Hands On With Samsung’s Galaxy S III: Innovative Features, Vanilla Design

Samsung Galaxy S III

Samsung brought the Galaxy S III, in "marble white" and "pebble blue," to the CTIA Wireless show in New Orleans. Photo: Nathan Olivarez-Giles/Wired

NEW ORLEANS — Samsung’s next iPhone fighter, the Galaxy S III, has finally made it to the United States. Well, sort of. The phone is on display at the CTIA Wireless show, but there’s still no word on when the S III will go on sale in the States, and how much it will cost.

Nonetheless, Samsung was showing off the phone in both its color variations — “marble white” and “pebble blue” — in New Orleans this week. I spent about 15 minutes using the new handset, and came away impressed by its ambition levels, but not its aesthetics. The S III is packed with clever new features, but I wasn’t wowed by either the phone’s UI or industrial design.

The Galaxy S III’s massive 4.8-inch screen felt awfully big, but not so annoyingly large as the 5.3-inch display on the Galaxy Note. Regardless, the large display is put to good use when the handset’s Pop Up Play feature is in action.

This feature allows you to play a video in a pop-up window that can be dragged around the screen while other apps simultaneously run on the same home screen. I loaded a website, launched a few different apps, and looked through a photo gallery, all with a pop-up video playing, and there were no hiccups at all.

When I launched the Galaxy S III’s camera app, Pop Up Play went away, which makes sense, as you’ll want to devote all your attention (and screen real estate) to photo composition. All in all, the smoothness of the Pop Up Play feature felt like a testament to the abilities of the 1.4GHz quad-core Exynos processor living under the hood of the S III.
Continue Reading “Hands On With Samsung’s Galaxy S III: Innovative Features, Vanilla Design” »

Tags: , , , , ,
Back to top

Orangutans at Miami Zoo Use iPads to Communicate

In this Feb. 21, 2012 photo, an orangutan works with an iPad at Jungle Island in Miami. Photo: J Pat Carter/AP

The iPad is by far the most adored tablet in the human world. The numbers speak for themselves. But what you may not know is that members of the animal kingdom dig the 9.7-inch tablet too — particularly a clan of six orangutans at the Miami Zoo.

At the Miami Zoo’s Jungle Island, handlers are interacting with orangutans using the iPad. The apes use the tablet to identify items they’re familiar with, and express their wants and needs. This is done primarily through an app designed for autistic children that displays an array of object images onscreen.

“We’ll ask them to identify ‘Where’s the coconut?’, and they’ll point it out,” Linda Jacobs, who oversees the Jungle Island program, told Wired. “We want to build from that and give them a choice in what they have for dinner — show them pictures of every vegetable we have available that day, and let them pick, giving them the opportunity to have choices.”

Orangutans are very intelligent, but lack voice boxes and vocal cords, which can make communication difficult. Up until now, zoo keepers have been using sign language to communicate with them. Using the iPad gives the orangutans another form of communication with humans, provides them with mental stimulation, and also gives those who don’t know sign language a chance to interact with humans.
Continue Reading “Orangutans at Miami Zoo Use iPads to Communicate” »

Tags: , , , , , ,
Back to top

Hands On: Nokia City Lens Beta — Augmented Reality For Your Lumia Phone

The augmented-reality mode in Nokia City Lens overlays information about local businesses on top of a live camera view. Photo: Ariel Zambelich/Wired

Nokia wants to turn your Windows Phone into an augmented-reality-based discovery tool. On Tuesday, the company released a beta version of its Nokia City Lens app, helping Lumia smartphone users find and explore nearby destinations.

The app, which first appeared on Symbian OS, is still in beta, but it’s already listed as “likely to graduate to a commercial product” on the Nokia Beta Labs site. I spent some hands-on time with the app and was impressed — it’s incredibly well designed, and sports a number of useful (if not also familiar) augmented-reality features.

Launch the app and you’re taken to an “explore” homepage where you’ll see tiles for eight destination categories: nearby, food, hotels, shopping, famous, fun, sights, and transport. Tap on one of the tiles to see the nearby locales in a map, list, or augmented-reality mode.

