Gadgets

Refinements are perfectly fine • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 12, 2022Posted in Gadgets, Google, Google Fall Event 2022, Hardware, PIXEL, pixel 7, Pixel 7 ProNo Comments

Following last week’s Google event, a colleague commented to me that the Pixel 7 wasn’t as big an upgrade as the Pixel 6. This is an objectively true statement. But also, it’s fine. Whatever you think about the yearly refresh cycle hardware makers are locked into, we’ve all come to accept that some upgrades are going to be more incremental than others. In fact, most years are going to be iterative. That’s how this works. The contrast is strong here, because last year was anything but. The Pixel 6 was Google’s breakout phone. Last year was the year Google finally answered the “why,” marrying excellent hardware and software with an affordable price point. It’s a question the Pixel Watch may spend another generation or two addressing. But last year the Pixel smartphone line broke out of the cycle, and all it took was a massive restructuring of Google’s hardware division. The Pixel 6 changed the conversation around Google’s smartphone efforts. The Pixel 7 is, by and large, an iteration on last year’s model. And that’s totally fine. In 2021, the company worked to catch up with the rest of the flagship market, and now it’s about keeping that pace. The truth about the way the category is structured currently is that it seems likely that any one will change the conversation completely. Image Credits: Brian Heater So many of these devices revolve around same or similar components powering the same operating system. At present, Google’s biggest differentiator is software. The Pixel may have been developed as a method for showcasing new Android features, but these days, those features are precisely what distinguishes the product from the pack. The other big (and related tentpole) are the company’s advances in machine learning. Those are present in a number of spots, but most primarily imaging, where this thing really shines. I opted to review the 7 Pro instead of the 7 this time out because we’re finally getting some nice fall weather here and I really wanted to take some good photos. Is that selfish? I mean, yeah, for sure, but photography is the battlefield on which the smartphone wars are currently waged. There’s a third potential plank for some differentiation: processing. Like Apple, Google has broken out of the Qualcomm mold that powers a majority of flagships these days, instead opting to build its own chips in-house. Unfortunately, there’s really not a big leap from original Tensor chip to the G2 — certainly nothing worth dwelling on here. The benchmarks do get a small uptick, but for day-to-day use, it seems unlikely you’ll notice much there. Image Credits: Brian Heater The hardware is refined over last year’s model. It’s a nice looking phone (the camera bar has proven somewhat polarizing, but I like it). It’s slim, slick and shiny, and the phone doesn’t feel as outsized as its 6.7-inch screen (though single-handed use is largely a no-go for me). The 1,000 nit display is nice and bright, and the 1440 x 3120 512 ppi resolution looks great coupled with the smooth 120Hz refresh rate. Like the new Pixel Watch, it’s got an always-on option, though again, that’s going to have an impact on battery life. Also like the Pixel Watch, I wasn’t particularly impressed with the on-board battery. Rated at 5,000 mAh (a slight downgrade from the 6 Pro’s 5,003), I’m looking at around 25% capacity nine hours in. Once again, imaging is where this thing really shines. One of the earliest hard-learned lessons for the line is that computational photography alone isn’t enough. Google felt it had something to prove in those early days, with a single camera sensor, but it ultimately came up short. Computational photography, coupled with good camera hardware, on the other hand, is a force to be reckoned with. The standard 7 sports a 50-megapixel wide camera and 12-megapixel ultrawide, while the Pro adds a 48-megapixel telephoto into the camera bar. I’m not permanently packing up my SLR any time soon, but as far as a frictionless, out of the box experience goes, it’s tough to beat the Pixel 7 Pro. Generations of camera software updates have made taking a good photo dead simple, and recent upgrades have brought dramatic improvements to things like zoom. [Insert: Full zoom]The phone will only get you up to 5x with optical zoom, but it does an impressive job beyond that, all things considered. When you really push things to 20-30x, you’re going to see clear noise on the image, but the result is still impressive, particularly when shooting in direct sunlight. Image stabilization also does a good job minimizing some of the unavoidable handshaking that comes with telephoto shots. Light also makes a world of difference for macro shots. Holding the camera around one to two inches from a subject will surface the setting automatically. There’s no specific macro lens built in (as we’ve seen on a smattering of other models). Instead, the feature relies on the ultrawide, and the results are impressive, nonetheless. Coupled with upgrades to features like Real Tone for more authentic skin tones and Night Sight and you’ve got an extremely well-rounded and impressive little camera in your pocket. Image Credits: Brian Heater The biggest exclusive (for now, at least) software updates arrive on the Speech side of things. These have long been top of the list of Pixel standout features, so it’s no surprise to see that they’re still a focus this time around. Voice Recorder adds Canadian English, American Spanish and Hindi English to a list that also includes German, French, Spanish, Italian and Japanese. Google’s longstanding quest to make automated phone menus less annoying continues in earnest with the addition of pressable menu options that populate even before the robot voice speaks them. Much like the phone itself nothing there is a true breakthrough, so much as a refinement on an already good thing. With a starting price of $599 for the 7 and $899 for the 7 Pro, Google is more

