Nest Cam IQ is a new indoor security camera with facial recognition tech

Nest Labs has launched pre-orders for a new indoor security camera.

Called Nest Cam IQ, the camera supposedly offers a range of intelligent features. It knows when your child has arrived home safely, for instance, or that there’s a stranger in your home. It can differentiate between a person and your cat and can alert you accordingly. So, if it detects a person, it can send a person alert to your phone and will auto-zoom in on and track the person.

And if you subscribe to Nest Aware, you can get “personalised alerts” based on who is in the house – whether a family member or a dog sitter. That means it identifies if there’s a person within the camera’s field of vision and can send a special alert with a curated zoomed-in photo. Nest is pitching the new camera as a having a mixture of “intelligence with excellent image and sound quality”.

It has face recognition learning technology, as well as ntelligent audio alerts, which will notify you about things that the camera can’t see, such as a person talking or dog barking. Only some of these features are free. If you subscribe to Nest Aware, Nest promises an extra layer of intelligence, including continuous cloud storage. You’ll be able to access your 10- or 30-day video history.

• Nest might soon launch a cheaper thermostat and new security system
• Nest 3.0 review: The smartest thermostat just got smarter
• Nest Cam Outdoor review: Secure enough as a security camera?
• Nest Cam review: The next level in home security

The camera features a 4K image sensor (8 megapixels), 12x digital zoom, HDR imaging, and two 940nm infrared LEDs. It also offers Night Vision (without a red glow), as well as feature called HD Talk + Listen Audio. Nest claimed that the built-in speakers are 7x more powerful than the original Nest Cam, while the three-microphone array offers noise suppression and echo cancellation.

You can check the companion app to see what’s happening at any time and see a HD picture-in-picture experience, including a full 130-degree view of the room and close-up tracking. In terms of security, Nest Cam IQ encrypts your video on-device before streaming and storing video content, using 128-bit AES with TLS/SSL secure connection, Nest said. There’s also two-step verification available.

The Nest Cam IQ has a white polycarbonate design with a swivel mount. It is available now for pre-order in the US at Nest’s website for $299. It will be available soon for pre-order in UK for £299, with shipping expected by the end of June.

Qualcomm set to take over fingerprint sensor market with under display scanners

Qualcomm has just announced itself a major player in the supply of fingerprint sensors, as it’s announced it will be one of the, if not the first company to produce under-display sensors.

• Qualcomm Sense ID is a 3D biometric scanner that will solve those sweaty Apple Touch ID moments

Announcing them at MWC Shanghai, Qualcomm says its next-generation fingerprint sensors will use ultrasonic technology, something that Xiaomi used on the Mi5s.

• Xiaomi’s new smartphones features embedded fingerprint scanners and dual lens cameras

By being based on ultrasonic tech as opposed to capacitance, Qualcomm says the new sensors, which can be fitted under displays along with metal and glass bodies, will be able to “scan through OLED displays up to 1200um”. 

Note how only OLED displays get a look in, that means LCD displays won’t work with the new technology. However, if a phone doesn’t have an OLED display, it can still have a fingerprint sensor embedded in the rear panel if it’s made from glass or aluminium. Sensors will be able to scan through up to 800um of glass, or 650um of aluminium.

The Qualcomm fingerprint sensors will also be able to detect your heartbeat and blood flow, whether the screen is on or off, and can even work underwater.

Perhaps the biggest news from the announcement is that the Qualcomm fingerprint sensors can be used with non-Qualcomm processors, opening up their application to pretty much every phone on the market and positioning Qualcomm as a major player for the supply of sensors. 

It will be some time before we see the under display fingerprint sensors implemented, as Qualcomm says commercial samples of the sensors will be available for manufacturers in late-2017 to early-2018. We should see the first phones to feature them arrive in late-2018, which could have an impact on the flagship phone releases next year. 

The first phones to feature the glass and metal sensors should arrive in early 2018. 

The idea of under display fingerprint sensors is nothing new, it’s an idea that many phone manufacturers have been toying with for some time. Samsung was expected to feature one on the Galaxy S8 and S8+, but that never came to fruition, then it was expected the Note 8 would have one instead. A recent set of leaked renders suggest that now won’t be the case.

