No longer a part of Sony, VAIO likes the look of that smartphone market, and has decided to go up against its former parent company's Xperia series with its own creation -- one that looks very familiar to our smartphone-seasoned eyes. It's called the VAIO Phone, and it's launching in Japan in collaboration with one of the country's smaller carriers, b-mobile, on March 20th.
Remember this isn't the giant Sony we're dealing with any more: VAIO is now leaner and well, a whole lot smaller. However, it seems they put their best brains on the flagship laptop series because there's really not much to scream and shout about its first smartphone. There's five-inch display, Android 5.0, 13-megapixel camera and enough power behind the purposely unassuming shell: two gigs of RAM and 1.2GHz processor. And it all looks, well, just... okay:
There's a very flat, glossy back, curved plastic sides and it's generally very unassuming. VAIO is calling it "simple and stylish" but we interpret that as "nondescript", at least going from our early play with it. Fortunately (probably due to the smaller phone carrier involved) there's no app-based bloat, something that still lingers in Japan on its mobile phones. There's really not much more to say however: it's a smartphone. It looks like a lot of smartphones that came before it. There's no crazy camera tech, eye-bleeding screen (it's only 720p, pixel fans) or object-reading magic. But it will be priced to sell -- just shy of 33 bucks (4,000 yen) per month will get you VAIO's first smartphone as well as unlimited data. Japan residents can also pick up the phone for about $420, or 51,000 yen. Not such an easy sell.
Forget all your wires and cables. You won't need them if you buy Apple's new MacBook -- it only has two ports.
Apple's new MacBook is its thinnest and lightest laptop to date. To achieve this feat, Apple (AAPL, Tech30) engineers streamlined many features traditionally associated with portable computers, and eliminated some as well. Here's what you need to know:
1. The body is tapered like the MacBook Air. At its thickest, the new 12-inch MacBook is 13.1mm high (about half an inch) -- 24% thinner than the existing 11-inch MacBook Air.
"Can you even see it? I can't even see it," Philip Schiller, Apple's senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing, said on stage at an Apple event Monday afternoon, holding a closed laptop.
2. It weighs two pounds. For comparison, the MacBook Air weighs almost two-and-a-half pounds. The iPad Air 2 weighs just under one pound.
3. Taking a page from the iPhone design book, the new, all-metal body MacBook comes in three different colors: silver, gray, and gold.
4. The new MacBook is fanless, which is partly why the laptop is so thin and light.
5. There are only two ports. One is a headphone port, and the other port is for a new kind of USB connector called the USB-C. The USB-C port is about a third of the size of a standard USB port, and serves as a single connection point to charge the laptop's batteries, transfer data, and transmit video.
For consumers who want to use their existing, standard USB devices with the laptop, this new USB format will most likely be a pain point. An adapter dongle for the USB-C port costs $80 on the Apple store.
6. Apple has also redesigned the keyboard, which now extends to the edges of the laptop. The keyboard has also been updated to respond to lighter touches, meaning less pounding when typing. The surface of each key is also 17% larger and is lit by individual LED lights underneath "for more precise illumination," Schiller said.
7. The computer's track pad also got a nice upgrade. Like the new Apple Watch, the track pad is now powered by Apple's new Taptic Engine, which picks up on how forceful a touch or tap is. For example, instead of clicking repeatedly on the fast forward button on Quicktime to speed up a video, you only need to press down on the new track pad a little longer and harder than a tap to achieve the same goal.
8. On stage at the event, Schiller said the new MacBook is the "world's most energy-efficient notebook." The laptop's Intel Core M processor consumes five watts of power, and its newly designed and contoured battery cells have 35% more capacity.
9. The new MacBook has a battery life of up to 10 hours.
10. The cost for a new 12-inch MacBook 1.1 GHz dual-core Intel Core M processor with 256GB of flash storage starts $1299. A 12" 1.2 GHz dual-core Intel Core M processor MacBook with 512GB of flash storage starts at $1599.
During today's press event, Apple took the lid off the upcoming Apple Watch. When the device launches on April 24, you can expect a number of features working in congress with the company's iOS and Mac ecosystem. And prices range from $350 USD/£299 GBP/$499 AUD all the way to a staggering $10,000 USD/£13,500 GBP/$14,999 AUD.
Apple claims every Apple Watch is super accurate, within 50 milliseconds of UTC. And speaking of speed, the new "Glances" feature allows you to check notifications, the weather, or even your heart rate, with just a quick swipe.
