Hasta La Gadget!

Apple’s iPhone release schedule has been predictable in the past when it comes to number of devices: each year, a single new smartphone. For 2013, that’s changed with the iPhone 5c, as for the first time Apple has eschewed simply bumping down the outgoing iPhone as a lower cost option, and has instead released hardware specifically designed to be more affordable. The iPhone 5c is the result of this rare change in Apple’s game plan, and it makes a good argument for being flexible with product lines.

• 4-inch, 1136×640, 326ppi display
• 16 or 32GB storage
• A6 processor (said to be 1.3GHz dual-core w/ 1GB RAM)
• 8MP iSight camera (rear), 1.2MP FaceTime HD camera (front)
• Dualband 802.11n Wi-Fi
• Up to 13-band LTE support
• Bluetooth 4.0
• MSRP: 16GB for $99 on contract/$549 unlocked; 32GB for $199 on contract/$649 unlocked
• Product info page

Pros:

• Essentially the same phone inside as the iPhone 5
• Lots more LTE band support
• Improved battery life vs. iPhone 5
• New design is easy on the eyes and the hand

Cons:

• Still quite pricey outright
• Could miss out on some apps or app features designed for 64-bit iPhone 5s

Arguably the iPhone 5c’s most noteworthy feature is its new design. Apple went plastic, or should I say went back to plastic, after switching to metal and glass with the iPhone 4. To date, Apple’s choice of materials has been one of its prime differentiating factors, at least from an aesthetics point of view, vs. the Android crop of competitors. So does dipping back into a polycarbonate shell threaten the image Apple has tried so hard to cultivate?

The answer is a resounding ‘No.’ Apple notes that the iPhone 5c is actually polycarbonate because it wanted to get the colors just right, and doing so in metal just wasn’t feasible. Further, it points out that there’s a steel frame (which doubles as an antenna) girding that polycarbonate shell, which results in a phone that feels sturdy in the hand, without the flex or perceived fragility of other plastic device designs.

In fact the iPhone 5c is slightly heavier than the iPhone 5s, weighing in at 132g vs. 112g for the all-metal flagship iPhone. The added weight gives it a nice heft; it’s just a shade lighter than the iPhone 4S, which lends it a feeling of substance. The material of the case, while glossy and smooth, doesn’t feel prone to slipping from your grip, and the rounded edges and corners are also a very nice fit for the contours of your hand.

Some interesting details I noticed about the iPhone 5c vs. the 5 and 5s: its lock/power button appears to be the same as the volume buttons, which could help Apple save on manufacturing costs, and there’s a simple, four-hole single speaker grill on the bottom, whereas the metal designs have two grills, each with two rows of holes. It doesn’t seem to make much different to speaker performance, however.

If you’re familiar with Apple’s iPhone Retina displays, than the screen on the 5c needs no introduction. If the 5c is your first iPhone, or your first Retina-capable iPhone, than the screen will truly impress. Other manufacturers have exceeded Apple’s PPI count with screens of their own, but the 4-inch Retina shows no signs of age despite now being year-old technology.

Apple’s iPhone display makes text ultra crisp and clear, but it also offers the best and most consistent color and tone balance of any mobile screen in my experience. And the Retina screen gains additional new life thanks to iOS 7, the mobile OS overhaul that Apple is launching alongside the iPhone 5c and 5s. Both ship with iOS 7, and one of its key improvements is that has a new, lightweight system font that shows off the Retina’s text rendering prowess extremely well.

We’re treating iOS 7 to its own separate review, but it’s worth highlighting some of the software features that really pop on the iPhone 5c. First, Apple has decided to ship each iPhone 5c with a color-matched lock and homescreen wallpaper pre-installed and activated on every new device, which has a small but significant effect on consumer experience. It gives the 5c a subtle, ‘your own phone, right out of the box’ type of feel, which is ideal for a device that seems to be aimed at a very broad group of users who might not be instantly comfortable or familiar with customization options.

