IRL: A week with the thinnest phone on the market

IRL: A week with the thinnest phone on the market

BY BRAD MOLEN 

engadget

Ever since the original Moto RAZR V3 came out 10 years ago, the smartphone industry has had a strange obsession with skinny phones. Not because shaving a millimeter or two off a device will give it more functionality, but because it's an effective marketing tactic. In emerging markets in particular, slimmer phones at slimmer prices enjoy a distinct advantage. Gionee, a handset maker based in China, isn't very well known, but it's looking to make a name for itself with devices like the $375 Elife S5.5. At 5.55mm thick, this svelte beauty currently claims the title for the thinnest smartphone on the market. To put that in perspective, that's a full two millimeters skinnier than the iPhone 5s. I spent a few days with the device to see if thinner really is better.%Slideshow-213737%

Hardware

Sporting a chamfered magnesium frame with Gorilla Glass 3 panels on both front and back, the Elife is a beautiful phone with much better build quality than I expected. It features flat sides with angular edges, which -- along with its sleek form factor -- makes for a stylish design that's fun to look at. It's comfortable, but the slim size doesn't play a role in making it any more so than fatter devices. Durability is typically a concern for extremely slim devices, but being thinner doesn't seem to make a difference here: I'm convinced this handset can hold up as well as any other smartphone comprised of similar materials. (That said, you'll still need to be careful with the glass, since it's scratch-resistant, but not shatterproof.) At 4.69 ounces (133g), the Elife also has enough heft to give it a premium feel without being too heavy or too light.

The Elife's camera is a tad thicker than the rest of the device, but Gionee smartly designed the bump to complement the phone's minimal design rather than sticking out like a sore thumb. The 13-megapixel module and LED flash are nestled on the top-left corner of the back, with chamfered and angled edges that drop down to meet up with the glass. Of course, this makes it so the back isn't completely flat when you lay it down, but on a positive note, this prevents sound coming out of the rear speaker from getting muffled.
Along with a thinner frame -- and a lower price point -- comes less room to go all-out on specs. It only comes with 16GB of internal storage space and no microSD slot; it features HSPA+ (either 850/1900/2100 or 900/1900/2100, depending on market), but no LTE connectivity, which likely won't be a problem in most emerging markets for now. There's also no NFC; and the non-replaceable battery is fairly small, at 2,300mAh.
The 5-inch, 1080p Super AMOLED display comes with a pixel density of 441 ppi and features excellent viewing angles. All told, the panel is similar to what's used on the Samsung Galaxy S4, which means you're going to get saturated colors and deep blacks. It's not nearly as bright as most flagships I've played with recently, but it's easily viewable in direct sunlight (provided the brightness is above 85 percent).

Performance and software

Under the hood, the Elife uses an octa-core MediaTek chipset, which, despite its eight cores, is more mid-range than high-end component. And its performance reflects this: Animations and transitions are a bit choppy; the screen sometimes has problems responding to finger input; and gaming is hit-or-miss thanks to some frame skips. Otherwise, though, the performance is smooth enough. Its biggest issue, which is amplified by the phone's slim build, is that the processor runs so hot that the glass surface is almost impossible to hold while playing games. (You'll also want to refrain from holding it up to your face for a few minutes until it cools down a bit.) The 2,300mAh battery is not very impressive, either; on most days, I struggled to make it through a full day on a single charge.

On the software front, the Elife runs Android 4.4 KitKat with a custom user interface called Amigo OS. It's very similar to other Chinese Android options in that it doesn't have an app tray, so all of my apps were scattered on the home panels, à la iOS. You can access Google Play Services as well, ensuring that you'll be able to sync your Google accounts if you want. However, after a few days with the new OS, I was ready to switch over from Amigo to the Google Now Launcher, which is now available for most Android devices and is much closer to a pure Android experience on the front, but features Gionee customizations everywhere else (such as the lock screen and notification tray).
The Elife is only available in a handful of countries including India and China, but the manufacturer has partnered with other brands to create carbon-copied versions of the device. You can get the Blu Vivo IV in the US, for instance, the Allview X2 Soul in Europe and the Bara 1 in Taiwan, all of which have essentially the same chassis and spec sheet. (Pricing varies, but the Vivo IV is $300.)

