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Friday, March 15, 2013

HTC One Review: This is Beauty and the Beast


HTC’s high-end Android flagship phone, sporting a sexy body, stunning screen and out-of-the-ordinary camera.
A review of HTC's new One smartphone

Who’s it for?
People who want the most polished and smooth Android experience available, and maybe don’t want to stretch (literally and figuratively) to the five-inch screen that’s becoming common on top-end Android phones.

Design
HTC’s always been good at making pretty phones, and the One keeps the gorgeous genes within the family. It’s got a minimalist metal construction with polycarbonate ‘accents’, which reeks of exquisite build quality. The metal construction and reassuring weight give it a chassis that feels rock-solid, and the rounded back, tapering to supermodel-skinny sides, makes it genuinely comfortable to hold in your hand.
The 4.7-inch screen is clad in Gorilla Glass, which wraps beautifully round the edge of the chassis — HTC says it ‘flows’, and it almost has a point. The glass doesn’t just stop at the edge of the screen, but contours round to give a silky-smooth edge you’ve got to feel to believe. Overall, tiny details like this conspire to make the One the most gorgeous phone I’ve laid eyes on in years, and a refreshing change from seemingly endless copycat, look-a-like phones. I’m smitten.
A review of the HTC one smartphone
The minimalist design is, sadly, carried over to the more practical side of the phone too. You won’t find a microSD card slot lurking anywhere, and as for a removable battery? Dream on. All you get is a headphone jack, micro USB for charging, a pop-out SIM tray, and a pair of buttons — a metal volume rocker, and a weird-looking power button that also doubles as an IR blaster, so you can use your phone as a TV remote.
One area HTC hasn’t skimped on is the speakers: you get two of them, on the front of the phone no less. The holes are drilled out of the aluminium  and there’s a notification LED — always a good thing in our books — lingering behind one of those holes on the top speaker.
The One’s also more than just a pretty face. Under the Gorilla Glass is a stonking great 1920x1080p display, powered by a Snapdragon 600 processor, and a sweet 2GB of RAM — the same as the Nexus 4, Sony Xperia Z or LG Optimus Pro. Don’t be fooled, though — performance on this is nippy as you like.
A review of the HTC One smartphone
Software
This thing is fast! Zipping around HTC’s well-skinned version of Android — and zip is definitely the right word — there’s nary a hint of lag or stutter. Given the processing power under the hood, that’s hardly surprising, but it’s still damn impressive. Even pushing the system with the more graphically-intensive Android games — Asphalt 7 or Real Racing 3, the One purrs along better than anything else out there.
In terms of OS, the One is running HTC’s custom Sense 5.0 on top of Android 4.1.2. Sense 5.0 sports a bunch of differences to vanilla Android, but the overall impression you’re left with is that Sense helps casual users access some of the more hardcore Android features, without needing to mess around deep inside various settings menus.
The customisable lock screens are a good example: they’re one of the things Android’s really got going for it, but normally it takes a fair bit of messing around with custom widgets to make a decent one. Sense comes preloaded with a bunch of different lock screen themes.
We won’t dive into an exhaustive rundown of all the software differences here , but suffice to say that Sense is the only manufacturer Android skin I’d seriously think about keeping on a phone.
HTC one review
Hardware
Once you’ve finished obsessing over that gorgeous body, you’ll inevitably reach for the on switch (which is a little hard to find, being almost completely flush with the body), and light up the screen. The 4.7-inch, 1920x1080p panel is incredible — forget numbers, forget stats, and just revel in what, for my money, is the best mobile display made thus far.
The PPI is obviously somewhere north of pointless (468, for those of you who get aroused by meaningless metrics), but more importantly, the screen is a competent all-rounder. Viewing angles are excellent, and you can actually read the damn thing in direct sunlight. Side-by-side with the Galaxy S III’s AMOLED display, you can see that the blacks aren’t quite as good, but that’s real nit-picking.
A review of the HTC One smartphone
Of course, if there was one feature HTC trumpeted above all else on its new phone, it was definitely the Ultrapixel. To recap: HTC’s being the good guy, going against the megapixel myth, and shipping a 4MP phone camera it reckons is not only as good as the better-endowed competition, but is actually better in low light.
Does it work? Yes. In low light, the pictures this thing cranks out are seriously impressive, managing to make out objects without having to resort to a blurry noise-fest.
A review of the HTC One camera against the Sony Xperia Z smartphone's camera
Compared against the Sony Xperia Z, one of the best Android shooters out there, the low-light performance is out of this world. In the sample images above, (which are both cropped to the same extent), the text in the One’s photo is totally readable, whereas the Sony’s is a horror show you’d be hard-pushed to find a single letter in. Obviously, those sample images are a worst-case scenario, but they prove a point — the One’s camera craps all over the competition when the Sun goes down.
We tested the low-light against a bunch of other phone cameras, and the results are impressive — the Nokia Pureview 808 wins (almost inevitably), but the One is close behind, and certainly leagues better than the blurry, noisy mess churned out by the others.
Sadly, the performance isn’t quite as stellar when it comes to everyday photography. Whether it’s due to the lack of pixels, or some other less-than-stellar component in the camera assembly, the One’s photos aren’t particularly sharp. They’re fine viewed on the phone screen or Facebook, but blow them up any bigger, and everything goes a bit marshmallow-soft. Overall, it’s fair to say the One’s packing a decent shooter, but not anything particularly revolutionary and certainly not a Lumia 920-dethroning upstart.
A review of the HTC One smartphone

