Asus ZenFone 3 Zoom preview: The mid-ranger cameraphone

Asus went after mixed reality geeks with the ZenFone AR, but with the  Zenfone 3 Zoom, it’s targeting photographers.

All the major smartphones from this year’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas had multiple camera lenses, including the ZenFone 3 Zoom, which comes equipped with two 12-megapixel camera lenses to deliver a blurred “bokeh” effect as well as optical zoom. 

There are several phones in the ZenFone 3 range, such as the Max and Laser. The ZenFone 3 Zoom stands out because of its iPhone 7 Plus-like design and impressive camera specifications. There are horizontally mounted dual cameras with 12-megapixel sensors, both of which are made by Sony. While one offers a f/1.7 aperture, the other has a 2.3x optical zoom, and both have Asus’ SuperPixel technology.

Asus claims the technology gives the cameras two-and-a-half times better light sensitivity than the iPhone 7 Plus, though we couldn’t test that during our demo because the show floor was well lit. However, we played around with the camera interface, which displays all sorts of manual controls – from shutter speed to white-balance settings. The phone also offers digital zoom, so you can get up to 12x zoom. 

You can tap a button to quickly zoom in (unfortunately, there’s no visual indication when switching from optical to digital). You can also shoot in RAW, record 4K videos, and manually select lenses (including using the two lenses together to produce a blurred background, which Asus calls Portrait mode, just like Apple does). Other camera specs include laser autofocus and optical image stabilization.

As for the front-facing camera, it’s a 13-megapixel sensor. The Zenfone 3 Zoom is definitely trying to be a cameraphone. And thanks to a 5,000mAh battery, it should power the longest of selfie sessions. Asus said it can even do 42 days standby. Amazingly, despite the massive cell, the phone is only 8mm thick, so you’ll likely have no problem touting this thing around to all your shoots.

Asus loaded the ZenFone 3 Zoom with a 5.5-inch AMOLED screen (1,920 x 1,080-pixel resolution), Qualcomm Snapdragon 625 processor, 4GB of RAM, and Android 6.0 with its own ZenUI over the top. We think the added software really takes away from the Android experience, so don’t expect the phone to properly contend with Google Pixel or any of the newer Nexus devices running the latest, purest version of Android. 

First Impressions

Overall, the Zenfone 3 Zoom is a mid-range phone with some compelling camera specs and a large battery. We really need to spend more time with it before we can say whether it can capture better photos than competing handsets, and it would be good to know how much the thing costs before giving it two thumbs up. Asus has said it is coming in February, but it’s staying quiet on price and availability. 

Keep in mind most mid-rangers often go for less than $400.

The Trump Archive is collecting everything he’s said on video

Remember that time US President-elect Donald Trump said one thing years or weeks ago, then reversed his position? If your answer is “which of the many, many examples,” you’ve been paying attention — and now you have a handy database full of speeches, debates, interviews and other broadcasts to trace his evolving opinions. The Trump Archive is live and has over 780 video clips amounting to over 520 hours of footage to date, with more on the way.

The repository is a project by the otherwise neutral Internet Archive, known mostly for its Wayback Machine that allows users to peer backward to the early days of the world wide web via cached pages. The Trump Archive builds on the organization’s experience making the Political Ad TV Archive they started in 2014. Likewise, the new collection’s laser-focus on the incoming Commander-In-Chief hopes to help reporters, researchers and the general public fact-check old Trump statements from as far back as December 2009 with new ones, the Television Archive’s managing editor Nancy Watzman said in a blog post.

But there’s another reason for uploading the archive beyond Trump’s upcoming inauguration, Watzman somberly reminds us: Things posted or broadcast on the Internet aren’t inherently saved forever.

“Reporters and the public may take it for granted that a news story or a piece of broadcast video is only a google search away, but as newspapers, companies, and organizations fail and change, often vital information is lost. The web is far more fragile than is generally understood,” said Watzman.

Via: VentureBeat

Source: Internet Archive blog

Gaming’s representation problems and where we go from here

Games are now big business and influential media in their own right. So what do video games tell us about how we see ourselves? Anita Sarkeesian from Feminist Frequency joined me on the Engadget stage to discuss games as popular culture, where we are now and the challenges facing better representation in the games that we all love. As our guest puts it: “The media works to reinforce and reflect society, for better and worse.”

