TomTom Touch review: Out of touch

Behold the fitness tracker that will not only tell you how many steps you’ve taken and how high your heart rate is, but also your body’s fat percentage. Say hello to the TomTom Touch.

The Touch was unveiled when Fitbit launched the Charge 2 and Withings announced the Activité Steel HR. Which is important, given how the Touch sits against this competition in both aesthetic, price and capability terms.

Because while the TomTom Touch sounds great on paper, it’s out of touch in today’s bustling fitness market. Here’s why.

TomTom Touch review: Design

• 11.5 x 47.7 x 16.7mm; 10g
• IPX7 water-resistance
• Black, blue, red or purple colour options
• Small and large bands available

The TomTom Touch isn’t the best-looking fitness tracker out there. Unlike some companies in its field, TomTom hasn’t embraced the fashion angle.

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Rather than offer exciting interchangeable straps, or the ability to place the removable tracker within a necklace or bracelet to smarten it up, you are stuck with a plain, pretty-boring rubber band that comes in standard four colours.

TomTom opts for the pin-and-hole fastening for the band, which isn’t the most secure option out there. It is also only IPX7 water-resistant so there’s no swimming with this device.

An optical heart-rate sensor is positioned on the underside of the Touch tracker, along with a silver metal disc, used in conjunction with the same disc on the top of the tracker for recording body composition.

The Touch tracker itself is secure within the band however, offering a reassuring click when it clips into place. When it is removed you’ll find Micro-USB the charging port.

TomTom Touch review: Display

• 128 x 32 pixel resolution OLED display
• Touchscreen control

Despite the Touch tracker being around 17mm wide when in its strap, the monochrome display is only 5.58mm wide, meaning it’s significantly smaller than the tracker itself. Unlike the Fitbit Charge 2 or Garmin Vivosmart HR+, the display doesn’t wake up at the raise of an arm. Instead, you’re required to tap the silver disc to turn on the screen.

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Once on, swiping from the bottom to the top of the display will present various metrics – from steps taken to distance travelled – while a swipe from the top to the bottom will display recording options for tracking, body composition and heart-rate.

The touch functionality is responsive, but having to tap to wake the screen is frustrating, especially while exercising. The screen also displays numbers horizontally and text vertically, with no option to switch everything to one orientation or the other, meaning we often found ourselves cocking our head to the side.

TomTom Touch review: Features

• Steps, active minutes, distance, calories burned, sleep, heart rate

The TomTom Touch does everything we’d expect an activity tracker to do. It tracks steps, distance travelled, calories burned, active minutes and sleep duration – all of which are now standard across most fitness devices available.

In addition to these basics, the Touch offers continuous heart-rate monitoring, basic smartphone notifications, and the ability to measure body fat and muscle percentages.

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Like smart scales, the Touch uses the metal silver discs positioned on either side of the tracker to send an undetectable electrical current through the body from one disc to the other, measuring body composition.

A measurement is recorded after around 10 seconds, with a tick appearing on the Touch’s display when the measurement has been recorded successfully. After which the TomTom Sports app needs to be opened to see the result.

The Touch also offers a sports tracking feature, which starts a stopwatch for tracking activity, such as a gym session. When in this mode, the Touch will monitor time, distance and heart rate, offering a break-down of all three in the Sports app.

TomTom Touch review: Performance

• Three-to-four day battery life
• Micro-USB recharging

As a basic fitness tracker, the TomTom Touch is on par with its competition in terms of accuracy. Its step-tracking, calories burned and active minutes fall in line with the likes of the Fitbit Charge 2, while heart-rate monitoring is also on point.

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Body composition accuracy is a harder to determine without having professional tests done. The Touch provides a very easy way to measure composition and monitor progress over time, which is perhaps the more important point than whether you are made up of 32 per cent fat or 34.3 per cent.

Sleep tracking and smartphone notifications both appear to have been more of an afterthought though. Sleep isn’t a goal you can set, for example, and it doesn’t have a specific place within the Sports app, offering just the average number of hours on the device itself.

When a text message comes through, a speech bubble will appear on the screen and the Touch will vibrate – but it doesn’t display the message or sender, like the Fitbit Charge 2 does. It’s a similar story when it comes to calls, too. The Touch is therefore much more basic on this front compared to some other fitness trackers.

