Hasta La Gadget!

The changes that are coming to your Facebook News Feed are numerous – but they’re not going to interrupt the way you do business on a daily basis. Instead you’re going to find the features added this week by the Facebook crew to be just that – Features: helpful and (hopefully) rather intuitive to use. For those of you working with the mobile app version of Facebook on either iOS or Android, this change-over will be extra simple: it is, at its core, a bridge between the mobile and desktop experience.

Facebook speaks up on the changes

What you’ll want to see first is Facebook’s designers speaking up about the changes they’ve made themselves. They’re always good at making the case for a positive forward movement, and today’s video is no exception. They’ll speak up here about each of the three main points this change is pushing before we go through them one by one.

Rich Stories

Design choices throughout this new iteration of the News Feed on Facebook show the company to be coming to terms with the idea that images are king. If you post a photo, you’ll find that you’ve got the largest preview showing in your News Feed that Facebook has ever shown before – along with Like, Comment, and Share buttons right below in newly smoothed-out sections. If two people become friends, you’ll see one of them in a tiny icon and the other represented by not just their icon, but their header image as well.

When you see a link being shared, you’ll also see a short list of icons associated with the people who have shared it on Facebook as well. Hovering over one of these icons expands the rest – this element is in place to have people finding new friends with similar interest, of course. Along those same lines you’ll find Upcoming Events appearing next to single dates – Fridays, for example, will be of particular interest.

Finally you’ll see newly revamped posts from pages – this will be great for pages such as SlashGear (http://www.facebook.com/SlashGear) for appearing in your News Feed in a newly sleek setup. As with the rest of the feature updates, this redesign is much more simplistic than it’s been in the past.

Choice of Feeds

With a new pull-down menu that reads “News Feed” until you switch it, you’ll be able to select from any of the following to syphon your feed down to just the items you want: Most Recent, All Friends, Photos, Music, Following, Games, or Groups. This filter will be working in both the desktop (web browser) and mobile user interfaces soon – simple and smooth.

This filter will not be the first time you’ll be seeing a page that only shows photos and videos, but it is the first time we’re seeing Facebook push the “Following” aspect in a completely separate way. You can follow people on Facebook without friending them – this is good for “famous” users and the like – with this filter you’ll be able to see things that they share with the public and nothing else. This is much closer to what we see on Twitter on the daily – not so much the personal friendliness of Facebook.

Mobile Consistency

Both the desktop and the mobile editions of this change-over are going to be pushed almost at the same time. The desktop version will be coming first – with a limited roll-out starting today, the day of the update’s announcement. The mobile version – for iOS and Android at once, mind you – will be out in coming weeks.

The “Mobile Consistency” title refers also to the idea that the design for both user interfaces are now much more close to one another than they’ve ever been before. The biggest addition to the desktop end of things is the left-hand sidebar – get anywhere you need to from any Facebook nook or cranny, no more need to go all the way back to the News Feed every time!

SlashGear 101: this week’s Facebook News Feed redesign is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

We were rather heartbroken when Emblaze Mobile announced the premature death of its First Else project back in June 2010, with the culprit being “critical delays in deliveries;” so when we caught up with ex-CEO Amir Kupervas — who’s now running a startup called UIU — at MWC, we had to see if he had anything to add to the sad story. “It was ambitious for a small Israeli company to come into consumer electronics, build a brand and try to push it,” Kupervas emphasized. “When we started this project it wasn’t about ecosystem and apps and things like that. Eventually the iPhone came with its app store, and then Android came with its app store, and we were left behind.”

Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile

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Tech shows like CES and MWC are great for taking a peek at what’s coming up in the world of consumer electronics, even down to the component level. At the latter show this year, we came across DigitalOptics whose name may not sound familiar, but you may already be using its HDR, red eye removal, face tracking, face beautification and other related technologies on many phones (like Oppo’s) and cameras (sorry, not allowed to name them here). Now, this year the company will also be offering its MEMS (microelectromechanical system) lens actuator which, compared to its traditional voice coil counterpart, is apparently more reliable, longer lasting, more efficient and faster with a 10ms settling time instead of the usual 20 to 25ms.

