3D-printed smartphone microscope is good enough for scientists

Your smartphone could soon be a fully functional microscope capable of examining samples as small as 1/200th of a millimeter. Australian researchers have developed a clip-on device that requires no external light or power sources to produce a clear picture of microscopic organisms and cells from animals, plants and blood — and it can be made by anyone with a 3D printer, as the team is sharing the 3D printing files publicly.

Unlike other phone-based microscopes which use bulky LEDs and other power sources, the device works using internal illumination tunnels, which use light from the camera flash to illuminate the sample from behind. Lead developer Dr Anthony Orth said: “We’ve designed a simple mobile phone microscope that takes advantage of the integrated illumination available with nearly all smartphone cameras,” adding that the device can be used as “an inexpensive and portable tool for all types of onsite or remote-area monitoring.” The team anticipates the microscope being used to test water cleanliness, to detect disease and to analyze blood samples for parasites.

This isn’t the first time scientists have tried to turn smartphones into microscopes, but it’s comparatively the most successful. In 2016, Italian company Smart Micro Optics revealed its set of Blips lenses that could turn a phone’s camera into a digital microscope capable of magnifying up to 80 times, while 2013 saw a YouTuber demonstrate how it can be done using Plexiglas and a laser pointer.

Via: ZDNet

Source: Scientific Reports

Spotify might be building a smart speaker of its own

Spotify appears to be working a smart speaker that it says will be “category defining,” according to new job listings. “Spotify is on its way to creating its first physical products and set up an operational organization for manufacturing, supply chain, sales and marketing,” one ad states. So far, it has relied on other products like Google’s Assistant, Amazon Echo and Sonos:1 to stream its service. However, Apple recently launched its HomePod speaker with only native Apple Music support, showing Spotify’s need to take action on its own hardware.

The ads show that the new “operations manager,” “senior product manager: hardware production” and “project manager: hardware production and engineering,” would be handling manufacturing and supply for the new product. That suggests Spotify is ready to start manufacturing soon, as the Guardian points out.

Spotify is easily the most popular streaming app and works just fine on most hardware products. However, it’s impossible for Android users to stream it over the Apple’s HomePod (Mac and iOS users can do it via Apple’s proprietary AirPlay protocol). That eliminates a bit chunk of users from both Apple and Spotify’s ecosystems, depending on their loyalties.

If Spotify does release a smart speaker, it could support Alexa or Google Assistant, or both, like models from Sonos and others. The company is taking a bit of a risk of stepping on its partners’ toes, though it seems unlikely that anyone but Apple — which wants to promote its own streaming service — would block the app and its 70 million worldwide paid subscribers.

Via: The Guardian

Source: Spotify Jobs

Apple Files New Trademark Application for Classic ‘Rainbow’ Logo

Apple has applied for a new U.S. trademark for its famous multicolor logo for use on apparel, reports The Blast. The Apple filing was processed in December by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office’s Trademark Reporting and Monitoring System (TRAM), and is now being considered for approval.

The description of the mark in the filing is of “an apple with a bite removed, with a detached leaf in green, and the apple divided into horizontal colored segments of the following colors (from top to bottom): green, yellow, orange, red, violet and blue”.

According to the application, the logo will be used for headgear, namely, hats and caps. Apple already sells t-shirts with the same logo emblazoned on the front at its Apple Park Visitor Center, so the filing likely relates to a possible extension of the existing clothing line, although there’s no saying whether Apple will actually use the trademark or just wants to protect it against unofficial use.

The classic multi-colored Apple logo was conceived by graphic designer Rob Janoff in 1977, but Steve Jobs axed the design when he returned to Apple in 1997 in favor of the monochromatic logo that continues to be used today.

Janoff’s “rainbow Apple” was actually created as a more modern, albeit playful replacement for Apple’s first logo, which was designed in 1976 by Apple co-founder Ron Wayne. Sometimes referred to as Apple’s “fifth Beatle”, Wayne famously sold his stake in the company two weeks after it was founded.

Wayne was a fan of the ornate line-drawing style of Victorian illustrated fiction, and used Sir Isaac Newton as the company’s symbolic bellwether, an apple hanging precariously above his head. A quote from Wordsworth embellishes the baroque frame: “A mind forever voyaging through strange seas of thought, alone.”

