Headlines Archives - Page 5 of 58

Garmin Varia Vision Is Like Google Glass, But For Cyclists

January 5, 2016 By Cristopher Hall Leave a Comment

Garmin Varia Vision is like Google Glass, but for cyclists – at least, at a first glance.

Garmin might just make this Google Glass lookalike popular, as it targets a demographic that is in need of this kind of gadgets. The Varia Vision can attach to any pair of glasses. It weighs about 30 grams, and its battery juice makes it run just shy of eight hours on a single charge.

The Varia Vision can be clipped on either side of the glasses. It provides a compact display at the right, or left, edge of a cyclist’s view so they don’t need to look down at the handlebars and away from oncoming traffic ahead.

The Varia Vision comes with a pretty hefty price tag of $400 – this converts to 270 pounds in the UK, and AU$555 in Australia; and it’s most certainly not for newcomers to the sport. It’s aimed at professionals who compete, train and for those who rely on their bikes for commuting in a traffic-riddled city.

The heads-up display provides turn by turn directions, distance, cadence, speed metrics and other performance data, and even notifications and messages if the user pairs it with a smartphone. Furthermore, we don’t really know the resolution of the display, or what it’s actually made out of, but the company has assured us that it will be clearly readable in all weather conditions.

Analysing it, we notice that it does about everything that Google’s Glass did – it even has a touch-sensitive strip on the side so you can easily navigate the UI. Garmin claims that it can be utilized if the individual even wears gloves or has wet hands.

The Varia Vision can also connect to Garmin’s Rearview Bike Radar – a device that notifies the user if a car is coming from behind in order to ensure that the cyclist doesn’t steer in front of its path.

The Varia Vision offers an augmented reality display, but considering that the AR tech is somehow still in its incipient development phase we are quite curious to see it how it functions in real-life.

The device will come out in Q1 of 2016 and it’s compatible with Android and iOS – there doesn’t seem to be any love for Windows mobile OS at the moment, but we are still hoping.

However, Garmin isn’t the only company developing augmented reality devices for athletes. Recon Instruments is the first that comes to mind. The company was recently bought by Intel, so we are foreseeing great things in AR for athletes in the near future.

The Garmin Varia Vision has been announced at this year’s CES, which takes places in Las Vegas.

Image Source: 1, 2

A Fitness Journey: The Best Weight Loss Apps

January 5, 2016 By Cristopher Hall Leave a Comment

Everybody knows that getting fit and, most specifically, losing weight is a rather long and tenuous ordeal that requires more than just wishful thinking. Other than a healthy, well-balanced diet, workout sessions and a drive to not let your dreams be dreams, you will most likely need a guide; a framework if you wish. That is where the best weight loss apps out there can kick in as a helping hand.

Considering that getting a personal coach to handle that is a good idea and will, most of the time, be enough at least for your gym workouts, in order to truly keep everything in check you will need something extra. And that is where the fitness gadgets – and here I mostly mean wearable tech such as the Jawbone or Garmin Fenix – and, to a more affordable extent, fitness applications that one can make use of in their own home.

By using some of the best weight loss apps out there, you are not only giving yourself a very good overview of what and how well you’re doing in your goals, but also gain that extra motivational nudge that gets you up and about.

We’ve been experimenting with some of them and here is our very own list of the best weight loss apps that we could find.

Best Weight Loss Apps #1: Lose It!

Certainly meant in a positive, constructive way, Lose It is a great example of how you can use smartphone or computer applications to the betterment of your life. Most specifically – your healthy, fitness lifestyle-driven life. And the best piece of news about it is that you can get it for free for both iPhones and Android phones.

You can do a wide variety of things with the Lose It weight loss app without hooking any other trackers to it, but most of its native ability relies on an extensive set of information about your diet. For anyone who needs more than just an outlet of numbers to look at regarding calorie intake, Lose It! Is absolutely great as it allows you to set yourself challenges based on an internal scoring system, set weekly limits, and even create and share goals with friends.

Add a helpful tips & tricks section to it as well as reminders and the kind of messages that motivate you to keep at it, and you’ve got yourself a great thing to go on.

Best Weight Loss Apps #2: MyFitnessPal

Compare it to the Lose It application and MyFitnessPal manages to be just as good and even improve on some things that the previous entry wasn’t so good at. The most important thing I can mention in that direction to begin with is the fact that this application is made to work with Windows and BlackBerry phones too, in addition to the classic Android or Apple smartphone.

The MyFitnessPal app has a more “professional” approach to it and doesn’t fare that well on the “do it” kind of attitude. It does, however, offer you a very capable application to handle all of your statistics, diet information and even generate comprehensible graphs and pie charts and whatnot for you.

Similarly to all of the best weight loss apps or fitness tracker applications out there, it lets you connect it to a variety of other trackers that can provide you with a more insightful overview of your progress. You can also visit the www.myfitnesspal.com website for a fully functional dashboard.

Best Weight Loss Apps #3: Pact

While I felt a definite sense of unease at the name of the app, Pact is actually an… odd one to say the least but an innovative idea nonetheless. While one could argue that it employs some form of negative reinforcement, I wouldn’t go that far. Depending on how “motivated” you are to lose weight, as well as how honest to yourself you manage to be, Pact can actually help you out a great amount.

The way it does that is through real life money and not all those mainstream, amateur gamification-inspired point systems that everyone uses. Basically, you will be making pacts that you need to hold – such as promising that you will eat vegetables and fruit and posting a relevant photo that suggests that which needs to get approved by the Pact community. Succeed in fulfilling the pact and you can win real money (up to $5 a week). Fail to do so, and money is taken out of your bank account.

Now there are no fixed amounts for each type of failed task and it gives you the freedom of not only setting the literal price of failure but also whether you’re going to go to the extent of entering your account details to begin with. While it also has some of the regular features one would expect from a fitness tracker such as step count, some degree of calorie burn calculations and the rest, I am unable to focus on that aspect of it altogether.

Best Weight Loss Apps #4: Nike+ Training Club

Thus, we move onto an application that I personally used for a fair amount of time a couple of years ago. The Nike Training Club you can regard as literal fitness coach; one that won’t be able to watch and correct you as you undergo your workouts, but a great guide of how the type of exercise you should be getting for losing weight.

You can use it for more than just losing weight as it has a huge number of workouts and types of workouts for anything you would ever dream of achieving. Things like toning, working particular groups of muscles and so on. Once yous’ve selected your preference, you will get a detailed explanation of what you have to do – particular exercises, number of times you need to repeat it, the amount of time you need to take a break for and so on.

It even allows you to “enroll” in a four-week program that will handle everything you need to do on a daily basis.

Best Weight Loss Apps #5: 7-Minute Workout App

Once again, an application that’s slightly different than the ones we’ve talked about so far, the 7-Minute Workout app is just a distinctively helpful thing to have on your smartphone as it provides the user with a personalized workout they can do in the least amount of time. It’s meant to help you fit working out into your schedule no matter how busy or pressed you are by your day to day life. By following its instructions every day, you’re bound to start seeing results without changing much to your regular lifestyle.

Best Weight Loss Apps #6: Fooducate

Using this application is not even remotely as difficult as it is to pronounce it. Its purpose is not, however, to teach you how to exercise or to motivate you to do your workout. Instead, it just offers a comprehensive translation of everything you can eat by employing the help of a huge database. It’s also heavily reliant on the social aspect of it.

Once you scan the barcode of a product, the app will return an overview of how good that particular item is for you, and providing you with nutritional information such as calories per portion, overall grade as well as a list of better alternatives.

Best Weight Loss Apps #7: Diet Hero

Diet Hero is a great choice for anyone who usually prefers min-maxing their resources and not spending ridiculous amounts of time looking for god knows what special ingredients or rare pieces of exotic herbs and vegetables that will “help you lose weight”. Instead, it tries to help and teach you how to use what you have and what you like to your weight-losing advantage.

By recording into the app what you like eating and what you have at home, Diet Hero will tell you whether it’s a good idea to eat it, when to eat it and in what quantity. After you’ve also typed in your weight and height and all the other necessary details, the Diet Hero app will help you create a personalized diet that you can truthfully start losing weight with.

The downside of the app is that it’s currently only available on the App Store and nowhere else. You will also have to pay a one-time $1.99 fee to purchase it.

Best Weight Loss Apps #8: iPhone’s Health App

Moving onto how you can best use the health applications of your very own smartphone to the best of your interests, let’s start with Apple’s Health. Normally, the default health apps that major operating systems include in their basic programs tend to get overlooked and underestimated. It’s no news that these apps can’t do as much as a professional, dedicated fitness tracker app. But all of our smartphones are equipped with a multitude of sensors that help track a number of things.

If you go and open the iPhone Health app right now, you may be surprised to see a long history of steps taken, walking and running distance as well as flights climbed starting with when you first used the phone. But other than that, you will see a great number of categories of data that lack any kind of entry. Most of them will either require your manual input or information that you normally collect with other fitness and health apps to begin with.

And that is the one aspect where the iPhone Health app can truly shiny. While, by itself, it’s not that amazingly useful if you’re planning to lose weight, using it as your central hub of all things related to your health – including things such as sleeping patterns, vitals, regular medical checkups, nutrition and even reproductive health – can earn you a great overview of which aspects need improving and how well you keep things in check.

Best Weight Loss Apps #9: Google Fit

Android’s Google Fit – while in essence very similar to the iPhone equivalent – has a slightly more capable set of abilities, one could argue. To list the things that are native to default smartphone health apps, and in this case similar to what the iPhone Health app can do too – Google Fit provides you with a great overview of the things it can track by itself. That is: number of steps taken, distance and time walked, run or biked as well. It can draw a variety of charts and graphs that you can use to track your progress over time.

However, the one thing where the Google Fit can turn out to be a little more useful when it comes to the motivational factor – more or less. In comparison to Apple Health, this one allows you to set daily goals such as number of minutes you walk or number of steps you wish to take. After this is said and done, you’ll always be shown the percentage of completion you’ve done every day towards your goal.

