Mitsubishi Evo concept is an AI-assisted crossover EV

Honda has been rolling out EV concept cars to test the waters, first a throwback boxy coupe, then the debut yesterday of a sporty two-door vehicle with subtle AI assistance. Today, Mitsubishi followed suit with its own new crossover concept, the e-Evolution. If that name sounds familiar, you’re on the right track: They’ve transitioned the iconic Lancer Evo sedan into an electric four-wheel-drive cross-country vehicle.

Shifting a vehicle line to a more agile crossover seems like an admission that it can’t compete in the sport sedan space, Autoblog wrote. Instead, the e-Evolution emphasizes road performance: It has Mitsubishi’s Super All-Wheel Control for traction while integrating artificial intelligence with external sensors to read external conditions and adjust the vehicle to the driver’s actions. A huge flatscreen takes up the whole dashboard, displaying “outside conditions, navigation and coaching information,” according to Mitsubishi’s press release.

As with most concept vehicles, it’s unclear if or when the e-Evolution will be available to consumers. But plugging in all of tomorrow’s automotive technologies under the aegis of Mitsubishi’s most recognizable model in a transformed SUV is a clear direction for the company’s strategy.

Via: Autoblog

Source: Mitsubishi

Autoblog’s 2017 Tokyo Motor Show roundup

By Jeremy Korzeniewski

Stay strange, Tokyo. The Tokyo Motor Show never fails to show off the weird, wacky, and wild side of the automotive industry. Though the themes are the same as other recent shows — electrification, autonomy, mobility — the execution is way different than what we saw from Frankfurt, the major auto show just prior to Tokyo.

From small-bore motorcycles to big-bore touring bikes, hot hatches to performance sedans, and tiny trucks to electrified heavy haulers, Tokyo brought us exactly what we expected: Unique takes on industry issues and clever concepts designed to offer a glimpse into the future. See how it all unfolded in our this recap of the 2017 Tokyo Motor Show.

Read all of Autoblog’s Tokyo Motor Show coverage at its event hub right here.

McAfee stops letting foreign governments check its source code

Cybersecurity software company McAfee stopped allowing foreign governments to review the source code of its products earlier this year, a company spokesperson told Reuters. Security experts have warned for some time against this type of sharing, which they claimed could open products up to security vulnerabilities.

Moscow in particular has made greater demands for the source code of products released by Western tech companies. Their stated reason for prying into the code: Ensuring that there aren’t any secret backdoors that would allow private or government actors to exploit vulnerabilities. Of course, looking at the code would theoretically allow investigators to spot weak points to exploit in hack attempts.

McAfee ended foreign government code reviews back in April after it broke off from Intel and became an independent company, the company spokesperson told Reuters, though they didn’t have evidence of a security issue resulting from previous reviews.

While McAfee’s ban extends to all foreign governments, fellow security firm Symantec was more blunt when it refused to allow Russian authorities access to its products’ source code back in June to prevent potential exploitation of vulnerabilities. “It poses a risk to the integrity of our products that we are not willing to accept,” Symantec spokesperson Kristen Batch told Reuters.

Source: Reuters

Viacom chases mobile deals to make up for cord-cutting

To win over young US cable-cutters, Viacom is attempting to cut deals with mobile phone networks to provide their subscribers with its content. The media conglomerate’s move is a quiet strategic redirect to target younger users where they are — on their phones and devices — instead of insisting they’ll eventually return to cable television.

Viacom will create a division with “at least 100 people” dedicated to producing short-form shows designed to be consumed on mobile phones, Viacom Chief Executive Bob Bakish recently told Reuters. He declined to say which carriers the company approached.

Viacom already has deals with carriers outside the US, Reuters noted, including apps and streaming channels for MTV and Nickelodeon content to Japanese and Indonesian mobile companies. The company owns several other popular cable network families, including Comedy Central, BET, TV Land and Paramount films, all of which might be attractive to young mobile subscribers in the US.

Verizon tried to solve this problem internally with its Go90 service, which it launched in 2015 to promote vertical video-focused content. But the telecom laid off over 150 employees from its team back in January, signaling a greater struggle in providing attractive media directly to its customer base.

Source: Reuters

Huawei Mate 10 and Mate 10 Pro review: all about promises

The Huawei Mate 10 series is all about promises: the promise of AI on your smartphone; the promise of a rising star in the industry; the promise of a better long-term future for your device.

Huawei has been hot on the heels of its main rival Samsung for years; building its global market, while slowly increasing its western mind share.  It’s become in many ways the premier innovator in the smartphone space.

With the Mate 10 and Mate 10 Pro, Huawei has delivered its latest salvo in the battle against other mainstream manufacturers and the results are very compelling. Despite a few odd choices, like using a lower resolution screen and omitting the headphone jackon the Pro model, these devices are pretty incredible. This is the Mate 10 and Mate 10 Pro review, so let’s dive in.

• Huawei Mate 10 and 10 Pro price and availability

Review scoring: We’re holding off on our final review scores until we get our hands on a final U.S. Mate 10 Pro to run through our full suite of Android Authority tests. During the review period, several updates were also pushed out, the last of which arrived after the review had been completed and may affect some of the judgments below. We’ll update this review with updates and final scoring in the near future.

Design

With the Mate 10 and Mate 10 Pro, Huawei has moved away from its signature all-metal design. Like most 2017 flagships, these phones opt for a glass front and back around an aluminum frame.

This shift is a positive change. The phones look and feel magnificent, even if they collect fingerprints much more than their metal-clad predecessors. For some reason Huawei didn’t think adding wireless charging was necessary, despite the change to a glass back.