Filed under: Misc

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If this year’s Mobile World Congress taught us one thing, it’s that no matter how interesting and innovative the gadget makers and software developers of our global community are, it’s the top brands that end up making or breaking the show. Make or break the show for the press, that is. Case in point: our several articles written from our chat with Google’s Mathias Duarte – they ended up easily becoming some of the most popular posts we had this week, and Google didn’t reveal any new products at the convention. In fact, they didn’t have a stand – the chat we had wasn’t even on the map. And yet, there it is – Google stole the show anyway.

Another oddity in our biggest hits of the week was an early tip we received from an intrepid early-entrant to the convention. The Samsung Galaxy Note 8.0 was photographed on a large screen standing proud at the massive Samsung booth that was opened early the next day. Even though Samsung really only “revealed” one new piece of hardware at the show, that single piece of hardware – and subsequent posts about that device’s power – ended up being more popular than many of our other hands-on and up-to-the-minute news posts.

From Brand New to Brand Reinforcement

While this year’s convention in Barcelona was larger than past years – at a new, larger venue with more floor space than ever – it ended up being commented on as more “dry” than shows in past years. That’s a rather subjecting thing to say, of course, but take note of massive releases at Mobile World Congress in the past, and you’ll see the trend. Instead of revealing brand new never-before-seen lines of devices and unique services at the convention, companies now appear to be showing more “here’s another from our already successful line” items – or no new hardware or software at all.

2010: The HTC Desire, Samsung Wave S8500 (with Bada!), Sony Ericsson XPERIA X10, Toshiba TG02 and K01, Acer Liquid e, and a whole lot more. [MWC 2010 tag portal]

2011: NVIDIA shows their Tegra roadmap and the superhero-themed code-names for processors we’re still seeing revealed today. Samsung reveals the Galaxy S II and Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1. LG shows the LG Optimus Pad (aka G-Slate) and the LG Optimus 3D. HTC shows a collection of smartphones and a tablet, as well as the Facebook phones Salsa and ChaCha. Google shows up with Eric Schmidt to speak at a main keynote while the Google Pod exploded unto the collective minds of attendees. [MWC 2011 tag portal]

2012: HTC revealed their HTC One series with the HTC One X, S, and V. ASUS shows a full line of Android-powered beastly tablets. The LG Optimus Vu, Sony XPERIA P, and game-changing Nokia Lumia 808 with 41-megapixel camera were all revealed – see more Nokia action in our 2012 MWC Nokia wrap-up specifically. Samsung seems to have started the trend of revealing their hero devices outside of MWC here with just two reveals at the event, one of them being the Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1. Qualcomm brought the Snapdragon S4 dual-core SoC, Texas Instruments showed the OMAP 5, and oddly, Microsoft showed up to bring on the Windows 8 Consumer Preview. Google again brought Eric Schmidt and another Google Pod. [MWC 2012 tag portal]

This year we saw ASUS show a new version of a concept they’ve released before in the ASUS PadFone Infinity and a re-skinned but perfectly recognizable 7-inch tablet called the FonePad – look like the Nexus 7 to you? (Incase you did not know, they made that too, revealing it in an early iteration back at CES 2012 at the NVIDIA keynote then re-revealing it at Google I/O 2012 as the Nexus 7.)

We also saw Nokia reveal two new smartphones that apply what they’ve learned with the Lumia Windows Phone 8 devices they’ve had on the market for several months to two new sizes: Lumia 720 and Lumia 520. Groups like HTC and Motorola decided against revealing anything new at all, with the HTC One having been revealed one week earlier than the conference and the Motorola RAZR lineup being the center of a rather low-traffic Motorola presence.

