Samsung's Galaxy S8 can turn into a PC with its DeX dock

Samsung, like Motorola and Microsoft before it, is trying to turn a phone into a PC. Samsung’s Galaxy S8 will pair with a new Samsung Desktop Experience (DeX) dock accessory to morph into a desktop PC-like environment. The specialized dock, that looks like a candle holder, supports a monitor connection via HDMI, keyboard, mouse, and two USB ports to help expand the Galaxy S8’s capabilities. Samsung’s dock even has a special embedded cooling fan to help keep the Galaxy S8 cool when you’re using it to display Android apps on a monitor, and a USB-C connection to power it.

Samsung’s desktop mode comes with an app drawer on the side, and supports Android apps with full access to notifications and resizeable windows. The whole interface looks a little like Chrome OS, but there’s no full desktop browser here. That means you’re limited to how well Android apps are supported on bigger screens, and most apps in the Google Play Store simply aren’t optimized for this type of usage. Samsung’s own browser, Microsoft’s Office apps, and Adobe’s mobile creative suite all work fine, but the vast majority will look like stretched phone apps on the big screen.

Any app updated for Nougat will window just fine, but Samsung is also handling windowing itself through its own system. While you can unplug the Galaxy S8 from the DeX Station and app windows will disappear, they don't come back when you plug the device back in. Samsung is also using the iris scanner on the Galaxy S8 to let you look at your phone in the dock to log into the desktop mode. Samsung is really aiming its DeX system at business customers who need basic apps on the go, but this really isn't going to replace your PC or laptop just yet.

Samsung is partnering with VMware to bring virtual Windows desktop apps to the DeX experience, thanks to an app that will let you stream a virtual session. That will obviously require an internet connection, and the reliability of that connection will be key to how well the apps stream.

 

Samsung isn’t the first to try all of this, though. Motorola tried and failed with the Atrix years ago, and more recently Microsoft has put its effort into Continuum on Windows phones to try and turn them into PCs. All of these solutions are held back by the fact that the real desktop apps you’d expect from a Mac or PC simply aren’t present, unless you stream them through virtual machines. Microsoft might have an answer to that soon, but right now both Microsoft and Samsung’s efforts are very basic examples of how a phone might turn into a PC one day.

The article was published on : theverge

Samsung's new Gear 360 camera shoots in 4K and works with iPhones

 

Samsung just announced a new version of its Gear 360 camera, which as the name suggests shoots video and photos in 360 degrees, and has a new design that’s supposed to make it easier for non-video-nerds to use. It is admittedly cute, and has a nifty stabilization ring. The big question is whether its new handheld design is a step forward in capturing 360 imagery, or whether we’re about to see a lot of really shaky 360 video in our feeds. 

The new Gear 360 camera is mushroom-shaped, with the spherical part of it extending into a built-in grip. Basically, it has an eye-like aesthetic that’s similar to the original camera, but now has a stalk below it. At first look it appears to be much easier for people to hold themselves — and presumably, take more selfies. 

That's a good thing for photos, and it makes the device more approachable for regular consumers. But the new design runs the risk of encouraging hand held videos, too. 360 videos can already feel like a chore to watch, whether you’re clicking and dragging or wearing a headset. The problem gets worse if you’re always trying to catch up with a moving camera. 

The new camera doesn't necessarily discourage stability, though. It has a standard tripod mount, and Samsung has also thrown in a little rubber ring that you can wrap around the bottom of the camera to keep it stable on a flat surface. The rubber ring is simple but also one of the more ingenious aspects of the new device. 

The new Gear 360 camera will also capture video in true 4K, at a resolution of 4096 x 2160, and is capable of live-streaming 2K video. The live stream capture is sent wirelessly to a smartphone first and is then uploaded as a “Live Broadcast” to either YouTube or Facebook. Last year’s camera also captured video that was just less than the resolution of true 4K, and didn’t have live-streaming capabilities.

 

The first Gear 360 camera, released in 2016, looked like a giant eyeball and, like the new camera, had two fisheye lenses on either side of the camera. It shipped with a small tripod, and the camera itself had a standard quarter-inch tripod mount. But as The Verge’s Sean O’Kane pointed out in his review of the first camera, you pretty much had to use a larger tripod or stabilizer and position the camera at least five feet off the ground or a flat surface if you wanted to capture decent, non-nauseating video. 

