NASA starts wind tunnel tests for its quiet supersonic jet

NASA’s plans for a quiet supersonic jet, the QueSST, just became tangible: the agency and Lockheed Martin have started wind tunnel tests for the future X-plane. It’s a scale model at this stage, but it will be subjected to winds as high as Mach 1.6 (950MPH) to gauge both its aerodynamic performance as well as parts of its propulsion system. The tests should run until the middle of 2017.

Whether or not QueSST moves beyond these tests will depend on funding approval. If it does get the go ahead, though, the next step is making an honest-to-goodness aircraft poised to fly in 2020. That goal is still a long way off, but it now seems more achievable than it did a year ago.

Source: NASA

Here’s our first look at Netflix’s ‘Bright,’ starring Will Smith

Why would Netflix pay $90 million for a single film? Two words: Will Smith. The blockbuster star is teaming back up with David Ayer, the director of Suicide Squad, for Bright, a new fantasy action film. Tonight at the Academy Awards we caught our first glimpse at the movie, which basically looks like a bunch of Suicide Squad deleted scenes. Smith stars as a cop in a world where humans live alongside fantasy creatures, and he partners up with an orc (Joel Edgerton) to track down a superweapon.

Netflix is reportedly aiming to make Bright a franchise, and given the star power involved, there’s a good chance it’ll encourage even more people to sign up for subscriptions. The streaming video company also reportedly paid over $100 million for Martin Scorsese’s next film, The Irishman, with Robert DeNiro, as well as $60 million for the Brad Pitt-starring War Machine.

Fantasy has become reality. Will Smith and Joel Edgerton star in Bright, only on @netflix. pic.twitter.com/FJueEhMFCO

— Bright Film (@BrightNetflix) February 27, 2017

Amazon’s ‘Manchester by the Sea’ wins acting and screenplay Oscars

Amazon’s $10 million bet on Manchester by the Sea has paid off with a few Oscar wins. Casey Affleck won the Academy Award for Best Actor, while writer/director Kenneth Lonergan picked up Best Adapted Screenplay. The film was nominated for seven Oscars, and it notably made Amazon the first streaming video company to earn a Best Picture nod. It was also Amazon’s first Golden Globe winning film, so all in all that $10 million seems pretty well-spent.

Additionally, the company scored an Oscar win for best foreign film with Asghar Farhadi’s The Salesman. The director wasn’t at the ceremony — he remained in Iran in protest of Donald Trump’s travel ban from Mulsim countries — but he pleaded for empathy in a speech read by Iranian astronaut Anousheh Ansari.

Amazon beat out Netflix, which won one Oscar for the short documentary The White Helmets. Netflix was also nominated for Ava DuVernay’s The 13th in the documentary category, but it lost out to the epic-length O.J.: Made in America.

Moto G5 and G5 Plus hands on: bringing premium looks to the mid-range

The Moto G5 and G5 Plus are the G series phones that most clearly aspire to Z series status: they do away with the plastic chassis and adopt some Moto Z range characteristics. But are the Moto G5 and G5 Plus just mid-rangers masquerading as flagships or are they truly attempting to bridge the gap between the G and Z?

These are by far the most premium-looking G series phones Motorola – or should we say Lenovo – have ever made. But looks can be deceiving: are these phones more old school G or new school Z? The answer is they’re a little bit of both. The new Moto G’s deliver everything we know and love from the G series but wrap it all in a frame that resembles the flagship Z series a lot more than ever before.

Think about it: the Moto G series has historically been Motorola’s bigger seller. But the Z series is the flagship line. What better way to encourage fans of the mid-range devices to consider stepping up to the top tier than to provide flagship looks in a cheaper device?

We’ve seen a similar “trickling down” of flagship features on other smartphone ranges plenty of times before, and Motorola has taken this attitude as its personal M.O., so there’s nothing particularly new going on here. But what is new is the G series’ design: a full-metal build on a mid-range phone that costs little more than $200 rather than double that.

The G5 Plus is the more premium of the two phones: slightly larger and with slightly better specs than the regular G5. But that difference won’t matter much to U.S. customers, as the G5 Plus is the only version making it to that market. Priced at $229 for the base model with 2 GB of RAM and 32 GB of storage (with microSD expansion) and $299 for an additional GB of RAM and 64 GB of storage, the G5 Plus will be available Stateside in March.