The two phones look almost identical from behind, barring the rear-mounted fingerprint scanner on the Pro version, their overall shape is slightly different. The Mate 10 Pro assumes the 18:9 aspect ratio common to 2017 flagship displays. As such, it is taller and thinner than the Mate 10 which retains the traditional 16:9 ratio.

Despite the differences in size and shape, they weigh pretty much the same, at 178 grams for the Mate 10 Pro and 186 grams for the Mate 10. Compare that to the 190 gram Mate 9 or the 195 gram Galaxy Note 8 and you get a feel for their heft.

Compared to a similarly-sized phone like the LG V30, which only weighs 158 grams, both Mate 10’s are relatively weighty for their size. However, they do have a 20 percent larger battery than both the Note 8 and V30, making that added heft totally worthwhile.

The main differences on the front  are again fingerprint scanner-related. The Mate 10 squeezes an elongated scanner in the bottom bezel, which isn’t actually much larger than the “bezel-less” Mate 10 Pro. The upshot of this placement is that the regular Mate 10 doesn’t have any front-facing branding, which some will love.

There’s very little to dislike about either Mate 10 design, despite natural preferences for front- versus rear-mounted fingerprint scanners, manufacturer branding and the presence of headphone ports (only the Mate 10 has one); If anything they just look a little unexciting. but these devices comfortably fit within Huawei’s understated-but-premium design language, which has always been better than most.

Display

The display is the Mate 10s are most different. Huawei has made some interesting decisions here. The Mate 10 Pro has an OLED screen with the fashionable 18:9, or Univisium aspect ratio, and supports HDR10. On the other hand, the Mate 10 has a 16:9 aspect ratio and uses an IPS LCD panel instead, though it also has HDR10 certification. Neither panel has for the rounded corners we’ve seen on several other flagships this year.

Huawei also decided to put QHD resolution on the regular Mate 10 only, although it defaults to Full HD out of the box. The Pro version ships with Full HD+. The pixel density of the Mate 10 Pro is therefore noticeably lower than the Mate 10, at 402 ppi compared to 498 ppi. While it is a noticeable difference, most will make the decision based on which aspect ratio they prefer and whether they’re into QHD or OLED.

The upshot of the OLED panel on the Mate 10 Pro is the presence of an always-on display, though it’s oddly hidden in the settings by default. To enable it, go to Settings > Security & Privacy >Screen Lock & Passwords > Always Display Information and flip the switch. The always-on display will show the time, date, battery percentage and what music is playing, and app notifications— though only for Huawei’s pre-loaded apps. So no WhatsApp, Gmail or Snapchat, kids. Sorry.

The Mate 10 Pro has great viewing angles, only suffering from color shift at extreme angles. The resolution difference is hardly noticeable, and even then you’ve got to really look for it. The Mate 10 Pro’s OLED panel naturally produces better blacks and slightly punchier colors, but the Mate 10’s IPS LCD does an admirable job.

The Mate 10 has slightly weaker viewing angles, but both devices can hit 730 nits of brightness. Both are perfectly legible outdoors in bright sunlight.The Mate 10 display was a bit too cool for my tastes out of the box. It had a slightly blueish tint and a little less life to its colors. Fortunately, Huawei lets you adjust the color temperature in settings.

Both the Mate 10 and Mate 10 Pro support HDR10, and while neither worked with YouTube HDR content during the review period, Huawei assured me it was coming. Netflix and Vimeo are your best bet for HDR content right now. Both devices are also in the process of being Daydream certified.

As with a lot of other things in the Mate 10 family, they’re future-proofing themselves with promises: preparing for the emergence of more HDR content; heralding the advent of mobile AI; and banking on machine learning in Android Oreo.

Hardware

As always with Huawei, the hardware on the Mate 10 and Mate 10 Pro is impeccable. The build quality is excellent and the machining is top notch.

Both phones have a volume rocker and power button on the right, but only the Mate 10 Pro has a fine matte finish to it They both have a single speaker grill on the bottom (the earpiece speaker provides the second speaker for stereo sound), a USB Type-C port, and a pair of pinhole mics.

On the left, a SIM card tray pops out to reveal dual SIM slots on the Mate 10 Pro. The Mate 10’s got a hybrid dual SIM slot, which lets you pick between a microSD card or a second SIM card..

The Mate 10 comes in one model with 64 GB of on-board storage and 4 GB of RAM. The Mate 10 Pro has two models; one with the same pairing and another with 6 GB of RAM and 128 GB of storage, but neither of which have microSD expansion.

Up top, there’s an IR blaster and another pinhole mic on both devices, but only the regular Mate 10 has a 3.5mm headphone port. Because the Mate 10’s ship with Android Oreo, you can take advantage of a bunch of audio codecs (including aptX , aptX-HD and LDAC) for a better Bluetooth experience than you’d get on a pre-Oreo device. Note that the Mate 10’s use Bluetooth 4.2, so you won’t benefit from the additional range or higher throughput of Bluetooth 5.

Support for lossless 32-bit audio at 384 kHz is a nice touch of overkill but the presence of high-end codecs in Oreo and an included Type-C to 3.5mm adapter will not be enough to satisfy every potential Mate 10 Pro buyer who prefers wired headphones. Huawei Histen audio tuning is available when you plug in though, and there’s some decent USB Type-C earbuds in the box.

The Mate 10’s external speakers get plenty loud, easily hitting 80 dB. At max volume it’s not the most pleasant audio experience. It gets a little tinny for my liking, especially from the earpiece speaker. If you keep it to around 80 percent volume, the result is perfectly acceptable if not exceptional.

The Mate 10 series features the world’s fastest 4.5G modem with 5CC carrier aggregation, 4×4 MIMO, dual 4G VoLTE, 256-QAM and Cat.16 (Mate 10) and Cat.18 D (Mate 10 Pro) data speeds. Naturally, call quality was excellent, which is also assisted by AI-powered voice recognition and in-call noise cancellation.