Tag: trademark
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Samsung to Slash OLED Panel Production on ‘Weak Demand’ for iPhone X, Claims Nikkei

Samsung plans to slash its OLED panel output in response to Apple’s decision to cut production of iPhone X due to “weak demand”, the Nikkei Asian Review reported on Tuesday. Samsung will make OLED panels for 20 million fewer iPhones at its South Chungcheong plant in the January to March quarter, a lot lower than its original goal of supplying panels for 45 million to 50 million iPhones, according to the paper.

Samsung is said to have made a 13.5 trillion won ($12.6 billion) capital investment in anticipation of the originally expected number of OLED panel orders from Apple. The new target reportedly reduces plant production to roughly 60 percent of original forecasts, and Samsung’s display business is expected to suffer revenue declines for the first half of 2018. Samsung stock fell as much as 2.3 percent in morning trade, reported Reuters, while shares of some Japanese OLED component makers also declined.

Today’s report follows previous claims by Nikkei that “weak demand” for iPhone X has forced Apple to slash its production target by half in the three month period from January. However the claim doesn’t tally with Apple’s own results reported at its recent quarterly conference call earlier this month, and it’s unclear which supply chain sources the publication is relying on. Apple CEO Tim Cook has dismissed these types of reports in the past, suggesting that the company’s supply chain is very complex and that any singular data point is not a reliable indicator of what’s actually going on.

During its record financial results report for the first fiscal quarter of 2018 (which corresponds to the fourth calendar quarter of 2017), Cook said the iPhone X was the top-selling iPhone model every week since it had debuted in November. iPhone shipments were down 1.2 percent year-over-year compared to the year-ago quarter, but only because of an extra sales week last year – Apple’s growth was actually 21 percent year-over-year on an adjusted basis.

Related Roundup: 2018 iPhonesTag: nikkei.com
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Amazon will reward Prime members for shopping at Whole Foods

Amazon has announced that its Rewards Visa will now offer users the same level of reward when they shop at Whole Foods as they receive at Amazon itself. Eligible Prime members will now receive a flat five percent bonus on all purchases at Whole Foods, just as they do online. By comparison, shopping beyond Amazon’s universe will net you two percent back at restaurants, gas stations and drugstores, and a single percent elsewhere.

The key note here is that if you’re a Prime member, then you’ll receive the five percent bonus, for lesser mortals, the return is three percent. But as Amazon’s vast ecosystem of products and services begins to coalesce, users will have less reason not to sign up to Prime. And the more you succumb to that pull, the more time you’ll be spending inside Amazon’s benevolent embrace.

Source: Amazon (BusinessWire)

Xiaomi Redmi Note 5 Pro benchmarks: Putting the Snapdragon 636 to the test

The Redmi Note 5 Pro gives us a first look at Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 636 platform.

Xiaomi unveiled the Redmi Note 5 Pro earlier this week in India, and among its many highlights is the fact that the phone is the first to be powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 636 platform. Like the Snapdragon 660, the Snapdragon 636 is built on the 14nm node and brings Kryo cores to the mid-range category, with the chipset featuring eight Kryo 260 cores in a 4 + 4 cluster.

The Kryo 260 leverages four semi-custom Cortex A73 cores clocked at 1.8GHz, along with four semi-custom Cortex A53 energy-efficient cores at 1.6GHz, Adreno 509 GPU, and Qualcomm’s X12 LTE modem with up to 600Mbps downlink. The Cortex A73 cores are some of the fastest available today, and as such the Redmi Note 5 Pro offers a noticeable uptick in performance over the likes of the Redmi Note 5 and other Xiaomi phones in the budget segment.

In fact, there isn’t a phone in the budget segment that comes close to the Redmi Note 5 Pro in terms of sheer performance, as we’ll see from the benchmarks. I compared the Redmi Note 5 Pro to the Redmi Note 5, which shares the same Snapdragon 625 platform as its predecessor. I also included scores from older devices, including the Snapdragon 650-based Redmi Note 3, which has two Cortex A72 cores.

The higher-performance Cortex A72 cores give the Snapdragon 650 a lead in CPU-intensive tasks, but the 28nm design doesn’t really offer the same levels of battery efficiency as the 14nm chipsets. And to provide an overview of just how competitive the Snapdragon 636 platform really is, I included benchmarks from the Snapdragon 835-based Mi 6, the Snapdragon 821-based Mi 5s, and the Snapdragon 820-based Mi 5. The Snapdragon 660-toting Mi Note 3 rounds off the list of devices included in the test, and it serves as a baseline for the results.

All seven devices are running MIUI, but the platform version is different — the Mi 5, Mi 5s, and Redmi Note 3 are on Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow, and the rest of the devices are on Android 7.1.1 Nougat.

