If the whole of human knowledge were to be wiped out tomorrow, how would you recreate the consumer electronics industry so you can jam out to some rockin’ tunes? Why you’d build these unique 3D-printed headphones. Except for some twists of wire, these cans consist of thin pieces of printed plastic and the speakers are actually plastic with a coil of copper wire embedded, by hand, into a set of tiny traces. Even the audio plug which consists of wire wrapped around a small plastic spindle. You can download the project here and print it yourself or marvel at how the creator, designer J.C. Karich was able to use wire and plastic to build a pair of cans that actually work. He obviously had to source the wire and magnets (although, arguably, he could have dug the ore himself, right?) but the rest of the project is completely hand-designed and printed on the fly, an increasingly common feat with today’s 3D printers. The audio quality looks surprisingly good, all things considered, and the design is ingeniously primitive. Writes Karich: Anyway, the sound quality is very nice against all expectations but will necessitate a power amplifier to be louder when using only portable sources like pods or phones. Sadly no one has reported actually being able to build these things yet on Thingiverse but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try. Who knows? Maybe this is the future: artisanal headphones.
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Whether you’re fighting mutant cyborg dogs in a hellish, post-apocalyptic wasteland or, more likely, dealing with potentially radioactive substances on a daily basis, the MTM ‘Rad’ watch may be the wrist droid you’re looking for. MTM makes so-called ‘Special Ops’ watches which are bold, large, and usually made of coated steel or titanium. However, every once in a while they come out with something unique. This new timepiece costs $1,500 and includes a built-in radiation detector that can sense rate and dose of radiation as well as warn you when you’ve gone over a preset boundary. The counters are completely self-contained and surprisingly small. The battery should last two years and, although this thing looks big, it’s actually quite light and watch writer Paul Hubbard wore it in a 5K race and on a plane where he got a reading of “3.7 micro sieverts/hour.” You can also transmit readings to a computer via an IR transfer system that is built into the watch. Who is this for? Hubbard writes: Let’s cut to the chase. If you work in a radiation area, buy this watch. If you’re wondering about dosages where you live, buy this watch. While bulky, it effectively doubles as safety equipment and there’s no external clues to observers of what it does. I was wondering what the TSA would think of passengers wearing Geiger counters, but the only clue is a recessed grey trefoil on the dial, and no one yet has sussed it out. In short, if you’re in need of a Geiger counter (and, let’s face it, in these Mad Maxian times I think we all are) this may be just the wrist-mounted Pip-Boy for you.
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SumUp, one of the many European mobile card reader startups targeting small businesses — and taking advantage of Square’s continued absence to acquire users and build out a business — has taken another step designed to expand its reach by announcing a partnership with Revel Systems, a maker of iPad POS software. Revel Systems provides iPad-based tills to more than 400 chain stores and restaurants throughout the U.S., Canada, Australia and Saudi Arabia but it’s aiming to expand into Europe, hence the tie-up with SumUp. After launching last August, SumUp has now rolled out to 10 European markets. Revel Systems will be using SumUp’s API, which it made available in fall last year, to process debit and credit card and cash payments in Europe. In other markets the company uses payment gateway USAePay, and says it can also integrate directly into Mercury Payment Systems. In Europe the SumUp mobile payments app will come pre-loaded on Revel Systems tills and users will also get SumUp’s black card reader — which plugs into the iPad to take card payments. The partnership won’t bear instant fruit for SumUp on the customer acquisition front but as and when Revel Systems builds up its customer base in the region, SumUp will also make gains. Commenting on the tie-up in a statement, John Doe, CEO of Revel Systems, said it chose to partner with SumUp to offer flexibility to its retail customers — but did not specify what it offered over and above other European mobile payments startups such as iZettle and Rocket Internet’s Payleven. “SumUp’s technology is aligned with ours because it’s lightweight, secure, and speedy. SumUp is a natural partner for us,” he said. “We’re always looking to forge new partnerships with those businesses that aim to enhance the overall customer experience. Our users are also certain to appreciate the easy SumUp sign-up process and pay-as-you-go billing. We’re looking forward to working with SumUp as we expand to new markets.” As with the myriad mobile payments players targeting small businesses, SumUp does not charge a monthly fee to businesses using its system but rather takes a 2.75% per card reader transaction charge. SumUp accepts Visa, Mastercard and recently added support for Amex in the majority of its markets. The Revel Systems tie-up is not SumUp’s first b2b partnership aimed at building out its business. The company has previously announced partnerships with German taxi hailing app Taxi.de and an odd job software platform provider.
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Google’s ambitious Glass display is still a ways off from its public release, but it looks like those newly-minted Glass Explorers now have something else to do besides taking first-person photos. The New York Times just pulled back the curtain on its own Glass-friendly app today, which makes it the first installable third-party app available for the ambitious headset (Path was technically the first third-party app, but it’s preloaded on early versions of the device). It’s no surprise to see the Grey Lady embrace Glass so enthusiastically — Google developer advocate Timothy Jordan first showed off an early version of the New York Times Glass app at SXSW 2013 in Austin (you can see his full talk here), which pipes new news and headlines to the head-mounted display at regular intervals. Navigating through that stream of news seemed easy enough: a quick tilt of the head would allow the user to sift through photos and full articles as well. Setting up the app is a simple process — clicking on the link above asks for access to your Google account: Once that’s all done, Glass can occasionally chime in by reading headlines in your ear, but the app is also capable of reading off brief article summaries too. All told it seems like a very neat, (if strangely intrusive way) to consume your daily dose of news, and other companies have already pledged to craft their own Glass experiences — Path and the New York Times are a given, but Evernote and supposedly even Twitter are working on apps for Google’s daring device.
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While I’m not a big fan of ostentatious watches that cost too much and are aimed at buyers with more money than sense (in short, most of the Hublot line) I will give this odd-looking watch a moment of reflection. It is the MP-05 LaFerrari, a tourbillon watch with a 50-day power reserve, a number almost unheard of in the watch world, and a unique styling that is reminiscent of a certain Arashikage ninja. The watch itself has a custom HUB9005.H1.6 movement and displays the time in a series of vertical registers. There is a visible tourbillon (essentially a rotating balance wheel AKA the little wheel that “spins” in your average mechanical watch) on the bottom of the watch as well as a winding port on the top. To wind it you use this little power drill. Seriously. A power reserve indicator tells you how long you have to go before you whip out your little drill gun and the entire thing is designed to look like the cowling on the $1.3 million LaFerrari or, more precisely, Cobra Commander’s codpiece. The watch is completely handmade and you can see more photos here. It comes in a limited edition of 50 and you can expect to pay $300,000 for the privilege of strapping it to your wrist.
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As a man who spends most of his time in his attic, it’s nice to hit the open roads, feel a little wind in your hair, and run over crack vials as you motor through downtown Manhattan. That’s exactly what I did yesterday as when I tried to ride an Ultra Motors A2B Metro electric bike from Bay Ridge to our offices on Broadway, thereby cementing my love for electric bikes and this electric bike in particular. The Metro, made by German manufacturer Ultra Motors, is a brutalist electric bike with a built-in battery and maximum speed of 20 MPH. It has pedals and a 7-gear shifter so it is technically considered a moped and does not require a motorcycle license and a built-in limiter ensures you don’t go roaring down the streets on this 80 pound machine. The company has had these bikes in the US for a few years now but they are working on a complete rebranding – although the bikes will remain the same. You can see the brand new bikes on this absolutely awful webpage they’ve made. This particular model costs about $3,000 online but the build quality is excellent and the equipment – from the fat Kenda tires to the Shimano shifter – is acceptable enough. I noticed some bad reviews on Amazon complaining of damaged motors or tires and, although I didn’t experience these issues over the past week, I cannot speak for extensive use. In my 15 mile ride I saw solid performance and no skidding or fishtailing while accelerating. I did, however, experience a low battery and riding this thing home, even for a mile, on pedal power wasn’t great. The bike is big bit it’s still thin enough to ensure you don’t get entangled with other riders in tight paths. I found it worked great in tight quarters and, because it is in actuality just a bicycle with a hub motor, the other cyclists didn’t give me that much of a stink eye. I’ve avoided looking at electric bikes of late because most of them look like motors strapped to 10-speeds. This is far different and, if I were to describe it in any way, it is the exact opposite of those foldable city bikes folks are riding. The kids, in fact, have taken to calling it Super Bike. Ultra Motors is finding its footing right now and also has sub-$2,000 models available, including their own version of the folding electric called the Kuo which retails for $1,599. The company is also now calling itself HeroEco, so you may see a bit of confusing until their full rebranding. What are you paying for? Well, you’re paying for a solid, welded frame, solid components, and excellent acceleration. The range isn’t too shabby and for a bit more you can add on a second battery for 20 miles of range. I could also imagine a user removing the governor – though I’m sure Ultra Motors doesn’t condone this. This isn’t a sport bike. I could really see it more as a bike for folks with a 10-15 mile commute who want to hit the open air a little and don’t want (that much) of a carbon footprint.
