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Industry-leading hardware specifications
Galaxy S5 screen testing, on the Samsung production line in South Korea [Image credit: PC Mag]
Thursday, April 17, 2014
Samsung Galaxy S5 review round-up: Almost flawless, except for low-light photography
How Samsung Galaxy S5′s Ultra Power Saving Mode makes 10% battery last 24 hours
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In addition to the standard power saving mode, Samsung has created a new Ultra Power Saving Mode (UPSM). This feature leverages tightly integrated hardware and software to extend standby time many times over, apparently allowing the phone to squeeze 24 hours of standby time out of just 10% battery life. Early impressions indicate it works even better than expected. Samsung may have under promised and over delivered on this one, but how?
Ultra Power Saving Mode is not simply a fancy way to restrict background data and dim the screen like most other OEMs do — this mode drastically reduces power drain by pulling back on almost everything the phone does. The most obvious change when activating UPSM is the switch to a grayscale display. This wouldn’t make much difference at all to a phone with an LCD, but Samsung’s Super AMOLED is playing to its strengths here.
An AMOLED panel differs from LCD in that it doesn’t need a backlight. All the light is produced by the pixels, so a black pixel is simply off (uses no power). By changing to a black and white UI, the Galaxy S5 needs to light fewer pixels, thus reducing power usage substantially. It also caps brightness at a maximum of 87 nits, a big drop from over 400 nits without Ultra Power Saver. Does that make it harder to read? Not really. AMOLEDs have very high contrast, so a black and white interface — even one that is very dim — is surprisingly readable.
Big changes happen on the inside of the Galaxy S5
when UPSM is engaged too. The device comes with a Snapdragon 801, which
has four Krait 400 CPU cores clocked to 2.5GHz. Ultra Power Saver Mode
takes advantage of Qualcomm’s custom ARM cores — two cores turn off
completely, and the remaining two are downclocked and capped at 1.5GHz.
To compensate for the reduction in processing power, Samsung also drops
the display refresh from 60Hz to 30Hz.Samsung has designed the new TouchWiz software to be ruthless when UPSM is turned on — all running processes and services are ended, and nothing is allowed to run in the background except for the bare essentials needed for calling and messaging. You can only access a subset of apps in this mode, including the stock Samsung browser, messaging, phone, clock, and ChatOn. Of course, this might just be a devious way to get people to actually use ChatOn.
With UPSM activated, the Galaxy S5 is able to drop its power usage to just 16.8mW, which could run the phone in standby for over 64 hours on a 10% charge. Samsung only claimed 24 hours, which likely assumes you’ll still wake it up on occasion. Our own informal testing showed 2% battery drain for a 15-hour overnight stretch, during which the phone was in standby the entire time.
Ultra Power Saver Mode is an example of an OEM using its Android modification powers for good instead of evil. After all, Google hasn’t even bothered with a power saving mode in stock Android. There are aspects of TouchWiz that still need hammering out, but it probably has the most impressive power saving feature of any smartphone today.
Sunday, March 16, 2014
In-car emotion detector can tell when you have road rage, can make driving safer
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This work, developed by EPFL’s Signal Processing 5 Laboratory (LTS5) in association with PSA Peugeot Citroen, uses an infrared camera placed behind the car’s steering wheel to track the seven universal hard-coded emotions that your face can show. Fear, anger, joy, sadness, disgust, surprise, and suspicion are so intrinsic to human nature that they have very specific muscle movements — movements that can be fairly easily picked up with an infrared camera and some computer vision software. As you can see in the video below, the software tracks your eyes, mouth, and nose, and from their movements it can work out what emotion you’re currently experiencing.
If your face registers “anger” or “disgust” for long enough, the software decides that you are stressed out and probably about to do something stupid. Because this is a prototype, all the EPFL system does is tell you when you’re suffering from road rage — but presumably a production version of the technology would do a lot more. Maybe it would pre-charge your breaks, ready for when you tailgate the guy in front of you? Or maybe, if your car has some autonomous driving features, they could quietly take over — so you think you’re still driving, but it’s actually your car that’s preventing you from swerving out of your lane or piling into the car in front of you. Maybe such a system could disable your car’s horn, too…
Lenovo 19.5-inch quad-core Android all-in-one for $319
The Android all-in-one is obviously a compromise in a few areas, lacking the mobility of a tablet or true desktop-class specs and compatibility, but in some ways it also gives you the best of both worlds. With a 19.5-inch touchscreen, you can use it like a desktop with a keyboard and mouse, but it also includes a built-in battery so that you can pick it up and move it around the house like a tablet.