Of course, Apple Watch will also contain a number of communication options, working with the just announced iOS 8.2. You can receive iMessages, as well as answer voice calls like Dick Tracy. But one of the newest features is Digital Touch, which allows you to communicate with friends from Apple Watch to Apple Watch, even sending doodles you make on the watch face.
Apple Watch will communicate with your iPhone either through WiFi or Bluetooth. An Apple Watch app for iPhone will be available via the App Store.
Apple played up the health and exercise benefits of Apple Watch during today's event, pointing out how the device will send helpful reminders for your exercise routine. Of course, the workout app will track your daily movement, and deliver stats like calories burned and miles traveled.
But Apple Watch's biggest conveniences likely come from its use of notifications and its sense of place, making it easy to do things like check into a hotel and even use the watch as your room key. Be sure to check out IGN's coverage of all the apps for Apple Watch discussed today.
Apple claims the Apple Watch should last for about 18 hours. And charging the watch is simple, thanks to a magnetic charger.
Apple Watch Sport
The Apple Watch, as previously announced, will be available in more than one flavor. The Apple Watch Sport features an aluminum body, and will be available in Space Grey and silver. The Sport is $350 USD/£299 GBP/$499 AUD for a 38mm version, or $400 USD/£339 GBP/$579 AUD for a 42mm version.
Apple Watch Steel
The stainless steel variety of the Apple Watch is 80 percent harder, and more resistant to scratches. The model, available in Space Black, will retail for $550 USD/£479 GBP/$799 AUD to $1050 USD/£899 GBP/$1549 AUD, or $600 USD/£519 GBP/$879 AUD to $1100 USD/£949 GBP/$1629 AUD, depending on the watch band associated with the model.
Apple Watch Edition
Finally, the--"very limited"--third version of the Apple Watch is clearly not for the general public. Boasting an 18K solid gold body, the Edition will start at $10,000 USD/£8,000 GBP/$14,000 AUD. Yowza.
Pre-orders of the Apple Watch will begin on April 10. The device will launch in Australia, Canada, United States, Japan, China, France, Germany, Hong Kong, and United Kingdom on April 24.
Chinese smartphone manufacturer Xiaomi has today launched its first action camera. Aimed squarely at GoPro, it beats the Hero on specs and price—though it's not yet clear if you'll be able to buy one in the U.S..
The Yi, as it's called, features a 16-megapixel camera which can shoot 1080p video at 60 frames per second. That's better, at least in spec terms, than the $130 GoPro Hero (which shoots 1080p footage at 30 fps, or 720p film at 60 fps). The image sensor is from Sony, it can be used 40 meters underwater, and it comes loaded with 64GB of storage—twice as much as the Hero. There's also a corresponding apps and a bunch of accessories—such as a pet mount—available.
Of course, it's not clear that all those stats necessarily roll together to produce a final product that will perform better than the GoPro Hero. But it's still an impressive offering considers that the device is set to retail for 399 CNY—which is just $64. While you stand no chance of using a Xaiomi phone in the U.S., there is a glimmer of hope that you may, one day, be able to buy one of these. Xaiomi is due to open an online store in the U.S. later this year; it won't sell phone, but it will sell other products. With any luck, this may be one of them.
Samsung wasn’t kidding when it said the Galaxy S6 would be unlike any other Galaxy smartphone on the market. Just about every feature on the device is an upgrade from the previous model; there is no confusing the Samsung Galaxy S6 with the Galaxy S5.
The sixth generation device is Samsung's attempt to recapture the market, in which it has suffered significant sales drops in the last year. After being criticized for releasing a host of smartphones that were too similar to one another, Samsung started from scratch, and code named the Galaxy S6 "Project Zero." That project, the Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 Edge was unveiled Sunday at the Galaxy Unpacked press event in Barcelona, Spain. The event precedes the World Mobile Congress, which starts Monday.
The competition among premium smartphones is at an all-time high. Having noticed the how crowded the smartphone market has become, the Korean manufacturer set out to make the "best in class smartphone with the best in class design," Samsung President and CEO J.K. Shin said. The Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 Edge include a host of features, which Samsung said it hesitated to introduce until it was certain the features worked well and would be valuable to consumers.
Check out the preliminary details for both devices:
Samsung Exynos chip -- 20 percent faster performance
32GB, 64GB, 128GB internal storage options
5.1-inch Quad HD Super AMOLED Display, with Gorilla Glass 4
Metal design, 50 percent stronger than other metal smartphones
Fast charging: 10 minute charge for 4 hours of battery life
Charge from 0-to-100 in half the time than an iPhone 6
Built-in battery
Wireless charging compatible with both WPC and WMC charging standards
Thin: 6.8 mm breadth
16-megapixel rear camera with optical image stabilization
5-mega pixel front camera with real time HDR
Samsung Pay
The Samsung Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 Edge will be available April 11 in 20 countries, with availability to other markets coming later.