Apple may have cracked it though, and is said to be using an optical-based fingerprint scanning technology for an embedded sensor on the iPhone 8. 

Samsung shows off dual camera tech, destined for the Galaxy Note 8?

Samsung has used MWC Shanghai to show off its new dual camera system for smartphones, that makes use of the company’s own Isocell technology.

• Samsung Galaxy Note 8: What’s the story so far?

There have been rumours circling lately that suggest the upcoming Galaxy Note 8 phablet will be the first Samsung device to feature a dual camera, and some renders of the phone show just what it could look like.

There has been no official word from Samsung, of course, but press shots from the MWC Shanghai floor clearly shows the South Korean company is working on a dual camera setup, that comprises RGB and black & white image sensors. The both image sensors are 13-megapixels and both have an f/2.0 aperture. Samsung’s “dual camera solution” claims to produce “superior image quality in low-light conditions”.

Samsung will use its own Isocell technology, which was introduced in 2013, in the dual camera system. An Isocell camera puts a physical layer in between each pixel to reduce crosstalk and ultimately improve image quality. Isocell can be implemented in any of four different variations: Bright, to deliver bright and clear images in low-light; Fast, to give fast autofocus on moving objects; Slim, which uses 0.9-1.0um pixels, the smallest currently available; and Dual, in which sensors can be mixed and matched to meet consumer demand. 

• Samsung Isocell technology introduced – to land in Galaxy S5 camera?
• Samsung Galaxy Note 8 to be the first Samsung phone with a dual camera
• These amazing Galaxy Note 8 renders reveal Samsung’s next phablet

While this doesn’t explicitly confirm that the dual camera will feature in the Galaxy Note 8, the timing couldn’t be more perfect and certainly provides more weight to the rumours.

KeepVid Music: Download any song or video from the web to your Mac or PC

Have you ever watched a music video on YouTube and wished you could save the song to your computer? Well, you can, with KeepVid Music.

We installed the app in order to download MP3s directly from YouTube and over 10,000 other music and video sites, such as Facebook, Spotify, SoundCloud, Vimeo, Vevo, and MTV. It basically let us capture any song or playlist we could find on the internet, but it smartly cut out the adverts and split up all our tracks for us – automatically. While we played around, we discovered several other handy features.

Pocket-lint

What is KeepVid Music?

KeepVid Music is a Mac and Windows video downloader app. It’s described as a “perfect music tool” that can free up “your music on phone and computer”, as well as let you “download, record, discover, manage, and play music”. It primarily lets you download music from several music and video sites, but you can also use it to record any song or playlist on the internet.

Other main features include the ability to browse through and download from KeepVid Music’s own extensive music collection, as well as manage your iTunes library, and transfer any media files between iTunes and iOS, PC, Mac, and Android devices.

How does KeepVid Music work?

Getting started

Go here to buy, download, and install KeepVid Music for Mac or Windows. Once the app is finished installing on your computer, launch it. Once you open KeepVid Music, you will see four tabs at the top. The first is Get Music. While on that tab, you will notice it has three screens: Discover, Download, and Record. Keep reading to see an explanation of these three screens and their features.

Pocket-lint

Download music, playlists, and video

Discover lets you browse and download songs or playlists from KeepVid Music’s own collection. You can also search fro songs, artists, albums, etc. Just use the search bar. Once you search for and find a song or playlist you want, hit the Download button. The download status icon in the corner lets you manage the download, including delete it or find the folder it’s located in (select folder button).

You can manage where downloads go under KeepVid Music > Preferences > Download > Downloads saved to. By default, our files went to the KeepVid Music folder in our Mac’s Music folder. In the Preferences dialog box, you can also change your YouTube video quality from the default 720p to 1080p or higher. We recommend playing around to discover more hidden, granular controls available.

Anyway, back to the Get Music tab on KeepVid Music.

The second screen is Download, which lets you download from sites on the internet, such as YouTube, Spotify, SoundCloud, Vevo, etc. The Download screen offers some quick-access links to these sites, but you can also paste a link to any video or song on the internet into the download search field. Just specify MP4 or MP3 if you want it to download the entire video or just the audio, respectively.

