Reviews Update

Samsung Galaxy S6 tipped to run smaller 5-inch screen

by Luke Johnson 02 February 2015 |

samsung galaxy s5

The Samsung Galaxy S6 will feature a 5-inch screen, a display smaller than that of its predecessor, latest reports have suggested.

According to newly leaked import documents, the Galaxy S6 is set to drop down from the 5.1-inch panel found on the existing Samsung Galaxy S5, while moving to an improved, 2560 x 1440 pixel QHD resolution.

While hardly a radical decrease in size, if accurate, this would mark the first time a flagship Samsung phone has lined up with a smaller display than its predecessor.

Contrasting previous claims which suggested the S6 could move to anywhere between a 5.3-inch and 5.5-inch panel, the latest reports have been fuelled by a purported test device spotted entering India through shipping service Zauba.

According to the tracking data, the handset will pair its 5-inch panel with an octa-core Exynos 7420 CPU, 3GB of Ram and an improved 20-megapixel camera.

This specs sheet is markedly similar to that of the Samsung Galaxy Note 4 and would see the S6 closely echo the expected features list of upcoming rivals such as the HTC One M9 and the Sony Xperia Z4.

One of the most eagerly awaited devices of the year, the Samsung Galaxy S6 is expected to make its first official appearance at MWC 2015 next month.

As well as a sharper screen resolution and improved camera, the S6 has been tipped to benefit from an iPhone 6 rivalling design.

Expected to mimic the Note 4 and Galaxy Alpha in moving to more premium, metal materials, the S6 could feature more rounded corners than its predecessors. An improved fingerprint scanner is also expected to feature in a larger physical home button.

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Sony to spend £590m on image sensor production

by Sean Keach 02 February 2015 |

Sony CMOS sensor

Sony has revealed it plans to spend 105 billion yen (£590 million) to increase its production of image sensors.

The Japanese company reckons demand for CMOS imaging sensors will continue to grow over the next few years, and hopes to boost manufacturing ahead of time.

Sony’s CMOS sensors are used across the mobile industry, appearing in many flagship tablets and smartphones, including Apple’s iPhone series.

The firm wants to increase its total output capacity to 80,000 sensor wafers every single month.

This is up from a current 60,000 wafers every month across the company’s three Japanese plants.

It’s likely that Sony is shifting its focus to the image sensor sector to compensate for its struggling mobile and TV divisions.

Sony has not been quiet about the difficulty it’s had trying to flog smartphones, with a reduced release cycle – yearly, down from half-yearly - expected for future handsets to cut costs.

Despite growing concerns over Sony’s mobile business, the firm is reportedly on track to launch its next flagship smartphone in the coming months.

The Sony Xperia Z4 should land anywhere between MWC 2015 – March 2 to 5 – and the summer.

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Intel buys chipmaker Lantiq for smart home expansion

by Sean Keach 02 February 2015 |

Intel block logo

Intel has confirmed it is going to buy Lantiq, a German manufacturer that produces network chips.

It’s part of Intel’s continuing effort to tap into the nascent ‘Internet of Things’ market.

Intel has chosen not to disclose how much it’s spending on the acquisition, but revealed the deal was agreed today, as reported by Reuters.

The chipmaker was previously bought up by private equity firm Golden Gate Capital back in 2009, a buyout which then amounted to some 250 million euros (£185m).

Despite being only a month into 2015, we’ve already seen a huge push for smart home technology, with the connected tech a clear mainstay of the CES tradeshow earlier this year.

Lantiq produces a wide range of connected chips for both wired and wireless connections.

Its typical clientele consists of telecom firms and broadband providers, which will likely continue under the new Intel leadership.

This isn’t the first smart home acquisition we’ve seen from a big technology firm in recent times, and it certainly won’t be the last.

2014 saw Google pick up Nest for a mega $3.2 billion (£2.1bn). Nest is one of the more prominent smart home manufacturers, famous for its smart thermostat range.

Samsung also threw down big bucks in 2014 for smart home tech, shelling out a slightly more meagre $200 million (£133m) for SmartThings, an IoT software firm.

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BT ‘vastly overestimating’ rural broadband cost, report finds

by Sean Keach 02 February 2015 |

These sheep could soon trade roaming the field for surfing the web. Un-baaa-lievable...

MPs have lambasted BT for ‘vastly overestimating’ how much it would cost to bring broadband to Britain’s rural areas.

The comments follow a report from the National Audit Office, which found that an actual rural rollout would fall £92m (25 per cent) short of BT’s estimates.

Parliament now hopes that BT will use the spare capital to fund fast broadband to even more remote areas.

Unfortunately, BT doesn’t agree with the UK government that it purposefully bumped up the cost estimates, and described the Public Accounts Committee claims as ‘bizarre’.

