Amazon Prime users can now read thousands of books for free with Prime Reading
Amazon has just given Prime members even more reason to keep their annual subscription with the introduction of Prime Reading.
- Which Amazon Kindle is best for you?
- Amazon Kindle Unlimited UK: Everything you need to know about the Spotify for books
Running alongside the Kindle Store and the Kindle Unlimited subscription, Prime Reading will give Prime subscribers free, unlimited access to a rotating library of over 1,000 top-rated Kindle books, magazines, comics, children’s books and more.
It’s not just the lesser-known book titles that are reserved for the free service, as books including Harry Potter and The Philosopher’s Stone, Man Booker Prize shortlisted The Fishermen, and Karl Pilkington’s Moaning of Life are all available to read. Star Wars and Guardians of the Galaxy comics are included too, along with magazines such as OK!, Good Housekeeping and Time Magazine.
Prime Reading is accessed through the Kindle app, so can be used on iOS, Android, PC, Mac, Fire tablet and of course, Kindle e-readers.
Alessio Santarelli, EU Kindle Content Director, Amazon. “Prime members will love the range of books now available to them on any device, with everything from psychological thrillers, to business books, the latest travel guides and bestselling fiction.”
- Amazon Kindle: A brief history
Prime Reading is the latest benefit for Amazon Prime subscribers, and joins Prime Video, unlimited free next-day delivery, unlimited free access to music with Prime Music and access to exclusive live concerts with Prime Live Events.
What is Google Lens and how do you use it?
Google announced several new key products and services at its I/O 2017 developer conference including a new technology it is bringing to Android smartphones, called Google Lens.
Google Lens is an AI-powered technology that uses your smartphone camera and deep machine learning to not only detect an object but understand what it detects and offer actions based on what it sees.
Here is everything you need to know about Google Lens.
What can Google Lens do?
Google Lens is a super-powered version of Google Googles and similar to Samsung’s Bixby Vision, which launched on the Galaxy S8.
It will enable users to do things such as point their smartphone camera at something, such as a specific flower, ask Google Assistant what the object your pointing at is and you’ll not only be told the answer but you’ll get suggestions based on the object, like nearby florists in the case of a flower.
With Google Lens, your smartphone camera won’t just see what you see, but will also understand what you see to help you take action. #io17 pic.twitter.com/viOmWFjqk1
— Google (@Google) May 17, 2017
Other examples of what Google Lens can do include users being able to take a picture of the SSID sticker on the back of a router, after which your phone will automatically connect to the Wi-Fi network without you needing to do anything else. Yep, no more crawling under the cupboard trying to read out the password whilst typing it in your phone, only to realise you forgot to put CAPS on.
Google Lens will also recognise restaurants, clubs, cafes and bars too, presenting you with a pop-up window showing reviews, address details and opening times.
What apps will Google Lens work with?
At launch, Google Lens will be implemented into Google Assistant and Google Photos. Other Google apps will eventually follow.
Google Assistant
Within Google Assistant, users will be able to tap the Google Lens icon, point their smartphone camera at show times outside a cinema or a gig venue’s information board, for example.
Users will then be presented with a number of suggestions in the view finder, such as hear some songs from the artist picked up from the information board, get tickets for the event through TicketMaster or add the event to your calendar.
Google Photos
Within Google Photos, Google Lens will be able to identify buildings or landmarks for example, presenting users with directions and opening hours for them. It will also be able to present information on a famous work of art. Maybe it will solve the debate of whether Mona Lisa is smiling or not.
Additionally, Google Lens will allow users to call a number directly from the Photos app if a friend sends you a screenshot with contact details for example.
When will Google Lens arrive?
Google didn’t specify when Google Lens would arrive on Android smartphones but we will let you know as soon as we hear more.
OnePlus 5 name confirmed by OnePlus itself
OnePlus has let the cat out of the bag and confirmed its next flagship killer will be called the OnePlus 5
- OnePlus 5: What’s the story so far?
In a blog post commenting on how the company will be teaming up with DxO to work on the upcoming smartphone’s camera, OnePlus itself refers to the new phone as being the OnePlus 5.
We already had a pretty good idea that the phone would skip the number 4 as it’s seen to be unlucky in China, and go straight to 5, but now it’s clear for all to see that that is exactly what OnePlus will be doing.
With regards to the DxO partnership, OnePlus still hasn’t given too much away, but Etienne Knauer, SVP Sales & Marketing at DxO, said: “OnePlus has always been one of the leading innovators in the smartphone industry, and we are proud to partner with them and support their exciting mobile photography strategy.”
It’s thought the OnePlus 5 will have dual cameras on both the front and back of the phone, and a recent retail listing seemed to confirm this, saying there would be a 23-megapixel camera on the back and a 16-megapixel camera on the front. The slightly odd thing there is that 23-megapixel may only refer to one sensor, so we have no idea what the other one will be.