Only the Pro has an IP67 dustproof and water-resistant rating (up to a meter for a half hour). The regular Mate 10 has an IP53 rating, which is on the don’t-count-on-it-for-anything-end of the spectrum.

The fingerprint scanner on both devices is lightning fast and reliable, just as we’ve come to expect from Huawei. Huawei says it unlocks the device in just 0.33 seconds, and I have no reason to doubt it.

Huawei has added “enhanced GPS technology” to its multi-sensor navigation, including inertia tracking and offline data to get you better location data when in tunnels or out of a service area. While I can’t say I found myself lost in the woods during the testing period, it’s a nice thing to have in the back of your mind if you ever do.

As an added bonus, both devices come with clear rubberized plastic cases to help mitigate fingerprints and save that shiny exterior from scratches and scrapes.

Performance

The Mate 10 and Mate 10 Pro both ship with Huawei’s 10nm HiSilicon Kirin 970 chipset, complete with a dedicated Neural Processing Unit for faster on-board AI processing. Gary Sims will be covering the NPU in far more detail soon.For now it offers a relatively limited feature set which basically boils down to:

• Scene recognition in the camera app
• Translation (photo-based, no live view or audio for now)
• Resource allocation
• Smart tips (based on context awareness, like suggesting the blue light filter when you’re reading in a dark environment etc)
• Noise canceling and voice recognition in calls

Huawei assures me that over time, new features that take advantage of the NPU’s abilities will be added (rather than being held over for release with the Hauwei P11 or Mate 11). Huawei has positioned the Kirin 970 as an open platform for mobile AI development to encourage new applications to take advantage of the NPU. But they’re also working with key partners to make that happen faster.

For example, the next Android maintenance release scheduled for later this year will add support for Google’s ARCore. Google’s Neural Network APIs will also be added to the Mate 10 via an update early next year. Huawei is in the process of getting Google Translate to work with the NPU in the same way the Microsoft Translator app does.

The Kirin 970 uses an octa-core configuration made up of four high performance Cortex A73 2.36 GHz cores and four energy efficient Cortex A53 cores which clock in at 1.8 GHz. Along with an i7 co-processor, the SoC features the world’s first Mali-G72 MP12 GPU, as well as the brand new NPU.

I primarily used the 128 GB Mate 10 Pro with 6 GB of RAM during the testing period, and while on paper it packs quite a punch, I encountered a few glitches. Like any phone, minor stutters appeared on occasion but cleared up either after a restart or by clearing cached apps. Huawei actually put out two updates in the last week, so the versions that hit stores may be more stable.

It wasn’t just the usual stuff, though.

On two separate occasions the Mate 10 wouldn’t unlock normally. Tapping the fingerprint scanner and power button had unusual results, neither doing what you’d expect. Tapping the fingerprint scanner either did nothing or showed the lock screen with a different battery percentage than on the always-on display. Pressing the power button didn’t always turn the screen on either. Sometimes I had to force-restart the phone to get things back to normal. It should be noted both of these instances occurred after Google issued a bug fixing update and disappeared after a factory reset.

Google apps didn’t always play nice with the Mate 10 Pro, either. Gmail would occasionally only show half a screen of emails. When switching to another account it sometimes wouldn’t show any emails at all. Closing the app and restarting it cleared up the issue. Likewise, for a while all YouTube notifications came through with the same thumbnail, regardless of the channel.

If you can get beyond these issues as early teething problems or possibly related to Google’s bug fixing patch, the Huawei Mate 10 offers considerable performance with the promise of getting better over time— or at least not degrading as fast as other phones. Here’s some benchmarks to whet your appetite.

Battery

Both versions of the Mate 10 ship with a large 4,000 mAh battery and support Huawei Supercharge via the included 4.5V/5A charging brick. Charging a fully depleted device with the power off, you’ll get between 30-35 percent charge in 15 minutes, 55-60 percent in a half hour and 85-90 percent after an hour (batteries charge slower the fuller they get). Huawei wants everyone to know its fast-charging solution is the first to be certified by TÜV Rheinland.

That 4,000 mAh cell will regularly get you somewhere between four and five hours of screen-on time, depending on how bright your screen is set. I managed six hours on the Mate 10 Pro (with the dark theme enabled) in a day when I was inside with the screen constantly set to about 40 percent. I hit just under 7.5 hours on a day when it was set at about 25 percent brightness, but I only just scraped past three hours on the weekend when I was outside the whole time with max brightness enabled. In all cases, I had no problem getting through the entire day with plenty to spare.

The Mate 10 and Mate 10 Pro offer “AI-powered battery management” that promises to better allocate resources according to your personal habits. Much like Huawei’s “Born Fast, Stay Fast” machine learning optimization, it all sounds good but you’ll have to wait until well after you’ve spent your money to see if it all comes true.

The Mate 10 has a satisfying battery management area that lets you check off various suggestions for saving power, including switching to a dark theme on the Mate 10 Pro, manually controlling power-intensive apps, limiting auto-syncing and more. You can also drop your screen resolution down, either automatically when your battery life requires it, or manually whenever you like.

Software

There are some notable new features to EMUI, some of which are due to the Mate 10 shipping with Android 8.0 Oreo. Oddly, Huawei seems to have skipped out on a few Oreo features.

On the positive side, the settings menu has been cleaned up a little, falling more in line with Google’s compact layout in Oreo.

Project Treble guarantees the potential for faster updates in future and Huawei has confirmed the Mate 10 family will get two years of Android updates and at least one major Android version bump.

Oreo features like Picture-in-Picture mode, app shortcuts, smart text selection and notification dots – oddly called badge app icons – are on board. Others are absent, like the adaptive icons and the swipe-up app drawer on the Pixel. The default setting is still an app drawer-less home screen layout, but you can change that in settings.