Beyond that, 360 video can sometimes be problematic when it comes to transferring or editing the footage, since so much data is being captured. So it’s not so much shooting the video that can be a barrier to mainstream usage, but rather, what to do with it after the fact. We’ll have to wait until we get our hands on this new model to see how well this works, and whether the live-streaming aspect of it changes the experience as well. 

Samsung hasn’t yet announced pricing for the new camera or exactly when it will ship beyond “the spring,” but has said it should be more accessible than last year’s camera, which cost $349.

Another notable change? The new Gear 360 camera pairs with many more smartphones: most recent Samsung phones, other Android-based phones (so long as you have Android 5.0 Lollipop or newer), and recent versions of the iPhone. Last year’s model only worked with newer Samsung phones, like the Galaxy S7 or S7 Edge. While last year’s camera felt like an experiment, Samsung now seems determined to make 360 video and photos more accessible to the masses.

The article was published on : theverge

Samsung is also making mesh Wi-Fi routers, but they work with SmartThings

Move over Eero. And Google Wifi. And Orbi. And Plume. And HiveSpot. And Portal. And Velop. And AmpliFi. And Almond. Samsung is coming to mesh Wi-Fi router town with a new offering it’s calling Samsung Connect Home.

That not-very-catchy name is attached to a very-catchy trend: replacing the big, antenna-laden router in your closet with a set of little white pucks you tactically place around your house to maximize your Wi-Fi signal.

  

Samsung’s take on this trend is to do the same thing, but ensure that these little Wi-Fi routers also serve as SmartThings hubs, so you can better control the smart home gadgets you have in your house. It should be compatible with what Samsung says is “hundreds of third-party smart home devices” like Philips Hue and the Ring doorbell. It works with Zigbee, Z-Wave, and also has Bluetooth 4.1

Samsung says that each individual unit can cover up to 1,500 square feet, and they’re selling them either individually or in packs of three. And actually, there are two versions. The standard connect has a 2 x 2 MU-MIMO antenna array and a slower processor, capping out at specified speeds of 866 Mbps in the 5GHz spectrum. There’s also a Pro version with a 4 x 4 antenna which caps out at 1.7 Gbps (but doesn’t come in a three-pack). 

Here’s what we know Samsung’s Bixby assistant can do on the Galaxy S8

 

Samsung’s new virtual assistant, Bixby, is a different sort of thing than what you’re used to. Where Siri, Google, and Alexa are focused on collecting and understanding information out on the internet and then answering your questions about it, Bixby is trying to help you use your own phone. Samsung’s goal is to make it so that if you don’t want to, you don’t have to touch your device at all — “anything you can do with touch, you can do with voice” is the common refrain we’ve heard from them.

That’s an awfully ambitious goal, though, and it’s nowhere near complete. Right now, Bixby offers a much smaller subset of that goal — it only works with 10 or so of Samsung’s own Android apps — so we’ll need to wait to see how it’s updated over time. On stage, Samsung said that it will work with Google Play Music and other third-party apps — and really emphasized how it will work with Samsung Connect smart home devices.

But the funny thing about Bixby is that it actually does way more than that simplistic pitch. It actually consists of three different components that are all interrelated.

Bixby Voice: talk instead of touch

This is the headline feature for Bixby, and we know that it can work in at least the following Samsung apps: phone, messaging, settings, camera, reminder, contacts, and gallery. In those apps, instead of trying to find the thing you want, you can just ask Bixby to do it for you.

In a demo Samsung showed us, Bixby was able to rotate a photo, play a video, and even send a video over to a television screen. You just hit the Bixby button, ask it to do a thing, and then it tries to do that thing.

There are some cases where Bixby might not be able to fully complete a task. One example might be that you want to send an email, but you need to punch in the address yourself. 

Samsung says you can mix both voice and touch interactions, doing whatever is appropriate to the context of what you’re doing. You can hold the phone up to your ear to have a “more private” conversation with Bixby, or change the gender sound of its voice.

At launch, Bixby will work in US English, and Korean, with Chinese and US Spanish to follow shortly after.

Bixby Vision: Augmented reality (for buying stuff)

The part of Bixby we did get to test a bit was the Vision aspect. It’s essentially an augmented reality camera that can identify objects in real time and then search for them on various services. You can launch it directly in the camera app or from Bixby Home.