Among the many decent features in the new G5’s include a front-facing fingerprint scanner that not only serves a security purpose but can also be converted into a navigation tool. Simply enable a setting to remove the on-screen navigation buttons and use a series of swipe gestures on the finger scanner to move through the interface.

The 12 MP camera on the G5 Plus has Dual Autofocus Pixels for super-fast autofocus – up to 60 percent faster than the G54 Plus – with a 1.4 micron pixel size, on-sensor phase detection and impressive f/1.7 aperture for low light shots. The camera app will be familiar to any G series fan, but the sensor is a major step up from previous G phones. The front-facing camera is a 5 MP shooter with f/2.2 aperture.

On the battery front there’s a 3,000 mAh battery featuring TurboPower charging for six hours of battery life in just 15 minutes. On the display front, the 5.2-inch Full HD IPS LCD is pretty standard mid-range fare but there’s a 3.5 mm headphone jack, unlike the flagship Moto Z. The Moto G5 and G5 Plus run Android 7.0 Nougat out of the box with Moto’s added value software features in the settings.

The G5 Plus is powered by the power-sipping Snapdragon 625, meaning that battery life should last even longer than on a flagship phone with a similar capacity, due to the lower power demands of the chipset. There’s also Google Assistant coming via update, Moto Actions like the familiar wrist-flick to launch the camera and a karate chop gesture to launch the flashlight.

If you’re in a market that will get the G5 as well, things take a step down: to a Snapdragon 430, 5.0-inch Full HD display, 13 MP f/2.0 aperture camera which maxes out at 1080p video (whereas the G5 Plus can shoot 4K), a 2,800 mAh removable battery and 16 GB or 32 GB versions.

The Moto G5 starts at 199 Euro for the 2 GB of RAM and 16 GB ROM version with an upgrade available to 32 GB of storage. Both the G5 and G5 Plus have dual-SIM capabilities but neither come with NFC, so there’ll be no contactless payments in your future if you pick one up.

There’s no pretending these phones are anything even close to flagships in specs, but they certainly look the part. Samsung has successfully delivered its premium design to the Galaxy A series and the same approach will likely work wonders for Lenovo too. They deliver the same tried-and-true recipe the Moto G series has become famous for, but they do it in a style typically reserved for flagship phones. And that sounds like a recipe worth repeating.

The Invoxia NX 200 desk phone is an ode to a technologically handicapped past

Why it matters to you

Invoxia’s NX 200 promises to turn your mobile phone into an extraordinary office phone, but it does too little for too much.

If you’re the kind of person who can’t stand sacrificing a desk phone for something mobile, or if you have an inexplicable affection for cubical farms of the early 2000s, then NVX 200 is the product you’ve been searching for. It’s a digital Bluetooth desk phone that offers an “optimized” and “simplified” user experience — presumably because, you know, the calling function on smartphones these days is way too cumbersome to fiddle around with.

Invoxia’s NVX 200 “offers the best of unified communication” with the “comfort” and “style” of a desk phone, according to the company’s press release. It takes calls in hands-free mode just like any old smartphone. Or, if you’d like to feel especially anchored to your desk, you can switch to the NX 200’s handset.

More: Invoxia’s stylish desktop phone puts your mobile device to work

The benefits of the NVX ostensibly include high quality sound, conferences of up to five people, apps like Skype and Hangouts, and programmable speed dial keys. But those aren’t exactly novel. AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, T-Mobile, and others have adopted or are in the process of adopting voice-over-LTE — VoLTE, for short — that sound noticeably clearer and better than your average landline. The iPhone and major mobile networks have supported five-way conference calling as far back as 2008. And it goes without saying that Skype and speed dial have been smartphone hallmarks for nearly a decade.

There’s potentially something of real value to Invoxia’s Vivo Acoustic software, which uses a combination of far-field microphones and software to pick up speech from up to 16 feet away. And there’s the the NVX 200’s standalone mode, which enables it to function as a phone without the need for Wi-Fi or Ethernet connectivity.

But it’s hard to argue any of those features justify the NX 200’s $250 asking price.

More: Forgot your phone charger at home? This desk can help

“In a time when Slack, Workplace by Facebook, and other unified communication networks triumph, the way companies communicate is evolving rapidly towards more mobility,” an Invoxia spokesperson said. “An entire new ecosystem needs to be created and peripheral devices should evolve accordingly to optimize unified communication.”

