Colorado High Schooler Invents Smart Gun That Unlocks With Your Fingerprint

Colorado High Schooler Invents Smart Gun That Unlocks With Your Fingerprint

Sarah Buhr

TechCrunch 

Colorado has a history with gun violence so it’s only appropriate that 17-year-old Kai Kloepfer, a high school student from Boulder, would want to apply biometric user authentication to firearms. Kloepfer just won the $50,000 Smart Tech for Firearms Challenge for his smart gun prototype.

Angel investor and gun reform advocate Ron Conway became the main backer of the $1 million Smart Tech prize to spur gun safety solutions earlier this year. “Let’s use innovation to bring about gun safety. Let’s not rely on Washington,” Conway told the SF Examiner in January. According to the Smart Tech Foundation, a total of 15 innovators will receive a part of that million dollar prize. Kloepfer is the first to get the award.

The gun works by creating a user ID and locking in the fingerprint of each user allowed to use the gun. The gun will only unlock with the unique fingerprint of those who have already permission to access the gun. The clearly brainy teen tells me he has an interest in information security. According to him, all user data is kept right on the gun and nothing is uploaded anywhere else so it would be pretty hard to hack. This potentially makes it ideal for military use as well.
Kloepfer came up with the idea two years ago when he needed something for his high school science project. “The idea came to me right as I was falling asleep. It was kinda in the back of my mind because of the shooting,” said Kloepfer, alluding to the Aurora, Colorado shooting that had been on everyone’s mind at the time. The shooting was just an hour’s drive from his home. “I scribbled it down before I went to bed and fell asleep and then in the morning I began my research,” he explained.

Kloepfer’s parents helped him in monetary increments to get the parts needed for each improvement. It would eventually cost $3,000 for the whole thing to come together. “At first it was just a concept on paper,” he tells me. The gun went from phase to phase with each science fair. “Right now it’s a prototype on a plastic model. It's not entirely there but it works,” he says.
Some of the $50,000 has already been used to purchase a 3D printer to create new parts for his prototype. Kloepfer, who will graduate from Fairview High School this year, plans to use the rest of it toward the integration of a fingerprint scanner.

“Every 30 minutes in the U.S. a kid dies from a gun. I want my gun to help reduce accidental deaths and injuries, and to prevent tragedies,” said Kloepfer (Note: 1500 kids die from a gun and many more are seriously injured every year, according to the Center for Injury and Research Policy).
He spoke about his biometric smart gun tech at the TEDx Mile High: CONVERGENCE this week in Denver, Colorado.

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Will Apple's digital wallet kill the card swipe?

Will Apple's digital wallet kill the card swipe?

MAE ANDERSON

Associated Press 

NEW YORK — Apple wants the plastic credit card to become as rare as the paper check.
On Tuesday, the company announced Apple Pay, a digital payment system that lets people pay for retail store purchases using their phones rather than cash or credit cards. The service, which will work both with iPhones and Apple's new Watch, is backed by a host of big retailers, along with most major banks and credit card issuers, including Visa, MasterCard and American Express.
So-called contactless payment isn't new. Starbucks, McDonald's, PayPal, Google and Square offer their own services, but only a small portion of customers use them. Some experts believe Apple Pay — with its presence on millions of iPhones and its advanced security features— could be the service that leads to widespread adoption of the digital wallet.

Citi Investment Research analyst Mark May believes the sum total of mobile payments could grow from $1 billion in 2013 to $58.4 billion by 2017.
Payment digitization paints an enticing vision of shopping's future: simply tap your device against a checkout screen and walk away with your new shoes.
But despite the flashy Apple Pay launch, Apple faces challenges making that vision a reality. The company and other digital wallet providers must convince shoppers that the transactions are safe — especially in the wake of recent high-profile data breaches at Home Depot and Target. Meanwhile, the company must also make a case to retailers that it's worth it for them to invest in new point-of-sale systems.