Even though it’s not all that dissimilar from stuff we’ve seen before like Google Goggles or Amazon Firefly, Samsung’s implementation seems miles better than the competition. It can translate text, read QR codes, and recognize landmarks. But lots of apps can do those things. Where Bixby excels is combining them all with what seems like pretty decent object recognition right there in your camera app.

To use it, you just point it at a thing and wait a tick (or several ticks, depending on the quality of your internet connection). In our tests it recognized flowers and a watch, and it can also recognize stuff like wine labels and books. Samsung has a few specific partners it’s working with — Amazon, Vivino, and Pinterest come to mind — and more are coming.

It’s probably my favorite thing Bixby does.

Bixby Home: yet another pane of widgets

When you swipe over from your home screen or hit the Bixby button, you’ll get taken to Bixby home. It’s a vertically scrolling list of a bunch of information that Bixby can interact with. You’ll find stuff like weather, fitness activity, buttons for controlling your smart home gadgets, and more. 

Samsung calls it a “social stream for your device,” which sounds nice I suppose, but it also sounds like a lot of other attempts at giving you relevant information on your home screen. It could be super useful or it could be a thing you never bother to look at. Samsung says it will learn from your routine and habits (which is another promise we’ve heard before from other companies, notably Google), so it will all come down to implementation.

More to come

Bixby can do a smattering of a few other things, like setting reminders based on your location, querying Wolfram Alpha, and more. So the distinction between Bixby and the Google Assistant on the S8 is probably going to get fuzzier as time goes on.

Waiting for time to go on is really the main thing we’ll need to so with Bixby. Giving it its very own button before it works with everything you’d want it to is a very bold gamble. If it works out, Samsung will have created a new and interesting user interaction model for its devices, something that will entice users not just to get a pretty phone, but buy into a whole ecosystem. That’s a big if, and to get there Samsung will need to prove it works and prove that people use it.

Samsung Galaxy S8 price will start at $720 — here's how to buy

Samsung just unveiled its brand new smartphones, the Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8 Plus, and US carriers along with big retailers are wasting no time sharing details on how you can get one of them. You’ll be able to preorder either device from all four big carriers beginning tomorrow, March 30th.

The phone will be released on April 21st — less than a month from today and a few weeks after LG’s G6 widely launches in the United States. Let’s not waste any more time: here’s everything you need to know about how and when to purchase the Galaxy S8. I’ll be updating this post rapidly as all carriers announce availability details throughout the day.

Carriers

Verizon

Preorders start March 30th at 12:01AM ET. Available in stores April 21st.
Preorder customers receive free Gear VR with Controller and Oculus content pack, or can instead choose $99 “Experience Box” with Gear VR and Controller, Harman Kardon headphones, and 256GB microSD card.

Galaxy S8: $720 full retail
Monthly installments: $30 / mo for 24 months

Galaxy S8 Plus: $840 full retail
Monthly installments: $35 / mo for 24 months

Other / trade-in promotions:

Order the Galaxy S8 on device payment, sign up for Verizon Unlimited and trade-in the following phones and pay only $15/month for 24 months -- Apple: iPhone 6, 6 Plus, 6S, 6S Plus, 7, 7 Plus; Samsung: GS6, GS6 edge, GS6 edge +, GS7, GS7 edge, Note 5; Google: Pixel, Pixel XL; LG: G5, V20; HTC: 10; Motorola: Z Droid, Z Force

Order the Galaxy S8 on device payment, sign up for Verizon Unlimited and trade-in the following phones and pay only $20/month for 24 months -- Apple: iPhone SE; Samsung: Note 4, GS5; LG: G4, V10; HTC: M9; Motorola: Turbo 2, Z Play

Order the Galaxy S8+ on device payment, sign up for Verizon Unlimited and trade-in the following phones and pay only $15/month for 24 months -- Apple: iPhone 7 Plus; Google: Pixel XL; Motorola: Z Force; Samsung: GS7 edge

Order the Galaxy S8+ on device payment, sign up for Verizon Unlimited and trade-in the following phones and pay only $20/month for 24 months -- Apple: iPhone 6, 6 Plus, 6S, 6S Plus, 7; Google: Pixel; Samsung: GS6, GS6 edge, GS6 edge +, GS7, Note 5; LG: G5, V20; HTC: 10; Motorola: Droid Z Droid

AT&T

Preorders start March 30th. Available in stores April 21st.
Preorder customers receive free Gear VR with Controller and Oculus content pack.