The folks at HP decided to take a swipe at creating a real-deal Android tablet (quite likely because of the odd success the HP TouchPad had after it was essentially given away post-WebOS cut) – have a peek at the HP Slate 7 and see the Beats grab hold again.

ZTE revealed a new rather large smartphone in the Grand Memo, here showing for the first time the Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 SoC – but the actual hardware won’t be in stores until the third quarter of this year. LG brought on a relatively impressive selection of devices including the LG Optimus G Pro – but that device was revealed well before the conference started as well. The only things LG actually revealed during the conference were items like the “world’s smallest wireless charger” and a bit of some (admittedly rather impressive) HD wireless transmission technology.

If you’ll have a look at each of the several hands-on posts we’ve got from LG, you’ll see that they’ve really only confirmed that they’re sticking with the design language they wrote with the still-popular LG Optimus G. These devices are going to be winners, but as far as LG revealing their biggest beasts of the year at MWC – that simply didn’t happen. A “true” replacement for the LG Optimus G will come later this year in an LG-run event separate from a press conference, we estimate – you can count on it. The most interested news this week touching LG was, without a doubt, their purchase of WebOS from HP – the repercussions of this have not yet begun to ripple!

Where are the heroes?

So you’ve got Google who, for the past two years, had set up a playland of Android bits and pieces throughout the convention, deciding here to continue to command like a sigil guardian. There was no official Google stand, but they were there – and they did hold one heck of a yearly party. You’ll see more of the Google Head Space action in our LG Optimus G Pro Photo Tour of MWC 2013 – complete with Tinie Tempah, Florence and the Machine, and one massive amount of bright lights and dancing Androids – and a Google Play lounge as well.

Samsung remained a magnificently massive force on the floor, even with but one new device – again, an expansion of a line they’ve been building for a while now. Samsung continued to drop massive amounts of cash on advertising around the city during the week (and beyond, we’re sure), and had what very well may have been the largest hands-on-centric booth at the convention. There’s some contention amongst analysts (and would-be analysts) who cannot decide whether Samsung has “abandoned” the show by only revealing one device or are supporting it more than ever with such a hearty floor presence – with devices, to be fair, not everyone there had seen before.

HTC had for the past several years used Mobile World Congress as their big blast-off point for the whole year. This year they – perhaps rather wisely – decided to have a launch a week before the Spain-based show. This way they were able to capture several days of press on technology news sites for themselves AND offer hands-on looks at the device – the HTC One – to convention-goers too.

The NVIDIA crew did indeed bring some fire to the show with hands-on looks at both a Tegra 4-toting developer tablet and the Phoenix Developer Platform smartphone, made specifically for Tegra 4i. I don’t know if I can drive this point home enough times, but here it goes again: while the Phoenix device was new, the main subject remained the Tegra 4i (and the Tegra 4), with NVIDIA letting the news about everything they had at MWC 2013 – more or less – out well before the convention started so as to keep more press time to themselves – more than they’d get on convention week.

Qualcomm also had a rather large presence on the floor with their vast array of demonstrations of both devices running their hardware and showings of what’s possible in the near future with services such as AllJoyn. Qualcomm’s biggest push this past week was, indeed, for AllJoyn and the “Internet of Everything” as it appears that we’re getting really, really close to the beginning of that connectivity hitting the market. As AllJoyn gets closer to real announcements of hardware manufacturer and developers being on-board, the AllJoyn Alliance begins its switch from just OeM/Developer outreach to public outreach so users know what it’s all about. See our features with both the President of the Qualcomm Innovation Center, Inc. Rob Chandhok and Qualcomm CEO Paul Jacobs as well as our Qualcomm tag portal for the full story.

But again, most announcements made were not for a brand new product or service, but for expansions of services and the strengthening of bonds – with the occasional smartphone or tablet reveal mixed in.