However, the one aspect where both the Apple Health and Google Fit ultimately fail is their power as standalones. Logging food is difficult to do and will mostly rely on you knowing exact quantities of sugar, fat and calorie intake because there’s no internal database of foods you can choose from. Connect them to third party apps or a Google fitness tracker, however, and the result is ten times more satisfactory.

Best Weight Loss Apps #10: Xbox One Kinect’s Fitness App

Remember Dance Dance Revolution? It basically employed gaming concepts to make you get some exercise for a change. That is something that was later attempted with the release of things such as Wii or the Xbox Kinect auxiliary devices. While you can try using regular Kinect gaming to get moving, you should also know that there is a dedicated Kinect Fitness app out there too that can make things easier for you.

The Xbox Kinect fitness app doesn’t just show you detailed videos of how to perform each and every exercise in its database, but it also constantly provides you with hints and tips on how to best practice them all. There’s a great amount of reinforcement and a wholly motivational approach to it. The best aspect of it all is the fact that thanks to the Kinect motion detection technology, the application will be able to tell how well you’re performing and doing the exercises while also not giving you a lot of room for slacking off.

Image Source: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11

Lyft Gets $500 Million from General Motors

January 4, 2016 By Nancy Young Leave a Comment

Lyft gets $500 million from General Motors and joins the race for the first consumer-ready self-driving car system.

Lyft is valued at $5.5 billion due to financing from GM, Saudi Arabia’s Kingdom Holding CO., Japanese e-commerce giant Rakuten Inc. and Janus Capital Management.

This is the first time a large automaker joins forces with a ride-sharing company. Considering that they are a huge threat to auto sales, as more and more urban commuters prefer to hail a ride from Uber or Lyft rather than owning a car, an alliance doesn’t seem so shocking.

With Google, Uber, Tesla and Apple heading towards autonomous vehicles, the industry is trying to adapt and reshape itself.

General Motors have announced that it would work closely with Lyft on developing a self-driving car system that would let customers order a vehicle via their smartphone, tablet or personal computer, and have said car arrive at their door step with no driver.

General Motors President Dan Ammann has said in an interview that the very first large-scale deployment of self-driving cars will be in demand on ride-sharing platforms – as in Uber and Lyft.

GM is known to have already started developing autonomous cars, and that it plans on testing a fleet of vehicles at their Detroit technical center in 2016, but there’s no news regarding on the phase of development with Lyft. Ammann has declined to comment on the status.

The fleet of vehicles will be comprised of 2017 Chevrolet Volts.

Also, GM has confirmed that their Super Cruise tech, which has been in development since 2012, will be finally available in the 2017 version of the Cadillac CT6.

In the following months, the car-manufacturer giant plans to build a series of rental-car centeres where Lyft drivers have the possibility of renting vehicles at lower, discounted prices.

Lyft had previously managed to raise about $1 billion from investors across the world including hedge-fund behemoth Carl Icahn, Middle Kingdom-based ride-hailing company Didi Kuaidi Joint Co., Tencent Holding Ltd., Alibaba Group Holding Ltd., US-located Founders Fund, Coatue Management and Andreessen Horowitz.

After receiving funds from Carl Icahn, back in May of 2015, Lyft was valued at $2.5 billion.

Even though that seems to be quite huge, its direct competitor, Uber, has raised a total of about $12 billion both in equity and debt.

Uber Technologies have also managed to raise, roughly, the same funds as Uber, but the Cali-based ride-sharing company is valued at $64.6 billion – higher than even GM’s market value, which stands at $53 billion.

Image Source: 1

Samsung’s Tizen-Powered Remote Will Control Your Smart Home

January 4, 2016 By Nancy Young Leave a Comment

Samsung’s Tizen-powered remote will control your smart home – in the future, that is.

Simplicity is a core facet of Samsung’s 2016 line of Smart TVs. Building an universal remote control and an improved Smart Hub user interface might just make the Korean company the choice for many smart home enthusiasts.

Even now, there are quite a few modern living rooms that have several devices connected to a big screen TV – a gaming console, a Blu-Ray player, a video-streaming box and other gadgets. Controlling all of them means that the consumer has to manage, let’s say, more than five remotes.

Samsung understands that this is just absurd and comes with the solution in the form of the Tizen-powered device. This will serve as the sole controller for every device that connects to a Samsung Smart TV.

The company claims that it can immediately detect set-top boxes that are connected via the HDMI port, among other devices.

However, the Korean-based company doesn’t say if the remote control will ship with 2016 Samsung Smart TVs, or if consumers will have to acquire the controller separately.

Yet, if it is indeed included in the box, then it could very well put Logitech’s department of third-party universal remotes out of business.

Samsung also revealed at the end of 2015 that they will be making their Smart TVs fully compatible with IoT – the Internet of Things; via SmartThings. This means that you will be able to control everything connected in your home, from light bulbs to thermostats, via the Tizen-powered device.

This turns Samsung’s Smart Control into a direct competitor to Logitech’s Harmony Remotes.

Samsung has announced that the company is trying to bring a more unified approach to its TV OS. It intends to make it easier for users to switch from a content service to another, as well as between devices. Take linear TVs, gaming consoles – read, Microsoft’s Xbox One, Sony’s PlayStation 4 and Nintendo’s Wii U; and set-top boxes.

This means that users will be able to search for content across all of their devices via a single search box.

Samsung has also announced that they will be present at this year’s CES event in Las Vegas. The Consumer Electronics Show is the biggest tech event in the world, and it’s going to start on January the 6th. Until then, we can only speculate how awesome the tech giant’s new device will be. Stay tuned as we will report the biggest and most thrilling devices from this year’s CES event.

Image Source: 1

Google Pixel C Review – A True Competitor to Hybrids

December 31, 2015 By Kenneth Scott Leave a Comment

When it comes to hybrid tablets, there isn’t a huge amount of models existent out on the market to truly make a selection out of. Ask anyone to name a few off the top of their heads and they’ll probably mention the Microsoft Surface Pro and the rather new iPad Pro release. While they are not the only ones available, having Dell, HP, Toshiba and Lenovo following suit with several of their own models, it’s not a lightly known fact that the most famous ones have that status for a reason.

Not only that each of the two major names pioneered something in the trade, but they also had the previous desktop-related experience in order to be able to sustain a hybrid that aims to replace your laptop. Then the Google Pixel C comes along and there’s a reason it manages to wildly draw our attention. Starting with a premium, amazing look, some particularly good aesthetic and practical choices and a good adaptation of what Google had into a great final product.

But spend a while with the Google Pixel C and the Microsoft Surface Pro 4 side by side and your excitement might start to slowly dwindle. And it’s not because the hybrid falls behind as a product overall, but simply because in the end it might feel a little lackluster on the software aspect of it. It’s the Android operating system you may have got used to on other Samsung devices for example, but it’s applied on a piece of tech that’s supposed to act as a laptop; in other words, a portable near-full computer experience.

So the issue that arises is the extent that the Google Pixel C manages to perform well to. Nevertheless, being mostly an operating system-related issue only – susceptible to numerous upgrades and even downright facelifts – chances are it’s not that huge of a reason to be worried.

Pros: premium build, amazing design, great keyboard, high tier hardware, stock Android

Cons: software isn’t cut out for laptop-like activity yet, limited amount of software you can download and use on it

Google Pixel C Design

Google Pixel C Tablet

At the risk of over-praising the Pixel C right off the bat in the first section of the review and not having that much else to say on the following ones, I believe the hybrid deserves the attention. Aesthetically, I can’t even express into words how pleased I was with the end result. The Google Pixel C has a strong, premium feel, carefully cut and put together. No matter how much I turned it around on all sides and checked every nook and cranny of the body, I couldn’t find any sign of weakness.

The anodized aluminum build would normally account for a lighter device altogether. However, for its 242 x 179 x 7 mm dimensions, it weighs a little over a pound – 0.517 kilograms or 1.13 pounds to be exact – without the keyboard attachment. That’s still a lot lighter than the much larger iPad Pro and only 0.1 mm thicker. The robust design makes way for a sharper approach to its corners and edges than you may have seen on models such as the Samsung Galaxy Tab S2. That one is mostly noticeable in the corners of the device which have a relatively small degree of curving and comes off a little more rigid than one would expect. Other than that, I sincerely don’t see any reason anyone would find a flaw in terms of aesthetics.

Button placement-wise, I’ve found the Google Pixel C very… symmetrical and tidy looking. If we consider landscape to be the default orientation, you get the power and/or sleep button on the left side at the top, the volume rocker on the left side, at the top and the Type-C USB charging slot at the bottom. The right side hosts the 3.5 mm headphone jack. 2 sets of 5 punctured speaker holes rest on either side of it. You’ll also find 4 near miniscule holes at the top that serve as the quad noise-cancelling microphone of the Google Pixel C.

Even the back of the tablet is amazingly simplistic in design: the circular camera sensor resting in the top right corner is only accompanied by the trademark Google colors in a slim light strip at the top.

Google Pixel C Keyboard

Since you have to purchase the Bluetooth keyboard separately, I’ll also talk about it in a separate segment. It’s already something we’ve grown accustomed to, seeing as Microsoft is doing the same with their Surface Pro 4. For an extra $150 that the keyboard is worth, you will find the same aluminum outer case gracing the back of it. However, to my surprise, the keyboard turned out to be very heavy – at least as far as hybrid keyboards go. Weighing a hefty 0.87 pounds (395 grams) all by itself, when attached to the tablet, the entire device ends up feeling a lot heavier than it looks like it should be.

Given the Pixel C overall smaller dimensions, when compared to the Microsoft Surface Pro 4 for example, naturally the keyboard ends up being a little more cramped than some individuals would like. Getting used to typing on it may take a fair bit, but the appendage makes up for that detail through 1.4 mm of travel on its keys that feel good and responsive even for fast typing. The top side of the keyboard is a mobile portion that relies on magnets to keep the tablet connected and immediately starts charging the keyboard whenever it is connected. It rotates somewhere around 90 degrees up and has a surprisingly good grip on the tablet until you try to force it to tilt it to more than vertical position.

