Month: February 2016

Sebastian Anthony

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BARCELONA, Spain—While Samsung may have been first to the (consumer) market with its Galaxy Gear VR headset, it's safe to say that compelling content is still thin on the ground. The company hopes to change that with the Galaxy Gear 360, a camera born out Samsung's "Project Beyond" that captures spherical video and images for playback in VR, or in 2D via an Android app. It's due for release in Q2 of this year in "select countries."

The Gear 360 is a small (just shy of a baseball), sphere-shaped camera weighing at 153 grams that sports two fisheye lenses hooked up to two 15-megapixel CMOS sensors, which work together to capture 3840x1920 360-degree video, or 30-megapixel still images. There's also an option to film 180-degree wide angle video by using just one of the lenses. Both lenses offer a relatively fast F/2.0 aperture, which should help in low light, particularly given the small sensor size.

Naturally, the Gear 360 is splash-proof and dust resistant—rated at IP53—for capturing all those extreme sports moments without the need to strap a bunch of GoPros to your head. Indeed, with GoPro not having had the best year in 2015, Samsung's primed to snap up some marketshare.

Enlarge / Global snapshot of the Vegetation Sensitivity Index (VSI), which measures environmental sensitivity to a changing climate, using satellite data gathered between 2000-2013 at 5km resolution. Areas in green are covered in vegetation that is the least sensitive to changes. Areas in red show the highest sensitivity. Grey areas are barren land or ice covered. Water is blue. (credit: Sedon, et. al.)

Climate change isn't just one, uniform transformation of the planet. Over time, some areas are going to get hotter, some wetter, some cloudier—and vice versa. This map, produced using a new system for analyzing satellite data, reveals which parts of the planet will be most affected by these changes.

Published in Nature, the map shows what the researchers call a vegetation sensitivity index (VSI). The VSI is a new measure of environmental vulnerability that combines several sources of data. The first source of data comes from the enhanced vegetation index—a measurement of plant cover on the ground, built with data from a satellite-based, moderate-resolution imaging spectroradiometer.

The researchers added information about how well each region's plant life could withstand changes in temperature, moisture, and cloud cover.

The future's so bright, I gotta wear these free VR shades Samsung included with my phone pre-order. (credit: Kyle Orland)

With all the talk of the impending Oculus Rift and HTC Vive, it's easy to forget that the Samsung Gear VR already provides a consumer-grade virtual reality experience for a relatively low price and without the need for a pricey desktop PC. Samsung seems intent on not letting the tech world forget about its mobile VR solution, though, announcing at Mobile World Congress Sunday that pre-orders for its new flagship Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge phones will include a free Gear VR headset.

On the one hand, adding a useful $100 accessory to these pre-orders seems like a good, synergistic way to generate interest in both virtual reality and in Samsung's new top-of-the-line phones, possibly pushing both to critical mass more quickly than they could unbundled. On the other hand, the fact that Samsung is willing to essentially give away a significant number of these $100 headsets suggests the Gear VR might not be selling as well as Samsung had hoped.

Business concerns aside, the pack-in deal is great for VR-curious consumers that are ready for a phone upgrade. Sure, the Gear VR might not have the head-tracking or hand-tracking capabilities of its PC-based counterparts. And the Galaxy phones can't really match the sheer pixel-pushing power of the GTX980 graphics cards needed to power tethered PC headsets.

BARCELONA, Spain—After numerous leaks, Samsung has officially revealed the successors to its popular Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge smartphones: the new 5.1-inch Galaxy S7 and 5.5-inch S7 Edge. Headline features include an iPhone-like pressure-sensitive display, a water resistant chassis, the return of the microSD card slot, and a whopping 4GB of RAM. Both are due for release on March 11 in Europe and the US, with preorders beginning on February 23 (Tuesday morning).

At first glance—besides their larger screen sizes—both phones look largely identical to their predecessors, the S7 sporting a flat glass front, and the S7 Edge sporting a curved display that gently folds in at the edges to the meet the aluminium body. Both phones will be available in Black Onyx and Gold Platinum, with the S7 Edge also available in Silver Titanium. Unfortunately for fans of 4K, both the S7 and S7 Edge are rocking 2560×1440 pixel displays. The most noticeable design change comes to the rear of the phone, where the dreaded camera bump has been removed to to make the camera module flush with the body. Surprisingly, this hasn't affected the thickness of the phones, which remain fairly svelte at 7.9mm for the S7 and 7.7mm for the S7 Edge. The regular S7 also gains a curved back like the Galaxy Note 5.

Perhaps more exciting is that the S7 and S7 Edge both feature a microSD card slot, a much requested feature that was removed from the S6. Both phones will ship with Android 6.0 Marshmallow, which allows users to merge the SD card with the internal flash memory to create one large seamless pool of storage, making the SD card slot a welcome addition. Also back is water and dust resistance, which was previously found in the Galaxy S5 but was skipped over for the S6. The Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge are both rated IP68, which equates to "totally dust tight" and prolonged submersion in water (the S5 was IP67, which is only "temporary immersion").

(credit: Sebastian Anthony)

BARCELONA, Spain—Where Microsoft's Surface is all about sharp edges and a monolithic look, Huawei's new MateBook—a convertible tablet powered by Intel's Core m processors—is a far more svelte affair. And make no mistake, Huawei is going after Microsoft's premium hardware with the Windows 10 MateBook, as evidenced by the numerous comparisons the company made between the two devices during its MWC press conference.

The good news for Huawei is that its new hardware is more than good enough to take on the Surface. In some ways, it's actually better. The MateBook's slender 6.9mm profile makes it the same thickness as Apple's iPad Pro, while its 640 gram weight makes it lighter than both the the iPad Pro and the Surface. The soft, curved edges also make it much more comfortable to hold, while the all-metal unibody chassis with its sharp chamfered buttons gives it a premium feel. Huawei's been knocking it out of the park of late when it comes to hardware design and construction, thanks in part to devices like the Nexus 6P and Mate S, and the MateBook is no exception.

That extends to the lovely 12-inch IPS LCD that sports a sharp resolution of 2160x1440 pixels, 400 nits of brightness, and covers 85 percent NTSC colour gamut. While I couldn't test Huawei's colour gamut or brightness claims here on the show floor, I can say that the screen is very nice indeed, and easily as good as anything Apple or Microsoft has to offer. Even better is that the MateBook's screen has a far slimmer bezel than both at just 10mm. That helps reduce the overall size, and helps keeps the tablet from feeling unweildly. Indeed, it felt just as comfortable to hold as Apple's iPad Air, which sports a smaller 9.7-inch screen.