Today SwiftKey 4 has been revealed, integrating the abilities of what we’ve seen very recently with the beta of SwiftKey Flow and a collection of new features we’ve never seen before. What this app represents is a next-level Android-based on-screen keyboard experience, complete with word predictions, a multi-tiered learning interface, and now the ability to “flow” from key to key for typing without ever lifting a finger.
In the first big ad spot for this new version of SwiftKey, you’ll see each of the new amazing features available with the system. Here you’ll see examples of the 60 languages you can have active at once, you’ll see the several different keyboard skins you can use, and you’ll see the fabulous Flow of words being typed with a multi-colored trail of accuracy following your finger. This system continues to use an ever-upgrading award-winning prediction engine unique to SwiftKey to learn the language you use in a unique way.
We’ve also got a rather simple demonstration of flowing in-action on an Android device. At the moment this software is, yes, available only on Android devices, and most certainly does make your Android experience a much more readable one. While we don’t use the prediction engine as much as we could have in the demo, keep an eye on it – it’s smart! SwiftKey’s learning engine connects with Gmail, Facebook, SMS, and more to follow what you type, understanding and archiving it all away so it knows what you’ll type next – you type the same stuff all the time!
Again at this point you should note that there’s only one app, with SwiftKey Flow being a feature of SwifKey 4 – you’ll be downloading SwiftKey 4 soon! SwiftKey 4 offers several different ways to type with SwiftKey Flow – one of them being the three SwiftKey Flow Candidates you get when you hit backspace after you’ve completed a word – three options for alternate words are given. Candidates are also given if you tap any word you’ve completed in the past.
Another feature in SwiftKey Flow typing in SwiftKey 4 is mid-word completion, allowing you to see word predictions and let your finger up from the screen before you’ve completed the word – see what you need, just lift your finger! After you’ve typed (or had predicted) a word in a sentence, you’ll also see next-word predictions based on your language patterns. You can type whole sentences with just predictions based on what you’ve said in the past!
Berry flavor included – tasty!
The style you use to type is also automatically selected in this release. In the past with SwiftKey you were asked to select either “rapid” or “precise” – now all that’s done for you. The 60 languages mentioned above includes a selection of additions made new in this release: Sudanese, Thai, Vietnamese, Albanian, Bosnian, and Javanese. Layouts have also been improved on the keyboard for both Russian and Korean language sets.
You’ll be able to download SwiftKey 4 and SwiftKey Tablet 4 from the Google Play app store inside the SwiftKey section – apps developed by the official SwiftKey team. If you’re a legacy user, you’ll find that SwiftKey will upgrade to SwiftKey 4 for free. If you’re a new user, a promotional price of $1.99 USD has been placed on the app for a limited time – grab it right this minute!
This week we’ve had the opportunity to have a look at the new HTC One with not only a collection of hands-on experiences, but with processor benchmarking as well. Using the standard Quadrant Benchmark test here we’re finding that the Qualcomm Snapdragon 600 quad-core processor is blowing up the charts, destroying the previous high-mark in the basic readout by more than double – those tiny towers on the left are what’s left of the original HTC One X, the ASUS Transformer Prim TF201 (with a Tegra 3 processor), and some lesser beings. Even compared with the Snapdragon S4 Pro quad-core SoC running on the Google Nexus 4 only reaches nearly 5000 as a final score in Quadrant – the HTC One reaches 12,417!
Comparing the individual markers inside the total you’ll find a CPU score of 37,304, Memory at 10,922, and I/O at a staggering 10,566. Those are massive scores, on all accounts. The Nexus 4 comes in at CPU: 10,687, Mem: 7,612, and I/O: 4,340 if you’d like to know. With the HTC One’s combination of four Krait 300 CPU cores at 1.7GHz, an Adreno 320 GPU, and a performance boost well over the Snapdragon S4 Pro, this will very likely be the most impressive smartphone processor-wise you’ll have ever experienced.
We’ve also had a look at Sunspider working with the standard web browser on the device. Here we get a lovely 1195.2ms as a final result, this compared with the HTC One X+ (1215.4ms) and the Samsung Galaxy S III (1082.2ms) shows that web browsing is pretty much the same as it’s been over the past year. Then again – as above – this is not final software and anything could happen before the HTC One is released inside March, 2013. It should also be noted that the speed of the rendering on the HTC One (as well as the others here) were done at different times and under different conditions – so take it all with a bit of straw.
