Volvo electric car targets 250 miles, mass-market pricing, 2019 launch

Volvo is no stranger to technology. The car maker’s autonomous plans have been well documented, running hand-in-hand with the company’s desire to ensure that there are no deaths on the road that lay at the fault of a Volvo car. Safety is synonymous with Volvo.

The company is also no stranger to electric, offering hybrid cars through its Twin Engine option on the XC90 and V60. News that Volvo is aiming to get a pure electric model on the road with a range of 250 miles, then, should come as no surprise. 

Talking to Automotive News, Lex Kerssemakers, CEO of Volvo Car USA, is reported to have confirmed the company’s plans to get an EV on the road to challenge the likes of the Tesla Model 3. 

A range of 250 miles is the target, addressing the biggest barrier to electric cars which has been range anxiety – people just think it won’t go far enough to meet their needs.

Higher ranges are being pushed by companies like Tesla with its premium cars, but companies like Chevrolet are offering 238 miles with Bolt and Hyundai offering 124 from the Ioniq Electric (EPA figures).

Delivering it with a price between “$35,000 and $40,000” sees a future Volvo run slap-bang into the middle of Tesla Model 3 and Chevy Bolt pricing, with the Ioniq Electric arriving slightly cheaper at just over $30,000.

There’s no telling what this Volvo might look like, but Volvo has run pure electric cars before with its C30 DRIVe Electric concept. This adapted the company’s smaller hatchback model and offered 93 miles, but that was in 2011 and the world has moved on. 

The time frame of 2019 is rather tight, but Kerssemakers confirmed that Volvo’s modular platforms meant that it wasn’t starting from scratch. Watch this space. 

Tech meets fashion: 6 of the most stylish smartwatches

The worlds of fashion and tech are becoming more and more entwined. The collaborations that happen during fashion week are just the tip of the iceberg though, with numerous devices taking a fashion spin.

It’s smartwatches that have seen one of the biggest fashion influences however. Several companies are jumping on the bandwagon, from Tag Heuer and Guess, to Michael Kors and Emporio Armani, all after a slice of the smartwatch pie.

Not all smartwatches put fashion as a primary consideration, but we are seeing more and more that have at least appreciated that one size doesn’t fit all. For all those out there who are looking to be down with tech without it ruining your style, here are six fashion-friendly smartwatches.

Pocket-lint

Apple Watch

Buy the Apple Watch Series 2 for £369 from Amazon.co.uk or for $578.99 from Amazon.com

The Apple Watch could easily be considered one of the most fashion-conscious smartwatches around. It is well built and it looks great on, but more importantly, it comes in two sizes and there are over 30 models to choose from, and that’s before you start mixing and matching. 

The Hermès collaboration takes the style element of the Apple Watch one step further but you can create a great look with the other models too. You get most of the tech you’d expect from a smartwatch with this device and with so many strap options and body colours available, there is bound to be one to suit various outfits. 

Read the full review: Apple Watch Series 2 review

Pocket-lint

Tag Heuer Connected

Buy the Tag Heuer Connected for £2,995 from Amazon.co.uk or $2,650 from Amazon.com

The Tag Heuer Connected is one of the most expensive smartwatches out there and it only comes in one size – 46mm – but it is a beauty.

It’s a sporty style of Tag’s Carrera family of watches and it is more unique than many of its competitors, with Tag’s 150-year experience shining through. If you have the cash, it’s worth the splash.

Read the full review: Tag Heuer Connected review

Pocket-lint

Michael Kors Access

Buy the Michael Kors Access for £308.50 from Amazon.co.uk or for $350 from Amazon.com

The Michael Kors Access smartwatch is up there with the best in terms of design and wearability. It does what a smartwatch should do: look like a watch you’d want to wear, while adding Android Wear smart functionality.

