Ticwatch S Review by MrMobile: Android Wear on the cheap

Last year, while mourning the loss of my favorite smartwatch to a Fitbit acquisition, I was given hope by a wearable called the Ticwatch 2. It featured an innovative operating system and a very clever touch-sensitive strip for controlling it. Recently, almost 20,000 people pledged about 3.2 million dollars on Kickstarter to bring its two sequels to life.

The Ticwatch S and E models are the result, and I got to check out the sportier “S” model during a weeklong review period. The Ticwatch S ditches its predecessor’s proprietary OS for Android Wear, but it also eliminates its single most interesting feature in favor of affordability. With its “tickle strip” ditched and its casing looking a lot like every other fitness watch out there, does the Ticwatch S still stand out? Click on MrMobile’s Ticwatch S Review above to find out!

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Get active noise-cancelling with the $39 Cowin E7 Bluetooth headphones

This is noise-cancelling on a budget.

The Cowin E7 active noise-cancelling Bluetooth headphones are down to $38.99 with code CBDEAL11 on Amazon. This price only applies to the Black color. The street price is around $70 usually, but they did drop to $45 for the Black Friday shopping season. Even including that drop, this deal is better and one of the lowest we’ve ever seen.

Features include:

• Advanced active noise reduction technology quells airplane cabin noise, city traffic or a busy office, makes you focus on what you want to hear,enjoy your music, movies and videos. The noise cancellation function can work well both in wire and wireless mode.
• Proprietary 40mm large-aperture drivers. Deep, accurate bass response. Crisp, powerful sound.
• Cowin E7 provides high-quality built-in microphone for hands-free calls, which is convenient for you to free yourself from wires.
• NFC pairing aided by voice prompts promises quick and stable connection with your Bluetooth enabled devices
• The professional protein earpad and 90-degree swiveling earcups. More durability and comfort, Enjoy high-quality, long-listen comfort.
• 30 hours playtime per charge in Bluetooth mode.

These headphones come with an 18-month warranty.

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Samsung’s W2018 flip phone has a camera with an adjustable aperture

The W2018 won’t ever come to the States, but its camera tech might.

Flip phones are still quite popular in certain parts of the world, and in China, Samsung recently announced its new W2018 for the country. The phone will be an exclusive to China Telecom and likely sell for more than $1,500 USD, and although it’ll never make its way to the United States or other parts of the world, there’s something quite interesting going on with its rear camera.

The W2018 comes equipped with a 12MP sensor and an incredibly low f/1.5 aperture, and while that’s impressive enough on its own, the kicker here is that the aperture can actually change to f/2.4.

We haven’t seen this tech on a phone since 2009 with the Nokia N86 MP, and it means that you’ve got flexibility for capturing the best image possible whether you’re in an area with low or ample lighting. The W2018 can only switch back and forth between f/1.5 and f/2.4 with no option to go to aperture ratings in between, but even with that being the case, this is still exciting. We’ve yet to see how this system actually performs in regards to image quality, and while we aren’t certain if the Galaxy S9 will ship with a similar setup in 2018, we’d expect this to make its way to other Samsung handsets at some point down the road.

The W2018’s adjustable aperture in action.

As for other specifications on the W2018, there are two 4.2-inch 1080p Super AMOLED displays, 5MP front-facing camera, Snapdragon 835, 6GB of RAM, USB-C, NFC, and a rear-mounted fingerprint sensor.

The variable aperture with the W2018’s rear camera is easily the most exciting part of the phone, so be sure to let us know in the comments whether or not this is a feature you’d like to see in future Samsung devices.

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This is the season for binge-watching with Verizon Fios [Sponsored]

With Fios 100/100 Mbps internet, you can rest assured that you’ll be streaming virtually uninterrupted on multiple devices for just $39.99/month online.

As the cold winter months approach, there’s no better time to cozy up on the couch for some quality binge-watching. A new year means new seasons of all your favorite shows, so there’s no time like the present to catch up on everything you’ve missed. With Fios 100/100 Mbps internet, you can rest assured that you’ll be streaming virtually uninterrupted on multiple devices for just $39.99/month online plus taxes, equipment charges, and other fees.

Want to splurge a bit on yourself with more entertainment options this holiday season? Check out Fios Triple Play!

With this offer, you’ll get internet with speeds up to 940/880 Mbps — along with crystal-clear HDTV and home phone service — for just $79.99/month online plus taxes, equipment charges, and other fees, with a new 2-year contract. You’ll even get SHOWTIME® included for two years at no extra charge so you’ll be able to watch all of your favorite shows like Shameless, Homeland and Ray Donovan.

