Tech Roundup: Android Marshmallow, Dell Chromebook 13 & More
[A recurring feature on the latest in Science & Technology.]
Google Alphabet's new project - cover your roofs with solar panels:
Now that Google has effectively become one of the many things under Alphabet, so that you don't have to work yourself up over the fact that why a search engine company is working on a self-driving car or a contact lens that measures glucose levels of diabetic patients directly from tear fluids, while giving it some breathing space to expand and grow (and give more transparency into its workings), the web-giant, sorry, electronics conglomerate is slowly unveiling its next plans. Called Project Sunroof and currently rolled out to three cities in the United States (San Francisco Bay Area, Fresno and Boston), the new environment-friendly initiative helps people looking at solar-proofing their homes get the "best solar plan" by using its mapping technology to compute the amount of sunlight falling on their roofs per year and estimate the amount in savings to their electricity bills in the course of the switch.
Dell's new Chromebook finally sounds like one worth buying?
Chromebooks have been always a niche product, considered as a laptop for noobs (owing to its zero maintenance), before gaining broader acceptance as a budget computer for both personal and enterprise use. I, for one, have been wanting to purchase a Chromebook for quite a while. But they were always found to be lacking in one aspect or the other, compromised either in terms of performance or battery life or a poor display, and if not, either clunkily designed, or so beautiful but with a bank-breaking price tag (hello, Pixel!). And then it starts - who would want to pay 1000 dollars for a web browser when you can install Chrome for free on Windows (or Mac)? Dell's new enterprise-focused Chromebook 13, however, treads a middle ground, and is not only well-designed, but also offers a slew of customisations (processor, storage, RAM, touchscreen) that pegs the laptop's price anywhere between $399 to $899. It will be available in the U.S. starting September 17.
Nexus 5 2015 and the return of physical button in Android:
Google has been rumoured to be partnering with Huawei and LG (again) for its new flagship Nexus smartphones, but an alleged leak of LG's Nexus 5 2015 edition has left me wondering about one thing - the curious placement of fingerprint scanner at the back below the camera module. It's not necessarily bad (considering the fact that Android M has native support for fingerprint recognition), but it's strange to see the physical button making a comeback in Android - OnePlus 2 has it on the front a la Samsung - especially after Google made a conscious design choice to get rid of them (the home, back and recent apps have been on-screen buttons since Android 4.X Ice Cream Sandwich). An on-screen fingerprint reader would be better, I suppose!
Samsung launches Galaxy S6 edge+ and Note 5:
In addition to making Android operating system a household name, Samsung turned heads when it announced Galaxy Note back in 2011. It was a smartphone as much as a mini-tablet, a category now so mainstream that even Apple joined the bandwagon last Fall at the cost of cannibalising its iPad sales. Four years later, Samsung is still the undisputed king amongst its Android kin, although it has begun to feel the pinch, especially in the aftermath of bigger iPhones and the rising popularity of affordable 'flagship killers' from Motorola, Lenovo, OnePlus, Huawei and Xiaomi. The Galaxy S6 and S6 edge, better designed and a little light on the software front, no doubt stemmed from this need to differentiate and give the South Korean chaebol an edge against its peers.
Whether it has worked or not is another matter altogether. But that hasn't deterred Samsung one bit from announcing its latest premium offerings Galaxy S6 edge+ and Note 5 at the Unpacked event held last week. The latter, I feel, is in someways a step down - there's no user-removable battery, no expandable storage, no waterproofing and surprisingly even the battery capacity is down from 3,220 mAh (on Note 4) to 3,000 mAh. Both the devices however will come with Samsung Pay, the new contactless mobile payments service, that relies on a new technology called magnetic secure transmission (MST) in addition to NFC, thus enabling it to work with standard credit card machines as well. Apple Pay beware!
Apple is into self-driving cars:
Given how that close we are to an iPhone reveal, tech grapevine swirled earlier this month as to how Apple is in talks to become a mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) in the US and Europe, like Google's own Project Fi revealed back in April, outlining its ongoing plans to establish itself as a wireless carrier, but relying on existing telephone network purveyors for its infrastructure. What it effectively means is you will be paying Apple (or Google) directly for calls, texts and data, while your phones take care of automatically switching between carriers (and even Wi-Fi networks) to get the best service in return. This is all good, only that Apple has rubbished the report in a statement to CNBC. Well, if not now, later. Remember the Apple SIM that comes with the latest iPads?
Even more a topic of interest has been its plans for an electric car. First came the Financial Times (paywall) article that revealed Apple's hiring of automobile experts for a possible car research lab, followed by Wall Street Journal (paywall) that detailed its secret electric car efforts dubbed Project Titan. Reuters too joined in, adding the vehicle would be "self-driven". Now months later, The Guardian has laid all the rumours to rest. According to the report, in May, engineers from Apple's secretive Special Project group met with officials from GoMentum Station, a 2,100-acre former naval base near San Francisco that is being turned into a high-security testing ground for autonomous vehicles... to get an understanding of timing and availability for the space, and how we would need to coordinate around other parties who would be using [it]. In other words, Apple is indeed working on a self-driving electric car.