Many U.S. merchants still aren't sold on the idea. About 220,000 stores are set up to accept Apple Pay. That's only 5.5 percent of the 3.6 million retail locations in the U.S., according to the National Retail Federation. The biggest U.S. retailers, including Wal-Mart and Best Buy, are not participating in Apple Pay.
The main reason is cost. Each point-of-sale device, which uses something called near-field communication technology, costs hundreds of dollars, plus hours of worker training. And there's been little customer demand for the systems.

That may change now that Apple has entered the arena, says Gartner analyst Avivah Litan.
"There's no doubt young people want to use phones to make payments, but they have to have a place to pay," says Litan. She predicts bigger retailers will see how well Apple partners like McDonald's do before they move into mobile payments.
"If it goes well at other retailers, Wal-Mart and other companies may break down and start taking it," Litan says.

In countries such as Canada and the U.K., contactless point-of-sale systems are widespread, and as a result, such payments are far more common. In Canada, for instance, about 20 percent of transactions at registers processed by MasterCard are completed by contactless payment, according to MasterCard.

"What you learn from that is when consumers start 'tapping' two or three times, they never go back to their old behavior at that merchant. ... It's just a much better experience," says Ed McLaughlin, chief emerging payments officer at MasterCard.
One of the strengths of Apple Pay is its security. Its system uses the company's Touch ID fingerprint technology, a secure chip, and payments that require a one-time security code.
That kind of security — similar to the chip-and-pin credit card system used in Europe — would prevent the type of breaches that happened at Target and Home Depot. And it could be a compelling reason for retailers to adopt Apple Pay, Litan says.

"If you get enough people using the service, it would cut down on retailers' security costs, and that's why over time it may really take off," she says.
Still, not everyone is convinced that swiping a credit or debit card is that much of an inconvenience in the first place. Bill Ready, head of next generation commerce at PayPal, points out that near-field communication has been around for 10 years without catching on. His vision of the mobile payment future is more akin to an "e-commerce style transaction happening in the physical world," he says, citing the example of car-sharing service Uber, which works with PayPal to processes riders' payments by way of a mobile phone app.

"Uber addressed a real pain point, in that hailing a taxi and payment for a taxi is cumbersome," he says. "We're focused on those types of things more than killing the card swipe."
Even amid the differing visions, most experts agree that the march toward the digitization of payment will continue.

"Someone is going to figure out how to make mobile payments easy and cheap and then we're talking a real shift in consumer behavior," says Gartner's Litan.

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Cars that drive themselves starting to chat with each other

Cars that drive themselves starting to chat with each other

By Ben Klayman, Bernie Woodall and Paul Lienert

Reuters

DETROIT — An Acura RLX sedan demonstrated an unusual way to tow another car this week: the vehicles were not physically attached. The second car drove itself, following instructions beamed over by the first in a feat of technology that indicates a new stage in automation is happening faster than many expected.

Systems that enable vehicles to communicate with each other have been developed in recent years in parallel with features that enable cars to drive themselves. Manufacturers and suppliers now are putting the two together in novel ways, with broad implications for vehicle safety and convenience.
General Motors Co., Honda Motor Co., which owns Acura, and other automakers are working with traditional suppliers and startup firms. Tech giants Google, with its pioneering work on driverless cars, and Apple, which is working with automakers to embed greater connectivity in their cars, are accelerating the change.

"It is the mix of big companies — Apple, Google, the automakers and the data aggregators — that starts to create momentum. Two years ago, it was different. It was a promise. Today, it’s reality," said Laurens Eckelboom, executive vice president of business development at Parkmobile, a smart-parking startup whose investors include BMW AG and Ford Motor Chairman Bill Ford's venture capital firm Fontinalis Partners.