What’s Included with the Triple Play:

• 100% fiber-optic network with Fios Gigabit Connection with speeds up to 940/880 Mbps.
• Get Custom TV, and choose a TV package with the types of programming you watch. Pay for the types of channels you want. Not the ones you don’t.
• Fios Digital Voice home phone service that delivers the voice quality of a 100% fiber-optic network and includes calling to the U.S., Canada, and Puerto Rico.
• 2 years of Fios Multi-Room DVR service
• 2 years of SHOWTIME® at no extra charge.

Locked into your current contract with another provider? Verizon is offering up to a $500 credit to help cover your early termination fee and keep away the holiday blues.

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Tinder is using AI to figure out who you’ll really like

In 2015, Tinder introduced a new feature called the “Super Like.” We all know you can swipe right to let a user know you’re interested. But if you’re really interested, that’s where the Super Like comes in. Swiping up meant you Super Liked a person. Now, Tinder is launching a new feature called “Super Likeable,” and it uses AI to figure out who you’re likely to Super Like.

Users are limited to using Super Like once a day. But Tinder’s AI will present you with four different people it thinks are worthy of your Super Likes. You’ll get one free Super Like to use on one of these Super Likeable people. Users have no say over when Super Likeable people appear to them, and you can’t go out and find them; it’s just a feature you’ll occasionally find while using Tinder. It’s worth noting that this feature is similar to the way one of Tinder’s rivals works: Coffee Meets Bagel delivers matches it thinks you’ll like every day.

The feature is currently limited to users in New York and Los Angeles, but it will likely roll out to the wider Tinder audience soon. It will be interesting to see how spot-on the AI actually is in regard to the people it thinks users will Super Like.

Via: TechCrunch

Source: Tinder

Researchers create ultrasound needle for internal surgical images

Minimally invasive surgeries are appealing because they typically mean less scar tissue, shorter recovery times and a lower risk of infection. But they have their downsides as well. Getting a good look at the tissue being targeted during a minimally invasive surgery can be quite difficult, and often surgeons are limited to using external ultrasound probes and imaging scans taken prior to surgery. But new research published today in Light: Science & Applications presents a potential new option — an optical ultrasound needle.

Within the needle are two optical fibers. One generates ultrasonic pulses by delivering brief flashes of light and the other detects the light that’s reflected by the tissues in the body. “The whole process happens extremely quickly, giving an unprecedented real-time view of soft tissue,” Richard Colchester, an author of the study, said in a statement. “Using inexpensive optical fibres, we have been able to achieve high resolution imaging using needle tips under 1 mm,” said co-author Adrien Desjardins.

So far, the researchers have tested the ultrasound needle during heart surgery in pigs and they hope to test it out in other clinical applications that use minimally invasive techniques as well. They’re also working towards using the technology in humans. You can check out the video below for more info on the needle.

Image: Finlay et al. / Light: Science & Applications

Via: Phys.org

Source: Light: Science & Applications

Periscope’s stream tipping is available outside the US

Periscope’s livestream tipping system is no longer a US-only affair — the Twitter-owned service has expanded its Super Broadcaster program to Canada, Ireland and the UK. As before, livestreamers who’ve received enough Super Hearts (which viewers pay for with in-app purchases) can apply to become Super Broadcasters and trade those Hearts in for real money. Periscope will only take a $1 cut. Effectively, it’s a spin on Twitch’s cheers or YouTube’s Super Chat. You’re rewarding streamers you like and encouraging them to treat it as more of a business than a hobby.

Periscope will widen the program to more countries “as soon as we can.”

The Super Broadcaster initiative is a way for Twitter to improve Periscope’s viability as a business, but it’s also a bid to prevent the brand from sharing Vine’s ignominious fate. Vine was popular to the point where it had stars known primarily through their short looping clips, but there was no easy way for them to get paid. They eventually drifted to other, larger services where it was easier to rack up advertising deals. While Periscope’s move won’t necessarily stop some streamers from preferring services like Instagram (its 800 million-plus users are hard to ignore), it may be ideal for broadcasters who want to make an income from fan support rather than ad deals.

