Honor 9 Lite vs. Xiaomi Redmi Note 5: Which should you buy?

Both the Honor 9 Lite and Redmi Note 5 offer a compelling set of features for under $200.

Honor has rolled out budget phones at a steady clip over the last two years, and the Honor 9 Lite is the latest addition to its portfolio. The phone made its debut in China at the end of last year, and went on sale in India followed by a launch in Europe last month. Available for £199 ($275) in the UK and ₹10,999 ($170) in India, the Honor 9 Lite ticks a lot of boxes: it has an 18:9 panel, comes with Android 8.0 Oreo out of the box, and features a total of four cameras.

The Redmi Note 5 is no slouch either — Xiaomi decided to stick with the same internal hardware as last year, but introduced an 18:9 panel and lowered the price point to ₹9,999 ($153), making it a real bargain. With two great options on offer at the same price, it’s time to find out which phone to pick.

What the Honor 9 Lite does better

Of the two phones, the Honor 9 Lite has the better design. The 2.5D curved glass at the back has a mirror finish, and it looks striking — even more so when light reflects off it. The blue color option in particular looks gorgeous, and there’s no denying the fact that this is one of the better-looking phones in the budget segment.

There’s similar 2.5D glass up front, which when combined with the rounded corners makes it easy to grip the device. 18:9 panels in general are unwieldy because of the tall nature of the display, and that’s the case with the Honor 9 Lite as well. The 5.65-inch panel comes in at 151mm, which is less than the 158mm height of the 5.99-inch display of the Redmi Note 5, but one-handed usage is going to be a stretch unless you have huge hands.

The Honor 9 Lite is one of the better-looking budget phones out there.

Thankfully, you can enable fingerprint sensor gestures to pull down the notification shade. The phone is particularly light at 149g, or 31g less than the Redmi Note 5. That’s because of the smaller battery and the fact that the mid-frame is made out of plastic and not aluminum. Nevertheless, it sports a metallic finish, and the device overall has top-notch build quality.

The Honor 9 Lite also wins out when it comes to the software side of things, as the device runs EMUI 8 based on Android 8.0 Oreo out of the box. The Redmi Note 5 is still running Android 7.1.1 Nougat, and there’s no mention of when the device will pick up Oreo.

The key difference between the variant on sale in India and the model available in Europe is that the latter comes with NFC, enabling Google Pay compatibility in the UK.

See at Flipkart

What the Redmi Note 5 does better

The main thing in the Redmi Note 5’s favor is battery life. Sporting a 4000mAh battery under the hood, the phone offers two days’ of battery life on a full charge, significantly more than what the Honor 9 Lite manages.

The Redmi Note 5 is a battery monster.

On average, you’ll get over nine hours’ worth of screen-on-time between charges, so if battery life is a priority for you, then the Redmi Note 5 is the device to get.

The phone also has one of the best 18:9 panels in this category, and the screen itself isn’t as reflective as the Honor 9 Lite. Sunlight legibility is also better on the Redmi Note 5, particularly in harsh climes like India.

See at Flipkart

Which should you buy?

If you’re in the UK, the Honor 9 Lite is a solid option, particularly considering it comes with NFC and Oreo out of the box. For £199, there aren’t many phones that offer quite as much as the Honor 9 Lite.

But if you’re in the market for a new budget phone in India, there are better alternatives available. The Redmi Note 5 Pro, for instance, is available for ₹13,999 ($215), and handily beats the Honor 9 Lite in every area.

The Redmi Note 5 Pro comes with a Snapdragon 636 chipset, a 4000mAh battery, and a 12MP camera at the back that’s currently the best in this category. You also get 4GB of RAM and 64GB of internal storage as standard, and the same variant of the Honor 9 Lite will set you back ₹14,999 ($230). The Redmi Note 5 is pretty great for ₹10,999, but the Redmi Note 5 Pro trounces it in terms of value.

See at Flipkart

Larry Page’s autonomous air taxi ‘Cora’ flies in New Zealand

Reports surfaced in 2016 that Google co-founder (and now Alphabet CEO) Larry Page had two “flying car” projects in the works, and while we saw the Flyer recreational vehicle unveiled last year, today it’s time to meet Cora. An “air taxi” developed by Page’s Kitty Hawk company, the electric aircraft is intended for use as part of a transportation service instead of sale to individual users. It’s built to use self-flying software, and uses 12 lift fans for vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) like a helicopter, so there’s no need for a runway.

