iPhone 7 home button ditched in latest full frontal photo leak
The Apple iPhone 7 has had quite a few leaks but not a lot of photos showing the front of the handset, until now. The latest shot shockingly shows the home button has been dumped completely.
The leaked photo was sent to MobiPicker by one of its sources. According to the leakster this photo shows a touch sensitive ‘pad’ instead of a physical button.
The claimed reason for ditching the button is that it can go wrong and be expensive to replace. We’re taking that with a pinch of salt. However a touch sensitive home button would make sense as it could allow for more ease of interaction. Plus rumours of the home button being ditched have already been floating about.
The source says you’ll be able to press and hold for Siri, double tap for running apps and, of course, hold to unlock using TouchID. This, the source claims, “might be significantly smoother and faster due to this change”.
The photo also shows that the top and bottom bezels are slimmer plus the front camera and proximity sensor have been moved.
While we have heard previous rumours of the iPhone 7 ditching the home button we’re still not taking this as fact. We’ll have to wait until the expected September unveil to find out everything.
Mobipicker
READ: Apple iPhone 7: What’s the story so far?
Sky Movies becomes Sky Cinema, kicks off with Spectre
Sky has rebranded its Sky Movies service to be called Sky Cinema.
The new name, which will come into effect on the 8 July, will kick off with the UK premiere of James Bond’s latest outing: Spectre.
“We have a brand new name! Introducing Sky Cinema, bringing movie moments closer to you from July 8th,” said the company on Twitter announcing the news.
Sky
As part of the relaunch Sky says there will be a brand new movie every day rather than just a handful each weekend and that there will be regular “pop-up” channels like it already offers with collections like Harry Potter or Bond.
The broadcaster has also said that it has improved the HD picture quality, made the sound better, and introducing new features to make it quicker and easier to find films.
HD channels will be added to current subscriptions at no extra cost.
Earlier this year Sky launched Sky Q, a new set top box with a completely overhauled user interface and something it dubs “fluid viewing” allowing you to start watching something on one TV in your house and then carry on where you left off on another.
At the time of the launch, Sky announced it would be launching a 4K service later in the year, but that has yet to be detailed. It hasn’t detailed any 4K Ultra HD plans at the Sky Cinema event either apart from saying that it is “still coming”.
The company has confirmed the name change will also change on Now TV, as well as its services in Italy and Germany.
Developing…
Vodafone Smart Platinum 7 with 2K screen throws in free VR headset to show off its affordable power
Vodafone has taken the wraps off its latest flagship smartphone that’s built to offer high-end specs while remaining affordable. Those specs are so good they can even do VR justice, so Voda is throwing in its Smart VR headset for free.
The Vodafone Smart Platinum 7 is just £300 offline. We say that first – and use the word just – as you need to realise what you’re getting for the price.
The handset is made from aircraft grade aluminium and features a rear fingerprint sensor. On the front is a 5.5-inch 2K AMOLED display encased in 2.5D glass. Powering the device is an octa-core processor backed by 3GB of RAM and 32GB storage plus microSD expansion to 128GB.
In the rear of the phone is a 16-megapixel camera with “super zoom”, phase-detection autofocus and “zero second shutter lag”. The front has an 8-megapixel selfie snapper which also comes with its own flash.
The Smart Platinum 7 comes with 4G+ connectivity and is powered by a 3000mAh battery for two days life, claims Voda. It also features Quick Charge 3.0 for rapid top-ups on battery.
So that’s £9 less than a OnePlus 3 but comes with a better screen and free VR headset.
The Vodafone Smart Platinum 7 is available now for £300 on pay as you go or £28 per month on contract with unlimited minutes, texts and 1GB of data plus 500MB roaming data per month. Both price options include a free Vodafone Smart VR headset.