Also have a peek at our timeline below filled with hands-on experiences with the HTC One, complete with details from each of this device’s new features. With the HTC One, the company may well be entering a new age. One in which a single device really, truly is the hero – could it possibly be?
The HTC One is here, a new Android flagship wrapping the innovation we’ve known HTC for up in a sleek all-metal chassis with no compromise on specifications. A 4.7-inch Full HD smartphone packing a 1.7GHz quadcore Snapdragon 600 processor, beautiful crafting, and a slick new version of HTC Sense, it’ll begin its global roll-out in March 2013. There are some quirks on the spec-sheet, though, not least the “UltraPixel” camera with its 4-megapixel-equivalent resolution but which, HTC insists, is far more suited to the sort of everyday photography common among most users, and the “Zoe” system which blends stills and videos. In short, it’s the super-phone HTC is counting on to turn around its fortunes in 2013.
Measuring in at 137.4 x 68.2 x 9.3mm (tapering to 5mm at the edges) and 143g, the HTC One is hewn from a solid block of aluminum and built around a magnesium core: there’s just enough plastic – such as the two narrow injected strips across the back panel, white on the brushed silver One; black on the matte black One – to allow the radios to do their thing. The metal itself is specially created for HTC, and the focus on a quality hand-feel does mean that one feature – wireless charging – isn’t supported. Instead, you’ll have to hook up a regular microUSB charger, to a port which also supports MHL-HDMI output for your TV.
Otherwise, all the boxes are ticked. There’s LTE support (800/1800/2600) as well as HSPA+, WiFi a/b/g/n, Bluetooth 4.0 with aptX, GPS/AGPS/GLONASS, and the usual array of sensors: motion, digital compass, gyroscope, and ambient light detection. The quadcore processor is paired with 2GB of memory and either 32GB or 64GB of internal storage (though, in the UK and Europe for instance, HTC doesn’t have immediate plans to offer the larger-capacity version); no microSD port, however, and the 2,300 mAh battery is non-removeable.
So far so good, but the HTC One X+ had all the specs you’d demand, and still struggled to differentiate itself against Samsung’s Galaxy S III and Apple’s iPhone 5. So, HTC has stepped up its game elsewhere, finessing other elements of the phone experience. There’s Beats Audio with individual amplifiers for headphones and speaker, just as on the 8X, but the HTC One gets front-facing 16 x 9 mm stereo speakers behind its broad, micro-drilled grilles. The drivers use a floating-membrane system, rather than piezo-electric as is more common, and sit in chambers that are roughly twice the size of typical rivals: that means more room to move, and so more volume. The amps use dynamic monitoring, too, constantly adjusting the power so as to maximize the output without straying into distortion: in all, HTC claims, it’s 4x louder than some rival phones.
Audio input gets renewed attention too, with a dual-microphone system that is suited both to regular volumes – such as normal conversation – and high-volume environments like concerts. The high sound pressure microphone automatically switches on in the 70dB to 120dB range, while the high signal-to-noise microphone, the more sensitive of the two, works in the 10dB to 70dB range; both support stereo recording and HDR sound.
In a world where 13-megapixel cameras are becoming the new commonplace, HTC has taken a wildly different tack with the HTC One. In pure equivalence terms, the One tops out at 4-megapixel resolution (half that of 2012′s One X); however, that’s really just a side effect of HTC’s “UltraPixel” technology.
The focus is on individual pixel size, not how many pixels can be packed into an increasingly dense sensor. The latter strategy, HTC points out, results in pixels that struggle to capture sufficient light unless you’re outdoors in perfect conditions; everywhere else you get images that are both high in resolution and noise. The HTC One works differently: its custom sensor uses 2.0 micrometer pixels (4um square) almost double the size of the pixels in an 8-megapixel phone camera, and with more than 313-percent the light-gathering potential of a 13-megapixel sensor. Large pixels mean more data, HTC says, which means you can do more with that data.
There’s also 2-axis optical image stabilization, an f/2.0 aperture lens, HDR audio for the Full HD video recording – which is also supported by the 2.1-megapixel front-facing camera, that has HTC’s favorite 88-degree wide angle lens for more accommodating group shots – and a new ImageChip, HTC’s proprietary camera DSP. That can handle real-time HDR video, for instance, at 60fps in 720p resolution (or 30fps at 1080p).