Lenovo’s N308 features a quad-core Nvidia Tegra 4 processor and 2GB of RAM, stacking up well with current tablets, so it will be able to run apps and view HD videos about as well as any tablet out there. However, it’s more like a desktop when it comes to storage, with a 320GB HDD with an 8GB eMMC combo. The flash memory will help keep boot time snappy while you load up the slower HDD with all your media.
Two
full-sized USB ports are available to hook up your peripherals, as well
as a 6-in-1 card reader. Bluetooth 4.0 as well as 802.11bgn WiFi are
also built-in to connect your devices without wires.A kickstand is built into the back of the display, allowing you to easily adjust the angle from 15 up to 65 degrees. Lenovo has also bundled a wireless keyboard and mouse with this, helping to keep things mobile from the get go. It’s covered by your standard one-year warranty. Take advantage of some nice extra savings with our coupon code and get this for a great
Wednesday, March 12, 2014
The Weirdest Gadgets 2014
Strange thing
The annual Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas is always sure to entertain, and this year is no different. Although the show is loaded with cutting edge innovations like 4K cameras, and the exploding market of wearable fitness gadgets, there are some technologies and gadgets that are unexpected, offbeat or just plain strange lurking around. We've rounded up some of the wackiest thingys of CES 2014.Why Nokia X Is Different From Other Android Devices?
BANGALORE: Nokia X, the first ever Android phone from Finnish manufacturer has already been launched in India. It is available with the price tag of
8,599. Even if Nokia X is built on Android OS, it varies from other
devices that run on Google’s operating system. Listed below are the six
ways wherein Nokia X stands out the crowd, as reported by The Indian
Express.Android sans Google
Nokia X comes with an operating system that is built on Android Open Source Project (AOSP). As AOSP lack proprietary Google code, applications such
as
Google Play Store and Google Maps will not be available on Nokia X.
Google were adding several aspects to Google Play Services over years,
which were not available under AOSP. If an app uses any of these
features, Nokia X cannot operate it.Steve Ballmer laments Microsoft’s failure on the mobile front
Steve
Ballmer has admitted that his biggest regret, and Microsoft’s biggest
mistake in recent times, is the failure to capitalise on the mobile
market.
Ballmer, of course, was Microsoft CEO for the last 14 years, although he recently retired at the beginning of last month to make way for Satya Nadella (who some argue is the polar opposite of the fiery Ballmer).
Ballmer made his admission when speaking to Oxford university students. The Register notes that he said that Microsoft “would have a stronger position in the phone market today if I could redo, for example, the last ten years.”
He continued: “The thing I regret is that we didn't put the hardware and software together soon enough. It was almost magical the way the PC came about with an operating system from us and hardware from IBM. There was a little bit of magic, too, for Android and Samsung coming together. But if you really want to bring a vision to market, it is helpful to be able to conceive and deliver the hardware and software.”
Of course, Android is now the dominant force in the smartphone
world, and Microsoft’s Windows Phone OS is still struggling to make any
real impact – despite big deals and moves with Nokia.He
stressed, though, that the company was “Micro-soft” with a focus on
software – but that had changed, of course, with the move into consoles,
hardware like the Surface tablet, and mobiles. He observed:
“Essentially we have a profile that will wind up being far more mixed in
the future.”
Is that a hint that there’s more to come, perhaps on the hardware front like wearables – which is, after all, the next big thing (or one of them)? Given that Microsoft has become a “fast follower” rather than innovator, as we’ve discussed before – well, that’s the avenue everyone else (Apple, Google, Samsung and so forth) is headed down currently.
Whatever happens, Microsoft better learn from its past, and not do too much watching and following, because after all, that’s why Windows Phone has ended up where it is .
Ballmer, of course, was Microsoft CEO for the last 14 years, although he recently retired at the beginning of last month to make way for Satya Nadella (who some argue is the polar opposite of the fiery Ballmer).
Ballmer made his admission when speaking to Oxford university students. The Register notes that he said that Microsoft “would have a stronger position in the phone market today if I could redo, for example, the last ten years.”
He continued: “The thing I regret is that we didn't put the hardware and software together soon enough. It was almost magical the way the PC came about with an operating system from us and hardware from IBM. There was a little bit of magic, too, for Android and Samsung coming together. But if you really want to bring a vision to market, it is helpful to be able to conceive and deliver the hardware and software.”
Is that a hint that there’s more to come, perhaps on the hardware front like wearables – which is, after all, the next big thing (or one of them)? Given that Microsoft has become a “fast follower” rather than innovator, as we’ve discussed before – well, that’s the avenue everyone else (Apple, Google, Samsung and so forth) is headed down currently.
Whatever happens, Microsoft better learn from its past, and not do too much watching and following, because after all, that’s why Windows Phone has ended up where it is .
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