Shimi certainly has the makings of a viral video hit, but its creators at Georgia Tech want you to know that there’s more to the dancing robot than just a pretty face. The “interactive musical buddy,” designed by the school’s Center for Music Technology, is a one-foot-tall smartphone-enabled “docking station with a brain.” Shimi has a whole slew of functionality, using the phone’s face-detection to track listeners and better position its speakers. Users can also clap out a beat, which the ‘bot will use to pull a matching song from the phone’s playlist, playing the track and, naturally, dancing to the beat. Forthcoming functionality includes the ability for users to shake their heads or wave a hand to affect Shimi’s song choices. Google I/O attendees will get the opportunity for a closer look at Shimi this week in San Francisco. In the meantime, check out a couple of videos of the robot doing its thing after the break.
We’ve watched our potential quad-mech overlords from KMel Robotics evolve from agile solo acrobats to worker bees to deft synchronized performers. It seemed only a matter of time before they would hunt down Sarah Connor en masse — or take the show-biz world by storm. Fortunately for us, the tricky flyers chose to embrace their flamboyant side at a tour-de-force 16-quad lightshow in Cannes, where they opened the Saatchi & Saatchi New Directors’ Showcase. The soaring automatons pulled all their past tricks out of the bag, flying precisely with mirrors to bounce lights from below, all timed to dramatic music –which they also had a hand in controlling. The sparkly treat awaits right after the break.
Nintendo’s new 3DS XL was just revealed last week, but we didn’t have to wait long for the plus-sized handheld to get put through its paces. Puissance Nintendo got its game on with Nintendo’s newest, and if Google’s translation is to be believed, the added screen real-estate is, naturally, a welcome addition, and the panel is plenty bright with excellent viewing angles. Also, any negative effects from the bigger pixels present in the display — it’s the same resolution as its baby brother — have apparently been ameliorated by an anti-aliasing filter of some sort. As for folks concerned about gripping the 3DS XL, fear not, as ergonomics are reportedly spot on, with an even weight distribution that feels no heavier than a standard 3DS. Still not ready to rush out and grab one this August? Head on past the break to see the XL in action, and pop on over to the source link to see if the full French spill will persuade you.
From Barcelona to Hanover to Vegas and Taipei, we’ve seen our fair share of low-end Android tablets, some of which actually offer a bit of promise, and get it done for under 200 bucks. And while even a few sub-$100 models have littered the exhibition hall floors, they’re most often mere vaporware, never actually making their way to US and European retailers and online shops. The Matrix One, for its part, could actually get the nod of approval from big box execs, however — according to company reps, at least. And it wouldn’t be a half-bad option at $99, shipping with Android 4.0.3, a 2-megapixel webcam, 1.5GHz Cortex A8 processor and an 800 x 480-pixel 7-inch capacitive display. Those specs also make their way to a nearly identical $149 flavor, which ups its budget counterpart’s 512MB RAM and 4 gigs of storage to 1GB and 16GB, respectively, while keeping the other components intact.
While that display won’t best any brand-name slab on the market, it’s certainly usable, even in bright sunlight, as we experienced today at CE Week in New York City. The tablet performed just fine during our quick demo, which included navigating through some menus and watching a few HD video clips. The built-in speaker on the rear won’t come close to filling a room (or even a noisy car, perhaps), but a headphone jack will let movie fans and youngsters alike appreciate content a bit more, especially if traditional tablets are priced out of reach. There’s also an HDMI port for outputting 1080p video to a TV, along with one full-size USB port, a mini-USB connector for syncing and updates, a power port and a micro-SD card slot, for adding up to 32 gigs of extra storage.
You’ll also find a built-in mic and a two-megapixel webcam (no rear-facing shooter, however). All in all, the 11.1-ounce package is quite polished, especially given the price. We won’t likely be adding the Matrix One to our personal collection, but if a $99 tablet is on your must-have list, this wouldn’t be a bad choice — let’s just hope it does indeed pop up in stores, perhaps as soon as the tablet’s ready to ship at the end of next month. There’s a gallery below if you’d care to take a closer look, and do jump past the break as well — that’s where you’ll find our hands-on video, with a lively Manhattan soundscape to boot.