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In terms of the sports tracking feature, it not possible to tag a specific activity, as you can with Fitbit. The silver disc on the top of the Touch is used to start and end the tracking session, as well as wake up the screen, meaning it’s very easy to end a tracking session by accident. Most annoying.

Meanwhile, we were only able to get between three and four days out of the Touch before it needed recharging. Not the claimed five days.

TomTom Touch review: App

• Android and iOS compatible

The TomTom Sports app is where the Touch faces its biggest challenge. In its current state, it just doesn’t compete with the likes Fitbit, Garmin or Withings, all of which have more user-friendly interfaces and more incentives to achieve goals.

Rather than having easy-to-access tabs, the TomTom Sports app has a menu in the top left-hand corner offering access to the various options: Activities, Goals, Progress, Life Time Totals, Account, Device, Preferences and About. There is no community section or challenge section, as there is with Fitbit, while the TomTom app or device doesn’t offer any reminders to move either.

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Many of the options within the app are self-explanatory, but some of the great features are just too hidden. The Goals section, for example, allows users to change three goals: sports, activity and body. Within these goals, there are several preference options resulting in a lot more variation for goal tracking than other devices but it not well implemented.

Syncing the Touch within the Sports app isn’t always seamless either. It can be very slow at times, while on other occasions the Touch wouldn’t sync at all, resulting in us having plug the device into our computer to sync and restart it.

Verdict

The TomTom Touch ticks many of the right boxes when it comes to features and accuracy – but it is out of touch with the rest of the market when it comes to design and software.

The Touch ignores the growing need for activity trackers to be versatile in their looks. The display is too small, meaning the app plays a more prominent role, but that app is just not up to fulfilling its role.

So while the TomTom Touch has some great features, they aren’t good enough to outshine its software woes and, therefore, the competition.

TomTom Touch: The alternatives to consider

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FitBit Charge 2

• £130

If you’re looking for a well-designed, accurate fitness tracker with a fantastic app platform, then the Charge 2 fully takes charge. It might not offer body fat measurement like the TomTom, but it’s still the platform we would choose.

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Garmin Vivosmart HR+

• £170

The Garmin Vivosmart HR+ is an ideal device for someone who wants to track daily activity as well as record runs or walks in more detail, but doesn’t want to go the whole hog and start wearing a running watch all the time. You’ll need to pay that Garmin price premium, though.

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Withings Activité Steel HR

• £170

Ok, so it’s not a band, but we do rather love the Withings analogue watch approach and digital integration, plus heart-rate monitor.

Dutch scientists’ artificial leaf can create medicine anywhere

Wouldn’t it be great to have the ability to concoct medicine anywhere the sun shines, even if it’s on another planet? A team of Dutch scientists from Eindhoven University of Technology have developed an artificial leaf-like device that could make that happen. The researchers, inspired by plants that can make their own food through photosynthesis, used materials that can match leaves’ capability to capture and store sunlight for later use. These materials are called luminescent solar concentrators (LSCs), which have special light-sensitive molecules that can capture huge amounts of incoming light.

The team designed a device that looks like a leaf by incorporating thin, microchannels mimicking veins in a silicon rubber LSC. By pumping liquids into those channels, their molecules can get into contact with the sunlight absorbed by the LSC. The energy is intense enough to trigger chemical reactions. According to the researchers, the device’s chemical production was 40 percent higher than the rate demonstrated by similar experiments without LSC. “Using a reactor like this means you can make drugs anywhere, in principle, whether malaria drugs in the jungle or paracetamol on Mars,” lead researcher Dr. Timothy Noël explained. “All you need is sunlight and this mini-factory.”

Source: Eindhoven University of Technology

Peter Thiel’s startup helps authorities track illegal immigrants

Data-mining and analytics firm Palantir, co-founded by Gawker-bankrupting tech billionaire Peter Thiel, remains a secretive purveyor of intelligence-gathering tools. While a May report revealed the company’s struggles retaining blue chip commercial clients, it still retains contracts with some government agencies. Recently-released documents uncover that the company has quietly provided assistance to US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) by contributing to an info analysis system that draws information from multiple law enforcement databases. This existing relationship could assist Trump in his stated plans to ramp up the US’ immigration vetting process.

