Month: August 2018

Valentina Palladino

Today, Samsung is unveiling the successor to its well-rounded yet expensive Galaxy Tab S3 from last year. The new Galaxy Tab S4 improves upon last year's slab in nearly every way, and it should be more versatile for users thanks to included Samsung Dex software. Confined to accessories until now, Samsung Dex software lets users connect a Samsung mobile device to a monitor and then use the device as a pseudo-desktop.

The first Dex dock came out over a year ago and was designed to be used with Samsung smartphones. Users could plug their device into the dock, connect it to a monitor, pair a keyboard and a mouse, and use the setup as they would a full desktop PC. The system ran a version of Android that Samsung modified to better suit a desktop UI, which included a lock screen and a task bar area with app icons. Dex on the Galaxy Tab S4 works just like this, with a couple of extra features that leverage the power of a tablet.

Enlarge / NASA conducts a test of an RS-25 rocket engine on the A-1 Test Stand at Stennis Space Center. (credit: NASA)

One of the primary criticisms of NASA's Space Launch System is that the program was created to save jobs at key agency contractors that otherwise would have been lost following the end of the space shuttle program. The large, new rocket includes several heritage components from the shuttle, including its main engines.

When the space shuttle program ended in 2011, NASA had 15 of the reusable main engines left over and has since built one more from spare parts. Because the expendable SLS rocket will use four engines in its core stage, this means NASA presently has enough for the first four flights of the SLS rocket.

NASA will therefore eventually need more engines for the SLS rocket—assuming the rocket flies more than a handful of flights— and so the agency awarded Aerojet Rocketdyne a $1.16 billion contract in 2016 to restart production of a modified version of the space shuttle main engine, known as the RS-25. In addition to this, the space agency placed an order for six "flight" engines, bringing the total value of the contract to $1.5 billion.

Enlarge / This interview is all about battery life.

With the last version of the Android P Developer Preview released, we're quickly heading towards the final build of another major Android version. And for Android P—aka version 9.0—battery life is a major focus. The Adaptive Battery feature will dole out background access to only the apps you use. A new auto brightness scheme has been devised. And the Android team has made changes to how background work runs on the CPU. All together, battery life should be batter (err, better) than ever.

To get a bit more detail about how all this works, we sat down with a pair of Android engineers: Benjamin Poiesz, Group Product Manager for the Android Framework, and Tim Murray, a Senior Staff Software Engineer for Android. And over the course of our second fireside Android chat, we learned a bit more about Android P overall and some specific things about how Google goes about diagnosing and tracking battery life across the range of the OS's install base.

What follows is a transcript with some of the interview lightly edited for clarity. We also included some topical background comments in italics.