Ditch the cable with Skullcandy’s Ink’d wireless earbuds, now as low as $27

A quality pair of in-ear headphones is a must-have for your mobile devices. And Bluetooth connectivity now makes it easy to ditch the cables,. Trend-setter Apple, for example, has gone all-in on the Bluetooth bandwagon, ditching the 3.5mm headphone jack altogether on the latest iPhones.

Bluetooth headphones free you from having to be tethered to your device via a cable, so if you’ve been thinking about liberating yourself from wires, then consider the affordable Skullcandy Ink’d wireless earbuds. These in-ear headphones feature a Bluetooth receiver built into a lightweight flexible band that sits comfortably around your neck. The featherweight unit weighs only 24 grams, and the neck collar uses cable channels to keep the earbuds from flopping around, making it comfortable to wear all-day long.

The internal battery gives you eight hours of playback on a single charge, and the neckband has a built-in microphone and remote so you can take calls and control your music playback. The Bluetooth receiver offers a wireless range of up to 30 feet, so you don’t have to worry about dropped connections even when your connected device is stowed away. When not in use, the earbuds and neck band easily roll up so you can tuck them into your pocket or bag.

The Skullcandy Ink’d wireless earbuds include two sets of silicone gel ear pieces for a better fit that isolates sound, so you won’t hear too much outside noise and people around you won’t be bothered by your music. The drivers feature Supreme Sound technology that delivers crisp, clear audio.

The Skullcandy Ink’d wireless earbuds are normally $50, but you can enjoy a limited-time discount of up to $21, with the white pair priced at $29 and the black and royal blue models priced at $32 and $33, respectively. The red and black headphones are also available for $43 which still provides a nice 13 percent discount.

$29 on Amazon

AMD’s new Radeon Pro Duo claims double the performance of a Titan X

Why it matters to you

It’s not for gamers, but professionals now have another option when it comes to high-tier graphics for serious workloads.

AMD has a new Radeon Pro Duo built atop its most recent Polaris architecture and it’s an impressive piece of hardware. Featuring dual Polaris graphics processors (GPU) and a mammoth 32GB of GDDR5 memory, AMD claims it is capable of delivering performance more than twice an Nvidia GTX Titan X.

With an absence of real competition for Nvidia’s top-of-the-line graphics cards, AMD has released a few zany cards over the past few years. Alongside a $10,000 GPU with its own built-in solid-state storage (SSD), AMD also released the Radeon Pro Duo in 2016. At the time, it was the most powerful single-board graphics card in the world, despite using two GPUs to do it. While the new Radeon Pro Duo cannot match it in terms of raw performance, it is certainly powerful and much more efficient.

Aimed at the professional market, AMD’s new Radeon Pro Duo is built using Polaris chips, based on the same architecture as the WX 7100. The card is designed to excel at media and entertainment, we’re told, though more in a creation sense than the kind you expect to find in an HTPC.

The Polaris Radeon Pro Duo comes with a total of 72 compute units, offering up to 11.45 TFLOPS of performance. It’s said to be capable of handling up to four 4K monitors operating at 60hz, or a single 8K monitor at 30Hz (60Hz with a dual cable solution). We are told that the dual-GPU design of the Radeon Pro Duo lets professionals multi-task, even between demanding applications, like rendering visual effects while creating 3D assets in a secondary program.

Each of the dual cores is clocked at 1,243MHz, with 16GB of memory a piece. The two memory interfaces are 256-bit each.

The big claim AMD makes about this card, though, is its overall performance. While the raw numbers don’t necessarily make it the most powerful card in the world, we’re told that it has “up to two times faster performance compared with the Radeon Pro WX 7100 and up to two times faster performance than the closest competing professional graphics card.”

That wording does seem rather deliberate. In its cited performance numbers, AMD pits the Polaris Radeon Pro Duo against an Nvidia Titan X and does beat it handily in a number of settings, but that’s not the most powerful card Nvidia has anymore. The Titan X falls short of the consumer facing GTX-1080 Ti and the current king of the hill, the Titan XP.