Once it’s in the air, a single propeller drives Cora at about 110 miles per hour, between altitudes of 500 and 3,000 feet. According to the company’s FAQ, the plane has three independent flight-computers and can navigate even if one goes down, while each rotor works independently and just in case things really go wrong the plane has a parachute for landing without its fans.

Power: All-electric

Capacity: Designed for two passengers.

Altitude: Operates between 500 ft to 3000 ft above the ground.

Wingspan: 36 feet/about 11 meters

Vertical take-off and landing: Cora is powered by 12 independent lift fans, which enable her to take off and land vertically like a helicopter. Therefore, Cora has no need for a runway.

Fixed wing flight: On a single propeller.

Range: Initially about 62 miles / about 100 kilometres.

Speed: About 110 miles per hour / about 180 kilometres per hour.

Kitty Hawk is run by former Google X head Sebastian Thrun, while Cora’s initial blog post makes out New Zealand as its base to make a future “where the freedom of flight belongs to everyone” in the same way that the Wright Brothers initially took off in North Carolina. As the New York Times explains, today the company will join with New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern to announce an agreement to test the vehicles there.

Cora

Kitty Hawk

Formerly Zee.Aero, Zephyr Airworks is Kitty Hawk’s operator in New Zealand, although the companies haven’t put a timeline on when it will be available for rides. A timeline on the website shows how far things have come over the years, from its first hover in 2011, first self-piloted transition in 2014 and the beginning of self-piloted testing in New Zealand last October. Of course, Kitty Hawk isn’t the only company working on “air taxi” concepts, but others like EHang and Uber Elevate aren’t in operation yet either.

Source: Cora, Cora Launch video (YouTube)

Switch update makes it easy to add Facebook and Twitter friends

Nintendo Switch owners have a new system update awaiting them, and the release notes reveal what 5.0.0 is bringing along. While previous updates have smoothed out some rough edges for transferring saves and assisting with voice chat, this one’s highlight addition is the ability to suggest Nintendo Accounts based on your Twitter and Facebook friend lists (assuming you’ve linked them and are over 13 years old). There are also 24 new Arms and Kirby user icons, and if you purchase a game from your PC or phone it will start downloading onto the system faster, even if it’s asleep.

This update also fixes the problem that was hiding some older play activity data, and it adds a notification to let you know when pre-ordered games have unlocked. For parents, the PIN entry now operates from the stick and buttons instead of using an on-screen keyboard, and specific titles can be whitelisted for play, outside of the restricted software settings.

System Update Version 5.0.0 for #NintendoSwitch is available now. This update includes friend recommendations from select social media platforms, additional user icons and more! For the full list of changes and features please visit: https://t.co/aWUe95EWQh pic.twitter.com/854rBJICFw

— Nintendo of America (@NintendoAmerica) March 13, 2018

Source: Switch update 5.0.0 notes

The father of the world wide web is one disappointed dad

Today is the World Wide Web’s 29th birthday, and to celebrate the occasion, its creator has told us how bad it’s become. In an open letter appearing in The Guardian, Tim Berners-Lee painted a bleak picture of the current internet — one dominated by a handful of colossal platforms that have constricted innovation and obliterated the rich, lopsided archipelago of blogs and small sites that came before. It’s not too late to change, Lee wrote, but to do so, we need a dream team of business, tech, government, civil workers, academics and artists to cooperate in building “the web we all want.”

Lee reserves his biggest criticisms for the huge platforms — by implication, Facebook and Google, among others — that have come to dominate their spheres and effectively become gatekeepers. They “control which ideas and opinions are seen and shared,” Lee wrote, pointing out that they’re able to impede competition by creating barriers. “They acquire startup challengers, buy up new innovations and hire the industry’s top talent. Add to this the competitive advantage that their user data gives them and we can expect the next 20 years to be far less innovative than the last.”