A "truck platooning" application by Peloton Technology, a startup based in California's Silicon Valley, is intended to save fuel and reduce collisions.
As with virtual towing, a "platoon" of two heavy trucks use wireless communication and computer-controlled braking and acceleration to keep in close formation on the highway, according to a description by the company, which expects to start selling the technology late next year at $2,000 per truck plus a share of the projected operating savings.

The total price tag for widespread adaption of such features could be steep. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration estimates automakers will need to spend billions of dollars to install safety systems that automatically assist drivers and could be mandated by 2020, when the industry expects the first self-driving cars to start easing onto roads.

WHO IS LIABLE?

There are other risks and issues including reliability, cybersecurity and legal liability.
"What happens if a self-driving car gets into an accident? Who is liable for the damages? Will the human ‘copilot’ be at fault or will the car’s manufacturer?" the Center for Insurance Policy and Research wrote last month, citing "a long list of safety and legal issues to iron out before self-driving cars hit the road.”

All the razzle-dazzle technology promised by automakers and regulators "shouldn't take our eyes off the prize — cars that don't crash," Jon Lauckner, GM's chief technology officer, said at the Intelligent Transport Systems World Congress in Detroit this week.
Citi analyst Itay Michaeli said the convergence of connected and automated technologies also has the potential to reduce vehicle emissions and fuel usage, and bring down vehicle operating and insurance costs.

Active safety, including hands-free driver assistance and accident avoidance, was a common thread of many technical discussions and technology advances on display at the ITS show, which attracted 10,000 engineers, scientists and researchers, ending on Thursday.

Automakers are starting to put more of the new technologies on the road "to get some experience and see how the market reacts in advance of the government requiring it," said Jeff Owens, Delphi Automotive chief technology officer.

Price is still a big question. Some advanced systems could cost two to three times more to develop than early adopters are likely to pay, several industry insiders estimated in conversations at the show.
Even with just a few semi-automated systems installed, the price tag remains stiff, although recent studies have shown car buyers are willing to pay about $3,000 to have hands-free driving capability.
The Chrysler Group, a unit of Italy’s Fiat SpA, is charging nearly $3,500 for a technology bundle on its new 2015 Chrysler 200C sedan that includes adaptive cruise control, which automatically applies brakes and throttle to keep a vehicle a safe distance behind the one ahead; lane departure warning with lane keep assist, which automatically redirects a vehicle that is drifting out of its traffic lane; blind spot and cross path detection, which helps the driver monitor the presence of vehicles, and automatic park assist.

GM's Cadillac brand hasn't said how much its new Smart Cruise system will cost when it debuts in about two years. The system is designed to enable hands-free driving on the freeway with automatic steering, braking and throttle, as well as using GM's OnStar system to provide location, weather and traffic information to the automated systems.

But drivers should not expect to take a snooze. "We are talking about 'automated' driving features, not autonomous driving," with Smart Cruise, warned spokesman Jim Cain. "We will have strategies in place to keep the driver alert and engaged."

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The Biggest iPhone Is Already Sold Out, But Plenty Of The Smaller Phones Are Still Available

The Biggest iPhone Is Already Sold Out, But Plenty Of The Smaller Phones Are Still Available

Lisa Eadicicco
Business Insider 

Don't count on getting your hands on an iPhone 6 Plus anytime too soon. Starting Friday at 12 a.m. PT, Apple started rolling out preorders for its iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus, but it looks like the first batch of the larger 5.5-inch iPhone 6 Plus is already sold out.

At the time of this writing (9:00 a.m. ET), the iPhone 6 Plus was delayed by three to four weeks for all colors, carriers, and storage capacities. The 4.7-inch iPhone 6 is set to ship within seven to 10 business days, which just about lines up with the iPhone's official in-store launch scheduled for Sept. 19.

The delay in iPhone 6 Plus orders doesn't come as too much of a surprise. Before Apple unveiled its new smartphones, reports suggested Apple's first phablet would be delayed due to production issues.
We'll update this article accordingly if the situation changes.