Galaxy S8: $750 full retail
AT&T Next: $25 / mo for 30 months
AT&T Next Every Year: $31.25 / mo for 24 months

Galaxy S8 Plus: $850 full retail
AT&T Next: $28.34 / mo for 30 months
AT&T Next Every Year: $35.42 / mo for 24 months

Other / trade-in promotions:

Customers that preorder a new Galaxy device can also take advantage of these great offers:

Up to $750 in credits towards another Samsung Galaxy S8 or S8+

A Samsung Gear S3 for only $49 with a 2-year service agreement

Get a Samsung Tab E and/or a Samsung Gear S2 for only .99 cents, when you activate a 2-year agreements

T-Mobile

Preorders start March 30th at 12:01AM ET. Available in stores April 21st.
Preorder customers receive free Gear VR with Controller and Oculus game pack.
T-Mobile @Work customers get free DeX desktop dock with in-store preorder.

Galaxy S8: $750 full retail ($729 at MetroPCS)
Monthly installments: $30 down payment + $30 / mo for 24 months
Jump! On Demand: $0 down +$33 / mo for 24 months

Galaxy S8 Plus: $850 full retail
Monthly installments: $130 down payment + $30 / mo for 24 months
Jump! On Demand: Same as monthly installments

Sprint

Preorders start March 30th. Available in stores April 21st.
Preorder customers receive free Gear VR with Controller and Oculus content pack, or can instead choose $99 “Experience Box” with Gear VR and Controller, Harman Kardon headphones, and 256GB microSD card.

Galaxy S8: $750 full retail
Monthly installments: $31.25 / mo for 18-month lease

Galaxy S8 Plus: $850 full retail
Monthly installments: $35.42 / month for 18-month lease

The article was published on : theverge

The Galaxy S8's face-scanning feature might make you forget about its misplaced fingerprint scanner

Samsung’s new Galaxy S8 will have multiple ways to authenticate your device. It’s got a fingerprint sensor, an iris scanner, old-fashioned PINs, and now, a face scanner. Today the company announced its face-scanning feature, which it says will be its most convenient way to access your device. It’s fast and works from a distance, unlike the iris scanner, which requires you to put the phone close to your face to unlock it. It’s basically Windows Hello for your Samsung phone. 

This is also supposed to be the weakest form of authentication security-wise, so you won’t be able to use it for purchases, either through Samsung Pay or Android Pay. For that, you’ll need to rely on your current method to verify your identity. Can it be spoofed with a photo? We aren’t sure, but look out for our review where we’ll definitely put the scanner to the test.

The face-scanning convenience might end up making up for Samsung’s poor fingerprint scanner placement. It’s now directly next to the camera on the back of the phone, which is definitely going to result in unintentional fingerprints on the camera. Get used to face scanning, I guess, to keep your phone clean.

Developing. Check out our Samsung Galaxy S8 live blog for the latest updates and our Samsung hub page for all of the news!

The article was published on : theverge

Samsung’s Galaxy S8 has a super tall screen, but a bizarre aspect ratio

Now that Samsung is ditching its Edge brand and going all in on edge-to-edge, bezel-less displays for its flagship phone line, we’ll now have to contend with what may be one of the weirdest smartphone screen aspect ratios out there. On both the Galaxy S8’s 5.8-inch and 6.2-inch models, the device has an 18.5:9 aspect ratio. 

This is partly because of Samsung’s overhauled hardware design, which combines an edge-to-edge “infinity” display with reduced bezel and rounded corners to maximize screen size over what is otherwise pretty familiar real estate. This is so the phone doesn’t appear that much larger in your hand, but the screen absolutely looks and and feels as if it’s been supersized. 

Of course, 18.5:9 is going to bring with it some headaches, particularly when it comes to videos. Because some videos display at 16:9, the S8 and S8 Plus is going to smack some vertical black bars on the left and right of files you watch in that format. (Android automatically resizes apps to work with various screen sizes, so you won’t have to worry about mobile games and other apps doing the same.)