Simultaneous photo and video capture is used in one of HTC’s key software introductions in the One: Zoe photography. The One will allow you to fire off stills or video separately, as always, but you can also shoot Zoes: a combination of a 3.6s video clip (0.6s kept from just before you hit the record button, then 3s from that point on) in 1080p resolution, and twenty burst stills (five before the button is pressed; fifteen after), again at full resolution. The cluster of frames can be used to do face replacing pulling an expression from one frame into another, to piece together a shot where everyone is smiling, for instance – or object-removal, or you can pull out different stills from the video to keep.
The new gallery, though, is split by default into “Events” – you can split and merge different stills, videos, and Zoes to create your own manually, too – and the Zoe clips are shown looping in the regular view, animated like a Harry Potter newspaper. There’s also a highlight reel topper, a 30s-long, automatically curated summary of the content in that Event; you can choose from six different themes (each with its own filters, musical backing track, and overall mood) and hit remix to instantly juggle the edit. Press the share button, and you can upload an MP4 to YouTube, Facebook, or any other sharing service Android supports.
There’s also Zoe Share, however, HTC’s new social network for publicly showing off Zoe content. As well as the highlight reel, this allows up to ten stills or 3.6s Zoe clips to be uploaded to an online gallery (either over 3G/4G or WiFi) and then, once it’s all uploaded, gives you a shareable URL in the Android notification bar. Viewers see first the 30s video and can then browse through the individual content, and each upload lasts for thirty days before being automatically deleted.
Zoe isn’t the only new aspect of Sense 5; in fact, the new software looks different from the outset. HTC’s consumer research revealed that, while user-customizable home screens have been a factor of Android since the outset, for most users it’s a set-and-forget arrangement, and so the initial default on the One isn’t the traditional desktop at all. Instead, it’s the BlinkFeed, a Flipboard-style endless scrolling list pulling content from online news providers, your own Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Flickr feeds, news from local apps (such as timely Zoe clips from the gallery, if you’re revisiting a location you went to before and used the camera), and, first thing in the morning, an agenda summary for the day ahead.
BlinkFeed isn’t intended to replace standalone apps – such as your Twitter or Facebook client – but act as a gateway to them: tapping a story, which is laid out with dynamically adjusting thumbnail sizes, opens up the relevant app (the defaults at present, though user-customization preferences is likely in a future iteration. By default, BlinkFeed updates every 2hrs when there’s a WiFi connection, or manually – by pulling down the list – over cellular data, though those frequencies can be changed. HTC is working with thousands of service providers to inject geographically appropriate content, which can be selected either by category (e.g. Sport, Technology, Design) or by provider (e.g. CNN, BBC), or turned off altogether so that only local content appears; eventually there’ll be Google+ integration, through it’s not there in version one, and similarly you won’t be able to add your own RSS sources, at least initially.
The regular homescreen – two panes by default – is a left-swipe away, where you can have all the icons and widgets you want. Or, you can default to the all-apps view, with a choice of a 3×3 or 4×5 grid and folder support. Sense 5 pares back the iconography in keeping with the underlying Android 4.1.2 (4.2 is in the pipeline, HTC tells us, and should arrive “pretty quickly” though the only real difference One owners will probably notice is the Quick Settings feature) and does away with most of the unnecessary gradients and 3D effects of previous iterations; there’s also plentiful use of the Roboto font, particularly the condensed version in the BlinkFeed view. A long-press of the capacitive Home button opens Google Now, while a double-tap shows the “recent apps” switcher; there’s also a capacitive Back button and volume keys on the side, with the power/lock key on the top edge.
That power button does hide another secret, however: it looks like black plastic, but it’s actually an IR blaster. HTC uses it with the simply-named TV app, which turns the One into an intelligent universal remote of sorts. Powered by Peel, it shows all of the content available from whatever TV service you have – free-to-air, cable, DirecTV, satellite, Freeview, etc. – with a now-playing view (complete with a progress bar showing how far through each show is) and a full EPG a pivot away. Tap the show, and you can see a summary, as well as automatically switch to that channel; if you favorite a show, the TV app will push a reminder into the BlinkFeed when there’s a new episode coming up.
In addition to live TV, there’s also on-demand support. The One can pull in content from Hulu, Crackle, and HTC Watch (no Netflix at launch, though HTC is “working on it”); by default it opens on the device itself, but if you have an appropriate set-top box, such as HTC’s own MediaLink, you can have the content open on your TV instead.