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Leap Motion has just announced that its 3D gesture controller hardware ship date will be delayed, from May 13 for pre-orders and May 19 for general retail availability to July 27. The delay was caused by a need for more testing from the Leap Motion beta testing community, and an expansion of that group with additional members, according to Leap Motion CEO Michael Buckwald, who held a press conference today to discuss the missed dates. This is not good new for a company that has spent a lot of time promoting its product and securing high-level partnerships (with Asus, HP and Best Buy) up until now. The hype that Leap Motion has been able to build only means that users will be more disappointed by any delays in its launch window, and the effect on public perception is certainly one the hardware startup would like to have avoided. Still, some 12,000 developers have received units and already used them to do impressive things, so Leap Motion is hardly in danger of being branded ‘vaporware’ as of yet. Leap Motion says it wants to make sure that the product they deliver is the best they can offer, and says that there is “nothing catastrophically wrong” with the hardware as of yet. The company believes that it could have shipped by the original date if it had really pushed things, but wanted to make sure that things were ready for prime time. The new July 22 ship date is firmly set, according to Buckwald, and this is “the first and only delay there will be.” When asked if there was a specific cause, Buckwald said it’s more about beta testing everything in general, but that there will definitely be a focus on getting more input on how customers interact with the product. In general, it sounds like there’s some concern about making sure that user experience is pleasant among not only Leap Motion’s more technical users, but also the general public, too. Buckwald says it has addressed most of the technical issues around gesture tracking, and now the emphasis is squarely on usability testing, and those who are already seeded with early hardware will essentially act more as consumer testers. “If you’d asked me a year ago what was the biggest challenge, I’d have said it would be the hardware side,” Buckwald said, but went on to explain that the software aspect is now what’s holding things up, and the part that needs more refinement. 600,000 units are in inventory in warehouses ready to ship, he said, but those won’t be going out until the software issues are ironed out. When asked about how that affects their funding situation, he explained that the $45 million it has raised so far was designed to help it field unexpected hiccups in the process, and it continues to help with that. A small number of additional users will be invited to the beta test pool beginning in June, Buckwald explained, but Leap Motion will be reaching out to users specifically to choose those, based on their desire for a more varied beta pool. In other words, you probably can’t petition for early access. The full letter Leap Motion is sending out to pre-order customers follows: Release Date Update I wanted to reach out to update you on the status of our ship date. After a lot of consideration, we’ve decided to push back the date and will now be shipping units to pre-order customers on July 22nd. This is not a decision we take lightly. There are hundreds of thousands of people in over 150 countries who have pre-ordered Leap devices, some as long as a year ago. These people are part of our community and there is nothing more important to us than getting them devices as quickly as possible. We’ve made a lot of progress. When we first started taking orders back in May we were twelve (very tired) people in a basement. Now we are eighty (although still tired and possibly still in a basement). We’ve manufactured over six hundred thousand devices and delivered twelve thousand Leaps to amazing developers who are building applications that let people do things that just wouldn’t have been possible before. These developers have given us great feedback that we’ve used to make huge improvements to the stability and polish of the product. We’re really proud of Leap as both a company and a product. The reality is we very likely could have hit the original ship date. But it wouldn’t have left time for comprehensive testing. This will come in the form of a beta test that will start in June. We will give the 12k developers who currently have Leap devices access to the feature complete product including OS interaction (today developers only have access to the SDK). We will also invite some people who are not developers to join the beta test. Ultimately, the only way we felt 100% confident we could deliver a truly magical product that would do justice to this new form of interaction, was to push the date so we would have more time for a larger, more diverse beta test. I really appreciate your patience. I know it’s been a long wait. Everyone that works at Leap is working tirelessly to make sure that wait is worth it. Thanks so much for your help and support. David and I will be participating in an open video Q&A using Google Hangout tomorrow. We’ll send along more specific information on that shortly. If you have any questions please don’t hesitate to contact our support team atsupport@leapmotion.com or my personal email (buckwald@leapmotion.com). As always, we will not charge pre-order customer’s credit cards until the devices have actually shipped. Thanks again. Michael Buckwald
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The USPTO published a number of Apple patent applications Tuesday, including two related to automobiles (via AppleInsider). The car patents both describe systems that can be built into future iPhones, replacing most of the functionality of your standard key fob with the smartphone, and providing a way to help drivers navigate the often maze-like interiors of parking garages to find their ride. In one application, Apple describes what amounts to a series of different indoor positioning systems to help drivers locate their cars when parked. The system would involve pairing a car and an iPhone via Bluetooth, and then using that connection to automatically detect when a car ends up actually parking in a spot. Then, it uses sensor data communicated from the parking facility itself to peg a location. Once a user returns to the garage, they can trigger the phone to find their current positioning data from the same system, and then provide actual guidance or directions back to their car itself. The patent describes parking garages in which devices are placed at regular intervals throughout to help facilitate the indoor location portion. Apple’s recent acquisition of indoor positioning system company WiFiSLAM could also work very well in terms of helping provide a way to make this system work. The IPS element is interesting, but where Apple’s patent is really unique is in using on-board device sensors, including things like the camera and microphone, to determine automatically when a car parks to begin with to trigger the car location logging information. There are plenty of “where did I park my car” apps out there (though few boast IPS), but the automatic, fully-integrated way Apple’s system would work would make it so that you don’t even have to remember to activate it. The other car-related application describes a system that would turn the iPhone into a remote car starter, unlocker, and essentially a parental control device for a target vehicle. The patent talks about using Bluetooth to pair a car and a handset, then allowing a user to choose their level of security, making it possible to have the phone unlock the car automatically based on proximity, or require a PIN to even use any car control functions. Apple’s patent goes further than most remote starter/unlocker key fobs by allowing a user to set specific limits for particular devices, like making it possible to start the engine with a phone only during set hours, setting a max speed for use with a particular device, limiting access to infotainment services, and building in geofencing. All of these can be used in theft prevention, but also to set limits on say a teen child’s car permissions. It’s about time that cars got tighter integration with mobile devices, in ways that make the best use of all the tech on board our modern smartphones. Many car companies seem to be open to working closer with Apple, too, so while there’s a lot of infrastructure changes described in these patents, we still could see these features make their way to shipping devices over the next few years.
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Games app downloads to smartphones and tablets are set to grow significantly over the next four years, according to a new report by analyst Juniper Research which projects there will be 64.1 billion such downloads in 2017 — more than three times the 21 billion downloaded in 2012. Key drivers powering this high rate of growth are increasing numbers of free-to-play releases (aka the freemium business model), as well as more sophisticated devices and the continued global uptake of smartphones, says the analyst. The dominance of freemium as a games app business model is very evident from the analyst’s figures: in 2017, it expects just 7% of games to be paid for at the point of purchase, across smartphones and tablets. In-app purchases and/or advertising are presumably how games developers will be mostly earning a buck. Juniper says mobile will become the primary screen for gamers, thanks to an increase in the number of “sophisticated games, which allow for truly multi-platform gameplay through the use of cloud technology”. Growth in the quantity of memory on devices is also enabling consumers to download more games. And while Juniper is not expecting smartphones and tablets to kill off dedicated portable gaming devices, it says there’s no doubt consumer mobiles are challenging and eroding the latter market — with players such as Nintendo cutting its sales forecasts by 14% for its 3DS, and 27% for its Wii U. Social & Casual games will remain the most popular genre downloaded, according to Juniper’s forecast — with over half of all smartphone games downloaded fitting this genre. That’s in keeping with the key characteristics of mobile devices: always-on connectivity, which means being wired in to social services; and portability, meaning these devices are suited for short bursts of casual gaming to kill time. Looking specifically at tablets, Juniper found their users are especially keen on downloading games, with more than twice the number of games downloads to tablets than smartphones.  ”Tablet games are growing so much because they are such an accessible way for all consumer segments to access games. In particular mid-core gamers, who previously spent a lot of money and time playing games but now have jobs, families or other commitments, are driving this trend,” commented report author Siân Rowlands in a statement.  ”These people are really embracing the tablet form factor, and innovative gameplay devices such as the mobile based OUYA console, really appeal to them.”