The augmented-reality mode is one of the app’s most impressive features. Using your phone’s live camera view, you can see the details of nearby restaurants, stores, hotels and other landmarks via graphical overlays. As you pan your phone across your real-world environment, the graphical tidbits show you which businesses are located in direct proximity.

This certainly isn’t the first time augmented reality has been used in a discovery app. Yelp has a very similar feature, Monocle, in its iOS and Android apps. Yelp’s Windows Phone app, however, doesn’t offer Monocle. And Yelp’s Monocle is a somewhat hidden feature, while Nokia City Lens makes augmented reality a central component.
Continue Reading “Hands On: Nokia City Lens Beta — Augmented Reality For Your Lumia Phone” »

Tags: ,
Back to top

HP Announces New Ultrabooks, Introduces ‘Sleekbooks’

The HP Envy Spectre XT has an all-metal body and weighs only 3.07 pounds. Photo: HP

HP has expanded its ever-slimming laptop line with the introduction of five new devices. The company introduced on Wednesday new ultrabooks that are thinner and lighter than their predecessors, and also unveiled a pair of “Sleekbooks,” a new HP term to describe thin and light laptops that don’t quite meet Intel’s ultrabook criteria.

On the high end of the lineup is HP’s new 13.3-inch Envy Spectre XT, the follow-up to the glass-bodied Envy 14 Spectre. This time around, HP has ditched the glass and opted for an all-metal body. The Spectre XT undercuts its predecessor in weight and size, weighing in at 3.07 pounds and featuring a slightly smaller screen. (The Envy 14 Spectre has a 14-inch screen and weighs just under 4 pounds.) The new Envy Spectre XT does, however, maintain the same thinness at 14.5 mm thick.

Inside the chassis, HP’s Envy Spectre XT features Intel’s third-generation Ivy Bridge processors, 128GB of SSD storage, and 4GB of memory. And according to HP, the Spectre XT will get up to eight hours of battery life. It has a 1366×769 pixel display and comes with Beats Audio speakers, a backlit keyboard, HP CoolSense technology, as well as a bunch of preloaded software such as Adobe Photoshop and Premiere Elements 10, and Norton antivirus protection. The Envy Spectre XT will start at $1,000 and will be available on June 8.
Continue Reading “HP Announces New Ultrabooks, Introduces ‘Sleekbooks’” »

Tags: , , , ,
Back to top

Latest Apple Rumors: iPhone in September, iPad Mini in August

Rumors continue to maintain that we'll be seeing a 7-inch iPad in the future. Pictured, the third-generation iPad. Photo: Ariel Zambelich/Wired

The week wouldn’t be complete without a new Apple rumor, or at least an update to an existing one. Today, the news regards launch dates for Apple’s yin and yang: the iPhone and iPad.

Apple’s next iPhone will reportedly launch in September, and a 7-inch iPad mini will land in August, according to Digitimes. The Taiwan-based news organization reports that Pegatron, a parts manufacturer for the iPad and iPhone 4S, received orders for the two products. Digitimes also reports Pegatron has downsized other departments, like its SI motherboard unit, to accommodate the Apple orders.

The 7-inch iPad will be assembled at Foxconn, according to the report.

The iPad Mini has been the subject of reports, rumors, and random, unconfirmed spottings since before the original 9.7-inch iPad even debuted. Former CEO Steve Jobs once famously said 7-inch tablets would be all but dead on arrival: “7-inch tablets are tweeners: too big to compete with a smartphone and too small to compete with the iPad.”

Nonetheless, the popularity of tablet-like smartphones such as the Samsung Galaxy Note and the 7-inch Kindle Fire tablet seem to indicate times have changed, and there’s a space for a ‘tweener in our lives.

As for the next iPhone (the iPhone 5?), most recent reports are hedging on a fall release date of either September or October. The iPhone is widely expected to have a larger display, possibly 4 inches, and a slimmer profile. It may also feature more noticeable use of Liquidmetal technology.

via Apple Insider

Tags: , , , , , , , ,
Back to top
« OLDER POSTS