READ: Vodafone Smart Ultra 6: The ultimate budget smartphone
Kanye West adds ‘Saint Pablo’ track to his living album
Whether you love, hate or have been pushed to piracy by either the artist or his unconventional release strategy, Kanye West will continue meddling with his The Life of Pablo album. After announcing the Saint Pablo tour early in the day, the album disappeared from its listing on Tidal before reappearing with an extra song. The 20th track on the ever changing album is also titled Saint Pablo and features Sampha. It’s live on Tidal and iTunes/Apple Music so far, although we haven’t heard about any other changes to the album. Saint Pablo isn’t an entirely new piece however, as the track leaked online around the same time TLOP stopped being a Tidal-exclusive. Of course, while the lack of exclusivity could be a downer, West is still pushing Tidal with the new tour, promising its members will have early pre-sale access to tickets tomorrow on the 16th.
Kanye has added “Saint Pablo” to #TheLifeOfPablo via @TIDALHiFi https://t.co/DzL49cDV53
— TeamKanyeDaily (@TeamKanyeDaily) June 15, 2016
Source: Tidal, iTunes
New app lets anyone spot and help migrant boats in distress
If you’ve ever wished you could do more to help migrants, but don’t have the wherewithal to join a humanitarian group, a new app could do the trick. The Migrant Offshore Aid Station (MOAS)’s I Sea iOS app lets you scour satellite images to spot refugee boats in trouble and alert rescue teams to their location.
The idea is so simple it’s a wonder no one has thought of it before. The app takes satellite images of search and rescue team routes, divides them into millions of small plots and assigns them to users to monitor. The app doesn’t make clear how long you have to monitor your assigned patch, though.
Once you spot what you think might be a boat, you can flag it and tag with a description. Figuring out if a vessel on your plot is a migrant boat in trouble is a bit challenging, though. I thought I was looking at a picture of the night sky when I tried the app, and wasn’t sure if any of the specks in the image were worth flagging.
I tried tagging a shadowy blob as “nothing,” and I Sea asked for my name, passport number and email before letting me submit my report. That’s a pretty good deterrent for would-be pranksters, but the form can also be filled out with dummy info.
After posting my report, I was returned to the same plot of the Mediterranean sea I had been assigned, with no indication of when I would get a new region. The app sends your report to “relevant authorities” for processing, before sending a rescue team out to your tagged location.
It’s wise that I Sea is reviewing the reports before sending its teams out on wild goose chases, but that vetting alone could become more of a hindrance than help. However, compared to the dozens of donation apps available, I Sea appears to be helpful in a much more immediate way. For those with time and good intentions, this might be a helpful way to spend some downtime.
Via: Mashable
Source: I Sea
OnePlus X series is no more, says CEO
While it’s common practice for smartphone makers to offer two or three product lines to cover all the bases, OnePlus has recently decided to go from two to one. At the OnePlus 3 launch event in Shenzhen today, CEO Pete Lau confirmed that his company’s more affordable offering, the OnePlus X, will not have a followup model. That’s not to say it was a bad phone (even we liked it) nor was it unpopular, but Lau reasoned that OnePlus will instead focus on just one “true flagship” line from now on, in order to strengthen its foundation — something that Lau admitted his team neglected last year — rather than fighting the low-end price war.
Part of this long term plan includes merging OnePlus’ development resources for the global Oxygen OS (near native Android) and the China-only Hydrogen OS (skinned Android), and we’re told to expect an announcement on that end later this year. Lau added that he’ll continue to invest in after-sale services and offer more lifestyle products — like the new series of bags unveiled at the show — to further promote his brand. Judging by last night’s Loop VR virtual launch event plus the new fancy promotional videos, it appears that OnePlus has been spending more money on marketing as well, though Lau said he’ll still be avoiding the conventional advertising channels in order to pass the savings onto his customers. And yes, OnePlus is still going to make a profit off its competitively priced phone, because “we still gotta make money at the end of the day; it’s just a matter of how you do it and how much you want to make.”