Considering the latter has a cited 12 TFLOPS of computational power, it may be that AMD chose its comparison deliberately here. It could also simply be that the Xp wasn’t available then, since the testing AMD refers to was reportedly conducted on March 25.

That is not to say that the new Radeon Pro Duo wouldn’t beat it, but we don’t know either way. It is certainly a powerful card with a competitive price tag of $1,000.

The Radeon Pro Duo is set to become available at the end of May.

3D-printed zoetrope gives 19th-century tech a 21st-century spin

Why it matters to you

Like your Victorian-era artwork with a dash of 21st-century tech? This stunning 3D-printed zoetrope is just the ticket!

Whether it is virtual reality, robotics, or artificial intelligence, a lot of the cool tech we cover here at Digital Trends is on the cutting edge of what’s possible, circa 2017. A new art project by renowned U.K. artist Mat Collishaw takes a slightly different tact, however, by merging tech that could have existed 200 years ago with the latest in 3D printing technology.

The result is a 3D-printed zoetrope called “The Centrifugal Soul,” an elaborate three-dimensional model which uses a combination of 60 rpm rotations and flashing strobe lights to create the illusion of movement. The zoetrope depicts a 1-second loop — 18 separate frames in all — depicting wild flowers blooming and colorful birds flapping their wings. Think of it as a Victorian-era GIF — with a bit of modern day additive manufacturing thrown in for good measure!

“The only way of getting that animation millimeter-accurate is to 3D print it,” 51-year-old Collishaw told Wired in an interview. Despite using the technology, though, he said that he’s “not really a tech person” and uses his distrust of technology to add an element of tension to his work. “It’s good to use a medium I’m suspicious of,” he continued.

The Centrifugal Soul is currently on display at London’s Blain Southern.

But this isn’t the end of Collishaw’s deep dive into the world of Victorian technology, combined with the latest emerging tech. Next up, Mat Collishaw is set to debut a virtual reality project, based on the world’s first major photography exhibition, which took palace in 1839.

Called “Thresholds,” the work will recreate that exhibition in painstaking VR detail, thanks to the technical expertise of London-based CGI firm VMI Studio and doctoral students hailing from the University of Nottingham. Thresholds will debut at Photo London on May 18, before travelling to other cities in the United Kingdom.

More of this sort of thing, please! Let’s hope it comes to the United States next.

Best Tempered Glass Screen Protectors for Samsung Galaxy Tab S3

What’s the best screen protector for the Galaxy Tab S3?

If you’re going to bother getting a screen protector for your Galaxy Tab S3, then you’ll want to go with tempered glass. If it cracks or chips, it won’t turn into sharp, scratchy shards of death; it’ll become blunt bits, so your screen will stay pristine. That being said, tempered glass is very strong, so you’d be hard-pressed to mess it up without much force.

Here are the best tempered glass screen protectors for your Galaxy Tab S3.

• Pleson
• Supershieldz
• Yoozon
• Spigen
• IQ Shield

Pleson

Pleson’s tempered glass screen protector for the Tab S3 is made to fit perfectly. Its precise laser cut means that your whole screen is protected — no more, no less. Pleson glass features an oleophobic (oil-resistant) and hydrophobic (water-resistant) coating, as well as a surface that repels dirt and dust, so you shouldn’t see fingerprints and if water hits your screen, it’ll just bead and roll off.

Pleson offers a lifetime warranty, so if anything goes wrong (within reason), you’ll receive a replacement.

See at Amazon

Supershieldz

Supershieldz is an old standby for tempered glass screen protectors. It makes quality protectors that are perfectly clear and maintain all the touch sensitivity you’d want and expect from a quality tempered glass screen protector. Like all great protectors, Supershieldz features and anti-scratch and anti-fingerprint coating, so you won’t have to constantly wipe your screen with your shirt.