Another big improvement for all iPhones with the iOS 7 update is the new Control Center feature, which provides quick access to Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Do Not Disturb and other toggles, as well as apps including the Calculator, flashlight activation and AirPlay/AirDrop controls. It’s a much smarter, much easier to get at version of the app tray Apple previously used to provide access to some of these features, including music playback controls. The app tray was one of the least understood features of iOS among users in my experience, co Control Center, combined with the new multitasking windows accessible via double-tapping the Home button, should go a long way to helping new users get accustomed to Apple’s mobile software.

The iPhone 5c inherits the capable camera of its predecessor, the iPhone 5s. That 8 megapixel shooter remains one of the best smartphone cameras in terms of practical use, if not on paper, that’s currently available on a mobile device. That means it’s packing a backside illumination sensor, a f/2.4 aperture and a hybrid IR filter. But software is where the 5c gets some serious camera improvements.

The camera app in iOS 7 offers features like built-in filters, which can be applied during or after photo capture, and there’s improved face detection, which can now capture up to 10 individual faces even during 1080p video recording, as well as 3x zoom during video shooting and improved video stabilization. As you can see from the video demo segment, the HD video quality is very nice (the vertical pan is somewhat shaky though, as is to be expected shooting freehand).

New in the iPhone 5c is the FaceTime camera, which improves over the iPhone 5′s front-facing shooter with larger individual pixels and better backside illumination, all of which adds up to better low-light capture. The effect is immediate when you’re using FaceTime or other video chat services, since colors are better-rendered and there’s less grain on the image. Apple is focusing on exactly the right areas with the FaceTime camera, since low-light is the most common use case with the front camera when video chatting indoors or capturing party selfies. Frontbacks should come out much better with an iPhone 5c.

As you might expect, the iPhone 5c performs a lot like the iPhone 5, which is to say it’s lag-free, fast and responsive. You won’t want for processor power with current generation games and apps, and at least for now, the difference between 32-bit and 64-bit apps (which are new with the iPhone 5s and its A7 system-on-a-chip) won’t be felt by any consumers. That said, it’s conceivable that as devs start to build experiences designed for 64-bit mobile computing, the 5c could feel the pinch with some edge case software, probably of the advanced creative variety.

The iPhone 5c performs a lot like the iPhone 5, which is to say it’s lag-free, fast and responsive.

One big area where Apple has improved the iPhone 5c is with the range of its wireless connectivity options. Both the iPhone 5c and 5s can support up to 13 LTE bands, which makes them much more likely to support LTE on multiple networks. Right now, carriers don’t have very many LTE roaming agreements in place, so when travelling internationally you’ll probably still get bumped down to 3G, but as those agreements fall into place that’ll change, with more global LTE coverage available on both devices.

As a special treat, if you’re purchasing an unlocked device, it should be LTE compatible with other networks out of the box. For instance, I purchased an EE 4G LTE data-only SIM for the UK in my U.S.-model iPhone 5c review unit, and it instantly connected to the EE LTE network. This is great news for both travellers and people who’d like more options for reselling their device or moving country-to-country down the road.

Here’s something I think many of you will be happy to hear: In my experience, the iPhone 5c got better battery life than the iPhone 5 during general usage. On average, I got around a day and a half of standby, with between 6 and 15 hours of actual usage depending on my activity mix (more HD video streaming towards the lower end).

On my brand new iPhone 5 hardware, I’d been getting less than that under similar conditions. Apple is advertising slight gains to battery performance with the iPhone 5c vs. the iPhone 5, but in terms of lived experience the 5c definitely seems like a step up, and the improvements to the standby power management algorithm in iOS 7 really seem to be cutting back on idle power draw.