It all makes for an ambitious device, and the HTC One is shaping up to be a strong performer from HTC – arguably its best handset to-date. HTC says the One’s global launch (see here for individual carriers, with HTC saying it has had “the best ever engagement from operators” on this device) will begin in mid-March, perfectly timed of course to take on Samsung’s Galaxy S 4.
We’ll have much, much more on the HTC One in our hands-on coverage today.
This week the folks at NVIDIA have revealed not just the Tegra 4i mobile processor, but the Phoenix Reference Phone that’ll carry it. With Phoenix, NVIDIA will once again be delivering their own bit of user-ready hardware top to bottom, but unlike Project SHIELD, this device is meant to be used by prospective hardware manufacturers and developers wishing to optimize their games for the processing environment. That said, this device brings on some of the most fabulous high-end specifications yet available to the market – starting with a 5-inch 1080p display.
With the Phoenix reference platform you’ll get an 8mm thin smartphone with 4G LTE connectivity as well as all the rest of the next-generation features the Tegra 4i offers. With the Tegra 4i you’ve got the NVIDIA i500 software-defined radio modem which gives you the 4G LTE you crave – this time integrated on the chip rather than separate. On the Tegra 4 you’ll also find compatibility with the i500, but in that case it’s optional and the end result is a significant amount larger physically.
As the Phoenix works with all of the greatest features the Tegra 4i offers, you’ll also find PRISM 2, DirectTouch, and Chimera – what NVIDIA notes is the world’s first mobile computational photography architecture. PRISM is a technology developed by NIVIDA back with the Tegra 3, improved here with the Tegra 4 family with PRISM 2 for more Pixel Rendering Intensity and Saturation Management than ever before, allowing the Phoenix to reduce backlight power at the same time as it enhances pixel color – the result being longer battery life than you’d otherwise get with the same “visual quality”, as they say.
With DirectTouch you’re getting touch responsiveness that’s made much less reliant on battery power as its offloaded to the Tegra 4i processor. This innovative technology was also introduced with the Tegra 3 – the last big boost here, on the other hand, is all new. With the NVIDIA Tegra 4 and Tegra 4i, and live in effect with the Phoenix, you’ll find NVIDIA’a own Chimera Computational Photography Architecture.
With Chimera you’ve got several new innovations made possible by the many graphic processing cores the Tegra 4i (or the Tegra 4) has available. With the Phoenix phone you’ll be able to use each of the three new abilities revealed thus far by NVIDIA: Persistent Tap-to-Track, HDR Panorama, and Always-On HDR. With the Tegra 4i’s Always-On HDR this phone’s camera always captures multiple exposures instantly, allowing you to see a final product that’s near-real vivid “similar to how the human eye sees the world” as NVIDIA says.
With HDR panoramic photos on the Phoenix you’ll be getting that same amazing instant-HDR processing you get with regular photos, but here in many different long modes. You can capture long photos side-to-side, up-and-down, or diagonally. Finally there’s tap-to-track technology here that allows you to attach a virtual sensor to whatever object you like – human or not – the camera continuing to keep focus as well as exposure levels based on that object.
Can’t wait to check it all out? Have a peek at our NVIDIA Tegra hub to follow SlashGear right up until and through the point at which we get our own hands-on opportunities with this reference platform in the future. It’ll be then that we’ll also find out how you will be able to get your hands on this device as well – good luck on that!
In a move that’s making as clear a statement as can be made without outright saying the final word, Ubuntu has set up a timer with the words “tick, tock, tablet time” attached, lining up perfectly with the HTC event tomorrow morning. If there’s one thing that’s clear in the world of technology news reporting, it’s that there’s no such thing as a coincidence – and never more than in situations such as these. The doors open at 9:15 AM EST for a 10AM start in New York City – Ubuntu’s reveal looks to be set for the event’s start.
We saw a demonstration of the Ubuntu mobile operating system earlier this year at CES 2013 and found it to be interesting, if not titillating enough to want to use on an otherwise Android-based smartphone in the near future. At the moment that operating system is working quite well on the Samsung Galaxy Nexus, a device that otherwise would be running the most basic Google-only stripped-down version of Android. Because both systems have very similar roots, Ubuntu is able to be hacked in quite easily.
