Category: News

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It Can Wait Expands Message From Texting to Smartphone Use

I’m a big fan of the It Can Wait campaign, which works to reduce the number of traffic injuries and fatalities by educating people on the dangers of distracted driving.

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One key problem with their messaging however, has been the focus on “texting while driving”. As we now live most of our lives out of our phones. For many of us, the phrase “distracted driving” has been far more important, as there seems to be little functional difference in preoccupying a driver with a text over a Tweet, Facebook message, IM, email, or any other notification and interaction.

Happily It Can Wait is now moving their conversation to smartphone use of any kind. It’s a vitally important conversation for folks to have, as we move towards a world with more data enabled services, and we’re still a ways off from self-driving cars being the norm…

You can hit the video and press release below, or head to ItCanWait.com for more info and studies on distracted driving.

Continue reading “It Can Wait Expands Message From Texting to Smartphone Use”

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Asus Launching ZenFone 2 in North America

Asus is relative new to the smartphone market. They’re a brand really well known for their tablets and laptops. While their Zenfone 2 has been available in select countries for a couple months now, Asus took the stage in New York City to announce their plans to sell the phone here in the United States.

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Zenfone 2 marks some interesting hardware choices. Instead of turnign to Qualcomm or Mediatek for the processor, Asus is using Intel’s Atom, a chipset more commonly found in Windows tablets. The higher end ZenFone will also be the first smartphone to sport 4GB of RAM.

design-ergonomicThe rest of the hardware is nipping at the heels of the flagship market, with a 5.5″ 1080p display, a 13MP camera utilizing pixel merging and software stabilization, a 3000mAh battery, and MicroSD card storage expansion. Fast charging will provide a 60% charge in up to 40 minutes.

accessory-overview-zenflashIn terms of design, ZenFone 2 looks like the love child of HTC’s rounded edges and LG’s backplate mounted volume controls.

Asus has already built up a small ecosystem of accessories inculding a flip case, an LED flash which plugs into the headset jack, a Xenon flash which approaches proper camera flashes, a 10,050mAh small form factor powerbank and a pair of high quality ear buds.

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pixelmaster-lensWhat’s most interesting about this offering however is the price.

Asus is looking to compete by busting up flagship pricing. The faster Intel Quad-core paired with 4GB of RAM and 64GB of storage will sell for $299, while the slower Quad-core, 2GB of RAM and 16GB of storage will sell for $199. Really exciting price points to bring what looks like capable hardware to the North American market.

Lastly, also interesting, Asus looks to be side-stepping carrier partnerships. No word on if ZenFone will be sold in carrier stores, but starting tomorrow, the phone will be available directly to consumers via online retailers Amazon, NewEgg, and B&H.

Asus ZenFone 2 on Amazon.

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Samsung Gear VR Innovator Edition for Galaxy S6 Available Online for $199

samsung gear vr innovator edition galaxy s6VR tech is heating up and we’re getting more options for consumers.

If you’re a Galaxy S6 owner, you can now pick up a Gear VR headset built on Oculus Rift tech. Utilizing the screen and processing power of your S6, you can strap this puppy to your face to experience immersive gaming and video.

Samsung is also touting their Milk VR service which streams 360 degree video, similar to Youtube’s roll out of their 360 video service.

The Innovator Edition is available online now for $199 and thankfully works with both the S6 and the S6 Edge (unlike the Note 4 version of the Gear VR). The headset should be available to purchase in store at Best Buy later this month.

Gear Innovator Edition for Galaxy S6 (Samsung)

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Glucose Monitoring App Coming to Android Wear for Diabetics Using Dexcom Monitors

xdrip nightwatch glucose monitor app android wearThis is a perfect example of where we can start pushing the boundaries on consumer wearable technology.

Dexcom makes medical equipment to help manage diabetes. Patients were a small sensor, plugged into their skin, which continuously monitors their blood sugar. This is a far more convenient and accurate way to get a sense of trends and to manage health than solely relying on individual blood tests on strips.

Of course there’s always room for improvement. Dexcom’s CGM (Continuous Glucose Monitor) sends a Bluetooth signal to a little standalone unit, which is another little gadget to keep track of and charge. What if we could send that monitoring info to consumer devices like phones or watches to get near real-time data?

Dexcom has brought an official app to the Apple Watch which displays info and graphs, but using the same general connection protocols, a developer is working on the same connection for Android Wear watches. Unofficial Apps xDrip and NightWatch pull the info from the Dexcom unit and send it to an Android Wear watch.

Once connected, users can get updates every five minutes with their blood sugar and can see daily trends displayed as a graph.

You can check out the XDrip and NightWatch projects via Stephen Black’s page on GitHub for more info.