The possibility of dual cameras has been further back up by leaked renders, drawings and photos that clearly show two imaging sensors on both sides of the phone.
Dual cameras on both the front and back will not only be used to add greater depth and zoom to photos, but will supposedly add augmented reality features too.
- Full OnePlus 5 specs leak in retail listing
- OnePlus 5 confirmed to feature dual-rear camera, possible embedded fingerprint sensor
We’re expecting the OnePlus 5 to be announced sometime in June, so will bring you all the latest news as and when we hear it.
27 fantastic photographic firsts
Photos serve an important purpose in life. They capture precious moments, funny moments, once in a lifetime moments and many more. With the rise of social media, we’re snapping and sharing more photos than ever. According to a recent survey, more than 2.5 trillion photos were shared online in 2016 alone, more than 30 times the amount of photos we took in the 1990s.
Among the several trillion photos taken over the years, there have been many photo firsts and we’ve done our research to find 27 of them. So join us as we take a trip down a visual memory lane of the photographic milestones of the past 190 years.
Joseph Nicéphore Niépce [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
First photograph made in a camera
The oldest surviving photograph is the View from the Window at Le Gras, taken in 1826 or 1827 by Nicéphore Niépce. It was taken on a camera obscura which projects the image being taken through a pinhole in a screen, where it is then shown as a reversed and inverted image.
The image on the original plate is quite hard to distinguish, but thanks to modern technology it’s been manually enhanced to show buildings and the surrounding fields of the Le Gras estate. It’s been voted as one of the 100 most important photographs in the world.
Louis Daguerre [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
First picture of a person
Louis Daguerre was friends with Niépce, and after Niépce’s death in 1833, Daguerre continued to experiment with various and eventually created the Daguerreotype process. He’s also responsible for taking the first photo to feature people.
Taken in 1838 at the Boulevard du Temple, in Paris’ 3rd arrondissement, the long exposure means that that all the traffic in the street has vanished, but two men are clearly visible in the bottom left, who, thanks to one having his boots polished by the other, have remained static long enough to become visible on the negative.
Robert Cornelius [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
First photographic self-portrait
Before we called them ‘selfies’ and we flitted around with smartphones, there was a breed a photographer such as American Robert Cornelius, who did things the hard way.
A man of infinite patience he is credited with creating the first ever photographic self-portrait in 1839, a feat that required him to sit motionless in front of his camera of a 15 minute exposure.
Hippolyte Bayard [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
First photographic hoax
The accolade of first staged photograph goes to a one Hippolyte Bayard. Bayard was considered Daguerre’s rival, as he came up with his own photography method called the direct positive process. Bayard wanted to be considered the pioneer of photography, but Daguerre beat him to it. As a reaction, Bayard took a photo of himself drowning in water, claiming he had killed himself, when in fact it was all staged.
He even wrote a full paragraph on the back of it, claiming “The Government which has been only too generous to Monsieur Daguerre, has said it can do nothing for Monsieur Bayard, and the poor wretch has drowned himself.”
Unknown
First real “news” photo
Despite the name of the photographer who took this 1847 image being lost to the passage of time, this Daguerreotype image of a man being arrested in France by soldiers is widely regarded as the first photograph of a news event.
James Wallace Black [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
First aerial photo
The first aerial photo on record is a view of Boston in 1860 at a height of 2,000 feet. Back then photographer’s didn’t have drones, so this photo was taken from a hot air balloon. It’s titled “Boston, as the Eagle and Wild Goose See it”.
However, French photographer Nadar (real name Gaspard-Félix Tournachon) is credited as being the exponent of aerial photography in 1858, but unfortunately none of his work has stood the test of time.
By Southworth & Hawes (The Metropolitan Museum of Art) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
First photo of a U.S. President
As is often the way with images from the early years of photography – just because an image is first doesn’t means it survives. So it is with the early pictures of the U.S. Presidents. On March 8, 1841 William Henry Harrison became the first sitting president to be photographed but sadly the image taken on the day of his inauguration speech has been lost.
It is therefore this 1843 image of John Quincy Adams, the sixth President, that has become the oldest surviving image of a Commander in Chief, despite it being taken over a decade after he left office.
James Clerk Maxwell (original photographic slides) ; scan by User: Janke. [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
First durable colour photo
Colour images started appearing in the late 1840s, but the techniques of the day were so laborious and the results so fragile, that it wasn’t until 1861 that the first durable colour image was produced.
The image, called Tartan Ribbon, was created by photographing the same subject three times, using red, green, and blue filters over the camera’s lens. When the pictures were developed, they were printed onto glass sheets and then shone onto a wall via three different projectors – each fitted with a coloured lens that matched the filter used to take the original picture.