You can snooze notifications but there are no notification channels on the Mate 10; it’s all or nothing. While some music apps try to do something with album artwork, they all end up looking nowhere near as good as the version on the Pixels. Just look at the mess of styles below.

It should be evident by now that you shouldn’t look to Huawei for a faithful implementation of Android Oreo to a T. Though Huawei falls down on implementing Google features, like the Samsung of old, it makes up for it with a vast bucket of software additions.

One of the coolest Huawei features debuting on the Mate 10 is Projection Mode. Simply buy a USB Type-C to HDMI cable with support for Display Port 1.2 and you can plug your phone directly into an external monitor – no dock required. In this mode you can add Bluetooth peripherals like a mouse or keyboard or use the phone’s display like a trackpad. You’ll need app support for full desktop mode, but other apps will still open, just in portrait mode like on your phone.

The experience works just as advertised too. Just plug in your phone, connect your mouse and keyboard and away you go. It’s a little sluggish – and you obviously can’t be charging your phone at the same time – but it works. It’ll be interesting to see where this type of functionality goes in future.

My personal favorite new feature though has got to the AI-powered translation feature. Living in a foreign country, I frequently have the need for translation, and I’ve never seen anything do it as fast as Microsoft Translator on the Mate 10. If Microsoft isn’t your cup of tea, Google Translate is in the pipeline as well.

It doesn’t have a live view feature like the Google Translate app, but Microsoft’s app can translate up to 50 languages almost instantaneously. Thanks to the NPU it all happens on-device. It works on photos taken via the app, or existing photos, or even screenshots in your gallery. All you have to do is download the language packs you need and away you go. There’s also voice translation and keyboard input.

Huawei has also added a smart split-screen mode. When you’re watching a video or playing a game in full-screen mode, the Mate 10 will add a split-screen icon to most messaging apps’ popup notification. The app will then appear in a window side by side while your video or game continues playing in the other.

A floating navigation dock lets you remove the on-screen navigation buttons and use a little floating ball like you would fingerprint scanner gestures. On the Mate 10 you have fingerprint scanner gestures, the floating dock and on-screen button options, while on the Mate 10 Pro you only get the latter two.

Knuckle gestures return, with two of the more useful options being an ‘S’ to take a scrolling screenshot, and a double-knuckle double tap to start screen recording.

You now have 30 days to recover items deleted from the phone, after which they’ll be completely gone.

 

You can register a fingerprint to access a second version of your phone, so if your parents, girlfriend or immigration officials come snooping around and demand to see your phone, you can simply use your “clean” fingerprint to unlock that version. It takes a little while to open, but it works.

EMUI is a feature-packed Android skin, with most of the added benefits of Android Oreo as well. Huawei’s take on Android is a little rough around the edges, but there’s no denying the company is pushing the envelope where software features are concerned. Many of these could be called gimmicks, but a lot of them are really useful.

While it can be a little confusing the Mate 10 software experience is generally smooth and rewarding. A lot of Huawei’s pre-loaded apps have little use, since Google has better ones available, and it would’ve been nice to see all of Oreo’s main features baked into Huawei’s version of Android 8.0, but EMUI is as clean and functional as it has ever been. It’s still got a ways to go before I’d say it was great, though.

Camera

The Mate 10’s camera outperforms expectations in almost all situations. Beyond the physical hardware, which we’ll cover below, it is also assisted by the NPU in a few ways.

There’s currently 13 scenes that the NPU can recognize, automatically adjusting settings for optimum image capture. The number of compatible scenes will grow over time, and the phone reacts remarkably fast ,  outputting  images of generally very good quality. You can always override the AI-predicted scene selection settings if you disagree, but only by going into the manual controls and switching to a preset. A simple on/off toggle in the camera would’ve been better.

The Mate 10’s camera has a dual ISP for noise reduction and better low-light performance with a 4-way hybrid autofocus comprising laser, depth, contrast and phase detection. The Kirin 970’s NPU capabilities also enable an AI-powered bokeh mode, AI Motion Detection for reduced motion blur and a hybrid digital zoom, all of which are above average.

The Mate 10 has two Summilux-H lenses with f/1.6 aperture: one RGB sensor at 12 MP and a monochrome sensor at 20 MP resolution. They are again co-engineered with Leica and the main RGB sensor has OIS which helps a lot in low light situations.

The Mate 10 camera takes very good shots in a simple point-and-shoot scenario, with a little variation. There’s very little noise to be found in low light shots, and the OIS helps with motion blur. But it must be noted that to get those grain-free shots the Mate 10 tends to crush blacks a bit and slightly darken the overall scene in the resulting photograph. Depending on your tastes, it maintains better image integrity after the fact, but low light photos can be a little less poppy and light than those shot on the Pixel 2 or Note 8 for example.

In contrast to this slight underexposure, bright spots in low-light photos tend to be a little blown out, like in the shot of the river above. The scene wasn’t quite as dark as this shot would imply, but the warning lights on the bridge are half white and half red, a fact the Pixel 2 managed to pick up even if there was much more noise in the photo.

Where other devices balance things out a little more at the cost of added grain, the Mate 10 seems to be on a mission to stamp out noise at the expense  of color and reality. Personally, I appreciate the sharper details, and I can always lighten the shadows in post, but your mileage may vary.

Oddly enough, a more familiar result comes when using the hybrid digital zoom. The level of detail achieved is quite remarkable but the overall image is much lighter than the regular shot with its pitch blacks. You get more noise, but there’s also much more visible in the shadows, as you can see in this shot of Berlin’s TV Tower. The hybrid zoom definitely produces more detail than a zoomed-in regular photo.