Apple’s iPhone 5c sparked a lot of debate prior to its launch, prompting observes to wonder what it might mean for Apple to build a “cheap” iPhone or target a new market segment. What Apple has delivered is far from a “cheap” device, in terms of both quality of experience and hardware, and in terms of price. The 5c is probably more broadly appealing than the iPhone 5s just by virtue of its lower cost of entry, but it’s still premium hardware and is likely better thought of as an analogue to the iPhone 4S relative to the iPhone 5 back when that device launched.

the 5c also has a focus on color, personality and a sort of ‘lightness’ of design.

But the 5c also has a focus on color, personality and a sort of ‘lightness’ of design. The phone feels ‘young’ overall, and it’s likely that’s the kind of consumer that’s going to enjoy this device; the youth market and those just getting their first smartphone or moving up from their first budget Android device to the big leagues.

The iPhone 5c is an improvement, even if slight, to the smartphone I’d still call the best available if Apple hadn’t also released the iPhone 5s. I’ll say that with the caveat that I believe the iPhone is still the best smartphone available for the largest number of smartphone buyers, in terms of both usability and design, even with the dramatic changes wrought by iOS 7. Given the choice, I’d choose an iPhone 5c over an iPhone 5, based on design alone, and ignoring its other benefits. In other words, if you’re in the market for a new smartphone, Apple’s iPhone 5c should be right near the top of your list.

Is the 3D modeling space big enough for multiple competitors? Martijn Elserman, Siert Wijnia and Erik de Bruijn sure think so. They’re the founders of a new 3D object sharing site called YouMagine and were the creators of the Ultimaker, a $1,500 3D printer that comes in kit form and is a favorite with the DIY set.

The Ultimaker system is open-source and self-funded and some of the profits have been rolled back into R&D and for the creation of YouMagine.

“We invested in YouMagine because we believe in a sharing platform that is about more than just files,” said de Bruijn. “Its audience will grow as designs are there, designers are attracted when there’s an audience. While this seems like a chicken and egg situation, in the Ultimaker community there are thousands of passionate 3D printer users, many of which are designers. We told our friends in the community that we were developing YouMagine and they have just started seeding the site with amazing designs.”

He sees his site as something a bit different and an opportunity for a fresh start. “One of the biggest criticisms to Thingiverse is that it’s full of nearly identical iPhone cases,” he said. “There are more and more 3D design sites popping up. Lots of them show gears and RepRap parts, which in my opinion are awesome, but just aren’t for everybody. Our site is much more diverse in terms of its content, because contributors are often Ultimaker owners who don’t need to be tech people to use their printer.”

While 3D printing is still in its infancy, it’s also interestingly entrenched. There are a few major players – Makerbot and RepRap being the two names most often mentioned – but few have cracked the 3D model sharing business like Makerbot. However, because Thingiverse is a Makerbot property, the assumption is that the models there print best on a Replicator. While not true, perception is often the rule here.

To that end, the folks at Ultimaker have added a number of features which encourage the use of their own printer. Most interesting is their effort to add “wireless printing” to the website.

“We’re developing the site for the community, so we listen to their feedback to make it cater to the community’s needs. And we release an update with new functionality every other week. Also, we’re working on single-click, wireless 3D printing capabilities which are already working in the lab with the Ultimaker² and is even backwards compatible with the Ultimaker Original. All the complicated stuff happens in the cloud, you don’t need to worry about that or understand it. You don’t need to download or open a design, just hit print on YouMagine,” said de Bruijn.

They’ve seen 400 designs uploaded so far and the site sees itself as a clearinghouse for all 3D modelers, not just Ultimaker or Makerbot fanatics. There aren’t many compelling things up there just yet – except this – but the plan is to offer a full range of 3D modeling tools as well as support multi-material prints and other cool tweaks that will make the YouMagine experience superior. Some creators are even making their models YouMagine-exclusive, an interesting choice. Will it take off? Well, Thingiverse hit 100,000 items in June so they have a bit of a hike.

“We believe sharing is fun, and at the same time it created the RepRap project to which Ultimaker founders were core contributors. RepRap, in turn, has created the whole desktop 3D printing revolution of Makerbot, Printrbot and Ultimaker. While some have thrown open source over board, we prefer to do the opposite by investing more in the community. YouMagine is an example of this commitment,” said de Bruijn.