Tragic Flaw
You might’ve read about Blinkfeed, HTC’s live tile/RSS feed mashup that spits out a constant news feed onto a home screen widget. You probably skimmed over it, thinking it’s another bit of bloatware crap to be discarded as soon as you start setting up the device, right? Wrong.
Blinkfeed is here to stay, as a permanent wart on your home screens. Sure, you can change it from being the default home screen, but every now and again you’re going to scroll onto your Blinkfeed page and get inadvertently slapped in the face by reality. For now, Blinkfeed is here to stay, a constant presence in your life (and probably on your data usage and battery, since you can’t disable auto-refresh).

This is Weird
The handset gets almost worryingly hot when used a lot, especially if shifting a lot of data over the mobile network. We’ll chalk it up to that metal back, and it’s certainly not a deal-breaker, but it’s still a tad disconcerting.
A review of the HTC One smartphone

Test Notes
- Oh my god the speakers are good — better than any mobile speakers have the right to be. Playing music to various people through the phone is a funny experience, and one worth trying if you’ve ever wondered what the actual definition of jaw-dropping is. It’s not so much the volume, which is definitely the best of any smartphone but hardly deafening — it’s that over the whole sound spectrum, the stuff the speakers spits out is fairly accurate and distortion-free.
I don’t know whether this is due to the Beats Audio EQ (unlikely) or the excellent dual-speaker setup (far more plausible), but the speakers on this thing are damn close to putting small travel speakers like my own Altec Lansing out of work. It’s that good.
- The IR blaster, which is embedded in the power button (now that’s what I call multitasking!), lets you use your phone as a universal remote with your TV and home theatre set-up. It’s quick and easy to configure. Moreover, the system leverages Peel to provide a personalised TV guide that ties in with the remote — just tap on a currently airing show, and your TV will switch over to that channel, as if by magic.
- Battery life is average. The One is packing a 2300mAh cell, which gets me through a full day of fairly punishing use. On a brutal video rundown, it lasted about seven hours before conking out, translating to a good day of real-world use, especially if you crank up HTC’s power saver mode, which lets you (among other things) restrict CPU usage and screen brightness.
- Internet speeds, especially web browsing, feel pretty nippy. With the chomping-at-the-bit processor under the hood, this is hardly surprising, but the One also seems to hold onto mobile signal a little bit better — in rooms and Tube stations I’d previously had marked down as dead spots, I was scraping a little bit of coverage. We’ve tested on both EE’s 4G and Vodafone’s HSPA+ network, and download speeds are exactly in line with other top-end smartphones — anything between 1 and 12Mbps, depending on signal and how much lead is in the walls.
- HTC’s get-started software merits a mention for making the getting-going procedure surprisingly slick. If you’re not restoring the phone from an HTC account backup, you can choose to do the initial setup on a computer rather than the phone — just navigate to a webpage, enter the code your phone generates, and you’re free to set up email accounts, lock screens and the like from your computer. It might sound like faff, and it’s hopefully not something you’re going to use more than once, but as someone who switches between phones with depressing regularity, not having to type out every email address and super-secure password on a touchscreen keyboard is something of a godsend.