Bizarrely I found the Mate 10’s HDR mode to be a little unreliable. A similar level of hit-or-miss occurred with the AI scene selection. The Mate 10 has a tendency to produce very different photos if you shoot a couple in a row. Normally this could be explained by the AI not recognizing the scene in one of them. In HDR mode, even whenfocused on the exact same spot, the phone  would lighten shadows in some photos, but darken them in others. You almost always get a great shot, but I’d recommend always firing off a couple just to have options.

The AI Motion Detection function is really impressive. I took several shots that on almost any of phone would’ve produced at least some degree of blur, even in good lighting, but the Mate 10 managed crisp shots without a hint of movement. From a shot of basketballers jumping in the air in decent but overcast lighting, to this running frisbee shot in low light, the Mate 10’s ability to capture moving subjects without blur was impressive.

The bokeh mode is also pretty good. While these software modes have improved across the board in the last year, the Mate 10 does a very admirable job, lining up well against the Pixel 2, even if that phone manages the effect with dual pixels rather than a dual lens setup.

The software missteps on occasion, but the results are generally more than good enough for a new profile pic or social share. They always look a little artificial, but in the absence of a DSLR or mirrorless camera it’s the next best thing.

The front-facing 8 MP f/2.0 lens is perfectly fine for the average selfie, but if you want the best shots you’d do better perfecting your selfie arm to use the main sensor. I took a few shots covering the monochrome sensor, and while there’s less detail, it’s barely noticeable even when zoomed right in. As a fan of the LG V30’s wide-angle camera, I can only imagine how amazing this camera would be with that as a secondary lens or even a 2x zoom lens.

If I had to criticize the Mate 10 camera it’d be for over-sharpening, which can be pushed to such an extreme that the resulting photos look fake. Some of this may be down to the AI scene detection, but as you can see in this photo of a dog yawning, the ISP has tried so hard to sharpen up the details that it ends up looking odd. This other shot of a dog looks perfectly fine though.

You can pick a color profile from standard, vivid or smooth colors. All the usual Huawei camera modes are also there, including monochrome, 3D panorama, light painting, night shot and slo-mo.Pro mode is also there if you want full control over ISO, white balance, exposure compensation, shutter speed and more. It’s even got a motion photo option like you’ll find on the Pixel 2 or iPhone.

Where the Mate 9 was a manual photographer’s dream, the Mate 10 has stepped up its full auto game. The addition of AI produces some great results, even if the handling of shadows and low light might not be to everyone’s tastes. Occasionally you will feel like you’re battling against our new AI overlords as you struggle to retain control over the resulting photo, though.

If the camera on Huawei phones put you off in the past because they seemed too complicated, those days are over. The Huawei Mate 10 has just as good a point-and-shoot smartphone camera as any other. It just has a little “character” you’ll need to get used to, or just go full manual.

Specifications

Display	5.9-inch Huawei FullView IPS LCD 3D glass 2560 x 1440 resolution 498 ppi 16:9 aspect ratio	6.0-inch Huawei FullView OLED 2160 x 1080 resolution 402 ppi 18:9 aspect ratio	6.0-inch Huawei FullView OLED 2160 x 1080 resolution 402 ppi 18:9 aspect ratio
Processor	Huawei Kirin 970 Octa-core CPU (4 Cortex A73 2.36 GHz + 4 Cortex A53 1.8 GHz) + i7 co-processor + NPU	Huawei Kirin 970 Octa-core CPU (4 Cortex A73 2.36 GHz + 4 Cortex A53 1.8 GHz) + i7 co-processor + NPU	Huawei Kirin 970 Octa-core CPU (4 Cortex A73 2.36 GHz + 4 Cortex A53 1.8 GHz) + i7 co-processor + NPU
GPU	Mali-G72 MP12	Mali-G72 MP12	Mali-G72 MP12
RAM	4 GB LPDDR4	4 / 6 GB LPDDR4	6 GB LPDDR4
Storage	64 GB MicroSD expansion up to 256 GB (uses SIM 2 slot)	64 / 128 GB No MicroSD card slot	256 GB No MicroSD card slot
Cameras	Rear cameras: 20 MP Monochrome + 12 MP RGB sensors f/1.6 in both lenses, OIS (color sensor only), BSI CMOS, dual-LED flash, PDAF+CAF+Laser+Depth auto focus, 2x Hybrid Zoom, 4K video recording Front camera: 8 MP sensor with an f/2.0 aperture, fixed focus	Rear cameras: 20 MP Monochrome + 12 MP RGB sensors f/1.6 in both lenses, OIS (color sensor only), BSI CMOS, dual-LED flash, PDAF+CAF+Laser+Depth auto focus, 2x Hybrid Zoom, 4K video recording Front camera: 8 MP sensor with an f/2.0 aperture, fixed focus	Rear cameras: 20 MP Monochrome + 12 MP RGB sensors f/1.6 in both lenses, OIS (color sensor only), BSI CMOS, dual-LED flash, PDAF+CAF+Laser+Depth auto focus, 2x Hybrid Zoom, 4K video recording Front camera: 8 MP sensor with an f/2.0 aperture, fixed focus
Battery	4,000 mAh Non-removable Huawei SuperCharge	4,000 mAh Non-removable Huawei SuperCharge	4,000 mAh Non-removable Huawei SuperCharge
IP rating	IP53	IP67	IP67
SIM	Dual SIM Primary SIM: 4G Secondary SIM: 2G/3G/4G	Dual SIM Primary SIM: 4G Secondary SIM: 2G/3G/4G	Dual SIM Primary SIM: 4G Secondary SIM: 2G/3G/4G
3.5 mm headphone jack	Yes	No	No
Connectivity	Wi-Fi 2.4 G, 802.11a/b/g/n/ac with Wi-Fi Direct support Bluetooth 4.2, support BLE support aptX/aptX HD and LDAC HD Audio USB Type-C DisplayPort 1.2	Wi-Fi 2.4 G, 802.11a/b/g/n/ac with Wi-Fi Direct support Bluetooth 4.2, support BLE support aptX/aptX HD and LDAC HD Audio USB Type-C DisplayPort 1.2	Wi-Fi 2.4 G, 802.11a/b/g/n/ac with Wi-Fi Direct support Bluetooth 4.2, support BLE support aptX/aptX HD and LDAC HD Audio USB Type-C DisplayPort 1.2
Software	Android 8.0 Oreo EMUI 8.0	Android 8.0 Oreo EMUI 8.0	Android 8.0 Oreo EMUI 8.0
Colors	Mocha Brown, Black, Champagne Gold, Pink Gold	Midnight Blue, Titanium Gray, Mocha Brown, Pink Gold	Diamond Black
Dimensions and weight	150.5 x 77.8 x 8.2 mm 186 g	154.2 x 74.5 x 7.9 mm 178 g	154.2 x 74.5 x 7.9 mm 178 g