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Samsung Attacks Apple’s Keynote With “It Doesn’t Take A Genius” Ads

Samsung Attacks Apple’s Keynote With “It Doesn’t Take A Genius” Ads

John Biggs

TechCrunch

Samsung has released a series of videos lampooning this week’s Apple announcement, a move that is at once familiar and not unexpected. There are six of them in total, including one on screen size, in a series called “It Doesn’t Take A Genius.” Collect them all.

After years of cringey, tone-deaf commercials, the company has finally grown a few claws and even made fun of Apple’s jittery live feed in the example above. There’s even the obligatory howl of “It’s a bigger screen!” as the two “nerds” in the ad salivate over the new offerings.
Samsung has a long history of iSheep advertising and I doubt it will abate any time soon. Perhaps Apple needs to bring out the big guns again? Where have you gone, John Hodgman? A nation turns its lonely eyes to you.

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China's iPhone delay gives smugglers reason to cheer

China's iPhone delay gives smugglers reason to cheer

By Yimou Lee

Reuters

HONG KONG - The likely delayed launch of Apple Inc's (AAPL.O) new iPhone 6 in China, the world's biggest smartphone market, sparked a race to pre-order the phone in Hong Kong on Friday.

Pre-orders for the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus sold out within two hours on Apple's Hong Kong website - and many of those devices will be smuggled across the border into mainland China, where they could change hands for as much as four times the Hong Kong price.

The new models go on sale in the United States, Hong Kong and other markets on Sept. 19, but China is still waiting for a release date.

Hong Kong residents went online to pre-order iPhones in the hope of selling them on for a tidy profit to unofficial dealers, many of whom will then move them into China to cash in on pent-up demand there.

Apple did not release the number of sales for pre-orders.

"I'm worried about getting enough iPhones to resell. Orders have doubled compared to last year," said Gary Yiu, a salesperson at I Generation in Sin Tat Plaza in Mong Kok, Hong Kong's electronics hub.
His store offers HK$10,000 ($1,290) for those willing to re-sell the latest model, almost twice the official local price of HK$5,588. Yiu said he received more than 100 orders from Hong Kong and mainland China, double the number he had a year ago when Apple launched the iPhone 5S.

There are about 100 electronics dealers in Sin Tat Plaza and each bought 150-200 handsets immediately after the official release of the iPhone 5S last year.

In Shenzhen, across the Chinese border from Hong Kong, the asking price for the cheapest iPhone 6 model hit 20,000 yuan ($3,260), while a salesperson at a telecoms shop in Shanghai said his company had sent staff to Hong Kong, Japan and even the United States to buy the new models and get them back to China for sale.

"It's tough to say right now what price we'll ask. It really depends on market sentiment. It'll be decided by the asking price in the market," said the man surnamed Zhang.

Typically, student 'mules' from Hong Kong carry iPhones in their schoolbags or strap them around their waists and ankles each time they cross the border to the mainland. Some web users in China shared tips on how to smuggle iPhones into the country - such as opening the packaging so, if stopped, carriers can claim the phone was bought for their own use.

Others in Hong Kong were still weighing whether to resell their newest iPhone after securing a pre-order.

"It's all about luck," said information technology officer Danny Lam, 28. "I kept refreshing. My F5 button almost broke.""I may give it to my sister. I don't need this urgently, so I may check the price with traders. If the price is good, of course I'll sell it."

(1 US dollar = 7.7502 Hong Kong dollar)

(1 US dollar = 6.1344 Chinese yuan)

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Apple sees voice messaging as the next wave of digital communication

Apple sees voice messaging as the next wave of digital communication

Ellis Hamburger

The Verge 

Remember Push-To-Talk? Before Blackberry’s ascent, and before the launch of the original iPhone, Nextel’s range of PTT devices were the hottest phones in America. Cell phones were still relatively new at the time, offering high-tech connectivity and voice calls, but PTT devices offered
instant connectivity for a hefty price tag. Then, with the rise of smartphones and the death of Motorola flip phones, walkie talkie-like functionality disappeared. Texting was in. Facebook messaging was in. FaceTiming was in. PTT was out. Today, PTT’s signature chirp can only be heard on constructions sites and in taxi cabs.