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Dropcam is updating their iOS apps today with two new features their users have been clamoring for: location awareness and in-app time scheduling. Dropcam is a high definition plug-and-play security camera that has gotten some well deserved praise for its simplistic design and easy installation. Once your Dropcam is plugged into a power source, it automatically connects to your wifi connection. You can control the video feeds through your browser or your smartphone. It’s a painless setup, and pretty neat. Dropcams can be controlled in the browser and through your smartphone app, so the updates are welcome news. With location aware toggling, Dropcam can now automatically turn itself on when you leave the house, and off when you’re back inside, by virtue of the GPS on your smartphone. Another added feature is in-app scheduling, which allows you to select which times of the week you’d like your Dropcam to be monitoring your home. For example, if you were planning on going on a week long vacation, you could program your Dropcam to be on during that time in advance. Dropcam is available at their website for $149. Their apps can be downloaded in the iOS App Store here.
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According to a report from Bloomberg, e-commerce behemoth Amazon is preparing to launch a set-top box this fall, in hopes that you’ll consume all of your content through its spin on the now-common device. The company is already working hard to push its Kindle line to consumers, and this box would be for people who don’t want to deal with the fanciness of Apple products, the gaming nature of Microsoft’s XBox, the half-baked Google TV or the little engine that could, Roku. Yes, this is a crowded market, but Amazon has something that these other companies don’t have, which is warehouses full of things to sell to people while they watch TV. I imagine that you’ll be able to shop as you would online or on your mobile device, right on your TV set. That means that the temptation to pick up that new TV, while you’re watching your old crappy one, could overcome you during a show. One button click and a new TV could be on the way. Think of it as Home Shopping 2.0. With some interesting programming to watch, of course. Instead of acquiring a smaller company that already has its own product in the wild, Amazon has decided to build this in-house, under its Lab126 umbrella in Cupertino. Amazon has been building up its content viewers by bundling it with Amazon Prime shipping for free, trying to entice anyone who is already spending regular money with them to try other things out. What shipping has to do with free movies and TV, I don’t know, but customers seem to be happy with it thus far. Reasons for doing a set-top box are obvious, with its original content being the most popular on the platform since it launched. As Amazon finds its way to more niche shows that it can present exclusively, the reasons to grab an Amazon-branded device for your TV makes more sense. In the same way that Apple leverages each of its devices to sell new ones, Amazon is learning how it’s done. It also doesn’t help that it has millions of shoppers visiting its site daily looking for new things. Some could say that Amazon is late to the game, but I see Jeff Bezos and company taking smart, calculated steps to capitalize on mistakes made by others, much like it did with the Kindle, staying close to a purer paperback-esque reading experience. [Photo credit: Flickr]
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Waterloo-based Thalmic Labs is working on getting the MYO armband into the waiting arms of pre-order customers, which now number well above the 25,000 announced in March, Thalmic told me, making up over $4 million in total sales to date. MYO is a unique control device worn around the forearm, which measures muscle movement and electrical impulses and translates those into a control mechanism for various devies over Bluetooth. This new video by Thalmic is a solid explainer for those curious about the engineering that goes into the MYO, and acts as a sort of general FAQ about how it works and what’s going on in terms of ongoing third-party development from the community MYO is trying to build. MYO’s official dev program is slated to come online in the coming months, and will include early access to hardware. The new video is more about what’s going on within the company as Thalmic continues to build momentum ahead of its targeted ship date of sometime late in 2013, but the Sphero cameo is cool enough to make me slightly giddy. In case you didn’t know, the Sphero is the best dog toy ever created, and the MYO looks like it’ll make it even better in that regard. On the business side of things, Thalmic passing the $4 million pre-order mark means that it has added over $300,000 in pre-sales since April 11, so over the course of just two weeks.
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Sprint’s Q1 2013 financial results came out this morning, and the news wasn’t great overall. Losses continue to accumulate, and total smartphone sales aren’t faring very well, either, with just 5 million units sold in total. The iPhone, after achieving a record high of 2.2 million handsets sold on Sprint’s network last quarter, dropped back down to 1.5 million, the same number Sprint saw in the three quarters preceding Q4 2012. This is the first time Sprint has reported specific total smartphone sales in an earnings release, and it said it achieved 5 million handset sales in total. that means that the iPhone accounted for 30 percent of total device sales at the carrier. iPhone sales for all of 2012 totaled 6.6 million, on total smartphone sales for the year of 20 million, which means Apple’s devices accounted for just about one-third of the total. That puts this quarter pretty close to on pace, but compared to the rest of the field, iPhone growth was flat at Sprint. Horace Dediu of Asymco notes that iPhone sales grew 25 percent at Verizon, and by around 12 percent at AT&T. Worldwide, the pace was a 7 percent increase, with 14 percent improvement at home. It might be tempting to put some of the blame for Sprint’s flagging fortunes on a big bet on iPhone, but the numbers indicate the carrier isn’t being hurt so much by flagging iPhone sales, but by a general inability to match its competitors, in terms of device sales aside. iPhone sales grew 25% at Verizon, 12% at AT&T and 0% at Sprint. Overall US growth was 14% vs. 7% globally.— Horace Dediu (@asymco) April 24, 2013 Sprint is still quick to note that the iPhone is driving new customers to its business, pointing out that the rate of new subscribers signing up via iPhone purchases is once again at over 40 percent, the same as over the past several quarters. The iPhone has been consistent for it, but the company was likely hoping it would be more of a breakout hit.