Speaking to the BBC, Margaret Hodge, chair of the PAC, said: “Although it’s reassuring that the cost to the public purse could end up being £92m less than what BT had originally forecast in its bid, I worry that this does not stack up with what BT told my committee in 2013.”

“It is very concerning that it looks like BT could have abused its dominant position in the market by vastly overestimating forecast costs in the first place when it put in its original bid, and we also have broader concerns about whether the deal represents value for money.”

BT, however, responded by explaining that its cost estimates were ‘based on our initial view of how much it would cost to deploy fibre in rural areas.” 

“We have come in under budget in several areas which is good news for the taxpayer as we only charge for the costs we incur, not those we first forecast. The saings can now be reinvested to take fibre to additional areas.”

It added: “The suggestion we inflated those costs is bizarre as by doing so we would have hindered our changes of winning the work.”

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Echo Connect Plus charges your iOS and Android devices

by Joe Svetlik 02 February 2015 |

Cables are so 20th century

You want to charge your iOS and Android devices but don't want to carry around a bundle of cables. What to do? The Echo Connect Plus handles all your charging needs and is small enough to fit on a keyring.

It features both an Apple Lightning connector and a microUSB port, so you can charge pretty much any mobile device under the sun. It's just 6cm long, which is about the length of a door key, and is coated is tough plastic, so should be durable enough to withstand the daily jangle in your pockets.

It's flexible too, so won't snap if bent out of shape. It can even fold up and fit in a wallet.

It's not a portable charger itself. To juice up on the go you'll need the PowerBank – which will cost extra – or an equivalent device. But it will charge from any standard USB port on a laptop or desktop computer, or a USB-equipped plug in a socket.

If you signed up in the first 24 hours, you would have got your name on the device for free. Sadly that window has passed. You can still pick one up for $15 (£10) though – that's under half price.

It's passed its $10,000 funding goal. All being well, it should start shipping in April.

It has a good USP and is made by a British company. Let's hope it's a success.

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Pirate Bay returns online after December raid

by Sean Keach 02 February 2015 |

The Pirate Bay

The Pirate Bay is open for business once again, having been offline for over a month.

The torrent database website went down back in December after its Swedish server base was raided by the police.

Authorities seized all of the servers in response to an earlier complaint by interet crime abuse watchdog Rights Alliance regarding the site.

Soon after, a countdown appeared at the thepiratebay.se domain, leading right up to February 1.

Sure enough, the countdown ended and the Pirate Bay was back online, as brimming with downloadable torrent files as ever.

A message on the website, written by someone called ‘Winston’, said: “So, first we ditched the trackers. We even got rid of the torrents. Then we left the servers to enter the clouds.”

“Now, we’re about to take the biggest step in our history.”

The site previously went offline back in 2006, but that takedown only last three days.

The Pirate Bay is the world’s most popular torrent outlet, marking it as a core target for copyright claims.

Many critics suggest however, that taking down a torrent website is fruitless and doesn’t tackle the source of the problem, due to the impossibility of removing all torrent outlets from the internet.

Despite this, internet service providers in the UK were ordered to block user access to the website – and many of its mirror sites – by the High Court.

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Raspberry Pi 2 announced

by Jon Mundy 02 February 2015 |

Raspberry Pi 2

The Raspberry Pi 2 has been revealed, adding more processing power and memory to a familiar DIY computer package.

The first Raspberry Pi was launched two years ago, in February 2012. While we've seen subtle improvements and modifications since then, this marks the second major iteration since that point.

Despite that, the Raspberry Pi 2 Model B is broadly similar to the current Raspberry Pi Model B+.

The key improvement this time around is the inclusion of a new Broadcom BCM2836 900MHz quad-core processor, which replaces the old and slightly creaky Broadcom BCM2835 700MHz single-core chip. RAM has also been doubled over the B+ to 1GB of RAM.

The result of this is that the Raspberry Pi 2 can boast an estimated six times more power than the Raspberry Pi B+.

Speaking with The Register, foundation boss Eben Upton outlined what this power increase would mean in practical terms. "I think it's a usable PC now," he said. "It was always the case that you could use a Raspberry Pi 1 as a PC but you had to say 'this is a great PC in so far as it cost me 35 bucks'. We've removed the caveat that you had to be a bit forgiving with it. Now it's just good."

Read More: Creator CI20 vs Raspberry Pi: Battle of the DIY microcomputers

The Raspberry Pi 2 will retail for the exact same price as the Raspberry Pi B, which is just £22.85. Interestingly, however, the B+ will continue to be sold for the same price.

This is simply because not all industrial customers want to move on from the familiar set-up of the first generation Raspberry Pi.

Upton has promised that there will be an initial batch of 100,000 units for the Raspberry Pi 2. He doesn't anticipate the sort of six month waiting list that greeted the launch of the first Raspberry Pi model, but it should still be a strong seller.

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