Via: TechCrunch

Source: Periscope (Medium)

Razer Phone review: A tough sell, even if it’s great for gamers

Razer is mostly known for its gaming hardware, so it was a little surprising when the company acquired phone-maker Nextbit earlier this year. Eleven months later, and it finally revealed the results of that acquisition: The Razer Phone. Just like the rest of Razer’s lineup, the company’s first smartphone was built with gaming in mind. Even so, the Razer Phone has features that would please non-gamers too. Whether it’s worth $700, however, is another question.

Hardware

At first glance, the Razer Phone looks like a larger, sturdier version of the Nextbit Robin, except that instead of plastic, the Razer is wrapped in anodized aluminum. I have to admit, however, that I was not immediately impressed with the Razer Phone’s design. It just looks like a boring black slab that doesn’t appear remarkably different from other Android handsets.

Measuring 6.24 inches long by 3.06 inches wide by 0.32 inch thick and weighing 6.95 ounces, it’s also sort of hefty. It was pretty hard to use one-handed with my small hands. What’s more, the Razer Phone has straight sides and sharp corners all the way around, which can dig into your hands. Still, the all-aluminum body does give the phone a premium feel, which can’t be said about the Robin.

Like the Robin, the Razer Phone has a power button on the right side that doubles as the fingerprint sensor. It worked well in my tests, and I was able to wake the phone with a slight touch. Sitting right above the power button is a slot for both the SIM and a microSD card. On the left side are two volume buttons, while the front-facing 8-megapixel camera sits above the display. On the back of the phone is a 12-megapixel dual-lens camera; one wide-angle lens with a f/1.7 aperture and a f/2.6 telephoto zoom lens. There’s a dual-tone LED flash next to the camera as well.

On the bottom is a lone USB-C port, and — just like the latest iPhones and Pixels — the Razer Phone does not have a headphone jack. Instead, it comes with a USB-C-to-headphone adapter that packs a 24-bit THX-certified digital-to-analog converter. Or, of course, you could just use a pair of Bluetooth headphones.

Internal specs include a Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 processor, an Adreno 540 GPU, 8GB of RAM, 64GB of storage, and support for up to 2TB microSD cards.

Display and sound

If you’re going to boast that your phone is “made for gamers,” then the display had better deliver. Thankfully, for Razer, it certainly does. The screen is an absolutely gorgeous Sharp IGZO 5.7-inch QHD (1440 x 2560) IPS edge-to-edge display, with bright, rich colors and brilliant detail. What’s even more impressive is that the screen refreshes at rates as high as 120Hz, which is really unheard of in a globally available smartphone like this one — it’s the same refresh rate found on the iPad Pro and a Japan-only Sharp Aquos R Compact.

What this translates to is a wonderfully smooth gameplay experience, which is especially useful in action-packed titles like Titanfall Assault or Final Fantasy XV. Not all games can take advantage of the 120Hz refresh rate — most developers cap their games’ FPS in order to support all displays — but Razer is working with select devs to optimize their games for its display. Developers for games such as Shadowgun, Arena of Valor and Final Fantasy XV are already on board. Thankfully, you don’t need to be gamer to appreciate this higher-than-usual refresh rate: sifting through apps and scrolling down long webpages look smoother and more natural than on other devices. Once you see this super-fast refresh rate in action, you’ll wish it was the smartphone standard rather than the exception.

That’s not to say the screen itself is perfect, though. While it’s perfectly usable (and playable) indoors, the display is, unfortunately, hard to see in bright daylight. I often had to shield the screen with my hand just to check my notifications, and trust me, that’s not a great way to live.

Sandwiching the display on the top and bottom are two front-facing speakers, which are probably the best speakers I’ve heard on a smartphone. Each has its own amplifier and, as the phone is tuned with Dolby Atmos for Mobile, there’s hardly any distortion or crackling — even at high volumes. In short, the audio is loud, immersive and an absolute treat when playing games, watching shows on Netflix or just playing your favorite tunes on Spotify.

Software

The Razer Phone ships with Android 7.1 (Nougat) and though the UI is fairly clean, it does ship with the Nova Prime launcher preloaded. A favorite among Android users, the Prime launcher lets you customize everything from the look and feel of the desktop to mapping gestures to a variety of different functions. For example, you can map it so that swiping up will expand notifications, or so that double-tapping triggers Google Assistant. Of course, if you’d rather have vanilla Android, you can always remove the launcher. Razer is confident that it’ll get Android 8.0 (Oreo) in early 2018.

On top of that, Razer is also working with several game publishers to create custom themes that you can download from the Razer Theme Store. You’ll have to create a Razer ID account for this, but once you do, you can download and apply whichever gaming-inspired theme you fancy.