Gallery

Pricing & Final Thoughts

The Huawei Mate 10 is a the most mainstream smartphone the company has ever produced. It retains its slick looks while switching to the current trend of a glass front and back. It retains its massive battery while adding an even more efficient chipset and AI optimizations. It takes what used to be a full-featured but complicated camera and makes it incredibly reliable for pick up and shoot photographers.

Huawei is the among the first to ship with Android Oreo out of the box, but software is where the Mate 10 is let down a little. EMUI is convoluted, confusing and occasionally downright weird. There’s more software features here than you can poke a stick at, but it’ll take you a good long while to discover them all and you can expect a few hiccups along the way.

Huawei is really bringing its A-game with the Mate 10 though, putting up its most convincing challenge to competing devices like the Note 8, Pixel 2 and V30 yet. Huawei’s brand name may still not be as popular in the West as the company would like it to be, but devices like the Mate 10 and Mate 10 Pro will help turn that around.

Despite a few questionable choices, the Mate 10 and Mate 10 Pro are really nice phones. The weird mixture of missing features between them will make picking one a slightly harder task, as not all the “best” features are necessarily in the Pro model. Where a company like Samsung knows you’re better off putting all your eggs in the flagship basket, Huawei is taking a risk here.

At 699 Euros the Mate 10 has all the regular bases covered, but at 799 Euros the Mate 10 Pro is only superior in some ways.. It’ll be the only version to make it to the US though, with local pricing and availability coming soon.

There’s an awful lot to love about the Mate 10’s, and while they might not yet be meeting Samsung head to head, they’re another positive step in that direction. If Huawei comes through on all or even most of the promises the Mate 10 makes, then they’re guaranteed to only get better over time.

Alphabet’s ads rake in billions, but its ‘other bets’ are growing

Google’s parent company Alphabet saw its stock price hit an all-time high last week, and the financial good times continue to roll in the company’s newly released quarterly earnings. Over the past three months, the companies under Alphabet’s purview raked in a total of $27.8 billion in revenue (up a healthy 24 percent since last year) and reported $6.7 billion in net income. That surge in revenue is thanks to a big lift in Google’s advertising business, but some other (arguably more fascinating) parts of the Alphabet megastructure are continuing to grow, too.

Just look at Alphabet’s “other bets” — the category that encompasses wild-eyed Google offshoots like Nest, X, Calico and Verily — made $105 million more than it did last year. The total works out to $302 million, the most this category has made since Google’s companies were rolled up into the Alphabehemoth. It’s safe to assume that Nest once again accounted for most of that revenue since it’s been steadily rolling out new consumer-facing products and updating old ones, but Google Fiber clearly pitched in and Verily (Alphabet’s life sciences business) is also known to be profitable.

Tackling big-picture problems like how to build a car that drives itself how to extend human life is a costly endeavor, so it’s no surprise the “other bets” category ultimately lost $812 million this quarter. Still, it’s not losing as much money as before, and Alphabet has the resources to keep investing for the long haul.

Meanwhile, Alphabet unimaginatively refers to as “Google other revenues.” That’s the bucket revenues from Google’s cloud business and hardware sales go, and it has swelled nearly a billion dollars since this time in 2016. Unfortunately, Alphabet doesn’t break out numbers for this category, so it’s tough to say if the growth is thanks to increased demand for its cloud services, or if people really bought into the #MadeByGoogle marketing blitz. Honestly, we’re really looking to Alphabet’s next quarter — a big bump could mean people are rapidly adopting Google’s updated Pixel smartphones or its Home speakers.

Alphabet’s customary earnings call begins at 5PM Eastern — we’ll update this story with any new insights as they’re discussed.

For Microsoft, it’s all about the cloud

Microsoft’s first quarterly earnings for 2018 (the company starts its fiscal year in July) continues the trend seen in the last one. It reported $24.5 billion in overall revenue, which is a 12 percent increase from this time last year. Notably, Surface sales has gone up for the first time in a long while. After a decrease last quarter, Surface revenue actually increased by 12 percent year-over-year this time around, which is probably in large part due to the newly released Surface Laptop and Surface Pro.

That said, cloud revenue continues to dominate Microsoft’s earnings, raking in almost $20 billion this past quarter. Azure commands an impressive 90 percent revenue increase from this time last year and income from its office products has gone up as well. Office 365 commercial revenue has increased by 42 percent while the consumer version of Office 365 now has 28 million subscribers.

Though those two sources of income are up, revenue from the overall personal computing market remains relatively stagnant. Windows OEM revenue went up by just four percent and commercial Windows and cloud services increased by seven percent.