Without giving away sales figures, Lau pointed out that his company is doing very well across Europe, India and the US. He expects Europe to remain OnePlus’ fastest-growing market, while the company continues to be the top brand in the $300+ category in India — as reflected by Amazon India’s bestseller chart, according to the exec. Unlike its local competitors, though, OnePlus will remain cautious in China and focus its resources on its online channels, and it won’t be opening any new physical stores there. “This will all make sense in 20 years’ time,” Lau added. “Some vendors say the online model is stalling so they badmouth it, but I see that as an opportunity. You just have to remain persistent.”
Unlike previous launches, the OnePlus 3 has ditched the much loathed invite system and can be ordered immediately (mass production had already started last month), so it shouldn’t be long before we see whether the company’s new strategy will pay off. “We hope that once our fans have played with the OnePlus 3, they will feel the same way they did with the OnePlus One,” Lau said.
Machine-vision algorithms help craft realistic portraits from sketches
Sketching a person’s face is difficult even for the most talented of artists. But even though it’s an austere task for humans, it’s not entirely perfect for computers just yet, either. That’s where machine-vision algorithms come in.
Computers have been capable of taking hand-drawn sketches and turning them into photorealistic images for some time now, but the color photographs that result haven’t always been accurate. Obviously it’s even more of a frustrating exercise for humans to tackle, let alone take even a cursory stab at.
That’s where a neural network educated by Yagmur Gucluturk, Umut Guclu and others at Radboud University in Denmark comes in. The process began with 200,000 images of faces pulled from the internet and converted them into drawings, grayscale and color sketches to teach a neural network with 11-layers to turn a sketch into a photograph of a face that could rival one actually taken by a camera.
This went so far as to train the neural network, and then the team gave it one more go using a completely different set of data. It was direct to start with a sketch and create a photorealistic image. The resulting images were surprisingly accurate, with the team making note that the line sketches produced images with color even when there wasn’t any color to be found within them.
The neural network was tested again with an additional data set using an alternate set of sketches, and again the network produced admirable results. Some anomalies produced by the experiment were such that the network had difficulty with realistic results when there wasn’t shading with regular pencil drawings.
Despite its shortcomings when it came to some particular data sets, the network was able to recreate some impressive images of artists like Van Gogh and Rembrandt using self-portraits sketched by the greats themselves.
These results were achieved in only a few years of work, paving the way once more for the startlingly impressive neural networks we’re able to teach and train to perform complex tasks. What’s next for these machines? The sky could be the limit.
Via: MIT Technology Review
Source: arXiv
Three’s mobile ad-blocking trial starts today
Three is trialling network-level ad-blocking in the UK today. The experiment, which is sure to put advertisers and publishers on edge, will affect a small number of Three customers that were approached beforehand. It’s been described as a “technology test” for Shine, an ad-blocking specialist which Three has recruited to explore the idea.
Three has stressed that “not all participants will experience the full Shine service” over the 24 hour period. That means it could come on intermittently, or only affect certain sites. “You might still see some ads on some websites, or notice some formatting errors,” Three explains to trial participants. “Don’t worry — this is something we’re aware of, and we’re working to fix it.” The technology only works on Three’s own network too, so testers won’t see the benefit while they’re connected over Wi-Fi.
The method by which Shine blocks ads at the network level is unclear. The company says it uses “machines” that are capable of performing deep packet inspection (DPI) inside the network. Using a mixture of “real-time analysis, artificial intelligence and algorithms,” the team is able to identify ads and stop them without breaking the original webpage or app.
Once the trial is over, Three will be picking a selection of customers and asking them for feedback. Responses will be gathered over the phone, however “it may take up to three months” for the company to call.
Ad blocking is a divisive subject. There are clear benefits for the customer — better privacy and a cleaner, faster experience on the web — but it also threatens the business model of countless internet companies. “The current ad model is broken,” Tom Malleschitz, Three’s chief marketing officer said in May. “It frustrates customers, eats up their data allowance and can jeopardise their privacy. Something needs to change.”
While ad blocking is on the rise, it’s still a niche practice — mostly because people have to go out of their way to install an app or browser extension. If it was enabled by default on Three, or offered during the setup of every phone it sells, that could change the numbers dramatically. Three is stepping cautiously — EE and O2, even more so — but if it decides to go all-in with mobile ad blocking, it could have huge implications.