One preloaded app that I particularly like is called Game Booster. This app lets you customize the frame rate, resolution and processor clock speed for each individual game, which is great if you’d rather not make global changes that affect the entire phone. For example, if you want your games running at 120, you can set that accordingly, while leaving the rest of the phone at a lower refresh rate to conserve battery. The app also has a couple of automated adjustments. There’s Power Save mode, which automatically downscales settings to save battery, and Performance mode, which maxes out all the settings for the best gameplay experience possible.

When you do optimize the game for performance, the results are pretty great. I played a few graphically-rich games like Alto’s Adventure and Titanfall Assault and was very pleased with the rich colors and sharp detail. To be fair, they were very good even without the optimizations, but the higher resolution and increased refresh rate made them look that much smoother and sharper.

A word of caution: If you were expecting the cloud-backup solution that Nextbit’s Robin was known for, you won’t find that here. Instead of the phone offloading unused apps like Nextbit did, you’ll just have to store them the old-fashioned way — on local storage. Thankfully, the Razer Phone’s sizable 64GB of space (and up to 2TB of additional storage via microSD card) should be good enough for most people. As for documents and photos, you can store them in the cloud, thanks to Google Photos and Google Drive, just like any other Android phone.

Camera

The Razer Phone’s built-in camera is very basic, with the ability to toggle flash, HDR and a few extra features like a visual grid and a timer, but not much else. I appreciated the tap-to-focus ability, but that’s standard for most phones these days. Shutter speeds feel a touch slow, and if you do decide to use HDR, it’s even slower, with a delay of one to two seconds. You can quickly launch the camera by double-pressing the power key, and holding down the shutter button will take photos in burst mode. That’s really it.

The front-facing 8-megapixel camera takes decent selfies, with bright colors and sharp detail, but there was nothing that made me prefer it over other selfie cams. As for the photo quality of the rear camera, the results were OK but not great. Pictures taken in daylight were plenty sharp, but colors were a bit muted and weren’t as rich as I would like. Low-light photos were hit or miss as well — some looked acceptable given the right lighting conditions, but the ones that were less adequately lit looked fuzzy and noisy. As far as cameras go, you can do much, much better.

On the one hand, it’s really no surprise the camera is in the shape that it’s in. This is Razer’s first phone, and as we’ve seen with devices like the Essential PH-1, it’s very difficult for a team without loads of experience to nail a smartphone camera on their first try. That said, the Razer Phone’s camera falls well short of what we expected from a device that costs this much — I’m pretty sure gamers like to take nice photos, too. For what it’s worth, Razer has acknowledged these camera issues and it says it’s working on updates to improve the experience. We’ll see how things change once those updates are released, but for now, merely OK photos are the best you can hope for.

Performance and battery life

As mentioned earlier, the Razer Phone ships with a Qualcomm 835 Snapdragon processor as well as an Adreno 540 GPU and 8GB of RAM. I spent most of my time with the Razer Phone checking email, looking at Twitter, watching YouTube videos and playing games, with a lot of multitasking in between. For the most part, I had no noticeable issues with lag or slowdown. There were a few occasions when apps crashed during gameplay, but that didn’t happen often.

I was particularly impressed with the Razer Phone’s 4,000 mAh battery. During moderate use peppered with several intense gaming sessions, the phone easily lasted a day and a half between charges. I should note here that I used the phone under default settings, where the screen refreshes at 90hz and then changes depending on whether a higher frame rate game is running. The phone does get a little hot if you’re playing a particularly action-intensive game — Titanfall Assault, for example — but it cools down quickly. The Phone also comes with Qualcomm QuickCharge tech that lets it charge from zero to around 85% in just under an hour.

The competition

Due to the Razer Phone’s price, I thought it fair to compare it to phones of a similar price range. The Essential, for example, initially sold for around $700 (it’s since dropped to $500, however) and has a 5.7-inch QHD screen too. It doesn’t have the same refresh rate as the Razer, but that display is nothing to sneeze at, either. Yet, the Essential falters when it comes to its speakers and doesn’t do well when it comes to photo quality.

When compared to other Android flagships, the Razer Phone holds its own in terms of price and battery life. The Pixel 2 is $649 while the Pixel 2 XL is $849, and both also promise a pretty impressive battery life, each lasting more than a day with average use. The Galaxy S8 and S8 Plus up the ante with Super AMOLED “Infinity Displays” that wrap all the way around, with a design language that is far sexier than the Razer’s blocky look. The Samsungs also have great battery life, with the S8 Plus lasting around two days on average. But you’ll have to pay for that, as the S8 and S8 Plus are $750 and $850 each.