Polaroid. The brand is iconic, to put it lightly. In the post film age however, the company has fought to stay relevant without completely sacrificing its identity at the altar of the digital photography gods. The solution has been cramming printers inside the bodies of its shooters (and partnering with questionably talented celebrities), hoping to recreate the experience of instantly coping a glossy copy to hang or hand out, while co-opting the benefits of the megapixel. The Z2300 is the latest in its effort to claim a chunk of the casual photography market. This 10 megapixel printer cam produces 2 x 3-inch prints that are also stickers in about 30-45 seconds. It’s not quite as quick as the Polaroids of old, but at least you don’t have to shake em.
We’ve seen more than a few energy monitors, but how many of them offer a pretty light show on the side? The EnergyBuddy — first unveiled as a prototype at CES but just now inching toward a full launch — is a complete home energy-tracking system brought to you by Cali-based startup FutureDash. Starting at $99, it keeps tabs on users’ energy consumption with a square-shaped gadget that connects to your network via WiFi or Ethernet. The square glows red, yellow or green depending on how much electricity you’re guzzling, and you have the ability to specify what qualifies as acceptable usage.
Naturally, the EnergyBuddy has a few peripherals in tow. A sensor installed at your electrical panel communicates with the rest of the system, and so-called Smart Plugs let you track the energy consumption of individual devices. The iPhone, iPad and desktop apps also offer some pretty in-depth stats, including dollars per hour spent on energy and a chart detailing consumption throughout the day. FutureDash is currently pushing the product on crowd-funding site Indiegogo, and though availability is TBD, you can take a peek at the system in our hands-on video below.
Excitement, about a Symbian phone? The Nokia 808 PureView has forced many to reconsider their platform loyalties by virtue of its big number boast: 41-megapixels of camera goodness. The surprise stand-out of Mobile World Congress, the 808 PureView is the first public evidence of a five year labor of love inspired by ultra-high-resolution satellite photography. There’s compromise galore involved, however, to join the early PureView train, so is it worth it? Read on for the full SlashGear review.
Hardware
Miniaturization can only get you so far: if you want 41-megapixels – and Nokia really does – then you have to accept some heft with it. As a result the 808 PureView is a chunky phone, measuring in at 123.9 x 60.2 x 13.9 mm and 169 grams, though it’s biased toward the lens section with its oversized sensor. In the hand, though, it’s actually quite a pleasant thing to hold: the textured plastic back cover feels high-quality and sturdy, and your forefinger butts naturally against the curve of the camera hump.
That’s not to say you don’t notice it when it’s in your pocket. In contrast to the slimline devices we’ve grown used to, the 808 PureView makes for a considerable bulge; we could fit it into a jeans pocket, front or back, but it wasn’t the most comfortable we’ve ever been.
Controls include a three-button strip along the front, for call, menu and end/power, along with a volume rocker, lock switch and dedicated two-stage camera key on the right edge. Along the top there’s a micro HDMI port (for use with Nokia’s CA0198 HDMI kit) under a flap, a microUSB port for charging, and a 3.5mm headphone socket. Nokia includes a wired hands-free kit of decent audio quality, though we had no issues using third-party headsets with the phone.
Up front there’s a 4-inch AMOLED ClearBlack display clad in a sheet of Corning Gorilla Glass. As with all OLED-based phones it has great viewing angles, contrast and color saturation; however, it’s also running at a mere 360 x 640 resolution, and that means individual pixels are inescapable. The grittiness is visible from the outset, as soon as the start-up Nokia logo appears, and permeates throughout the phone experience. Considering the imaging focus of this phone, it’s a disappointment.
Inside, the 808 PureView packs one of the fastest processors to grace a Symbian device, a single-core ARM 11 running at 1.3GHz. It’s paired with 512MB of RAM and 16GB of storage, expandable with up to 32GB microSD cards. Connectivity includes pentaband HSPA (up to 14.4Mbps down/5.76Mbps up, networking depending) which means support for both AT&T and T-Mobile 3G in the USA, along with Bluetooth 3.0, WiFi b/g/n, NFC and quadband GSM/EDGE. Slot in the optional microUSB to USB Host adapter and you can attach peripherals like USB drives, and there’s A-GPS/GPS for navigation and photo geotagging.
Software and Performance
Software is the 808 PureView’s Achilles’ heel. Symbian, rebranded Nokia Belle in this latest iteration, is old in the tooth and considered outclassed by all but the staunchest of fans. With its UI borrowing some elements of Android – such as the drop-down notifications bar and the differently sized homescreen widgets – and sharing the squircle iconography of MeeGo on the N9 it’s certainly the best looking iteration of Symbian to-date, but day-to-day usability is still a pain.