“Our major tagline is: “be critical of the media you love”… but I came to this as a fan, as someone that loves games. I want to be better for everyone and much more inclusive.”

Our conversation touches on the harassment that female gaming critics have received over the last few years, games that aren’t properly representing the world we live in and the responsibilities of developers and publishers. As Sarkeesian puts it: “The games they create are not in a vacuum,” adding that the stories that games tell do have an impact. “We need to look to the games publishers: and why didn’t these companies stand up to harassment campaigns from their users, from people that are playing these games.”

Report: FBI arrests Volkswagen executive over Dieselgate

The first Volkswagen executive has been arrested in the “Dieselgate” affair, reports the New York Times. The FBI charged former regulatory compliance chief Oliver Schmidt with conspiracy to defraud the United States, said unnamed law enforcement and company insiders. Schmidt reportedly gave false technical explanations for high emissions levels discovered during 2014 tests and only acknowledged the existence of software “defeat devices” once the scandal broke last September.

Volkswagen eventually confessed to installing pollution-cheating devices on 11 million vehicles. The software sensed when the 2.0- and 3.0-liter cars were being tested by the EPA and activated pollution systems at the expense of power. It disabled the controls during real-world conditions to give vehicles more performance, however, causing them to emit up to 35 times the legal level of nitrogen oxide. That gas is known to cause respiratory problems and kills up to 30,000 people per year in the UK alone.

The company agreed to settle federal and state lawsuits for $14.7 billion, including $2.7 billion toward an EPA fund to clean up the damaged caused by the polluting cars. Regulators recently agreed to VW’s plan to fix 70,000 2015-and-later 2.0-liter models, though buyers also can also sell them back to Volkswagen for the full retail price.

[Audi’s] V6 has exactly the same issue [as Volkswagen diesels], but not public yet. They have not been caught.

In a July press conference, NY state Attorney General Eric Schneiderman said the company only admitted the scam “when they knew the regulators had the goods on them.” To illustrate the point, he showed an email sent from Oliver Schmidt to a VW spokesperson that read, “[Audi’s] V6 has exactly the same issue [as Volkswagen diesels], but not public yet. They have not been caught.” That, Schneiderman said, shows that, “these actions highlight how stubborn and unrepentant the culture at Volkswagen is that gave rise to the systematic cheating and deception described in this complaint.”

Volkswagen would not confirm the arrest, telling the NYT that while it’s cooperating with law enforcement, “it would not be appropriate to comment on any ongoing investigations or to discuss personnel matters.” Volkswagen engineer James Liang pleaded guilty to similar charges last September, but if the report is accurate, Schmidt would be the biggest name charged in the scandal so far.

Source: NYT

Foxconn Taking Advantage of Sharp Acquisition With OLED Production Line Set for Upcoming iPhones

Sharp is gearing up to help create OLED displays for the iPhone inside of Foxconn’s “iPhone City” plant in Zhengzhou, China, according to a new report by Nikkei (via DigiTimes). Foxconn acquired Sharp in 2016, and soon after reports emerged that Foxconn would use its newly acquired investment in Sharp to become a major OLED supplier for Apple.

Today’s report points toward the OLED displays being manufactured for iPhone models further down the line than the upcoming 2017 model. Production on the Sharp line in the Foxconn plant is believed to begin “sometime in 2019,” with around $864 million being spent on OLED production specifically for upcoming iPhones.

Sharp plans to invest JPY100 billion (US$864 million) to set up an OLED production line at Foxconn Electronics’ factory in Zhengzhou City, northern China, with production to begin in 2019, according to Japan-based Nikkei.

As Foxconn produces iPhones at the factory, the OLED capacity is believed to be specifically for supplying OLED panels for upcoming iPhone models.

According to recent rumors, Apple will launch at least one iPhone model with an OLED screen in 2017. From there, the actual design of the OLED screen has been conflicting, including reports that the screen will wrap around the edges of the device, or potentially a more traditional screen that still eliminates the bezels but includes a stainless steel frame.