Centralizing the web like this has lead to serious problems, like when an Amazon Web Services outage took down a chunk of internet services over a week ago — ironically, nearly a year to the day after another similar web-crippling incident on AWS. But bottlenecking the internet through a handful of platforms has also enabled something more sinister: The weaponization of the internet. From trending conspiracy theories all the way up to influencing American politics using hundreds of fake social media accounts, outside actors have been able to maximize their manipulation efforts thanks to a far more centralized internet than we used to have, in Lee’s opinion.

These companies are ill-equipped to work for social benefit given their focus on profit — and perhaps could use some regulation. “The responsibility – and sometimes burden – of making these decisions falls on companies that have been built to maximise profit more than to maximise social good. A legal or regulatory framework that accounts for social objectives may help ease those tensions,” wrote Lee.

You know who could fix the future of the internet? Us, of course — a group of individuals from a broad cross-section of society who can outthink the hegemony of colossal internet corporations who are mostly fine with things as they are. Incentives could be the key to motivating new solutions, Lee concluded.

But there’s another problem that business can’t really solve: Closing the digital gap by getting the unconnected onto the internet. These are more likely to be female, poor, geographically remote and/or living outside of the first world. Bringing them into the fold will diversify voices on the internet and be, well, a moral thing to do now that the UN has decided internet access is a basic human right. But it’ll take more than inventive business models to get them online and up to speed: We’ll have to support policies that bring the internet to them over community networks and/or public access.

Via: NY Mag

Source: The Guardian

What’s on TV: ‘Star Wars: The Last Jedi,’ ‘Burnout Paradise’

This week gamers can finally revisit Burnout Paradise on new-gen consoles as the game gets remastered for 4K and released Friday for $40. It’s also time for an early release of the latest Star Wars movie on video on-demand services, while the men’s college basketball tournament also gets rolling. Several Oscar winners and contenders launch on Blu-ray this week too, including The Shape of Water, Call Me By Your Name, I, Tonya and The Disaster Artist. You can also grab a remastered version of the WWII flick that launched a million memes, Downfall. Look after the break to check out each day’s highlights, including trailers and let us know what you think (or what we missed).

Blu-ray & Games & Streaming

• Star Wars: The Last Jedi (VOD)
• Justice League (4K, 3D)
• The Shape of Water (4K)
• Call Me By Your Name
• I, Tonya
• The Disaster Artist
• Suspiria (Remastered)
• Ferdinand (4K)
• The Handmaid’s Tale (S1)
• Downfall (Collector’s Edition)
• A Trip to the Moon
• The Age of Innocence
• Assassin’s Creed Origins – The Curse of the Pharoahs DLC (PS4, Xbox One)
• Devil May Cry HD Collection (PS4, PC, Xbox One)
• Q.U.B.E 2 (PS4, PC, Xbox One)
• The Long Reach (PC, PS4, Switch)
• Pizza Connection 3 (PC)
• The 25th Ward: The Silver Case (PS4)
• Alchemist’s Castle (PS4)
• The American Dream (PC, PS VR)
• Pure Farming 2018 (PS4, Xbox One)
• Burnout Remastered (PS4, Xbox One – 3/16)
• Kirby Star Allies (Switch – 3/16)
• Tesla vs. Lovecraft (PS4, Xbox One – 3/16)

Monday

• D.C.’s Legend’s of Tomorrow, CW, 8 PM
• Lucifer, Fox, 8 PM
• The Voice, NBC, 8 PM
• WWE Raw, USA, 8 PM
• Man with a Plan, CBS, 8:30 PM
• McLaren, Starz, 9 PM
• The Alienist, TNT, 9 PM
• iZombie, CW, 9 PM
• The Resident, Fox, 9 PM
• Living Biblically, CBS, 9:30 PM
• American Dad, TBS, 10 PM
• McMafia, AMC, 10 PM
• Shoot the Messenger, WGN, 10 PM
• Good Girls, NBC, 10 PM
• Final Space, TBS, 10:30 PM
• Desus & Mero, Viceland, 11 PM