The Daily Graphic (The Daily Graphic) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
First halftone photograph ever printed in a newspaper
Halftone refers to the technique of producing an image using several small black dots of varying size and spacings. It’s an optical illusion of sorts, as the human eye sees the dots as a gradient.
The first printing of a halftone photograph was in the 4 March, 1880 issue of The Daily Graphic, an American newspaper. The image in question was “A Scene in Shantytown, New York”.
By George R. Lawrence (1869-1938), George R. Lawrence Co. [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
First photo taken from an unmanned aerial vehicle
Having narrowly survived falling 200 feet from a captive airship, American aerial photographer George R. Lawrence pioneered a safer technique for getting his 22kg cameras to elevated vantage points.
Through the use of kites, Lawrence was able to capture amazing images such as this one of the ruins of San Francisco following the 1906 Earthquake. The image sold like wildfire netting the photographer $15,000 – almost $400,000 by today’s standards.
By Jack Aeby [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
First photo of an atomic bomb being detonated
As is often the case throughout its history, photography has often been used to document the very best, and the very worst of mankind’s achievements.
On July 16th, 1945 the first ever atomic bomb was detonated at the Trinity Site in New Mexico. Of all the numerous images taken of the blast, Jack Aeby’s is the only colour photo of the blast to have emerged well exposed enough to show the fireball in all its terrifying glory.
By U.S. Army [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
First photo of the Earth as seen from Space
On October 24th, 1946 The White Sands Rocket, officially referred to as V-2 No.13 took the first ever photograph of the Earth from Space.
Captured using a DeVry 35mm camera the picture was taken from an attitude of 65 miles (104.6Km), 5 times higher than any other picture taken before.
Courtesy of Playboy
First Playboy front cover
Ever the showman, when Hugh Heffner launched Playboy magazine in December 1953 he knew he needed something big to woo his potential readers, and they didn’t come much bigger than Marilyn.
Thanks in part of Marilyn’s star power, along with there being very little direct competition for the startup magazine, Heffner quickly sold all 53,000 copies printed and the publishing icon was born.
Mogens von Haven/World Press Photo
First photo to win World Press Photo contest
The World Press Photo of the Year is considered as one of the most prestigious press photography competitions in the world.
It was this image from 1955 of a rider falling off his motorcycle during the Motocross World Championship at the Volk Mølle course that won Danish photographer Mogens von Haven the inaugural title.
Russell A. Kirsch (National Institute of Standards and Technology) [Public domain or Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
First digital image
Russell A. Kirsch is credited as the man who produced the first digital image. While working at the National Bureau of Standards, Kirsch and his team developed a digital image scanner.
The first image scanned was of a photo of Kirsch’s three month old son, captured at one bit per pixel. It’s considered to be one of the 100 photographs that changed the world.
NASA
First photo of the Earth as seen from the Moon
The first photo of the Earth, taken from the moon, was taken on 23 August 1966. The photo was taken by the unmanned Lunar Orbiter 1 spacecraft and transmitted to Earth, where it was received at a NASA tracking station near Robledo De Chavela near Madrid, Spain.
NASA / Bill Anders [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
First colour photo of the Earth
The first colour image taken of our planet was shot by Astronaut William Anders as part of the Apollo 8 mission in 1968. Anders used a highly modified Hasselblad 500 EL camera with an electric drive and 70mm colour film.
Life magazine has since regarded Earthrise as being “the most influential environmental photograph ever taken.”
NASA
First full view of Earth
Four years after the first colour image of the Earth was taken, the crew of Apollo 17 captured an image of the entire planet. The photo was taken on 7 December 1972 and is now known as the “Blue Marble”.
COURTESY NSSDC/GSFC/NASA
First photo of another planet’s surface
In 1975, whilst on an unmanned mission to Venus, Soviet spacecraft Venera 9 captured these images of Venus’ surface. They became the first photos to show us the surface of another planet in our solar system.
Silvio de Gennaro/CERN
First photo to be published to the Internet
In July 1992 Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web, turned to Silvio de Gennaro, his colleague at CERN, and asked if he had a couple of pictures that Berners-Lee could upload to the web to test the newly created support for the Gif file format.
De Gennaro happened to have to hand a series of pictures he had taken of the CERN parody tribute group Les Horrible Cernettes. Being a fan of the group, Berners-Lee decided they would make an ideal test image and selected this frame of the girls posing to upload.
Philippe Kahn/Full Power Technologies
First photo taken with a camera phone
Having a camera on our phones is now considered essential, but there was such a time when you would have to use a separate, dedicated camera if you wanted to take photos, as having one on your phone seemed farfetched.
That all changed in 1997 when Philippe Kahn created the first camera phone, which was done by literally combining a digital camera and a mobile phone, and took the first photo of his newborn daughter. He then sent the the photo wirelessly to 2,000 people around the phone.
Jean-Paul Goude for Paper
First photo to “Break the Internet”
While it didn’t literally “break the Internet”, it did come under a lot of stress when Paper Magazine released naked photos of Kim Kardashian in the WInter 2014 edition.