But, within the last couple years PTT has become popular again, but under a new name — "voice messaging." As consumers have experimented with the various ways you might reach someone — a call, a text, a WhatsApp message, an email, a FaceTime, a voicemail — voice messaging has once again proven useful. It’s perfect for when you’re driving or when you simply don’t feel like texting. Apps like Taptalk and Cord make "one-tap" voice messages dead simple, and see crazy-high engagement from users. Viber, which has more than 100 million active users, tells The Verge that its users send more voice messages than photos.

VIBER'S 100-PLUS MILLION USERS SEND MORE VOICE MESSAGES THAN PHOTOS

The trend has gotten so big that even Apple is joining the fray, cementing voice messaging as a legit trend. In iOS 8, the Messages app includes
one-tap access to sending a quick voice message

, a task that used to take several steps to accomplish. In the Apple Watch, "walkie-talkie" mode is a feature worth boasting about on marketing pages, and worth elevating above almost every other feature on the device. The Watch also lets you send voice notes inside text messages. Both these functions are easily accessible through the Watch's dedicated messaging button on its side. Apple and others have taken what was most compelling about PTT — that it’s easy, fast, and immediate — and combined it with what’s best about texting — it’s asynchronous and lightweight.

In the future-world of the film Her, people talk to their phones all day and night. They dictate reminders, emails, send voice messages, and carry on lengthy phone calls without any regard for those around them. We’re not quite there yet. Voice messages aren't going to replace texts, however simpler it may be to send one.

There’s an oddness to sending short sound bites that I can’t quite shake. There’s an awkwardness to dictating a reminder to Siri in public. It’s one thing to get caught talking on the phone by a stranger, but another when you get caught blurting out "Yes, ham and cheese!" seemingly to no one at all. From my experience, using your voice to send a message or control a computer is still strange unless you’re completely alone. But then, it’s a godsend.
This is why voice has taken on such a prominent role in operating systems like Ford Sync and Apple CarPlay that work when you
are alone. "Voice is the only way to communicate and multi-task," says Thomas Gayno, co-founder of Cord. "A few seconds of voice has much more to offer than a few hundred characters." Factor in devices like the Amazon Fire TV and Xbox One, which marketed themselves on voice search features, and you’ve found Silicon Valley's favorite new way to interact with technology.

This stuff is coming — it’s just a matter of when. Voice commands already work pretty well in places like the car and on your couch, but soon, you’ll likely hear them more and more on the street. With Apple’s distribution network, which seeds millions upon millions of devices into the hands of consumers, voice messaging could soon become more mainstream than ever. Voicemail usage has been dropping for years, but perhaps not for the reasons we thought. With the right interface, voice messages have proven to be a really great way to talk.

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How Someone Can Track You With a Photograph You Took

How Someone Can Track You With a Photograph You Took

Grant Burningham

Newsweek 

Chances are, if you're currently a living, breathing human, you take digital pictures.
No longer the provenance of fancy cameras, digital photographs can now be taken on pretty much every cell phone out there and uploaded to computers with equal ease and gusto. Today, 91 percent of American adults own cell phones, for a total of 285,649,000 potential citizens out there with cameras. And every one of those JPEGs you upload to your computer and to the web don't just contain images; they contain a slew of extra information, collectively called metadata, that could be used to track you down.

Metadata can be extremely useful to photographers; nearly all metadata includes information like the focal length used to take the photo and the photo's exposure. But more and more often, GPS-enabled cellphones and cameras mean metadata now includes where, as well as when, the photograph was taken—meaning if you post frequent JPEGs, RAWs or TIFFs to the Internet, people could well be tracking you by your photos.

