Hasta La Gadget!

Running out of battery on your smartphone can be a real stinker, although not such an inconvenience especially if you have a portable battery pack or a battery case for your phone. Unfortunately sometimes these battery cases can get pretty pricey meaning that you have to ask yourself if the extra battery is really worth an additional expense of $20-$90. Well the good news is that Xiaomi is hoping to take the indecision out of the equation by creating a battery pack that will apparently only cost $5 to purchase, meaning you can get one without thinking too much about it. Heck, you could probably even get a few for friends and family and all at the price of a nice meal.

The battery in question is a 5,200mAh battery that will retail for $5. Unfortunately this is only a rumor at this point in time, but considering that Xiaomi released a 10,400mAh battery back in December for only $11, a $5 battery would not be completely out of the question. For the most part most phones will not have a battery larger than 5,200mAh, meaning that you should be able to get a couple of charges with this battery pack. No word on when Xiaomi plans to release this 5,200mAh battery pack, but at $5, we’re pretty sure there are many out there who will definitely be interested in getting their hands on it.

Xiaomi Could Launch 5,200mAh Battery Pack For $5 [Rumor] original content from Ubergizmo.

Turkeys can actually turn red in the face.

(Credit: Valerie Burtchett)

Turkeys are called “seven-faced birds” in Japanese for a reason: Their heads can actually change color — and quite dramatically — shifting from reds to blues to whites.

The mechanism at play is the swelling or contracting of blood vessels when excited or under duress, which in turn alters the spacing between bundles of collagen fibers that are interspersed throughout the blood vessels, which in turn alters the scattering of light waves and ultimately our perception of the color of a turkey’s head.

Bioengineers at UC Berkeley are mimicking this very mechanism to build a biosensor that changes color in the presence of certain chemicals, as well as a companion app that analyzes the color changes to report on which chemicals are present. The idea is to affordably and easily use our smartphones as toxin detectors — which could prove useful in a variety of settings.

The team made sensors that mimic the collagen fibers in turkey skin, which expand or contract to turn different colors when in contact with targeted chemicals. Their app analyzes the resulting bands of color.

(Credit: Seung-Wuk Lee Laboratory)

“In our lab, we study how light … [Read more]

Related Links:
Researchers bypass blood work, favoring lasers to detect malaria
Scratch-and-sniff jeans keep you smellin’ fine
Scientists accidentally record ball lightning in nature for first time
Test driving the Audi ERL tech of tomorrow, today
Pebble Steel declassified: Raising the smartwatch design bar without breaking the mold

It is not surprising that Samsung’s newer devices, like the Samsung Galaxy S4 and the Galaxy Note 3 are on the receiving end of the latest build of Android, but what about Samsung’s older devices? If there was a drawback to not owning a Nexus device is that you never know if and when your OEM decides to update to the latest build of Android, but the good news is that if you own either the Galaxy S3 or the Galaxy Note 2 from back in 2012, you’d be in luck because according the rumors, Samsung is expected to update both handsets to Android 4.4.2 KitKat by the end of March.

Last we heard the rumors claimed that the update could only arrive in April, but thanks to insider info received by the folks at Android Geeks, they claim that the update will arrive by the end of March instead, a good month earlier than expected which we guess is a good thing. The good news about the KitKat update is that it wasn’t designed with high-end and powerful devices in mind, but rather the low-end, meaning that devices that aren’t too old should be able to be updated to it, so it’s really a matter of whether the companies that make the phones want to upgrade them or not. In any case take it with a grain of salt for now and try not to get your hopes up just yet, but check back with us at a later date to see there are any additional details to be had.

Samsung Galaxy S3 And Note 2 Rumored To Receive Android 4.4.2 By End Of March original content from Ubergizmo.

We’ve heard some pretty awesome stories before about how “Find my iPhone/iPad” had been used and actually managed to recover said stolen device, and here’s another one we can add to the list, although this might be a tad more exciting than your typical story as it does involve one of the criminals escaping in a vehicle, although there was no car chase, unfortunately. This took place in New Zealand where a father and son went out to their car after a meal only to find that it had been ransacked and with their iPad stolen (amongst other things). Thankfully they installed Find my iPad and fired up the app on their phone and discovered that the tablet was in a suburb nearby.

They called the cops who accompanied them to the suburb, which according to the dad, was “full of suspicious, sunglass-wearing scoundrels.” One of the criminals managed to escape and actually turned off the tracking feature, but thinking quickly, the dad set the iPad to “lost” mode and sent a message saying, “It’s a small town. We’ve seen you, your car, and your friends. Drop the bag and iPad at Countdown by the Warehouse by 5pm tomorrow and we’ll leave the cops out of it”. Surprisingly they managed to get their iPad back, and the cops managed to nab the thief as well. According to Sgt. Jo Managh, “The fact that technology allows us and affords us to track our own stolen property is fantastic. It helped us locate and recover it back to the victim.”

Father And Son Duo Use “Find My iPad” To Recover Stolen Tablet original content from Ubergizmo.

Transparent screens just aren’t very practical these days — bigger models are frequently expensive and bulky, while smaller heads-up displays tend to have very narrow viewing angles. However, MIT may have solved all those problems at once with its …