone socket, a physical home button with an integrated fingerprint sensor. So, even without Tango and Daydream, the ZenFone AR is definitely a noteworthy flagship phone. It packs powerful tech, an excellent screen, and impressive cameras into a slim form factor – and we’re looking forward to really giving it a whirl when it releases in the second quarter of 2017.

Hubble spots kamikaze comets plunging into a nearby star

The Hubble telescope helped a team of astronomers discover evidence of comets taking a dive into a young star called HD 172555 that’s “only” 95-light years away from Earth. While they didn’t exactly see these “kamikaze comets,” Hubble detected some fast-moving silicon and carbon gases in the starlight close to the edge of the star’s debris disk. The most likely explanation for those gases is that they’re the result of comet-like objects shattering after crossing the star’s disk.

Kamikaze comets provide more insight into the formation of our own solar system, since the celestial bodies that crashed into our planet billions of years ago could have been responsible for bringing water to Earth. The 23-million-year-old star could be in the middle of forming planets, maybe even a rocky, habitable one like our own. Besides, it might already have a Jupiter-sized giant, since kamikaze comets could indicate the presence of strong gravitational pull caused by large planets.

Lead scientist Carol Grady from NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland said:

“Seeing these sun-grazing comets in our solar system and in three extrasolar systems means that this activity may be common in young star systems. This activity at its peak represents a star’s active teenage years. Watching these events gives us insight into what probably went on in the early days of our solar system, when comets were pelting the inner solar system bodies, including Earth. In fact, these star-grazing comets may make life possible, because they carry water and other life-forming elements, such as carbon, to terrestrial planets.”

Thankfully, star HD 172555 is relatively close to our little spot in the universe, so we’ll be able to study it further.

Source: NASA Hubblesite

Color Glide Review

Puzzle games are aplenty on the Google Play store. It’s rare to find one that really pulls you in to the point where you want to play for more than 10 minutes at a time. Thankfully Color Glide, from Eternal Studio, is a game that is fun and addicting early on. The premise is simple, but the complexity quickly ramps up.

Think you have what it takes to solve puzzles like this?

As the player you must solve each puzzle by “gliding” colored squares into the appropriately colored goal. Simple physics allow each colored square to slide up, down, right or left. Later on, puzzles test your skills by creating walls that only certain colored blocks can pass through, or by forcing players to combine two colors to create a new color. It’s a rewarding experience when you use a little bit of wit to figure out the correct combination of moves.

Each level has a goal, or par, for the amount of moves to solve each puzzle. If the level is completed at or close to par, the player will receive a bronze, silver or gold trophy. This adds to the replay-ability as you can return to any level you’ve completed to best your previous score.

Before you know it, you’ll be combining colors to reach new goals

Music is minimal and soothing. This is not a fast paced, frantic puzzle game like Tetris–it’s more thoughtful and calculated, so the ominous, gentle music fits right in. The sound effects are sparse with chimes, dings and effectively what could be described as shattering glass. Overall, a nice complement to the overall aesthetic.

Color Glide does implement leader boards in a very minimal way. You can see scores from friends you have within the Google Play games network, but outside of that, the leader boards are quite limited. The game also has an option to pay to remove those pesky ads (which I did not do), to tweet out to your followers about the game, or to link to and like Eternal Studio on Facebook.

More levels can be purchased with gems at any time. Gem prices range from 100 for $.99 to 600 for $4.99, or can be supplemented by ads. Also, you have the option to play the Daily Level, which is a unique level that is updated each day. Color Glide offers 37 levels from the start, which should be a good amount of challenge for most players. After that, if you still enjoy the game and want more, feel free to spend your gems on more levels.

For fans of the puzzle genre, it’s hard not to recommend Color Glide. It’s simple enough for a child to understand, yet deep enough for the most intellectual player to exercise his or her mind a bit. Check it out in the Google Play store if you’re up for a fun and colorful challenge.