You’ll also want to know that Ubuntu already has a bit of software you can run on your Android device easily: Ubuntu for Android. This software (as shown in the demo video below) allows you to work in a familiar Android UI when your on your smartphone and a lovely desktop mode when you’re connected to a larger screen with your HDMI-out (or whatever mirroring method you generally work with.) This would be the perfect jumping-off point for an Ubuntu tablet.
But what’s the point of all this if it’s closed-source? What we’r hoping-against-hope for here is a real-deal open environment the likes of which HTC has been warming up to over the past couple of years. If HTC’s Bootloader Unlock initiative is any indication, we’ll likely see more open and free excellence in the very near future. Sound alright to you?
Also note – HTCGlobal posted a picture earlier today of a set of covered devices, each of them rather small save for one nearest the camera. Is that an Ubuntu tablet we see? Could be! Join us tomorrow when the countdown clock is up right here on SlashGear – we’ll be live from both New York City and London – double coverage for all!
LG hasn’t been shy with the Optimus G Pro, its 5.5-inch 1080p quadcore behemoth, but now we know the oversized Android handset is headed to North America sometime in Q2 2013. Fronted by a 1920 x 1080 Full HD display that’s capable of 50-percent more brightness than rival phones, LG says, the Optimus G Pro also introduces some new software features, including a “Dual Recording” system whereby both the front and rear cameras shoot simultaneously, meaning that whoever is taking the photo also gets included in a 360-degree panorama.
There’s also tracking focus in the camera, something common on standalone shooters but more rare on smartphones, together with a dual-window multitasking system similar to what we’ve seen Samsung do on the Galaxy Note II. Buyers in South Korea will get full QShopping support, for online price comparisons and ordering while you’re browsing physical stores.
As for the rest of the hardware, it’s a 150.2 x 76.1 x 9.4mm phone tipping the scales at 172g, and LG will be offering it in both “indigo black” and “luna white.” There’s LTE, HSPA+ and EVDO inside, along with WiFi (and WiFi Direct support), Bluetooth 4.0, NFC, HDMI SlimPort output, USB 2.0 Host, and a microSD card slot for up to 64GB cards to augment the 32GB of onboard storage.
The 1.7GHz dualcore processor – Qualcomm’s 600 Series Snapdragon – is paired with 2GB of RAM, meanwhile, and runs Android 4.1 Jelly Bean with LG’s usual tweaks. The main camera runs to 13-megapixels, while the front is 2.1-megapixels, and the whole thing is powered by a sizable 3,140 mAh battery.
Those in Korea will be able to snap up the LG Optimus G Pro from Wednesday, February 20, across three carriers simultaneously. Those in North America, Japan, and elsewhere in the world will have to wait for a sequential launch sometime in the second quarter, though our guess would be that LG will have more to share at Mobile World Congress next week.
It’s time for the mother of all casting calls in the next Star Wars movie: Han Solo – and wouldn’t you know it? It appears that none other than Harrison Ford will be reprising the roll. That is, according to Latino Review – a source that (later in this post) you’ll find has been a surprisingly well-informed source in the past! It’s not every day that we get to report on a new Star Wars movie (even though that may change in a few years time) so it’s all excitement from our end!
The details are not known at the moment on what Harrison Ford will be doing as Han Solo at this point. The amount of movies he will be in is not known. What is known is that Harrison Ford has signed a contract to reprise his role as Han Solo in an upcoming Star Wars film – so says El Mayimbe. This writer has made it clear that he only knows that Ford has signed on to do a film or films in the future, all that’s left is for the studio – Disney or Lucasfilm – to do a formal announcement.
Sound like an awesome deal to you? It’s now possible that they’ll either be doing flash-forwards to when Han Solo was the age Ford is now, or that they’ll have the first (or subsequent) films set in an amount of time relative to our actual timeline. There’s also been rumors of break-away films with character-centric storylines, Han Solo being one of the possibilities too. How about some Tron: Legacy action with The Dude’s face being retro-ized with many virtual markers for a much younger Han?
The possibilities are endless in this extremely advanced virtual effects-driven universe of ours. And we know good and well that the Star Wars franchise is no stranger with the VFX universe – a universe right here and now, up close and personal!