Wrap-up

Thin phones have their fair share of trade-offs. On one hand, the Elife is a sleek, elegant device. On the other, its slim design comes at the expense of battery life, heat dissipation, storage space and other specs. It's also just as comfortable and usable as most flagship smartphones that have two to three millimeters of extra padding (although it can be tougher to pick up when it's lying on a table or desk). Even so, additional thinness doesn't make a difference to the in-hand experience. And yet, there are strong indications that Gionee will soon come out with an even thinner device soon; if it does, the company will keep its claim to the thinnest phone on the market. But at what cost?

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Can a 'Transit Mode' Stop Us From Texting While Driving?

Can a 'Transit Mode' Stop Us From Texting While Driving?

Kriston Capps

CityLab

In one way (maybe the only way), flying is easier than it used to be. Last year, the Federal Aviation Administration relaxed its ban on using electronic devices on airplanes. Since then, flight attendants have all but abandoned any pretense about requiring passengers to switch their portable electronic devices off or to Airplane Mode, even during the parts of a flight that are still subject to some FAA strictures. For phone addicts, this is great news, since the ban never made much sense from a technological perspective, and because hold on I need to check Twitter.
This development leaves us with Airplane Mode itself, a familiar toggle built into every mobile and tablet operating system that no longer feels so useful. But rather than let this function slip away as a digital anachronism, we ought to seize it as an opportunity. And by "we," I mean a different federal agency, namely the Department of Transportation.

The idea isn't mine alone: I have to tip my hat to Texas country great Robert Earl Keen. Recently, he's appeared in commercial spots for AT&T advertising the provider's new gigabit fiber Internet service in Austin. Over the last couple of days, the company has been promoting a tweet from @RobertEarlKeen1 about its "It Can Wait" campaign—so I guess I need to tip my hat to AT&T as well.
The campaign is a public proposal for a common shorthand to prevent distracted driving. The idea, to the extent that there is a specific prescription, is pretty simple. Before you get behind the wheel, you text "#X" to anyone with whom you've been texting to let that person know that you're driving and therefore unavailable.
That's a solid suggestion for a lot of reasons. There's plenty of room in the digital lexicon for shorthand and conceptual mapping rn, tbqh. And texting while driving is a large enough crisis that it merits a prominent project X: More than 3,300 people were killed in distracted-driving accidents in 2012, while some 421,000 people were injured. Plus, #X is easy to remember.
Bless Robert Earl Keen's soul, but this campaign really doesn't reach far enough. Actively sending a #X text to a friend (or friends) doesn't really resemble the way that we deal with similar situations in other realms of our digital lives. When we don't plan to get back to email for a while, we set an auto-reply. When we leave our desks for lunch, we set our chat status to away. Any can't-text-I'm-driving notification should work the same way: automatically.
Crucially, the distracted drivers who are most prone to accidents may be engaged in several text conversations at once. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, drivers in their twenties make up 27 percent of the distracted drivers involved in fatal car accidents. The cohort with the largest share of distracted drivers is the 15–19 age group, which is also the part of the population most fully integrated into the texting Matrix.
So here's a modest proposal: Let's turn Airplane Mode into Transit Mode. Build in a couple of options under Transit Mode. One might be similar to the way that Airplane Mode currently shuts off all inbound and outbound data (also a handy way to quickly charge your phone, by the way). But another function might work a bit more like an auto-reply, a way to send a text response (perhaps a #X) to contacts who try to reach you without notifying you that someone's trying to reach you. (Because you are driving, biking, or otherwise distracted.)
Parents, exes, significant others: There are many people who might object to receiving a #X reply to a text. (Those people probably aren't keen on getting no reply at all, either.) And there are certainly circumstances in which you might not want to let everyone who asks know you're engaged in #X activity. Personally, I'd rather check my texts when they come in before I decide how to respond—and, actually, I'd much rather just text this one quick thing nbd and so what if I'm driving? That's the problem, of course. No one thinks that he's a distracted driver when he's driving distractedly.
The AT&T campaign gets at one part of the issue: It's a lot easier to type out "#X" than "I'm driving to Taco Cabana brb." But a minor, multimodal improvement on Airplane Mode would prevent drivers from ever seeing that "Yo pick me up a burrito ultimo" response that inevitably leads to a hasty conversation—one that drivers can't afford to engage in but never seem able to resist.
One day, when cars drive themselves, distracted driving won't be the same issue. On the other hand, if lawmakers can require in-car breathalyzers for certain drivers, they might could consider a solution that prevents drivers from receiving texts or calls altogether (barring certain emergency conditions, of course).
In the meantime, a little paternalism from mobile providers might help drivers put their urgent digital lives out of sight and out of mind