Should You Buy It?
The One is, undoubtedly, an excellent device. It does everything well, some things — the build, screen and mind-bending speakers come to mind — superbly, with only a few entries in the negatives column. Of course, being average doesn’t cut it any more, not with new smartphones spilling from Mother Innovation’s every orifice.
Compared to the competition, the One still fares well. It’s certainly at the top of the Android stable, with only Sony’s Xperia Z and the bargain-basement Nexus 4 (and probably whatever Samsung’s got in store) able to give it any competition. It’s also one of the few devices that can compete with the iPhone on lustworthiness — the rock-solid build and that awesome screen certainly give it a dinner-party-wow-factor in a different league.

Samsung Galaxy S4 vs Sony Xperia Z


High-end flagships with massive displays are fast becoming the norm, but can the Samsung Galaxy S4 outgun Sony's Xperia Z?

Sony Xperia Z: Key specs and features

The Sony Xperia Z may be a flat rectangle, but what a flat rectangle it is. Clad on front and back by extra-tough Dragontrail glass the phone has a premium feel while looking classy with panelled detailing on the sides and snazzy embedded silver buttons. The Xperia Z is also waterproof and has IP57 certification.
Sony Xperia Z
The screen bezel is very narrow and the edges have a chiselled shape. The display itself is a 5-inch LCD with a 1920x1080 pixel Full HD resolution at 443 pixels-per-inch (ppi). This delivers fantastic brightness and pure whites, while Sony’s Mobile Bravia Engine 2 creates punchy colours and OptiContrast technology ensures everything pops.
Watching video on this thing is unreal, it’s rather a lot like glass-less 3D even though there’s not a whiff of 3D tech involved. This is easily one of the best displays around alongside the HTC One.
Power comes from a quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 processor along with 2GB of RAM and an Adreno 320 GPU. 

While newer chips are starting to take over, this particular model is still a recent one and remains competitive in the current market. It’ll deftly handle Android’s interface and multitasking as well as any apps or games you care to try on the Google Play store.

Samsung Galaxy S4: Key specs and features

The processing power inside Samsung’s Galaxy S4 represents the next wave of mobile hardware as it’s based on ARM’s Cortex-A15 architecture as well as its big.Little technology. It’s the Exynos 5 Octa eight-core chip, which buddies up a 1.6GHz Cortex-A15 quad-core cluster.
Samsung Galaxy S4
This allows the chip to optimise high-end speed against low-end battery efficiency depending on the tasks at hand and should result in quicker performance than its rival as well as longer life on a single charge. Samsung’s setup also sports a PowerVR SGX544MP3 tri-core GPU and 2GB of RAM.
Another key component of prolonging battery life is the new display technology – it’s called Green PHOLED and is up to 33 per cent more efficient than conventional AMOLED at no cost to image quality.
The 5-inch panel has a Full HD 1920x1080 pixel resolution of 441ppi. Visuals are crisp and colourful with great contrast and it’s a neat display for consuming multimedia.
Storage space is reasonably plentiful with options for either 16GB, 32GB or 64GB of onboard capacity plus expandability via microSD cards by up to 64GB.
You’ve also got Android 4.2.2, the most up-to-date Android build available with all of its slick optimisation and reliable performance upgrades.
With a 2,600mAh battery, things will keep going for a long time - well - much longer than on the Sony Xperia Z anyway.

Conclusion

The Xperia Z is a brilliant phone and we’ve rarely encountered a display that’s this rich, however, you pay a price for it and not just in monetary terms.
The battery life is not particularly good and the device only has 16GB of onboard storage. There is the option of expanding this by microSD by up to 32GB, but here the Galaxy S4 has an advantage with 16GB, 32GB or 64GB of internal capacity plus card capability up to 64GB.
The Galaxy S4 still offers a fantastic display which is much kinder to your power consumption, but it backs this up with a faster processor which is also not as hard on the battery.
That said, the Xperia Z certainly beats the Galaxy S4 on visual design and build quality.
So, if battery isn’t important to you and you’re looking for a pretty yet portable media viewer with an insane display, the Xperia Z may be for you. Otherwise, for a well-rounded smartphone, the Galaxy S4 seems like a better choice.