Microsoft refreshes the Surface Laptop, Pro and Studio • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 12, 2022Posted in Gadgets, Hardware, Microsoft, microsoft surface, Surface, surface laptop, surface pro, surface studioNo Comments

Microsoft introduced a deluge of upgraded Surface products during a virtual keynote this morning. Detailed in a blog post penned by Chief Product Officer, Panos Panay, the Laptop 5 gets top billing here. The devoted touchscreen notebook arrives in 13.5- and 15-inch models, powered by Intel Evo, which the company claims will make it “50% more powerful than their predecessor.” Image Credits: Microsoft The 13-inch model arrives with a 12th Gen Core i5, upgradable to i7, while the larger version is available with the latter. This time out, AMD won’t be available for the system. Both models do, however, not have Thunderbolt 4 support built in. The 13- and 15-inch models start at $1,000 and $1,300, respectively. Not a huge update this time out, unfortunately. The company devotes more words to the Surface Pro 9, which is available in both Intel and Arm flavors. The convertible, which celebrates a decade of life this year, has a 13-inch touchscreen, with support for Vision IQ (Intel only, apparently), Dolby’s feature that adjust display settings based on ambient light. That system also starts at $1,000 for the Intel model and $1,300 for the Arm. The Laptop and Pro arrive October 25. Lastly, but certainly not leastly is the Surface Studio 2+. As the name suggests, it’s less of a full upgrade to the convertible all-in-one, but instead something more akin to a souped-up version of its predecessor. The design remains the same, with a 28-inch touchscreen display that’s adjustable via the Gravity Hinge. When lowered, artists can interact with it more along the lines of a Wacom Cintiq drawing tablet. Says Panay. we’ve rearchitected our Surface Studio processing engine utilizing an updated Intel Core H-35 processor, with up to 50% faster CPU performance. We’ve designed NVIDIA Ge Force RTX 3060 discrete graphics to double the graphics performance, achieving the most realistic ray-traced graphics when you craft 3D design or render models. We’ve enhanced and modernized the display, cameras, Studio Mics, and ports –including USB-C with Thunderbolt 4. With Windows 11, Surface Studio 2+also meets Secured-core PC standards. Image Credits: Microsoft Powered by the Intel Core u7, 32GB of RAM and 1TB of storage, the Studio runs $4,300. The company will toss in a mouse, keyboard and stylus for another $200.

Roku dives into smart home market with security cameras, video doorbells, smart lights, and more • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 12, 2022Posted in Gadgets, roku, security cameras, smart home devices, video doorbellNo Comments