The folks at Boulder/San Francisco-based Occipital are very much software people — the company’s RedLaser app was a big hit in the early App Store days before the team sold it to eBay, as was 360 Panorama before iOS 6′s Panorama feature took some of the wind out of its sails.

Their roots may be in software, but now the team is trying something very, very new. Occipital just launched a Kickstarter campaign for its very first hardware project: the Structure, a portable 3D sensor that straps to the back of your iPad that should ship by next February.

Update: Wow, the Occipital team has blown past its $100K funding goal in just over three hours.

“It took us out of our comfort zone,” CEO Jeff Powers admitted. “We went from a team of basically three to about 13, which is still ridiculously tiny, and no one sleeps anymore.”

Those sleepless nights seem to have paid off. The Structure itself is an awfully handsome piece of kit. Small and clad in colored anodized aluminum, it doesn’t look anything like the clunky 3D sensors you may have already been exposed to. That’s a testament to the sort of fastidious tweaking that went into making the Structure what it is — there’s a full-sized PrimeSense Carmine sensor in there, but it was up to Occipital to cut out the physical cruft so the Structure could fit in a pocket. Power consumption also had to be cut dramatically since it runs off the iPad 4′s battery (though it’ll technically connect to any iDevice in your arsenal that has a Lightning dock connector).

The really astonishing bit is how quickly the Structure works in capturing all of this data. Powers took the Structure and a few of the bundled demo apps for a brief spin in our New York office, and in a matter of mere moment he was able to capture a virtual bust of his ever-present marketing director and firing it off to Shapeways for printing. Scanning the topology of a side room was similarly quick, as was the process of throwing a virtual cat into the mix that would chase after balls that bounced off of 3D interpretations of couches and under coffee tables.

That breadth of those demo apps speaks to the sort of ecosystem that Powers hopes will rise up around the Structure in the weeks and months to come. After all, as neat as it is, the market for a gadget that lets its users capture and export 3D models for printing is still pretty limited. Powers’ vision is much more expansive: the SDK that’s being released alongside the Structure sensor will allow developers to build consumer-facing apps that take advantage of all that 3D data.

“We’re not really just building a device, we’re building a platform,” Powers said. As far as he sees it, Occipital can’t possibly build every possible augmented reality game or measuring app on its own. Instead, the team is going to make the low level data accessible to developers, and make high level APIs available to developers who know nothing about computer vision in a bid to make the Structure as accessible as possible.

It’s not hard to imagine the sorts of applications that could come along with adoption of the Structure. Looking to buy a new couch? Scan your living room and see if that sucker fits next to your bookshelf. Real estate agents could benefit from easy-to-capture, manipulable models of office spaces and homes (though some startups already have a head start on that front). Thankfully, while the Structure is designed to fit on the back of your iPad, ambitious devs can use connect to PCs, Macs, and Android devices thanks to a so-called hacker cable that allows for a standard connection over USB.

At first glance, this whole thing seems like a drastic shift for a company that has only ever focused on crafting software, to say nothing of on the production perils and pitfalls that come with building hardware at scale. That’s not to say that Occipital’s 3D ambitions have come completely out of the blue though. Earlier this year the company closed its acquisition of French startup ManCTL, which was best known for a 3D scanning desktop app called Skanect that let users fire up cheapo 3D sensors like the Kinect or the Asus Xtion to capture 3D data and convert them into full-color models in a matter of minutes.

Structure, then, seems like the next logical step. It’s a convergence of two seemingly divergent realms of expertise, and it’s arguably happening at just the right time. Smartphones and tablets are growing more capable by the day, which leads people to expect more from their daily companions. And with 3D printers moving into the mainstream, there’s a growing sense of awareness around the value of converting objects and environments into 3D representations.