READ MORE: THIS IS THE SAMSUNG GALAXY S8, COMING APRIL 21ST

However, a lot of feature films and other high-quality YouTube content these days is in 21:9, which has the benefit of removing those pernicious black bars on the top and bottom of screens. Samsung’s phones won’t remove those black bars, but the device’s software will stretch the image to fit the 21:9 format and allow you to watch the video as it more naturally would appear on a television set. 

So in most cases, this wonky aspect ratio won’t be too much of an issue. But consider it a weird wrinkle in an otherwise gargantuan smartphone display.

The article was published on : theverge

Samsung's Galaxy S8 has a pressure-sensitive home button built into the screen

After years of sticking to physical keys, Samsung is switching over to on-screen buttons for the Galaxy S8 — but it's putting a bit of a twist on them.

Like nearly all other Android phones, the Galaxy S8 will display a bar of three buttons at the bottom of the screen: multitasking, home, and back. But in a unique approach, Samsung has made the home button pressure sensitive, letting you push on the bottom of the screen to activate the home button even if a full-screen app has hidden it.

The downside? Samsung has to move its fingerprint sensor

It's a small touch, but it could help ease the transition to the S8 for people used to having a physical, always-present button at the bottom of their phone. (The feature works a lot like Apple's Force Touch, just confined to a single location on the screen.)

 

There's a mix of good and bad to come out of this. On the plus side, Samsung can put much slimmer bezels on the front of the phone, and that looks really cool.

On the downside, physical buttons are easier to pick up for people new to smartphones (though that's not necessarily a huge issue for a top-of-the-line phone in 2017), and the removal of them requires Samsung to relocate its fingerprint sensor. Rear fingerprint sensors can be great, but Samsung has decided to place the S8's right beside its camera, which seems pretty awkward at first glance.

So the results of Samsung's switch on-screen buttons seem decidedly mixed. Most Android phones have been using this method for years, so it's not like the decision to go virtual should be a huge problem. But a lot is resting on how comfortably Samsung placed that fingerprint sensor.

Our first impression? My colleague Dieter Bohn writes that the fingerprint sensor is placed "too high up on the phone to comfortably reach, and it’s also right next to the camera module, which might mean you’l be getting fingerprints on the camera more often than you’d like.” You can read his full first look at the phone right here.

The article was published on : theverge

Hackers promised an iCloud apocalypse — but probably can't deliver

When the Turkish Crime Family first broke into the news last week, they sounded like a crisis in the making. The group claimed to have stolen a massive trove of iCloud credentials — the first over 300 million, then as many as 559 million — and unless they got $75,000 from the company before April 7th, they would start remotely wiping phones. Apple responded with a limited denial, stating that company servers hadn’t been breached, but allowing for the possibility that the credentials had been obtained some other way. As journalists began to confirm smaller sets of profiles released by the group, it gave Apple users plenty of reason to be nervous. Were we headed toward some kind of mass iCloud hack?

Now, those threats are starting to unravel. Today, ZDNet examined the largest account drop yet — just under 70,000 login / password pairs — and found that 99.9 percent of the pairs matched accounts already included in a database of previous leaks. In short, the Turkish Crime Family was working from recycled public data. At the same time, Motherboard obtained documents showing the group using the data for a quick cash out, asking for $3,000 from the breach notification site Leakbase in exchange for bringing good publicity to the service.

It’s a confusing turn in an already confusing story, but the upshot should be reassuring to Apple users. If the database really is built from public credentials, it’s likely to be far smaller and far less damaging than the group initially promised. You should still change your iCloud password and set up two-factor verification — both of which are worthwhile regardless — but it’s looking less and less likely that you’ll need to. So far, the group seems to be more interested in securing a quick payout than causing havoc, which makes it far more likely that the April 7th deadline will come and go uneventfully.

To understand why the Turkish Crime Family threat isn’t so frightening, we’ll need to get a little more technical. The group seems to have pulled off a credential-stuffing attack, taking login / password pairs from a public leak and testing them against separate services. Out of the 117 million logins in the 2012 LinkedIn breach, for instance, one might find tens of thousands of logins that also worked for iCloud, simply because users kept the same password for both services.

Credential-stuffing attacks are a real and persistent threat, and one of the main reasons security writers tell you not to use the same passwords across multiple accounts. But it’s the kind of attack Apple and other companies deal with every day, either quietly forcing password resets or blocking suspicious logins. As a result, it rarely rises to the level of a crisis. 

