Gadget Ogling: Magnificent Mics, Intriguing E-Ink, and Compact Computers

I've tried dipping my toes into the world of podcasting with a friend this year. We haven't found it easy to get together to record, but for the two trial runs we've had, I bought a Blue Snowball mic. I'm very pleased with the sound quality, so I'm fairly certain I'd be happy to have Blue's latest microphone, Raspberry. It's a gorgeous, portable little thing.

Microsoft's New Tech Targets Human Creativity

Microsoft made a slew of announcements at its New York City event Wednesday, focusing on the idea of user as creator. Among its new offerings: the Surface Studio, an all-in-one desktop computer with a touchscreen that's 12.5mm thick; the Surface Dial, a new input device that provides haptic feedback; the Surface Book i7; VR headsets for Windows 10; and a revamped Paint app with 3D capability.

Xiaomi Debuts Magical Mi Mix

Xiaomi on Tuesday fired another shot in the shrinking bezel wars, as it announced a smartphone with a front that's more than 90 percent display. The Mi Mix is a 6.4-inch phone that's stylishly crafted by French designer Philippe Starck. It sports a feature set that indicates Xiaomi wants to compete at the high end of the smartphone market. The Mi Mix has a screen-to-body ratio of 91.3 percent

Microsoft Open Sources AI Toolkit

Microsoft has released an updated version of its Microsoft Cognitive Toolkit as an open source Beta. The deep learning system is used to speed advances in areas such as speech and image recognition and search relevance on CPUs and Nvidia GPUs. It also works with Microsoft's Azure GPU offering. The toolkit's developers initially were looking for a tool to speed up and improve their own research.

Apple Brings a Surprising Touch to MacBook Event

Apple on Thursday unveiled two new MacBook Pro laptops, adding a touch more power to the line. Both the new 13-inch and 15-inch models will be offered in silver and space gray. They have a Touch Bar that replaces the row of function keys found on laptops, as well as a Touch ID fingerprint scanner incorporated into the power button. They sport a Force Touch trackpad that's twice the size of the trackpad in previous models.

Sprint will support next-gen texting on Android next year

Ah, RCS: it stands for “Rich Communication Services” and it’s meant to replace SMS as the default way most phones send text and multimedia messages. It’s more powerful than SMS — without that silly 160 character limit and with better support for images and video and group chat. But like SMS, it’s a carrier-based solution, which means that it has to prove that it can overcome historical problems that SMS has had, including crazy pricing models and weird interoperability problems from carrier to carrier.

Google has been working on getting carriers on board since at least February of this year to prove that very thing, and today it finally has something to announce: Sprint is switching over to RCS on its Android devices. Everything that ships next year will support it, and “select LG and Nexus phones” will get software updates.

SPRINT JUMPS ON DEFAULT ANDROID RCS FIRST

Sprint uses Google’s solution for supporting RCS, called Jibe, but it should be able to send and receive messages with any phone because it comports with the “Universal Profile” for messaging put out by the GSMA. That profile should mean that any RCS-compatible phone should be able to send multimedia messages to any other RCS-compatible phone (and fall back to SMS if that fails). But “should” and “will” are two different things, and even though it’s 2016 we still don’t fully know how all this stuff will really shake out just yet.

AT&T supports RCS on a pretty big array of Samsung and LG phones — using their custom-built Messenger apps — but we don’t know if its solutions will work with Android’s default Messenger app yet. T-Mobile announced support for RCS back in July 2015.

On Sprint, RCS will work — blessedly — through the standard Android Messenger app. That’s one of three messaging apps that Google ships on phones (the other two are Allo and Hangouts), and that lack of messaging clarity is a sore point for Android users.