Training documents suggest that Palantir has lent its tech to the CBP’s program, called the Analytical Framework for Intelligence (AFI), which draws and analyzes information from an array of federal, state and local law enforcement databases. That info can be quite personal, from names and addresses to known associations, travel itineraries, immigration records, and even physical traits like fingerprints or tattoos. Just how central AFI is to CBP’s intelligence is unknown. But the government body lends the program out to other law enforcement agencies, according to a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) report released last September. Those include: The Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) office of Enforcement and Removal Operations, the Transportation Security Administration’s (TSA) Office of Intelligence & Analysis and the US Coast Guard’s Office of Intelligence.

All this information comes from heavily redacted AFI documents the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) obtained through a lawsuit. While the program was known and avowed — it has a brief listing on the DHS’s website — the documents reveal Palantir’s relationship and suggest how the company contributed to its development. While AFI was initially created to help CBP “identify, apprehend, and prosecute individuals who pose a potential law enforcement or security risk, and to improve border security,” according to a 2012 report, it has grown from a search-and-analysis tool to become its own database of material to increase efficiency.

Ultimately, the program uses algorithms to create risk profiles of individuals. These mathematical formulas were what EPIC sued CBP last year to obtain. In the process, the agency released the documents, though they are so redacted that Palantir’s specific role and contributions aren’t clear. But there’s enough to say that Palantir is involved with AFI, EPIC attorney John Tran said, and the company played “an active role in management and upkeep of the system.”

“AFI generates risk assessments for travellers,” Tran told The Verge. “But we don’t know how the scores are being generated and what the factors are. What if there’s an error? Users should have an opportunity to correct the error, users should have an opportunity understand what goes into generating the score.”

These concerns are amplified by reports shortly after the presidential election that Palantir cofounder Peter Thiel had joined Trump’s transition team. Even more alarming was Thiel’s refusal to confirm that he’d signed an ethics agreement acknowledging that he wouldn’t financially benefit from transition activities, The Verge pointed out.

Among the databases that AFI draws from is the National Security Entry-Exit Registration System (NSEERS), a Bush-era index of information on foreign nationals from mostly Muslim countries who registered with the US government. This is the “Muslim registry” that Trump either wants to reinstate or replicate, despite members of the tech industry outright refusing to help build such a database. Whether one is built with help from Palantir is uncertain, but the tools it already provided could help Trump track individuals his administration deems immigration risks anyway.

Source: The Verge

LG announces five new phones you probably won’t care about

Get ready for the K10, K8, K4, K3, and the Stylus 3.

Ahead of CES, LG has announced four new phones in the K series — the K10, K8, K4, and K3 — that will make their debut at the trade show. LG will also showcase the Stylus 3, which offers an “improved writing experience” that mimics the “feel and feedback of an actual pen.”

The Stylus 3 is the most interesting handset of the lot, offering a 5.7-inch 720p display, MediaTek MT6750 octa-core CPU, 3GB of RAM, 16GB storage, microSD slot, 13MP camera, 8MP front shooter, and a 3200mAh battery.

The K10 features a 5.3-inch 720p display, the same MT6750 SoC as the Stylus 3, 2GB of RAM, 16GB/32GB storage based on the market, microSD slot, 13MP camera, 5MP front camera, and a 2800mAh battery. The K8, meanwhile, has a 5-inch 720p display, Snapdragon 425, 1.5GB of RAM, 16GB storage, microSD slot, the same camera setup as the K10, and a 2500mAh battery.

As for the K4 and K3, they come sporting FWVGA displays, 1GB of RAM, and 8GB storage. The K10, K8, and the Stylus 3 will run Android 7.0 Nougat out of the box, while the K4 and K3 are based on Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow. All phones come with removable batteries. The spec sheet for each handset is included at the end of the press release.