This is not an idle threat. John McAfee, tech mogul and maker of the famous McAfee anti-virus software, was living in Belize in 2012 when he was sought by police as a “person of interest” in a murder case. Convinced the police had it in for him, he fled Belize for the jungles of Guatamala — only to be tracked down by a Twitter user when two reporters from Vice magazine, who’d joined him on his trek, posted photographs online with the metadata still included.

And there’s no need for Vice Magazine to be involved, either: anyone could be just as easily tracked by way of their Facebook photo album. Already websites have popped up aiming to raise awareness of the problem. The most well-known example, IKnowWhereYourCatLives.com, raises the privacy red flag by tracking public pictures of cats to their owner's homes. Despite the site-owner’s (truthful) claim that he’s only showing what’s already public, the site can be a creepfest to look at — especially if you’ve posted a picture of your cat taken, well, anywhere close to your home.

Luckily, if you'd prefer to post to Instagram without people knowing where or when you took your photos, stripping metadata is pretty easy. For mobile phones, CNET recommends simply disabling location settings for the cameras on iOS and Android; for photos that find themselves on a computer, there's plenty of freeware for Windows, Mac and Linux that will strip the metadata from files. Those more curious than paranoid can also read their photo's metadata in plaintext by right-clicking the photo and scrolling to “More Info” (on a Mac) or doing the same and then scrolling to “Properties” and then “Details” (on a Windows PC).

And for those times when even stripping the metadata won't suffice? Well, there's always old-fashioned film.

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Double solar storms headed to Earth raise disruption concerns

Double solar storms headed to Earth raise disruption concerns

By Irene Klotz

Reuters

CAPE CANAVERAL Fla. - A rare double burst of magnetically charged solar storms will hit Earth Thursday night and Friday, raising concerns that GPS signals, radio communications and power transmissions could be disrupted, officials said on Thursday.

Individually, the storms, known as coronal mass ejections, or CMEs, wouldn’t warrant special warnings, but their unusual close timing and direct path toward Earth spurred the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Space Weather Prediction Center to issue an alert.

The first CME, which burst from a magnetically disturbed region of the sun on Monday night, should reach Earth Thursday night, center director Thomas Berger told reporters on a conference call.
The same patch of solar real estate produced a second, more powerful storm about 1:45 p.m. EDT on Wednesday.“We don’t expect any unmanageable impacts to national infrastructure from these solar events at this time, but we are watching these events closely,” Berger said.

The sun currently is in the peak of its 11-year cycle, though the overall level of activity is far lower than a typical solar max.

Storms as powerful as the ones now making their way toward Earth typically occur 100 to 200 times during a solar cycle, Berger said.

“The unique thing about this event is that we’ve had two in close succession and the CMEs could possibly be interacting on their way to Earth, at the Earth’s orbit or beyond. We just don’t know that yet,” he said.

The highly energetic, magnetically charged solar particles could hit Earth’s magnetic field and disrupt some radio communications and degrade GPS signals, NOAA said.
The storms also have the potential to impact electric field power grids in the northern latitudes, which are more susceptible to geomagnetic disturbances.

Power grid operators and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) have been notified “just in case,” Berger added.

On the plus side, the storms should trigger beautiful auroral displays, visible wherever clear skies prevail along the northern tier of the United States. Aurora are caused by electrically charged solar particles hitting oxygen, nitrogen and other gases high in the atmosphere, creating curtains of light above the planet’s magnetic north and south poles.

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Demi Lovato Reveals the Outfits She Feels Most Confident In

Credit: Splash News/Image Courtesy of Sketchers

We were so excited when we heard that Demi Lovato was announced as the new face of athletic brand Sketchers, because if any there's any celeb who flawlessly incorporates sporty elements into her edgy style, it's definitely Demi!