Because OLED displays are more difficult to produce in mass quantities, in comparison to LCD displays, Apple’s suppliers will be unable to meet the company’s production capacity for the 2017 iPhone. The strain on production is believed to be the major reason why Apple is considering an OLED display for only one 2017 iPhone model, likely to be the higher-cost version.

Tags: Foxconn, digitimes.com, Sharp
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HTC Ocean’s Touch UI gets another video leak, this time looking more official

The first leak we saw for the HTC Ocean was a concept for a new Sense Touch UI, detailing that you could operate the phone without buttons.

A new video, shared by @evleaks, gives us another look at a similar-looking Sense Touch UI, again accessed without using any buttons. 

There’s been no official word whether this is something that HTC is planning to launch or if it’s simply a concept, but the HTC branding at the end of this clip gives it a look that’s more official and the UI details shown on the screen display some HTC hallmarks – like the 10:08 time for example – as well as HTC Sense’s app icons.

Remember the HTC Ocean? (https://t.co/q5ghm3vQ8Z) pic.twitter.com/GtpqowETjM

— Evan Blass (@evleaks) January 8, 2017

The video doesn’t reveal much. The couple are drawn to the window of a Diptyque shop, and the exotically-fragranced candles obviously make them hungry. He pulls up local restaurant suggestions, but she remembers to grab a selfie of them outside the Diptyque store.

Quick menus are pulled up via a swipe on the side of the phone and it appears to work on both sides, letting you swipe up and down to scroll the list and tap to select the app.

@evleaks

What’s not clear from this video is whether this is using some form of touch sensor in the body of the phone, or if it’s using a curved display like the Samsung Galaxy S7 edge’s edge display feature. On the Samsung phone you can swipe in from the edge to access a number of services or shortcuts and Touch UI appears to be offering the same sort of access. 

You also can’t tell too much about the phone from this video. From the front there doesn’t appear to be a fingerprint scanner like the HTC 10, but there is a circle, which we’re assuming is a home button – perhaps with an embedded fingerprint scanner under the skin, a technology that’s already been demonstrated in Qualcomm’s Sense ID.

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

When they lift the phone for the selfie, things are a little more confusing, as the design looks a lot like the HTC One A9 with that centre-top rear camera. 

While this video looks cool and there are a lot of fragmented pieces of the HTC 2017 smartphone puzzle coming together, at the moment we have more questions than answers. 

Hopefully things will get clearer over the next couple of months, perhaps with a significant MWC 2017 launch, as well as a reveal scheduled for 12 January. 

Blu Vivo 6 review: Affordable Android in a pretty shell

Phone-maker Blu started making a name for itself in the States for being an affordable Android brand, but it’s taken some time for the company to bring its wares to the UK.

In fact, the Vivo 6 is the company’s first Blighty-bound device. Having launched in time for a crazy opening-day Amazon discount during Black Friday weekend in 2016, the phone is now back to its full price of £239. So is it worth the cash?

Blu Vivo 6 review: Design

• 154.3 x 74.9 x 7mm; 170g
• Metal body with polished chamfered edges

It’s hard for manufacturers these days to come up with a handset design that’s unique or even interesting. Although the Blu Vivo 6 is far from groundbreaking, it’s good enough.

It’s Huawei-esque in a sense, with its metal rear casing and parallel antenna bands running along the top and bottom. Both the front and back feature an attractive, slim and polished chamfered edge, which gives it that classy shine.

Pocket-lint

The camera protrusion is circular and placed near the top to the centre, with a simple LED flash next to it. Although the back of the phone is ever so slightly rounded, it’s not enough to make it feel particularly comfortable in hand. Combined with the flat edges, the almost flat back makes the phone feel quite block-ish.

On the bottom edge, there’s a Type-C port for charging and transmitting data, flanked by two cutouts – one of which lets the sound escape from the single loudspeaker. The power and volume buttons live on the right edge, with the SIM tray on the opposite side, and the 3.5mm audio jack placed in the top edge. Despite being a sub-£250 phone, Blu has equipped the Vivo 6 with a fingerprint sensor for speedy sign-in, which lives inside a pill-shaped home button on the front of the device. It’s click-able, quite spongey in response and sits between the capacitive back and multi-tasking buttons below the screen.