Roku’s newest venture goes beyond your TV screen: The hardware company just announced Roku Smart Home, a new lineup of devices including security cameras, video doorbells, smart lights, and voice-enabled smart plugs. The company also launched a Roku Smart Home mobile app and a security camera subscription service. Roku building out its home technologies is significant for the company as rivals Google and Amazon have dominated the competitive connected home space for years. The move makes sense for the company and is a pretty obvious one, given that Roku is looking for ways to increase its sources of income. The company missed Wall Street’s expectations last quarter when it reported total net revenue of $764 million. Roku’s new smart home devices include floodlight cameras, indoor/outdoor cameras, 360° indoor cameras, video doorbells, smart light bulbs, light strips and both indoor and outdoor plugs. A Roku spokesperson told ZebethMedia that “this is just the first step for Roku Smart Home,” and indicated more smart home products will launch in the future. “As the #1 selling smart TV [operating system] in the U.S., the Roku platform is used by tens of millions of households, and now we’re extending our ecosystem to include devices and services to power the modern smart home,” said Mustafa Ozgen, President, Devices, Roku, in a statement. “Branching further into the smart home category is a natural extension of our business, and we are proud to partner with Walmart to make the experience simple and affordable.” A select number of the new products are available to purchase today on Roku.com and Walmart.com. Plus, as part of its partnership with Walmart, consumers will also be able to buy the devices in retail at 3,500 Walmart stores starting Monday, October 17. The two companies partnered up in June to allow consumers to purchase items while streaming on Roku devices. Image Credits: Roku Roku’s new security cameras consist of indoor and outdoor cameras, a 360° camera for indoors, a video doorbell and a floodlight camera. Each device comes with HD video quality (1080p), person detection, motion and sound detection, night vision, two-way audio, cloud storage, as well as instant notifications and a loud siren. What’s more, all Roku’s smart home products are compatible with Roku’s voice assistant, Roku Voice, as well as Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa. The Roku voice remote can be used to bring up video feeds on Roku TVs and Roku streaming players. Roku’s wired indoor camera and outdoor camera are, for the most part, the same in design, however, the outdoor camera comes with a 12.5 ft power adaptor. They both have a horizontal field vision of 130°. The devices range from $27 to $50, which are more affordable options than the $100 Google Nest wired camera. There’s also the battery-operated outdoor camera with 110° view and 6 month battery life for $74. The Indoor Camera 360° is $40 and tracks motion by panning and tilting the camera. Amazon’s similar indoor plug-in camera, the Blink Mini, is $35, and will soon get a Blink Mini Pan Tilt mount for $30. Image Credits: Roku The Video Doorbell & Chime costs $80 – $100 and is waterproof, wireless, and includes a rechargeable battery, head-to-toe view and package detection. Roku’s device competes on price with Ring’s Video Doorbell Wireless with Chime, which is $100. Roku’s wired floodlight camera is priced at $100, has a brightness of 2600 lumens, and features motion-activated lights and a waterproof design. With the floodlight camera, users can see a 270° area up to 30 ft away. In September, Amazon introduced a Blink wired floodlight camera for $100, which will be available to U.S. customers in the coming months. Ring also sells a wired floodlight cam for $200. Google has a Nest Cam floodlight for $280. Image Credits: Roku Similar to Amazon’s Ring Protect plan, Roku offers a security camera subscription, which costs $2.99 per camera per month. There’s also a free 14-day trial. Ring’s cheapest security camera subscription plan increased to $3.99 per month in June. Google’s security camera subscription plan, Nest Aware, is more on the pricier side, starting at $6 a month, however, it includes 30 days of video history. Roku’s camera subscription retains video clips for 14 days. Users can also download the new Roku Smart Home mobile app to control devices, get cloud video recording history, turn on smart alerts, get package delivery notifications, and more. Image Credits: Roku The new smart light bulbs are available in white and color and range from $6.88 to $24. With a brightness of 800 lumens, Roku’s smart bulbs can be customized within the Roku Smart Home app, such as a dimming feature, time schedules, and more. Roku’s smart light strips cost $23 to $45, feature lighting effects, and can be synced with music, making it a great device for parties. Users can set a timer for the lights as well. Electronic devices can be controlled throughout the home with Roku’s voice-enabled smart plugs, which cost $8.88-$15.