Tuesday

• Ricky Gervais: Humanity, Netflix, 3 AM
• Children of the Whales (S1), Netflix, 3 AM
• Stretch Armstrong & the Flex Fighters, Netflix, 3 AM
• Terrace House: Opening New Doors (S1), Netflix, 3 AM
• NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament, TruTV, 6:40 PM
• The Fosters (season finale), Freeform, 8 PM
• NCIS, CBS, 8 PM
• WWE Smackdown, USA, 8 PM
• The Voice, NBC, 8 PM
• The Middle, ABC, 8 PM
• Fresh Off the Boat, ABC, 8:30 PM
• Black-ish, ABC, 9 & 9:30 PM
• Black Lightning, CW, 9 PM
• Bull, CBS, 9 PM
• The Challenge, MTV, 9 PM
• LA to Vegas, Fox, 9 PM
• This is Us (season finale), NBC, 9 PM
• The Mick, Fox, 9:30 PM
• Rise (series premiere), NBC, 10 PM
• For the People (series premiere), ABC, 10 PM
• Baskets, FX, 10 PM
• Bellevue (season finale), WGN, 10 PM
• Hate Thy Neighbor, Viceland, 10 PM
• Kevin (Probably) Saves the World, ABC, 10 PM
• NCIS: NO, CBS, 10 PM
• The Quad, BET, 10 PM
• Undercover High, A&E, 10 PM
• Unsolved: The Murders of Tupac and The Notorious B.I.G., USA, 10 PM
• Chicago Med, NBC, 10 PM
• Another Period, Comedy Central, 10 & 10:30 PM
• The Detour, TBS, 10:30 PM
• Desus & Mero, Viceland, 11 PM

Wednesday

• The Path, Hulu, 3 AM
• The Looming Tower, Hulu, 3 AM
• The X-Files, Fox, 8 PM
• Grown-ish, Freeform, 8 PM
• Survivor, CBS, 8 PM
• The Blacklist, NBC, 8 PM
• Riverdale, CW, 8 PM
• Speechless, ABC, 8 & 8:30 PM
• Alone Together, Freeform, 8:30 PM
• Life Sentence, CW, 9 PM
• Law & Order: SVU, NBC, 9 PM
• 9-1-1, Fox, 9 PM
• The Magicians, Syfy, 9 PM
• American Housewife, ABC, 9:30 PM
• Channel Zero (season finale), Syfy, 10 PM
• Designated Survivor, ABC, 10 PM
• American Crime Story: The Assassination of Gianni Versace, 10 PM
• Slutever, Viceland, 10 PM
• Corporate (season finale), Comedy Central, 10 PM
• Criminal Minds, CBS, 10 PM
• Trixie & Katya Show, Viceland, 10:30 PM
• Full Frontal with Samantha Bee, TBS, 10:30 PM
• Desus & Mero, Viceland, 11 PM

Thursday

• Tabula Rasa (S1), Netflix, 3 AM
• NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament Rd 1 (CBS, TNT, TruTV, TBS), 12:15 PM
• Gotham: A Dark Knight, Fox, 8 PM
• The Tougher Mudder, CW, 8 PM
• Superstore, NBC, 8 PM
• Grey’s Anatomy, ABC, 8 PM
• Beyond, Freeform, 8 PM
• A.P. Bio, NBC, 8:30 PM
• American Ninja Warrior: Ninja vs. Ninja, USA, 9 PM
• Scandal, ABC, 9 PM
• Will & Grace, NBC, 9 PM
• Showtime at the Apollo, Fox, 9 PM
• Champions, NBC, 9:30 PM
• Lip Sync Battle, Paramount, 9:30 & 10 PM
• Atlanta, FX, 10 PM
• Black Card Revoked, BET, 10 PM
• How to Get Away With Murder (season finale), ABC, 10 PM
• Portlandia, IFC, 10 PM
• Thursday Night Darts, BBC America, 10 PM
• The Rundown with Robin Thede, BET, 11 PM
• Desus & Mero, Viceland, 11 PM