Supershieldz Amazon ad says the protector fits the Tab S2, but it will also definitely fit your Galaxy Tab S3.

See at Amazon

Yoozon

Yoozon’s tempered glass screen protector is Amazon’s current number one new release for the Galaxy Tab S3. It’s 0.33mm thick, which makes for optimal clarity and full touch sensitivity, and like any great tempered glass screen protector, it’s laser cut, so it fits your Tab S3 precisely.

Yoozon offers a two-pack for $12, and you get a lifetime replacement or refund warranty.

See at Amazon

Spigen

Spigen makes great phone cases and that has translated well to tempered glass screen protectors. This two-pack is only about $14 and it features a dust-resistant and oleophobic coating to prevent fingerprints and keep your Tab S3’s screen nice, clean, and pristine. This protector features rounded edges, which is perfect if you like to keep your Galaxy Tab S3 in a case.

See at Amazon

IQ Shield

IQ Shield is known for making excellent screen protectors, and this tempered glass protector for your Galaxy Tab S3 keep with tradition in reliable fashion. IQ Shield promises almost 100% clarity and perfect touch sensitivity, so once you install it, you shouldn’t even notice it’s there. IQ Shields are made from ballistic tempered glass, which is very resistant to impact, so it’s difficult to shatter, meaning your screen stays protected and in one piece.

See at Amazon

Do you use a screen protector?

Do you use a screen protector on your tablets? Which one are you using on your Tab S3? Let us know in the comments below.

Google is tweaking ongoing casting notifications to be more informative

You’ll still see it in your notification shade, but now it tells you if someone’s casting content.

Google’s wireless, in-network casting abilities are one of the better parts of subscribing to the Android ecosystem, which is why the company’s continually tweaking it to work better. Android Police reports that there are some minor changes rolling out that will hopefully make it easier for multi-device households to use casting.

At present, if you’re streaming something, say, from your Google Home in the kitchen, anyone else with an Android device connected to the same network could see that there’s an active casting session somewhere in the house, but not whether it was them doing the casting or someone else. As a result, having this alert made omnipresent in the notification shade means there were often accidental stops for whatever’s streaming, simply because it wasn’t informative about who was streaming.

Google’s apparently working on making this notification more explicit. The feature isn’t live for everyone just yet, but it appears to be slowly rolling out. Swipe down, and you’ll see that a device is casting on the Wi-Fi network. There are still buttons for starting and stopping the stream, but you don’t have to touch those if you don’t want to. And it’s nice so that if you’re watching TV with other Android users, for instance, they can stop the stream if needed without unlocking your personal device.

Google launches second-gen Jump camera for filming VR

Google has launched the second-gen Jump and the Jump Start initiative, which gets the appropriate tech for making VR into the hands of content creators.

Google is certainly not backing down from virtual reality any time soon. In fact, it’s announced the next generation of the Jump camera for capturing three-dimensional 360 video.

The second-gen Jump camera — preceded only by the GoPro Odyssey — comes packed with 17 Yi Halo 4K-capable cameras. Seventeen! There are 16 cameras continuously arranged around the device, in addition to an upward facing camera to help with image continuity. The camera also boasts 100 minutes of continuous recording, as well as a companion Android app that acts as a remote control and features a live preview.

Google has also announced Jump Start, aimed at getting the right tools into the hands of prolific virtual reality content creators. From Google’s blog:

To get Jump cameras into the hands of more filmmakers than ever before, today we’re also announcing Jump Start. Jump Start gives selected filmmakers both free access to a Jump camera and free unlimited use of the Jump Assembler for their VR film. Over the next year, the program will give over 100 creators these tools and enable them to make their vision a reality. Applications to Jump Start open today, and filmmakers have until May 22nd to apply.