 

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LG G4 Trial Giveaway Program Live in the USA! Trial Submissions End May 7th!

LG G4 trial programLG wants to get their new flagship into smartphone fans hands! Sure we tech bloggers like to share our thoughts, but never underestimate the value of real users getting hands on and showing their experiences.

If you think you’ve got the chops to go hands on with the new G4, and posts your thoughts to social media channels, you can submit an entry via their trial page. Submissions will be accepted through May 7th at 11:59pm Eastern Time. Two Hundred and Seventy Six people will be selected so get cracking!

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Samsung Announces New Faster MicroSD Memory Cards Which Galaxy S6 Users Can’t Use

ProEvo_Main_1Samsung is releasing newer, faster SD and MicroSD cards.

The EVO+ line of cards will feature 80MB/s Read and 20MB/s write speeds. There’s definitely more of a focus on listening to music and watching high resolution video from these cards. EVO+ will arrive in 64GB and 128GB flavors.

Their new Pro line will step up to 95MB/s read and write speeds for the full sized SD card and 90MB/s read and write speeds for the MicroSD card in 32GB and 64GB flavors. These are cards focused on content creation, especially for folks shooting UHD video like that found on the NX1 or Galaxy Note 4.

Samsung is a premier manufacturer of flash memory products, we’ve reviewed their EVO Solid State computer drives, so it’s just a bit of a shame that Galaxy S6 owners wont be able to utilize these faster cards. No pricing or availability yet on these new EVO cards, but they are expected later this month.

If you’re curious how much of a speed advantage you might find moving to a faster memory card, we did perform a test of a 90MB/s Transcend card, which you can watch below.

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Adobe Lightroom Mobile – RAW Photo Editing Comes to Android

adobe lightroom mobile android raw photo editingAdobe has released a killer update for their Lightroom Mobile app for Android.

Not only does the app bring compatibility for tablets and MicroSD card storage, for folks looking to produce the highest quality content possible while on the go, you can now edit RAW photos.

It’s like the difference between editing the raw audio off of a CD or working from a compressed MP3. Most people use JPG files, which are squished for easier sharing. RAW photos retain all of the detail and information from the camera sensor, before software turns them into the visual equivalent of MP3’s.

This update will require the new Google Camera API which allows for RAW capture. This API was released with Lollipop, but of course not all manufacturers are using it. You can test your phone with this Manual Camera Compatibility app to see if RAW capture will work. The Galaxy S6 for example supports manual photo features, but does not support saving RAW images.

This is an excellent step for mobile content creation on the Adobe platform. You can grab Lightroom Mobile on Google Play.

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Build 2015: Android and iOS Apps Coming to Windows 10 Phones

***Update for tech clarification at the end***

The Windows Phone platform has often been criticized for a lack of apps. Windows 10 will bring new tools for developers to create universal apps that run on Phones, Tablets, Laptops, Hybrids, Desktops, and the XBox.

Yet it can still be difficult courting developers to stray from the iOS and Android duopoly. There have been rumors swirling that Microsoft would be allowing ported Android apps to run on Windows 10, and at the Build Developer conference Microsoft took it one step further.

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New tools will be provided to easily transition Java and C++ apps from Android, and developers will also be able to transition Objective C apps from iOS to Windows Phone.

Developers typically focus on iOS first to bring new services to market thanks to the consistency of Apple’s ecosystem. Conceivably, those same developers can invest far fewer resources to bring that service to EVERY device running Windows 10 than moving that same app to Android.

microsoft king candy crush apps software gamesKing.com was given as an example of one of the first companies to utilize these new tools, porting Candy Crush from iOS to Windows Phone in a matter of hours.

There’s now even less of a barrier for developers to bring services to the Windows ecosystem, especially as Microsoft expects Windows 10 to be on over one billion devices within the first year of release, handily outpacing the number of gadgets running iOS 8 or Android 5.0.

***Update***

For those wondering, Microsoft will be adding a subsystem to Windows 10 that can run Android Open Source Project software. The APK’s which install Android apps will be installed directly, in a secure partition, though if apps call certain API’s or depend on services Google wont allow on Windows, then obviously the app wont work. Microsoft will be providing tools to easily port certain actions, say an App calls for Google Now, it can be pointed over to look for Cortana instead.

For iOS apps, Microsoft is providing software for devs to completely recompile apps written in Objective C. iPhone apps will not be running in Windows Phone in the same way Android apps will run in a little emulation pocket.

While we’ll have to wait for Windows 10 on more devices to see the fruits of Android APK support, Microsoft has already released the iOS re-compiler for free, which hopefully means we’ll start seeing iOS services show up in the Windows store soon.

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