Sometimes KeepVid Music might send you on-screen desktop notifications when you’re viewing a video or listening to a song in order to give you an easy way to download from there. Once you download it, click the download status icon in the corner to manage or find your download.

Pocket-lint

Record music and playlists

So, on the Get Music tab in KeepVid Music, we’ve covered the Discover and Download screens, but we still have Record left.

Go ahead and click on Record. You’ll notice the only thing visible on that screen is a record button. Click the button to start recording whatever song you’re listening to right now. If you’re listening to a song on SoundCloud or Pandora, you can record it and save an audio file to your computer. Easy. This feature lets you record music freely from any site online. You can even record video into audio.

Pocket-lint

Transfer music or playlists files

Now that you’ve downloaded all this media, you may want to transfer the files between your iOS, PC, Mac, and Android devices.

You can easily add music from your PC or Mac over to your iOS or Android phone, for instance. Just go to Device tab, then connect your device to your computer with a USB cable, and ensure it is recognised in KeepVid Music. From there, click on Music in the corner, then click the Add button, and select Add file (for Windows) in the corner to add music from PC or Mac to your connected device.

To transfer between two devices, connect the two devices to your computer via USB cables. Go to the Device tab, then click the Device icon, and select the Device you want to transfer from. On the main interface, select Copy Music to Other Device tab to start transferring.

To add music from your Mac or PC to your iTunes library, go to the Library tab, then click on Add icon in the corner, and add music files from PC/Mac. Be sure to open iTunes to check that everything transferred correctly. You can also drag and drop them into iTunes.

Pocket-lint

Manage iTunes library

One of the last major features we wanted to go over is how to manage your iTunes Library.

Once in KeepVid Music, click on the Toolbox and then click Clean Up iTunes Library. From there, click on Scan button to scan your iTunes music library to find out how many tracks need to be fixed. And click the Fix button to finish organising in one-click. There are also options to clean missing tracks, delete duplicate songs, and fix music tags and covers, etc. Check out this FAQ page for more.

How much is KeepVid Music?

KeepVid Music for Mac costs $39.95 for a one-year license or $59.95 for a lifetime license. The Windows version costs $29.95 for a one-year or $49.94 for a lifetime. Check out KeepVid Music’s website for more information on pricing.

Is there a website app? 

Yep. If you don’t feel like installing the desktop app, you can always use the KeepVid website experience, which lets you download videos for free by simply pasting the video URL.

Microsoft’s next big Windows update will use AI to fight malware

Windows Fall Creators Update will come with a hefty serving of security upgrades, made timely by the increasingly rampant cyberattacks targeting the platform these days. In a blog post, Microsoft has revealed how the upcoming major update will level up Windows Defender Advanced Threat Protection, a Win 10 enterprise service that flags early signs of infection. According to CNET, Windows enterprise director Rob Lefferts said the upgrade will use data from Redmond’s cloud-based services to create an AI anti-virus that will make ATP much better at preventing cyberattacks.

One of the AI’s features is the ability to instantly pick up the presence of a previously unknown malware on a computer. Microsoft can then quickly quarantine the malware in the cloud and create a signature for its identity that can be used to protect other computers from it. Lefferts says about 96 percent of cyberattacks use new malware, so this feature sounds especially helpful. It could certainly change the way Microsoft rolls out defense measures, since it currently takes researchers hours to conjure one up. By the time they’re done, the malware might have already made its way to more computers.

While ATP’s new security features will initially only be available to enterprise customers, CNET says Microsoft has plans to roll them out to ordinary users. In addition, the company wants ATP to support “more platforms beyond Windows” and has begun working to make that happen. Microsoft will release Fall Creators’ preview between September and October, so these features (and more) will start hitting some businesses’ and companies’ PCs around that time.

Source: CNET, Windows Security

Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 450 delivers 30 percent better performance and 4 hours of additional battery life

Why it matters to you

Qualcomm’s upcoming Snapdragon 450 might dramatically improve the battery life of mid-tier devices.