That is one downside that I’ve found and some people may be annoyed by. Once you try to tilt it to more than that, chances are the tablet will just pop off from its magnetic grip leaving you with it hanging in your hand. While tilting it up and down on the kickstand feels good and stable, the hybrid tends to lose a little of that feeling when you attempt to use it anywhere else than a hard, horizontal surface. Typing on it when it’s in your lap will have you question whether the tablet portion is truly stable in the magnetic grip.

The keyboard can be placed on top of the tablet and used as a cover – very similar to how laptops do. A huge disappointment of the keyboard is the lack of a trackpad. What that means is that you’re forced to use the touch screen as your only means of actually navigating everything. That may not be such a huge problem for some, but it may end up feeling a little awkward when the tablet is sitting upright and you don’t want to press too hard on it and make it tilt backwards.

Lastly, if you’re looking for the aid of a stylus to serve for your navigational concerns, it’s sad to say that there’s no such thing included in the package here.

Google Pixel C Display

The Google Pixel C features an outstanding 10.2-inch display. It’s not much larger (if at all) than the sizes you find on regular tablets. It is, however, smaller than the two direct competitors – the 12.9 inch iPad Pro and 12.3 inch Microsoft Surface Pro 4 respectively.

However, with a native resolution of 2560 x 1800, the Google Pixel C has a rather odd feeling aspect ratio. It’s not one I’ve found on many other devices, if ever, and can only be summed up into the same proportions of an A4 sheet of paper. That means that it doesn’t fall into the wide screen category, scoring a relatively large height to begin with. Because of that, movies may feel a little strange to watch as they will get letterboxed a little awkwardly at times. As a side note, while we’re still on the topic of resolution, the Google Pixel C has a pixel density of 308 ppi pixels per inch, higher than both the Microsoft Surface Pro 4 and the iPad Pro, by an even larger margin.

But image crispness is not the only great feature the display of the Pixel C has to show for itself. Brightness levels are particularly high, making it great for viewing regardless of lighting conditions and even faring well in direct sunlight. Wide viewing angles and accompanied by vibrant and appealing colors, as it is expected from a LTPS LCD screen.

Google Pixel C Hardware & Performance

Take a look inside the Google Pixel C and it will immediately spell a threat to the components of tablets such as the iPad Pro. It features the latest nVidia X1 quad-core processor clocked at 1.9 GHz that proved highly superior to the A8X chipsets, especially in terms of graphic performance – 3D gaming more specifically. Along with the outstanding CPU, you also get 3 GB of RAM memory and 32 GB of storage space on the default version.

The nVidia Tegra X1 is an 8 CPU-core, 64-bit ARM CPU that features a quad-core A57 2 MB L2 cache and another quad core A53 512 KB L2 cache brother. It employs 20 nm ARM CPU architecture that attempts to improve battery life but also deliver high efficiency. Packed in the chipset is the nVidia Maxwell 256-core, DirectX 12 ready graphics processing unit. The unit alone succeeds in delivering one of the best gaming experiences I’ve ever had on a tablet. 3D, graphic-intensive games work perfectly smooth, without experiencing frame drops of any kind.

In an attempt to suitably compliment the outstanding CPU of the Google Pixel C, you also get 3 GB of LPDDR4 memory. That is more than enough a hybrid would need for a smooth performance that feels as speedy and responsive as a full-fledged laptop would elicit for the user.

The storage space that the Pixel C offers is that one aspect where the tablet will hiccup. The default version only offers 32 GB of space, while the only other alternative is a maximum of 64. Without an SD or microSD card expansion availability, you will pretty much be stuck with that particular amount. At least until they release larger storage space options – if that ever happens.

Google Pixel C Software & Features

Good news, everyone! Anyone willing to purchase the Google Pixel C hybrid will be granted with full access to the stock version of the Android 6.0 Marshmallow operating system and allowed to enjoy the greatest extent that Android software has ever gone to. Every single feature of the 6.0 Marshmallow OS can be found here, along with a handful of classic apps and utilities.

Along with the processor improvements to battery life, the 6.0 Marshmallow operating system throws its own input into the fray. The feature in question is called Doze, with the sole purpose of maintaining the device’s activity to a minimum when not being actively used.

Thanks to the inbuilt microphone in the top side of the Google Pixel C, you get a fair amount of voice support too, meaning you get to make use of Google Now. Even the Google Now app itself has seen some improvements by also adding Now on Tap; this basically allows you to view even more information than the vocal Google Now offers you with a simple tap.

Hangouts, Google Plus, Play Store, even Google Drive installed on it straight out of the factory will greet you as soon as you open the app tray. However, this is where the problems start – even if they’re not an ultimatum and will only take some time to get fixed. While there are loads of apps you can get for the Google Pixel C that will work with it wonderfully, there’s also a great number of popular apps that aren’t yet optimized for this particular type of device or aspect ratio.

As a last note regarding the feel of the Google Pixel C as a true hybrid, you’ll find some split opinions out there. While the hardware does its absolute best you can expect from a tablet in terms of performance, it feels as if the software isn’t up there to compliment the hybrid’s capabilities of truly replacing a laptop. Most of the fault actually falls onto 6.0 Marshmallow’s ability to function as a desktop operating system replacement. Most of the time, using the Pixel C will certainly not fool you into thinking it’s just like using a laptop and you’ll probably always remain fully conscious that you’re just using a tablet with a keyboard strapped on it. Regardless, considering the Pixel C is probably set at the top of the software update priority list, it’s near certainty that this will change in the future.

Google Pixel C Camera & Battery

There are two cameras planted on either face of the Pixel C tablet – an 8 megapixel one on the rear and a 2 megapixel one on the front. The front camera you’ll probably only end up using for video conferences, and even then it’ll probably be out of necessity and not out of the wish to do so. To be frank, cameras are probably the most unexciting bit of the entire tablet, with a more practical approach to photo and video shooting rather than quality.

The 8 megapixel rear camera you may find difficult to use when you realize that even aiming it to get a good shot is particularly problematic when wielding a pound-heavy tablet. Not to mention that in the absence of a LED flash, shooting photos and video in low light conditions is out of the question. Not even the Camera app offers much reason to be excited as it only gives you several modes to shoot in, video included. Focus is not the best and your end result when taking shots – you should keep in mind – result in awkwardly shaped pictures.

When it comes to the battery however, you’ll find it to be quite the treat. The 34.2 WHr power pack is rated to last up to 10 hours of video playback. In reality, I’d call that a bit of an exaggeration as I could only get up to 9 at most. However, that’s an amazing amount to begin with. Mild usage of the tablet will earn you literal days of uptime, while heavy usage will still last you up to 15 hours.

And considering it makes use of Type-C USB charging, getting your battery from 0 to 100% will be an unusually fast process.

Google Pixel C Verdict

In the end, I think our verdict depends on how you look at the Google Pixel C. if you intend to use it as a pure tablet that happens to have a keyboard as a purchasable extension to ease your typing, then you’re most likely making a great choice and this is the best Android tablet you could ever get. Great hardware and performance are only matched by outstanding design and a particularly strong battery.

As a hybrid – and more specifically a device that is meant to replace your laptop – I don’t think the Google Pixel C really has what it takes. The interface doesn’t succeed in convincing me of its potential in that direction, but that’s left to question as things may improve in the more or less near future.

You can purchase the Google Pixel C for $500, along with the separate keyboard that comes for $150.

Image Source: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11

More than 25 iOS 9 Tips and Tricks

December 30, 2015 By Michael Turner Leave a Comment

A little over 3 months since the original version of the iOS 9 has come out and I still find myself discovering new things you can do on it every other day. While the “initiation” guide that you normally get with any new version only walks you through major changes before you decide to exit it and never return, there are just so many new, small things that get added with every following version. A great number of them you probably will never use or are too situational to bother with. However, you never know when the situation arises that one or two of them might just save you some time.

And just earlier this month the latest version of the operating system – iOS 9.2 hit our software menus, bringing even more fixes to previous issues such as syncing bugs and also added a few more neat tricks to pave our way even further into what real technological assistance is supposed to do. Now keep in mind that some of the iOS 9 Tips and Tricks we will be listing here are only available for users of multiple Apple devices (e.g. iPhone and iPad or iPhone and Mac PCs) while others may only be available on the latest iPhone 6 models.

Considering there’s a lot of information to take in and shockingly diverse categories of them too, we’ll be dividing them in chapters so you can find your particular point of interest faster.

iOS 9 Tips and Tricks – Ease of Access

iOS 9 Tips and Tricks – Switching from Android to iOS

Switching carriers is one thing. Upgrading your iPhone has been made amazingly easy over the years. But if you find yourself in the position where you’re switching from an Android to an Apple phone, the transition may feel downright confusing and difficult to pull off without a serious time investment.

Luckily, with the iOS 9, a nifty app made its way on Google Play. Once you download it on your Android device you can choose to save your photos, contacts, messages and such. When you set up your new iPhone – more specifically, during the setup phase itself – all you need to do is tap the Move Data from Android option.

iOS 9 Tips and Tricks – Making good use of the SD Lightning Adapter

What better way to transfer photos from your SD card or camera than directly, by using the SD Lightning Adapter. Once iOS 9 hit, it has been made possible for you to use the SD to Lightning and USB to Lightning adapters together in order for such transfers to be possible.

iOS 9 Tips and Tricks – View the state of your battery of your other Apple products from a single device

I’m not going to scramble my mind out to figure out when you would use something like this, but it’s always good to know it’s a possibility. Basically, you can view the battery life of any of your synced Apple devices from any of them. By pulling down your notification center when the phone is unlocked, you can scroll all the way to the bottom, hit Edit and tap the + button next to Batteries.

iOS 9 Tips and Tricks – Handoff, now just a tap away

Handoff is not new to the iOS but can easily be listed as one of the most useful things you can have if you own more than just one Apple device. In case you haven’t used it yet, it allows you to pick up where you left off if you’re writing an email, a document and even a message and continue it on a completely different device.

iOS 9 makes it all even easier by adding a fast access option to Handoff straight from your multitasking screen. Double tap your home button and you’ll find the shortcut at the bottom of your screen, right below all of the currently open apps.

iPad’s own Selection of iOS 9 Tips and Tricks

There is a bunch of things that the iOS 9 update brought to the latest iPads only – meaning you won’t be able to enjoy them on your phone or iPod. For the few lucky iPad users out there, here’s what we gathered.