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Nokia has announced another handset in its Series 40-based Asha portfolio of low end mobiles which compete with the budget end of Android and cheap BlackBerrys. The 2G-plus-Wi-Fi Asha 210, due to ship before the end of Q2, packs a physical Qwerty keyboard and comes painted in Nokia’s now trademark eye-popping colours (yellow, cyan, magenta), plus black and white. But the most notable addition to this BlackBerry-esque device is a hardware key on the front that short-cuts to messaging app Whatsapp — which, extending the BlackBerry comparison, is the phone’s BBM replacement. As well as the ability to fire up Whatsapp by long pressing on this dedicated key, Nokia said Asha 210 buyers will get a free subscription to the messaging service for the lifetime of the device. On the Series 40 platform, Whatsapp normally charges a $0.99 annual fee after a first year of free use. Last week the messaging service said it now has north of 200 million monthly active users (this compares to BBM’s more modest 60 million). Tapping into the hugely popular social messaging craze is clearly Nokia’s aim here. Nokia describes the Asha 210′s Whatsapp hardware key as a “world first”, although we’ve seen the mobile maker (and others) stick a Facebook button on a phone before. But before you start wondering how displeased Facebook is going to be with Nokia for two-timing it with a deadly messaging rival, the handset actually comes in two social messaging flavours, with a second variant having a dedicated Facebook key (shown below, on the black handset) instead of a Whatsapp button. The two Asha 210 social flavours — which also each come in single SIM/dual SIM variants – won’t be offered together in the same market but will rather be region specific, presumably corresponding to where the respective services are most popular. Neil Broadley, marketing director for Nokia’s mobile phones division, told TechCrunch the Whatsapp device will generally target Asia-Pac and Middle East & Africa, while the Facebook flavour will mostly be heading to Europe and Latin America. He also confirmed that neither device will be sold in North American. Both of our partners are hugely successful around the world. “On a market by market basis we will have either Whatsapp or Facebook,” said Broadley. “Both of our partners are hugely successful around the world and as we go on a market by market basis, some of our market teams would like to have the Whatsapp variant, some would like to have the Facebook variant. And of course we already have the Nokia Asha 205 on a global basis with the Facebook hard key there as well.” Broadley added that Nokia is looking at the possibility of making a third variant of the Asha 210 — specifically targeting the Chinese market — with another, as yet undetermined social service loaded on the hard key (China has a variety of homegrown social services that outstrip the popularity of global offerings, such as microblogging service Sina Weibo vs Twitter). Nokia certainly has work to do to win back buyers in China. In its Q1 results last week, China saw the biggest drop of any of Nokia’s regions in terms of sales by value and volume, with $334 million in sales in Greater China, down 56% on the year ago quarter. Low end hardware + social software Aside from differing social shortcuts, the Asha 210 variants have identical hardware and software, with a sub-1Ghz chip; 2 megapixel rear camera plus a dedicated camera key on the front of the device (in addition to the Whatsapp/Facebook key plus standard nav/call keys); Nokia’s Slam Bluetooth-sharing data transfer tech and its hot-swap SIM system; plus a rubberised full Qwerty keyboard which recycles the pillowed keys of 2008′s Nokia E71. The keyboard also includes shortcut keys for turning on/off Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. On the software front, the device comes with Whatsapp, Facebook and Twitter preloaded; support for YouTube streaming and web apps; a ‘Games Gift’ of 15 free downloadable “premium” games & apps from the Nokia Store; plus Nokia’s neat voice-guided self-portrait feature, which gets around the lack of a front-facing lens by helping users align a self-portrait when they can’t see the screen. Nokia’s earlier Facebook-button-packing phone, the full Qwerty Asha 205, was announced in November last year. At the time, the company’s decision to introduce a phone with a dedicated Fb button revived a 2011 trend which, for the majority of last year, appeared to have run its course — without, apparently, covering any of the device maker particpants (including HTC, Orange and Vodafone) in huge heaps of gold. Asked about sales of the Asha 205, Nokia said it has not broken out any numbers for the model but added that the number of Facebook activations for the device is “significantly higher” than for the average Asha family device. Whatever the sales figures, Nokia clearly believes there is more gold to be mined from  low end mobiles by associating its hardware with the biggest brands of the social messaging space. Asha vs Android: Show me the money The Asha 210 — along with the entire Nokia Asha range — targets developing markets and cost-conscious consumers, which explains its focus on seeking ways to reduce not just the initial outlay but also the total cost of ownership, while simultaneously amping up its core social offering by making sure it can provide access to big name apps and allow for easy social photo-sharing, as Android does. The Asha 210 will have a $72 price-tag (before taxes and subsidies). The price-tag puts it in touching distance of budget Androids and while the S40 platform is not as user friendly, flexible or as app-rich as Android, Nokia has been working to strength its competitiveness against Android’s low end with additions such as its cloud-based data-compressing Xpress Browser, which ekes out up to three times as much data as non-compression browsers to help keep the user’s data costs down, plus offers such as ‘Games Gift’ and the free Whatsapp subscription. As with other Asha devices, the 210 also boasts a long battery life — of up to 46 days on standby, and around 12 hours talk time. Nokia noted that it is using push notification technology to reduce battery drain caused by the Asha 210 checking for Whatsapp/Facebook updates. Update checking is done by Nokia in the cloud, with any new info pushed out to the user’s phone when it arrives. One more thing…  Nokia and Whatsapp are about to hold an online Q&A about the launch of the Asha 2010 so we’ll be checking for any interesting tidbits that come out of the discussion to add as an update below. Currently, around the world, there is still plenty of regional diversity across messaging and social services – messaging apps are especially fragmented. Many of these apps inevitably compete with and come into conflict with social networking giant Facebook, which wants to own all the world’s chatter. And with Facebook having just launched its app-sidelining Android skin, social challengers such as Whatsapp are likely to be keen to find ways to increase their own visibility on mobile. Having your brand stamped on the outside of a phone sounds like a great place to start.
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Look, it’s no secret that HTC knows how to put together a nice phone. Despite the quality of its wares though, HTC spent most of 2012 releasing disappointing earnings statements and being outflanked by much larger rivals — what’s a company to do in a situation like that? The answer, according to CEO Peter Chou, was to double down on innovation and design in hopes of creating a device that would truly resonate with consumers that were already up to their necks in Android phones. That device was the HTC One. Even so, plenty of questions remain. Is it really all that it’s cracked up to be? Does the One really have a chance at changing HTC’s fortunes? To answer all of the above: yes. If you’re in a rush you can skip to my final thoughts here but make no mistake: the HTC One is the sort of device that deserves to be talked about. 4.7-inch, 1080p Super LCD3 display 1.7GHz Quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 600 chipset with 2GB of RAM “Ultrapixel” rear camera, 2.1-megapixel front-facing camera Available with either 32GB or 64GB of internal storage, no memory card slot NFC Sealed 2,300 mAh battery 32GB model available for $199 with a two-year contract with AT&T and Sprint, while T-Mobile offers it sans contract for $579. The $299 64GB version is an AT&T exclusive. Test notes: Sprint has provided me with a pre-release version of the One to review, and HTC has given me an unlocked international model to play with. They’re nearly identical, but I’ll point out any pertinent differences as they come up. I was smitten with the One’s design from the moment I first manhandled the thing back in February, and that feeling has never really gone away — the One is a truly stunning device both to hold and to look at. Samsung could really learn a thing or two from these guys. Before I get too effusive with my praise, let’s take a quick tour around the device itself. The One’s face is dominated by a 4.7-inch 1080p Super LCD3 display that’s flanked on all sides by a thin black bezel. Sitting directly above and below the display are the One’s unfortunately named Boomsound stereo speakers (a small notification LED will occasionally blink at from the top grille), and the 2-megapixel wide-angle front-facing camera rests on the top-right corner of the device’s visage. The One’s sides and bottom are fairly nondescript — the volume rocker, microUSB port, and SIM slot are nestled along the right, bottom, and left edges respectively, while the top edge hosts a headphone jack and a sleep/wake button that doubles as an IR blaster for controlling your television. Phew. Now that I’ve run through the laundry list, permit me to gush a bit about how the One looks. To say that the One is understated in its design would be putting it mildly; the thing is terribly handsome in a stark, minimal sort of way. It’s worth pointing out, though, that the One isn’t actually that big a step forward from some of its predecessors when it comes to physical design. If anything, it represents the refinement of a design formula that HTC has been working on for the past 9 or 10 months with devices like the Butterfly and its American cousin the Droid DNA. Familiar elements like elongated speaker grilles, textured volume rockers, gently sloping backs, and highlighted camera pods seen in those earlier devices all make appearances on the One, but HTC has clearly upped the ante in terms of quality and construction this time around. The first thing you notice as you pick it up is how light it is — at 143 grams it’s only a hair heavier than the Droid DNA, and (thankfully) the One’s minimal heft belies just how sturdy it feels. That’s all thanks to the device’s unibody aluminum chassis, which HTC says takes somewhere around 200 minutes for a CNC machine to carve out the One’s frame from a single block of aluminum. That’s a considerable chunk of time for HTC to spend while some of its rivals spit out handsets like it’s nothing, but the end result is a device that feels as reassuring in your hand as HTC’s would-be savior should. That said, you still won’t want to toss the One around all willy-nilly. The white plastic polycarbonate that runs around the device is flanked on both sides by polished, chamfered aluminum edges that are prone to picking up scuffs and dings, though some people won’t care nearly as much about that as others. Samsung could really learn a thing or two from these guys. The One isn’t without its share of question marks, though. If you’ve used pretty much any popular Android device before spending some time with HTC One, then one little omission will probably stick out like a sore thumb. I’m talking of course about the lack of a third soft key — the company opted to stick solely with Back and Home keys separated by an HTC logo. If you go by the company line, the choice was made in an attempt to simplify how users interact with the One. I’d actually argue that dropping that extra button is more counterintuitive than anything else since most current Android users are likely familiar with the three-button layout, but it doesn’t take too long to readjust to the two-button lifestyle. And of course, HTC has once again seen fit to exclude a microSD card slot in its latest flagship handset. I can’t really be surprised at this point considering this is a recurring theme for HTC, and it’s not as big an issue as it was in other devices since HTC offers 32GB and 64GB versions of the One, but I’ve often looked to expandable memory as a hallmark feature of an Android device, and I’m sad to see HTC skipping them completely on its top-tier handsets. Both versions of the One I’ve played with come loaded with Android 4.1.2, but as always, HTC has done its level best to paint over the stock UI with its custom Sense interface. The Taiwanese