The photos were shot by French fashion photographer Jean-Paul Goude, and Paper Magazine’s website received 50 million hits in one day, which accounted for 1 per cent of all US internet traffic that day
Kevin Systrom/Instagram
First photo to be uploaded to Instagram
The very first photo to be uploaded to Instagram was this picture of a dog at a taco stand. It was taken by Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom and uploaded on 16 July 2010.
Since its inception, Instagram has gone on to become the most used social site ever. As of April 2017 the service has 700 million active users and well over 1 billion photos have been uploaded.
Ellen DeGeneras/Twitter
First “super-selfie”
One of the most famous selfies ever was taken at the Oscars 2014. Ellen DeGeneres got as many celebs as she could to get in frame, including Jennifer Lawrence, Brad Pitt, Glenn Close, Julia Roberts and Kevin Spacey. It was Bradley Cooper that got to press the shutter button.
Since then, the photo has become the fastest retweeted image to date, amassing more than 3.4 million retweets
Kevin Abosh
First photo of a potato to sell for over $1m
No, we kid you not. In a world where photography has long vied to be treated equally to art, it’s hardly surprising that photographs should start selling for crazy insane amount of cash.
There have been several stories over the last few year’s of individual photographs changing hands for vast sums of money but for sheer understated elegance you can’t go beyond a potato photographed by Kevin Absoch.
For the uninitiated, American photographer Abosch specialises in celebrity portraits and has developed a cult following. It was during dinner at the artist’s Paris home in 2015, where a European businessman saw ‘Potato #345’ hanging on the wall and had to have it, regardless the cost, which was a cool million dollars.
beyonce/Instagram
First photo to get over 10 million likes on Instagram
With over 700 million users, it was only a matter of time before a photo uploaded to Instagram would get over 10 million likes. It happened in February 2017 when Beyonce uploaded a photo announcing that she and partner Jay-Z were expecting twins.
The image has now gained more than 11 million likes and over 500,000 comments.
Jim Hellemn
First Gigapixel photo
In 1998, underwater photographer Jim Hellemn started to photograph the Bloody Bay Wall off the Cayman Islands. Shooting for 10 days straight over 23 dives, Hellemn painstakingly captured a 20 ft by 68 foot area of the wall in 280 overlapping frames.
Post processing of the shots took 6 months with Hallemn using a drum scanner to import each frame into a Mac G4 at 4000ppi. All 18GB of RAW data got combined to create a stunning 1.77 Gigapixel final image. When the project was completed in 1999, it was believed that Hallemn had made the largest image ever created outside of the scientific community.
The Morning After: Thursday, May 18th 2017
Google’s annual conference touched on all the zeitgeisty terms you’d have expected: More voice assistant features, artificial intelligence, visual search powered by deep learning and a whole lot more.
Here’s what you missed
Google I/O 2017 recap
The opening day of Google’s developer event focused on putting more AI everywhere — in your camera with Google Lens, in your phone/car/TV/speaker with Google Assistant — and connecting virtual reality to mixed reality with Daydream. It probably sounds like a lot, because it is, but we boiled down the speech to a 15-minute video with all the highlights, so click here and get acquainted with the Google-y new world we’re living in.
Its latest search engine knows what’s in your photos.
Google Lens is a powerful, AI-driven visual search app
Google Lens is a broad term that encompasses all kinds of vision-based computing skills. It can recognize what’s going on in photos or videos and offer up clever shortcuts you might want to use. For instance, point your phone at a flower and Google Lens will tell you, on the screen, which type of flower it is, or aim the camera at a restaurant sign to see reviews and other information pop up. The least sexy application we saw on stage might be the most useful: Point the camera at a WiFi router’s name and password, and Google will apparently do the connecting for you. The new system will arrive in Google Photos and Assistant first, later this year.
Practice saying ‘ok Google’
Google Assistant gets smarter and lives in more places (like your iPhone)
For all the talk about artificial intelligence, most of us will experience Google’s work in the area via Google Assistant. The smart helper is opening up to app developers so it can do more things — like take a conversational delivery order — and accept typed input for your more private inquiries. iPhone owners can give it a spin outside of Allo, thanks to a new standalone app that (at least so far) narrowly edges out Apple’s Siri in terms of usefulness.
You just want to be in the beta
All about Android O
We still don’t know what the “O” is for, but we do know a lot more about what Google is concentrating on this time around. Other than accelerating boot time, Android O has new limits for apps that are supposed to keep them from draining your battery and wasting resources while running in the background. There’s some AI secret sauce in there, with hardware-accelerated neural network APIs that can figure things out without shifting your private data to the cloud, and a smart copy-paste feature that easily figures out which text is important. Also, new notification dots bring alerts out of the top panel, and there are big emoji updates.