VR eye tracking could shape your relationships with virtual people

Well over a year ago, I tried a Kickstarter-funded virtual reality headset that could track not just your head, but your pupils. It was called Fove, and it’s now open for preorders, with a price of $599 and a shipping date of early 2017. (Kickstarter backers will get their versions toward the end of 2016, and people who preorder in the first week will get a discounted price of $549.) At the VR Developers Conference in San Francisco, I was able to test out the latest version, and it’s come a long way — even if its creators admit that it’s ready for everyday use just yet.

Outside VR, eye tracking in entertainment is usually an aid for aiming and navigating in video games, whether that’s shifting the camera in an action game playing Asteroids with your eyes. Inside VR, it’s most practical for foveated rendering, where a headset saves processing power by rendering the part of a screen you’re directly watching in fine detail and blurring everything else. This could let people make more complex and beautiful VR experiences, or drive down the cost of VR-ready PCs, and multiple companies are working on it.

If you’re an iPhone user, this is your best hope for a VR controller

Google’s virtual reality team has said that they want the Daydream controller, a little remote with an internal motion sensor and a trackpad, to be the “mouse of VR” — a standardized control system that people intuitively comprehend the moment they pick it up. But unlike your average mouse, the Daydream controller still only works with a small subset of devices: new Android phones that support the Daydream standard. iOS users, in particular, are being left in the cold. That’s why mobile headset maker Merge VR is working on its own, more universal take on the controller.

The Merge VR remote is still in an early state; we saw a 3D-printed prototype at the VR Developers Conference in San Francisco. But its creators say they’ve been working on it in some form for a year and a half. The version we saw has a lot more buttons than the Daydream remote — two arrows, two face buttons, one analog stick, two bottom triggers, and a little home button on the end, to be precise. The latest design supposedly gets rid of most of these, bringing it to rough parity with Daydream. It can be paired with the Merge VR headset, seen above, but it can also be used with any other third-party headset or even non-VR device, as long it’s supported by a given game or app. Think of it as a third-party Bluetooth gamepad with an unusual design.

Google DeepMind's next gaming challenge: can AI beat Starcraft II?

DeepMind, the British artificial intelligence company that's now a part of Google, stunned the world back in March when its AlphaGo AI defeated world-champion Go player Lee Se-dol to achieve one of the most sought-after feats in computer science. The ancient Chinese board game of Go was considered the most difficult "perfect information" game for computers to crack, as the dizzying complexity produced by its simple rules requires a highly advanced degree of intuition to play at a serious level, but AlphaGo managed it with a revolutionary system built on neural networks and machine learning.

Now DeepMind is turning its attention to a game that will pose an even bigger challenge: StarCraft II. Blizzard Entertainment's real-time strategy hit is one of the most fiercely competitive games played professionally around the world, and the company is working together with DeepMind to release it as an AI research environment. The announcement is being made at Blizzard’s annual conference, BlizzCon.

"StarCraft is an interesting testing environment for current AI research because it provides a useful bridge to the messiness of the real-world," says Oriol Vinyals, a DeepMind research scientist who was once the top-ranked StarCraft player in Spain. "The skills required for an agent to progress through the environment and play StarCraft well could ultimately transfer to real-world tasks." Creating strong StarCraft AIs would obviously also have major implications for the game itself, with the potential for customized virtual coaches to raise the level of play across the board.

Maybe this keychain will stop me from losing my iPhone 7 headphone adapter?

It’s been almost two months since Apple courageously lead us into its brave, new, headphone-jack-less future with the iPhone 7. And although it included a helpful dongle for connecting the now-defunct adapter, it’s really easy to lose. Trust me. I’ve almost lost mine roughly a dozen times so far.

The fittingly named Uncourage is a keychain with a male headphone plug on it so you can attach your headphone adapter into it when you’re not using it with your phone. So, if you’ve unplugged your headphones to use them with your computer or any other device beside an iPhone 7 — which believe it or not is something people do pretty frequently — you can keep the adapter on your keys when not in use. As someone who encounters this problem almost every day when I get to work, the Uncourage seems to better solution than my current method of just annoyingly leaving it hanging from the end of my phone while I’m at my desk.