What’s arguably the deal-breaker for Nokia Belle here is the performance. On the Nokia 700, which also runs Belle on a 1.3GHz single-core, we found ourselves conceding that it could make a reasonable entry-level device for the fledgling smartphone audience. Somewhere along the line, however, the 808 lost whatever turn of speed the 700 managed to squeeze from the processor.
The homescreen is fairly swift, but the 808 soon runs out of steam once you get into the apps. In the messaging app we’d sometimes have hammered out a half-word or so before the on-screen keyboard caught up; scroll fast through a full gallery and you’ll see nothing but placeholder thumbnails, turning navigating images into guesswork.
It’s the browser that’s the big nightmare, however, capable of paper of handling full sites but struggling with anything more complex than their mobile versions. Pinch zooming becomes trial and error, tedious since given the low resolution you’ll probably be doing plenty of it. Swipe around the page and you have to wait a second or two for the screen to catch up with you. Flip from portrait to landscape orientation, or back again, and the lag shows itself once more. Most annoying though is how prone to crashing it is, the app periodically shutting down altogether. We didn’t experience a full phone lock-up, but altogether it was enough to make us save our web browsing until we were home.
Oddly, we didn’t experience the same sluggishness on the 808 PureView units running non-final software on our trip to Carl Zeiss several weeks ago. Then, the Nokia seemed as responsive as the 700 had been. It’s possible that the final software tweaks have erred toward scaling back performance in favor of battery life, and if so we’re hoping Nokia sees sense and tips the balance back a little toward usability with a firmware update.
Camera
Make no mistake, the Nokia 808 PureView is all about photography. Nokia’s imaging team spent five years developing PureView – hence it being stuck with Symbian rather than getting Windows Phone like the Lumia series – and took the principles of mobile cameras back to basics in order to improve on quality.
We’ve covered the technology behind PureView on the 808 comprehensively here, but the brief version is that it’s a rethink of how lossless zooming can be supported on a phone. Traditionally that would demand an optical zoom lens, involving bulky moving parts; PureView does it instead with a surfeit of pixels. In PureView mode, the 808 uses its 41-megapixel sensor to capture more typical 2-, 5- or 8-megapixel shots, and in fact Nokia expects most owners to stick at 5-megapixel quality.
Nokia 808 PureView technology:
At 1x zoom, each pixel making up the final frame has around seven pixels on the sensor to feed into it, reducing the likelihood of a glitch or noise making it into the image. PureView can simply ignore any obvious outliers, making for more accurate shots. However, if you want to zoom in, the 808 can take a full-resolution (i.e. 2-, 5- or 8-megapixel) subset of the whole frame, similar to how a digital zoom magnifies a portion but with no loss in detail.
Exactly how much you can zoom depends on what PureView resolution you’re using – the 808 won’t allow you to get past the point where it can save a full-resolution image – so you get more range in 2-megapixel mode than you do at 8-megapixels. It averages at roughly 3x at 5-megapixels. The phone will also allow you to shoot at “full” resolution, either 34-megapixel 16:9 aspect images taken across the full width of the sensor, or 38-megapixel 4:3 aspect images taken across the full height of the sensor, though in that case you don’t get any zoom option.
The 808′s camera app has obviously changed from the Nokia Belle norm to accommodate PureView, and there are three key modes to choose between. Automatic strips you of all manual control bar toggling the Xenon flash between on/off/auto/red-eye modes, defaulting to roughly 5-megapixel frames, though you still get touch-focus. Scenes mode offers a choice of auto, landscape, portrait, sports, night, night portrait, spotlight and snow configurations, again with flash options and touch-focus.
Finally, there’s Creative mode, where the guts of PureView are opened up to more avid tinkerers. The 808 can be toggled between PureView mode – with the choice of three resolutions and both 4:3 and 16:9 aspect ratios – and Full Resolution mode – with either 16:9 or 4:3 settings – and save in either Normal or Superfine JPEG quality modes. Color tones can be switched between normal, vivid, sepia or black & white, and there’s optional bracketing, interval or self-timer modes. With interval, the 808 becomes a time-lapse camera, capable of shooting up to 1,500 images every 30 minutes (or as low as every 5 seconds).
Then there are sliders for saturation, contrast and sharpness, while icons on the preview screen control flash, exposure, lighting type, ISO (from 50 – 1600, with an Auto mode) and the ability to turn off the neutral density filter. Once you have a clutch of settings you prefer, you can save them to one of the three custom shortcuts for easier retrieval.