On the whole, the design and build quality is great for such an affordable phone, but along with that spongey feeling home button, there are other questionable choices.

The SIM tray features two slots and, bizarrely, one of them is for a micro SIM, not nano SIM. The other is supposed to fit in a microSD card or a second SIM (this time nano), except, when a nano SIM is placed in the second slot, the SIM tray doesn’t fit back into the phone.

Pocket-lint

Then there’s the 3.5mm jack which isn’t centred in between the top and bottom chamfered edges, instead, it overlaps the bottom polished chamfer, meaning part of it is angled away. It’s not unusual to see a non-flush headset jack, with phones becoming so slim, but it would look better if that was the case here.

Blu Vivo 6 review: Display

• 5.5-inch IPS display
• 1920 x 1080 resolution (401ppi)

On paper, the Full HD display on the front of Blu’s latest creation should be great, but it shows signs of being less than a flagship quality panel.

With a pixel density just over 400ppi, most of the content on screen is certainly sharp enough at arm’s length. Colours are nice to look at, but not especially vibrant.

Being an IPS panel means it’s not quite as lively or full of contrast like an AMOLED panel would be. But viewing angles are good, and being an in-touch display means there are fewer layers between the content displayed and the Corning Gorilla Glass 3 surface. That means you feel close to the action.

Pocket-lint

On the negative side, there is often a yellow tint when the brightness is low. Whites appear warm, which is really unusual for an LCD panel (which tend to go to the cooler, blue side of the spectrum).

Still, for the most part, media consumption was pleasant enough, especially given the phone’s price point. That’s where it wins.

Blu Vivo 6 review: Software

• Android 6.0 Marshmallow
• Custom software/apps on top

The Blu Vivo 6 runs Google’s Android 6.0 operating system with the company’s own custom skin on top.

Like so many third-party versions of Android, the Blu has no app drawer. All of your apps are auto-organised to fill as many home screens as necessary, leaving you with the unenviable task of organising them all into folders. If there’s ever a reason needed not to restore a phone from a previous Android backup, it’s precisely this. Like with Apple’s iOS, you press-and-hold an app icon then tap the “x” to delete it from the phone. Making folders is achieved by tapping, holding and dragging an app icon on to another one.

Pocket-lint

One element of Blu’s software we like a lot is the Edge Bar. It’s essentially a quick access panel and you can choose which apps you want to appear there. Kind of like Samsung’s software in its curved edge phones, despite the Blu being a flat panel.

A quick swipe across the home button brings the menu up and allows you quickly get to those apps that you really don’t want to have to hunt for. There’s enough space for six apps. It’s feels invaluable when you can’t remember where you put Shazam and absolutely have to tag a song to find out what it’s called. Or it is for us, anyway.

However, there’s plenty of bloatware installed on the Blu Vivo 6. Not all of it is redundant though. There’s an interesting app called Chameleon that allows you choose two colours from a scene and then cretes a live wallpaper to match. For those who care that their gadgets match their outfit, you could point the app to your coat and fingernails, or hoody and jeans, and the wallpaper and theme will go with what you’re wearing.

Pocket-lint

Despite the added bloatware and no app drawer in Blu’s software skin, the overall Vivo 6 experience is clean and doesn’t negatively impact overall performance.

BLU Vivo 6 review: Performance

• Mediatek Helio P10 processor
• 4GB RAM; 64GB storage (microSD expandable)

As specifications go, the Blu Vivo 6 has the numbers to match the best of them. There’s 64GB of storage under the hood, sitting alongside 4GB of RAM. Rather than have a flagship Qualcomm Snapdragon chip, however, the company opted for MediaTek’s Helio P10 processor which, while powerful, isn’t quite on par with the high-end Snapdragon chipsets.