Apple did not respond to a request for comment, but Shape Security CTO Shuman Ghosemajumder, who previously worked on click-fraud protections at Google, says iCloud is likely expecting the attack. “Apple is certainly watching for an attack like this, particularly because of the announced threat,” says Ghosemajumder. “They definitely see credential stuffing attacks on iCloud accounts every single day, just like all major online account systems do.”

The Turkish Crime Family’s trick was making that credential-stuffing attack seem like something larger and more threatening. By claiming hundreds of millions of accounts and threatening attacks on a specific zero-hour, the old credentials suddenly seemed like an imminent threat — worth paying attention to, and maybe even worth paying for. But as more details came out, that case got weaker and weaker. It’s still hard to say for sure what will happen on April 7th — and again, entirely worth resetting your passwords — but the chances of a hacking apocalypse are looking slimmer by the day.

The article was published on : theverge

The black OnePlus 3T is a very nice black phone

Last week, OnePlus announced that it would be selling a new color of the 3T smartphone, dubbed midnight black. The new color is now available for purchase and now that I've put my hands on one, I must say it’s a very nice black.

See, black phones can be boring, or nondescript. But a good black phone can be stunning — Apple’s jet black iPhone 7 and Samsung’s black Note 7 (RIP) are great examples of black phones that are beautiful to look at.

The midnight black 3T is not like those, as it has a matte finish instead of gloss. To be frank, its finish very similar to the matte black iPhone 7. But that’s not a bad thing, as the matte black iPhone 7 is also a very nice black phone. OnePlus says it tested “more than 30 color iterations” and used “three carefully applied dark coatings 14 microns thick” which “maintains the natural look and feel of metal.” It also added an anti-fingerprint coating, which appears to work rather well. The phone comes in a special black box, to further differentiate it from the other colors, which come in white boxes.

If you want a OnePlus 3T that matches the darkness of your soul, or if you just prefer black over the standard gunmetal gray, you can order one from the company right now. But these are supposedly available in limited edition runs, so you might want to act fast if you want one.

The article was published on : theverge

Fujifilm announces new Instax Mini 9 in festive colors

 

 

Fujifilm announced another new mini instant camera today. This time, it’s the Instax mini 9. The new model is different from most of the other mini ones because it has a selfie mirror (like on the Instax mini 70), includes an attachable close-up lens, and a high-key mode, which lets you minimize shadows in a photo — all in one package. But perhaps more importantly, the camera comes in a bunch of funky colors. Aw yeah. 

There’s a lime green option that you can see above, as well as flamingo pink and “ice blue.” Here’s the rainbow of options:

The mini 9 will be available in April in the US and Canada for $69.95 USD.

The article was published on : theverge

The new Jumanji is about a video game, which supposedly explains Karen Gillan’s outfit

Footage from the Jumanji reboot Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle was shown at Sony’s CinemaCon panel last night, confirming the long-rumored plot detail that the new film is about a magical video game instead of a magical board game. And you all said the movie industry has no new ideas!

The story reportedly follows four high school students who find an old video game console (console unspecified) while cleaning out a dusty closet during detention and are subsequently transported into the world of the game — and into the bodies of stars Kevin Hart, The Rock, Jack Black, and Karen Gillan (Nick Jonas is also in this movie somewhere, TBD). The game is vintage, hence the dust and the magic and being buried in the back of a closet, which is presumably what The Rock meant when he said there was a logical reason for Karen Gillan’s absurd hiking outfit. 

Now that I understand the context, I’m absolutely so impressed by the team’s attention to detail and fidelity to the costuming of (I’m guessing) ‘80s video game characters. What would we even be doing here, with our 2017 reboot of a movie about a game that is sentient or haunted and it’s never clear which, if we weren’t getting the crop tops right? 

Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle, directed by Bad Teacher and Sex Tape’s Jake Kasden, will be released in 3D, IMAX, and normal 2D on December 22nd. 

The article was published on : theverge

HTC’s next flagship smartphone will reportedly feature customizable sensors in the metal band

Way back in September 2016, a rumored device called the HTC Ocean leaked out in a video showing off a novel feature — sensors in the metal band around the phone that allowed for customizable functions. Back then it seemed like a nice concept device, but now VentureBeat is reporting that the Ocean is real, and it will be announced as the HTC U next month.