The Xiaomi-backed Halo cameras have also been built to work seamlessly with Jump Manager, the Mac-only app that syncs up the rig to Google’s cloud-based service for converting raw footage into VR videos and photos. The second-gen Jump is on sale this summer and you can register your email if you’re interested in making your own virtual reality content with the device.

Tesla plans to double the number of Supercharger stations in 2017

Tesla has announced it will have more than 10,000 Superchargers in North America by the end of 2017.

That’s more than double the amount of high-speed electric car chargers than it had at the beginning of the year. Tesla currently operates 830 Supercharger stations with 5,400 charging connectors across 31 countries. The company also revealed in a blog post it will expand its Destination Charging network (at partner locations like hotels and parking garages) from 9,000 to 15,000 connectors.

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But that’s not the most interesting part. Tesla wants to make charging “ubiquitous in urban centers”. It will build larger stations along its “busiest travel routes” to accommodate “several dozen Teslas Supercharging simultaneously”. These stations will feature the same type of Superchargers and technology currently available; the size of the site will simply allow many Tesla vehicles to charge at once.

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“In addition, many sites will be built further off the highway to allow local Tesla drivers to charge quickly when needed,” Tesla explained.

These moves should therefore help city-dwelling Tesla owners who don’t have their own garages or access to reliable daily charging.

Xiaomi still isn’t ready to sell phones in America

Whenever I write about a new Xiaomi product these days, the response is usually sour comments along the lines of, “Why bother telling us when these won’t be coming to our side of the world?” I, too, get frustrated (as if the poor data connection in Beijing wasn’t enough to wind me up), because it has indeed been a long wait since I attended Xiaomi’s first-ever product launch almost six years ago. That bitterness has only gotten worse as the company’s smartphones have became increasingly more appealing. Case in point: There are no plans for its new Mi 6 to enter the US or Europe. Meanwhile, Shenzhen-based OnePlus — a much smaller and younger competitor, mind you — has been able to form impressive lines in the US, UK and other places Xiaomi doesn’t dare go.

The day after the Mi 6 launch event, I sat down with Xiaomi Senior Vice President, Wang Xiang, to vent. Wang took over Hugo Barra’s role as Global VP earlier this year while continuing to oversee the company’s supply chain and intellectual property, so he was my obvious go-to exec for this occasion. Alas, in contrast to Barra’s previous hint of a possible 2017 smartphone launch in the US, Wang was reluctant to provide a time frame, but he is certainly well aware of the “Mi fans” out there who go as far as buying Xiaomi products through unofficial channels.

“Even though we don’t sell [in the US or Western Europe], we feel very sorry for not serving them well,” Wang said. He reasoned that in terms of supply chain and manpower, Xiaomi’s resources are currently stretched thin serving 30 regions, most of which are developing markets. “What we’re after is a mass market, a massive impact, as opposed to a premium, elite thing. We want innovation for everyone.”

Based on marketshare in Q4 2016, Xiaomi was the number-two smartphone brand in India and number three in Ukraine, Indonesia plus Myanmar. The demand there will likely continue to grow as the company plans to open more authorized stores with local retailers or distributors. While it was just about managing to cater to those markets, Xiaomi also faced supply chain issues around the same time back in China (which may explain why it fell to fifth place in China that quarter). “Therefore we are in no hurry to serve the developed markets,” Wang said.

Then there’s the usual story of how the US smartphone market is driven by carriers, and how bringing a device to their networks would require customization plus tedious testing. Wang said his engineering team is “super busy” and would struggle to serve such carriers, but they are still frequently in touch to explore the right opportunity for a potential launch.

Xiaomi is probably capable of going the OnePlus or Huawei Honor route, selling directly to consumers in Europe and the US. But in the exec’s words, this would be a “hot-headed” move to make. According to Wang, Xiaomi doesn’t want to burn bridges with the carriers, nor does it want “short-term gain” to potentially “ruin seven years’ worth of hard work on branding” because of poor preparation.