Still, day-to-day performance is good enough that you won’t be hankering too much for a more expensive phone. Although there was minor stuttering and frame-rate dropping in some mobile games during our testing period, it wasn’t anything different to what we experience with many (often more expensive) handsets. For the most part, regular transitions and animations like app switching, scrolling through lists and opening app folders were smooth.

Blu Vivo 6 review: Battery Life

• 3,130mAh battery
• No fast charging

The Vivo 6’s battery is capacious enough to get you through a work day, no matter how busy you are. In our testing we got to late evening/bed time without it reaching the dreaded 15 per cent level. It did get close on particularly active days, though, so it’s nowhere near being a two day battery. 

Pocket-lint

With its 10W supposedly “rapid” charger included, the phone doesn’t top-up anywhere near as quickly as Qualcomm’s Quick Charge 3.0 would. We expect faster charging times, but getting from dead to full in less than two hours isn’t the worst that we’ve ever seen. 

Similar to other Android phones, the Blu Vivo 6 comes with some enhanced battery optimisation. That means it kills apps running in the background if they’re using too much juice. That can mean some annoyances if you have apps like Strava which need to run in the background in order to track your runs or bike rides. Thankfully, you can manually whitelist apps to be non-optimised. 

Blu Vivo 6 review: Camera

• 13-megapixel Sony sensor
• f/2.0 aperture
• 1080p video

The 13-megapixel camera built into the Vivo 6 has a plethora of features to keep any snapper avidly occupied. As well as the regular automatic mode it has HDR (high dynamic range), night, panorama, time-lapse, slow-motion, smart scene, text recognition and macro modes (among others).

While shooting you can add guidelines, change the picture size, capture mode and add filters, as you can with most camera phones. Sadly, the results left us a little disappointed. 

Pocket-lint

In automatic mode, even with lots of available light, the images came out looking noisy and lacking in detail. The only time images looked close to good was outdoors in daylight – and even those weren’t fantastic.

As you’d expect, the lower the light levels are, the worse results get. Not even the professional mode that gives you more manual control could save the quality of the photos. 

Interestingly, the night mode shots we captured came out pretty well, especially considering how unimpressive the regular automatic shots turned out. Still, there are many better cameras out there, even at this price point. 

Verdict

For its price point, the Blu Vivo 6 boasts a handful of great features and an impressive specification. It’s pleasant to use but does have its flaws.

The camera is disappointing, even for a mid-range device. Despite its many shooting modes, just taking a plain old photo almost always results in excessive image noise and limited sharpness.

The phone’s display is fine, while build quality and design are certainly more premium than the Moto G4 (and not too far off the quality offered by the more expensive OnePlus 3T).

Blu’s main competition at this price point is the Honor 5X (and possibly Honor 8). Which you go for depends on whether you’d rather have clean software or a better camera. Blu’s phone may have no app drawer, but it has fewer annoyances than Huawei’s EMUI software.

Blu Vivo 6: Alternatives to consider

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Moto G4

• From £169

While not as small as its predecessors, the fourth-gen Moto G continued the trend of offering a lot of performance for your money. There are still very few devices that offer as complete an Android experience as the Moto G for under £200. It’s stock Android, has a big screen, and will cost you less than the Blu Vivo 6… but it has considerably less storage and RAM. 

Honor 5X

• £190

Like the Blu, the Honor 5X has a 5.5-inch Full HD resolution screen and comes in a similar glass and metal package. It doesn’t have as much storage or RAM as the Blu, but it’s £40 cheaper and offers a great experience for that price.

Pocket-lint

Vodafone Smart Platinum 7

• £300

For those wanting a more powerful device, the Smart Platinum 7 has a higher-resolution AMOLED screen which looks fantastic, alongside a pair of front-facing speakers to make your media that much more immersive. It costs more, but it’s worth it in our opinion.

Samsung Gear wearables can now be used with iOS devices

Samsung and Apple have never always seen eye to eye as we’ve seen all too often the two smartphone giants trying to outdo each other. But we’re pleased to say that Samsung has been the bigger man and announced its Gear series of wearables can now used with iOS devices. If you own any of those devices you can now download the Gear S or Gear Fit apps from Apple’s App Store, follow the onscreen instructions and use the two in harmony.