The Samsung Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 Edge will also be compatible with a new model of the Samsung Gear VR headset.
(Reuters) - Apple Inc has been ordered to pay $532.9 million after a federal jury in Texas found that its iTunes software infringed three patents owned by patent licensing firm Smartflash LLC.
Though Smartflash had been asking for $852 million in damages, Tuesday night's verdict was still a blow to Apple.
The jury, which deliberated for eight hours, determined Apple had not only used Smartflash's patents without permission, but did so willfully.
Apple, which said it would appeal, said the outcome was another reason reform was needed in the patent system to curb litigation by companies that don't make products themselves.
"We refused to pay off this company for the ideas our employees spent years innovating and unfortunately we have been left with no choice but to take this fight up through the court system," Apple said in a statement.
Smartflash sued Apple in May 2013, alleging its iTunes software infringed its patents related to accessing and storing downloaded songs, videos and games.
"Smartflash is very happy with the jury's verdict, which recognizes Apple's longstanding willful infringement," Brad Caldwell, a lawyer for Smartflash, said in an email.
The trial was held in Tyler, which over the past decade has become a focus for patent litigation.
Smartflash's registered office is also in Tyler.
It was also in Tyler federal court that a jury in 2012 ordered Apple to pay $368 million to VirnetX Inc for patent infringement. A federal appeals court later threw out that damages figure, saying it was wrongly calculated.
Apple tried to avoid a trial by having the lawsuit thrown out. But U.S. District Judge Rodney Gilstrap, who presided over the case, ruled earlier this month that Smartflash's technology was not too basic to deserve the patents.
Apple had asked the jury to find Smartflash's patents invalid because previously patented inventions covered the same technology.
Smartflash's suit said that around 2000, the co-inventor of its patents, Patrick Racz, had met with executives of what is now European SIM card maker Gemalto SA, including Augustin Farrugia, who is now a senior director at Apple.
Smartflash has also filed patent infringement lawsuits against Samsung Electronics Co Ltd, HTC Corp and Google Inc.
The case is Smartflash LLC, et al v. Apple, Inc, et al, in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, No. 13-cv-447.
MANILA, Philippines (UPDATED) – Two Filipino women are in the running to join a reality competition with an enviable (or unenviable) prize: a one-way ticket to help establish a colony on Mars.
Minerva Rañeses from Pasig City, and US-based Jaymee Orillosa del Rosario, are among the 50 women and 50 men who made the cut in the third round of astronaut selection by the Netherlands-based Mars One project.
The Mars One project aims to get people on Mars by 2024, where they will establish a colony – essentially, a one-way ticket to Earth's neighbor.
MINERVA AND JAYMEE. Screen shots from their community profiles.
In her profile on Mars One, Rañeses, 24, describes herself as a writer, and that she is an "intellectual wanderer" seeking "growth in knowledge and philosophy."
"I don’t decide based on monetary or materialistic returns, but on the experience I will garner," she said in her introduction. Philosophy, literature, and history are her top interests – "[generally], anything that can lead to comprehending mankind’s behavior and the many possible structures society can take form in the future."
Meanwhile, Orillosa, 27, is an entrepreneur distributing raw material metals and exotic alloys to aerospace, defense, and commercial industries, according to her Mars One profile.
In fact, she says one of their clients is Space Exploration Technologies, or SpaceX: "Our materials/product was part of the Dragon Capsule that was successfully launched in 2010."
She also is working towards earning a Bachelors degree in Business.
Two out of 202,586
A whopping 202,586 people from around the world applied for the project, which was whittled down to 600, then the current crop of 100 candidates. (READ: 5 Pinoys, one-way ticket to Mars)
The candidates come from all continents: 39 from the Americas, 31 from Europe, 16 from Asia, 7 from Africa, and 7 from Oceania.
The top 100 were chosen after they were interviewed by Norbert Kraft, the project's chief medical officer. "We were impressed with how many strong candidates participated in the interview round, which made it a very difficult selection," he was quoted as saying.
The third round selection is the easy part, Mars One said: the candidates will now be trained to compose teams "that can endure all the hardships of a permanent settlement on Mars."
"Being one of the best individual candidates does not automatically make you the greatest team player, so I look forward to seeing how the candidates progress and work together in the upcoming challenges," Kraft said.
The final cut will see only two dozen people abandoning Earth for a new start on a cold, dry, oxygen-less planet some 55 million kilometers (34 million miles or 6 months' travel) away.