And as far as this leak goes from Latino Review: If you’ll have a look back at the post Marvel Reporting from the writer named Da7e on their website, you’ll see that they’ve literally been contacted by Marvel Comics in an attempt to bribe them out of their inside sources in the film industry. And this isn’t the first time they’ve had a major scoop either. The scoop we’re having a look at here was so important that writer El Mayimbe went to Fox News Latino to let it be known. Have a peek at this video to see him make it public:
Be sure to stick with SlashGear in our Star Wars tag hub for all the information leading up to, during, over, and past the release of Star Wars VII. We’ll be pumped up and jumping in every single day with the biggest tips, leaks, and final news releases all the way!
This morning a meteorite has broken up over central Russia in a shockwave blast that lit up the sky and caused damage to the bodies of 500 citizens nearby. Though this news bit may seem like science fiction from the latest blockbuster apocalypse movie, it’s the real deal. According to reports from the region, this former chunk of space debris was right around the size of a sports utility vehicle before it shattered entering the Earth’s atmosphere.
Another much larger mass is passing by the Earth today in what asteroid expert Richard Binzel of MIT notes is almost certainly an unrelated incident. This larger asteroid conglomeration called 2012 DA14 is closer in size to a 13-story-sized building and will be passing by the Earth nearly 24 hours after the Russian mass. 2012 DA14 will pass within 17,000 miles of our planet at right around 2:24 PM EST today, February 15th, 2013.
According to Binzel speaking with USA Today, “we just have the incredible coincidence of this happening just before the asteroid flies by.” The Russian meteorite entered Earth’s atmosphere and bits crash landed across Chelyabinsk. This little beast has been estimated at entering the atmosphere at 33,000 mph and has been captured, believe it or not, in a collection of home-made videos filmed by citizens around the area. Have a peek at a couple here:
Above: Here you’ll hear the shockwave – or multiple shocks, that is – along with the dust left by the material entering the atmosphere.
Above: In this vehicle dash-based camera capture you’ll see the meteor enter the vehicle’s line of view, light up the sky, and continue its journey downward in a lovely arc.
Astronomers will be attempting to recover the bits of matter left by the Russian meteor for study as soon as possible. According to a Rueters report, citizens like Viktor Prokofiev saw the heavenly body enter the atmosphere clearly: “I was driving to work, it was quite dark, but it suddenly became as bright as if it was day. I felt like I was blinded by headlights.”
Above: Security camera footage shows meteor lighting up the sky.
Head of the Emergencies Ministry in Chelyabinsk Yuri Burenko spoke up as well, noting the rarity of this type of situation happening in Russia: “There have never been any cases of meteorites breaking up at such a low level over Russia before.” This same Emergencies Ministry described the event as a “meteor shower in the form of fireballs” but made it clear that “background radiation levels were normal.”
At this very moment final estimates for the amount of damage and injuries are not to be had, but according to Rueters, more than 500 people have been “hurt.” We’ll be checking back throughout the day with updates – stay tuned to SlashGear for more.
UPDATE 10:36 AM CST: The Washington Post now reports that 1,000 people have been injured by the blast.
UPDATE 10:45 AM CST: New home video surfaces (seen below). According to local news group Pravda a partial evacuation was conducted in Chelyabinsk and the police were set to high alert. A “Fortress” plan was enacted and “all vital facilities of the city were taken under additional protection.” It’s also been reported the the area is “currently” being inspected by three aircraft and 20,000 EMERCOM personnel. EMERCOM is Russia’s Ministry for Emergency Situations.
UPDATE 10:50 AM CST: Another video with the first major sonic boom surfaces.
UPDATE 11:00 AM CST: A video has surfaced showing the initial boom with glass breaking in nearby buildings – a must see!
Today a collection of screenshots have been revealed of what appears very much to be a Samsung “smartwatch” with the name GALAXY ALtius attached to it. The images shown here come from a Korean messageboard where the main topic of conversation is how well the watch will fit in with the rest of the market rather than if the mysterious device exists. Given the recent fervor created by the idea of an Apple iWatch, could the Samsung smartwatch, indeed, be far behind?
This series of screen-grabs includes the name GALAXY Altius, one that we’ve heard in a set of rumors very recently attached to what was thought to be the Galaxy S IV – another device rumored to be revealed soon. This device has SKT and SKTelecom on several shots, this indicating that it will be carried with a data plan on that particular South Korean mobile service. Though the software here does appear to have an Android-type look to it, it could just as easily be a basic Java-based interface not unlike what we’re seeing with today’s reveal of the REX series from Samsung.