Text selection made easy (finally). I kind of wish this had been made available for the iPhone as well as selecting text is a handful and I will most likely just give up unless it’s vital for me to copy paste fragments somewhere. On the iPad however, iOS 9 allows you to use multitouch and mimic the way you would usually use a trackpad on a laptop. That way you can use two fingers to select the entire body of text you wish with a minimal amount of struggle.

Pop-out videos. You know how the YouTube app has the capability of minimizing your currently watching video while you browse for other ones? That is now possible on your iPad, regardless of the source of the video, as long as it’s an Apple app or Hulu. The way you do it is via the button that you can see on the bottom right of the screen when you’re playing a video or by using the video button, alternatively.
Multitasking at its best. You can now run two apps at the same time on your iPad Air 2 via the Split View app. The only downside of it is that not all the applications out there support it. However, the way you get that going is by swiping from the right after you’ve opened your first app of choice, select the second you want to open from the grid then drag the slider to the middle of the screen.

The new iPad Keyboard. While the keyboard has definitely been improved on the mobile phone version of the iOS 9 as well, the iPad received a fair amount of extra attention. The on-screen iPad keyboard has added some new options to cut, copy and paste as well as easy to access shortcuts to various apps.

iOS 9 Tips and Tricks – Interface and Notifications

iOS 9 Tips and Tricks – Improved Passcodes

Not much to mention here other than the fact that the iOS 9 now supports passcodes as long as 6 digits. All you need to do is proceed to change it from the Settings > Touch ID & Passcode submenu.

iOS 9 Tips and Tricks – A Back Button is a Good Button

No more constant double tapping the home button to get from one app to another and get lost in the process when you’re trying to multitask. The iOS 9 added a very simple, very useful back button in the top left of your screen so you can easily return to the previous application you were using.

iOS 9 Tips and Tricks – Notification Grouping

While there’s only one more option added to the iOS 9 other than the default sort by date and time, it’s something. By going to Settings > Notifications and turn on the Group by App setting, you can now view them sorted by each separate application instead.

iOS 9 Tips and Tricks – Low Power Mode

If left on default options, your phone has probably already started notifying you that its battery is running low when it reached 20% and 10% respectively. But in case you haven’t found it yet, you can actually turn this mode on manually via Settings > Battery and enabling or disabling it at the very top of the screen.

iOS 9 Tips and Tricks – Searching Improvements

I can’t say that the iOS settings menu is the most intuitive of them all and you may also always realize that you spend a long amount of time to find specific settings in all the submenus that is has. The search function of the iOS 9 is now featured in the Settings App as a standalone spin-off. You can find it when you’re scrolled up all the way to the top.

In addition, iOS 9 also allows you to comb out the apps that you don’t want showing up as results on your searches to maintain a higher level of relevance and faster search times. You can do this via Settings > General > Spotlight Search.

iOS Tips and Tricks – Calling & Texting

iOS 9 Tips and Tricks – App & Contacts Suggestions

Depending on how you choose to access your search menu in the new iOS 9, your iPhone will offer you suggestions for various things. If you swipe from the top in the home screen, you will get a selection of 4 apps that the operating system registered you use most. Swipe from the left to right from the first page of the home screen and you’ll be granted an additional row of suggestions – this time contacts; by tapping on a suggested contact, you’re prompted to choose whether you want to Call, Text or just view that contact’s profile.

iOS 9 Tips and Tricks – Keep better track of your voicemail

The iOS 9 allows you to not only save your voicemail but also share it if need be. By sharing it, I mean anything between sending it to someone as a message, sharing it on social media and sharing it to your other devices. The way you do it is by saving it from the Phone app and tapping on it if you wish to share it.

iOS 9 Tips and Tricks – Unknown callers?

This is one piece of information that truly falls into the second category of the iOS 9 Tips and Tricks selection. Sadly, it’s not 100% reliable but a decent attempt an uncovering the identity of an unknown caller that you haven’t saved into your contacts. It requires you to link your e-mail app or apps of choice to your Apple Mail. If the caller has his or her phone number attached to their e-mail, it will display as a suggestion while that person is calling you.

iOS 9 Tips and Tricks – Texting Emojis and Optimizing Your Options

Very small chance that you haven’t used or at least seen the huge amount of emoticons that pop up when you attempt to change the keyboard language layout via the button that is in the bottom left of the screen in the Messages app.

If you feel that the shake to undo is more of an annoyance than something you find yourself actually using, you can turn it off now from the Settings > General > Accessibility > Shake to Undo option.

iOS 9 Tips and Tricks – Siri

Siri seems to be taking turns with either being amazingly useful or an absolute danger to new operating system builds (remember the security flaw where people were able to access private information off of a locked phone via Siri back in September?). Regardless, now that all of these issues have been fixed, we can actually enjoy all the upgrades Siri received.

iOS 9 Tips and Tricks – Siri Reminders

You can now tell Siri to remind you of more than just the time you have to wake up. You can make her remember things such as specific web pages or things you’re looking at and also have her set up a reminder for a specific date, time or location. That way you can easily pop up the TV guide for the evening as soon as you come home for example.

iOS 9 Tips and Tricks – Siri almost knows it all

While Siri has been able to find locations for you before, she can now even gather more specific details such as the working hours of markets and restaurants. As a side note, I’ve found most of these utilities of Siri by just fiddling with it and experimenting with asking various things, you should try it too!

Along with the iOS 9’s smart way of categorizing your photos, varying from selfies, location-specific albums, date-specific folders and so on, you can ask Siri to pull up a particular set of pictures such as the ones you took on the 31^st of December or the photos you took last summer in Italy.

iOS 9 Tips and Tricks – Make Siri discreet

In order to not have her shout out her results of whatever you have her do when the situation calls for, you can set Siri up to not speak out loud if your phone is turned on Silent. That can be done via Settings > General > Siri > Voice Feedback > Control with Ring Switch.

iOS 9 Tips and Tricks – Settings

iOS 9 Tips and Tricks – WiFi Assist

There was a feature added with the iPhone generations starting at iPhone 5 and above that made your phone choose and juggle between available connections to ensure you get the best and fastest internet browsing you could. By that meaning that your phone would automatically switch to 4G when your WiFi connection faltered or became slow and choppy. Sadly, you couldn’t turn that off nor did the phone tell you it was happening which could result in painful amounts of extra charges or an entire month worth of your data plan gone out the window.

Thankfully, you can now prohibit the phone from making that call by itself by going to Settings > Cellular > WiFi Assist and turn it off.

iOS 9 Tips and Tricks – Improved Battery Usage Information

If you feel like your battery life is slower than usual and aren’t sure why, the iOS 9 offers you a detailed history of how much of your power certain apps have been using either over the past 24 hours or past 7 days. You can access the list via Settings > Batteries, all the way at the bottom.

iOS 9 Tips and Tricks – Touchscreen Assistance

There are a few things you can change about your display’s responsiveness to touch. By turning the core option on from Settings > General > Accessibility > Touch Accommodations (third group of options), you can adjust things such as hold duration and tapping assistance.

iOS 9 Tips and Tricks – Notes

iOS 9 Tips and Tricks – Doodling in Notes

Sadly only available in the newer Apple products such as the iPhone 6 and above, you can now pull out an entire arsenal of colors and drawing tools and doodle inside the Notes App. Ok, so maybe it’s not an arsenal, but you’ll be given a market, pen or a pencil as well as a few colors to use. Some people may find this more useful than having to type things down.

To make things even more interesting, you can also add photos to your notes now. Additionally, you can share photos you find in your browser directly into your notes for easy access.

iOS 9 Tips and Tricks – To-Do Lists

iPhone 6 and above also allows you to make entire to-do lists in your notes that automatically add check icons which you can tap next to every row. You’ll find the to-do list option when you open a new note, the first icon on the left right above the keyboard.

iOS 9 Tips and Tricks – Safari

Safari has had its fair share of improvements too, while I can’t call them all groundbreaking. There is an option that you can make use of to turn off frequently visited websites so they don’t show up when someone else may be using your phone. You can disable displaying this information by going to Settings > Safari > Frequently Visited Websites and uncheck the option.

The more relevant change that Safari has seen is a decent amount of customization that was brought to reading webpages. Those revolve around font size, background colors and more. It’s a nifty little thing that you can use when reading blocks of text that can quickly tire your eyes out, especially when the display’s brightness is set to high.

iOS 9 Tips and Tricks – E-mail

iOS 9 Tips and Tricks – More Doodles!

Not exactly considered doodling per se, but the latest iOS 9 allows you to take notes and draw directly onto email attachments. What better way to make your point and quickly reply to the sender of the email than to quickly mark the content you’re referring to? In order to make use of this feature, all you need to do is to open the email with the attachment in question, tap and hold on the image or document in question then select Markup and Reply and a selection of options at the bottom of your screen will appear.

iOS 9 Tips and Tricks – Working with your emails easily

There’s a quick and fast method of keeping your mail attachments safe and accessible from any Apple device you are logged on. Similarly to how you can do to import photos in Notes, you can tap and hold the attachment in question and you get an option to save the attachment directly to your iCloud (it doesn’t say it will save it to the iCloud, but you can quickly recognize it thanks to the trademark iCloud logo).