How Samsung's Galaxy S 4 stacks up against iPhone 5


Samsung Electronics Co on Thursday premiered its latest phone, the Galaxy S4, which sports a bigger display and features such as gesture controls, as the South Korean company takes the fight to iPhone maker Apple Inc.
The following is a side-by-side comparison of their physical hardware:
SpecsGalaxy S4iPhone 5
Screen size5in full HD Super AMOLED4in IPS LCD
Resolution1,920 x 1,080 pixels, 441ppi (pixels per inch)1,136 x 640 pixels, 326ppi
Thickness7.9mm7.6mm
Processor1.9GHz quad-core Snapdragon Fusion Pro; or proprietary 1.6GHz octa-core Exynos 5 OctaProprietary A6
Camera (rear/front)13-megapixel/2-megapixel8-megapixel/1.2-megapixel
RAM2GB1GB
Video recording1,080p HD video1,080p HD video/30fps
Weight130g112g
PlatformAndroid (Jelly Bean)iOS6
Capacity16GB, 32GB, 64GB16GB, 32GB, 64GB
Expandable memoryUp to 64GBNo
4G LTEYesYes
NFCYesNo
Battery life2,600mAh8 hrs talk time/Standby 225 hours
Launch datelate AprilSept 2012

After months of rumours and speculations, Samsung has finally unveiled its new flagship smartphone, the Galaxy S 4, to great fanfare in New York City.
iPhone 5
The phone is slimmer yet larger than its predecessor - it has a 5in screen with an incredible full HD (1,920 x 1,080-pixels) display. The Galaxy S III has a 4.8in screen.
For shooting photos and videos, it has a 13-megapixel on the back and for video calls it has a 2-megapixel camera on the front.
Apart from that it will come with a host of features, including Air Gestures which will allows users to browse content, change music and reject or answer calls with just a wave of their hand.
It'll come packed with a number of Samsung apps. The S Health apps, for instance, will help users track their calorie intake and keep count of the number of steps taken.
Samsung has borrowed some features from the Galaxy Note II, namely the function that allows users to preview content by hovering the S Pen over the screen. WIth the S IV you don't need a stylus to do that - users can just use their finger.
Samsung Galaxy S4


Samsung Galaxy S4 : Be Ready 4 the Next Galaxy!

Samsung's Galaxy S4 phone looks a lot like Samsung's old phone.

Side by side, you can barely tell them apart. 

Pick up the Samsung Galaxy S4, however, and there's no mistaking it. 

It's lighter, it's thinner, it has a premium feel and more modern look, a plastic border that seems like metal, and a screen that makes for compelling viewing.

It's this display that makes the biggest impact when you pick up the phone, and not just because of its larger size (5 inches rather than 4.8). 

(scroll down for video )

The Galaxy S4 Super AMOLED screen seems brighter and is clearly a lot sharper. Its full high-definition, 441 pixels-per-inch resolution makes words easier to read, photos more detailed, and gives Apple's 326ppi Retina display true competition.


SAMSUNG GALAXY S4

Samsung Galaxy S4
Samsung Galaxy S4 ... compared to the Samsung Galaxy S3 in New York. 
Samsung seems to have glossed over other hardware enhancements in this phone during its press conference - including an eight-core processor, 2GB RAM, and an infra-red light for use as a TV remote control - but these could make the difference when sizing up a future phone investment. 

Instead the company is focusing on the new software in its new Galaxy. Some fresh features have a lot of potential, while others might seem more like a gimmick than a daily saviour.

One of the most useful and innovative additions is Air Gesture. Certain moves, made in front of the phone's 2-megapixel front-facing camera, let users drive the phone without touching it.


SAMSUNG GALAXY S4

Samsung Galaxy S4
Samsung Galaxy S4 ... compared to the Samsung Galaxy S3 in New York. 
Want to flip from photo to photo without dragging greasy paws across its display? Air Browse let us do that. 

Side-to-side waving gestures in the internet browser let us switch between tabs, while up and down movements moved a website up and down. This works comfortably and reliably in practice.

This waving motion can also be used to accept a phone call, though users should be mindful of gesticulations before applying this feature.