• Samsung Gear S3 Classic review Android Wear, beware, this is the smartwatch to beat

Samsung has said a wide range of features will be supported between the two platforms, including the usual array of notifications, Find My Gear function, syncing of health data and the ability to download apps directly to the Gear wearables.

Only the three Gear wearables mentioned are supported for now, and there’s no word on whether that selection will be increased in the future. You’ll also need to make sure you have a compatible iOS device to connect to a Gear watch. Compatible devices start at the iPhone 5 and include every generation up to the latest iPhone 7 models and the iPhone SE, they’ll need to be running iOS 9.0 or later.

Younghee Lee, EVP of global marketing, mobile communications at Samsung said: “By offering Android and iOS compatibility with our latest Gear devices, we’re giving users more ways to optimise their wearable experiences and connect to Samsung’s Galaxy of possibilities”.

The Gear S and Gear Fit apps are available to download from the Apple App Store now.

Amazon wins first Golden Globe film award for ‘Manchester’

Casey Affleck won a best-actor Golden Globe for his performance in Manchester by the Sea, marking the first time Amazon Studios has received a major film category award. It picked up rights to the film, directed by Kenneth Lognergan and produced by Matt Damon, last year at Sundance for $10 million. Amazon has a pretty good chance of snagging an Oscar next month too, as Affleck is the front-runner for best actor in that competition

Billy Bob Thorton also scored Amazon Video a Globe, winning best actor in a TV series as Billy Mcbride in the legal drama Goliath. As proof the company has arrived in Hollywood, host Jimmy Fallon pointed out Jeff Bezos in the audience during the broadcast and noted, “he actually arrived yesterday, but there was no one around to sign for him.”

Streaming arch-rival Netflix also snagged two Golden Globes, winning twice on The Crown for best drama series and best actress (Clair Foy). That makes four total snagged by Netflix (it won in 2014 and 2015 for House of Cards) next to six for Amazon, which won two for Transparent in 2015, two in 2016 for Mozard in the Jungle and two this year.

Amazon is just the distributor for Manchester by the Sea (along with Roadshow Pictures), and not responsible for production. So far, no Amazon Original films have won any major prizes, though it only started producing them in 2015 with Spike Lee’s Chi-Raq. The retail giant was savvy enough to attach its name to Manchester, and planned a theatrical release and awards campaign from the get-go. If the film does pick up on Oscar, it’ll not only garner Amazon a ton of publicity, but the first look at streaming what would be an Oscar-gilded project.

Source: THR

MIT’s 3D graphene is ten times stronger than steel

An awful lot of ink has been spilled about how graphene is going to basically save the world with its myriad applications and powers. But chances to actually see evidence of how and why the hexagonal lattices are so strong in a life-size way have been few and far between. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology has changed that. The school’s latest experiment uses graphene material that’s 5 percent as dense as steel and ten times the metal’s strength, showing what’s possible when the composite is more than just a flat sheet.

Starting from a highly-accurate computer model, the researchers 3D printed diatomic cubes to represent the material’s sponge-like structure and then subjected them to compression tests. The shape here is incredibly important; the cube itself looks like a magenta sponge. Its porous nature means that there’s more surface area, and more surface area means higher strengths at lower weights.

Perhaps most interesting is that the different cubes reacted unexpectedly. One with thicker walls and folds, for example, was actually less stable as more pressure was applied. Compared to one with thinner construction, it shattered explosively. By comparison, the thinner cube broke down in an almost controlled way, retaining its shape almost to the end.

MIT says that this is because the thinner walls allow the structure to deform gradually while the thicker one stores the deformation energy, which releases all at once. This lead to the discovery that it it’s not so much the materials in use (although it certainly helps), but their shape that contributes to strength, too.

“You can replace the material itself with anything,” MIT’s head of Civil and Environmental Engineering said. “The geometry is the dominant factor.”

One potential use? Taking polymer or metal particles, coating them with graphene and then removing the base materials after heat and pressure treatment. Such a method would leave the graphene’s lightweight and super strong structure in place. MIT thinks this type of application could be used anywhere from concrete bridges and even filtration systems for water or chemical processing.

Source: MIT