Qualcomm’s Snapdragon processors — the chips that power millions of smartphones, tablets, and PCs — run the gamut from the uber-powerful (the 800 and 600 series) to the affordable (the 200 series), but somewhere in the middle sits the Snapdragon 400 series. It doesn’t pack all of the high-end chips’ bells and whistles, but it’s nevertheless uncompromising on battery life, performance, and features. And on Tuesday, Qualcomm made it better with the launch of the Snapdragon 450, the newest flagship in the San Diego, California-based chip maker’s 400 series.

The Snapdragon 450’s biggest breakthroughs have have to do with raw processing power and battery life. Compared to the Snapdragon 435, its predecessor, the Snapdragon 450 boasts 25 percent faster compute performance and a 25 percent increase in graphics performance. That’s thanks to architectural improvements like a 14nm FinFET design, a first for Qualcomm’s 400 series, and eight 64-bit processing cores clocked at 1.8 GHz (up from 1.2 GHz and 1.4 GHz on the Snapdragon 435).

“When you’re opening up your email client or a social media application […] you’ll see launch times improved,” Kondap said. “It’s a very visible user experience enhancement.”

Despite the enhanced compute performance, the Snapdragon 450 sips much less power than the outgoing Snapdragon 435. It consumes 30 percent less, on average, which translates to about four more hours of battery life.

“We wanted to enhance the offering, but at the same time provide very good battery life,” Kedar Kondap, vice president of product management at Qualcomm, told Digital Trends during a phone briefing.

The Snapdragon 450’s beefed-up power management dovetails with its improved rapid charging. The chip’s Qualcomm Quick Charge 3.0, which supports USB Type-C, juices devices to 85 percent in 35 minutes, or a “full day” in 30 minutes.

Performance and power consumption aren’t the Snapdragon 450’s areas of improvement. Qualcomm’s built-in Hexagon DSP enables camera capabilities like real-time bokeh, which applies a blur effect to the background of images, and Clear Sight, which uses a combination of RGB lenses and black and white sensors to capture greater contrast, more light, and less noise. Those benefits extend to video recording — Snapdragon 450-equipped devices take footage in 1080p at 60 frames per second and automatically suppress background noise.

That’s just the tip of the iceberg.

The Snapdragon 450 sports USB 3.0, which can transfer files at speeds of up to 5 Gpbs compared to the Snapdragon 435’s 0.5 Gbps — fast enough to copy a two-hour movie in three minutes. Its X9 LTE modem can achieve a 300Mbps downlink, thanks to features like 2×20 carrier aggregation, 64 QAM, and 802.11ac with MU-MIMO, and Cat. 6 LTE. There’s precision-enhanced navigation and location tracking onboard, plus eye-based authentication and liveness detection. And the Snapdragon 450 is the first in the series to support iris scanners.

Better yet? It won’t be long before it launches. Qualcomm expects the Snapdragon 450 to become commercially available in the third quarter of this year, and launch in devices during Q4.

“We’ve made many recent changes to the [platform] as part of our vision to deliver the most advanced mobile functionality at the best possible value,” Kondap said. “With the Snapdragon 450, users are going to see a dramatically improved level of performance, connectivity, battery life, and imaging performance.”

Qualcomm reveals new phone fingerprint sensors that slot beneath glass

Why it matters to you

Your next smartphone might feature a subsurface fingerprint sensor, if Qualcomm has anything to do with it.

Smartphone fingerprint sensors haven’t changed all that much since the debut of Touch ID on Apple’s iPhone. They’re round, circular, and typically situated in the bottom bezels of smartphones, adjacent to the touchscreen. But Qualcomm’s next-gen tech is poised to shift the paradigm.

On Tuesday, Qualcomm announced its newest generation of fingerprint sensors. They’re the first capable of scanning through glass and aluminum, and they’re latest fully compatible with Qualcomm’s existing processors, including the Snapdragon 800 series, 600 series, 400 series, and 200 series platforms.

They’re not all the same, though. One for “premium” devices that slots under the screen, and one for “high [end]” devices that sits beneath metal or display digitizers. (A third model designed for “mid and low [end] phones” is embedded in the glass.) The company’s betting that most OEMs will place sensors near devices’ bottoms, underneath devices’ home buttons, but it’s not dictating placement. Smartphone makers are free to embed them wherever they choose, and to place as many as they’d like.

