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 So even if the connected module part of it gets outdated eventually (as it likely will), you’ll still be able to have a high-end TAG Heuer on your wrist just by swapping that module out.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.

This electric skateboard can hit 25 mph and charges itself when you brake

Why it matters to you

The choice is getting better all the time if you’re looking for an electric skateboard, and here’s another one to check out.

If you’re yet to hop on a souped-up skateboard but rather like the idea of tearing around the streets on something other than your boring old bicycle, then you might want to take a couple of minutes to check out the IvoryBoard.

The stylish-looking, battery-powered personal transporter offers an impressive top speed of 25 mph — that’s a shade faster than the popular Boosted board that YouTube star Casey Neistat uses for his hair-raising outings on the streets of Manhattan.

With an impressive 18-mile range, you’ll be just fine for the bulk of your trips, though here’s the neat part — the battery receives a charge every time you brake, increasing its range in the process. Still concerned about juice? Then buy an extra battery and swap it out in a few seconds when the original runs flat.

Anyway, there may be times when you want to use it sans electrical power. In that case, you’re all set, as its creators have designed it to work “exactly like a standard longboard when powered off,” giving riders “a frictionless ride that glides smoothly like a regular skateboard.”

As you’d expect, the board comes with its own remote speed controller, designed with a ring-like finger-hold so it doesn’t slip off when you’re making a sharp turn.

Drawbacks? Well, the machine tips the scales at 17 pounds, which is a little heavier than many of the other electric skateboards currently on the market, so if you think you’ll be carrying it about a fair bit and you prefer to keep things light, then you might want to look at the alternatives on the market.

More: 12 electric skateboards that let you skate without the sweat

Recently racing through its Kickstarter goal, the Aussie-based startup behind the IvoryBoard is planning to send out the first units as early as next month.

There is one snag for early adopters, though. The accompanying iOS and Android app, which offer information on speed and battery level, is unlikely to launch with the board, instead arriving “within six months” of March 23, the date the campaign ends.

Shipping to anywhere in the world, the IvoryBoard is expected to retail for about $1,180, though make a pledge now and you can secure one for $755.

The autonomous robot sub with a really silly name is about to begin its maiden voyage

Why it matters to you

Even though it has a silly name, Boaty McBoatface’s advanced technologies means oceanographers should soon gain new knowledge about Earth’s polar regions.

A high-tech, remotely controlled submarine called Boaty McBoatface is setting out on its first mission in the icy cold waters of Antarctica this week.

As you may recall, the bizarre moniker was the result of a public campaign launched last year by the U.K.’s Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) to choose a name for its gleaming new £200 million (about $243 million) polar research ship.

The NERC had encouraged “inspirational” suggestions linked to “environmental and polar science, to help us tell everyone about the amazing work the ship does.”

But the council clearly hadn’t accounted for the Brits’ sometimes bonkers humor, with one particular name — Boaty McBoatface — attracting way more votes than any other choice offered in the online poll.

Other suggestions included Onion Knight, I Like Big Boats & I Cannot Lie, and It’s Bloody Cold Here.

Clearly horrified at the thought of having to give its lovely new vessel such a daft name, the NERC reminded everyone that it would have the final say. After some thought, it ended up naming the ship after a British naturalist and broadcaster — a man with the far more sensible name of David Attenborough — who placed fifth in the poll. However, not wanting to completely disregard the people’s carefully considered choice, the council said it’d give the absurd Boaty name to the ship’s robot sub instead.

Boaty gets to work!

This week Boaty McBoatface begins its maiden mission aboard the the British Antarctic Survey research ship RRS James Clark Ross, which the RRS Sir David Attenborough will replace in 2019.

The autonomous underwater vehicle is a 3.62-meter-long, 700-kg “autosub” capable of traveling under ice at depths of up to 6,000 meters. Data gathered by Boaty will be sent back to scientists on the ship via a radio link when the sub periodically surfaces.

“Boaty and similar autonomous vehicles will help oceanographers investigate the processes driving change in the polar regions, including the extent of the ice melt, and conduct a range of research in the Arctic and Antarctic oceans without the need for the constant presence of a research ship,” NERC explains on its website.

In the coming years, Boaty is expected to attempt the first-ever crossing of the Arctic Ocean under ice, a mission that “has the potential to deliver a step-change in scientists’ ability to observe change in this vital region.”

More: The super rich don’t burn cash, they sink it into these insane personal submarines

The advantage of the sub’s silly name is that it’s helped to generate publicity for oceanographer’s work far beyond what they could’ve imagined before the public campaign started.

The U.K.’s National Oceanography Centre has even come up with a cartoon version of Boaty McBoatface to get kids interested in marine research, and, according to the Guardian, is also creating a large inflatable of Boaty that’ll publicize its work at special events around Britain.

Xiaomi sells over 1 million units of the Redmi Note 4 in India

Xiaomi sold a million units of the Redmi Note 4 in just 45 days in India.

Xiaomi has announced today that is sold over 1 million units of the Redmi Note 4 in India. Xiaomi achieved the milestone in just 45 days, making the Redmi Note 4 the fastest device to get to the million mark in the country. As noted by the company on Facebook, that equates to one sale every four seconds.

It’s easy to see why the device is doing so well in the country. The Redmi Note 4 offers a compelling set of features on a budget, and Xiaomi retooled the camera and introduced a more premium design. The company also overcame last year’s supply constraints, selling over 250,000 units of the device in the first sale.

• Xiaomi Redmi Note 4 review
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 4 vs. Redmi Note 3

The Redmi Note 3 was one of the best-selling devices in India last year, and its successor is well on its way to meet that goal. That said, there are phones on the horizon — particularly the Moto G5 — that will take the fight to Xiaomi.

Motorola is all set to launch the Moto G5 Plus in the country tomorrow, and the device shares the same internal hardware — Snapdragon 625 along with 4GB of RAM and 64GB storage — as the Redmi Note 4 while offering a far better software experience and a significantly upgraded camera.

For now, however, the Redmi Note 4 is the device to beat in the budget segment in India.