The HTC U will reportedly feature a 5.5-inch 2560 x 1440 display, Snapdragon 835 processor, 12MP rear and 16MP front-facing cameras, up to 128GB of storage, and Edge Sense, the sensor-laden metal band around the phone that will let you control a number of different features. It will also run Android Nougat 7.1, and HTC’s Sense 9 interface. 

Despite being HTC’s flagship phone for 2017, the HTC U will be the third “U” phone it has released this year, following up the HTC U Play and U Ultra. Why? Who knows. The HTC U is expected to be announced in April, and a global release will follow in May. 

The article was published on : theverge

Samsung is building 4K LED movie theater screens

 

Movie theater projectors might soon have some competition from a big name in the display business. Samsung unveiled its new Cinema Screen today, which is an LED, 4096 x 2160 (4K) resolution screen designed specifically for theaters. The 34-foot screen delivers High Dynamic Range content and can reportedly display movies at a brightness level 10 times greater than standard cinema projectors. Samsung says its display fits the changing demands for theater spaces in that it could be used for viewing not only movies but also sporting events, concerts, gaming competitions, or corporate events. 

Really, this display is making me question everything I know about movie theaters. I’ve never thought about why we have projectors over LED screens; it’s just a fact I accepted as truth.

Here’s what I know now: Samsung’s display is much smaller than most movie theater projections. A typical screen is between 45 and 65 feet wide, whereas IMAX theaters typically have a 72-feet-wide screen. I have no idea how they compare price wise, because Samsung hasn’t yet released pricing details.

The thing to note is also that we haven’t had incredibly thin or high resolution displays available to us until recently. I’d imagine installing them is more difficult, too, and perhaps getting a repair is harder. Still, is there going to be a day when screens replace our projectors? It was only four years ago that the great digital projectors switch happened, and now we also have 4K projectors. Who knows what's going to happen with movie theater tech, maybe we'll all just end up wearing VR headsets anyway.

The article was published on : theverge

NBC will broadcast its entire 2018 Olympics programming live across the world

NBC announced today that it will be broadcasting all events live across all time zones in the upcoming 2018 Winter Olympic Games in PyeongChang County, South Korea. 

For recent Olympics, NBC broadcasted all events through official online streams, but stubbornly insisted on tape delays for televised broadcasts of the games. For example, NBC chose to save popular events, competitions with big-name athletes, and even the opening ceremonies (which were last seen live in the US in 1996!) for more lucrative prime-time television slots, even when the actual event had taken place hours beforehand. 

That policy has come under fire as the proliferation of the internet and social media has made it possible for both results and even live streams of the tape delayed events themselves to make their way across the world before they aired on NBC and its subsidiary networks. The recent 2016 Olympics in Rio suffered the worst ratings of any of NBC’s recent broadcasts of the games — after all, why watch on NBC when the results are streamed online hours in advance?

The XXIII Winter Olympic Games kick off February 9th, 2018 in PyeongChang. 

The article was published on : theverge

The next Moto phones could have a dual-camera setup

 

A new, dual-camera Moto phone may be in the works from Motorola / Lenovo, according to some leaked images posted on Google+, as uncovered by Phandroid.

The post claims that the pictures are of a new 2017 Moto X model, but given the relatively weak specifications listed in the image of the boot loader — 3GB RAM, 32GB of storage, and a Snapdragon 625 processor — I’m a little skeptical that this is actually a new Motorola flagship device. (For reference, those are virtually identical specs to the company’s midrange Moto G5 Plus.)

Still, the images do show off an interesting two-camera system that seems similar to the iPhone 7 Plus or recent phones from LG. If Motorola is planning a new midrange smartphone to slot in above the recently released Moto G5 and G5 Plus, a dual-camera system that’s usually found on high-end phones could be a way to stand out. 

The article was published on : theverge

LG releases first G6 TV commercial on eve of Samsung’s big event

LG has to be hoping that come tomorrow, its brand new G6 smartphone won’t be immediately overshadowed in the minds of consumers by Samsung’s Galaxy S8. The two phones are similar in that they’re both all screen with a tiny surrounding bezel. Each has its own advantages; in the case of LG, that’s really the wide-angle camera lens on the back (and a flat display, if you’re a traditionalist like me). 