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Cassini spies methane clouds on Saturn's moon Titan

Cassini spies methane clouds on Saturn's moon Titan

By Amina Khan

Los Angeles Times 

Flying past Saturn's moon Titan, NASA's Cassini spacecraft has caught a few glimpses of methane clouds speeding over the enormous moon's hydrocarbon seas in its northern polar region.
Clouds developed and dissipated over Ligeia Mare, a roughly 310-mile-wide sea of methane and ethane that ranks as Titan's second-largest lake. Tracked for more than two days in late July, the pale apparitions' movements revealed wind speeds of 7 to 10 mph.
"It was exciting to see them because we have been waiting for a while now," said Elizabeth Turtle, a planetary scientist working with the Cassini imaging team at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab in Laurel, Md.
It's been a long time since such floating clumps of methane gas have been spotted in the icy moon's nitrogen-rich atmosphere. Ever since a major storm blew through Titan's midsection near the end of 2010, the skies on this Saturnian satellite have remained largely clear, Turtle said. But this sunny weather caught some scientists off guard: According to their models, more clouds should have started to crop up as Titan approached its summer season.
Such seasonal changes are more challenging to track far out in the solar system, given that a year on Titan lasts some 30 years on Earth (and each season is about seven years long). It takes a while to establish "annual" patterns on such long time scales, and so it becomes particularly disconcerting when the atmosphere's behavior doesn't fit the predicted models.
The clouds then are a welcome sign that perhaps the planetary scientists' long-held theories are not too far off base.
"It's just a tantalizing hint that the summer storms are starting," Turtle said, "but we'll have to keep observing to see."
Cassini is scheduled for another flyby in late August that could reveal whether clouds are building for some summer tempests, as they predict.
Scientists want to understand Titan in part because it helps them refine atmospheric models that they could then apply to far-off exoplanets and other as-yet impenetrable worlds. It is, after all, the only world in our neighborhood with a thick atmosphere and stable bodies of liquid on its surface.
It's also one of the few spots in our solar system very rich in complex organic molecules, giving it some potential for life-friendly environments. (The chances of any form of life ever having existed are still very low, however — as low as the surface temperature, which sits at about 290 degrees below zero.)

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An iPhone trick to avoid Facebook Messenger and keep chatting

An iPhone trick to avoid Facebook Messenger and keep chatting

Samuel Gibbs

The Guardian 

Facebook’s policy to force users to install a separate Messenger app on their smartphones hasn’t been popular. However, there is a quick trick on an iPhone to stop Facebook installing Messenger and continue chatting using the normal Facebook app.
Not all Facebook users are being forced to use the Messenger app, as the change is rolling out gradually. Eventually every mobile Facebook user will face the decision of whether or not to install the separate app.
All iPhone users have to do avoid this unpopular decision is to hit the install Messenger button when prompted by the standard Facebook app, but switch to the App Store while the Messenger app is being installed and stop the installation or delete the app.
Re-opening the standard Facebook app should have chat available in Messages, as before Facebook’s attempts to try to force Messenger on users.
The trick should work for now, but Facebook could easily update its apps for better detection of Messenger and remove the little work around.

Jailbreak or resort to Facebook in the browser

Those on an iPhone that decide to jailbreak have other options with at least one free hack available that forces the Facebook app to ignore the separate Messenger app to allow chatting on the social network through the main Facebook app.
Jailbreaking is a process that allows users to override certain security protocols on an iPhone to allow installation of applications from stores outside of Apple’s App Store, like the Cydia store, but is not an option for most users.
Another alternative for those trying to escape the clutches of Facebook Messenger is to use the Facebook mobile website, which allows users to chat as well as access most of the other features of the Facebook app but from within a mobile browser on an iPhone or Android.
Placing a bookmark for the Facebook mobile site on the smartphone’s home screen makes it behave similarly to an app – lacking some features and push notifications of messages – but also helps avoid battery drain issues some users experience with the dedicated Facebook app.