In the upper right-hand corner of a couple of the shots, you’ll see the “Samsung-GA7″ code name – this indicative of the LCD display. You’ll find that the software version is AltiusOS beta2, this either meaning that the software was built specifically for this device, or that it’s a version of Android (or some Samsung-specific OS) fitted for this device. You’ll also find that 1.5% of the full 235MB of internal storage space is being used up – this makes the case for a rather symbiotic device rather than a stand-along model.
The final screenshot shows a series of tiles that each have their own purpose – the first is a music player, the second a clock, another a connection to your email with a little “2″ in the corner to show how many messages you’ve got left to read. The fact that the last two tiles are off to the right of the display while a bar at the bottom shows a bit of a “slider” situation shows that this device will quite likely have a touchscreen display.
Each shot here is 500 x 500 pixels, this possibly indicating that the display is working with 500 x 500 pixel resolution – we don’t know for certain because the original delivery here isn’t verified as straight from the device. That said, such a resolution is quite possible given the current standards for smart devices – especially Samsung-made Galaxy devices.
It’s also worth noting that the name Samsung Galaxy Altius was sent to SamMobile on the 22nd of January as a Samsung flagship device. Though they’ve separately confirmed the Samsung Galaxy S IV to be working with the name GT-I9500, the connection to the name Altius could just as easily be assigned to the Samsung smartwatch Altius. It’s also possible – however unlikely – that both the Galaxy S IV and the Samsung smartwatch are working with the name Altius as a sort of “family name” for this next generation of smart device releases.
Have a peek at the timeline below covering the full gamut of recent Samsung next-generation tips and suggestions and stay tuned for more action on SlashGear in the Samsung tag portal as well! Click any of the images in the gallery below for larger more close-up versions of the images you see above.
Sony is experimenting with a tablet-style PlayStation controller, codenamed the EyePad, which would allow dynamic 3D motion control and virtual buttons for gaming and other purposes, according to a 2012 patent filing. The application, spotted by Gamechup, for “Input device, system and method,” describes a “panel, tablet or slab-like device” that would build upon the motion-tracking abilities of the PlayStation Move by creating a virtual interaction area above the slate – using a stereoscopic camera array – within which individual finger, hand, and object movements could be incorporated into gameplay.
As Sony describes it, the EyePad would be a broad, flat, slimline tablet with illuminated edges. Those lights would be used in a similar way to the Move’s motion-tracking, with the EyeToy camera accessory currently used with the PlayStation 3 relying on the illumination to pinpoint the EyePad in 3D space. Various physical controls could be dotted around the periphery of the fascia, optionally flanking a central touchpad area.
However, actually making physical contact with the touchpad wouldn’t be necessary. Sony envisages a pair of cameras – similar to those you might find in a smartphone – looking out of the tablet, and by using stereoscopic 3D algorithms, capable of tracking the movement of an object or objects in the space above the EyePad.
That movement could be of a finger, or of a whole hand, or indeed it could be of an object or shape that was held in the space above the EyePad and manipulated. Altogether, then, the peripheral would be able to funnel a vast quantity of data back to the PlayStation over Bluetooth: the absolute position of the EyePad itself in the room; the relative orientation of the EyePad in six axes, gathered from onboard motion sensors; the location of any contact points with the touchpad surface; the appearance/3D shape of objects in the space above the EyePad; and the status of any physical buttons or sticks scattered around the device.
As Sony suggests, the possibilities for utilizing all that data are near-endless. In the EyePets game, for instance, the EyePad could serve as a virtual grooming station: users could hold out the slate for their virtual pet to “jump up” and then, by miming stroking and brushing it, interact more naturally with the on-screen animal. A physical shape – perhaps a toy animal – could als be used to manipulate the on-screen representation; or, the EyePad could allow user avatars to be browsed through and viewed in 3D.
Another idea is a virtual fishtank, or a finger-controlled 3D roller-coaster, or indeed navigating through a point-and-click adventure game. A number of stereoscopic camera pairs, meanwhile, could gather stacked 3D data, allowing the EyePad to track different levels of objects and contact points.
Of course, just because Sony files a patent, it doesn’t mean that the company actually plans to develop the EyePad controller for commercial use. Still, with Microsoft having great success with Kinect – and supposedly planning to emphasize the motion-sensor even more with the Xbox 720 – while Nintendo continues to experiment with ambitious tablet-style motion controller, it wouldn’t surprise us to hear that Sony had similar 3D plans of its own for the upcoming PlayStation 4.
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