The dedicated MK faces make the Access feel that little bit more special than some other Android Wear devices and there are several colour options available, as well as alternative straps. For the MK fans who love the signature chunky watches but want it connected, the Bradshaw won’t disappoint.

Read the full review: Michael Kors Access Bradshaw review

Pocket-lint

Emporio Armani Connected 

Buy the Emporio Armani Connected from £183 from Amazon.co.ukorfrom $245 from Amazon.com

The Emporio Armani Connected is a smart, sophisticated and well-built hybrid smartwatch. It joins a Kate Spade model and Skagen model under the Fossil umbrella, bringing an option for those who like the idea of getting more out of their watch but who aren’t quite sold on a fully-fledged smartwatch.

Being hybrid, it misses out on some of the features offered by Android Wear devices or the Apple Watch, but the Emporio Armani Connected looks like your typical Armani watch and that’s where it will gain the hearts of those who want to be stylish and smart.

Read the full preview: Emporio Armani Connected preview: Simple and sophisticated

Pocket-lint

Samsung Gear S3

Buy the Samsung Gear S3 Frontier for £312 from Amazon.co.uk or for $335 from Amazon.com / Buy the Samsung Gear S3 Classic for £319 from Amazon.co.uk or $323 from Amazon.com

The Samsung Gear S3 is available in a couple of different models, the Frontier and Classic, both of which deliver in terms of both design and software. The solid metal chassis of the Classic offers meticulous fine details, 22mm straps and a lovely rotating bezel for navigating the operating system, while the Frontier is sportier but still looks great.

Both Gear S3 devices deliver on feeling like a proper watch that happens to be smart. There’s no higher praise than that. They are not as recommendable for the iPhone user, but for Android, it’s a fantastic option.

Read the full review: Samsung Gear S3 review: Android Wear, beware, this is the smartwatch to beat

Pocket-lint

Guess Connect 

Buy the Guess Connect for men for £294 from Amazon.co.ukor $256.95 fromAmazon.com and for women for £249 from Amazon.co.uk or$249 from Amazon.com

The Guess Connect smartwatch was announced at CES 2015, making it one of the oldest smartwatches on this list. The company has been making watches for over 30 years but the fact that it is probably better known for handbags and shoes is perhaps why the Guess Connect could be seen as more stylish than some other smartwatches.

There are two size options – 41mm and 45mm – but there are also five styles available including a rose gold model with a crocodile skin strap. The Guess Connect gets its brains from Martian Watches and the best thing about this device is that it looks like a normal watch despite being a lot smarter than one.

Read the full review: Guess Connect review

The Morning After: Tuesday, March 14 2017

Welcome to Tuesday. Intel has just spent over $15 billion shoring up its self-driving car tech, you’ll be playing PS4 games, officially and legally, on your PC and we explain how a microwave works. Because it certainly isn’t a camera.

Smart cars.

Intel buys self-driving tech firm MobilEye for $15.3 billion

MobilEye is one of the big players in autonomous cars and was an early partner with Tesla on its AutoPilot technology. Now Intel has snapped up the firm for $15.3 billion after the two teamed up on tech for BMW’s iNext platform, expected to debut in 2021. MobilEye’s expertise is in the computer vision and machine learning that helps self-driving cars figure out where to go, and Intel wants to make that a piece of its “automated driving solution.”

PS4 on your PC.PlayStation Now will add streaming PS4 games soon

Sony has been streaming games from the cloud with PlayStation Now since 2014, but so far, that has not included games for its latest console. Now, the company says PlayStation 4 games will join the subscription service, with a “private test” starting in the next few weeks. There’s no word on which games will be available, but remember that Sony is pulling the plug on PS Now for all devices other than the PS4 and PC.

You can decline — and they can keep your phone
US Senate bill would require a warrant for border phone searches

Border Patrol agents searched 5,000 cell phones in February, up from 5,000 in all of 2015. Usually, authorities need a warrant to search your electronic devices. That rule does not apply for international border crossings, however, where searches of devices and demands for passwords to cloud and social media accounts have spiked. Senator Ron Wyden is introducing a new bill that would require a warrant for search and forbid border officials from asking for your passwords.

