Author Archives:
Switch view

Apple Watch expected to have sold close to 1 million units in the US on launch day

by 134 comments

Apple Watch seems to have had a good launch day, if the data from Slice Intelligence is to be believed. The company tracked the e-receipts of 9,080 online shoppers who opted in to have their email tracked, the company estimates over 957,000 people purchased some variant of the Apple Watch in US alone.

Out of these, Slice Intelligence estimates 62 percent went with the cheapest Apple Watch Sport model, mostly in the Space Gray finish, with most of the rest preferring to get the stainless steel model. Read more »

Get YouTube’s experimental UI with a Chrome extension

by 35 comments

Google has been experimenting with a new UI for the YouTube player. The UI has transparent player controls that show you the relevant buttons without blocking the video.

The UI is still in development and hasn’t been finalized yet. But if you want to give it a shot, there is a way. Read more »

Best Apps and Games of the Week

by 41 comments

Welcome to our new weekly feature, the Best Apps and Games of the Week. Here we will try to cover some of the most notable apps and and games that were released in the past week or so on the mobile platform.

The list will include both new and apps that received some major update recently. The list is not limited to any particular mobile platform, but considering the current situation you’d likely only be seeing Android and iOS apps in the articles. Read more »

Huawei Honor 4X review

by 41 comments

The Honor 4X is the company’s latest entrant in the budget smartphone category. It is also the launch of Honor as a brand in itself, still owned by Huawei but running independently without the Huawei branding.

The Honor 4X is a competitively priced big screen smartphone. Some of the salient features include a 5.5-inch 720p IPS display, Snapdragon 410 processor, 2GB RAM, 13 megapixel camera, dual SIM connectivity, 4G LTE, and a 3,000mAh battery, all for a price of Rs. 10,499 ($168). Let’s take a closer look at it. Read more »

Canon announces XC10 4K digital camcorder

by 14 comments

Canon has announced a new camcorder with 4K internal video recording. Called the XC10, the new camera is aimed at beginners and semi-professionals who would want to upgrade to shooting 4K video without spending the big bucks for it.

The XC10 has a 1-inch type, 12 megapixel CMOS sensor for shooting videos and stills. The camera has a fixed wide angle optically stabilized lens with 10x optical zoom. It has a 35mm equivalent focal length of 24.1-241 mm for stills and 27.3-273 mm for videos with a variable f2.8-5.6 aperture. Read more »

Canon announces EOS C300 Mark II Digital Cinema Camera

by 11 comments

Canon has announced the latest flagship member of its cinema line of EOS cameras. The C300 Mark II has a new super 35mm sensor and 4K internal recording and 15-stop wide dynamic range.

The C300 Mark II has a new 8.85 megapixel super 35mm CMOS sensor coupled with Dual DIGIC DV 5 image processor. Canon has also developed a new XF-AVC codec that allows recording 10-bit 4:2:2 4K image internally without having to rely on an external recorder. The sensor is capable of shooting up to ISO 102,400 and sensor readout has been sped up by two times over the previous one to reduce rolling shutter distortion. Read more »

A look at the new racially diverse emoji in iOS 8.3

by 65 comments

We had talked about the upcoming racially diverse emoji in iOS and OS X a few weeks ago but it finally started rolling out in yesterday’s iOS 8.3 and OS X 10.10.3 update. It’s not often the emoji stack gets updated and this is by far the biggest update it has received in years, so let’s take a closer look at it.

The main change here was to diversify the skin color of the various faces. Emoji usage has exploded since Apple adopted it in iOS back in 2011 and a lot of people care about this now for the skin color of the faces to actually be an issue. Read more »

Twitter fixes its ‘quote’ button

by 12 comments

If you use Twitter, you’d have noticed that the ‘quote’ tweet button is entirely useless. It adds the entire tweet of the person in your tweet with their handle and quotation marks, which often leaves no space to add your own comment to it, in which case you’d rather just use the retweet button.