But for its first TV spot meant to sell you (and millions of other people) on the G6, the company is really focused on that screen and its friendliness to one-handed use thanks to a 2:1 aspect ratio. It starts by peeling off what you’d expect a traditional phone’s bezel to look like, and the tagline is “The big screen that fits in your hand.” And yeah, it’s definitely easier to navigate around this phone than some others. Good luck reaching the back button in this Gilt example, though. Please, developers, no more hamburger menus (or any important buttons) up there.

We get a very brief look at the camera in the skydiving scene, but I expect LG will have other ads for showcasing its unique dual-lens setup. And this spot also effectively gets across the device’s water resistance. But will any amount of advertising be enough against the Samsung juggernaut? The G6 launches on March 30th on Verizon and a week later on other US carriers, so it’s got some lead time. But after tomorrow’s event, a lot of people might already.

The article was published on : theverge

Microsoft’s Cortana is now available on the Android lock screen

Microsoft has been tweaking Cortana on Android and iOS recently, and the latest addition is a new lock screen option for Android today. While the feature has been in beta since January, it’s rolling out to everyone today. Microsoft isn’t replacing existing lock screens with Cortana, but you’ll be able to access the digital assistant simply by swiping left or right on a floating logo, making it just as quick to access as Google’s own options.

Alongside the lock screen integration, the Cortana home section of Android is getting refreshed today with information like calendar events, weather, and travel time to work displayed as soon as the app is launched. Microsoft is also launching Cortana for iOS and Android in Australia today, making it the third country the mobile app is available alongside the US and UK.

 

The article was published on : theverge

Andy Rubin teases a first look at Essential’s bezel-less smartphone

 

Andy Rubin (one of the co-founders of Android) announced in January that he was starting a new company, Essential, and would be working on a premium smartphone with an edge-to-edge display “that lacks a surrounding bezel.” 

Today, Rubin showed off the first glimpse of what Essential’s first smartphone will look like, and as promised, the bezel is almost nonexistent. Beyond that, we can see that the phone will feature a cutout on top for a speaker, along with a visible button on the side of the device. The software seems to be some version of Android, but it’s hard to say for sure without confirmation.

There’s obviously still a lot we don’t know about the device, but as a first impression, it definitely looks like Essential could have something interesting on its hands here. 

The article was published on : theverge

Apple is upgrading millions of iOS devices to a new modern file system today

 

Apple’s iOS 10.3 is rolling out today, with a new find my AirPods option and CarPlay improvements. Most of the features in iOS 10.3 aren’t major, but Apple is actually undertaking a pretty huge shift for all iPad and iPhone users today. Within iOS 10.3, Apple is moving supported devices to its new Apple File System (APFS). It’s a file system that was originally announced at WWDC last year, and it’s designed with the iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, Mac, and Apple TV in mind.

Apple has been using its 31-year-old Hierarchical File System (HFS) for iOS devices so far. It was originally designed for Macs with floppy or hard disks, and not for modern mobile devices with solid state storage. Even its successor, HFS+, still doesn’t address the needs of these mobile devices enough. Apple’s new APFS is designed to scale across these new types of devices and take advantage of flash or SSD storage. It’s also engineered with encryption as a primary feature, and even supports features like snapshots so restoring files on a Mac or even an iOS device might get a lot easier in the future. 

As APFS is designed to be low latency, this should also improve read and write speeds on iOS or Mac devices. Apple demonstrated this during WWDC last year with a Mac, showing how APFS saved time on a simple file copy compared to HFS+. Most iPhone and iPad users won’t notice a difference after today’s iOS 10.3 update, but there could be a boost to storage levels for some. Beta testers of iOS 10.3 reported seeing more storage available after the update, primarily due to the way APFS calculates available data.

Other than a tiny boost to storage, it’s unlikely you’ll see any benefits from this new file system on an iPad or iPhone just yet. It will help lay some of the foundations for Apple to switch fully over to 64-bit apps only on iOS, something that many believe will happen with iOS 11. What you might notice when you install iOS 10.3 is that it takes longer to install. It shouldn’t be too much longer, but Apple is taking on a big task to carefully and silently update millions of iOS devices’ file systems so things will take a little longer than normal.

The article was published on : theverge