The firm may have a point about “ecosystems” better suited to modern workplaces, and those may well be coming. Samsung, for example, is reportedly developing a smartphone dock that switches to a desktop interface when plugged into a monitor. Motorola’s Moto Z accessory lineup, meanwhile, includes a pico projector that can throw video calls, text messages, and PowerPoint presentations onto any wall.

The NX 200, then, is ultimately a solution in search of a problem. Its appeal is predicated upon its familiarity, not its usefulness, and we’d have to conclude that there are much better ways to spend $250.

More: Got a dead-end job? You can run in circles with this hamster wheel desk

But if the marketing’s nostalgia moves you, the NX 200 is available now from Amazon and other internet retailers.

The Invoxia NX 200 desk phone is an ode to a technologically handicapped past

Why it matters to you

Invoxia’s NX 200 promises to turn your mobile phone into an extraordinary office phone, but it does too little for too much.

If you’re the kind of person who can’t stand sacrificing a desk phone for something mobile, or if you have an inexplicable affection for cubical farms of the early 2000s, then NVX 200 is the product you’ve been searching for. It’s a digital Bluetooth desk phone that offers an “optimized” and “simplified” user experience — presumably because, you know, the calling function on smartphones these days is way too cumbersome to fiddle around with.

Invoxia’s NVX 200 “offers the best of unified communication” with the “comfort” and “style” of a desk phone, according to the company’s press release. It takes calls in hands-free mode just like any old smartphone. Or, if you’d like to feel especially anchored to your desk, you can switch to the NX 200’s handset.

More: Invoxia’s stylish desktop phone puts your mobile device to work

The benefits of the NVX ostensibly include high quality sound, conferences of up to five people, apps like Skype and Hangouts, and programmable speed dial keys. But those aren’t exactly novel. AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, T-Mobile, and others have adopted or are in the process of adopting voice-over-LTE — VoLTE, for short — that sound noticeably clearer and better than your average landline. The iPhone and major mobile networks have supported five-way conference calling as far back as 2008. And it goes without saying that Skype and speed dial have been smartphone hallmarks for nearly a decade.

There’s potentially something of real value to Invoxia’s Vivo Acoustic software, which uses a combination of far-field microphones and software to pick up speech from up to 16 feet away. And there’s the the NVX 200’s standalone mode, which enables it to function as a phone without the need for Wi-Fi or Ethernet connectivity.

But it’s hard to argue any of those features justify the NX 200’s $250 asking price.

More: Forgot your phone charger at home? This desk can help

“In a time when Slack, Workplace by Facebook, and other unified communication networks triumph, the way companies communicate is evolving rapidly towards more mobility,” an Invoxia spokesperson said. “An entire new ecosystem needs to be created and peripheral devices should evolve accordingly to optimize unified communication.”

The firm may have a point about “ecosystems” better suited to modern workplaces, and those may well be coming. Samsung, for example, is reportedly developing a smartphone dock that switches to a desktop interface when plugged into a monitor. Motorola’s Moto Z accessory lineup, meanwhile, includes a pico projector that can throw video calls, text messages, and PowerPoint presentations onto any wall.

The NX 200, then, is ultimately a solution in search of a problem. Its appeal is predicated upon its familiarity, not its usefulness, and we’d have to conclude that there are much better ways to spend $250.

More: Got a dead-end job? You can run in circles with this hamster wheel desk

But if the marketing’s nostalgia moves you, the NX 200 is available now from Amazon and other internet retailers.

The Invoxia NX 200 desk phone is an ode to a technologically handicapped past

Why it matters to you

Invoxia’s NX 200 promises to turn your mobile phone into an extraordinary office phone, but it does too little for too much.

If you’re the kind of person who can’t stand sacrificing a desk phone for something mobile, or if you have an inexplicable affection for cubical farms of the early 2000s, then NVX 200 is the product you’ve been searching for. It’s a digital Bluetooth desk phone that offers an “optimized” and “simplified” user experience — presumably because, you know, the calling function on smartphones these days is way too cumbersome to fiddle around with.

Invoxia’s NVX 200 “offers the best of unified communication” with the “comfort” and “style” of a desk phone, according to the company’s press release. It takes calls in hands-free mode just like any old smartphone. Or, if you’d like to feel especially anchored to your desk, you can switch to the NX 200’s handset.