Even the Kickstarter campaign is a sign of the times. Powers concedes that Occipital doesn’t actually need to go the crowdfunded route — he says they’ve got enough left over from its previous funding round to cover these very early production runs — but it couldn’t hurt to help build buzz among developers and gauge demand for a pricey tablet add-on. If you’re interested in throwing your hat in the ring you can lay claim to an early adopter package for $329, but the package will cost you $349 if you wait too long.

The army of Bluetooth-powered auxiliary hardware being built by hardware startups to extend the native capabilities of smartphones shows no signs of slowing its  march. Meet Nix: a colour sensor that lets you scan an object and get its exact colour data signature sent to the corresponding app on your phone so you can maintain a palette of preferred shades — and even track down an exact tin of paint.

The sensor’s Canadian creators say their device is much more accurate than using your phone’s on board camera to grab colour data, firstly because it’s purpose-built for accurate colour scanning and is “calibrated to return exact/specific colour values”. And secondly because it blocks out all ambient light — meaning the true shade can be captured, i.e. unaffected by shadows or changes in lighting conditions.

That’s the ultimate aim. For now, Nix’s creators are seeking $35,000 in crowdfunding on Kickstarter to get their promising prototype plus iOS and Android apps to market. With 29 days left to run on their funding campaign they’re already approaching half that funding amount, with more than 150 backers on board, so things are looking good so far.

Nix is designed to replace old school colour swatches and paint decks, and has obvious applications for interior decorators, and designers and artists of all stripes — anyone who cares about and plays with colour — but its creators also envisage other possible use-cases, such as using a colour scan to determine the ripeness of fruit, say. Or scanning skin-tone to develop custom make-up.

The sensor can be used to scan the colours of fabrics, as well as solid coloured surfaces like paints, albeit they note that patterned fabrics may return an average colour tone if the pattern is tighter than the sensor aperture (approximately the diameter of a nickel).

Nix’s makers, who secured an R&D grant to fund their initial prototyping work (both the sensor hardware and software on a development PC), say they intend the device to be hackable, so are making it open source — noting that possible ‘hack-lications’ could include machine vision for a line-following robot, a greenhouse system with humidity, temperature and light-sensing, or a push-notification for when your fridge is opened.

As well as allowing Nix users to view data on the colour they just scanned, the apps will include the ability to save a scanned colour swatch and add notes to it; view a colour in RGB, HSL, HSV, Lab, XYZ, HTML, or CMYK; convert the colour to other media such as wall paints, oil paints, make-up, watercolour, wood stain, automotive paint etc; select a particular brand associated with the media type you’re after and get directions to the nearest store where you can buy the paint.

How much is Nix going to set you back? This sensor plus apps are up for grabs for CAD$99 on Kickstarter — with eventual RRP expected to be $199. If they hit their funding goals, these makers are aiming to ship Nix by February 2014.

The Liberator gun made headlines when its creator fired up his 3D printer and created them, building firearms that actually fire out of little more than plastic components that combined cost little more than your average Blu-ray movie. Now, that pivotal moment in the history of DIY 3D printing is being ensconced in a London museum, Engadget reports.

Cody Wilson’s Liberator had its own misfires early on, which destroyed half the case, but later demos showed that it could fired multiple times. As John Biggs explained in a general overview, it technically can be printed at home by anyone who wants one, but not every self-printed version carries the history that these original Liberator models do.

Like Biggs pointed out, homemade guns aren’t new; it’s a long-established hobby, especially in the U.S., with a storied history. But whereas once it required a lathe and other ironworking tools and some kind of dedication and grit, now it pretty much can be managed by casual amateurs capable of spending quite a bit of money on a 3D printer and a proficiency in downloading files from the Internet.

The project being put together by the London Victoria & Albert museum is designed to showcase a range of “contemporary design projects,” of which the 3D-printed Liberator is a key example, and these will be displayed between September 14 – 22. So far, the Liberator hasn’t prompted a people’s revolution or a swell of murders, but getting eyes-on the originals still could be a story to tell the grandkids someday depending on how things shake out.