Gaming revenue didn’t move much either, with only a one percent increase, which means that not a lot of people are buying Xboxes. Microsoft did say that revenue from Xbox software did go up by 21 percent, so it seems that current owners are spending some money on the platform at least.

“Our results reflect accelerating innovation and increased usage and engagement across our businesses as customers continue to choose Microsoft to help them transform,” said CEO Satya Nadella in a statement.

Source: Microsoft

Amazon’s Alexa push is making customers buy more

Amazon announced its earnings for the third quarter of 2017 on Thursday and to nobody’s surprise, the internet shopping titan revealed that it has sold a whole bunch of products for unfathomable amounts of money.

The company reports that it sold $43.7 billion worth of merchandise in Q3, that’s a 34 percent increase over the same period last year. However, if you don’t count the $1.3 billion in sales that Whole Foods earned during that time, the company’s net sales only increased by a measly 29 percent year-over-year.

So where did all this cash come from? Well the Whole Foods acquisition in late August definitely helped, but Amazon also introduced three new Echos (the second-gen Echo, the Echo Plus home hub, and the lightweight Echo Spot) as well as new Fire TV, which supports 4K and integrates with an Echo for voice control.

The Alexa assistant living in the Echo also saw a number of upgrades, including the ability to make phone calls, the ability to play nice with Microsoft’s Cortana assistant, and an upcoming expansion into the Japanese and Indian consumer markets. That wasn’t the only new hardware to come out, however. Amazon also debuted new iterations of the Fire HD 10 tablet and the Kindle Oasis 7-inch e-reader.

In terms of the firm’s brick-and-mortar businesses, Amazon did open four new bookstores (oh the irony), bringing the nationwide total up to 12. Three more stores are slated for Walnut Creek, CA, Washington, DC, and Austin, TX in the coming months. The company also threw down the proverbial broken pool cue this quarter, challenging cities across the country to fight to the death for the honor of hosting its second headquarters.

All told, don’t expect this trend to change through the end of the year. The company reportedly expects its sales growth to continue unabated and “be between $56.0 billion and $60.5 billion, or to grow between 28% and 38% compared with fourth quarter 2016,” according to Thursday’s release.

Source: Amazon

Everything you need to know about the Boring Company, Elon Musk’s latest venture

Elon Musk is excited again, and this time it’s all about a new tech venture called “The Boring Company.” Yep, that’s a play on words, but it’s also a real business that wants to revolutionize the way that Americans travel — not up in powerful space rockets this time, but rather beneath our cities. Here’s everything you need to know about it!

What’s Elon Musk up to this time?

Flicker | OnInnovation

Musk and associates believe that “roads must go 3D,” to quote the Boring Company. In other words, they really, really hate traffic, and they believe that as cities get more congested we’ll need to find other traffic solutions beyond our boring old streets and railways. The “3D” solutions could be either flying cars or tunnels — and since flying cars aren’t really feasible right now, the Boring Company is focusing on tunnels. Specifically, a whole bunch of tunnels underneath cities for people to travel in.

Musk likes this tunnel idea because it’s long-term, won’t have much impact on current city structures, and (naturally) because it’s a little sci-fi. It also ties in well to Musk’s high-speed, long-distance transit passion (including dreams like the Hyperloop), with the possibility of connecting nearby cities to each other.

So, what is “The Boring Company” exactly?

You may be thinking, “Umm, Elon, we already have tunnels below cities. They’re called subways. You were about a century too late.” Well, Musk knows that, and that’s partly why the new venture is called the Boring Company. It’s not about seizing some newfound technology, but rather using old-fashioned underground digging more efficiently.

Specifically, the Boring Company wants to vastly increase the speed that city tunnels can be dug, and decrease the associated costs. Additionally, the BC wants to get involved in creating the tunnels themselves. That’s where the other meaning of “boring” comes in: The company will literally be boring holes underneath urban areas, using its own assets.

But what is the Boring Company actually doing differently?

The BC has several specific goals in tunneling, which include a lot of advanced technology that isn’t often seen in today’s tunnel-digging. That includes:

• New TBMs (tunnel boring machines): These are the giant machines that chew out tunnels. They are very slow: about 14x slower than a snail, according to the BC. The primary goal of the company is to replace these older machines with brand new versions that come with a lot of promises. They will be carried via electrical power instead of diesel; they will be automated for safety; and they will have triple the amount of power compared to their oldschool predecessors. Some of these goals are relatively easy, while some require a lot of new invention.
• New support strategies: Currently, TBMs tunnel a little, stop to build supports, tunnel a little, and so on. That’s one of the big reasons they are so slow. The BC also wants to find a better way, preferably a method that allows for continuous tunneling and reliable support-building.
• Smaller tunnels: Current tunnels are around 28 feet wide in the U.S. The BC wants to dig tunnels that are only 14 feet wide. That’s where most the speed and savings come from.
• R&D: To no surprise, the BC thinks that underground construction equipment is woefully out of date. Part of the organization’s purpose is to research new technology to update this industry.

Is the Boring Company a pipe dream, or is it really happening?

It’s really happening. Actually, it was really happening back in the summer of 2017, when Elon Musk rented a Canadian boring machine and secured permission to start digging test tunnels out at the SpaceX headquarters—quite literally what Musk had threatened to do in response to horrible LA traffic.

From there the project quickly expanded. Maryland gave the company permission to dig a 10-mile tunnel in part of the Baltimore-Washington Parkway, and the company unveiled plans to start using a second, more advanced boring machine. The long-term, Musk-style goal is to build a tunnel between New York and D.C., which in theory could take only 30 minutes.

Of course, at the moment these are primarily prototype and testing projects as the company forms ways to save money and reinvent tunneling. But there’s definitely a lot of activity.

Are there any practical yet fundamentally important problems that the BC needs to address?