Image Source: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13

Microsoft Band 2 Review – An Activity Smartwatch?

December 29, 2015 By Roxanne Briean 2 Comments

Update 1/4/2016: Replying to texts on the Microsoft Band 2 can be done both via voice command and on-screen interaction.

You don’t need to spend too much time with the Microsoft Band 2 to start wondering what the purpose the developers had in mind when they designed it. If you’ve seen any other activity tracker device out there such as the Jawbone UP 3, Jawbone 24UP, FitBit, Garmin Fenix 3 and so on, you’ll certainly immediately notice the difference.

If anything, the Microsoft Band 2 – and its predecessor of course – resemble something that we would call an attempt to breach the smartwatch market more than appealing to the ever-increasing need of activity tracker features market. While usual fitness trackers either aim for a minimalistic and subtle build or go full on the tracking utilities and interface, the Microsoft Band 2 graces us with what seems to be a responsive and stylish looking touchscreen; similar to what the Android Wear and Apple iWatch would, no?

There’s no denying that the new Microsoft Band 2 has a great potential to appeal to the professional activity tracker market as well, thanks to all the sensors that have been packed in. But the question remains just to what extent you can truly rely on it in that particular role, and how much of it is simply Microsoft’s version of wearable tech?

Pros:

Particularly stylish
Plenty of methods to track your activity and fitness sessions
Simple to use
Great screen

Cons:

Obvious wear and tear early into using it
Not a great amount of support for iOS and Android
High battery usage
Expensive for a fitness tracker

Microsoft Band 2 Design & Display

Out of all the wearable tech units we’ve reviewed so far, the Microsoft Band 2 is one of the best looking ones by far, regardless of what you use it as – whether you prefer it as a smartwatch or an activity tracker. It doesn’t actively hide the fact that it’s wearable tech like the Pebble Steel, nor does it scream fitness tracker like the Garmin Fenix. At least in what the front of the Microsoft Band 2 is concerned, it looks sleek and stylish.

Turn it around however to where the clasp is located and things don’t remain so impressive still. Overall, the band of the device is not particularly slim and even feels a little too wide for comfort around the metallic clasp part. Because of the method it employs of keeping the band fit around your wrist, you’ll often find the clasp rubbing against the desk when you’re working at the office and in various degrees of danger of it accidentally clinching to various surfaces. That brings us to the sad realization that the Microsoft Band 2 may end up looking older and more worn out than it should. Especially when that occurs mere weeks into using it.

On the bright side, however, it would seem that the comfort issues that many users reported with the original Microsoft Bands weren’t here to stay. Other than the rather elevated angle at which your arm will rest on a flat surface when you rest it on the armband is probably the only hindrance at perfect comfort when using it casually. Considering the way its body is built, with flexible bands and a slightly curved but firm display, some individuals may find it slightly uncomfortable around the top, depending on the shape of their wrist. On the bright side, however, the device comes in three separate sizes (with an attached online guide on how to decide which one is for you) that you can choose from so there’s a good chance one of the models will fit you just the way you wish.

In terms of button placement, the design of the Microsoft Band 2 is relatively simple. By that meaning that there’s not much to interact with physically; most of the controls will be done via the touchscreen display. However, at the bottom of the display, beneath the band’s edge you will find two separate buttons: the on/off/sleep button and the activity button. On the rear of the display you will find the sensors that are in charge of tracking heart rate. The charging slot is slightly difficult to find at first but it turns out to be a comfortably subtle and overall great placement: on the back of the clasp.

The Microsoft Band 2 has a 12.8 x 32 mm display, slightly curving around the wrist. The actual display is surrounded by a relatively wide bezel, but the entire area is covered with a layer of Corning Gorilla glass, giving the device a great and glossy look. Because it employs an AMOLED build, you’ll find a great amount of contrast and brightness on the Microsoft Band 2 screen coupled with deep, inky blacks. However, there’s also a fair amount of reflectivity attached to the display meaning that you might have some trouble reading it in sunlight.

The display supports a maximum resolution of 320 x 128, making for a very strange aspect ratio to begin with. And with that particular aspect ratio comes a relatively awkward layout for your notifications and recorded statistics for your activity. That’s not only because of the shape of the display but also because of its orientation; if you just attempt to look at it like you would at a normal watch, you’d have to tilt your head a fair amount to read the screen properly. Instead you’ll find yourself holding up your arm in a strange fashion as if you were making a post-contemporary salute-like gesture just so you can get a good read of what is being displayed. From that perspective, the Microsoft Band 2 feels more than awkward.

However, for anyone who has ever used the original Microsoft Band, the new display is more than just an upgrade; it’s a lot more responsive to touch, looks a lot better and even makes use of the curved display technology. However, having an AMOLED display attached to your wearable tech comes with several downsides. To name two that potential Microsoft Band 2 users will have to deal with are battery life and water resistance.

Firstly, you shouldn’t expect your tracker to go on without charging it longer than 2 days for example, depending on how many of its features you actually use. Secondly, the Microsoft Band 2 is not made to be water resistant: it’s protected against dust and was made to be “splash-resistant”. That merely means that you can probably risk a jog through the rain, but you shouldn’t even consider taking it with you to the pool or in the shower after a workout.

Microsoft Band 2 Specs & Hardware

So, as you may have heard before, the Microsoft Band 2 brings to the table a fair number of sensors that make activity tracking possible to begin with. There isn’t any on-board storage for apps or other particular stand-alone features like some wearable tech sometimes has.

Regardless, the Microsoft Band 2 hosts great amounts of potential when it comes to the physical intensive activities you can undergo and track with it. While it may not have a separate, personalized profile for every type of activity like the absolute top professional trackers do, there’s a fair amount you can do with it.

To make a short summary of what you’ll get as your bread and butter tools for fitness tracking and even more, the Microsoft Band 2 features a continuous heart rate monitor, both an accelerometer and gyrometer, various galvanic skin response sensors, a UV monitor and the newly added barometer. On top of that you also get GPS – great for route tracking, terrible for the battery – as well as a built-in microphone for voice commands via Cortana (only available if you have a Windows phone to match) as well as an ambient light sensor simply added to automatically control the brightness of the touchscreen display.

Just like any other tracker, it will use the motion sensors (accelerometer, gyrometer) to track things such as steps taken and sleep and calculate calories burned and how effective the exercise you did is. The UV monitor is not something I have found in many other devices of this kin before and can make for a nifty addition to the amount of health information you can gather. Lastly, the presence of the barometer within the ranks of sensors added to the Microsoft Band 2 you can map your actual progress and activity a lot better because it adds the tri-dimensional aspect to it all by measuring elevation changes when you job, bike or do things such as climbing stairs.

Microsoft Band 2 Software

Just like every other single tracker made and out there, the Microsoft Band 2 syncs with your mobile phone of choice (to note here that it doesn’t support tablets) via its Bluetooth 4.0. After pairing the two devices via the Microsoft Health app you can find for free in the various app stores, you’re near ready to proceed.

It’s critical to know that any kind of activity that implies movement such as biking or running, it’s highly advisable for you to make use of the GPS if you want to get accurate readings. Even if it takes an extra toll on your Microsoft Band 2 battery, using the device without GPS – even if it’s possible – felt underwhelming to say the least. There seems to be an unusually large amount of discrepancy between the results the band earns you with and without GPS.

Regardless, any type of fitness-related activity will require a slight nudge from you when beginning by pressing the activity button so the device is notified that something other than steps and sleeping patterns should start getting recorded.

The mobile app will pretty much display anything you need to know regarding your fitness sessions: duration – start and end time included – a rough estimate of calories burned, when GPS is on it will map a route of your job, included with a colored history of your pace (making you feel bad when you’re in the blue – depicted by a snail). You can swipe through the screens of data to display things such as heart bpm.

All of your recorded data gets uploaded to your online Microsoft Health Dashboard so you can overview your progress over time and draw charts of your current activity. Once again, even the dashboard doesn’t feel that detailed as the professional fitness tracker ones seem to be capable of producing but still offers a great amount of illumination when it comes to your health-related habits.

If there’s one absolutely knackering detail about the Microsoft Band 2 is the fact that it feels relatively lackluster when it comes to gathering data from third party apps. Many other fitness tracker apps offer you this select feature that can make up for the lack of their native capabilities; instead the compatibility of the Microsoft Band 2 is questionable to say the least.

Microsoft Band 2 Features

In terms of the capabilities of the Microsoft Band 2, there are two ways we can look at it. Firstly, we can consider it an activity tracker and judge it as that. Then we can regard it as a smart watch; there’s no denial that the Microsoft Band was originally the company’s attempt at breaking through into the market, with the focus on health and fitness as another way to latch to a particular niche as a safety net.

As an activity tracker, the Microsoft Band 2 surely comes with an extra amount of attention paid to the accuracy of data regarding your day to day activity. While you can’t cover every single type of sport activity with it in the absence of personalized app tracking and even due to physical boundaries (take pool or open water swimming), the band does fairly well in a more generic sense.

Where it really lacks as a fitness tracker is its capability of acting independently. There’s close to none of that present on the Microsoft Band 2 – no coaching, a minimal amount of attempts to enforce a healthy lifestyle or automatic notifications to remind you to follow a healthy schedule unless you set it up manually to do so. While you can create custom workouts through it, it’s not the smoothest of processes and risks giving you a bit of a headache and test of patience when you decide to do it.

As a smart watch, it ends up almost feeling as half-measured as a fitness tracker. Yes, you can push notifications from your smartphone to your watch and even do a fair amount of interacting with it to check weather, calendar, set alarms or whatnot. But you won’t be able to reply to your texts or social media messages directly off the Microsoft Band 2. Even if you did, you’d once again walk in headfirst into the same issue we mentioned earlier – the oddly shaped display.

There are, however, some nice things you can still get with the Microsoft Band 2, especially if you’re a Windows phone user. Firstly, there’s the neat voice command feature you can get by using the microphone that was built in the device to dictate replies to messages, setting alarms and other smaller features of that kind. However, this is only possible when using a Windows phone paired to the band. Another feature some individuals may enjoy on this device is the preinstalled mini app that allows you use your watch to make purchases once you store your barcodes onto the watch.