“We’re seeing new premium-tier smartphone designs right now,” Seshu Madhavapeddy, vice president of Qualcomm’s Internet of Things division, told Digital Trends during a phone briefing ahead of the unveiling. “You want to minimize the number of holes you have to drill in the outer casing […] because you want to keep a clean look and a waterproof design. We’re able to give smartphone manufacturers the choice to design phones without having to worry about […] giving up on fingerprint operation.”

The biometric scanners use ultrasonic technology to capture the shape of your fingertip through water, sweat, and other debris, and employ heartbeat- and blood flow-detecting techniques to deter would-be hackers. They’ll work through scratched glass and dented cases, Qualcomm says, and respond even when the display is off.

“Fingerprint sensors today don’t quite work when you have forms of contaminants,” Madhavapeddy said. “These work just as efficiently if your finger is wet or oily as it does otherwise.”

The sensors’ smarts don’t stop there. Qualcomm’s tech can estimate your heartbeat without the need for hear rate sensor, and detect swipe-like gestures smartphone makers can map to functions, shortcuts, and actions. “If you have oily fingers from cooking, you don’t have to worry about smudging the screen,” Madhavapeddy said.

Despite the technological leap, the new sensors aren’t expected to inflate the price of future smartphones, Madhavapeddy said. But it’ll be a while before they hit most commercial markets — as of now, Qualcomm’s expecting samples for the glass, metal, and display sensors to become available in the second half of 2017, and devices with in-screen fingerprint sensors to ship in summer 2018.

At Mobile World Congress in Shanghai, Qualcomm’s partnered with Chinese smartphone maker Vivo to manufacture reference devices with sensors mounted below the display.

“New premium-tier smartphone designs are what’s unfolding in the industry right now,” Madhavapeddy said. “They’ll be on par with the best of operation in the market today.”

Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 1200 chips have built-in LTE for always-on connectivity

Why it matters to you

Qualcomm’s Snapdragon Wear 1200 chip will power the next generation of Android smartwatches, fitness trackers, Internet of Things devices, and more.

If you’re sporting a smartwatch running Android Wear, Google’s mobile operating system, chances are it’s packing a Qualcomm processor. The San Diego, California-based chip maker’s Snapdragon Wear platform powers 80 percent of Android Wear devices in more than 30 countries, including the LG Watch Style, Huawei Watch 2 and Verizon Wear24. But Qualcomm is nothing if not ambitious.

At Mobile World Congress in Shanghai, China, on Tuesday, Qualcomm announced the Snapdragon Wear 1200 platform, a low-powered chipset targeted at compact, single-purpose wearables. That category of devices includes not only activity trackers and pet-tracking beacons, but also Internet of Things devices like parking meters and remote pumping stations.

It’s not Qualcomm’s first foray into power-efficient wearable processors — it launched the Snapdragon Wear 1100 in May 2016. But the 1200 addresses several of the first-gen platform’s biggest shortcomings.

At a minimum, every Snapdragon Wear 1200 device will tap GPS in “multiple regions” for real-time location tracking, including Russia’s GLONASS and the EU’s Galileo. And as was the case with Snapdragon Wear 1100, some devices will ship with Bluetooth and Wi-Fi radios, Qualcomm’s rapid charging technology, and built-in sensors like accelerators and gyroscopes.

The Snapdragon 1200 also doubles down on connectivity. It supports two new subcategories of LTE, M1 and 1, the latter of which maxes out at data speeds between 10 and 50 Kbps. It’s designed with lower-power applications in mind, like smart home monitoring and location tracking — Qualcomm says it expects MB1-enabled devices to get about 10 days of battery life on standby.

“It’s great for anything in real time — anything that requires constant feedback” Matt Dehamer, product marketing for wearables at Qualcomm, told Digital Trends during a briefing ahead of the announcement. “It can count steps and monitor a workout in a fitness tracker and handle basic voice communication  ,”

Snapdragon Wear 1200 devices that use M1, on the other hand, won’t last quite as long. But they’ll deliver speeds up to 350 Kbps — fast enough to stream from Spotify in high quality, as well as place voice calls over LTE.

