Zizy
On The Verge since Jan 14, 2015
Comment
There is nuans, not sure if it is available in your region though.
But that should be it for now I believe.
No real midrange phones launched from MS (7xx, 8xx) and all partners are throwing out only budget junk devices (and HP released premium one).1 recommendRec
Recommended MS patented an on-screen fingerprint scannerComment
Who gives a crap whether your device is tethered to a cable or stuck to a plate?
Everybody that got used to it.
2 replies 1 recommendComment
Lumia 950 XL
Get edge 7 imo. Dropped in price since release and looks a nice purchase now. Has all the main things you generally want, and I don’t think resale value would be as bad as usually with Android – budget flagships won’t have the same form, so you should be able to find a customer.1 replyComment
I will wait it out. I hadn’t even considered buying Note 7 before the explosions – too expensive and I only really wanted the pen, but now I hope I will be able to find some sweet deals on it.
Comment
Music controls should work great on circular display. iPods had circular navigation stuff; with rectangular screen showing track and stuff.
But yeah, text notifications definitely work much better on rectangular display.Comment
Take 100 pictures. Put smallish rectangle on the picture to get as much relevant stuff inside as possible. Do the same with a circle with the same area. Check which image ends up being better – showing more. In majority of cases, circular one will win.
And I believe most images taken are landscape, so portrait rectangle isn’t all that good solution for showing images.
1 replyComment
Well, proof requires math, but gravity works like this – if you are inside a spherical layer, all contributions to the gravity of that layer cancel out. Some stuff will drag you up, some left, right, down, in such a way they all cancel out and you don’t feel that layer at all. Doesn’t matter where you are, as long as you are inside you don’t feel gravity of that sphere.
So, consider Earth to be an onion with tons of layers. When you are on the surface, all layers contribute. But if you go inside the outermost layer, that layer stops contributing to the gravity. Go in the next one, and that one stops contributing either and so on, until you get in the center of the sphere where nothing still contributes and you don’t feel gravity (of the Earth) at all.
Comment
Well, it is like this – the closer to the center you are, more acceleration you feel. Poles are a bit closer to the center = slightly more attraction. Difference is slight and I don’t think you would feel the difference. If you consider why would you want rocket launches near the equator, rotation is the dominant factor and gravity is negligible.
However, only the stuff below you contributes. Suppose you are halfway to the center – only that smaller sphere below still attracts you. The stuff above you compensates the stuff on the other side of the Earth. So, sure, you are closer to the center, but there is less mass attracting you.
1 replyRec
Comment
The decision was made right, as everyone ended up following it. All companies rallied behind HTML5. Open, neutral standard, instead of proprietary broken one that was far more capable at that time. Had Google and MS supported Flash and pissed on HTML5, who do you believe would prevail? Not Apple. Their decision would be made wrong, and people would see it as a cash grab – "Apple breaks internet games to support their store".
Anyway, here it is exactly the other way around as it was with Flash. Less capable open standard is being replaced by proprietary one. And unlike Flash situation where companies together got rid of Flash, replacing 2 solutions by a single one, a single solution is being replaced by 2 camps.
1 reply 2 recommendsComment
Nah, it was clearly more secure and less capable at the time. Flash had 2 major issues – it was a relative power hog which was relevant just for phones and older PCs, and insanely insecure which finally killed it for good across the board. Take out insecurity part and Flash might even live on to this very day.
1 reply 2 recommendsComment
So far, we got 4 hour headphones that cost 160$ and look and sound the same as 30$ ones. And replacement of the ordinary junk 3.5mm headphones with less ordinary but the same junk Lightning ones. Yay, glorious progress. Replacing one wire with another, for 0 benefit.
No better sounding headphones yet. No headphones doing stuff not possible with 3.5mm (say heartrate measurement). No wireless revolution.