The most important news, though, is that you can try it out right now on various Nexus and Pixel devices.
The smart speaker is getting smarter.
Google Home is getting proactive assistance and visual responses
Google Home was a decent first stab at taking on Amazon’s Echo, but there’s clearly room for improvement. Today, the company revealed that its smart speaker will soon be able to give you proactive notifications, like alerting you to traffic delays ahead of upcoming appointments. Google Home will light up to let you know it has an alert for you, so it thankfully won’t just start talking without any prompting.
“Elon spent the rest of the call convincing me that it’s too far out,” said the Uber boss.
Tesla turned down Uber’s self-driving partnership offer
A new book on Uber by Fortune’s Adam Lashinsky is coming out soon, but Bloomberg has revealed one juicy anecdote ahead of time. CEO Travis Kalanick reportedly called up Tesla boss Elon Musk to propose a partnership on self-driving cars, but Musk rebuffed the offer and even tried to talk him out of it. Kalanick stated in the book. “Elon spent the rest of the call convincing me that it’s too far out, and it’s not realistic, that I should just stick to what we do best and be focused, or I’m going to fuck it all up. That’s when I knew Tesla was competing.”
Yes, the Galaxy S8 doubles as a desktop, but most people can stay away.
Samsung DeX review: The impressive, unnecessary, phone-powered PC
If you already own a Galaxy S8 or S8 Plus, then Samsung’s DeX dock is a fascinating proposition. For $150, you could cobble together a system that acts an awful lot like a PC. Mobile Editor Chris Velazco says the interface is familiar and overall performance is pretty impressive. The experience isn’t without its problems, though. There are a limited number of apps optimized for DeX and gathering up all the requisite parts could get pricey too, if you don’t already have a spare keyboard, mouse and monitor lying around. DeX blurs the line between smartphone and PC better than any other attempt he has seen — he’s just not convinced that many people will find it genuinely useful.
The Fire 7 gets a new body, the Fire HD 8 is $10 cheaper.
Amazon’s Fire tablets get a little thinner and a little faster
There’s nothing too drastic coming with Amazon’s Fire tablet update: the Fire 7 gets a thinner and lighter chassis and an improved 7-inch IPS display. Battery life and chip performance have also been improved, not to mention the addition of voice assistant Alexa. Amazon’s done even less to the Fire HD 8, throwing in faster, more power-efficient internals but leaving everything else the same. The device’s biggest new feature may be the $10 reduction compared to the last model.
But wait, there’s more…
- Qualcomm sues iPhone suppliers to get to Apple’s money
- Google launches a massive open AI division
- The first ‘Star Trek: Discovery’ trailer is here
- AMD’s 16-core ‘Threadripper’ CPU is built for ultra-high-end PCs
- ‘The Witcher’ will come to Netflix, not movie theaters
- Record labels are pushing Apple Music to have fewer exclusives
Amazon offers UK Prime members a free, rotating e-book library
While Amazon offers a variety of Prime perks for Britons, it can often take a while for some of them to make it across the Atlantic. Take, for example, Prime Reading: a “free” book subscription that launched in the US last October but is only now coming to the UK. Unlike Kindle Unlimited — which offers unrestricted access to over a million books, magazines and audiobooks for £8 a month — Prime Reading is bundled with Amazon’s annual subscription and delivers a rotating selection of popular e-books, magazines and short content.
A quick look at the selection reveals titles like Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, as well as books from Man Booker Prize shortlisted authors including Graeme Macrae Burnet, Annabel Karmel, Mark Edwards, Michael Lewis. Glamour, The Week, Chat, Yours, Red and BBC Gardeners’ World are also available digitally, whether on a Kindle device, Fire tablet or one of the free Kindle apps available on iOS, Android and desktop. With holiday season upon us, it might be time to load your device ready for that trip away.
Source: Amazon Prime Reading
WannaCry cousin uses your computer to mine Bitcoins
WannaCry might have wreaked havoc all over the globe, but it apparently has a cousin that’s been far more effective in earning money for its creators. While looking into the WannaCry attacks, security firm Proofpoint has discovered the existence of another threat called Adylkuzz that also uses NSA’s leaked hacking tools EternalBlue and DoublePulsar that exploit Windows vulnerabilities. Unlike the ransomware that takes over its victims’ computers in an attempt to extort money, Adylkuzz has a much quieter existence. It’s a small program that lurks in your PC, using its resources to mine for a cryptocurrency called Monero.
The security firm found evidence that it’s been in use since May 2nd, though it could have been around as early as April 24th. It flew under everyone’s radar because it’s nowhere near as attention-grabbing as WannaCry, and it doesn’t require people to know how to use Bitcoin. According Proofpoint exec Ryan Kalember, the miner’s creators could’ve already earned over a million from its efforts. Meanwhile, the three Bitcoin wallets connected to WannaCry have only gotten payments equivalent to around $81,000. Proofpoint says that it expects more cyber criminals to use NSA’s leaked tools in the future. If you want to protect your computers, make sure to install patches, keep Windows updated and don’t use unlicensed software.