company has been diligently trying to trim the fat from Sense for months now with largely positive results; Sense isn’t the kludgy, overwrought beast it used to be, and Sense 5 represents HTC’s biggest leap forward to date. Put very simply, Sense 5 looks great. Stock icons and the once-bubbly default keyboard and dialer have been designed to look flatter and less skeuomorphic, and HTC has dumped its usual font in favor of Roboto Condensed, which imbues the UI with a much cleaner vibe. The app launcher has gotten quite a facelift, too — a persistent time and weather widget lives at the top of the screen, and right out of the box you’re treated with a spacious 3×4 grid of applications. Tinkerers can easily fiddle with those particulars should they prefer a more densely packed grid like I do, and you can easily switch between ordering apps by name, recency of use, or whatever other convoluted scheme you can dream up. Of course, some changes are more drastic than others. Take BlinkFeed for instance — in one fell swoop, HTC has decided to try and reinvent the Android homescreen. The concept is simple: the way HTC looks at it, smartphones are content-consumption devices so BlinkFeed was designed to surface content based on your interests and your social connections with as few steps as possible. Getting Blinkfeed set up is painless enough — you can tailor your feed by selecting from some broad areas of interest (think gaming, music, politics, etc.), and by opting to receive content from your social networks, apps, and a handful of featured sources like ESPN, Vice, and Reuters (disclosure: some of Aol’s media properties are featured sources). From there, all of that stuff gets splayed out into a vaguely Flipboard-y grid for your immediate perusal, and all it takes to refresh your feed is a downward swipe. It all makes sense on paper, but Blinkfeed in practice leaves much to be desired. Why can’t I add my own content sources? Why can’t I just turn it off rather than manually disable each content feed and switching its default homescreen status off? The likely answer to both of these questions is a familiar one: it’s all about simplicity. BlinkFeed wasn’t necessarily designed with the power user in mind — we spoke to HTC’s Jeff Gordon just prior to the One’s launch, and he made the feature out to be a consummate time-waster, something people use when they find themselves stuck in a queue somewhere. That’s about the only time I bothered to use it to be quite honest; the rest of the time I would just fire up Flipboard or Twitter and get my content straight from the sources I wanted it from. Fortunately for me, more traditional Android homescreens are but a single swipe away, but you can only have up to four of them. The unlocked international model doesn’t have much in the way of bloatware — just a few preloaded apps like TuneIn Radio and a Kid Mode courtesy of the folks at Zoodles — but the Sprint variant doesn’t fare quite as well. Expect oodles of carrier-loaded apps that range in quality from mildly useful (Lookout Security is nice to have around) to the nearly pointless (do we really need the Sprint Music Plus store when Google Play is right there?). Most of them can be uninstalled without much trouble at all, and those that you’re stuck with (I’m looking at you, Sprint Zone) can be easily hidden thanks to the revamped app launcher. As you’d expect from a device that sports a cleverly-hidden IR blaster, the One also comes pre-loaded with a remote control app developed in partnership with Peel. I’ll be the first to admit that I’m no TV buff, so my experience with the remote control feature was short and sweet — the setup process was over in a matter of moments, and the One succeeded in turning my television on and changing the channel and volume a few times. After popping in my zip code and selecting my cable provider, the app also provided guide data for all the shows I don’t watch. While it’s unlikely to replace your actual remote, it works like a charm and that’s frankly a lot more than I was expecting. With the One, HTC has officially bowed out of the megapixel race. It’s easy enough to write off the word “ultrapixel” as a spurious bit of marketing fluff, but the One’s camera manages to prove that pixel size really does make a difference. Photos taken with the One look phenomenal when viewed on the phone’s crisp 1080p display — they’re nicely detailed and colors were vivid (perhaps a little too much so, more on that later). Sadly, a bit of that impact is lost when you transfer them to PCs or televisions. The shift towards fewer larger pixels instead of more smaller ones sounds like a good idea, and it mostly is, but there’s a sort of fuzziness apparent in some of the One’s photos that keeps my support from being full-throated. I suspect it’s an issue that won’t matter to a majority of users — the results are definitely more than adequate for [insert social network name here], and I’ve found the shots the One takes are still more pleasing than many of its competitors. If anything videos seem to fare little better; my test clips were all crisp and bright, and to my surprise the microphones blocked out plenty of background noise. Speaking of competitors, the camera sensors in most of them struggle in low light but the One manages to dodge those issues rather nicely. It’s surprisingly good at capturing light even when it’s in short supply and manages to do so without introducing much grain into the situation. It’s worth noting that the ability for the One’s sensor to pick up as much light as it does has an impact on color reproduction. Consider the comparison shot with the iPhone 5 above — the One captures more of the scene, but some details (like the tree branches in the bottom left corner of the photo) are lost because of overexposure. As far as the Camera app itself is concerned, it remains remarkbly clean and easy to operate. Switching between the front and rear cameras takes a single swipe, popping into Zoe mode takes a single touch, you see where I’m going. Beyond the simplistic interface though is an impressing array of settings — you can muck around with ISO, white balance, timer, scene modes, face detection, and even the review duration for recently snapped photos. Honestly, I find the idea of layering filters on top of perfectly good photos to be a little ridiculous, but the One has plenty of them for you Instagram-types to fiddle around with too. And then there are the aforementioned Zoes, those peculiar little three second video clips that HTC has started to push with the One. When I first played with the One, I was downright dismissive of the concept. I’m still not entirely sold on them, but I’ve grown just a little more appreciative of the notion. My biggest issue with them is how you’re supposed to manage the things. It’s simple enough on the One itself — the short clips are accessible from the Gallery app and you can use the HTC Share service to post them online for 180 days, but the real problem emerges when you try to pull them off the device through USB. Zoes are locally stored as very brief video snippets but as a series of stills as well, so pulling them off the One en masse feels a bit more labor-intensive than it should. Goodness, it seems like just yesterday that finding a 1080p display on a smartphone was a rare and wondrous event. These days nearly all the major Android players have worked those sorts of high-resolution panels into their new flagship phones — just look at the Optimus G Pro, Xperia Z, or Galaxy S4 to name a few. Even with such notable rivals to consider, the One’s 4.7-inch Super LCD3 panel is perhaps the best smartphone display I’ve ever seen. Text and high-res images were remarkably crisp (not a surprise considering the display sports a pixel density of about 474 ppi), and the colors are bright and accurately reproduced. While some displays pump up color saturation to lurid levels and others exhibit a pale cast, the One strikes a thoughtful balance between those extremes. I haven’t noticed any distortion or discoloration despite seeking out some of the most awkward viewing angles — in short, the One’s display is a real pleasure to ogle. One of my biggest issues with the 5-inch 1080p panel found on the Droid DNA was that it just wasn’t all that bright compared to the competition — it was perhaps the most notable miss for an otherwise impressive display. Thankfully, HTC has addressed that issue with the One. When screen brightness is cranked all the way up on both devices, the One’s display is noticeably more luminescent than its cousin and shines on the level of devices like the Nexus 4 and the iPhone 5. It may seem like a trivial upgrade, but the weather’s getting nicer and that bump in brightness has definitely helped outdoor visibility, too. Let’s just get it out of the way now: with a Snapdragon 600 chipset and 2GB tucked away in its handsome frame, the One was able to handle every task I threw at it with aplomb. Swiping back and forth between BlinkFeed and my more traditional homescreens were utterly seamless, as was scrolling down long webpages, and crafting ornate rococo structures in Minecraft Pocket Edition. If you’re the type that prefers numbers to anecdotes, the One’s five-run Quadrant average topped out in the low to mid 12,000s, handily blowing away devices like the Nexus 4 and the Droid DNA. Running Geekbench on the thing yielded similar results: the lowest of three trials was a 2728, which puts it on top of the performance heap again… for now anyway. It won’t be long at all before other devices start to catch up in terms of pure power, but there’s little question that the One will be able to handle nearly anything you load onto it and that’s really all that matters. All that power comes at a cost though. The One managed to stick it out for four hours and 21 minutes of our standard battery test, in which the device is made to run through an endless cycle of Google image searches over the wireless data connection with the screen lock turned off and display brightness set to 50%. Granted, less than 4.5 hours doesn’t sound all that great, but bear in mind that’s nonstop usage — in my experience, the One always managed to make it through a full work day’s worth of checking emails, firing off text messages, playing music through the Boomsound speakers, and playing the occasional game with at least a little juice left over. I won’t dwell too much on network performance for two reasons: your mileage will almost certainly vary from mine, and Sprint can be frustratingly sketchy in my particular corner of New Jersey. In case you were itching for a dose of schadenfreude for the day, I was never able to pull speeds greater than 2 Mbps down and my upload speeds topped out at 3.5 Mbps — that’s not really the One’s fault but man, that really hurt. On the upside, call quality was just peachy on both version of the device I tested (you know, in case you actually wanted to use this thing as a phone). I need to take a minute here and touch on one of the most impressive features HTC has baked into the One, and it may not be what you expected. I’ve reviewed my fair share of phones during my tenure here at TechCrunch, and with few exceptions they’ve all mostly let me down when it came to sound reproduction and quality. The One simply doesn’t — it’s got the best speakers on any smartphone I’ve ever used. Granted, that’s not really saying much since most smartphone speakers are downright wimpy, but the One’s BoomSound speakers managed to pump out crisp, loud audio along with a surprising amount of bass too. The jaunty bassline in Paul Simon’s You Can Call Me Al was bright and easily discerned, and not once during my testing did the One fall prey to the dreaded muddy audio syndrome. I can boil the preceding 3,000 or so words into a few brief sentiments for you to chew on: the HTC One is easily the best device that the company has ever crafted, and it’s perhaps the single nicest Android phone I’ve ever used. Despite some minor faults, I haven’t so much as picked up any of the other Android smartphones scattered around my office during my time with the One unless I absolutely had to. It’s really that good. And yet, after releasing a smartphone to near-universal acclaim, HTC’s future is still unclear. As Matt pointed out a little while back, building the perfect phone just isn’t enough anymore. These days it seems like technical expertise and the achievements that stem from them can often be overshadowed by lavish ad campaigns and the ability to churn out devices at a breakneck pace. That said, the mobile industry has never really been what you could consider meritocratic — the market is fast and unforgiving, and there aren’t many companies that have learned that lesson as clearly as HTC has. There’s no question that the One will be facing some very serious competition in short order, but if you’re looking to pick up a new phone in the weeks or months to come it’s definitely worth your consideration. Trust me, you’ll find plenty to like here.