Credit: Splash News/Image Courtesy of Sketchers

Even though the singer quickly goes from fierce stage costumes to cute casual styles, she makes sure that her outfits always represents who she is.

Credit: Twitter

 "My style philosophy is to stay true to who I am. To be my own unique self. That is when I am happiest," she explained during her new campaign. "When I'm on stage, it is probably edgy heels or boots and a leather jacket – as fun and crazy as I feel at that moment. When I am not on stage, chances are I am comfortable in a T-shirt and my Skechers."

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Samsung Galaxy Alpha review: a direct iPhone 6 competitor

Samsung Galaxy Alpha review: a direct iPhone 6 competitor

Samuel Gibbs

The Guardian 

Samsung’s new Galaxy Alpha Android smartphone finally demonstrates that the South Korean giant can do high-quality design and fantastic build quality, and begs the question why wait till now to do it.
The 4.7in Galaxy Alpha the smallest flagship smartphone in Samsung’s large range of devices. It sits under the 5.1in Galaxy S5 as the “design” smartphone, for people who want a smaller, better designed smartphone that doesn’t have to have all the latest technology packed in. Or at least that’s how Samsung puts it.
In reality it’s the first of a range of Samsung smartphones with metal bodies created in response to criticism over its plastic construction. The second metal smartphone will be the 5.7in Galaxy Note 4, due for release at the end of September or early October.

Premium design, build and feel

The Galaxy Alpha is both the most attractive smartphone Samsung has ever made, and the best built. The metal sides with chamfered edges feel great in the hand, and the plastic back has a soft-touch quality to it feeling a bit like a cat’s ear in texture.
It’s also very light at 114g - that’s 2g heavier than the 112g iPhone 5S, 15g lighter than the iPhone 6 and 31g lighter than the 145g Galaxy S5. It is solidly built with no give or twist in the body at all.
The smaller size of the phone compared to the majority of 5in flagship Android and Windows Phone smartphones makes it much easier to hold and use in one hand.
The 4.7in screen is colour rich and vibrant with good contrast and wide viewing angles. It has a 720p resolution resulting in a pixel density of 312 pixels per inch (ppi). While it is certainly sharp for reading text and viewing photos, it is noticeably less crisp than the Galaxy S5’s 5.1in 1080p screen with 432 ppi. For comparison the iPhone 5S has a 4in 326ppi screen and the incoming iPhone 6 a 4.7in 326ppi screen.

Specifications

• Screen: 4.7in 720p Super AMOLED
• Processor: Samsung Exynos 5 octa-core processor
• RAM: 2GB of RAM
• Storage: 32GB
• Operating system: Android 4.4.4 “Kitkat”
• Camera: 12MP rear camera, 2.1MP front-facing camera
• Connectivity: LTE, Wi-Fi, NFC, Bluetooth 4.0 with BLE, USB 2.0 and GPS
• Dimensions: 132.4 x 65.5 x 6.7mm
• Weight: 114g

Eight cores of power

The Alpha uses Samsung’s Exynos 5 octa-core processor, which has four low-power cores combined with four more powerful cores. Only four cores are used at any one time, with the lower power cores used until something demanding like playing a game or producing video is required to save battery.
The phone feels snappy, apps load instantly with no hint of lag and it handled blasting through graphically intensive games like Asphalt 8 without issue.
The Alpha has a smaller 1,860 milliampere-hour (mAh) battery than Samsung’s other flagship phones with batteries larger than 2,800mAh. The battery lasts about one day of solid use, with constant push email, three hours of listening to music over Bluetooth, two hours of browsing and 30 minutes of playing games. It will have to be charged every night, however. The Galaxy S5 with the 2,800mAh battery can last a day and half without a charge under similar usage.
Samsung’s Ultra Power Saving mode, which was praised in the Galaxy S5, works well, shutting down features, turning the screen black and white and limiting the number of apps available to a small handful, dramatically extending the battery life by days, with 10% battery listing around 24 hours of standby.
Unlike most other Samsung phones the Alpha has 32GB of built-in storage for apps, games, music, photos and movies, but no microSD card slot for further expansion.