Microsoft Band 2 Battery Life

One of the more delicate issues that most smartwatches and activity trackers alike are burdened with is battery usage; in other words, just how much you can make use of it without the worry of having to charge it. And native to any smart device with an AMOLED touchscreen that is either cramped into a small space or made to be thinner than anyone would even ask for, the battery issues are still something that a solution has not been found for.

Long story short, the battery of your Microsoft Band 2 will probably never last you longer than 2 days at most. Out of that amount of time you have to deduct things such as GPS usage, the amount of direct usage you actually put the band up to and how much time the screen actually stays on for as that one will probably be one of your largest power consumers in the first place. In reality, with average use you will most likely get about a day’s worth of juice out of its Li-Polymer battery.

The upside of it all is the fact that a full charge is hardly lengthy and you should probably get your Microsoft Band 2 from 0 to 100% in about an hour and a half. Even if you’re at work or simply not actively using the tracker you can easily put it up to charge on the go, wherever you are.

Microsoft Band 2 Verdict

So what have we gathered out of our trek with the Microsoft Band 2? At the risk of sounding harsh or unfair, I feel compelled to say that while the device feels premium and a well put together piece of technology, it ends up in a strange place between two planes. One plane is the one of smartwatches and I’m uncertain the Microsoft Band 2 has its place here; at least not one that it can proudly occupy and say that it was deserved because of some innovative feature.

The other plane is the plane of activity trackers and this one is as iffy as the former. It can do mostly everything you would want it to if you’re not into professional sports and really are just trying to stay healthy and keep track of your activity over the length of weeks and months. Not to mention that the entire potential of the Microsoft Band 2 may feel a little limited depending on other factors such as the phone you pair it with, the number of compatible third party apps that you manage to find for it and such.

The device is an outright upgrade from the previous Microsoft Band with no doubt, but in all honesty, it doesn’t feel like the second iteration of the series is up there yet. Especially if you take into account the rather spiky price you have to succumb to paying for it.

You can purchase the Microsoft Band 2 directly from the official website for $249.99. December 29^th: It is truthfully currently listed at $199 with no mention of a promotion or when it will end. If you are considering purchasing it, you can probably still get it for the reduced price until the end of the year at least.

Image Source: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10

Motorola Moto X Force Review – Champion in Durability

December 28, 2015 By Roxanne Briean 2 Comments

Update 1/4/2016: It would appear that the 6.0 Marshmallow update has been made available for the Motorola Moto X Force!

Out of all the smartphones that have sincerely caught our attention recently is a rather intriguing end-of-the-year release that shifted its focus on something else than reducing thickness of body the body and the ever-growing power of the hardware that a phone can pack. Now, don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t rate the Motorola Moto X Force that we’ll be taking a closer look at today mid-tier by any means. It may not come up to the absolute best specs a smartphone is capable of now, on the brink of 2016, but it’s certainly still great.

Now the main focus of the Motorola Moto X Force is, instead, cancelling out the danger of damage to your phone; and more specifically to your screen. Now, it personally never happened to me with any of my previous phones – and I have to say, my iPhone 5S took a little over a hundred tumbles and fearless leaps towards the floor – but that may very well just be my luck. Or surprisingly good cases. Regardless, there seems to be a ridiculous amount of times where the owner isn’t as lucky and what should be the bountiful long life of a newly purchased phone ends abruptly. Motorola knows that and made a point out of ensuring that the new Moto X Force does not share the same fate.

By employing the new Moto ShatterShield technology, the display of the phone is made strong enough to withstand the shock of falling and impact against various surfaces, including being hit by a blunt object. There is a vast number of videos on YouTube and other media channels depicting various “tests” being run to see just how strong the phone really is.

But that may not be the only thing that your regular user is interested in; so all things taken into account, let’s see how well the Moto X Force fares in when it comes to a 2015 smartphone release.

Pros:

Incredibly sturdy
Above average hardware
Great performance
Stock Android OS
Great battery life

Cons:

Pricey
The sturdiness of the screen comes with multiple downsides
Not a great timing for release now that 2016 hardware is about to come out

Motorola Moto X Force Design

The Motorola Moto X Force is mere steps away from falling into the bigger brother, phablet category given its 5.4 inch display. It is undoubtedly a large device in more ways than one: given its 149.8 x 78 x 9.2 mm dimensions, it scores a weight of 169 grams, making it somewhere around 20% heavier than its slimmer and smaller counterparts such as the Samsung Galaxy S6. That can’t possibly come as a surprise however, given the phone’s thickness: at nearly 1 cm thickness, one probably stops to ask themselves how can a phone so large even be handled.

Truth is, this phone may not be particularly comfortable for every user out there. Despite its attempts at slightly curved edges and back panel, along with the relatively adherent material used to improve your grip, it may feel increasingly difficult to hold and operate the Motorola Moto X Force because of its sheer size.

Design-wise, I won’t list the Moto X Force in my top 3, but there are a few touches to it that make it look pretty nice. The aluminum frame features slightly curved top and bottom sides, giving the phone a less sharp shape to look at, especially taking the rather wide build that the manufacturer chose into consideration. If there’s any part of the phone that turns out to be particularly catchy, it is probably the back cover of the phone. Featuring two unique patterns that you can get it in, the back is curved and covered with a leathery-feeling material, meant to not only assist with maintaining a good grip on the phone, but also take the overall design up a notch. While I couldn’t shake off the feeling of bulkiness throughout the entire time I studied the Motorola Moto X Force, I would be unfair to the design choices if I didn’t offer them some praise too.

The back cover of the phone – while we’re at it – also manages to look sleek, with a smooth strip dragging down the upper center of the phone, hosting the rear camera sensor, its LED flash and the Motorola logo buried in the classic “Moto dimple” as everyone likes to call it. Sadly, my original thought that the logo was in fact a hidden fingerprint reader did not turn out to be anything else than a design choice.

If you look at the back of the phone at a perfectly perpendicular angle, you’re able to see the metallic edges along with even more visible buttons sticking out around the frame – bringing some unwanted emphasis to the width of the phone. The buttons don’t bring any clever innovation to the table, nor any new and improved feature key. You’ll find your on/sleep button and volume rocker on the right hand side, while the top is left for the 3.5 mm headphone jack as well as the microSD/nanoSIM tray and the bottom for the micro-USB charging port.

While the display is certainly as well protected as it can get, it is worth mentioning that the bezel of the phone doesn’t exactly share the same treatment. Conduct too many experiments on your new and well-protected phone and damage will show on its edges and back; that’s something to take into consideration. On the front of the Motorola Moto X Force you’ll find the front facing camera along with its LED while the bottom of it features 2 orifices that you’d think hide the dual speakers. Instead, we are only provided with one, while the other serves as a microphone instead.

Overall the Motorola Moto X Force ends up feeling like a more stylish military-grade phone, vastly different from what we’ve grown accustomed to seeing when we refer to such a device. It’s not the greatest looker out there, but it makes for a sleek enough choice; especially when you take into account just how much beating it can actually take.

Motorola Moto X Force Display

The display remains the focal point of the Moto X Force. And it’s not even solely thanks to the ShatterShield technology that we have previously mentioned. In fact, the Motorola Moto X Force packs a rather outstanding display. For the 5.4 inch sized screen, the device offers the user a resolution of 2560 x 1440 pixels, which makes for an outstanding value of 540 ppi pixel density. In the lack of other recent smartphone models to use for scaling purposes – the only one immediately coming to mind being Samsung Galaxy S6’s 577 ppi and the iPhone 6S’s seemingly underwhelming 326 ppi – I’ll whole-heartedly declare that display of the Motorola Moto X Force is a sight for sore eyes.

It employs an AMOLED build that taxes a small portion on color vibrancy in favor of better contrast and less taxing on the battery. That’s why while brightness and color vibrancy seem to be excellent, blacks deep and whites bright, the only downside the AMOLED panel will face is a possible decay of color saturation over time. However, shifting the subject onto what most of you probably want to hear, the ShatterShield technology has its apparent ups and downs too.

Basically, instead of the usual 3-layer display that most devices employ, the ShatterShield has no less than 5. While that alone can ensure the survival of your screen, it comes with increased thickness (more than obvious in the overall thickness of the Motorola Moto X Force) and a few other mentions that might cause some dissatisfaction.

The first major issue is that the extra two layers are thick enough to make you aware of the fact that the display is buried deeper within the phone than it may initially seem. In other words, you’ll probably be fully aware that there is a visible layer of glass between the outer edge and where the image is actually projected.

Secondly, the outer layer of protective glass is awfully reflective. For some reason it feels like the manufacturers completely disregarded that aspect of smartphone development as the display doesn’t even make an effort in that direction; using it outside in broad daylight conditions also makes the display feel amazingly dim lit.

Motorola Moto X Force Specs & Hardware

Just like I mentioned earlier in the review, the Motorola Moto X Force does not come with something I would call mid-tier hardware by any means. If anything, I’d say it matches the competition pretty well unless you count the 2016 releases we’re soon to get in. Long story short, what you’ll find in this Motorola smartphone is an octa core Qualcomm MSM8994 Snapdragon 810 CPU along with its inbuilt Adreno 430 GPU, 32 and 64 GB hard disk variants, as well as 3 GB of RAM.

There’s plenty of debate whether the Snapdragon 810 is still a match against the newer Exynos chipsets that have made their way into flagship devices. Considering it’s one of the later, octa-core models, I’d say that it can hold its own extremely well. Consisting of a quad-core 1.5 GHz Cortex-A53 and another quad-core 2 GHz Cortex-A57, it can go to a clock speed of up to 2,5000 MHz. Thus, it is not only an extremely fast processing unit, but also extremely efficient when it comes to multi-tasking.