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The BlackBerry Q10 is, some might say, the BlackBerry OS 10 device that the company should have led with, ahead of its all-touch Z10. That’s because it sports a hardware QWERTY keyboard, something that has become a unique distinction among top-tier smartphones these days. BlackBerry tells me they wanted to nail the all-touch experience first, in part to prove that they could, but based on my last few days with the Q10, this is the phone that’s more deserving of the “flagship” moniker for the new BlackBerry fleet. 3.1-inch, 720×720, 330 PPI display 2GB RAM 16GB storage, expandable via microSD (supports up to 32GB cards) Dual core 1.5GHz processor 8 megapixel, 1080p rear camera; 2 megapixel, 720p front camera microHDMI out Dual-band 802.11 a/b/g/n Wi-Fi LTE or HSPA+, global roaming cellular connectivity MSRP: Likely around $199 on a 2-year agreement Pros: Solid industrial design Good battery life Hardware keyboard means business Cons: App ecosystem still way behind Display visibility suffers in bright light Screen and bezel size hamper gestures The BlackBerry Q10 is proof that a handset can take cues from the past and still be a modern, attractive device. The PVD-coateed metal border that frames the phone won’t scratch easily, as it’s the same treatment used on high-end watches. The carbon/glass composite back is extremely light, yet flexible and strong enough to handle spills, and since it’s created using a process through which it’s cut from a giant sheet and then formed instead of injection moulded, no two backs will have exactly the same pattern. It’s lighter and smaller than the Z10, feels better in the hand and looks miles better, too. BlackBerry hasn’t reinvented the wheel with the Q10; you might have already seen one in the wild and mistaken it for a Bold, in fact. But the small changes pay big dividends. Straightening the top row of the keyboard and dropping the trackpad and hardware buttons provided room for a display that’s 30 percent larger than any previous BlackBerry QWERTY, for example, and yet typing actually feels better because of wider keys and bigger frets between the rows. My complaints when it comes to hardware design are limited, but the back panel has a bit of play, and will shift around a bit even when it’s supposed to be firmly clicked into place. It’s a little disconcerting given the overall fit and finish, but also doesn’t reveal itself awesome enough to be anything more than a minor annoyance. The BlackBerry Q10′s display is unique among modern smartphones in that it isn’t gigantic. Quite the opposite, in fact: at 3.1-inches, it’s the smallest screen of any flagship-priced device currently available on the market. Yet it’s also 30 percent larger than any of its QWERTY BlackBerry predecessors. And it’s a SuperAMOLED display, which translates to very nice color rendering, deep blacks, and good battery conservation. Overall, the display really impresses. It displays images and video with crisp, vibrant colors, and BlackBerry has even gone out of its way to tweak some user interface and core app elements to take advantage of the excellent black rendering, which also leads to battery life savings. But the display has its own downsides, too. It isn’t quite as densely packed with pixels as some of its top-tier Android competitors, for instance, and I noticed that in certain outdoor lighting conditions, owing partly to glare and partly to a weak backlight (which doesn’t auto-adjust), it can be fairly hard to make out what’s on the screen. Side-by-side with an iPhone in bright outdoor settings, the iPhone wins easily, every time. That said, the display is usable outside, and works surprisingly well for viewing photos indoors. Text rendering isn’t quite as nice on the Q10 as on Z10, but I also didn’t notice the same problems with surface grime accumulation that affected my Z10 review unit, so there might be a better oleophobic coating on this one. The Q10 is largely the same in terms of built-in software as the Z10, so I won’t go into as much detail about every single feature of BlackBerry OS 10 (check out my Z10 review for more on that). But it is worth highlighting the changes BlackBerry has made that take advantage of the Q10′s hardware keyboard, and also the trade-offs that sometimes result from those changes. The home screen arrangement has been tweaked slightly to make room for three rows of apps, and the toolbar size has been reduced as well as labels have been removed. There are new tooltips, which is great because it provides a smoother onboarding process for BB10. Text selection is made easier through refined cursor control, making it much less frustrating than it was on the Z10. Cut, copy and paste functions have been added to the dialer screen, and you can set account-specific notifications for incoming messages  as well as change vibration and volume patterns for alerts for specific contacts. Overall, BlackBerry has done a good job of taking in early user feedback and using it to actually improve BB10 in the areas where it was most lacking. The Q10 boasts BlackBerry OS 10.1, an update which will make its way to the Z10 within the coming weeks, bringing the same improvements over to that side of the fence, including the improvements above and crucial bug fixes for issues like the lack of calendar syncing for Outlook users. But the really impressive software features of the Q10 focus on the keyboard. The Q10 keyboard is always present, so it makes sense to make use of it whenever possible. BlackBerry has done this by introducing Instant Action, which allows you to start typing and then execute a variety of commands, in a variety of apps. there’s a huge list of keyboard shortcuts, but some highlights include being able to BBM contacts, Tweet, send emails and more all without opening the relevant app, from no matter where you are in the OS. It’s a remarkable time saver, and a good example of why the hardware keyboard still has something to offer in a world dominated by touchscreen displays. In general, software is improved, but since the Q10 uses the same touch-based gesture control as the Z10, but features a smaller bezel, it can be harder to execute Peek actions, or to navigate around the OS. Some improved sensitivity on the software side here would’ve helped the Q10′s software performance. The Q10′s camera is the same as the one found in the Z10, and as expected, performs in a very similar fashion. The big addition here is on the software side, since the Q10 with BlackBerry 10.1 now offers HDR. This is a feature that most OEMs have embraced lately, and also something I never find myself using on any mobile device. I’m also not a huge fan of it when used professionally by DSLR photographers. The addition isn’t hurting anything though, and will be welcome by those that appreciate it. Overall, the Q10′s camera is a solid performer. It won’t win any low-light awards, and that’s putting it lightly, but it can still manage to take some amazing shots, which look even more amazing with the slightly exaggerated color rendering of the OLED display. It also captures stills in 1:1 ratio by default to match the display, though you can set it to use either 16:9 or 4:3, too. Video is perfectly usable, too, and defaults to wide-screen capture. This is the one place where the Q10 doesn’t fare that much better than its counterpart the Z10. Despite the fact that BlackBerry has made a lot of noise about growing its own app marketplace to 100,000 titles, there still aren’t too many to write home about. Some big names have come on board, but crucial ones, like Netflix, Instagram and Vine, to name just a few, remain absent. The Q10′s app situation isn’t helped by the fact that it has such a unique screen size. The screen means that native BB10 apps have to be coded specifically to offer both Z10 and Q10 compatibility, which BlackBerry assures me is simple enough, but which still inevitably results in some fragmentation. Q10 users simply won’t see apps that aren’t designed for its display – unless they’re Android apps. Android ports still show up and can be downloaded and used. That’s a double-edged sword, however. I found performance to be unpredictable with Android ports; Songza, for instance, lacked its concierge feature when running on the Q10. Others had bizarre visual element distortions, and even when everything goes smoothly, it still requires scrolling through an interface designed to be viewed all at once. The Q10′s app situation is a reminder just how far BlackBerry has to go, and a signal that it will probably have a much more targeted audience than the general purpose Z10. Where the Z10 faltered with battery, the Q10 excels. BlackBerry claims that the Q10 can get up to 13.5 hours of 3G talk time, 354 hours standby time, 61 hours of audio playback or up to 9 hours of video. In testing video playback and solid browsing time, it managed to come just shy of that at around 8 hours continuous use, but the standby time is what’s really impressive. This phone sips power with the screen off when it’s in your pocket, harkening back to BlackBerrys of old. It isn’t quite as long-lived, but it’s still impressive for a modern