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Microsoft teases new camera-focused Windows Phones on September 4th

Microsoft teases new camera-focused Windows Phones on September 4th

Jon Fingas

Engadget 

 You won't have to wait long if you're hoping for a new round of Windows Phones with powerful cameras. Microsoft has just sent out a save-the-date notice that asks the media if it's ready for "more face time" at a Berlin event on September 4th, just ahead of the IFA technology show. There's a Lumia 1020-style camera module not-so-subtly woven into the text, too. While there are no dead giveaways in the teaser, it's not hard to figure out the references. Our hunch is that "face time" is an allusion to "Superman" (aka the Lumia 730), the selfie-oriented Windows Phone that leaked just a few days ago. The module is slightly more cryptic, but it might be hinting at the aluminum-clad, 13-megapixel "Tesla" (Lumia 830) that reportedly surfaced last month. We're headed to IFA, so you should expect to hear much, much more about any new Lumias within a few weeks

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California's smartphone kill switch bill is about to become law

California's smartphone kill switch bill is about to become law:

Jon Fingas

Engadget 

After a brief battle, California's smartphone kill switch bill is on the cusp of becoming a bona fide law. The measure has passed its final Senate vote 27 to 8, leaving just the Governor's signature before it takes effect. For the most part, it's the same bill that we saw in May -- the biggest change is an exemption for selling older devices that can't "reasonably be reengineered" to incorporate the remote lockdown feature.

agreed to implementenacted similar legislation.

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What Apple’s secret in-house university teaches employees about good design

What Apple’s secret in-house university teaches employees about good design

At the top-secret internal training sessions that Apple offers to its employees, the message boils down to this: Be more like Picasso and less like Google. That’s the takeaway from an excellent New York Times report on Apple University, as the iPhone maker’s training program is known, which drafts in Ivy League professors and features tailor-made courses for incoming acqui-hires like Dr. Dre of Beats.
Drawing on interviews with three anonymous Apple employees, the Times’ Brian Chen writes that the program is “an especially vivid reflection of Apple and the image it presents to the world. Like an Apple product, it is meticulously planned, with polished presentations and a gleaming veneer that masks a great deal of effort.” It is also, like most of Apple’s initiatives, compulsively secretive—the company declined to comment to the Times on the program’s existence.
Steve Jobs’ admiration of Pablo Picasso is well documented, from the painter’s inclusion in Apple’s “Think Different” ad campaign to the Picasso homage within the Mac OS “Finder” icon. For an internal course called “Communicating at Apple,” former Pixar employee Randy Nelson uses the example of Picasso’s lithograph series “The Bull,” which shows the painter gradually paring down his representations of the animal until he uses only a few lines.
How does that apply to Apple? “You go through more iterations until you can simply deliver your message in a very concise way, and that is true to the Apple brand and everything we do,” one employee told the Times. The impulse to ruthlessly pare down designs to their most essential forms is seen in the evolution Apple products over time, from the mouse to the iPhone.
In another class taught by Nelson, “What Makes Apple, Apple,” he brings up the different design philosophies that gave rise to the Apple TV remote (a sleek sliver of aluminum with only three buttons) and the Google TV remote (78 buttons, including a QWERTY keyboard—presumably this one manufactured by Sony). Nelson explains that the simpler remote is an outgrowth of Apple’s pervading culture of minimal design:
How did Apple’s designers decide on three buttons? They started out with an idea, Mr. Nelson explained, and debated until they had just what was needed—a button to play and pause a video, a button to select something to watch, and another to go to the main menu.
Apple University practices what it preaches down to the smallest details. “Even the toilet paper in the bathrooms is really nice,” one of the employees said.

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GN Resound pins hopes on hearing aid for iPhone generation