3 replies 6 recommendsComment
iPad is the very same OS as iPhone, as much as Android tablet and phone are. Took them till iOS 9 to get split screen so your OS handles something more on the tablet than on the phone. And aren’t there still tons of complaints that you get the same few icons you do on your phone? The big one was especially made fun of for this.
But the big difference is that nobody ever bothered making good Android tablet apps, or Windows apps in general, while iPad has apps working with bigger screen. This might be why iPad looks to be "tablet done right".But still, tablet showed some promise back then – it is your netbook without keyboard. Lighter and more pleasant to browse with, although worse to write mail and similar. Though I expected it to die tbfh, at the hand of cheap touchscreen netbooks, but that didn’t happen – netbooks were the ones to go.
I don’t think Watch shows the same kind of promise, and its message was more confused. The most confusing aspect to me is why even watch? Nobody uses watch anymore, they just wear it.1 reply 1 recommendComment
The only generally fair and sensible way to compare screen shapes is by normalizing screen area and density. Square should be compared with circle of the same area, not the one that has diameter equal to square side, or the one that has diameter equal to square diagonal. It is plainly obvious the first circle can show less, and the second circle can show more information.
You might argue that watch-wearables should be compared by having height equal to wrist width as there is no point in having a larger watch than your wrist – it would look weird. However, there are 2 issues: does Apple Watch fully cover wrist width? It doesn’t seem so – if it was paper thin, it would seem small even in 42mm version.
The second is that while watch height is fixed, width is nearly unbounded. Endgame would be a wearable that covers everything from elbow to wrist. And obviously wraps around because why not.Anyway, now to some comparisons:
Our comparison point is Apple watch 42 mm. Its size is 42 mm x 35.9 mm, assuming perfect rectangle and with 100% screen to body ratio obviously. It would have 1508 mm^2 screen area.Circular watch that has the diameter equal to AW height is 8% smaller. Circular watch loses corners, but gets a bit more width.
Maybe hexagonal (hexagon height equal to AW height)? 1% better, losing bits of those 4 corners, but gaining 2 more, for tiny advantage in the end.
Having it square (same height) would be 17% better – can show everything AW can and a bit more.
Or circular again, diameter equal to diagonal of AW this time. Full 60% better than AW. Can show everything AW can and way more. Both in height and width.Which of these is therefore the best for content? Small circle has the smallest area, followed by Apple Watch, then hexagonal, rectangular and finally large circle. Not even mentioning that endgame armband thing.
Comment
Eh, why would anyone make an Android Wear watch? Hardcore Google fans claim they wouldn’t buy Gear S2/S3 as it doesn’t run AW (forget that AW cannot handle it)… but nobody ultimately buys AW watch.
The market is Apple Watch and even they aren’t doing all that great and are shifting focus to fitness, and fitness oriented stuff. Fitbit and similar cheap stuff or proper trackers. Both groups can handle notifications ok-ish = good enough for majority of people.1 recommendComment
Interesting crop stuff.
On this page, I would give advantage to the ip6s crop.
But on the link, ip6s crop looks much worse than the A7R crop.1 replyComment
Not really commenting on Apple Watch or that mock-up, as I don’t really care about either. There are better shapes for smartwatches, both in looks and function, than what we have seen so far.
It is just this damn misconception that circular screen is somehow on par with rectangular for text, which is stupid, or that rectangular screen is better for everything, which is dumb.
Comment
Well, a lot of people want a new phone, which is the allure of those flagship killers. If you buy used, just make sure the device doesn’t have various hidden flaws by previous owner abuse, is not stolen etc. You will give up some warranty, but get a generally better device in the end.
1 reply 1 recommendComment
Assuming same area and number of pixels, round display is mostly going to be better for displaying pictures and similar stuff. Advantage would be quite noticeable if any cameras took circular images, but sensors are generally rectangular.
Rectangular most significant advantage is in displaying more text, as you read in lines.For workouts I expect a small advantage for the circular one.