On paper, both M1 and MB1 might seem like a downgrade from the Snapdragon Wear 1100’s Cat. 1 and Cat. 4 LTE, which supported speeds up to multiple megabits per second. But Qualcomm says that unlike Wear 1100-based devices, not all of which supported LTE, every Wear 1200 will come with connectivity built-in. And thanks to the reduced bandwidth requirements, it expects carriers to bundle Wear 1200 smartwatches and fitness bands with prepaid data plans that will be potentially as low as $2 to $3 a month.

Qualcomm is highlighting new devices to mark the launch of Snapdragon Wear 1200, all from Chinese manufacturers.

One, from kid-friendly Chinese brand Genius, sports a waterproof body and supports quick charging, calling via Voice over LTE (VoLTE), and texting and messaging. Another, from Chinese security company Qihoo 360, handles calls, messaging, and location tracking, and features a 2-megapixel camera that parents can use to check in with kids wearing it.

Qualcomm says it expects more devices to hit the market in July, ahead of a wider rollout in August.

Despite the focus on low-end and midrange devices, Qualcomm is not letting its high-end smartwatch platform languish. Dehamer wasn’t willing to talk specifics, but said that an announcement regarding the Snapdragon 2000 series platform could come as soon as this year.

“It’s not the end of the road map. Companies are always risk averse until you’ve proven yourself on that higher end,” he said. “Partners like Michael Kors and Movado come from the traditional timekeeping industry, [and] gained some interesting insights that might not be obvious immediately.”

Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon 450 chip aims for speed and battery life on a budget

Qualcomm is bolstering its value line of systems-on-a-chip with the new Snapdragon 450.

As it has already twice this year, Qualcomm is introducing another so-called platform, a catch-all for its Snapdragon chips that power so many smartphones and tablets today.

This one, the Snapdragon 450, is aimed at budget phones, and aims to introduce a number of efficiency upgrades to help low-cost devices last all day like their mid-range and high-end rivals.

The platform is now built on a 14nm process, similar to the well-received Snapdragon 625 and recently-introduced 630, which Qualcomm says should give it up to four hours of additional battery life on equivalent tasks over the Snapdragon 435, which is built on 28nm.

Inside, up to eight Cortex-A53 cores at 1.8GHz keep things cool while moving smoothly, and the Adreno 506 is a very minor bump over the 505 inside the Snapdragon 435, though Qualcomm says, with thermal benefits and a minor clock speed bump the Adreno 506 should be up to 25% faster.

It’s clear that the performance upgrades are going to be of secondary importance to the story of this product compared to the battery gains, which should amount to up to 50% in some cases. The Snapdragon 450 also offers real-time bokeh through its support for dual cameras, the first in the 400-series.

On a connectivity side, the Snapdragon 450 supports Quick Charge 3.0, USB 3.0, displays up to 1080p, 1080p video capture at 60fps, and download speeds up to 300Mbps using the X9 baseband.

Look for devices to begin shipping with the new part in Q4 of this year.

Moto E4 review: Back to basics

Qualcomm’s ambitious new fingerprint sensors work through touchscreens

Qualcomm wants you to unlock your phone in ways you haven’t before.

Qualcomm wants in on the fingerprint sensor madness, since every phone these days has one — or should — and the company basically owns every other part of the animal, so why not another?

Dubbed Qualcomm Fingerprint Sensors, the term encompasses three main input methods: Display, Metal, and Glass. The first is both the most interesting and requires the longest wait, since it represents the ideal situation that we, as smartphone owners, have been anticipating for years: the ability to authenticate our fingerprints by merely tapping on the screen.

While it will only work on OLED panels up to 1200μm or thinner, this allows modern devices to essentially “hide” the fingerprint sensor by using ultrasonic sensing, a technique that has heretofore been less accurate, and desirable, than traditional capacitive fingerprint solutions.

The other methods, glass and metal-based sensors, can be embedded on the rear of a device, allowing someone to unlock with no seams in the casing, just a two-dimensional guide for placement.

According to Qualcomm, all three methods work underwater and can be accompanied with heart rate and blood flow sensors, as well as directional gestures for doing things like launching apps or opening the notification shade.

Devices with glass and metal sensors should be arriving in mid-2018, while we’ll have to wait until early 2019 or so for under-display solutions. Hopefully by then we’ll have similar options from Samsung, Apple and others to keep our fingers occupied.