Before we begin: The Redmi Note 5 Pro is currently running a beta build of MIUI 9 (9.2.2.0), and is slated to receive the stable update (9.2.4.0) shortly after it goes on sale. The particular beta build blocks a few benchmarks like Geekbench and GFXBench, so I’ll add those scores once the stable update hits my device.

Xiaomi Redmi Note 5 Pro benchmarks

AnTuTu

AnTuTu Benchmark v7.0.4

AnTuTu Benchmark v7.0.4

Xiaomi faithful have been relying on AnTuTu for several years now to gauge the overall performance. The benchmark isn’t a reliable indicator of how good a device is to use on a day-to-day basis, but AnTuTu maintains a leaderboard that gives us an idea of where a particular phone ranks in the overall scheme of things.

With a score of 112649, the Redmi Note 5 Pro is miles ahead of any other device in the budget segment, with the Snapdragon 625-based Redmi Note 5 posting a score of 77236. The high score is down to the semi-custom Cortex A73 cores, which elevate the overall performance of the device.

Basemark

Basemark OS II

Basemark OS II is a system-level benchmarking tool that gives a high-level overview of a device’s performance. The suite consists of an array of tests that gauge the system, internal and external memory, graphics, and web browsing performance.

Basemark Web 3.0

Basemark Web 3.0 offers a set of over 20 web benchmarks that measure browser performance and graphics, including page load responsiveness, along with CSS, and HTML5 capabilities. Once again, we can see the Redmi Note 5 Pro holding its own next to the Mi Note 3.

Chrome

Google Octane 2.0

JetStream 1.1

Kraken 1.1

We’ve seen phones in this segment field increasingly powerful hardware over the last two years, and the Snapdragon 636 is a generational leap forward. Essentially, the Snapdragon 636 is an underclocked version of the Snapdragon 660 — the chipset offers massive gains over the outgoing Snapdragon 625, and should make budget phones that much more exciting.

With the Redmi Note 5 Pro priced at ₹13,999 ($215), Xiaomi is once again offering incredible value in this category. The phone will go up for sale in India starting February 22 on Flipkart, and is available in two variants — a model with 4GB of RAM and 64GB of storage for ₹13,999 ($215), and a version with 6GB of RAM and 64GB of internal memory for ₹16,999 ($260).

See at Flipkart

Swype is reportedly bidding the consumer keyboard biz farewell

It may be time to find a new go-to keyboard if you’re still using Swype after all these years. Swype parent company Nuance told XDA Developers that the development of Swype with Dragon Dictation for Android has been discontinued. No more future updates, no more new features — the keyboard is apparently dead. Further, the publication also found a post on Nuance’s ZenDesk from early February, announcing that the company is also killing Swype for iOS and that it’ll no longer be available on the App Store for download.

Nuance’s ZenDesk announcement matches what the company told a Redditor who complained about their keyboard crashing on Pixel 2 after a reboot. The user posted the company’s response on Reddit, which reads:

“However, we are sad to announce that Swype+Dragon for Android has faced end of development. Here is a statement from Swype Product Team:

Nuance will no longer be updating the Swype+Dragon keyboard for Android. We’re sorry to leave the direct-to-consumer keyboard business, but this change is necessary to allow us to concentrate on developing our AI solutions for sale directly to businesses.

We hope you enjoyed using Swype, we sure enjoyed working with the Swype community.”

It looks like Nuance is leaving the consumer keyboard business altogether and concentrating all its efforts on its AI technologies for businesses. Nuance already offers Dragon voice solutions for medical professionals with sufficient medical vocabulary to allow them to take accurate notes. It’s also looking to convince automakers to use Dragon as a voice assistant in vehicles. We’ve reached out to Nuance for confirmation and more details, and we’ll update this post when we hear back.

Source: XDA Developers, Android (Reddit), Nuance

Samsung has the world’s largest SSD, again, at 30TB

Nearly two years ago Samsung released a 15.36TB drive that it said had the most capacity of any SSD. Now, it has topped that with a new effort that it claims features twice the capacity and performance. Inside its 2.5-inch frame, the PM1643 has 30.72 TB ready for whatever enterprise storage needs you have, with sequential read/write speeds of 2,100MB/s and 1,700 MB/s.