Via: MIT Technology Review
Source: Proofpoint, Symantec, Reuters
Amazon Launches New Fire Tablets With Built-in Alexa in U.S. and U.K.
Amazon yesterday refreshed its low-cost tablet range and brought its Alexa voice assistant to Fire tablets in the U.K. for the first time.
The new thinner and lighter $50/£50 Fire 7 boasts an improved 7-inch 1024×600 IPS screen with higher contrast and sharper text, up to 8 hours’ battery life, and more storage than its predecessor. Meanwhile, the new $80/£80 Fire HD 8 features a larger 8-inch 1280×800 display and up to 12 hours of battery life.
Both devices pack a quad-core 1.3GHz processor, 2-megapixel VGA front and rear cameras, dual-band WiFi, and Alexa voice assistant, which comes as a new feature for tablets sold in the United Kingdom.
Amazon claims its new Fire models are more hard-wearing than Apple’s iPads. Even so, the Fire 7 and Fire HD 8 are also available in Kids Editions, for £100/$100 and £130/$130 respectively, which come with a large rubber protective case and a two-year “worry-free” guarantee, as well as more storage, parental controls, no adverting or in-app purchases, and a one-year subscription to Fire for kids unlimited.
With its low-cost, feature-rich offerings, Amazon has managed to buck the trend in a tablet market in which even market-leading brands like Apple have struggled to convince consumers to upgrade to the latest devices. While iPad sales have declined for 13 consecutive quarters, Fire sales have generally improved, seeing double-digit growth in its media-positioned tablets. The Fire 7 has proved particularly popular among parents who want a device for their kids but aren’t willing to risk paying a premium price.
The Amazon Fire 7 and HD 8 tablets are available to pre-order now and due to ship on June 7. Amazon will roll out Alexa to more of its Fire tablet devices in the U.K. in June through a software update.
Note: MacRumors is an affiliate partner with Amazon.
Tag: Amazon
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Sony XE93 4K TV review: Latest picture tech unlocks HDR thrills
The first new Sony TV for 2017, the 55-inch XE9305, sets a seriously high-tech tone.
Leading the way is the second-generation of Sony’s Slim Backlight Drive system, which uniquely places two LCD light plates in sequence to provide twice as much local light control as you get with typical edge-lit LCD TVs. This system is the only edge LED engine we’ve seen, in fact, that’s capable of lighting a bright object in the centre of the image without causing stripes of light bleed right across the screen.
The KD-55XE9305 also boasts Sony’s latest and greatest picture processing engine. The X1 Extreme chipset (first seen on Sony’s spectacular 65ZD9 flagship TV last summer) introduces a new dual database system for improving the way high definition sources are upscaled to 4K, and crucially carries enough processing horsepower to add support for the Dolby Vision high dynamic range (HDR) format via a future firmware update (Dolby Vision adds a layer of extra information to the HDR picture data to help TVs optimise the way they present it).
This chipset also drives the advanced local dimming system made possible by the Slim Backlight Drive+; Sony’s Triluminos colour engine for delivering a wider, more defined colour palette; and a rather brilliant feature called Super Bit Mapping that gets rid of the colour striping issues that can plague HDR playback with surprisingly many rival TVs.
Is the XE93 the 4K telly to plump for, given the wide array of competition available from Samsung, Panasonic and LG?
Sony KD-55XE9305 review: Android TV
- Android TV smart operating system
- Chromecast built-in for Google Cast
For better or, in our opinion, worse, the 55XE9305’s smart features are all filtered through the clunky lens of Google’s Android TV platform. The latest version of Android TV found here is at least less buggy and less sluggish than previous versions, but it still features a horribly over-powering home screen, still seems far more focused on app quantity than app quality, still fails to offer enough customisation, and still doesn’t seem to understand that TV users generally have different priorities to phone users.
Sony
Fortunately Sony has got round Android TV’s additional issues with failing to cover all of the UK’s big four catch-up TV platforms by adding the YouView platform to the Android TV mix. It’s worth noting, too, that Sony seems to have developed its own relationships with Netflix and Amazon outside of the Android platform, ensuring that both apps support HDR and native 4K streams.
At the time of writing the streamed HDR support only covers the industry standard HDR10 format, but presumably the XE93 be able to take advantage of Netflix and Amazons’ Dolby Vision shows too once the aforementioned software update turns up.
Sony’s new TVs are also confirmed as supporting the new Hybrid Log Gamma (HLG) format that’s expected to be widely used for HDR live broadcasting.