The explainer you don’t really need.
No, Kellyanne, microwaves cannot turn into cameras

Everyone’s paranoid about cybersecurity and surveillance these days, and rightly so. Thanks to the increase in connected devices in our homes, there are more and more gadgets that can be hacked to spy on you. However, the basic laws of physics still apply. Yesterday, President Trump’s senior counselor Kellyanne Conway told a reporter that microwave ovens can turn into cameras for surveillance. Nope.

Inside ‘Infinity Room,’ a dazzling SXSW art installation

Refik Anadol crafts alternate realities but not for VR headsets

Infinity Room is an enclosed cube measuring 12 feet in all three dimensions. Four laser projectors beam various animations that envelop the square room’s walls, while the floor and ceiling are covered in mirrors. The result is an intense space, one that at once offers sensory deprivation and overload. So we put Aaron Souppouris inside it.

It takes an unusual approach to multiplayer VR.
PlayStation VR horror title ‘The Persistence’ lets friends mess with your game

Firesprite’s upcoming PlayStation VR sci-fi horror title The Persistence will include a mobile companion app that lets nearby friends see the game map. Your pals can make your life easier by steering you toward items, or create havoc by running you toward threats — which probably the fun part. It’ll make it one of the few horror games where the people on your couch may be as much of a threat as those virtual enemies. Friends indeed.

But wait, there’s more…

• Oceans are warming faster, so expect more floods
• What’s on TV this week: ‘Fences’ and ‘Passengers’ on Blu-ray, plus ‘Iron Fist’ on Netflix
• Luxury phone company Vertu gets sold for a third time
• Volvo’s first EV will cost less than $40,000

TAG Heuer made a modular $1,650 smartwatch

When TAG Heuer released its first smartwatch two years ago, it had a price tag of $1,800 and was dubbed the most expensive Android Wear device on the market. Still, more than 56,000 people bought it, which is certainly enough reason for the Swiss watchmaker to delve into the smartwatch business once again. And so it has. Say hello to the TAG Heuer Connected Modular 45, which is the company’s second Android Wear collaboration between Intel and Google. The starting price is still pretty high at $1,650 (£1,400), but the cost might be worth it this time. The reason? The Modular 45 comes with interchangeable parts, which makes the watch a lot more versatile than its predecessor.

What’s more, it’s the watch’s modular nature that makes this the “First Swiss-Made Connected Watch.” That’s because the 45mm smartwatch module can be swapped out with a purely Swiss-Made mechanical option (Either the Calibre 5 or the much more premium Heuer 02T Tourbillon, which TAG Heuer claims has “the most accurate mechanical movements around”) that transforms it into an “ordinary” luxury timepiece. So even if the connected module part of it gets outdated eventually (as it likely will), you’ll still be able to have a high-end TAG Heuer on your wrist just by swapping that module out. And, who knows, maybe TAG Heuer will make future connected watch modules for the same system, making the whole thing wonderfully future-proof.

As mentioned, it’s not just the watch modules that are interchangeable. Pretty much every part of the watch — that includes the straps, the buckles and the lugs — is as well. The core Connected Modular 45 range consists of 11 different designs; the watch module is in either silver or black, while the straps come in rubber, leather, titanium or ceramic, in a slew of different colors. And if that’s not enough, well, TAG Heuer offers 45 additional options, some of which include premium materials like patent leather, rose gold and, yes, diamonds. It all adds up to a grand total of 56 different designs and, according to TAG Heuer, over 500 different design combinations.