It’s the function of the convention that’s changing

While we’ve heard more than just a few people suggesting that this is the year the tech convention dies, I’d like to suggest a different possibility. The function of the tech convention is morphing. It’s the collection of reasons that hardware companies, software companies, developers, and the press head to these conventions and present themselves that’s changing.

In the past – for a while – a company would come to a large convention such as Mobile World Congress to reveal their newest products. Very recently, it’s become clear to many large companies that they’re able to get more attention – and prolonged attention – if they host their own separate event for each product they launch during the year.

The method of creating separate non-convention events held by manufacturers of hardware (and sometimes software) will soon be the unquestionably dominant expected way of things. They’ll also be the “reveal” point for any truly important product. For the press that’s able to travel to each of these events during the year, the larger conventions will grow less and less important to attend.

For everyone else, conventions like Mobile World Congress will continue to represent an opportunity to get hands-on time with products they might otherwise have to wait to see in stores – and they’ll continue to be great for networking person-to-person as well.

Evolution

For someone like you, the reader, this all means that you’ll get your hands-on looks at brand new devices spread out further throughout the year as opposed to having them all bunched up at CES, CTIA, MWC, and the like. And that’s fine with us!

Spread the announcement love more evenly across the year and we expect we’ll have a more tasty experience. Maintaining interest in the consumer technology universe through releases spread out over the year means a healthier – and less predictable – industry as a whole.

Or so we hope!

Have a peek at our [Mobile World Congress 2013 tag portal] to see everything we saw this year at the convention, and stay tuned to SlashGear for more. We’re expecting big releases from companies like Samsung, Motorola, and Google relatively soon – and that they’ll be breaking out the release love more frequently than restricting themselves to conventions such as these would otherwise allow. Excitement on the horizon!

Technology conventions aren’t dying – they’re evolving is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

This week we’ve had the pleasure of working with the brand new LG Optimus G Pro, taking photos as we covered the technology conference known as Mobile World Congress – of the 2013 variety. This device is one that we’ve now got in our possession still, and we’ll be bringing you a review in full in just a few days time. But meanwhile we’ve taken what LG has been very clear is a proud point for them in this device and put it to the test, right in the thick of thousands and thousands of ravenous mobile lovers in Barcelona, Spain – enjoy.

Before we go any further, you should know that this is just the second in what we’re expecting will be an extended series of Photo Tour posts here on SlashGear. The first was back a few months ago with the HTC Evo 4G LTE, a device whose photo setup was being pushed by its makers at the time. Of important note is the fact that both that device and this one both use Qualcomm Snapdragon processors – from different generations, yes, but both coming with architecture that Qualcomm is proud to speak about as having fabulous photo processing abilities. This time they team with LG, and here we go again on a different corner of the earth – Spain.

The first image you see above was shot with the camera right out of the box, automatic settings from start to finish, the shot taken in the morning of a Barcelona city street. Note that this photo was also the subject of another hands-on post earlier this week, the LG Pocket Photo – a miniature photo printer that requires no ink to use – like magic! Below you’ll see one of our first examples of an HDR photo. The shutter speed on this device, even with HDR, is rather quick – but because of the nature of HDR photos, you’ll still see multiple instances of the same people walking in this MWC 2013 crowd.

Below this you’ll find a gallery of photos taken in the same location as what you see above. With the quick shooting mode on this device, you’re able to collect a massive amount of photos in undeniably quick succession – 20 shots before it has to stop and think about what it’s done. The best way for you to visualize this here in still photos is to click (or tap) one of the photos below and move rapidly through the gallery with your arrow buttons. This will only work on a desktop computer with our gallery system unless you’ve got a wildfire-fast tablet or smartphone – if you do, go for it! The goal here it to see the images as a sort of stop-motion animation. When you do, you’ll see that this beast is a snappy shooter.

Another example of an HDR photo can be seen next – the big LG logo. Here you’ll get an idea of how this device shoots something lit up in a rather mixed-lighting environment. Again you’ll notice the multiple instances of the same faces because of the multi-exposure that happens when you shoot an HDR shot.