More: Invoxia’s stylish desktop phone puts your mobile device to work

The benefits of the NVX ostensibly include high quality sound, conferences of up to five people, apps like Skype and Hangouts, and programmable speed dial keys. But those aren’t exactly novel. AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, T-Mobile, and others have adopted or are in the process of adopting voice-over-LTE — VoLTE, for short — that sound noticeably clearer and better than your average landline. The iPhone and major mobile networks have supported five-way conference calling as far back as 2008. And it goes without saying that Skype and speed dial have been smartphone hallmarks for nearly a decade.

There’s potentially something of real value to Invoxia’s Vivo Acoustic software, which uses a combination of far-field microphones and software to pick up speech from up to 16 feet away. And there’s the the NVX 200’s standalone mode, which enables it to function as a phone without the need for Wi-Fi or Ethernet connectivity.

But it’s hard to argue any of those features justify the NX 200’s $250 asking price.

More: Forgot your phone charger at home? This desk can help

“In a time when Slack, Workplace by Facebook, and other unified communication networks triumph, the way companies communicate is evolving rapidly towards more mobility,” an Invoxia spokesperson said. “An entire new ecosystem needs to be created and peripheral devices should evolve accordingly to optimize unified communication.”

The firm may have a point about “ecosystems” better suited to modern workplaces, and those may well be coming. Samsung, for example, is reportedly developing a smartphone dock that switches to a desktop interface when plugged into a monitor. Motorola’s Moto Z accessory lineup, meanwhile, includes a pico projector that can throw video calls, text messages, and PowerPoint presentations onto any wall.

The NX 200, then, is ultimately a solution in search of a problem. Its appeal is predicated upon its familiarity, not its usefulness, and we’d have to conclude that there are much better ways to spend $250.

More: Got a dead-end job? You can run in circles with this hamster wheel desk

But if the marketing’s nostalgia moves you, the NX 200 is available now from Amazon and other internet retailers.

The pocket-sized Kado Wallet is the world’s thinnest phone charger

Why it matters to you

Smartphone chargers don’t get much more portable than the credit card-sized Kado Wallet.

Battery life is still a major bugbear for most smartphone owners. What do you when you don’t have a charger with you? Do you lug around a portable battery pack? Though they’re definitely getting sleeker and more compact, you may prefer something smaller still. The Kado Wallet is easily the slimmest phone charger we’ve ever seen. It’s so svelte, in fact, that you can slot it into your wallet.

There are two parts to this charger. One has fold-out prongs, so it can be plugged into a standard power outlet. The other has a coiled cable that you can pull out to plug into your phone. It feels about the thickness of three credit cards, and it’s very light.

More: The best portable battery chargers

The Kado Wallet comes with a 2-foot-long Lightning, MicroUSB, or USB Type-C cable built in, but that’s not all, because you can also slide the charger apart in the middle to reveal a USB connection that allows you to plug it into a laptop or computer for data transfer.

The maximum power output is 10 watts, so the charger will support some of the latest quick charge capabilities. The Kado Wallet will be available this summer and is set to be priced around $40 to $50. It’s not the only slimmed-down charger Kado has been working on. The company is focused on making charging easier and more portable.

“We call it the vicious cycle of mobile immobility, because we are always looking to increase our mobility, and in order to do so we increase the charger speed, but this increases the charger size,” Kado co-CEO Itay Hasid told Digital Trends. “We want to create truly portable solutions to keep your gadgets charged.”

Kado has also developed a portable wall charger for your laptops and tablets. The Kado Sleeve is the width of a pencil and sports two USB ports at one end. Fold it in half and you’ll reveal the prongs to plug into a standard wall outlet. It’s a 70-watt charger and can be used to charge up two devices simultaneously. It’s also expected to go on sale this summer and it will cost around $100.

These slim chargers are impressive, but what we’d really like to see is a portable charger with a built-in battery that could fit in our wallets. According to Kado’s Co-CEO, Itay Hasid, it’s in the works. We’ll keep you posted.

The pocket-sized Kado Wallet is the world’s thinnest phone charger

Why it matters to you

Smartphone chargers don’t get much more portable than the credit card-sized Kado Wallet.