Friday

• The Remix, Amazon Prime, 3 AM
• Benji, Netflix, 3 AM
• Take Your Pills, Netflix, 3 AM
• Edha (S1), Netflix, 3 AM
• On My Block (S1), Netflix, 3 AM
• Spirit: Riding Free (S4), Netflix, 3 AM
• Wild Wild Country (series premiere), Netflix, 3 AM
• Yoo Byungjae: Too Much Information, Netflix, 3 AM
• The Legacy of a Whitetail Deer Hunter, Netflix, 3 AM
• Fly Guys, Facebook, 12 PM
• NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament Rd 1 (CBS, TNT, TruTV, TBS), 12:15 PM
• Once Upon A Time, ABC, 8 PM
• Blindspot, NBC, 8 PM
• The Dynasty, CW, 8 PM
• Jane the Virgin, CW, 9 PM
• Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., ABC, 9 PM
• Taken, NBC, 9 PM
• Beyond the Opposite Sex, Showtime, 9 PM
• Strike Back, Cinemax, 10 PM
• High Maintenance, HBO, 11 PM
• This Is Not Happening, Comedy Central, 12 AM

Saturday

• NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament Rd 1 (CBS, TNT, TruTV, TBS), 12 PM
• Mommy’s Little Angel, Lifetime, 8 PM
• Christiane Amanpour: Sex & Love Around the World, CNN, 10 PM
• Saturday Night Live: Bill Hader / Arcade Fire, NBC, 11:30 PM

Sunday

• The Good Fight, CBS All Access, 3 AM
• American Idol ABC, 8 PM
• Our Cartoon President, Showtime, 8 PM
• Top Gear, BBC America, 8 PM
• Counterpart, Starz, 8 PM
• Instinct (series premiere), CBS, 8 PM
• The Simpsons, Fox, 8 PM
• Brooklyn Nine-nine, Fox, 8:30 PM
• Genius Junior (series premiere), NBC, 9 PM
• American Dynasties, CNN, 9 PM
• The Walking Dead, AMC, 9 PM
• Unsung: Deborah Cox, TV One, 9 PM
• NCIS: LA, CBS, 9 PM
• Here and Now, HBO, 9 PM
• Homeland, Showtime, 9 PM
• Ash vs. Evil Dead, Starz, 9 PM
• Last Man on Earth (spring premiere), Fox, 9:30 PM
• The Chi (season finale), Showtime, 10 PM
• Pope: The Most Powerful Man in History, CNN, 10 PM
• Naked & Afraid, Discovery, 10 PM
• Timeless, NBC, 10 PM
• Madam Secretary, CBS, 9 PM
• Deception, ABC, 10 PM
• Talking Dead, AMC, 10 PM
• Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, HBO, 11 PM

[All times listed are in ET]

ACLU sues the TSA for domestic electronics screening details

When the TSA launched stricter screening procedures for domestic passengers’ electronic devices last year, it didn’t reveal the whys and hows. That didn’t sit well with the American Civil Liberties Union Foundation, which has now filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the organization in an effort to extract more info about its procedures and motivations.

ACLU staff attorney Vasudha Talla explains:

“TSA is searching the electronic devices of domestic passengers, but without offering any reason for the search. We don’t know why the government is singling out some passengers, and we don’t know what exactly TSA is searching on the devices. Our phones and laptops contain very personal information, and the federal government should not be digging through our digital data without a warrant.”

The rights and liberties watchdog wants to see the TSA’s records detailing its policies, procedures or protocols when it comes to searching domestic passengers’ devices. It also wants to see the equipment the TSA uses to probe deep into people’s phones and laptops when they don’t think manual searches are enough. Finally, it wants to know what kind of training the officers who conduct electronic searches get.

The question now is whether the TSA would comply with the ACLU’s request — this is the second FOIA the non-profit org filed following its first attempt in December 2017. ACLU says the “TSA has subsequently improperly withheld the requested records” that time, so it’s putting the pressure on the agency to be more transparent yet again.

While the TSA is keeping procedures for domestic screening a secret, it did reveal that “border officials can search [international passengers’] devices with or without probable cause.” The ACLU is also challenging that practice for international flights, especially since the agency’s number of searches has ballooned considerably these past couple of years.

Source: ACLU

A fake startup uses initial coin offering to steal $2 million in digital coins

An individual or group recently used a questionable LinkedIn profile to scam a little over $2 million from more than 1,000 investors sinking funds into a fake initial coin offering (ICO). The offering supposedly helped fund a startup called Giza Device Ltd. that was developing a device to store cryptocurrencies. The ICO took place in January, and by the beginning of February, the company held more than 2,100 Ethereum coins provided by ICO investors. Now Giza is offline and the digital coins are gone. 