LG’S MASS-TIER SMARTPHONE OFFERINGS FOR 2017 TO BE UNVEILED AT CES

Four New K Series and Stylus 3 Get Early Debut as Mid-range Segment Heats Up

SEOUL, Dec. 22, 2016 — LG Electronics (LG) will unveil four new mass-tier K Series smartphones and a new Stylus 3 at CES 2017 in Las Vegas, as the mid-range segment continues its strong growth as the market matures. The new mid-range devices are designed to bring popular, best-in-class technologies from LG’s more premium flagship smartphones, such as the 120-degree wide angle front camera lens and the rear fingerprint scanner.

LG’s updated K Series carries over the original philosophy that all customers do not want the same things in a smartphone. Rather than offering one main smartphone model and expecting customers to adapt, the K Series was designed with the diverse needs of consumers in mind.

The K10 delivers a best-in-class 5.3-inch HD In-cell Touch Display that delivers a superb viewing experience indoors or out. Its 5MP front camera with 120-degree wide angle selfie lens complements a premium, 13MP rear camera that has been employed in LG flagship G series devices. Other advanced features not usually available in smartphones in this category include a fingerprint scanner, a metallic U-frame for a sturdy but slim 7.9mm profile and 2.5D Arc Glass design.

The K8 features a 5-inch HD In-cell Touch display and delivers high-quality camera performance with 5MP in the front and 13M on the rear enhanced by LG’s intelligent UX features such as Auto Shot and Gesture Shot for selfies. Auto Shot automatically triggers the front camera’s shutter when a face is detected. Gesture Shot takes a selfie in response to a hand signal, eliminating the need to press the shutter button and shaking the phone at the most critical moment.

The K4 is equipped with a sensitive 5-inch In-cell Touch display, 5MP front and rear cameras as well as the popular Auto Shot and Gesture Shot features found in the K8. The attractive K4 offers a slim 7.9mm profile and removable 2,500mAh battery as well as a microSD slot for additional storage.

The smallest in the series, the K3 comes with a 4.5-inch On-cell Touch display, a 5MP rear camera and a 2MP lens in the front supported by Gesture Shot. With a microSD slot and 2,100mAh removable battery, the K3 offers many features unavailable on other competing smartphones in this category.

LG will also debut the third generation Stylus 3, the latest version of its mid-range Stylus smartphone (Stylo in the United States). The Stylus 3 delivers an improved writing experience with a 1.8mm diameter fiber-tip stylus to provide the feel and feedback of an actual pen when writing on the screen. The Stylus 3 also features a fingerprint scanner and enhanced UX with Pen Pop 2.0 as well as the popular Pen Keeper and Screen-off Memo. With Pen Pop 2.0, your memos are never out of sight and can be set to display on the screen whenever the stylus is removed. Pen Keeper displays a warning when the stylus strays too far from the phone, and Screen-off Memo enables note-taking directly on the screen even when the display is off.

“Our 2017 mass-tier, mid-range smartphones focus on giving our customers a wide variety of options and choices for their smartphone lifestyles,” said Juno Cho, president of the LG Electronics Mobile Communications Company. “What’s consistent in all our K Series and Stylus 3 devices is that they look and feel premium, offer replaceable batteries and all come with expandable memory slots, what customers consider key factors when buying smartphones in this category.”

K10 Key Specifications:

• Chipset: MT6750 1.5 GHz Octa-Core
• Display: 5.3-inch HD In-cell Touch (1280 x 720 / 277ppi)
• Memory: 2GB LPDDR3 RAM / 16 or 32GB eMMC ROM / microSD (up to 2TB)
• Camera: Front 5MP (Wide) / Rear 13MP (Standard)
• Battery: 2,800mAh (removable)
• Operating System: Android 7.0 Nougat
• Size: 148.7 x 75.3 x 7.9mm
• Weight: 142g
• Network: LTE / 3G / 2G
• Connectivity: Wi-Fi (802.11 b, g, n) / Bluetooth 4.2 / USB 2.0 / NFC
• Color: Black / Titan / Gold
• Other: Fingerprint Scanner

K8 Key Specifications:

• Chipset: MSM8917 1.4 Quad-Core
• Display: 5.0-inch HD In-cell Touch (1280 x 720 / 294ppi)
• Memory: 1.5GB LPDDR3 RAM / 16GB eMMC ROM / microSD (up to 32GB)
• Camera: Front 5MP / Rear 13MP
• Battery: 2,500mAh (removable)
• Operating System: Android 7.0 Nougat
• Size: 144.8 x 72.1 x 8.09mm
• Weight: 142g
• Network: LTE / 3G / 2G
• Connectivity: Wi-Fi (802.11 b, g, n) / Bluetooth 4.2 / USB 2.0 / NFC
• Color: Silver / Titan / Dark Blue / Gold

K4 Key Specifications:

• Chipset: MSM8909 1.1GHz Quad-Core
• Display: 5.0-inch FWVGA In-cell Touch (854 x 480 / 196ppi)
• Memory: 1GB LPDDR3 RAM / 8GB eMMC ROM / microSD (up to 32GB)
• Camera: Front 5MP / Rear 5MP
• Battery: 2,500mAh (removable)
• Operating System: Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow
• Size: 144.76 x 72.6 x 7.9mm
• Weight: 135g
• Network: LTE / 3G / 2G
• Connectivity: Wi-Fi (802.11 b, g, n) / Bluetooth 4.1 / USB 2.0
• Color: Titan / Black

K3 Key Specifications:

• Chipset: MSM8909 1.1GHz Quad-Core
• Display: 4.5-inch FWVGA On-cell Touch (854 x 480 / 218ppi)
• Memory: 1GB LPDDR3 RAM / 8GB eMMC ROM / microSD (up to 32GB)
• Camera: Front 2MP / Rear 5MP
• Battery: 2,100mAh (removable)
• Operating System: Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow
• Size: 133.9 x 69.75 x 9.44mm
• Weight: 132g
• Network: LTE / 3G / 2G
• Connectivity: Wi-Fi (802.11 b, g, n) / Bluetooth 4.1 / USB 2.0
• Color: Black

Stylus 3 Key Specifications:

• Chipset: MT6750 1.5GHz Octa-Core
• Display: 5.7-inch HD In-cell Touch (1280 x 720 / 258ppi)
• Memory: 3GB LPDDR3 RAM / 16GB eMMC ROM / microSD (up to 2TB)
• Camera: Front 8MP / Rear 13MP
• Battery: 3,200mAh (removable)
• Operating System: Android 7.0 Nougat
• Size: 155.6 x 79.8 x 7.4mm
• Weight: 149g
• Network: LTE / 3G / 2G
• Connectivity: Wi-Fi (802.11 b, g, n) / Bluetooth 4.2 / USB 2.0
• Color: Metallic Titan / Pink Gold
• Other: Stylus Pen / FM Radio / Fingerprint Scanner

This is the world’s smallest and happiest snowman

The holiday season gets bigger and more hectic every year — and maybe you’re looking for a smaller, more adorable way to celebrate. Here’s one: the world’s smallest snowman. This microscopic frosty was built by the nanofabrication lab at London’s Western University. He’s adorable, but you’ll need an electron microscope to see him in person: according to the lab’s Tumblr page, the snowman stands at just three microns tall, or about 0.003mm. For comparison, a human hair is about 75 microns thick (0.075mm).

Despite the nomenclature, snow wasn’t the lab’s medium of choice. This winter decoration was constructed from three 0.9 micron silica spheres, stacked via electon beam lithography. A focused ion beam cut the jolly soul’s eyes and mouth, and the figure’s nose and arms were sculpted from platinum. It’s a small, but impressive artistic feat — and it beats out the last ‘world’s smallest snowman’ (0.01mm) by a wide margin. Or a small one. We’re not sure.

Source: Tumblr, Western Nanofabrication Facility

Japan axes its ‘fast’ nuclear reactor prototype

Japan’s Monju reactor was supposed to be a more efficient alternative to conventional nuclear power. The “fast,” sodium-cooled prototype plant would produce more plutonium than it ate up, making it relatively easy to recycle fuel. However, that’s not how it worked out. A leak and fire led to a 15-year shutdown starting in 1995, and the reactor has been plagued by failures, mismanagement and political fights ever since. And now, the government has had enough: it’s planning to close Monju once and for all. It would be slower and more expensive to fully restart the reactor than to shut it down (the equivalent of $4.6 billion versus $3.2 billion), officials claim, and the focus is on developing more practical fast reactors instead.