Glad you asked! There are a number of issues with digging new transportation tunnels, some that the Boring Company has addressed and some it has not. That includes:

• Earthquakes and vibrations: The BC assures people that, a) the tunnels are too deep for any meaningful vibrations to be felt, and b) tunnels don’t really get damaged in earthquakes, and certainly can’t cause them.
• Dirt: What happens to the dirt from all this excavation? Well, it’s usually shipped to landfills or other construction projects — and it looks like that will keep on happening. The BC mentions that it would like to turn the dirt into construction bricks for tunnel support, but no word on when or how this would happen.
• Emissions: The BC intends to use an electric skate method to transport gas-burning equipment (unfortunately, tunneling equipment needs a lot of power and cannot be fully electric yet). This helps cut down on at least some emissions involved in the process. Presumably, once tunnels are completed they will be equipped with electric cars and vehicles.
• Size: Are 14-foot tunnels large enough for subway cars and transportation equipment? We hope so! However, 14-foot tunnels have been used primarily for sewer and flood control in past projects: It’s not certain precisely what sort of vehicles would be used in these smaller tunnels, although we do have some interesting mock-ups from the BC. But would these new tunnels be required to use BC vehicles?

Additionally, if you live in NYC, D.C. or another city riddled with public transit, you have probably noticed (especially in recent years) that the big problem with subways and similar solutions is maintenance. Tunnels may reliably stay the same, but underground equipment wears out very fast and is very difficult to replace or keep running on a reliable schedule over time. In other words, you can have the best tunnels in the world, but unless the city devotes enough resources in maintenance and updates, they are going to run into a whole lot of problems.

This sounds fun and futuristic. Can I get involved?

The Boring Company is still a relatively small startup, but it’s looking for top-notch engineers and technicians if you are interested in applying. Currently, there’s no word on investment opportunities or funding rounds.

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Nvidia confirms GTX 1070 Ti add-in card will arrive next month from 11 partners

Why it matters to you

If you want more oomph in your gaming PC than the GTX 1070, but don’t want to pay the GTX 1080’s price, Nvidia has a graphics card for you.

After rumors of the card surfaced over the last several months, Nvidia confirmed on Thursday, October 26, that the GeForce GTX 1070 Ti graphics card will be available worldwide on November 2 starting at $449. It will fall in between the current GTX 1080 add-in card with a starting price of $549, and the vanilla GTX 1070 model with a starting price of $399. Customers can pre-order models now manufactured by Asus, Colorful, EVGA, Gainward, Galaxy, Gigabyte, Innovision 3D, MSI, Palit, PNY, and Zotac.

Here are the specifications for the new GTX 1070 Ti compared to the GTX 1080 and GTX 1070:

GTX 1080
GTX 1070 Ti
GTX 1070
CUDA cores:
2,560
2,432
1,920
Base speed:
1,607MHz
1,607MHz
1,506MHz
Boost speed:
1,733MHz
1,683MHz
1.683MHz
Memory amount:
8GB GDDR5X
8GB GDDR5
8GB GDDR5
Memory speed:
10Gbps
8Gbps
8Gbps
Memory bus:
256-bit
256-bit
256-bit
Ports:
3x DisplayPort 1.4
1x HDMI 2.0b
1x DL-DVI
3x DisplayPort 1.4
1x HDMI 2.0b
1x DL-DVI
3x DisplayPort 1.4
1x HDMI 2.0b
1x DL-DVI
Dimensions:
4.376 x 10.5 inches
4.376 x 10.5 inches
4.376 x 10.5 inches
Power use:
180 watts
180 watts
150 watts
Power connection:
1x 8-pin
1x 8-pin
1x 8-pin
Starting price:
$549
$449
$399

As the chart shows, the new GTX 1070 Ti card has the same base speed as the GTX 1080, but with 128 fewer cores. Meanwhile, it has the same boost speed as the GTX 1070, but with 512 additional cores. But also note that the GTX 1070 Ti uses more power than the vanilla 1070 due to the number of cores stuffed into the GPU. Nvidia recommends a 500-watt power supply to handle the juice these three cards demand.

According to Nvidia, the GTX 1070 Ti provides nearly twice the performance in The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, Deus Ex: Mankind Divided (DirectX 12), and Rise of the Tomb Raider (DirectX 12) compared to the company’s “legendary” GTX 970 card released in 2014. The newer card is based on Nvidia’s “Pascal” graphics core architecture providing better performance at a lower power draw.

“We designed the GeForce GTX 1070 Ti to be an overclocking monster with plenty of headroom for gamers to crank up the clock speeds,” Nvidia said on Thursday. “And our partners have built cards with thermals and power supplies that allow gamers to push performance way past stock specifications.”

For example, EVGA customers can pre-order four GTX 1070 Ti graphics cards now for a starting price of $469. All four ship with the company’s Precision XOC and OC Scanner X tools that will scan for the EVGA card, find and apply the optimal overclock settings with just the click of a button. Here are a few differences between the four:

SC Gaming
Gaming
FTW2 Gaming
SC Hybrid
Power type:
1x 8-pin
1x 8-pin
2x 8-pin
1x 8-pin
Power use:
217 watts
217 watts
235 watts
217 watts
Cooler type:
ACX 3.0
Blower
ICX
Hybrid
Backplate:
No
No
Yes
Yes
LEDs:
White
White
RGB
White
Price:
$469
$489
$499
$529

Nvidia’s new GTX 1070 Ti arrives after AMD’s latest add-in cards for desktop gaming arrived just two months prior. They are based on AMD’s new “Vega” graphics core architecture and target Nvidia’s GeForce GTX 10-Series family. More specifically, the new Radeon RX Vega 64 serves as a GTX 1080 alternative while the Radeon RX Vega 56 targets Nvidia’s vanilla GTX 1070 card.

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