Investors immediately became suspicious when the company assigned to manufacture the cryptocurrency device, Russian firm Third Pin LLC, said via its CEO that it halted manufacturing because of non-payment. Giza Chief Operating Officer Marco Fike told Third Pin that it needed to establish new operations outside Russia but didn’t provide an explanation or information. Without the funds, Third Pin couldn’t proceed with development. 

“Recently we started negotiations with cryptographic integral chips manufacturer, but, due to the position of Giza’s COO, we couldn’t even acquire critical technical documentation to start the development,” Third Pin LLC’s CEO “Ivan” said. “With a heavy heart, I am forced to tell that we are freeze all the activities related to the Giza device project.” 

What is strange about Fike is that no one has actually seen this individual, not even developers, contractors, investors, and former employees. The only evidence of his “existence” is a LinkedIn profile listing alleged fake jobs, including a community manager position denied by Microsoft. The University of Oxford is still investigating the listed Master’s degree in International Business. Even more, the profile picture links back to an Instagram account that never responded to inquiries. 

Suspicious, investors of the ICO began asking questions through a Telegram channel managed by an individual named Karina. Originally, Fike hired Karina through Freelancehunt.com and only communicated with her through Telegram and Skype chats. Communications with Fike halted around February 7 as did her paychecks from Giza. But she was just one of many individuals short-changed by the startup. 

Giza’s website disappeared last Friday, but a cached version describes the startup as “a group of young and ambitious programmers, hardware developers, industrial designers and marketers.” The proposed device included a cryptocurrency wallet, password manager, a file manager, and a two-factor authentication component. Early participants — those that invested in the ICO — were promised up to a 30 percent bonus. 

But the money is gone, drained over a period of two weeks. Although users of cryptocurrencies remain anonymous, the digital coins can still be traced, and that’s exactly what investors did in hopes of retrieving their stolen funds. There are three wallets associated with Giga outside the company’s main wallet where it originally stored the digital funds. Unfortunately, the flow of money moved through wallet No. 1 and wallet No. 2 until ending at the ShapeShift cryptocurrency exchange. 

Meanwhile, wallet No. 3 is linked to the Bee Token phishing scam in early February. During Bee Token’s official ICO, hopeful investors fell prey to an email scam that urged them to send Ethereum to hacker-controlled wallets before missing out on the offer. 

Editors’ Recommendations

• Companies, lawyers probed for selling cryptocurrency initial coin offerings
• Government websites fall prey to a plugin injected with a digital coin miner
• Thieves heist 600 PCs built for digital coin mining in Iceland
• As bitcoin takes its biggest tumble this quarter, other coins follow suit
• Robinhood lures digital coin traders from Coinbase with a free service

With AMD FreeSync support, games will look their best on Xbox One S, Xbox One X

The Xbox One’s latest update is bringing several new features to the console, including new options for Mixer streaming and resolution settings. But another addition could make your games look significantly better: AMD Radeon FreeSync support for enabled monitors.

FreeSync is a technology used in select AMD processors and displays that causes your monitor and gaming system to sync their refresh rates. Previously, it was a feature only available to PC players, but the update adds FreeSync support to both the Xbox One S and the Xbox One X. With FreeSync enabled, you should see reduced visual artifacts and screen-tearing in your games, resulting in a much more pleasant experience. The effect should apply regardless of your game’s frame rate, so you should still be able to boost performance when playing on the Xbox One X.

To allow FreeSync to work properly, all you need to do is go into the Xbox One’s “display & sound” settings and select the box labeled, “allow variable refresh rate.”

FreeSync monitors are available from a number of different manufacturers, including Asus, LG, and Samsung. They aren’t cheap, but if you already play games on a PC and want to hook up your Xbox in an area other than your living room, they’re a worthwhile option. Many are also extremely low-latency, and the updated FreeSync 2 monitors also support HDR. The Xbox One S and Xbox One X will both support this version of the technology, so your colors will still be just as vibrant as they were on a traditional HDR-enabled display. Just make sure the monitor you choose has an HDMI input, as some of the models only use DisplayPort.