The closure won’t be speedy. Crews wouldn’t finish removing used nuclear fuel from Monju until 2022, and it wouldn’t be completely dismantled until 2047. That’s 61 years after construction began. Still, it’s easy to see why the time might be considered worthwhiel. Japan has already poured over $8.5 billion into the experimental reactor with little to show for it. There’s no guarantee that Monju will work as promised even if everything goes according to plan. Also, it’s not exactly popular given both the gradual shift to clean energy and ongoing worries about nuclear power’s safety following the Fukushima earthquake and tsunami.

Even so, the government could have a fight on its hands. It needs both the approval of the city of Tsuruga and its prefecture to close Monju, and both are hesitant to decommission a reactor in an area that has already been hit hard by plant closures and disasters. They want better explanations and justifications for the shutdown, and there’s a concern that the Japan Atomic Energy Agency’ safety issues (it omitted inspections at Monju, for one thing) make it a bad candidate for dismantling the plant. The order to close the reactor is a start, though, and we’ll know more when a plan is ready in April 2017.

Source: Japan Times

HTC One X10 phone with 5.5-inch HD display might debut in January

HTC is holding a random event in January, and a new report has indicated it could be for a new phone.

The company’s sent out invites, which look sky or even ocean-like and are marked with the words “for u”, but it provided us with little clues as to what we can expect from the 12 January event. Now, however, a report from China has suggested that HTC is getting ready to unveil its next mid-range handset: the successor to the HTC One X9, a special sub-flagship version of the One A9.

The One X9 launched on New Year’s Day this year, so it makes sense that the company would prep a One X10 follow-up for January 2017. The upcoming device is expected to feature a 5.5-inch display (1080×1920 resolution), MediaTek Helio P10 SoC, Mali-T860 GPU clocked at 700MHz, 3GB of RAM, and a 13-megapixel rear-facing camera with OIS. It’ll cost about ¥2,000 ($288/£232).

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Keep in mind there’s a lot of unknowns right now. There is, presumably, a silver concept of the One X10 floating around right now, which looks practically identical to the One X9, so it’s hard to be sure. But if this report is legit, many outlets believe the phone will arrive in January, ahead of the HTC 11 flagship.

It’s not year clear, however, if the phone will indeed show up at HTC’s event set for next month. Only time will tell.

Snap Inc. is expanding its presence in China

Snapchat is officially banned by the Chinese government, but its parent company Snap Inc. is looking to expand its presence in the country’s tech and manufacturing hub of Shenzen. According to a CNN, Snap Inc.’s Shenzen office will work on research and development related to Spectacles, the company’s only hardware device, which is already being manufactured in China.

Although Snap currently has about 20 employees in Shenzen, new job postings on popular messaging service WeChat revealed the Los Angeles-based startup is looking to build its “first core team” of engineers in China. The company is looking for alums of China’s major tech companies like Alibaba (which reportedly invested $200 million in Snapchat last year), Baidu or Tencent. Shenzen employees would also get potentially lucrative shares of Snap stock as well as the opportunity to relocate to the US in the future.

While a growing presence in Shenzen could signal a wider release for the somewhat scarce Spectacles is coming down the line, CNN also notes that ties to China could help Snap keep an eye on how local trends influence global markets. And even though the service is blocked in the country, large companies that wish to break out of China could be a boon for Snapchat’s advertising revenues.

Source: CNN

Uber’s self-driving tests in SF end after the DMV steps in

The self-driving Uber pilot in San Francisco has ended, now that the DMV revoked registrations for the vehicles. Last week, the company faced off with government officials both state and local in an attempt to insist its cars did not need a permit or autonomous testing. Regulators disagreed, and things quickly escalated. Uber says it plans to redeploy the cars, somewhere, (hopefully without bike lanes), and “will be redoubling our efforts to develop workable statewide rules.”

Uber:

“We have stopped our self-driving pilot in California as the DMV has revoked the registrations for our self-driving cars. We’re now looking at where we can redeploy these cars but remain 100 percent committed to California and will be redoubling our efforts to develop workable statewide rules.”