Wrap-up

Razer definitely nailed the “phone for gamers” ethos, with its beautiful display, buttery smooth performance and ear-tingling speakers. Its performance as a regular ol’ phone isn’t too bad either, as those same qualities are great for other fun activities like watching videos and listening to tunes. Plus, battery life is stellar, which is great news for gamers and non-gamers alike. That said, if you wanted a stylish phone with a good camera and a display that works great outdoors, we’d advise you to look elsewhere. For those who care about gaming above all else, though, Razer has your back yet again.

Samsung’s W2018 flip phone has a variable aperture camera

Smartphone makers are always pushing for the fastest-possible camera aperture, and until today, the record was held by LG V30 with its f/1.6 lens. But it didn’t take long before Samsung hit back with an even lower f-stop.

Earlier today, the Korean giant announced the W2018 which is its tenth extravagant dual-screen flip phone — likely priced at above $1,500 — made exclusively for China Telecom’s “Heart Of The World” charity series. To our surprise, rather than simply repackaging existing flagship components into this form factor, Samsung actually threw in some new tech this time: not only does its 12-megapixel main camera come with an even lower f/1.5 aperture, but it can also switch to f/2.4 for a deeper depth of field when lighting is ideal.

While this is the first time that variable aperture is applied to a smartphone’s fixed lens since the Nokia N86 MP, Samsung was surprisingly quiet about this rare feature. Thankfully, we came across a close-up video of the W2018’s main camera in action, and the mechanism appears to be a miniaturized version of conventional aperture blades, except it’s limited to two aperture settings. The effectiveness of such variable aperture on a smartphone camera remains to be seen, but at least this gives Samsung a good head start, especially if this tech does end up on the upcoming Galaxy S9 — we may find out as soon as January.

The camera is otherwise pretty much identical to those on the S8 series and the wide-angle imager on the Note 8: it features large 1.4um pixels, dual-pixel auto-focus and optical image stabilization.

Another first for Samsung’s premium line of flip phones here is the addition of Bixby, which started supporting Chinese voice input as of last month. Of course, this means you have a new dedicated button on the side of the phone to toggle Samsung’s very own digital assistant.

Much like its predecessor, the W2018 features two 4.2-inch 1080p Super AMOLED touchscreens, a rear fingerprint reader, dual SIM slots, NFC, a 5-megapixel f/1.9 selfie camera and a surprisingly small 2,300 mAh battery. Luckily, the rest is as you’d expect on a modern flagship device: Snapdragon 835 chipset, 6GB of RAM, a storage option of 64GB or a whopping 256GB plus a USB-C port (yes, the W2017 still had a micro-USB port). There’s even an iris scanner if you prefer using that to unlock, but it’s only accessible when you flip open the phone.

At the time of writing this article, neither Samsung nor China Telecom had yet to confirm the price for the W2018; we tend not to hear about it until much later on (not that any of us outside of China are going to buy one, anyway). But what we do know is that both parties have donated a total of four million yuan (about $605,000) to the China Youth Development Foundation to help build ten “Heart Of The World Samsung Smart Schools” in rural areas next year. Each of these schools will be equipped with PCs, tablets, smartphones and interactive whiteboards, in the hopes of helping impoverished children as well as influencing other schools by training teachers with these equipments.

Via: Engadget Chinese

Source: Jason Wang (Sina Weibo), Samsung, Sohu, Sina Tech

Chrome on Windows will block third-party apps that cause crashes

Google says that around two-thirds of Windows Chrome users use third-party applications that interact directly with the web browser, like antivirus or accessibility software. These apps have typically injected code into Chrome to work correctly, but people that use these kinds of code-injecting apps on Windows are 15 percent more likely to see Chrome crashes. To curtail this issue, Google will start blocking code injection apps from Windows Chrome in three phases, starting in July 2018.

Chrome 66, due out in April of next year, will start warning users after a crash, telling them that injected code is the culprit for their issues, and then helping them remove the specific software. In July 2018, Chrome 68 for Windows will start blocking code injected by third-party software. If that keeps Chrome from launching, the browser will restart and allow it, but will also request that the user remove the software. In January of 2019, Chrome 72 will block apps that try to inject code automatically, no questions asked (though some software will still be allowed, like accessibility software, input method editors and Microsoft-signed code).

Via: Ars Technica

Source: Google