GN Resound pins hopes on hearing aid for iPhone generation

By Stine Jacobsen

Reuters 

COPENHAGEN - Denmark's GN Resound is banking on a hearing aid packed with bluetooth-like technology that lets users listen to calls and music from their iPhones as it seeks to steal a march on its rivals, its new chief executive told Reuters.
Anders Hedegaard laid out his plans for the company - the hearing aid business of GN Store Nord - for the first time since taking the helm on August 1 in a change of management that surprised investors and analysts.
After four years of cutting costs to boost operating margins, GN Resound now wants to grow faster than the global market, which grew about 4 percent last year in terms of sales.
"The restructuring is over and now it's innovation and growth that are the priorities," said Hedegaard.
The world's fourth-largest hearing aid maker, with a 16 percent market share, has worked with Apple Inc to develop the Resound Linx device that allows users to wirelessly transmit content from iPhones directly into their ear.
GN Resound hopes this will banish the stigma that many people feel when wearing an aid by linking it to a fashionable brand.
As the world's population ages, and lives longer, the industry has become fiercely competitive - and the company aims to gain an edge by appealing to the iPhone generation as it ages.
"We expect Linx to be the biggest driver behind our gaining market share for the rest of the year," Hedegaard said in a telephone interview. "The hearing aids industry is driven by products so it is important to develop devices which have advantages. We are very conscious about this."
 Together with Danish peers William Demant and unlisted Widex A/S, GN Resound supplies half of the world's hearing aids. The world's biggest manufacturer is Swiss group Sonova, with a market share of around 24 percent.
The Resound Linx, launched globally earlier this year, is the first device on the market to wirelessly transmit phone content, but GN Resound's competitors are working on similar products.
Parent GN Store Nord gave no reason for the change of chief executive at its hearing aid unit. The move surprised many analysts, who praised the work of previous boss Lars Viksmoen and said they would wait and see how Hedegaard, a former CEO of small biotech company Bavarian Nordic, performed.
Shares in GN Store Nord are down 5.65 percent since the change was announced in May, lagging Sonova's 5.4 percent rise and William Demant's 0.8 percent fall in the same period.
GN Store Nord is expected to increase its second-quarter earnings before interest, tax and amortization (EBITA) by 11.7 percent year-on-year, when it reports its results on Aug. 14, a Reuters poll of analysts showed on Monday.
Analysts from Jyske Bank and Handelsbanken also expect the company to raise its full-year revenue and EBITA guidance for GN Resound.
William Demant also reports on Aug. 14, but as the company does not disclose quarterly figures the numbers will be for the first half of 2014. Its earnings before interest and tax (EBIT) are expected to be up by 4.8 percent compared with the same period last year, a Reuters poll of analysts showed.

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Google backs an undersea cable that will give the internet a big speed boost

Google backs an undersea cable that will give the internet a big speed boost

Jon Fingas

Engadget

The internet is quickest when you have a direct connection to the sites you're trying to reach, but that's a daunting challenge in the Pacific -- undersea network cables can cost hundreds of millions of dollars. It's therefore good to hear that Google and a host of telecom giants (China Mobile, China Telecom, Global Transit, KDDI and SingTel) are backing FASTER, a $300 million fiber optic cable that runs between Japan and the US. As the name implies, it's all about speeding up data transfers between Asia and the Americas; the cable should offer a whopping 60 terabits per second of bandwidth between the two regions, which makes even Google's gigabit home internet service look puny by comparison. You won't see the difference until FASTER is finished in the second quarter of 2016, but it promises to improve the internet as a whole when it's ready. Don't be surprised if foreign multiplayer games and video streams get noticeably smoother within a couple of years

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Apple suppliers begin production of new iPad tablets -Bloomberg

Apple suppliers begin production of new iPad tablets -Bloomberg

Reuters

Apple Inc's suppliers have begun manufacturing new iPad tablets in an attempt to revive flagging sales of the tablet, Bloomberg reported, citing people with knowledge of the matter.

Apple, which helped create the tablet market in 2010 with its first iPad, has seen growth plummet from 2012, as larger phones became more popular and people delayed replacing their tablets.

Mass production of the iPad with a 9.7-inch (24.6-cm) screen has already started, and it is likely to be unveiled by the end of current quarter or early next quarter, Bloomberg said, citing two people familiar with the matter.

A new version of the 7.9-inch iPad mini is also entering production and is likely to be available by the end of the year, Bloomberg said.
Apple spokeswoman Trudy Muller declined to comment on the report.

International Business Machines Corp said in July it would partner exclusively with Apple to sell iPhones and iPads, which could rejuvenate the tablet's sales by entering into a largely untapped corporate market.

Apple shipped 13.2 million iPads in the June quarter, 8 percent less than a year earlier. Sales of the devices, which accounted for 15 percent of revenue, fell short of Wall Street's expectations for the second quarter in a row.

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Selena Gomez At Teen Choice Awards 2014

Selena Gomez At Teen Choice Awards 2014

Selena Gomez arrived at the 2014 Teen Choice Awards tonight wearing a Saint Laurent Tuxedo Jumpsuit ($3,790.00), a Christian Dior Minaudiere Metal Box (not available online) and a pair of Miu Miu Glitter-Soled Patent Leather Pumps (sold out).

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You Won't Believe What Zac Efron Is Offering a Fan

He is doing something pretty sweet for his fans. The High School Musical actor is offering one lucky person the chance to win the first car he ever owned!

"This is the car I learned everything in. How to drive in, got my first driver’s license in, got in my first car accident in," he said.

The winner will get to fly to Los Angeles, meet Zac, and pick up the car. All they have to do is donate at least $10 to the Make-A-Wish Foundation. Pretty simple, right?

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