The high cost of the project, an estimated $6 billion (4.4 billion euros), precludes the option of a return trip.
The trial resettlement is meant to be mainly funded by a reality-TV show about the project.
The final 24 would be sent to the Red Planet in 6 separate launches starting in 10 years.
Many experts scoff at the project's feasibility, questioning whether the participants would survive the physical perils and demands on their sanity. On the other hand, its supporters include Dutch Nobel laureate Gerard 't Hooft, who won the 1999 prize for physics.
The world's space agencies have only managed to send unmanned robotic rovers to Mars so far, the latest being NASA's $2.5 billion Curiosity rover, which touched down in August 2012.
If it succeeds, Mars One would be the first private-sector initiative, manned or unmanned, to explore another planet.
But the biggest question, once everything's set, is: could they survive? A study by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, using Mars One data, said that they can – but only for 68 days.
Yahoo Finance Canada/Weibo - Before a bank of more than 100 iPhones, a Chinese worker allegedly manupulates App Store results
A disturbing image allegedly showing a worker manipulating App Store rankings has gone viral, giving us a rare glimpse into the world of fake app ratings and downloads.
The photo, which was originally uploaded to social media site Weibo with the caption " Hardworking App Store ranking manipulation employee," depicts a Chinese woman sitting in front of a panel of close to a hundred iPhones.
The woman is wearing a heavy coat and hiding a hand inside of a blanket while she works on the dozens of iPhones in front of her, suggesting cold working conditions.
If the woman in the photo is, as the caption suggests, manipulating the rankings of app on Apple's App Store, she is likely uninstalling and re-installing apps on each of the devices to bolster their download rank. While only Apple knows exactly what factors into an app's ranking on the App Store, the higher the number of overall downloads, the higher the app's ranking.
The photo offers a rare glimpse into the clandestine world of App Store manipulation, an issue which Apple has struggled to eradicate in the past. App developers looking to give their app a boost in ratings or ranking can turn to the internet to find services claiming to offer a guaranteed five-star ratings or even a week in the App Store's Top 10 for around $65,000 per week, according to Cult of Mac.
> app store manipulation prices Cult of Mac Image reportedly showing the prices for a Top 10 spot in Apple's App Store.
App developers looking to legally boost their rankings in the App Store have expressed frustration with rigged rankings in the past, and if the above images are indeed real, it looks like Apple will need to continue its preventative efforts.
A collection of items planned to be left behind by the Apollo 11 mission have been found by Neil Armstrong's widow while clearing out an old closet. Among them is the camera that recorded some of the mission's most crucial moments, including the famous moon landing. The items have now been donated to the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum, who unsurprisingly are rather pleased to have received them.
According to transcripts of the Apollo mission, Armstrong—upon rejoining Michael Collins in lunar orbit—referred to a stowage bag known as a McDivitt purse saying, “You know, that – that one's just a bunch of trash that we want to take back – LM [lunar module] parts, odds and ends, and it won't stay closed by itself. We'll have to figure something out for it.” The purse was named after Apollo 9 Commander James McDivitt, who proposed the need for a place to temporarily stow items that would be too time consuming to fix in place, but couldn't be safely left to float around the spacecraft in zero gravity.
In the end, the “something” seems to have been stashing the purse in the back of a closet and forgetting about it. Carol Armstrong found the bag—including the various items inside—while clearing out part of the family home after Neil Armstrong's death in 2012.
Credit: Carol Armstrong. The photograph Carol Armstrong sent to the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, which reveals the content of the bag she found.
Under the mission's plans, items such as these were to be left on the Eagle module, and would have been destroyed when the Eagle crashed into the moon after having carried Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin to their rendezvous with Collins.
"Needless to say, for a curator of a collection of space artifacts, it is hard to imagine anything more exciting," said Allan Needell on the museum's blog. Needell has since confirmed that the items were almost certainly those Armstrong took to the moon and back.
Probably the most significant of the items was the 16mm Data Acquisition Camera that had been mounted on the Eagle lunar module to record the Eagle's touchdown, Armstrong's descent to the surface and the famous “one small step.”
Credit: Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum. The camera that recorded the "one small step."
A waist tether, intended for use if the lunar module and command module failed to reconnect correctly and the astronauts were forced to spacewalk between them, was included in the bag. Armstrong also used the tether to support his legs while he rested on the ascent engine cover during his only break on the moon.
Nine smaller items including a mirror, emergency wrench and lens shade were also found.