Swapping out the different parts of the watch isn’t too difficult, but it does require a bit of finesse. During a hands-on event in San Francisco, I tried assembling and reassembling the watch a few times and it definitely took me several attempts before I finally got it right. The lugs and the central module connect to each other via a couple of pins that snap together, and a push button underneath releases them. The trick was aligning the parts correctly, which is harder to do than it looks. Still, after some trial and error, I did learn how to do it eventually. The cool part is that the parts are all interchangeable without the need for a screwdriver; just use your own two hands.

The Connected Modular 45 watch module is quite a stunner. It has a 1.39-inch AMOLED touchscreen display, which is a lot sharper than the transflective LCD on its predecessor. It’s covered in 2.5mm sapphire crystal glass and the entire thing is encased in titanium. And, of course, it also comes with a few different TAG Heuer designed watchfaces. Yet, those with smaller wrists might not like it so much. The 45mm watch is really quite bulky on slender arms, and goes against the rumors that it would be more female-friendly. Of course, something like that could come out some time in the future, but for now, the Connected 45 is undeniably on the chunky side.

As for the insides, the watch is comparable to most modern smartwatches. It has an Intel Atom Z34XX processor, 4GB of memory, WiFi, GPS, is water resistant to 50 meters and boasts more than 24 hours of battery life. It also ships with Android Wear 2.0 baked right in, which means simpler navigation, NFC support so you can use it with Android Pay, third-party complications and a standalone app store, so you can use it with an iPhone as well.

As mentioned above, the Connected Modular 45 will start at $1,650, but of course, additional options will cost extra. If you opt for the top-of-the-line accessories and add-ons, it’s very likely you’ll be spending thousands more. Still, the cost is very much on par with other non-connected luxury timepieces, and even those aren’t as modular as the Modular 45. So if you think of it as a modern Android Wear wearable disguised as a versatile Swiss-made watch, that might make the cost easier to swallow.

We’ll have more thoughts on the watch once we get our review unit, but for now, you can get your own in the following regions: US, UK, Europe, Hong Kong, Japan, Australia, Malaysia and Singapore.

UPDATE: CEO Jean-Claude Biver has confirmed that Android Wear 2.0 will be coming to the original Connected watch at the end of the month as well.

Amazon’s next retail outlets are drive-up grocery stores

Seattle residents might be able to order groceries from AmazonFresh online and pick them up from a brick-and-mortar outlet in the near future. The city has given the company permission to install “AmazonFresh Pickup” signs in Seattle’s Ballard and SoDo neighborhoods. GeekWire captured some photos of the locations under construction last month. Now the fillings it has unearthed indicate that the drive-up grocery outlets are almost ready to open for business. According to the documents, the shops will have signs that say “HELLO, BALLARD” and “HELLO, SODO.” Their exterior walls will also be painted with slogans like “Shop online. Pick up here.” and “Relax while we load your groceries.”

Amazon has been thinking of building drive-up retail stores for years now. They’re a totally different concept from the company’s no-checkout Amazon Go experiment in the same state. While Go will allow you to walk in and buy stuff without having to line up for payment, these ones will have eight parking slots you can reserve so you can drive up to claim your online purchase. They’ll employ personnel who’ll focus on bringing bags of groceries to your car, but you can also walk into the warehouse where other staff members put orders together to pick them up. You can even buy items right there using the stores’ tablets.

GeekWire says the documents mention the URL http://www.amazon.com/pickup. It doesn’t lead anywhere at the moment, but it will most likely go live when the e-commerce giant makes an official announcement. Considering the publication caught a crew filming at the SoDo location, launch day might not be that far off.

[Image credit: Seattle Department of Construction and Inspections/GeekWire]

Source: GeekWire

Dumb phone prices are no longer used to measure inflation

The UK’s Office for National Statistics (ONS) measures inflation by looking at price increases among products the majority of consumers are spending their hard-earned on. And every year, the lists of stuff the ONS cares about keeping track of, called the “baskets of goods and services,” are revised to reflect changes in our spending habits. Over the past few years, music and video streaming services, set-top boxes, digital game downloads and PS Plus and Xbox subscriptions have all been added to reflect their broad popularity, while sat navs and rewritable CDs/DVDs have been bumped due to their dwindling relevance. This year there’s only one notable change, with dumb phones being dropped from the list of influential tech products.