A macro photo can be seen next, even though the LG Optimus G Pro isn’t promoted for its macro abilities, you’ll find that this photo does the trick. The subject matter is the G Pro Quick Cover – an official LG-made cover for this device you can read all about over on Android Community. Up close and personal without a special setting looks rather nice and clear with the 13 megapixel camera we’re right here and now using with the LG Optimus G Pro.

Another HDR photo is next, in this case showing an especially dark locale. You’ll find that in this Beer shop in the midst of this week’s convention venue, the blacks have become in many cases a lighter shade of gray. With this you’ll see that there’s not much that you cannot see – that can be especially valuable if you’re doing photography for documentation rather than for the sake of high art. If you want 100% true-to-life colors, you wont want to use HDR with the Optimus G Pro.

Then there’s a two-up photo set here, the first of a Coke can taken without HDR, the next being that same Coke can, this time with HDR switched to “on”. You’ll be able to tell one from the other only with extremely sharp eyes – and by noticing that I’ve accidentally placed my finger into the edge of the HDR photo. The HDR photo looks almost identical to the non-HDR photo (besides the finger and the television picture behind the can, for obvious reasons). The HDR version is ever-so-slightly more intense, especially in the darks across the range – the red in the can, for example, is a bit more deep.

The gallery you’re having a peek at below shows two different examples of what the LG Optimus G Pro captures with its own unique version of a Photo Sphere. If you’ll remember back a few weeks when a new version of Android Jelly Bean was introduced, Google revealed Photo Sphere – a built-in camera mode that creates a panorama photo, but capturing a massive photo that covers all directions, something like what you see when you head to Street View in Google Maps. You’ll also remember that while it works great some times, it – at other times – doesn’t work so perfectly. The same is true of LG’s iteration of this feature, even with a slightly different user interface.

Another gallery rests below, this time showing a set of examples of a regular old panorama. This standard panorama mode has produced marginally better results for us thus far than the sphere-like mode above. It is important here – as it always is with panorama shooting at this time in history – to drag the camera across your scene at an even rate – and not too slow, not too fast either. One of the photos was taken at the Google Head Space party during MWC – as you can see, this club area was rather dark, and didn’t work too well with the panorama mode in the end. The others were taken on a bridge inside the main MWC 2013 event, lighting being a bit more generous.

Next you’ll see another example of a photo taken indoors of a rather large, open area at Mobile World Congress. The first shot was taken without HDR, the second was taken in HDR mode. This example set shows just a bit more clear the difference between the two – generally this is the case when you’ve got the possibility of a much more large range of colors and levels of light and dark.

The nighttime photo you see below is taken from across the street from the Mobile World Congress 2012 venue. This is a place where many MWC-goers stop on the train to transfer trains as it’s a large hub from one place to another – notably the new venue, mind you. The important point here is the levels of light in the darkness – and the idea that this photo was captured by hand. Normally a photo captured here at this time by hand – with most smartphone cameras, that is – would have lots of light streaks due to the shutter being open for enough time to capture the correct amount of light. In this case, LG’s setup allows you to do this much quicker – and the result is obvious.

Finally you’ll find a lovely gallery full of photos taken at one of the more challenging locations a person can take a photo at with results that look more than terrible. It is – once again – the Mobile World Congress 2013 Google party: Google Head Space. There are two rooms here, the first a smaller one made for chilling out and having a drink amongst a DJ mixing tunes under a massive Google Play Music set of orange headphones. The second is a massive room with a stage that held both Tinie Tempah and Florence and the Machine.

Enjoy this if you would, and have a peek at the rest of our Mobile World Congress 2013 content in our lovely MWC 2013 tag portal. You can also have a peek at our LG tag portal for more awesome Optimus action, there finding the review of the LG Optimus G Pro soon, and very soon.

LG Optimus G Pro Photo Tour: Barcelona, MWC 2013 is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.