Yahoo Finance UK/AP Photo/Seth Wenig - Nick Woodman holds a GoPro camera in his mouth as he celebrates his company's IPO at the Nasdaq MarketSite in New York, June 26, 2014
From catching waves in Hawaii, base jumping in Utah or skiing the Austrian Alps, the must-have gadget for today’s adrenaline junkies is a GoPro.
Billed as the world's most versatile camera, a GoPro allows extreme sports enthusiast to capture their every move while social media users live vicariously through the daredevil stuntmen.
The tiny camera has made its founder Nicholas Woodman a billionaire – and he’s yet to turn 40. An adrenaline junkie himself, Woodman is worth around $2.9bn (£1.9bn) according to Forbes.
For the uninitiated, a GoPro is a small but high quality video camera that can be worn by the user in several different ways or attached to sporting equipment such as mountain bikes, skis and surfboards. The camera can shoot high quality video footage or still photographs at predefined intervals.
October 2012 saw skydiver Felix Baumgartner use a GoPro to record the world’s highest sky-dive, and the cameras are routinely used by nature channels such as National Geographic and The Discovery Channel.
But it’s the fact that GoPro has a price point that makes the cameras accessible to the mainstream which is largely responsible for the gadget’s success – you can pick up a GoPro Hero for under £100, although more complex models cost more.
GoPro wasn’t Woodman’s first business venture. He set up Funbug in 1999 as a gaming and marketing platform that gave users the chance to win cash prizes. Investors piled $3.9m (£2.56m) into the venture during the dot-com frenzy. The subsequent bubble bursting saw the company fail and was one of the era’s biggest disaster stories.
To rejuvenate, 2001 saw Woodman take a five-month trip to Indonesia and Australia and this is when the idea for the GoPro took hold. A keen surfer, Woodman longed for a camera which he could strap to his wrist to record barrels, backhands and hang-tens.
GoPro started life as a strap to attach existing cameras to surfers’ wrists with the first model made out of surfboard leashes and rubber bands. Woodman later honed his idea and decided to build the wrist strap, camera and device casing all in one package.
The first prototype was built using his mum’s sewing machine and a drill, with the first 35mm still camera debuting at San Diego's Action Sports Retailer trade show in 2004. Initially sold in surf shops and shopping channel QVC, the GoPro soon caught on among extreme sport enthusiasts.
Some of the company’s starting capital came from selling belts made of shells and beads, which Woodman and his then girlfriend Jill (now his wife) bought in Indonesia. The couple brought 600 belts back to the US and sold them at a $10,000 (£6,575) profit. Woodman invested a total of $30,000 (£19,725) in the project under the company name of Woodman Labs.
But Woodman’s story isn’t one of rags to riches – he had significant financial support from his family too; his mother invested $35,000 (£23,000) at start-up stage while his father was a prominent Silicon Valley investment banker who later invested $200,000 (£131,500) in the company.
By the end of its first year, GoPro had sold $150,000 (£98,613) worth of cameras with Woodman hiring an old college friend to help him market the product to surf shops and other retailers. Soon it was clear that the video camera would be just as useful on land as well as water and GoPro’s sales increased as it was sold to mountain bikers and skiers.
The GoPro Hero 3+ camera [Joe Giddens/PA Archive/Press Association Images]
By 2006 the camera had moved on from just taking still photographs. Additional video capabilities, and later audio capabilities, saw its popularity grow. 2006 brought $800,000 (£525,934) in revenue, while the following year saw sales quadruple to $3.4 m (£2.24m).
Rounds of venture capitalist funding between 2010 and 2012 followed, the most notable being $200m (£132m) from Foxconn in December 2012. The Chinese electronics manufacturer’s investment boosted the company’s worth to about $2.25bn (£1.48bn) and propelled Woodman, who still owns a large chunk of the company, into Forbes’ billionaires list.
In 2012 the company sold 2.3 million cameras and grossed $521m (£343m). By now it had become the highest-grossing digital imaging brand at US retailer Best Buy, overtaking Sony for the first time.
GoPro was valued at almost $3bn (£1.97bn) when it floated in June 2014. Shares were initially sold at $24 (£16) with double-digit percentage gains each day for several days after the initial public offering (IPO).
Despite considerable venture capitalist investment, a large part of GoPro is still owned by Woodman and his family. Both his sisters and both his parents are multi-millionaires due to their respective shareholdings in the company.
Today users can take professional quality HD video and save their exploits to a memory card or wirelessly transfer them to a GoPro app on a smartphone or tablet. GoPro maintains an impressive 94% share of the action-camera market, although this could come under threat from competitors such as Garmin’s Virb.
But for now GoPro’s riding high – on waves, mountains and in the stock market where shares are worth around $48 (£32), twice its IPO price.
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