smartphone. In actual usage, being neither extremely conservative or extremely power-hungry, the Q10 manages nearly two days of use in my testing, which is, again, very unusual for a smartphone. It boasts a larger 2100 mAh battery, compared to the Z10′s 1800 mAh unit. That means you can’t use the Z10′s external charger accessory to juice up the Q10′s battery, but BlackBerry offers the exact same device designed for the new phone’s battery, too. The BlackBerry Q10 is unique among smartphones, with its square display and hardware keyboard. And BlackBerry knows that it will appeal to a certain kind of consumer. What I found in using it, is that I actually gravitated towards tasks that were productive – zapping my inbox overload, typing up actual complete paragraphs for longer posts (I’ve never used another smartphone to do that), using the newly-ported Skype app to stay in touch with teammates. This is a business phone, and an unabashed one, and in a world where we often want our devices to do everything for us, a little focus is actually a very refreshing thing. That said, evaluate your priorities if you’re thinking about getting a Q10: the app situation is still dismal for BlackBerry 10, despite progress made since the official launch at the end of January. And the OS software itself still has some bugs, too: I experienced one black screen freeze that required a soft restart, and one issue where my cellular signal continually dropped until I turned cell traffic off and then on again. For those reasons, I still have trouble recommending it generally over the iPhone or a top-tier Android phone, if only because of the ecosystem that now surrounds those devices. But if you’re a BlackBerry lover, or if you long for the days when you could feel that keyboard under your fingers, the Q10 is very impressive device, especially from a company that more than a few people had completely counted out completely. The Q10 arrives in Canada and the U.K. first, beginning in early May (May 1st in Canada), with an expected rollout in the U.S. towards the end of May in the U.S. It’ll cost $199 on contract at Canadian carriers on a three-year agreement, and will run for $249 on a 2-year agreement in the U.S. That’s relatively steep, especially for a phone with 16GB of onboard storage, but I expect we’ll see discounts and special offers before too long, as we did with the Z10.
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While the Raspberry Pi is great for educating kids about computing, can it brew a mean beer? The BeagleBone Black can. Trevor Hubbard, an engineer at Texas Instruments, uses the new, next-gen board to control heat exchangers and monitors to handle beer temperature remotely. The board itself is quite cool. It runs a AM335x 1GHz ARM Cortex-A8 processor with graphics accelerator and has two 46-pin headers for IO, making it ideal for monitoring and robotics. The board itself costs $45 and is available now. It can run Android and Ubuntu linux and connects to the Internet via Ethernet or a USB Wi-Fi dongle. Interestingly, the entire board is open source, allowing you to download and tweak the design to suit your needs. The company was founded by Jason Kridner and Gerald Coley, two TI engineers. The headers allow for multiple styles of input and output including serial connectivity, timers, and digital I/O. While not as inherently simple as the Raspberry Pi, it’s still a formidable board. Hubbard, who recorded a video about his project, shows how he can control his beer temperature remotely using a BeagleBoard, the Internet, and a taste for bubbly hops. There is, I’d wager, not much more a man could ask for. via Ars
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Apple CEO Tim Cook doesn’t generally talk too specifically about upcoming product plans, but he went out of his way to put an unusually fine point on when to expect new products than he usually does. Cook kicked off today’s Apple earnings call talking about how Apple is looking forward to exciting product news in the fall, and throughout 2014, and then reiterated the exact same thing during the Q&A period. “I don’t want to be more specific, but we’ve got some really great stuff coming in the fall and across all of 2014,” Cook said later when asked if he could expand upon his earlier statements. Clearly, he didn’t expand, but he firmly reiterated what he’d said earlier. It seemed pretty apparent that Cook intended to manage expectations relative to Apple’s product release cycle, in a much more direct way than Apple has in the past. The statement on the surface seems designed to cool rumors and speculation that we’ll see a new iPhone (or perhaps multiple new models) at or around Apple’s upcoming WWDC 2013 event. Reports sourced from Apple’s supply and manufacturing partners have suggested a ramp-up in preparation for a June-ish consumer release, although just this past week some analyst chatter began to suggest that the iPhone 5S specifically might get pushed back to a (*gasp*) fall release. Cook also wouldn’t go so far as to eliminate entirely the possibility that we’ll see new products before the fall, but he clearly wanted to put the spotlight on the later this year and the entirety of next in terms of product innovation. Whether that means we’ll only see modest changes before September, with big bombshells like the rumored iWatch sometime later, or whether we won’t see anything before autumn, remains to be seen. Apple almost never spills any beans about what its product plans are, so it’s worth getting excited about fall based on Tim’s willingness to talk about that specific period, and his mention of “new product categories.” Still, unless he’s purposefully trying to throw us off the scent, people eager for new Apple products might also want to sleep through the summer.
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The Infinity Cell is a kinetic charger for the iPhone that uses your body’s movement to generate electricity. The current prototype for the Infinity Cell is a crude 3D printed rectangle, roughly the size of a pack of cigarettes, linked up to the iPhone with a cable. The plan is to create a more streamlined version during the product’s Kickstarter campaign. When you shake the Infinity Cell for 30 minutes, that provides enough power to give the iPhone a 20 percent charge. When you shake the Infinity Cell for three hours, that provides enough power to fully charge the iPhone. Of course, no sane person is going to sit around shaking his iPhone for three hours to grab a charge. The Infinity Cell eventually aims to generate power from the slightest bit of movement. The finished model will resemble a Mophie or MaxBoost battery case. You simply slip your iPhone into the case, put in your pocket, and the movement you create when you’re walking, jogging, or biking will power your iPhone. They’re also planning on releasing an Infinity Cell iOS app that will track your energy saving, carbon offset, and gamify the experience by granting users badges as they reach different energy saving rankings. The creators of Infinity Cell are seeking to raise $155,000 on Kickstarter by June 6th. A $125 contribution will nab you an Infinity Cell of your own, although it’s only compatible with iPhone 4 and 4S for now.
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It’s a surprisingly rare treat to see inside a very expensive and very unique timepiece. Although the video below is a render, it shows almost every important part of this wild watch including something called the chain-and-fusee, a method used for centuries to improve the accuracy of watches by ensuring constant force is applied to the balance wheel over time. The watch will be shown at Basel, the annual, 10-day marathon watch show in Switzerland. I’ll be bringing a few of the most interesting pieces to your attention. Before we get into the science of this thing, just understand that the chain you see is handmade and assembled and each link is made of sapphire to (ostensibly) reduce fiction. It’s a fairly basic watch – it has a power reserve function and just tells the time – but the engineering is what’s most important. Expect it to sell for over $100,000 (although I could see this selling for a bit under the $100K mark). Now for the watch nerdery. The fussee is a spindle attached to a chain that winds the mainspring barrel. The fussee allows the proper amount of force to be meted out to the “transmission” over time because as a spring uncoils it loses a bit of its power. This system, created by Breguet in the late 1700s, has been in use since then. This new fusee uses a snail cam that unwinds as evenly as the spindle but allows for a thicker, more robust chain and smoother motion. It’s a very minor change but it’s the first time I’ve seen this sort of cam in a fussee watch. Arguably this is not a cure for cancer or a moonshot, but R. Gauthier is a perfect example of a hardware startup that works in a very rarified sphere. Building a mar rover is cool, but redesigning something that has existed for 300 years is arguably just a tich cooler. At this price, however, you can either feed your family for most of a decade or visit the website for purchasing information.