That means the prices of feature phones no longer contribute to measuring the plummeting value of the pound. This needs little explanation, of course, but the official line is the removal is because “the number of models available and expenditure are falling as people increasingly switch to smartphones.” I can’t seem to track down any reliable market share stats, but I doubt you need figures to illustrate the population’s preference for touchscreens these days. That said, the ONS may soon regret throwing dumb phones out of the basket like an abandoned receipt when we’re all walking around with new Nokia 3310s this time next year.

Source: Office for National Statistics

Apple Joins Group of Companies Supporting Google in Foreign Email Privacy Case

Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, and Cisco have filed an amicus brief supporting Google in an ongoing case dealing with security and privacy, topics that Apple has been known to advocate in the past (via Business Insider). Most recently, Google’s case has led to a court in Pennsylvania requesting the company to comply to an FBI warrant asking for emails residing on foreign servers.

Although it’s unclear what resides within the emails in question, in a report last month (via The Register) it was said that a Pennsylvania district court submitted two domestic search warrants — issued under the Stored Communications Act — targeted at the suspects in the case and their emails stored overseas. Google was given two orders previously, which it refused to comply with, before the judge in the case ruled that as an American corporation it must abide by the rulings of an American court, no matter where the data in question is being held.

The coalition of companies supporting Google now argue that the scope of the SCA doesn’t reach into foreign territories, and could lead to Google being forced to violate foreign data privacy laws. The amicus brief cites a case where Microsoft was asked to hand over emails stored on cloud servers in Ireland.

Microsoft eventually won that case when it argued that the SCA does not cover data stored on servers in foreign countries and that the Act itself is “a statute enacted when the internet was still in its infancy” (it dates back to 1986) and subsequently should not be the touchstone of modern, technology-driven privacy cases.

The U.S. Government frequently serves some Amici with warrants issued under the Stored Communications Act (SCA). When the data sought is stored in a U.S. data center, Amici regularly comply with such warrants. The Government, however, also has attempted to use such warrants to force some Amici, without consent of the customer or the foreign country, to seize private emails stored in a foreign country and to turn them over to the Government. But the SCA does not authorize warrants that reach into other countries, and forcing those Amici to execute such searches on the Government’s behalf would place those Amici in the position of being compelled to risk violating foreign data privacy laws

The brief also argues that if Google is forced to hand over the emails, a reverse situation could occur that opens the floodgates for foreign countries to request emails from U.S. citizens that are stored on U.S. servers. At the most extreme, the brief argues that foreign nations could see the data extraction as “an affront to their sovereignty in much the same way that physically conducting law enforcement activity on foreign soil would violate their sovereignty and territorial integrity.”

Other than the filing of the amicus brief, Google’s case hasn’t moved forward in any way since February. When the Pennsylvanian court filed the search warrant forcing Google to hand over the emails, a spokesperson for the company said that Google plans to continue to appeal and “we will continue to push back on over-broad warrants.”

Tags: Google, Amazon, Microsoft
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‘Full Throttle Remastered’ will tear up the road this April

It’s been almost a year and a half since Double Fine announced it was giving Tim Schafer’s classic motorcycle adventure game an HD makeover, but title is finally almost ready. Today, the company announced that Full Throttle Remastered will be available on PS4, PS Vita and PC on April 18th. Its been a long wait, but for fans of the classic game, it could be worth it. At GDC earlier this month, Schafer described the remake as a sort of preservation project — detailing the painstaking lengths the team went to recreate all of the game’s graphics in HD quality, and the gold mine it found in the original reel-to-reel voiceover tapes.