In other news:
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| The new boot animation in Android Marshmallow/Android 6.0 |
Now that Google has effectively become one of the many things under Alphabet, so that you don't have to work yourself up over the fact that why a search engine company is working on a self-driving car or a contact lens that measures glucose levels of diabetic patients directly from tear fluids, while giving it some breathing space to expand and grow (and give more transparency into its workings), the web-giant, sorry, electronics conglomerate is slowly unveiling its next plans. Called Project Sunroof and currently rolled out to three cities in the United States (San Francisco Bay Area, Fresno and Boston), the new environment-friendly initiative helps people looking at solar-proofing their homes get the "best solar plan" by using its mapping technology to compute the amount of sunlight falling on their roofs per year and estimate the amount in savings to their electricity bills in the course of the switch.
Dell's new Chromebook finally sounds like one worth buying?
Chromebooks have been always a niche product, considered as a laptop for noobs (owing to its zero maintenance), before gaining broader acceptance as a budget computer for both personal and enterprise use. I, for one, have been wanting to purchase a Chromebook for quite a while. But they were always found to be lacking in one aspect or the other, compromised either in terms of performance or battery life or a poor display, and if not, either clunkily designed, or so beautiful but with a bank-breaking price tag (hello, Pixel!). And then it starts - who would want to pay 1000 dollars for a web browser when you can install Chrome for free on Windows (or Mac)? Dell's new enterprise-focused Chromebook 13, however, treads a middle ground, and is not only well-designed, but also offers a slew of customisations (processor, storage, RAM, touchscreen) that pegs the laptop's price anywhere between $399 to $899. It will be available in the U.S. starting September 17.
Nexus 5 2015 and the return of physical button in Android:
Google has been rumoured to be partnering with Huawei and LG (again) for its new flagship Nexus smartphones, but an alleged leak of LG's Nexus 5 2015 edition has left me wondering about one thing - the curious placement of fingerprint scanner at the back below the camera module. It's not necessarily bad (considering the fact that Android M has native support for fingerprint recognition), but it's strange to see the physical button making a comeback in Android - OnePlus 2 has it on the front a la Samsung - especially after Google made a conscious design choice to get rid of them (the home, back and recent apps have been on-screen buttons since Android 4.X Ice Cream Sandwich). An on-screen fingerprint reader would be better, I suppose!
Samsung launches Galaxy S6 edge+ and Note 5:
In addition to making Android operating system a household name, Samsung turned heads when it announced Galaxy Note back in 2011. It was a smartphone as much as a mini-tablet, a category now so mainstream that even Apple joined the bandwagon last Fall at the cost of cannibalising its iPad sales. Four years later, Samsung is still the undisputed king amongst its Android kin, although it has begun to feel the pinch, especially in the aftermath of bigger iPhones and the rising popularity of affordable 'flagship killers' from Motorola, Lenovo, OnePlus, Huawei and Xiaomi. The Galaxy S6 and S6 edge, better designed and a little light on the software front, no doubt stemmed from this need to differentiate and give the South Korean chaebol an edge against its peers.
Whether it has worked or not is another matter altogether. But that hasn't deterred Samsung one bit from announcing its latest premium offerings Galaxy S6 edge+ and Note 5 at the Unpacked event held last week. The latter, I feel, is in someways a step down - there's no user-removable battery, no expandable storage, no waterproofing and surprisingly even the battery capacity is down from 3,220 mAh (on Note 4) to 3,000 mAh. Both the devices however will come with Samsung Pay, the new contactless mobile payments service, that relies on a new technology called magnetic secure transmission (MST) in addition to NFC, thus enabling it to work with standard credit card machines as well. Apple Pay beware!
Apple is into self-driving cars:
Given how that close we are to an iPhone reveal, tech grapevine swirled earlier this month as to how Apple is in talks to become a mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) in the US and Europe, like Google's own Project Fi revealed back in April, outlining its ongoing plans to establish itself as a wireless carrier, but relying on existing telephone network purveyors for its infrastructure. What it effectively means is you will be paying Apple (or Google) directly for calls, texts and data, while your phones take care of automatically switching between carriers (and even Wi-Fi networks) to get the best service in return. This is all good, only that Apple has rubbished the report in a statement to CNBC. Well, if not now, later. Remember the Apple SIM that comes with the latest iPads?
Even more a topic of interest has been its plans for an electric car. First came the Financial Times (paywall) article that revealed Apple's hiring of automobile experts for a possible car research lab, followed by Wall Street Journal (paywall) that detailed its secret electric car efforts dubbed Project Titan. Reuters too joined in, adding the vehicle would be "self-driven". Now months later, The Guardian has laid all the rumours to rest. According to the report, in May, engineers from Apple's secretive Special Project group met with officials from GoMentum Station, a 2,100-acre former naval base near San Francisco that is being turned into a high-security testing ground for autonomous vehicles... to get an understanding of timing and availability for the space, and how we would need to coordinate around other parties who would be using [it]. In other words, Apple is indeed working on a self-driving electric car.
In other news:
- Google releases final preview of its upcoming mobile OS Android M; the 'M' in Android M officially called Marshmallow and it's version Android 6.0.
- Google Developers website receives a fresh coat of Material Design.
- Facebook enters live-streaming to take on Twitter's Periscope; available only in Mentions app.
- Apple now lets users restore deleted files on iCloud.
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