Source: Three
Sky Movies will become Sky Cinema next month
Sky isn’t just a household name in the UK, but in several other European countries too. In those regions, however, Sky Movies as a brand doesn’t exist. Instead, it’s called Sky Cinema in those parts, and come July 8th, that’s what it’ll be known as in the UK as well. Big deal, right? Well, the new name isn’t the only change. For starters, instead of debuting four new movies a week, a fresh film will be added to the roster every day. Sky Cinema will also devote more space to original content and foreign flicks in the future, with a new international release dropping on the service every Wednesday.
Sky’s on-demand library is now more popular than its linear channels, and this too will be growing as Sky Movies becomes Sky Cinema. For starters, the catalogue will increase from 1,000 to roughly 1,200 movies just throughout July. Themed events and transient “pop-up channels” that show back-to-back Harry Potter titles, for example, are to become more regular under Sky Cinema. On the technical side, Sky is implementing what it calls “better HD” on the Cinema service, which apparently carries one-third more pixels, as well as higher dynamic-range audio across the on-demand library.
Most importantly, upon the launch of Sky Cinema, HD movie channels will no longer command an added premium, so anyone with the right bundle (including Virgin Media patrons) will get the best resolution at no extra cost. Film discovery is also set to improve in subtle ways, and Sky subscribers will be able to skip back to the beginning of movies being shown on the linear channels from the EPG for the first time. Unfortunately, not a great deal of news for owners of a shiny new Sky Q box, though 4K flicks will be available at some point later this year.
U.S. Appeals Court Rules in Favor of FCC Net Neutrality Rules
A U.S. appeals court yesterday upheld landmark federal rules preventing internet service providers from obstructing or slowing down consumer access to web content (via Reuters).
The backing for the Federal Communications Commission’s net neutrality rules came in a 2-1 decision by a three-judge panel in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. The outcome reaffirms the law enforced last year that says ISPs must treat all internet traffic equally.
The rules prohibit broadband providers from giving or selling access to faster internet lanes for specific internet services, which the FCC claims will help protect freedom of expression and innovation on the internet.
The court also rejected legal arguments from telecommunications industry groups that the rules should not apply to mobile phone web use or that they violated the constitutional free-speech rights of internet service providers.
The court’s decision in favor of the FCC means that it too considered the internet to be a public utility, and therefore subject to government regulations. White House spokesman Josh Earnest called the ruling “a victory for the open, fair, and free internet as we know it today,” and one that barred service providers from becoming “paid gatekeepers”.
The outcome will also be seen as a personal victory for President Barack Obama, who is a strong advocate of net neutrality rules, although ISPs have already said they plan to appeal to either the full appellate court or the Supreme Court over the ruling. Telecoms industry groups have also said they will continue with efforts to get Congress to limit the FCC’s authority.
Netflix and Twitter were among the companies that praised the ruling, while Google and others have backed the rules. Democrats in Congress also lauded the decision to back the FCC rules, which have been in place since June 2015.
However, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce business group accused the FCC of “essentially transforming an entire industry… from an innovative, lightly regulated enterprise that made huge investments into this country, into a public utility subject to the whims of regulators.”
South Dakota Republican John Thune, who chairs the Senate Commerce Committee, said the decision upholds FCC restrictions “designed for the monopoly-telephone era” and asked the Republican-led Congress to step in to overturn a decision that results in “a highly political agency micromanaging the internet ecosystem.”
US Telecom, the telecommunications industry trade association that led the legal challenge, said the court failed to recognize “the significant legal failings” of the FCC rules that “we believe will replace a consumer-driven internet with a government-run internet, threatening innovation and investment in years to come.”
But FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler called the ruling “a victory for consumers and innovators who deserve unfettered access to the entire web” and claimed that it would ensure the internet remained “a platform for unparalleled innovation, free expression and economic growth.”
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Tags: net neutrality, FCC
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