Is it worth taking the time to play? Oh yes, yes it really is. We reluctantly left Carl Zeiss and our last experience with the 808 PureView wowed by quite how capable the new Nokia is, and nothing from our review unit has convinced us to think otherwise. This isn’t just “good for a phone-camera” either; the 808 is easily able to produce shots that put dedicated point-and-shoots to shame.
Noise is almost non-existent, colors are as accurate as we’ve ever seen from a phone, and – as long as you take the time to tap the screen to set focus – crisp detail. Low light performance is hugely impressive, even before you bother turning on the (excellent) Xenon flash, as PureView squeezes all the extra pixel data into the final image.
In full resolution mode, meanwhile, you lack zooming ability but you get images of a scale that would traditionally demand a dedicated camera. There’s something near-magical about being able to glance across an image, think “what’s going on there?” and zoom in without facing a screenful of pixelated mush. At 34/38-megapixel resolution there’s no PureView finessing going on – there aren’t the extra pixels to enable it – but it does demonstrate just how capable the sensor and companion Zeiss optics are.
As for video, the 808 PureView will record in Automatic, Scenes (auto, low light, sports, spotlight and snow) or Creative modes, at 360p, 720p or 1080p resolution. A choice of 15, 24, 25 and 30fps frame rates are supported, plus the same color tone options as in stills mode, together with exposure and contrast. Since even 1920 x 1080 Full HD resolution doesn’t come close to what the 808′s sensor is capable of capturing, the same PureView oversampling is used to improve video quality, and just as with stills the evidence of that comes through in the final frame.
Nokia 808 PureView 1080p HD video sample:
Our only complaint is the somewhat sluggish continuous autofocus, which has a tendency to wander and is occasionally slow to refix. You can, however, tap to manually set a focus point. While your fingers are near the screen, it’s worth playing with Nokia’s clever zoom control: you can pinch-zoom, of course, but we found it easier to use the single-finger zooming where sliding your thumb up and down adjusts the degree of magnification. It’s easy to keep both hands steadying the 808 and still zoom in, and when you’re zooming during video capture the actual magnification doesn’t happen until you lift your finger, allowing you to precisely frame without the hunting of regular systems. Alternatively you can use the zoom rocker, and unlike the stepped zoom levels of some devices, it’s a silky-smooth transition.
Nokia 808 PureView 1080p HD video sample:
Audio during video recording is often overlooked, but Nokia has saved a little magic for that, too. The PureView has twin microphones for capturing stereo sound, but it also includes Rich Recording, a way to capture high-volume audio without suffering from distortion or clipping. In fact, Nokia claims the 808 is capable of handling four-times louder sound than regular phone microphones, without having to introduce the sort of filters that can leave the audio track weedy.
Going by Nokia’s spec sheet, the 808 PureView should be able to capture the sound of a jet engine from 100-feet away without any stereo distortion. Topping out at 145dB, in fact, it’s beyond the point where human ears would likely suffer permanent damage even if they’re equipped with hearing protection. An average rock concert, meanwhile, at a more humble 115dB should be no problem at all for the 808 PureView, though we’ll need to schedule one on our jam-packed social calendar to actually test that out.
Getting photos and video off the 808 is reasonably straightforward. The phone can be set to show up as a Mass Storage device when plugged in via USB, appearing on your PC or Mac as an external drive (rather than demanding a management app as per Windows Phone). However we were surprised to find transfers very sluggish to our test Mac: shuttling just over 440MB of photos and video took around five minutes, in fact. There’s no native option to automatically upload images to an online gallery.
Nokia has already confirmed that PureView technology won’t be limited to just the 808. However, that’s already prompted confusion around just what sort of resolution sensors we can expect in future Lumia Windows Phones. PureView does not necessarily mean 41-megapixels – Nokia picked that number to satisfy headlines and deliver a 3x optical zoom equivalent for 5-megapixel frames – but instead refers to the oversampling technology; a lower-resolution sensor would still deliver a lossless zoom, albeit with a smaller range, while allowing for a thinner device.
Phone and Battery
Nokia has a strong track record with phone radios, and the 808 PureView is no exception. We had no issues with keeping a signal, and the dual-microphones meant in-call audio was clear. The 808′s 1,400 mAh battery is rated for up to 6.5hrs of 3G talk time or 540hrs of 3G standby, though the actual sort of longevity you’ll see from it is very much dependent on how much you play with the camera. The Xenon flash in particular will chug through battery in short order. In practice, we managed a day of relatively eager use before we had to reach for the mains adapter.