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Sony has decided to release a sequel to the Android Open Source Project (AOSP) for Xperia S it began in August of 2012, and took over from Google in November of last year. This time, the Xperia Z is getting its own project, which means that the company’s water resistant flagship phone will get to participate in the kind of Android development work more often reserved for Google-blessed Nexus devices. Sony’s Xperia S AOSP experiment was well-received, though it was eventually moved away from the AOSP main branch to Sony’s own GitHub, owing to the limitations of what could be done with the hardware. Sony software engineers Johan Redestig and Björn Andersson want to help continue that work with Sony’s latest. The Xperia Z project will help developers and tinkerers interested in making contributions to Android, and to Qualcomm’s Snapdragon S4 Pro platform do so using essentially a vanilla Android OS installation on the device, albeit starting out on Sony’s own GitHub, and not as part of Google’s own main AOSP project. Before you go thinking that this is a way to turn your every day Xperia Z into a stock Android Nexus device, however, note that use of the AOSP comes with a few big caveats: It can read the SD card, use Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS, the LED notification light and sensors, but the modem and camera are dependent upon proprietary binaries that Sony can’t release to the public. And still other binaries have been released by Qualcomm and Xperia Z, and are provided by Sony’s developer partners, but can’t technically be part of the AOSP efforts because they aren’t open source code. Sony plans to try to replace at least some of those binaries with source code as the project progresses, however. While this isn’t quite as exciting as when Google added the Xperia S as a hardware target to its own AOSP main branch, it’s still good news for developers and the development community, and should help broadly with contributions to Android and its evolution as well.
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Geeksphone, the smartphone OEM startup based out of Madrid, put the first Firefox OS developer phones on sale early this morning, offering the Keon for $119 and the more powerful Peak for $194. Both devices are the first hardware to be offered with Firefox OS on board, and both devices are now listed as “Out of stock,” just a few hours after first going on sale. The Keon and Peak devices are essentially preview devices, designed to give developers the opportunity to test out what they can do with the new Linux-based open-source mobile operating system before it sees its general public launch this June in five initial countries, including Spain, Brazil, Portugal and Venezuela. The Geeksphone devices are modest in terms of their hardware specifications, but Firefox OS will likely be positioned as more of a mid-market play. The $119 Keon (yes, that’s unlocked pricing) has a 1GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor, offers 3G and EDGE cellular connections, has a 3.5-inch HVGA screen and a 3 megapixel camera. It’s got just 4GB of onboard storage and 512MB of RAM, but it offers a MicroSD slot for capacity expansion. The $194 Peak has a 1.2GHz dual core Snapdragon S4, a 4.3-inch qHD IPS display, an 8 megapixel rear and 2 megapixel front camera, and otherwise looks pretty similar to the Keon in terms of tech specs. Both devices are currently sold out, but TheNextWeb reported in a profile posted yesterday that Geeksphone was aiming to be able to fulfill orders at a rate of about 5,000 per day, and a call I made to Geeksphone’s offices revealed that the company is working hard on getting more phones back in stock, and hopes to have them on sale again this week, hopefully by Friday. Demand has been has been tremendous so far, a company rep told me. It’s hard to make any kind of predictions about Firefox OS’s potential success based on these very early results of two developer handsets, likely produced in small batches and aimed at an enthusiast crowd, but it’s definitely not a bad thing that they’re already flying off the shelves.  
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The Nest thermostat has already gone through a hardware revision or two and found its way onto plenty of physical and virtual store shelves, but parent company Nest Labs is eager to get it into even more households in short order. And how does Nest Labs plan to do that? Well, the Palo Alto company has just announced that it has teamed up with energy providers from across the country that will see new climate-control services (not to mention some rebates) go live for customers in a handful of markets. So far, the list of partners includes National Grid, NRG Energy, NRG subsidiaries Reliant and Green Mountain Energy, Austin Energy and Southern California Edison. You can probably guess what markets those last two serve. These newly-forged partnerships could see adoption of the household gadget surge — customers who ink deals with National Grid for instance can claim a $100 rebate to help defray the costs of a Nest thermostat. While the others don’t offer much in the way of actual cash back, Nest’s tie-ups emphasize the long-term value of having a Nest over a run-of-the-mill thermostat. The way the folks at Nest look at it, their gadget is only going to become more useful as the days get longer and warmer, and those new services I mentioned earlier should only help matters when it comes to the cost-conscious. First up is Nest’s so-called Rush Hour Rewards, which are meant to reduce the load on already-strained power stations once it starts getting really hot outside. Rather than cranking the temperature down low and leaving it there as a hapless human might, the Nest instead gets a feel for the sorts of climate its users prefer and will sporadically turn down the temperature to keep things within that preferred range. By occasionally introducing blasts of cold air instead of just leaving things to run at full blast, the Nest can keep your house at about the same temperature as before without much of a corresponding bump on the bill. Also part of the package is what Nest calls “seasonal savings,” which will see the smart thermostat measure user temperature preferences over the course of the year and make minor modifications over the course of a few weeks. The idea? To reduce a user’s heating bill by carefully acclimating them to a new, more cost-efficient temperature scheme without the residents even noticing. For now, only customers who select certain plans with those power companies can use these new services, but I very much doubt that team Nest is content to leave things as they are. These sorts of deals will only serve to raise the company’s profile, and buy-in from power partners is a big deal for Nest especially as the company’s rivals have moved to make their own wares smarter. Consider Honeywell — the major conglomerate already filed a lawsuit against Nest last year for supposed acts of copyright infringement, an allegation that Nest Labs vigorously disagrees with.
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Because I like sharing cool watches with you guys I decided to share this cool watch with you guys. It’s called the Ressence Type 3 and it’s actually a liquid-filled mechanical watch with a nearly featureless face. Each of those dials – registers in the parlance – look like they are seamlessly embedded in the face surface and the watch, being suspended in synthetic oil, has no crown and is wound automatically. Arguably the movement itself isn’t very special – it’s a standard timekeeper that displays the date and includes a rotating seconds wheel – but the way the entire package is put together is a feat of horology. The sapphire crystal surrounds the face almost completely and the back of the watch hides the manual winding mechanism and a switch that allows you to change the time. On the wrist, the watch looks like a blob of liquid with markings suspended in it. It’s as if you were wearing a slug of liquid metal or a dollop of crude oil. The entire face spins (you can see it in action here) and a pressure valve compensates for temperature-related changes in the liquid. You can see hands-on photos right here or visit the product page. The watch, sadly, costs $34,000 and comes in a wildly limited edition but it may be worth it just to say that your watch is literally full of alien liquids.
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Leap Motion’s gesture-based controller launch is less than a month away, but so far we’ve heard relatively little about app support, besides the fact that the company is working hard on filling out its Airspace app store. Now, Leap Motion and Google are announcing support for Google Earth for Leap Motion tech, which will be built-in to the desktop Google Earth app for Windows, Mac and Linux as of version 7.1 (out today). That’s a good initial user pool for Leap Motion, since Google Earth has been downloaded by over 1 billion people according to Google’s stats. The endorsement by Google is crucial because of the company’s stature, and the fact that it builds a whole lot of software, including the Chrome browser, and because it gives potential Leap Motion owners a very tangible, natural and commonplace app to test out Leap Motion’s utility with. And we won’t have to wait until mid-May to find out how effective it is – 10,000 developers arleady have access to Leap Motion Controller hardware as it is. Leap motion is looking for devs to try it out and submit their own YouTube videos of the experience, by flagging the posts with #LeapInto. Those will go into a playlist the company will share to show off its tech. Leap Motion continues to rack up the pre-launch hits, with major retail and OEM partnerships. The HP arrangement that will see its 3D gesture tech built-in to future laptops and other devices in particular is huge news. But all that hype means it will face high expectations at launch, and Google endorsement drives those expectations even higher.
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