Meta’s vision for the future of VR is a worse version of the past • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 11, 2022Posted in Gadgets, Hardware, meta, Meta Connect 2022No Comments

Meta keeps saying VR is the future, but everything it shows us is an inferior rehash of the things we already have. Its event today was, between assurances that everything is great in the Metaverse, a collection of tacit admissions that the best they can hope to do is ape a reality we are all desperately trying to leave behind. The silliest example of this is the new capability to enter a Meta VR environment through an embed on a website. This was described as perhaps the first way many people will experience a virtual environment. It’s hard to know where to start with this notion. With the no doubt internally depressing acceptance that $1,000 VR hardware doesn’t scale well and most people can’t be bothered to try it? With the idea that a shared 3D environment is a new experience? Or that this is something that people actually want to do? Of course people have shared virtual environments for decades. When it’s viewed on a regular monitor, it’s no different than Second Life, or World of Warcraft, or any other of the popular games and platforms that have come and gone (and come again) over the years. The difference is those had a reason to exist: being a game you can progress and share hundreds of hours of unique experiences in, for instance. Meta’s environment is just that: an environment. It’s hard to imagine why anyone would want to join via this web interface unless they had no other option, like if the meeting was only being held in VR. But of course Meta has had trouble even getting its own employees to do that. Meanwhile most people in the world are waiting for VR to be worth the price of a gaming console or laptop. Today’s presentation didn’t really make much progress there. In fact there was an alarming and baffling reiteration of an idea that I thought we left behind a long time ago: a virtual desk. Image Credits: Meta This concept has been cursed for decades, since the most notable failure in the domain: the infamous Microsoft Bob. Meta has very unwisely recreated Bob, a virtual desktop, in ways that have no benefits whatsoever. You can have a worse experience reading emails, or a worse video call, or play games and watch movies on a worse screen. Notably there was very little showing what working at a virtual desk would actually look like, because most of the things people take for granted — effortless multitasking, quick switching between cursor and typing, easy compatibility with apps and websites — don’t exist in VR. Sure, they’re partnering with Microsoft and Accenture and so on, but even so, would Slack or Teams be better in VR, or worse? Like nearly everything, the answer is worse. Virtual meetings with everyone around a virtual office table sound like a nightmare to me. The most telling piece was the admission that the subtleties of human expression are important to communication — someone’s unique smile or posture, a moment of eye contact when the boss flubs a line in a presentation. Their solution is, like nearly everything Meta does, technically impressive and completely misguided. The new headset tracks facial expressions and gaze, meaning it can replicate these in a decent way in a virtual environment, on your new avatars with legs and everything. But it’s so plainly a poor recreation of the real thing, and video calls — for all the issues they have — are actually quite good at catching those little expressions and moments. VR meetings with the expression-tracking tech may be better than VR meetings without, but any VR meeting is still a huge pain in the ass that no one, including the faithful at Meta, would do regularly if they had a choice. Not only that, but working long term within VR doesn’t make sense in most ways, as Meta again admitted without explicitly saying so. The new Quest Pro headset actually has removable eye cups so you can see the real world in your periphery, in order to take some notes, grab your coffee, and so on. They literally cut holes in the headset so you could do normal things that ought to be possible with their much-vaunted mixed reality. Fortunately you won’t have to worry about that because the battery life is very limited. Even if your boss wanted you to be in virtual meetings all day, the headset would conk out before lunch. Isn’t the entire world trying to think past the idea of the office, of the meeting-filled workday, of the traditional form of work that’s essentially a relic of the postwar era? Why would anyone want to cling to these paradigms, unless they had no ideas about what actually comes next? It’s funny because VR is such a powerful technology, as anyone who has used it even once can attest. But Meta, its biggest proponent, doesn’t seem to know what to do with it beyond “what you already do, but worse.” So little of what it showed today suggested the future, and so much clawed at the past to find a crack into which to inject VR — hoping someone, somewhere might agree with them that appearing as a VR avatar in Zoom is something that makes sense. “Is it this? Is this the killer app for VR?” they seem to be asking. Needless to say it isn’t. And judging from the company’s inability to innovate at a large scale over the last years, it may not be capable of finding it.

