Month: October 2016

SAN FRANCISCO—Of all the products announced today at Google's massive event, the Daydream View might be the best seller. At only $79, Daydream packs a "Good enough" controller and VR headset into a single box, allowing anyone with a brand new phone (for now only a brand new Google phone) to experience virtual reality. The Daydream opens up the Gear VR concept to the entire Android Ecosystem, with future Android devices expected to support the standard.

Regardless of sales, the Daydream View is definitely one of the cleverest devices at the event. It is full of interesting little touches that show off all the thought that went into it.

Here's an example: rather than plastic (or cardboard) the Daydream View is made of cloth. Besides a few plastic bits on the inside, the headset is made of thermo-bonded cloth material that is stiff enough to provide structure and dense enough to block out light. The advantage of cloth is that it's super light—I couldn't get an exact weight, but Google says the device is "30 percent lighter than similar devices on the market today." Google probably means the Gear VR, which weighs 318g without a phone. Weight is extremely important for a VR headset—lighter devices are more comfortable, which lets you play longer without fatiguing.

Enlarge / Reduce, reuse, recycle those hacks. (credit: Ildar Sagdejev )

WikiLeaks celebrated its tenth anniversary today by teasing a release of documents that would damage presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. But when Julian Assange failed to release anything new, the individual who refers to himself as Guccifer 2.0 posted what he claimed were files from the Clinton Foundation's servers.

"Many of you have been waiting for this, some even asked me to do it," Guccifer 2.0, or whoever is posting under that name, wrote in a blog post. "So, this is the moment. I hacked the Clinton Foundation server and downloaded hundreds of thousands of docs and donors' databases. Hillary Clinton and her staff don't even bother about the information security. It was just a matter of time to gain access to the Clinton Foundation server." Ars contacted Guccifer 2.0, or whomever runs his Twitter account. He claimed the files came directly from the Clinton Foundation server—but declined to say how he got access to them ("I prefer to keep it to me yet").

However, a review by Ars found that the files are clearly not from the Clinton Foundation. While some of the individual files contain real data, much of it came from other breaches Guccifer 2.0 has claimed credit for at the Democratic National Committee and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee—hacks that researchers and officials have tied to "threat groups" connected to the Russian Government. Other data could have been aggregated from public information, while some appears to be fabricated as propaganda.

Enlarge / Google's Pixel, its latest (but not first) volley in the smartphone wars. (credit: Google)

Today, Google officially announced something that the tech world has known for months: it's launching a pair of high-end Pixel-branded smartphones, killing the Nexus program, and competing more explicitly with Apple and every other company that's making and selling Android phones.

Google is definitely pushing itself as a hardware company like it never has before. But this is hardly the company's first effort to get into the smartphone hardware business. The first was the Nexus One, which drew iPhone comparisons when it was launched. But low sales almost killed the brand—Eric Schmidt said in 2010 that the Nexus One “was so successful [in helping Android along], we didn’t have to do a second one”—before it was resurrected and pointed at the developer-and-enthusiast niche.

The second and more serious effort began in 2011, when Google bought Motorola for $12.5 billion. After clearing out the old Motorola’s product pipeline, in 2013 and 2014 the company introduced a series of high-end and midrange Moto phones that were critical darlings for their price tags, their focus on fundamentals, and their fast Android updates. These were three non-broken things that Lenovo promptly “fixed” after it bought Motorola from Google for just $2.9 billion three years later.

Enlarge / Left: The $379 Nexus 5X, Right: The $649 Pixel.

SAN FRANCISCO—Google just announced the new "Pixel" line, a super-premium set of smartphones costing $650 and up. Google users accustomed to $380 or $500 Nexus devices will find this announcement a tough pill to swallow, which begs the question: is the Nexus line dead?

For now, to the extent that Google has any serious future roadmap, the Nexus line seems dead. Google's official statement is that there are "No plans" for future Nexus devices.

Existing Nexus devices are also getting downplayed by Google when it comes to having the latest version of Android. The Pixel phones are getting Android 7.1 out of the gate, while Nexus devices will have to deal with a "developer preview" testing period.

SAN FRANCISCO—Google just unleashed a whopping five hardware products today, and I spent plenty of time trying them. The first and most important release is the Google Pixel, Google's new flagship smartphones.

At $649 for the Pixel and $769 for the Pixel XL, Google is charging a lot more for the Pixel than it has for the Nexus devices. It's attacking the premium end of the market, and these definitely seem like premium phones. In fact, they remind me a lot of one particular premium smartphone—the iPhone.

I say that both as a complaint and a compliment. Both phones are extremely well made, with the aluminum back, glass rear window, and glass front forming a shell that really feels like it's worth the price tag. The design is also extremely derivative, to the point that I almost picked up someone's iPhone on a display table thinking it was a Pixel.