The Adreno 430 graphics processing unit is a separate GPU that supports DirectX 11.1 has a frequency of 500 MHz. Once again I’m placed in the situation where I have to say that while it is not the most proficient, it will serve you well with a vast number of 3D applications and games without so much as a whimper in most – even the more graphic intensive ones picked out of the lot.

Only coming as a compliment to everything stated above, the 3 GB of RAM memory are more than plenty. The particular model implemented in the Motorola Moto X Force is a 800 MHz 64-bit LP-DDR4 SDRAM unit, giving you quite a fair amount to work with and earn great performance results.

Lastly, the phone only comes in two variants – either the 32 GB or the 64 GB versions; however, you can easily expand the amount of storage space you’re stuck working with via micro-SD cards. That way you can add up to a maximum of 200 GB of storage space for your daily needs in case the base amount won’t suffice.

Motorola Moto X Force Software & Features

Well, here one piece of good news that cannot and won’t be altered by any side effect or possible downside. And that is the fact that the Motorola Moto X Force comes with pure, stock Android installed on it. Now, it’s not the latest version, instead making use of the Android v5.1.1 Lollipop operating system version. However, it’s already been announced merely weeks post its launch that the 6.0 Marshmallow update will be making its way to the happy owners of the Moto X Force “sometime soon”. There’s no actual mention of a date, but highest chances are it won’t take very long until you can enjoy the very latest updates to the Android operating system.

If you choose to do so, you can also use the smartphone with some small UI improvements that the manufacturer has brought as a personal input in the say of things. They’re not gigantic features and mostly revolve around notifications and sound control – for example the Moto Display will also send you a pulse notification via the display when a notification pops up.

In terms of performance, the phone really manages to pull itself through amazingly well. Part of that is thanks to the hardware that the manufacturer stuck in the not-so-small device but it is unfair not to also thank the particularly clean operating system for it. Because there’s no bloatware or anything that will not only clog up your storage space but also eat up resources such as memory, the phone will work like a charm with whatever you put it up to.

Motorola Moto X Force Camera

As you’ve probably already picked up on the way, the Motorola Moto X Force features two, separate cameras. The rear camera – and most likely the focus of anyone reading this segment – is a 21 megapixel piece that uses phase-detection autofocus. There’s a half-nifty, half-annoying manual focus feature that allows you to take photos and manually choose the focus of the wanted image by tapping the screen where you want it to literally focus. It’s good for taking shots on the go and immortalizing special moments, but can lead to either completely defeating the purpose or a few extra attempts when you accidentally focus on the wrong side of your screen. That being said, there is no dedicated button that you press to take a photo.

There’s a fair amount of modes that you can select from when you attempt to take a picture. And I don’t mean just things such as HDR or panorama (which are present while we’re at it). By that I mean the actual editing extent that the phone offers its users; things such as exposure fall into your pre-shooting control. There are a fair few things you can do as on-screen post editing you can do, but there’s no reason to expect any PhotoShop-level processing either.

Already something that we can call a usual thing to the Motorola series of this year, there is a front-facing camera present on the Motorola Moto X Force too; scoring 5 megapixel in zoom potential and with its very own LED flash, this one will surely suffice when it comes to any of your selfie or video-conference needs.

Both cameras are capable of video capturing too, but the rear facing one is obviously a lot better at it being able to capture video in 1080p at 60 frames per second and even slow motion in 720p.

Motorola Moto X Force Battery

The Motorola Moto X Force packs an unusually powerful battery in its build: the 3,760 mAh cell that is tucked neatly inside is capable of outstanding amounts of juice for even the most intensive of activities that you choose to undergo on your phone. That is watching videos, playing games and multitasking in its core sense. Not only that battery usage is a very satisfactory thing to watch (as a whole movie will take you down somewhere between 15%-20%) but charging is done particularly fast thanks to the micro-USB charging. It’s not as fast as, say, Type-C charging would be, but in a little less than 2 hours you should be able to get a full charge up.

Motorola Moto X Force Verdict

So who can make the best use of the Motorola Moto X Force? If you ask me, this device is not only the best Motorola phone of the year, but comes as a worthy contender to many other devices that made it in the 2015 list. For anyone who knows and feels guilty about always ending up dropping their phone one way or another, the amount of protection that you’ll find on the Motorola Moto X Force will be more than welcome. You would have to pay the price of stylishness and slimness to some degree, but that aspect falls in your ability to judge.

The Motorola Moto X Force is a great phone overall; in terms of performance and capability, you’ll find yourself being more than just satisfied with what the phone can do. If you can live with the downsides of it all, then you’d get yourself a great thing that can assure longevity over anything else.

Image Source: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10

Game of the Year – Our Own 2015 Selection

December 24, 2015 By Roxanne Briean Leave a Comment

I think we can all agree that 2015 was a great year for gaming, whether you’re a PC or a console gamer. We’ve had so many memorable titles this year that choosing just one game of the year per genre was near impossible. While not everyone may enjoy the direction that video games are going into, it would be silly not to admit that every single big release of these days can easily be considered a work of art. Here’s to hoping that 2016 will be at least just as good.

We chose to split them on genres for PC and choose one game of the year for each other platform respectively, for the console-only titles. However, because it would be unfair to completely disregard all the wonderful games that heavily competed for number one, we’ll at least give them a mention in each category. So be sure to check them out too!

Action – Adventure Game of the Year

Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain

Not only the game proclaimed as the best action adventure of year 2015, but this one is most likely to make it to the title of “Game of the Year” too. And there’s a very good reason behind that: no gameplay of this caliber has ever graced us in a Metal Gear Solid game so far, and boy, were we grateful. If there’s anything that this game truly excels in, it’s freedom; and I don’t mean Grand Theft Auto kind of freedom, at least not the same tonality. But despite the action-adventure stealth tag on it, The Phantom Pain does nothing to limit you and instead lets you choose your own way of doing things. Mission objectives remain minimal in the method you employ to complete them; it’s up to you to act according to external factors such as weather or time of day.

Story-wise, Metal Gear Solid: the Phantom Pain is chronologically set before the original Metal Gear game and takes onto the story of mercenary Punished “Venom” Snake. Sadly, however, Konami and Hideo Kojima have announced that this is the last instalment in the Metal Gear Solid series. And if this is truly the last time we get our hands on a MGS game, Kojima Productions has made sure it will be something to remember.

Special Mentions: there’s no action-adventure genre without the defining Grand Theft Auto series in it – and most specifically the GTA V that only managed to come out this year on PCs. Although it’s far from being a new game, the PC instalment of the game was an iconic release of this year that stole the souls of many in an even larger open world experience.

Secondly, the true successor to the Arkham series – Batman: Arkham Knight – also hit the shelves and amazed us with the possibilities of the genre

Role-Playing Game of the Year

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

Another name murmured on the lips of gamers all over the world, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt was a release that once again changed the way we see video games altogether. The game astounded the masses through its sheer size, managing to dwarf even epic names such as Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. Considering that most actions you choose to undertake have a different outcome on the way the story or your relationship with various characters progresses, the game will take you hundreds and hundreds of hours for you to see every single possibility that the story holds.

Freedom of action plays an even greater role here as one could easily get lost in the dozens of side quests that can be found all over the place. But whom am I kidding? I probably spent most of the first days of the play through just riding Roach and enjoying the scenery – indomitably a work of art that truly deserves the praise and the title of the best role-playing game of the year.

Special Mentions: I’d be a heretic if I didn’t mention Fallout 4; an amazing success of the gaming industry altogether, Fallout 4 marked the end of a 7 year wait for the sequel to a genre-defining game. In the end, the game was an outstanding success that brought many great additions to gameplay and even more wasteland to explore and scavenge.

Action RPG Game of the Year

Dark Souls 2: Scholar of the First Sin

For the die-hard fans of the Souls game series, the Dark Souls 2: Scholar of the First Sin upgrade was an amazing thing to behold. With the already boundless popularity that the original Dark Souls 2 gained throughout the ranks of hardcore games, the Scholar of the First Sin brought new things to the table. Firstly, it made the game available on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One and enabled DX11 features on the PC version. But that wasn’t what truly brought the game out in the light; instead, it was the rearranging of all of the monsters and items in the world. For all the players who’d already finished the game multiple times and lost count of the pluses in NG+, this brought a breath of fresh air to the game and even made it challenging once again.

Additionally, From Software added one more alternate ending, a new final boss as well as elaborating on the lore behind Aldia – whom we caught a glimpse of when we ventured in Aldia’s Keep in the basic Dark Souls 2. The Scholar of the First Sin edition also brought a new PvP feature, in the shape of 4-on-2 matches and a number of NPC invaders that are there to make your life particularly difficult. You’d thought you got enough white hairs from the original version plus the DLCs? How mistaken you’ve been.

Special Mentions: Games these days become harder and harder to define in terms of genre as the RPG features seem to have been seeping and stretching their tendrils all over the place. Tales from the Borderlands, however, I’ll stick here even if I’m fully aware of the very obvious lack of action and a more point and click experience, typical to what Telltale usually does with its seasonal games.

Dungeon Crawler Game of the Year

Binding of Isaac: Afterbirth

While I have to admit I’m doing a little injustice to other games here by listing Binding of Isaac, it honestly has to be done. For an independent game that has been released back in 2011 and received 3 expansions up to date, the Binding of Isaac: Afterbirth is the last addition that was brought to the series in order to make it whole.

The heavily downright disturbing story of Isaac continues as he delves into new challenges, countless of new bosses and new achievements to obtain as well as gaining the possibility of a new ending and final boss with the Afterbirth DLC. Individuals who have already played the original Binding of Isaac have probably told you what makes this game an amazing example of contemporary video game development. Here, it’s not about the graphics or incredibly amazing and intricate system of gameplay features. It’s about the way a very delicate and disturbing story is told and developed in a game that doesn’t initially look anything like the message it’s trying to convey.