If you’re a member of the Xbox Insider Alpha Ring, it’s likely you already have FreeSync enabled on your Xbox One S or X. For everyone else, we should be seeing it later this spring. Along with FreeSync, the update adds a new version of Microsoft Edge for browsing the web, as well as new tools for starting tournaments and organizing communities. Mixer streamers can even allow viewers to take over their game for them if they’re stuck at a particularly tough spot.

Editors’ Recommendations

• Xbox One S vs. Xbox One X: Is the costly upgrade worth the money?
• How to appear offline on Xbox One
• Xbox One vs. Xbox One S: Is a mid-tier upgrade worth your money?
• Latest Xbox One update lets Mixer viewers control your game
• How to factory reset an Xbox One

What is an SSD? The ultimate explanation of the solid-state drive

The solid-state drive is a famous data storage option for your devices. But if you’re shopping for a new device or storage upgrade, you probably want the details. What is an SSD, really, and how is it different from the storage options that came before? We’re here to break it down!

The solid-state drive

Let’s start with a quick comparison. The older HDD-style drives offer “nonvolatile” storage based on physical forces – movement and magnetism. They are literal disks that spin around and write code into a magnetic coating that preserves the data. They remained popular for so long because they were safe, easy to use, and no one could come up with anything better…until the SSD, or solid-state drive, emerged.

The solid-state drive uses flash memory, which has been around for many years. Instead of depending on physically “writing” data on a disk, flash memory uses memory chips (typically NAND-style chips). In these chips, semiconductors flip arrays into different states of electric charge to store code. Since nothing moves but the electrical patterns, the storage drive is “solid state.”

Even before SSDs became common, we were using flash memory on thumbdrives and similar devices, but early versions of flash memory weren’t quick, and were expensive to make it large capacities. Even modern solid state storage, which relies on the newer NAND flash chips, remains much more expensive than a disk drive at any given capacity — but costs have come down enough to be competitive.

SSD advantages

Bill Roberson/Digital Trends

Since most computers now come with SSDs, they have to better than old HDDs, right? In many ways, yes. Here are the benefits that led to their dominance.

No moving parts: The big problem with moving parts is that they always, always wear out in the end (and sometimes unexpectedly in the beginning). Product designers try to get rid of moving parts whenever possible because of how easily they can be damaged. Solid state drives have their own lifespan limitations, but they’re generally more durable and reliable because there’s no moving parts to damage and no drive motor to break.

Speed: Electricity moves quickly. SSDs can write or read data at incredible speeds compared to HDDs—and at a fraction of the power, which means less heat buildup, too. There are also speed benefits related to a lack of fragmentation, and other solid state qualities.

Mobility: SSDs are smaller and lighter than previous drives. This makes it possible to create today’s ultra-thin laptops, tablets, and other mobile devices. The thinnest devices are putting solid state storage right onto the motherboard. That means upgrading is out of the question, but it help laptops, smartphones, and tablets reach their razer-thin profiles.

Low failure rates: Despite early concerns, SSDs malfunction less often than HDDs. This is do to widespread material improvements and features like like ECC, or error-correcting code, that keep SSDs on the right path.

Size and Design: SSDs can come in many different shapes and sizes, depending on how many chips they have and how those chips are arranged. This makes them much more versatile than alternatives.

Longer lifespan: Every SSD has a lifespan that’s limited by wear on the drive’s ability to properly store the electrical charges sent to it. Luckily, the lifespan of most drives can be measured in decades — at least under normal use. Research has shown that not only do SSDs last longer than HDD counterparts, but they also last longer than experts expected.

Types of SSD connections

There are a couple ways to classify SSDs, but we’re going to mention a particularly important factor—the type of connection they use. Connections can broadly be divided into a few different options.

SATA III: This is the final evolution of an older connection option that works with both HDD and SSD. It was very useful during the transition from HDD to SSD. Now that this transition is slowly coming to an end, SATA III connections (which can handle a maximum bandwidth of about 600 megabytes per second) are losing favor.

PCIe: The Peripheral Component Interconnect Express option connects to PCIe lanes in motherboards for a more direct flow of data. Because of this they are speedy, supporting SSD writing speeds around 1GB per second. However, they are currently quite expensive, guaranteed to raise the price of a computer.