Sony KD-55XE9305 review: Design
- 4x HDMI, 3x USB, Ethernet, Wi-Fi
- 55-inch: 232 x 715 x 40mm (stand: 282mm)
- 65-inch: 1451 x 838 x 40mm (stand: 295mm)
The home for all the 55XE9305’s cutting-edge technology is an exercise in elegance and minimalism.
Sony
The screen has a super-thin black frame edged in a subtle champagne metallic trim, and this champagne tone is continued into an appealing and robust centrally-mounted desktop stand that also provides some very effective cable management.
Connections fed by those cables are decently numerous, and include four HDMIs, three USBs and the now obligatory Ethernet port should you not want to use the built-in Wi-Fi instead.
Sony KD-55XE9305 review: Bright HDR
- HDR10 high dynamic range support
- Dolby Vision HDR support in the future
Upon letting the 55XE9305 loose on a few Ultra HD Blu-rays our first instinct was to reach for the sunglasses. Its HDR pictures really are phenomenally bright, driving HDR’s peak white highlights and ultra-dynamic colours off the screen with a level of aggression only marginally bettered by two much more expensive TVs: Samsung’s KS9500 series, and Sony’s own ZD9 flagships.
Sony
The expression this gives to HDR pictures, the volume it brings to the wide colour ranges that accompany almost all HDR images, and the way it enables the XE9305 to pick out subtle tone detailing even in the very brightest parts of the picture reminds you in no uncertain terms of just how important brightness is to the HDR experience.
In fact, the 55XE9305 outperforms the ZD9 series when it comes to delivering detail in the brightest areas, due to some seemingly superior mapping of HDR’s so-called PQ Curve.
Sony KD-55XE9305 review: 4K picture quality
- Slim Backlight Drive+ dual LCD illumination for local dimming
- X1 Extreme processor for upscaling
- Triluminos colour engine
It’s impressive to see, too, that the XE93 is capable of partnering its intense brightness with some unusually deep and believable blacks by edge-LED TV standards. The Slim Backlight Drive+ really does dodge much of the general greyness or overt light stripes usually associated with edge-lit LCD technology when it’s asked to deliver a high-contrast HDR image. As OLED fans will attest, a full HDR effect requires good black levels too – and while the 55XE9305 is no match for OLED on the black level front, it’s far ahead of the typical LCD game.
Sony
It also delivers some quite beautiful colours. We’ve long been a fan of Sony’s Triluminos system for the way it combines gloriously rich tones with extreme delicacy of tone and blend, and it’s more effective than ever on the 55XE9305. All that brightness just makes it that much easier to see all the finesse and colour minutiae Sony’s picture engine is able to eke out of Ultra HD’s pristine, dynamic and ultra-detailed images.
It’s thrilling, too, to be able to watch HDR movies without having to worry about seeing the distracting stripes of colour in skies, clouds, swirls of smoke and underwater shots that crop up from time to time on pretty much every other brand of HDR TV – including Samsung’s flagship models. The peerless finery of the 55XE9305’s colours joins with some pin-sharp reproduction of native 4K source’s resolution to deliver some of the crispest, cleanest-looking evidence yet for just what a difference 4K can make even on a 55-inch picture.
What’s more, the stunning clarity is scarcely so much as dented when there’s motion and camera pans to handle. Even without calling into play Sony’s Motionflow processing the image suffers only the tiniest bit with LCD’s common motion blur and judder issues. If you want to remove even these faint traces of detail-reducing flaws, though, you can use Motionflow on its True Cinema or even Standard settings without it generating many unwanted side-effects or leaving the resulting image looking unnaturally fluid.
Sony KD-55XE9305 review: HD picture quality
While the 55XE9305 is quite literally made for 4K and HDR sources, it also goes further than most rivals to make sure you still get a great picture when you have to watch a standard dynamic range, non-4K source.
Sony
By referring incoming HD images against separate detail enhancement and noise reduction databases it’s able to create upscaled images that look not just more detailed but also more natural and solid than those of any rival 4K TV seen to date (bar Sony’s own 65ZD9).
Some of the 55XE9305’s picture presets also apply an HDR upgrade to standard dynamic rage content. Some AV fans won’t like the sound of this, but in truth the system is so effective that we would expect most users just to accept its benefits without question. Other HDR upgrading engines, particularly Samsung’s HDR+ engine, push the added HDR effects more aggressively, but Sony’s more restrained look means there’s much less chance for skin tones to suddenly look unnatural, or certain lighting effects to get too much prominence.
Sony KD-55XE9305 review: Picture shortcomings
While the XE9305’s pictures often look good enough to bring a tear to your eye, though, they are not perfect.
Sony
Viewing angles are pretty tight for a start, with backlight flaws becoming much more strident and general contrast levels taking a hit if you watch from as little as 25-degrees off-axis.
Even Sony’s much-improved Slim Backlight System+, meanwhile, can’t prevent you sometimes seeing pretty clear blooms of accidental light around extremely bright objects when they appear against a dark backdrop.