Living with Apple’s iPhone 14 Plus • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 10, 2022Posted in Apple, Gadgets, Hardware, iPhone, iphone 14, iPhone 14 PlusNo Comments

What constitutes a big phone in 2022? It’s been a moving target for a number of years now — albeit a target that has been steadily moving in a single direction. It’s tough to determine the exact average display size, but most flagship smartphone screens generally fall somewhere between six and seven inches. In 2010, Steve Jobs famously touted four inches as the ideal screen size. “You can’t get your hand around it,” he noted as Android phones were slowly creeping up in size. “No one’s going to buy that.” The following year, Samsung released the first Galaxy Note. The 5.3-inch display elicited downright disgust from some. The first phablet of note was simply too big for pockets and hands. The intervening decade has rendered those comments quaint. Technology has a way of doing that. Fast-forward to 2022, and the four new versions of the iPhone 14 come in two sizes: 6.1- and 6.7 inches. Plenty of things have transpired to get us here, not the least of which is a dramatic gain in the screen-to-body ratio. As displays have gotten larger, the overall footprint required to support them has shrunk. I’ve been using the regular iPhone 14 as my primary device for the last few weeks. I can’t quite wrap my hand completely around it, but close enough. More important is the fact that it’s easy to use with one hand. We’ve come a long way since the days of a 5.3-inch phone seeming almost impossibly large. Image Credits: Brian Heater For my own daily use, I’ve come to really appreciate 6.1 inches as a sweet spot. It’s a good size screen in a hardware footprint that isn’t overwhelming. As ever, your mileage may vary. Some folks were understandably disappointed when the iPhone 14 lineup effectively marked the death of the Mini. Wanting a smaller phone is perfectly reasonable, and for now the SE will have to fill that role. As you’ve no doubt surmised from reading this, I’ve since switched to the 14 Plus for daily use. Right off the bat I will say that I cannot, in fact, wrap my hand around it. Using it in one hand is a bit more of a mixed bag. With face unlock enabled, there are certain actions that are perfectly possible to execute in this manner: checking emails, doomscrolling through social media — basically the things many of us spend most of our time doing on our phones. If you want to, say, respond to an email, on the other hand, things get more complicated. I can generally contort to select the specific message, but hitting Replay in Gmail and typing are going to require both hands. If you’re deep into the world of voice computing, perhaps you’ve got a workaround that works for you. As with all things in life, there’s a trade-off here. I do quite like the 6.7-inch size for things like video. It’s also nice having all that screen as a viewfinder while taking pictures. I ended up moderating a panel at a Brooklyn bookstore earlier this week, and it’s a great size to serve as a kind of makeshift teleprompter. Granted, that’s a fairly niche need, but moving from 6.1 to 6.7 inches, those sorts of advantages start to make themselves known fairly quickly. Beyond screen size, the biggest advantage to opting for the Plus over the standard 14 is battery. The Plus is rated at 26 hours of video playback versus the 14’s 20 hours. In practical terms for me, that meant I went to bed at around 50% battery and woke up around 37%. You should be able to make it through a full 24 hours without an issue. There’s a nice peace of mind in not having to worry about finding a charger during the day. We’re not talking an Apple Watch Series 8 to Ultra-sized jump here, but there’s a lot to be said for not having to worry about having a phone die on you when you’re out in the world. The 14 Plus sits in an interesting kind of liminal space in the iPhone line. It’s the entry-level model, and it’s not the most premium. It’s closer to the former, and similar in practically every respect aside from size. Interestingly, it’s actually lighter than the smaller 14 Pro. That’s something I noticed almost immediately, having been using the Pro a bit, as well. That’s certainly of note for a large phone like this. At $899, it’s also $100 cheaper than the Pro and $200 less than the Pro Max. Image Credits: Brian Heater The 14 is the device you get when you want a new iPhone, but don’t need all the latest bells and whistles. The 14 Pro sits on the bleeding edge of iPhone technology. The 14 Pro Max is a kitchen sink device. The Plus is for the person who prefers the larger screen, but doesn’t require all of the aforementioned frills. The surefire way to figure out which is right for you is to try them on for size at a local brick and mortar. I’d say the regular 14 makes the most sense for the most users. Upgrade to the Pro if you want better photos and a faster chip (and/or are generally dazzled by everything the Dynamic Island has to offer). If screen size is your chief concern, however, that 0.6 inches makes a lot of difference.