SAMSUNG GALAXY S4

Samsung Galaxy S4
Samsung's new Galaxy S4 is seen during its unveiling on March 14, 2013 at Radio City Music Hall in New York. The slim, feature-rich Galaxy S4 was introduced as Samsung's new champion in the fiercely competitive smartphone arena, scheduled to roll out in 155 countries in late April. 
Eye-tracking technology also receives an outing in this handset in two features: Smart Pause and Smart Scroll. 

Smart Pause seemed the most efficient during our brief tests. Even through spectacles, the phone recognised when we were paying attention and when we were looking at the ceiling, pausing the video until our eyeballs returned. 

Smart Scroll was less of a joy. The phone tracks a person's gaze and, if it's on the screen during a web-browsing session, the user can scroll by tilting the phone up and down. Sadly, this rarely worked as anticipated. Our eyes regularly disappeared from its field of view when tilting the phone up, halting the process.


SAMSUNG GALAXY S4 LAUNCH

Samsung Galaxy S4 launch
JK Shin, President and Head of IT and mobile communication division of Samsung introduces the Samsung Galaxy S4 in New York City. 
The Galaxy S4's new camera also gets much more than a 13-megapixel boost. The image modes from its Galaxy Camera now feature for quick photo enhancements, and some innovative features lie in its menus. 

Taking a photo with the phone's two cameras simultaneously might not be useful every day, but Dual Camera makes for excellent postcard-like travel shots.


SAMSUNG GALAXY S4 LAUNCH

Samsung Galaxy S4 launch
Samsung Galaxy S4 launch in New York City. 
Other enhancements likely to be useful include Eraser, that accurately identified and let us remove photo-bombers from pictures, and Drama Shot that takes many photos and combines some to give the appearance of multiple exposures.


SAMSUNG GALAXY S4

Samsung Galaxy S4
Samsung Galaxy S4 ... camera and photo features.
These are camera enhancements that could be replicated by apps, but they work seamlessly as part of the phone. 

Some other software features seemed of limited use. Group Play worked well in our test, sharing photos to a nearby handset so we could see the same thing, and music could be shared between handsets too. Whether this will become common practice is debatable. 

Ultimately, Samsung has again proven it can innovate and stand out from the Google Android pack with the Galaxy S4. Only those who like its look will reinvest, but that is a large worldwide audience.


Tuesday, March 05, 2013

Steak made with human POOP !



If you prefer your steak to be cooked rare, you may want to reconsider that choice after hearing about the latest advancement in food technology to come out of Japan: an edible steak made from human feces!

Take a moment to let that gag reflex subside. Now consider this: it's already been taste-tested, approved, and could eventually become a practical solution to sewage treatment. Someday "bowel burgers" may even provide an easy source of protein for the hungry.

The steaks were first envisioned by Japanese researcher Mitsuyuki Ikeda after he was approached by Tokyo Sewage to come up with a solution for the city's overabundance of sewage mud. Although "eating it" probably wouldn't have occurred to most people, Ikeda recognized that the mud was chock full with protein-rich bacteria.

After isolating those proteins in the lab, Ikeda's team then combined them with a reaction enhancer and put them in an exploder. What eventually came out was no filet mignon, but it was edible.

"Theoretically, there's nothing wrong with this," said Douglas Powell, a professor of food safety at Kansas State University. "It could be quite safe to eat, but I'm sure there's a yuck factor there."
To make swallowing the stool steaks a little bit easier, a nutty flavor was added using soy protein, and red food coloring was mixed in too, apparently to make the concoction look more like a juicy, bloody steak. A few brave researchers even took the plunge and taste-tested the product. (Apparently it tastes like regular beef.)

The official composition of the lab-grown steak is 63 percent proteins, 25 percent carbohydrates, 3 percent lipids, and 9 percent minerals. (Which sounds a lot better than 100 percent poop). According to Powell, the idea isn't really all that much different than eating plants that have been fertilized with manure or other excrement.

The idea could even help to solve the world food crisis. By comparison, researchers have also proposed harvesting insect protein (i.e., "bug burgers") as one possible way to help combat famine worldwide. Are "bowel burgers" really so much worse? They also take the ethic of recycling to its logical extreme.

Powell did offer one caveat to the future poo'd food revolution, though: because the steaks are made from human feces, there's always a chance for contamination. If you're brave enough to eat this, at least make certain that it's properly cooked (as if you were going to eat one raw!).

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