Clearly, Wang isn’t worried about catching up with these Chinese competitors later: “There’s a Chinese saying: ‘haste makes waste.’ You need to focus with patience and wait for the perfect opportunity.”

Xiaomi already sells accessories such as batteries, headphones, speakers plus TV boxes in the US, and it hopes to bring popular Mi Ecosystem products like its self-balancing scooter and rice cookers to more overseas markets. As for smartphones, Xiaomi’s most global device remains its Mi Note 2, which packs in 37 radio bands to cover pretty much the entire world. Wang added that his company will continue to release at least one or two such global devices each year, along with a follow-up to the ceramic, near-borderless Mi Mix at some point. Hardcore Mi fans will just have to keep buying their phones from their usual (unofficial) channels.

Kitty Hawk’s Flyer isn’t the flying car you were promised

That flying car startup Google’s Larry Page is backing? It’s finally showing its hand… and the company’s initial product is both more and less than what you might expect. Kitty Hawk’s first publicly demonstrated vehicle, the Flyer, isn’t so much the flying car of sci-fi fame as a recreational vehicle. The one-seat, propeller-driven vehicle is meant for a short flight across lake when you’re at the cottage, not commuting to work — that Jetsons-like future isn’t here yet. You won’t have to wait long to get it, though. Kitty Hawk expects to start selling the Flyer by the end of 2017. This will be a practical reality within months, in other words. You can already put down $100 to sign up for a $2,000 discount on the finished machine.

Page’s investment wasn’t just focused on this one product, of course. Kitty Hawk notes that there are several prototypes in the works, and this is more a “vision of the future” than the sum total of its plans. The focus on over-water flights is intentional — it’s meant to reassure Federal Aviation Administration officials worried that unlicensed pilots will be flying over populated areas. The company wants to work with the FAA to enable more ambitious vehicles, but it would rather play it safe in the early stages.

Kitty Hawk might want to hurry. Airbus may test a more practical flying car by the end of the year, Ehang wants to fly passenger drones in the summer, and personal jets are becoming viable. While the Flyer may become an honest-to-goodness product relatively quickly, it’s not the people carrier that others are promising. Kitty Hawk may need to move fast if it wants to fend off its flying car rivals.

Via: New York Times

Source: Kitty Hawk

DJI’s first-person goggles look to the future of drone flight

The new DJI Goggles put you in the cockpit of a quadcopter, giving you a first-person, VR-like experience in the real world. The goggles have a couple of screens through which you can see whatever the drone’s camera is pointing at. You can even control where the camera is pointed simply by moving your head. While we were able to take a quick test-drive of this immersive headset last summer, the company’s been rather coy about sharing specifics. Now, though, DJI has revealed a more detailed set of features for its goggles, as well as information on the new Ronin 2, an image-smoothing gimbal rig for professional filmmakers.

The DJI Goggles display a 1920X1080 image in front of each of your eyes, which is like having two HD displays strapped to your face. The company says that wearing the goggles is like looking at a 216-inch home theater screen set about three meters away. You can wirelessly connect to a Mavic Pro or Phantom 4 drone and use head movements to control both aircraft yaw — the spin around its center axis — as well as camera tilt. Up to two goggles can connect to the Mavic Pro drone, so you can share your aerial adventures with a friend, too.

DJI has also improved its new three-axis camera stabilizer with the new Ronin 2. The update is aimed squarely at filmmakers like Ethan Hawke, who used the original Ronin to film his biopic Blaze. The gimbals on Ronin 2 have more power, says the company, which gives them more torque to carry larger cameras. The carbon fiber monocoque frame is light and sturdy, and DJI has improved the ability to connect cameras and accessories via the Ronin 2’s integrated power and data ports.

The Ronin 2 will be available in the second quarter of this year, while the $449 DJI Goggles start shipping after May 20, 2017.

Source: DJI Goggles, DJI Ronin 2