That’s all created with 512GB 3D vertical NAND chips, half the size of the newest 1TB ones announced late last year. Now that it’s able to mass produce them at this size, we’ll naturally see Samsung trickle these down into drives with smaller capacity (15.36TB, 7.68TB, 3.84TB, 1.92TB, 960GB and 800GB). After that, we’d expect it will eventually increase the memory size available in PCs that fit on your desk, or the chips that go in devices like your phone.

Source: Samsung

Nike+ Run Club iOS App Updated With New Weekly Challenges Feature

Nike today updated its Nike+ Run Club iOS app with a new Challenges feature that aims to help users stay motivated throughout the week by letting them see how their mileage stacks up against other users in the global Nike running community.

The new challenges appear in the Club section of the app. As of writing there are three challenges to join, including 15K February Weekly Challenge, a 50K March Weekly Challenge, and a 100K March Weekly Challenge. Tapping on one sends you to a summary screen that tells you how many runners are currently participating and how long the challenge runs for.

Tapping on the Join button enrolls you in the challenge, but you can leave it at any time through the challenge overflow menu (the three dots in the upper right corner of the screen). It also looks like you can only participate in challenges if your privacy setting is set to “Friends (social)” or “Everyone (public)”.

Completing challenges earns users achievement badges, similar to those found Apple’s Activity app. In addition to the weekly challenges, Nike says there will also be occasional special Nike Challenges, which sound a lot like Apple’s seasonal/one-off challenges that Apple Watch users will be familiar with.

The Nike app’s last major feature update came in October, when Nike introduced Audio Guided Runs to coincide with the launch of Apple Watch Series 3 models.

The Nike+ Run Club app can be downloaded on the iPhone and all Apple Watch models, but with Nike+ models, there’s an option to launch the Nike+ Run Club app from the exclusive Nike watch faces.

Nike+ Run Club is available from the App Store for free. [Direct Link]

Related Roundups: Apple Watch, watchOS 4Tag: Apple Watch Nike+ EditionBuyer’s Guide: Apple Watch (Neutral)
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Altice One crams your modem, router, and streaming box into one device

During the 2018 Winter Olympics, Altice USA flooded viewers with commercials advertising its new Altice One, an all-in-one device for Optimum subscribers. It arrives after Netherlands-based Altice Group purchased Suddenlink in December 2015 for $9.1 billion, and Cablevision in June 2016 for $17.7 billion. Altice Group retired the Cablevision brand and renamed the newly owned New York-based company to Altice USA, making it the fourth largest cable/internet service provider in the United States.

The new Altice One falls under the Optimum banner. This platform provides broadband internet, Voice over Internet Protocol telephone service, digital TV, and a group of networks providing news, weather, and more. The new device is basically a three-in-one access point: Modem, router, and set-top box with integrated support for Netflix, YouTube, Pandora, and more. Cloud DVR recordings and Ultra HD video are also part of the Optimum platform.

“Altice One is an ever-evolving centralized platform that offers an innovative suite of features that reinvent the connectivity and entertainment experience,” the company says. “Altice One provides a simple all-in-one ultra-high-definition video, high-speed broadband, powerful Wi-Fi and IP phone experience in a sleek, compact home hub that replaces the traditional cable box, modem, and router.”

The Altice One seemingly adds “smart” connectivity to your TV sporting the interactive Altice One v1.0 operating system. With this device, you can scroll through the Optimum TV guide, find a missed TV show on demand or record shows to be stored in the cloud, and install popular apps from a growling list. Thus, with this device, you don’t need a Smart TV, console, or set-top box to stream Stranger Things.

The company first introduced the Altice One to select Long Island areas in November and is now rolling out the device across the entire Optimum footprint. Other notable features with the Altice One include a voice-activated remote control, a picture-in-picture component, a cloud DVR-based “restart” feature for rewinding to the beginning if you jumped into a TV show too late, and 4K capabilities

The beauty of Altice One is that it centralizes your internet connection, wireless access point, and streaming services. Instead of three devices, you only deal with one unit. The drawback mostly pertains to Wi-Fi connectivity: The further you move away from the Altice One, the slower the connection/data speed. Altice USA remedies that with the Altice One Mini, which not only extends your wireless range into dead spots in the home but enables TV and streaming capabilities to other rooms.

In addition to the Altice One, the company now offers broadband speeds of up to 400Mbps to residential homes, and up to 450Mbps to businesses. Also in the works is the expansion of its one-gigabit broadband service and its next-generation fiber-to-the-home network across its Optimum and Suddenlink coverage areas.

To get pricing for the new Altice One, customers must live within the Altice USA coverage area and fill out this form. They can also call the company’s toll-free number.

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