To be fair, the extent of the backlight clouding surrounding streetlights, moons, candles and the like is reduced from Sony’s debut Slim Backlight Drive sets, last year’s XD9305. There’s less abrupt edge definition to the backlight blooms too, making them less likely to draw your eye away from what you’re actually supposed to be looking at.
That said, high quality direct backlit LCD TV sets like the Samsung KS9500 or Sony ZD9 TVs suffer with markedly less overt blooming, while OLED TVs won’t suffer with any blooming at all. Though no OLED TV will get close to the 55XE9305’s brightness.
Sony
One final smaller frustration with the 55XE9305’s pictures is that they take a little longer to render than video game fans would like; around 38ms on average, though sometimes as long as 52ms. This isn’t devastatingly bad – we’ve seen TVs take longer than 100ms to render images – but it could be enough to marginally undermine your performance with games that rely on split-second timing.
Sony KD-55XE9305 review: Sound quality
Joining the 55XE9305’s mostly outstanding pictures is a less effervescent but still potent and engaging sound performance.
The seemingly invisible speakers bely the TV’s slender dimensions by producing a large but coherent soundstage without misplacing or overwhelming vocals, and fill the wall of sound with plenty of harshness-free details.
There’s enough headroom in the mid-range to deliver a sense of expansion during action scenes too. Bass could reach deeper, but the sound seldom sounds unbalanced or thin.
Verdict
While not even its cutting-edge Backlight Drive technology can completely solve LCD’s issues with controlling light with HDR content, the 55XE9305 nonetheless improves hugely in just about every way on the efforts of its 2016 predecessor.
The XE93 unlocks all the thrills the very latest picture technologies have to offer while also effortlessly taking yesterday’s pictures to places they’ve seldom if ever been taken before.
All for a price which, all things considered, seems more than fair. It’s a strong contender for the 55-inch 4K TV to buy.
Alternatives to consider…
Sony
Sony ZD9
We described the ZD9 as “the HDR master” when we reviewed it in 2016. It’s a notch above the XE93 in this regard, but only available from 65-inches in size (and starting at £4,000).
Read the full article: Sony ZD9 review
Pocket-lint
Samsung KS9500
The UK’s KS9500 is a curved screen for an all-encompassing view and improved viewing angles (it’s flat screen in the US). It’s also mighty bright, with HDR that, ignorning the ZD9 (above), is unrivalled.
Read the full article: Samsung KS9500 review
San Francisco’s diminutive delivery robots trundle into trouble
Why it matters to you
The technology for these delivery robots is improving all the time, but it could still be a while before we find ourselves strolling alongside them on the sidewalk.
The machines may be itching to get on with the robot apocalypse, but there are still folks out there keen to put up legislative barriers that may inadvertently delay the launch of the long-awaited uprising.
While a growing number of cities have been green-lighting trials for wheel-based delivery robots, a San Francisco supervisor has decided they’re a safety hazard and wants them banned, according to Recode.
Startups such as Starship Technologies and Marble have recently been testing out their tech on the city’s sidewalks, with the latter partnering with Yelp Eat24 to deliver take-out orders to hungry customers. The robots have a top speed of 4 mph and carry their consignment in a closed compartment, navigating the streets using multiple cameras, an array of sensors, and GPS software.
But supervisor Norman Yee is worried they could cause a pedestrian pile-up and wants them taken off the streets. He’s particularly concerned about seniors, those with disabilities, and children, as he believes these groups are at most risk of colliding with the robots.
Yee told Recode that San Francisco’s sidewalks are “made for people, not robots,” adding that a law banning the diminutive delivery bots would be “consistent with how we operate in the city, where we don’t allow bikes or skateboards on sidewalks.” Yee said talks with the companies failed to satisfy him, prompting the official on Tuesday to propose legislation banning the machines.
In trials conducted in San Francisco to date, the robots have had a human supervisor walking close by to ensure everything runs smoothly, and no calamitous accidents have so far been reported.
But as San Francisco mulls a ban, states such as Virginia and Idaho seem more open to the technology, recently giving the go ahead to companies who want to try out similar tech on their turf. In addition, Starship Technologies, for example, is currently conducting tests in Silicon Valley just a short distance from San Francisco, as well as on the other side of the country in Washington, D.C.
It’s not certain that Yee will get his way, but the concerns raised highlight the difficulties faced by firms hoping to transform the way we receive delivered goods at home or at the office, with developers of delivery drones facing even tougher regulations.
We’ve reached out to both Starship and Marble about Yee’s proposal and will update when we hear back.
While it’s easier to see why regulators are twitchy about warming to the idea of drones for deliveries, fear that ground-based delivery bots could also cause chaos is something we’ve heard little about until now. It suggests, however, that the technology has a lot more than sidewalks to navigate before it can truly be set free on the nation’s streets.
AIVAnet 