Look, it’s time to accept that the headphone jack is gone. Should Apple have killed it? Maybe. Maybe not. But this is the world we live in now, and I’m sick of tearing through my bag, pockets, desk, and general nightstand area to find the adapter every time I want to listen to music on my phone. Should you also share those feelings, the Uncourage is $6, with an extra $2 for shipping if you don’t live in Canada (compared to extra adapters from Apple for $9), and available to order online today.

Apple cuts USB-C adapter prices in response to MacBook Pro complaints

Apple is cutting prices for all of its USB-C adapters following a week of complaints about the MacBook Pro’s inconvenient port situation.

The new MacBook Pro only has USB-C / Thunderbolt 3 ports, so the vast majority of the peripherals people use today will need adapters to work. Someday, all those devices will likely use USB-C, but that day is not today and the Pro users interested in Apple’s new computers have been vocal about the problem.

Apple released a statement explaining the price cut: "We recognize that many users, especially pros, rely on legacy connectors to get work done today and they face a transition. We want to help them move to the latest technology and peripherals, as well as accelerate the growth of this new ecosystem. Through the end of the year, we are reducing prices on all USB-C and Thunderbolt 3 peripherals we sell, as well as the prices on Apple's USB-C adapters and cables.”

It’s a sign that Apple recognizes these dongles are a hassle, and it seems to hope that reducing the prices on them will lessen the pain of this transition. Starting immediately, all of Apple’s USB-C adapters and some of its USB-C cables will have their prices cut by $6 to $20:

• USB-C to traditional USB adapter from $19 to $9
• Thunderbolt 3 to Thunderbolt 2 adapter from $49 to $29
• USB-C to Lightning cable (1 meter) from $25 to $19
• USB-C to Lightning cable (2 meters) from $35 to $29
• Multiport adapter with HDMI, USB, and USB-C from $69 to $49
• Multiport adapter with VGA, USB, and USB-C from $69 to $49

Only USB-C charging cables aren’t being discounted.

Apple is also cutting prices by around 25 percent on all third-party USB-C peripherals that it sells. SanDisk’s USB-C SD card reader is getting a slightly steeper discount, from $49 to $29.

The discounted adapters will be available at Apple’s physical and online stores through the end of the year. It still has no plans to ship adapters in the box with the new MacBook Pro.

“WE WANT TO HELP [PROS] MOVE TO THE LATEST TECHNOLOGY.”

While it’s never been hard to find cheap USB-C adapters — they’ve always been plentiful on Amazon — these price cuts will still be a big help for early buyers of the MacBook Pro. Apple’s cables, unlike those you might order from a random seller online, are going to be well-made and reliable. With their prices cut lower, it now makes sense to buy from Apple instead of a seller you don’t have experience with.

The 13-inch MacBook Pro without a Touch Bar is already on sale, and reviews have been coming out — including our own — critical of Apple’s decision to use USB-C ports exclusively, effectively mandating that buyers use adapters to get anything connected. Cutting adapter prices doesn’t solve the problem, but it does ease the transition, something that Apple ought to be doing since it’s the one pushing people headfirst into this change in the first place.

Perhaps more important to Apple than any individual MacBook Pro review has been the mass of complaints on Twitter and various blogs from the very professionals who are supposed to buy these computers, with people saying that Apple isn’t meeting their needs. On one hand, Apple says that preorders for its new Pros are higher than for any prior MacBook. But on the other, it’s hard to imagine that inconveniences like this — however minor — won’t start to add up.

Samsung says ‘nearly 85 percent' of Note 7s have been returned in US

Samsung says that nearly 85 percent of Note 7s have now been returned in the US, meaning there are around 285,000 phones still unaccounted for.

To get those remaining phones back, Samsung basically plans to annoy customers into returning them. It’s issuing a software update that will make a recall message pop up every time someone “turns on the screen of their Note 7.”