Like previous remasters of Schafer’s early work, Full Throttle Remastered will give players the ability to swap between new and classic versions of the game on the fly, including the ability to mix and match old graphics with remastered audio tracks. Double Fine also announced the release date for David O’Reilly’s Everything, an artistic, yet goofy universe simulator with intentionally low-budget animation. That hits the PlayStation Store exclusively on March 21st. Want either? That’ll be $14.99.

‘Zelda’ concert tour to celebrate ‘Breath of the Wild’

If you love The Legend of Zelda, or appreciate top video game tunes, there’s nothing like a Symphony of the Goddesses performance. The live, orchestral concert series has dazzled fans of Link and Hyrule for the past five years, with epic renditions of classic tracks from A Link to the Past, Ocarina of Time and more. Today, concert organiser Jason Michael Paul Entertainment has announced the dates for the 2017 Tour. It’s also teased some set list changes, including a new piece from Breath of the Wild, an “all-new movement” from Skyward Sword and an updated overture.

The fourth season begins on March 17th in Bueonos Aires, Argentina. The show then travels across South America, North America, the UK and other parts of Europe, including Spain, Germany and Italy (you can check out the full tour schedule here). It’s a pretty big year for The Legend of Zelda, following the release of Breath of the Wild on the Nintendo Switch. The game has been praised by the press, earning a 97 percent score on Metacritic and a glowing review from Engadget’s own Aaron Souppouris. Interest in the Symphony of the Goddesses tour should, therefore, be high.

If you manage to snag tickets, you can expect a two-hour concert performed by a 66-piece orchestra and 24-person choir. The group will perform tracks from Zelda adventures old and new, including Majora’s Mask, A Link Between Worlds and Twilight Princess. While you sit and enjoy the tunes, a video collage will play behind the band, matching each score with defining moments from the franchise. “Besides all the new stuff, we’re also bringing back the Ballad of the Wind Fish from the original program, which has been a big request from fans for a while,” Jason Michael Paul said. We can think of few better ways to celebrate the series.

Source: Zelda Symhony of the Goddesses

Watch John Oliver poke fun at Samsung over its ‘rough couple of months’

Why it matters to you

After a difficult few months highlighted by Oliver’s spoof ad, Samsung will be hoping to turn a new page with the imminent launch of the Galaxy Note 8.

John Oliver put Samsung in the crosshairs in the latest edition of Last Week Tonight, lambasting the electronics giant for its “rough couple of months” that saw, for example, global recalls of its fiery Galaxy Note 7 phone and exploding washer.

“The fact is, Samsung is having a spectacularly bad run of PR, and to cover themselves in the future, they should probably just come clean about all their products’ flaws,” Oliver says before running a chaos-filled spoof Samsung ad (above) that promises customers a new level of honesty about its products and “no more surprises.”

According to the ad, “the truth” is that its phones “secretly call your mom on speakerphone whenever you’re having sex,” and that its fitness band makes you “look like a total douche.”

The one promise that it can “absolutely make” is that “none of our products will explode anymore.” What happens next involves plenty of flames and swearing as the ad rapidly descends into carnage.

More: The 10 worst tech failures of 2016

Following its tech-focused troubles last year, more bad news came Samsung’s way recently when its smart TVs showed up in a WikiLeaks-released document suggesting the CIA has the ability to hack them to listen in on private conversations. And just before that, Samsung de facto chief Lee Jae-yong was arrested on bribery charges.

Still, the company is hoping to turn a new page with the imminent launch of the Galaxy Note 8. Keen to reassure potential buyers that the new phone will not overheat or catch fire, Samsung has been running ads highlighting a new, vigorous 8-point test for each and every one of the Note 8 batteries.

The Note 7 received some pretty decent reviews prior to the first reports of problems last summer, so if the Note 8 can bring design improvements and a safely functioning battery, who knows, the company may yet be able to fix its battered reputation. And also escape further unwanted attention from Oliver and his team.