Battery life is still a major bugbear for most smartphone owners. What do you when you don’t have a charger with you? Do you lug around a portable battery pack? Though they’re definitely getting sleeker and more compact, you may prefer something smaller still. The Kado Wallet is easily the slimmest phone charger we’ve ever seen. It’s so svelte, in fact, that you can slot it into your wallet.

There are two parts to this charger. One has fold-out prongs, so it can be plugged into a standard power outlet. The other has a coiled cable that you can pull out to plug into your phone. It feels about the thickness of three credit cards, and it’s very light.

More: The best portable battery chargers

The Kado Wallet comes with a 2-foot-long Lightning, MicroUSB, or USB Type-C cable built in, but that’s not all, because you can also slide the charger apart in the middle to reveal a USB connection that allows you to plug it into a laptop or computer for data transfer.

The maximum power output is 10 watts, so the charger will support some of the latest quick charge capabilities. The Kado Wallet will be available this summer and is set to be priced around $40 to $50. It’s not the only slimmed-down charger Kado has been working on. The company is focused on making charging easier and more portable.

“We call it the vicious cycle of mobile immobility, because we are always looking to increase our mobility, and in order to do so we increase the charger speed, but this increases the charger size,” Kado co-CEO Itay Hasid told Digital Trends. “We want to create truly portable solutions to keep your gadgets charged.”

Kado has also developed a portable wall charger for your laptops and tablets. The Kado Sleeve is the width of a pencil and sports two USB ports at one end. Fold it in half and you’ll reveal the prongs to plug into a standard wall outlet. It’s a 70-watt charger and can be used to charge up two devices simultaneously. It’s also expected to go on sale this summer and it will cost around $100.

These slim chargers are impressive, but what we’d really like to see is a portable charger with a built-in battery that could fit in our wallets. According to Kado’s Co-CEO, Itay Hasid, it’s in the works. We’ll keep you posted.

DT Daily MWC Day Zero: LG G6, Huawei P10, Moto G5 Plus, Samsung Galaxy Tab S3

The sun was out in Barcelona, Spain, shining on the many companies holding press conferences at Mobile World Congress today. While the show itself opens its doors on Monday morning, most of the major new releases have been revealed, which means we have new smartphones from LG, Huawei, and Motorola. Samsung is also at MWC 2017, but it hasn’t brought the Galaxy S8, and instead came with a new tablet.

LG G6

LG launched the LG G6 and pulled off a miracle with the slick new device, because the screen may be large at 5.7-inches and boast a unique 18:9 wide aspect ratio, but the phone itself is really compact. This means LG could have fun with the user interface, and it added clever new camera modes so you can see previews of shots you’ve taken and use an Instagram-ready square-picture mode. LG never forgets the camera itself, either, and both have wide-angle lenses. We’re waiting for U.S. launch dates, but it won’t be long.

More: Huawei Watch 2: Our First Take

Huawei P10

Huawei is back after impressing us with the Mate 9 at the beginning of the year, this time with the beautiful P10. It has a dual-lens camera co-developed with Leica on the back, designed for taking amazing pictures of people, with a clever new portrait mode. Leica has also worked on the selfie camera, so pictures of yourself will also look great, plus the phone’s design really stands out thanks to a range of stunning colors. A U.S. release isn’t in the cards, though, and prices start at 650 euros in Europe.

Moto G5 and G5 Plus

MWC isn’t only about expensive phones. Lenovo’s Moto brand has two Android 7.0 Nougat phones that could end up costing you only $230. The G5 Plus is the one coming to the U.S., and it has a 5.2-inch screen with a 1,920 x 1,080-pixel resolution, a Qualcomm Snapdragon 625 processor, and a 12-megapixel camera; all wrapped in a smooth plastic body. It’s coming out at the beginning of March.

More: Nokia’s back with three new phones, and one old-new phone

Samsung Galaxy Tab S3

If Samsung didn’t bring the Galaxy S8 to Mobile World Congress, what did it show off? It’s the Galaxy Tab S3 tablet, and it’s an alternative for anyone who doesn’t want to buy an iPad Pro. Made from glass and metal, it has a 10-inch AMOLED screen with HDR, for showing really high contrast video. An S Pen stylus is included, and a keyboard accessory is available, but pricing and the release date are a mystery for now.

The show begins properly tomorrow, and we’ll be back with all the latest news, so join us then.