The update will also limit the phone’s battery life to 60 percent. It’s not clear if that’s a preventative measure to reduce the likelihood of the phone catching fire as well, but it’ll certainly make the phone less desirable to hang onto.

It sounds as though the update will be going out across all US carriers. Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile have all confirmed that they’ll be issuing the update.

“We remain focused on collecting the outstanding Galaxy Note 7 phones in the market,” Samsung says in a statement. The update, it says, is meant to “further drive participation” in making returns.

COME ON PEOPLE, RETURN THE EXPLOSIVE PHONES

While nothing about this recall can exactly be called good news for Samsung, it does say that “the majority” of people returning the Note 7 have opted to receive another Samsung phone. Though Samsung, and the carriers, have been offering incentives to make that happen.

Similar software updates have been released around the globe already, including in South Korea, Europe, and Australia, all limiting the Note 7’s battery to 60 percent. In New Zealand, carriers are even preventing the phone from connecting to their wireless networks.

The Note 7 was fully recalled nearly a month ago now, and Samsung has said it will cease production of the device. If you still have one: seriously, go and return it.

OnePlus 3T With 3300mAh Battery Tipped to Launch on November 14

OnePlus 3T With 3300mAh Battery Tipped to Launch on November 14

The upgraded variant of smartphone OnePlus 3, allegedly called OnePlus 3T, has been leaked for past few months. The leaks about the phone have suggested that it will not be a complete revamp but a rather more capable version of OnePlus 3. Even though the smartphone was earlier expected to be launched in December, rumours now suggest that it will be launched on November 14.

The leak comes from a post on Chinese website Weibo that says that OnePlus 3T will be launched on November 14 in London and will come equipped with Snapdragon 821 processor coupled with 6GB of RAM. The post further suggests that the smartphone will be made available in two storage variants of 64GB and 128GB and will also come in a Black colour variant. The battery is also said to have been upgraded to a 3300mAh version, larger than the 3000mAh offering on the OnePlus 3.

The smartphone is expected to sport a 5.5-inch screen with a screen resolution of 1080x1920 pixels just like that on OnePlus 3. OnePlus 3T is tipped to feature the same design as the current flagship of the company and is similarly expected to come with a USB Type-C port.

A recent leak suggested that OnePlus 3T will feature Sony's new IMX398 rear sensor and that it will run on Android 7.0 Nougat.

OnePlus 3T is expected to come with an Optic AMOLED display, as CEO Carl Pei earlier confirmed that OnePlus will continue to use the same display on its devices in the anticipated future. The support for Dash Charge is likely to be tagged along with the upgraded variant of OnePlus 3 as well.

As per earlier rumours, the OnePlus 3T will be priced at $480 (roughly Rs. 32,000). Like every other rumour, we will have to wait for an actual announcement by the company for any confirmation.

Xiaomi Redmi 4, Redmi 4A: Here’s what has changed from Redmi 3 series

Xiaomi Redmi 4, Redmi 4A series has been launched in China. Here's what is new in these smartphones.

Xiaomi Redmi 4, Redmi 4A smartphones, newer versions of the budget Redmi 3 series, have been announced in China. The Redmi 3 phones were first launched in January 2016, and 11 months on, Xiaomi has upgraded them with three new variants named as Redmi 4. Redmi is the budget series of the Chinese technology company and offers solid specifications at an affordable price. In India, Xiaomi launched the Redmi 3S, Redmi 3S Prime smartphones after the Redmi Note 3.

The below chart shows the difference between the Redmi 4 series and the Redmi 3, Redmi 3S/3S Prime.

So what’s changed?  

If you look at the Redmi 3 vs Redmi 4 series, it is pretty much the same in terms of design, camera and battery. However, Xiaomi has upgraded the display for the high-end variant as well as processor, RAM and storage. With the Redmi series, Xiaomi has made the 4100 mAh battery as the USP, offering nearly two days of usage at a budget price which is not often available in this price range.

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