NVMe: NVMe or Non-Volatile Memory Express is designed to augment PCIe connections so they are more versatile, easier to upgrade, and generally even faster. NVMe is currently even newer than direct PCIe connections, and so even more expensive, but look for this spec to become common in coming years.

The future of SSDs

Currently HDDs are still used for very large data storage projects, and will probably always have a place as niche storage that doesn’t depend on electrical states, but they will grow increasingly rare. SSDs are becoming common even in budget-oriented systems. We recommend that anyone buying a new laptop or desktop purchase one with an SSD.

As for storage tech beyond SSD, nothing is viable yet. There is some work on unique conductor arrangements like Intel’s Xpoint, and the hopeful possibility of quantum storage sometime in the future, but the SSD holds the throne for now.

Editors’ Recommendations

• Samsung beefs up the data center with a new SSD packing 31TB of storage
• Intel finally dishes out stick-shaped Optane storage SSDs for mainstream PCs
• Dell’s stick-sized external Thunderbolt 3 SSDs are extremely fast, but expensive
• The best solid state drives
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Google’s upcoming OLED display for VR headsets may pack a 3182p resolution

Google plans to introduce a 4.3-inch display with an 18-megapixel resolution during the Society for Information Display’s (SID) conference, dubbed Display Week, in late May. The screen will likely be manufactured by South Korea’s LG Display and target virtual reality headsets, delivering a wide field-of-view and a pixel-per-inch ratio of 1,443 pixels using OLED display technology. 

“White OLED with color filter structure was used for high-density pixelization, and an n-type LTPS backplane was chosen for higher electron mobility compared to mobile phone displays,” says a listing for the display’s presentation in May. “A custom high bandwidth driver IC was fabricated. Foveated driving logic for VR and AR applications was implemented.” 

As a reference, the upcoming HTC Vive Pro and the current Samsung Odyssey headsets rely on two 3.5-inch AMOLED screens with a 1,440 x 1,600 resolution each supporting a 90Hz refresh rate. Meanwhile, the current Oculus Rift and HTC Vive VR headsets rely on two AMOLED displays measuring 3.54 inches each that pack a lower 1,080 x 1,200 resolution. 

The presentation in May, listed as “18 Mpixel 4.3-in. 1443-ppi 120-Hz OLED Display for Wide-Field-of-View High-Acuity Head-Mounted Displays,” reveals that the LG-manufactured screen will support a 120Hz refresh rate, higher than the vomit-preventing 90Hz required for virtual reality. Anything lower than 90Hz, or rather 90 frames per second, can produce an experience that may cause nausea due to motion sickness stemming from a “skipping” environment. 

But what is the resolution of a single 18-megapixel screen? With a 16:9 aspect ratio, that could equal to around 5,657 x 3,182. That is per eye as well and would require a PC with extremely high-powered components to render visuals at 3182p on each screen at 90Hz or more. To help alleviate some of the work, the experience would need to rely on eye-tracking and a method called foveated rendering, according to Google Vice President of AR/VR Clay Bavor. 

The idea with foveated rendering is to monitor the user’s focal point with eye-tracking hardware. Everything existing outside the wearer’s peripheral vision – scenery not picked up by the eye’s fovea centralis – isn’t fully rendered by the PC. Google revealed that it is currently working on foveated rendering in December, leading to speculation that Google may be working on its own high-definition virtual reality headset.  

Google’s presentation at Display Week won’t be a big reveal in a keynote, but instead during a session on May 22 presented by Google hardware engineer Carlin Vieri. Also listed for the session is Grace Lee and Nikhil Balram from Google, and Sang Jung, Joon Yang, Soo Yoon, and In Kang from LG Display. It follows Bavor’s keynote during Display Week in 2017 where he revealed Google’s “secret project.” 

At the time, Bavor said Google wanted more pixels in VR and teamed up with “one of the leading OLED manufacturers” to create a VR-capable OLED display. It would have ten times more pixels than VR-focused screens currently available on the market. It would also deliver 20 megapixels per eye, aka the number of pixels comprising two and a half 4K TVs, he said. 

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