For notifications, rectangular one easily wins.
-
The other thing to note is that more watches are bought for the looks than for the function.3 replies 10 recommendsComment
Xperia X compact maybe, though I don’t think it is really premium phone.
But well, S7 isn’t much larger despite bigger screen. 142.4×69.6 vs 138.3×67.1.1 reply 2 recommendsComment
Well, Note 7 isn’t an upgrade for S7 Edge, it is an upgrade for Note 5. Yeah, it is nothing S7/Edge didn’t do previously, upgrades were tiny. Gone are the days where you bought Note for performance or screen size, it is relegated to mere note-taking addition to the lineup. But the pen rules here, so it is a significant feature … for an insignificant population.
As for the rest – I would argue 6s offered even less over 6. 3D touch and haptics are nice, but essentially irrelevant addition. The only really useful addition of 6s lineup seems speed of + model. To me, camera improvements of 7 are bigger upgrade.
I wouldn’t even bother upgrading iPhone 6 though, unless I got 16GB one and needed more space.Comment
Except it is completely different from HDR.
The point of HDR is ability to show small variations and requires 10 or 12b panel (unlike ordinary 8b). This gives you billions of possible colors. (N^3 = 1 billion for 10b panel vs 16M for 8b panel)
The point of wide gamut is ability to show deeper red, green and/or blue colors. This gives you the same number of possible colors, but different ones.1 replyRec
Recommended What does a wider color gamut mean?Comment
That would be interesting, though I don’t think it would be all that desirable outside of a smallish niche. Such screen does offer iPad Mini’s screen area to work on, but it still has that gap between them – I don’t think they will manage to produce something really seamless. Plus it would be very heavy for the phone. And coreM is way higher TDP than the Atom inside Surface 3, which is much larger than the proposed device.
They could make a nice space for the pen between the screens though1 recommendComment
Well, if I bought SP3, I wouldn’t have bought iPad Air 2. SP3 wouldn’t have replaced just my laptop, it would also be my tablet.
Everyone buys Yoga laptops and Surface Pros => they don’t buy iPad and Android tablets => pure tablet market is dead.Comment
It’s only the pairing that is proprietary, it doesn’t stop anyone using anyone else wireless headphones or using Apples on other systems.
It does hinder using anyone else wireless headphones due to lack of easy pairing.
Unless those headphones also have NFC (unlikely), it also hinders using Apple’s headphones elsewhere.I don’t see why Apple shouldn’t be able to make their stuff work better between their devices especially when it doesn’t stop you using anything else.
It does hinder using anything else, while there is an existing solution that would work exactly as good between their devices AND would work great between anything else too.
Sure, it isn’t a dealbreaker, but a ridiculous move where the only goal seems to be lock-in to their ecosystem. Apple users would rather buy W1 headphones, so headphone makers have to make them and pay Apple.
1 replyComment
It doesn’t bother me. You only picked a stupid argument in favor of the chip.
I expect there are other benefits. It is just interesting nobody here talks about them. These are the added value of the chip, not something available for years and everyone, made proprietary by Apple.1 replyComment
OR you could have ordinary headphones paired with your NFC phone and automagically have the pairing pushed to all your other devices without buying any new computers.
I know which I prefer.
2 replies 2 recommendsComment
There were too many phones because they weren’t selling. Nokia of the old was doing great with long lineup of devices.
Naming scheme was problematic because MS and Nokia kept messing around and wasn’t all that consistent what each class means.
One fuckup was too many variants of the phone. Why are there 4 640s AND additional 4 640XL? Sure, you only see 2 of each (dual sim or single sim LTE), but even that is too many. You needed to check just too much additional information, and there wasn’t any added value in this crap. Decide 640 has LTE, or it doesn’t.
And the most insane and serious fuckup that required severe brain damage of everyone involved was that you could find lower class device with features lacking in better device of the same gen.2 recommends