A better way to quote someone then was to add a link to their tweet with your comment, which is precisely how the new quote button works now. It lets you type your comment with the URL of the quoted tweet automatically added to the tweet. The URL cuts into some of the 140 characters but it’s not as bad as having the entire contents of the tweet using up the space. Read more »

THX updates Deep Note sound after 30 years

by 13 comments

Audiophiles, or anyone who has visited a THX-certified cinema hall, would be acutely aware of the grandiloquent THX Deep Note track that plays before every movie, a crescendo sound that announces the presence of THX certification for that cinema hall.

The original tone was created by Dr. James A. Moorer back when he was at Lucasfilm, creators of THX. 30 years since then, the company has unleashed the updated version of the tone, which is louder and more emphatic than ever before. Read more »

Nikon announces the 1 J5 mirrorless camera

by 79 comments

Nikon has launched the latest entrant in its compact mirrorless camera series, the Nikon 1 J5. The camera has a 20.8 megapixel, 1″ CX format BSI sensor, with EXPEED 5A image processor and an incredible 171 point contrast detect AF system with 105 phase detect AF points.

Speed seems to be the camera’s forte, as the company claims a burst mode of 20 fps at full resolution with continuous autofocus and up to an astonishing 60fps with fixed focus. The camera also boasts of 4K video recording, but does so at a lackluster 15fps, making it entirely useless for most people. Thankfully there’s the more usable 1080p60 recording mode as well 120fps slow motion 720p video. Read more »

Facebook launches Riff, a video creation and collaboration app

by 16 comments

Facebook’s Creative Labs department has come up with a new app for iOS and Android, called Riff. Riff lets you create videos that your friends can add to and contribute to videos created by your friends.

With Riff, you can make short videos that you can share with your friends. By default the videos are only visible within the app but you can also choose to post it on Facebook so it appears on your timeline. If someone wants to add to your video, they have to hit the + button on your video within the app, and their clip then gets added after yours. You can do the same to your friends’ videos. Read more »

HTC announces the RE SOK, the world’s first smart sock

by 47 comments

Smart watches are passé. HTC has just announced the RE SOK, the world’s smart sock. The sock integrates a display on the side that shows your phone’s notifications, so instead of doing the bothersome task of pulling the phone out of your pocket or bag, just hold your ankle next to your face.

The RE SOK also has a lot of other features. GPS tracking ensures you can find your other sock in case you ever lose it, a system designed to find holes in the sock, superslip coating to make it easier to slide around on hardwood floors (up to 40%), and complete compatibility with all versions of shoes (except sandals; the SOK are programmed to self destruct when used with sandals). Read more »

Microsoft announces MS-DOS for mobile

by 71 comments

Microsoft is bringing back MS-DOS but this time on the mobile. The company has announced a new version of MS-DOS for the mobile platform that you can download and install on your Lumia device.

The new (or rather the old) OS takes you back to your roots, back to some of the first computers we used. You can now relive those days in all their grayscale glory on your phone. The OS is also forwards compatible, so you can run Windows Phone apps as well, although pretty sure MS-DOS had more apps than Windows Phone does. Read more »

Latest WhatsApp for Android update brings voice calling to everyone

by 57 comments

WhatsApp has included the voice calling update in the latest version of the Android app. The feature is available through the 2.12.19 update and for now has to be downloaded through the company’s website, although should soon be available through the Play Store as well.

WhatsApp started rolling out the voice calling feature a while back but instead of making it available to everyone at once, they used sort of an invite system, where a user who already has the feature has to call you for you to get the calling feature. And this worked within a time window, so if you didn’t manage to get it activated then you’d have to wait for the next time window, whenever it arrived. Read more »

Sennheiser Momentum In-Ear Review

by 65 comments

The Momentum is Sennheiser’s series of premium portable headphones for the fashion-conscious crowd. While there is an undeniable whiff of Beats envy in the series, as that’s pretty much the same target audience that Beats caters to, being Sennheiser, the Momentum products didn’t at least sound terrible.

The company originally launched the around the ear circumaural headphones, which were later followed by the on-ear supra-aural model. The latest entrant in the series is the Momentum In-Ear, which, as you can guess, are a pair of in-ear earphones. Read more »