Wrap-Up
Viewed as a modern phone, the 808 PureView is a recipe for frustration. It’s heavy and chunky, the screen lacks pixels, Nokia Belle is short on apps and long on aggravation, and even those apps that are onboard run with varying degrees of wretchedness on the wheezing processor. When the 808 starts to make more sense is when you flip it around, and consider it not so much a phone with an amazing camera, but an amazing camera with a 3G internet connection.
With such mundane matters as messaging, internet browsing, multimedia and apps left to a more flexible (but less photographically-capable) platform like iOS or Android, that frees up the 808 PureView to do what it undoubtedly does best: take awesome photos and video. If you can find space in your pocket or bag for two phones, and you’re a keen shutterbug, then there are huge advantages to using the 808 rather than your regular phone camera.
Therein lies the rub: at $699 unlocked and SIM-free in the US, it’s an expensive second device. That would get you a good Micro Four Thirds camera, though blind testing suggests the 808 can produce photos as good as, or better than, such compacts. It would also be enough for an entry-level DSLR, though you’d lose any semblance of pocket-friendliness in that case.
In the end, though, even the fact that we’re comparing the 808 PureView to DSLRs is testament to Nokia’s achievement. Few people will actually go out and buy it themselves, but then the 808 is really a test bench for PureView technology, a proof-of-concept. Now that it has convinced us of its merits, Nokia can leverage the branding to differentiate its Windows Phone range. Frankly, the sooner it can do that, the better.
The Nokia 808 PureView has a 41-megapixel camera sensor. But you knew that. The crystallization of five years of imaging R&D has landed, and the timing couldn’t have been better for Nokia. Alongside uncomfortable financial reading, its move to Windows Phone hasn’t exactly set the smartphone world alight just yet. It’s seemingly established itself as the go-to WinPho choice for American customers thanks to some aggressive pricing, but with news that the next iteration of Windows Phone won’t come to the Lumia 900, many will hold out for Nokia’s next handset. Whatever that device will be, it’s likely to bring the same PureView technology we’ve got here on the Nokia 808 PureView — a Symbian-based handset whose software has seen better days. However, OS be damned, it still blew away attendees at this year’s Mobile World Congress. Impressive stuff, given that it’s the same show where HTC’s admirable One series debuted.
That huge sensor is paired with a new five-element Carl Zeiss lens and a refreshed flash with double the strength of the one on the Nokia N8 — the existing cameraphone champ. But behind the technical bullet points, it’s how Nokia maximizes the 41-megapixel sensor, oversampling with those pixels to create improved 5-, 8- , 3- and 2-megapixel images, reducing noise and improving low-light performance. However, when it comes to software, Symbian Belle (with Feature Pack 1 in tow) lags behind the likes of Android, iOS and Windows Phone in user experience and app provision. Similarly, the chunky handset flies in the opposite direction of the trend for slim smartphones. Is that camera module really all Nokia thinks (and hopes) it is? What’s more, is Symbian relevant enough for such future-facing goodness? Let’s find out.
Cisco won’t be the fastest out of the gate with an 802.11ac WiFi router, but it’s certainly one of the most ambitious. The dual-band Linksys EA6500 and a companion, single-band Universal Media Connector network bridge hike the bandwidth up to 802.11ac’s 1.3Gbps peak, each of them carrying their own quartet of gigabit Ethernet jacks. A pair of USB ports on the EA6500 should make sharing storage that much faster as well. If you ask Cisco, however, the real highlight is the new Cisco Connect Cloud app platform. Not unlike Novatel’s MiFi apps, the software helps either manage the router itself (think parental controls) or tap into other devices around the home, including AirPlay sharing and remote camera monitoring. There’s even a new SimpleTap hardware integration platform that will pair third-party WiFi gear like Onkyo receivers to a router through Android and iOS smartphone apps. Eventually, that should include a gentle NFC-based nudge.
A Linksys Developer Community is starting now with six app developers already lined up, and support is due for any access point Cisco deems worthy of the Smart Wi-Fi Router name. That said, you’ll have to wait awhile if you want the 802.11ac tag attached to that router at the same time. The currently-without-a-price EA6500 doesn’t hit shops until early August; you’ll have to wait until September for the equally priceless Universal Media Connector.
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