Month: October 2016

Enlarge (credit: Amazon Japan)

Amazon's Kindle Paperwhite can hold dozens of books without breaking a sweat, but the company is focusing on comics and art with its newest, region-specific model. Amazon Japan launched the "cartoon" model Kindle Paperwhite, which offers a performance boost over the current Paperwhite as well as eight times more storage, at 32GB.

The extra storage is meant to help the device hold hundreds of manga books at once. Amazon added a few other new features to make it easier for comic-lovers to enjoy their books, including "rapid page turn" which is 33 percent faster than the page-turning effect on the regular Kindles, and a two-page spread layout for viewing pages side-by-side.

The manga model Kindle Paperwhite also has the same 300ppi display of the newest, regular Paperwhite, and it should get up to six weeks of reading time between charges. The Kindle Paperwhite that's available worldwide has 4GB of storage, which is more than enough for holding books for the average reader. But for graphic-heavy titles, more storage is essential.

(credit: Bob Dormon / Ars Technica UK)

Nokia has achieved a connection speed of 5Gbps—about 625MB/sec—over 70 metres of conventional twisted-pair copper telephone wire, and 8Gbps over 30 metres. The trial used a relatively new digital subscriber line (DSL) protocol called XG.fast (aka G.fast2).

XG.fast is the probable successor of G.fast, which was successfully trialled in a few countries over the past couple of years and will soon begin to commercially roll out. (In an unusual turn of events, the UK will probably be the first country with G.fast.)

Fundamentally, both G.fast and XG.fast are best described as "VDSL on steroids." Basically, while a VDSL2 signal frequency maxes out around 17MHz, G.fast starts at 106MHz (it can be doubled to 212MHz) and XG.fast uses between 350MHz and 500MHz. This means that there's a lot more bandwidth (the original meaning of the word), which in turn can be used for transferring data at higher speeds.

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Following in the footsteps of the GTX 1080, GTX 1070, and GTX 1060, Nvidia has unveiled the GTX 1050 and GTX 1050 Ti. Pitched as graphics cards for e-sports players, or those looking to upgrade an off-the-shelf PC from the likes of Dell or HP, the Pascal-based GTX 1050 and GTX 1050 Ti are priced to move at just $109 and $139 respectively (UK pricing TBC, but probably £100 and £130 respectively). Both cards are due to launch on October 25.

At those prices, the GTX 1050 and GTX 1050 Ti are in direct competition with AMD's RX 460, which costs £99/$99 for a 2GB version, and $129/£135 for a 4GB version. In theory, Nvidia's cards should be a wee bit faster, with the 1050 Ti in particular sporting some great specs for the money. Those include 768 CUDA cores, 4GB of GDDR5 memory with 112GB/s of bandwidth, and a boost clock of 1392MHz. The non-Ti GTX 1050 drops down to 640 CUDA cores and 2GB of GDDR5 memory, but maintains the same bandwidth, and ups its boost clock to 1455MHz.

Both cards have a TDP of just 75W, which means that they can be powered by the PCIe bus alone. This makes them ideal drop-in cards for cheapo, off-the-shelf systems with integrated graphics that might not have the spare PCIe power cables needed to run beefier graphics cards. That said, some versions of the GTX 1050 and 1050 Ti will feature an additional power connector to allow for more overclocking headroom. There's no Founders Edition this time either, so all cards will come from Nvidia partners like Asus and MSI.

(credit: Edward Chester)

The all new Samsung 960 Pro, released today, is the follow up to last year's 950 Pro. It offers the same core set of features, with an M.2 form factor, four-lane PCIe 3.0 interface, NVMe communication standard, and 3D V-NAND. But the 960 Pro isn't just a minor spec bump. Samsung has seriously cranked up the speed (and capacities) of its flagship drives to the point where such ludicrous performance may be lost on all but the most demanding of users. These are some seriously hardcore SSDs.

Where the 950 Pro was available in just 256GB and 512GB versions, the 960 Pro starts at 512GB, with 1TB and 2TB versions also available. For the first time, you can reasonably consider replacing an entire array of spinner hard drives or even 2.5-inch SATA SSDs with these things—so long as you've got the cash, of course. With a 256GB starting capacity, Samsung was able to offer the speed, longevity, and warranty of the 950 Pro to those only able to budget £170 ($199) for an SSD. But with the 960 Pro starting at $329 for the 512GB model (probably ~£330), rising to $629 for 1TB, and an eye-watering $1,299 for 2TB, you'll need to save some extra pennies to buy one, or wait it out for the Evo drives Samsung is launching later this year.

Although a marked step down from the Pro range in some regards, the Evos are in theory faster than the 950 Pro drives for less money (thanks to using cheaper and more tightly packed TLC V-NAND). The 250GB will cost just $129 (~£130), 500GB will be $249 and 1TB will cost $470. There won't be a 2TB version of the 960 Evo.

Ron Amadeo

Google's getting into the hardware game (again) with the pricey Pixel and Pixel XL. But has it done enough to tempt people to switch to Android?[/ars_video] Welcome to the age of Google Hardware. Apparently tired of letting third-party Android OEMs serve as the stewards of Android handsets, Google has become a hardware company. (Again).

Earlier this year Google, launched a hardware division with former Motorola President Rick Osterloh at the helm. With the high-ranking title of "Senior Vice President," Osterloh doesn't oversee a side project—his group is on even footing with Android, Search, YouTube, and Ads. The hardware group is so powerful inside Google that it was able to merge Nexus, Pixel, Chromecast, OnHub, ATAP, and Glass into a single business unit. The group's coming out party was October 4, 2016, where it announced Google Home, Google Wifi, a 4K Chromecast, the Daydream VR headset, and the pair of phones we're looking at today: the Google Pixel and Google Pixel XL.

Enlarge (credit: Misfit)

It has been nearly a year since Fossil acquired the wearable and smart home company Misfit. Since then, Misfit has continued to push out new fitness trackers including the Shine 2 and the style-conscious Ray, but now the diving into full-on watches. Misfit has debuted the Phase hybrid smartwatch, its first true timepiece that combines an activity tracker along with some subtle smartwatch features.

The Phase is the most recognizable device Misfit has ever made because it's clearly identifiable as a watch. It has an aluminum and stainless steel case and comes with either silicone or leather bands. At this point, those are the typical smartwatch materials, but Misfit made sure to keep its aesthetic when designing the Phase. It's minimalist with small metallic accents in the watch hands, numbers, and a thin ring around the face itself. It doesn't have the bling of some Fossil hybrid smartwatches, with no oversized numbers or Roman numerals; while Misfit has clearly reaped the benefits of Fossil's watch expertise and supply chain, the Phase is undoubtably a Misfit device, not a Fossil one.

The definition of "hybrid," though, is likely taken from Fossil: the Phase combines activity tracking and smartphone-connected features, but does so without a touchscreen display. The watch itself is analog but it uses the hands, a small colored window near six o'clock, and vibrations to deliver notifications to your wrist. Not only does that allow the device to look and feel like a regular watch, but it also gives it a six-month battery life. The bands are also a little different from the rest: they're what Misfit calls "field bands," which forgo the traditional pin closure and use two snap buttons on each side of the band to attach to the case.