Android customisations that you’ll have to live with

The Alpha uses the same version of customised Android as the Galaxy S5, and I have the same complaints. Known as TouchWiz, the customisations add clutter to the already good standard Android experience, duplicate experiences like Samsung’s S-Voice which performs most of the same jobs as Google’s built-in voice search, and has less than premium look.
Samsung’s My Magazine social news app, which sits on the very left most home screen and is powered by the Flipboard app, is slow and a detractor for most. Users can remove it from their home screens.
Some Samsung fans will love TouchWiz, while anyone who has used an Android phone before will know how to use it. There are a few good additions like the aforementioned Ultra Power Saving mode.

Fingerprint scanner

The Galaxy Alpha has the same swipe-over fingerprint scanner under the home button as the Galaxy S5 and Note 4. Samsung has spent a lot of time improving it and the difference is noticeable. You can register three separate fingers, but with each finger you can also record an associated thumb, which is the digit most people will use to unlock the phone.
The fingerprint scanner now has above a 95% success rate for me making it useful and convenient to unlock the phone or authenticate a purchase through PayPal and others. The improvements were recently pushed to the Galaxy S5 via a software update boosting my finger swipe success rate from 75% to above 95%.

Heart rate sensor

There is an optical heart rate sensor beside the camera on the back. It works fine, feeding data into Samsung’s S Health app, but I’m unconvinced as to whether it’s useful for the majority of people.

Camera

The 12-megapixel camera is a step down from the 16-megapixel camera in the Galaxy S5, but it is still a solid camera, with good colour saturation, crisp details and fast auto-focus. Photos in good lighting conditions look great, those snapped in lower light levels can look a bit grainy when enlarged beyond the size of the screen.

Price

The Galaxy Alpha will be similarly priced to the Galaxy S5, available for around £500 without a mobile phone contract from 12 September.

Verdict

The Galaxy Alpha is the best made smartphone Samsung, which shows the Korean giant can make very solid, premium metal smartphones like competitors Apple and HTC. It bodes well for Samsung’s new smartphones that are expected to follow a similar design.
The smaller screen, thin profile, light weight and enhanced thumb-friendly fingerprint sensor make using the Alpha one-handed very easy. It feels great in the hand with the cat-ear-like plastic back and chamfered metal edges. The Alpha is snappy and responsive and the battery lasts a full day.
The screen is noticeably less sharp compared to phones with 1080p screens while the lack of microSD card slot hampers how much music, movies and photos users can store, despite having 32GB of built-in storage.
The Alpha is the best smaller smartphone Samsung has ever made and a solid competitor to the upcoming iPhone 6, which has the same size screen, similar weight and thickness.
Pros: Metal frame, solid build, super thin, decent camera, snappy performance, all-day battery life , one-hand use easy
Cons: Screen less sharp that others, low-light camera performance could be better, no microSD card slot

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Taylor Swift Slams Rumors That She's Feuding With Selena Gomez

We almost thought Taylor Swift and Selena Gomez had the kind of rocky relationship that rivaled Jelena, but it turns out that's totally not true! In the outtakes from her recent Rolling Stone interview, Taylor reveals that she never fought with Selena over her relationship with Justin Bieber — and she actually laughed about the rumors with Selena.

"People think they have my relationships all mapped out. There were all these blogs, like, 'Are they feuding? Are they fighting?' Meanwhile Selena and I would be on the phone that night, laughing about it. We let them have that one."

While we knew that Selena and Taylor were hanging out again, we hadn't seen them together in a while, so we thought the feud rumors were true. It's good to know they're still BFF! And if Taylordoes succeed in getting Selena to move to New York, we'll probably see them hanging out a lot more.

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