Special Mentions: Pillars of Eternity, Dungeon of the Endless

Real Time Strategy Game of the Year

StarCraft 2: Legacy of the Void

Video game releases are split in two categories, regardless of genres: firstly, there’s the innovative and amazingly-designed new releases that don’t occur that often but manage to surprise and win the hearts of many gamers out there. Then, there’s the classics and their sequels, which people are already fond of as soon as they hear their name. StarCraft 2 is an iconic real time strategy game and only managed to seal the deal with the addition of the latest expansion, Legacy of the Void.

It’s not difficult to tell why we’re listing the new version of StarCraft as the best RTS of the year; while it may have lost a lot of ground in the esports section, the new expansion continues the story with a focus on Aiur and the Protoss. The expansion came with new units as well as balance changes to previously existing ones, not only serving a lore purpose but also appealing to the multiplayer factor of the series. Many of the old StarCraft 1 iconic units make an appearance – such as the Dragoon and Dark Archon – appealing to the other category of StarCraft player: the nostalgic. Even to the regular RTS player, the latest instalment of the StarCraft series will answer to all needs one may have from strategy games.

Special Mentions: Total War: Atilla, Grey Goo

Platformer Game of the Year

Ori and the Blind Forest

Ori and the Blind Forest was one of the unexpected releases of the year that for some reason strongly reminded me of the PS3 exclusive Journey, despite being completely different. The reason it reminded me of it is the amazing atmosphere and the heavily immersive soundtrack that made for more than just a simple platformer game (and in Journey’s case, simply an adventure art game). If there’s any single word that I can use to describe Ori and the Blind Forest is “beautiful”.

But the greatness of this game is far from ending there. The beautifully designed levels and downright dreamy sceneries are complimented with an amazingly high levels of gameplay that call back to the Metroidvania genre and keep you on your toes an amazing amount. With its very own skill tree that allows you to build your character the way you find it suitable and the increasing difficulty of the game, Ori and the Blind Forest stands out from so many other platformer games that prefer to place humor and other appealing focuses higher up the ranking ladder. Instead, it gives off a graceful feeling to the game that enchants you as soon as you start the first level.

Special Mentions: BROFORCE, Oddword: New ‘n’ Tasty (PC)

Shooter Game of the Year

Call of Duty: Black Ops 3

The last instalment of the Call of Duty series marks the 12^th iteration of a long chain of games. It comes as a sequel to Black Ops 2, taking place 40 years after the events in the previous game of the series and continuing the story in a world where robotics has been developed to the point where robotic drones and cyborg supersoldiers are present.

But let’s be honest now, how many have been waiting for the Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 just to get to play the campaign? It’s not the primary focus of the developers and certainly not the primary focus of the players either. While the campaign is something you can also do in your spare time, the multiplayer is where the money’s at: with the new momentum-based movement system that was introduced with Black Ops 3, players are now able to perform a number of more or less airborne tricks such as wall running or sliding, as well as short-distance boosts in the air. You don’t lose your gun control in the meantime, giving the game a new level of gameplay altogether.

Special Mentions: Both Evolve and Star Wars Battlefront sadly lost the race to the top, coming with a number of improvements that ended up being choked by gameplay issues in the end.

Fighting Game of the Year

Mortal Kombat X

We don’t get that many fighting game releases in a year, simply because the already existing series have already tucked themselves in a very comfortable position on the market and not many even attempt at the well-established genre. So what is there to look forward to when releases such as the wild Injustice: Gods Among Us don’t make an appearance? We return to the classics we love most, of course!

And thankfully, they return to us as well. The latest Mortal Kombat X was released in Q1 of 2015 and brought countless of graphic and gameplay improvements. While the very first reception of the PC version of the game was reported quite unsatisfactory by individuals due to the technical issues that hindered a smooth and enjoyable experience. However, there’s no denying that Mortal Kombat is an iconic fighting game, only surpassed in multiplayer aspects by the Street Fighter series. Otherwise, the new Mortal Kombat X brought us new characters, new gameplay mechanics, great graphics and yet – an uncanny familiarity to what we’ve grown to love.

It’s a shame that Street Fighter V hasn’t made it as a 2015 release. Then we’d truly have a hard time deciding; but with just a beta that seems to be having difficulty in finding you a match running at this point in time, it’s hard to tell what the future holds for the fighting game genre.

Indie Game of the Year

SOMA

Although there’s a huge number of amazing indie game releases that have graced our shelves and Steam Library this year, and even a huge number of indie subgenres, we had to choose one. And it’s going to have to be SOMA – a science fiction survival horror game. With an outstanding story and plot development, some may have been a little put off by its rather random and sudden introduction into the action.

Still, the game managed to drip with a rich textured narrative and atmospheric suspense, with the unshakable sense of impending doom and ultimate bitter-sweet ending sealing the deal. Coming from the developers at Frictional Games, the same group of people who made the iconic Penumbra and Amnesia series, the game is highly reminiscent of the aforementioned. It delves in psychological horror over the most commonly employed jump scares and mostly leaves you to choose your own level of involvement in the plot. Story-wise, the game may seem linear, but in terms of level design, the devs managed to pull off an outstanding degree of intricacy.

Special Mentions: Darkest Dungeon, Undertale, Hotline Miami 2 – very different from our first place selection, but still worth looking at

Expansion/DLC Game of the Year

The Witcher 3: Hearts of Stone

In case you hadn’t spent enough hundreds of hours trying to explore every single nook and cranny of the gigantic world that The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt brought you, here’s a new reason to spend some more. Guaranteed to offer you at least 10 more hours of gameplay if you stick to the main storyline, Geralt is put in the position where he has to defeat a new antagonist – Olgierd von Everec.

On the way to succeeding in his quest however lie new characters, new monsters and a whole new gameplay mechanic, namely – the Runewords – that come in 3 tiers and offer a wide range of buffs. This changed the way combat gameplay worked before, thus giving the fans a new perspective on playing the game, and a very refreshing experience altogether. Ultimately, the Witcher 3: Hearts of Stone DLC ended up as a very well rounded addition to the game, equally enjoyed by players as the original was.

Special Mentions: Destiny: The Taken King, Final Fantasy XIV: Heavensward

Best Remastered Game of the Year

Resident Evil HD Remaster

Getting a video game remake to actually appeal to the original’s fans is actually more difficult than it sounds. Remastering is a newer trend we’ve seen in the video gaming world, especially proficient this year. We’ve seen a few of them, but our winner has got to be the Resident Evil HD Remaster.

Finally, we were able to relive the 2002 nostalgia with a Windows 7 and above compatible game remake, featuring a more up to date aspect ratio, light blooms and more contemporary background textures. The plot and story of the original game were hardly, if at all changed, giving the old fans just a better looking game to replay and reminisce on the good days of the video games of our childhoods. For those who didn’t get to enjoy the original at its time, the remastered version came as a headache-free chance to play a very loyal copy of the 2002 version.

Special Mentions: Grim Fandango Remastered (with a heavy heart not Remastered Game of the Year), Fahrenheit: Indigo Prophecy Remastered

Best Xbox One Game of the Year

Rise of the Tomb Raider

Following the highly successful Tomb Raider reboot of the series that came out in 2013, the Rise of the Tomb Raider continues the story of Lara Croft in a new-gen, highly stylized game that features highly intensive levels of gameplay and compelling puzzles. It maintains the 2013 Tomb Raider’s rather brutal and harsh-themed display of the main character over the more classic “cool” Lara Croft we remembered from the original Tomb Raider games.

Gameplay-wise, Rise of the Tomb Raider received a number of improvements over its predecessor, giving stealth-based play a more reliable role in the game, complimented by the new crafting system that allows you to turn scavenged items from plants and animals into useful tools. Weather conditions and the day-night cycle-dependent features have also been added into the game, giving it a whole new level of depth to gameplay and decision making.

Best PlayStation 4 Game of the Year

Bloodborne

I’ll start off by saying I am a big fan of the Souls games, dating back to the soul-crunching, power of will-challenging and nerve-wracking Demon’s Souls. When I first saw the trailer for Bloodborne, I have to admit I was very reluctant and a bit of a non-believer because of the change of theme and a strong personal dislike of vampire-related things. However, for the sake of From Software and Hidetaka Miyazaki mostly (hearing that he was back at the wheel, unlike the case was with Dark Souls 2, figures), I decided to give the game a spin and now I can’t even go back to Dark Souls 2 anymore.

Safe to say, Bloodborne is a masterpiece that managed to appeal even to the less hardcore gamers without giving up much of its difficulty aspect. Or at least that’s how it felt for an old timer like me, I wouldn’t be able to speak in the name of someone who’s never played any Souls games whatsoever. Bloodborne managed to combine the strengths of each of the previous Souls games (without actually officially catering to the series, given the change of scenery), add some new features and creating an absolute masterpiece.

Amazingly rich in story – the kind of story that nobody actually tells you, but which you gather by reading item descriptions and particularly short dialogues with the scarce NPCs found in a dying world – Bloodborne truly showed its colors to me only on my second playthrough (on NG+). With the addition of the Old Hunters DLC that elaborates on some loose strings from the base game but also leaves so many questions unanswered, Bloodborne is probably something to continue looking forward to. At least until Dark Souls 3 comes out in April 2016.

Best Online Game of the Year

Halo 5: Guardians

The fifth instalment on the Halo series finally came out roughly 2 months ago after a hefty 3 years wait. While the campaign depicts Master Chief’s disappearance and Jameson Locke’s job of finding him, it’s the online aspect that we were most enthusiastic about. Although it comes with the loss of split screen co-op play (R.I.P.), the new Warzone is where you’ll spend most of your time gaining points and increasing your ranks.

There’s also a level up system that allows you to access better items as you progress through your Warzone matches. Arena is where the diehard competitive gamer will go in order to amass skill rating and take competitiveness to the next level with the help of the 7 ladders: bronze, iron, gold, platinum, diamond, onyx and champion.

Special Mentions: H1Z1, Rocket League

Image Source: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15

Juniper Networks Spy Code Story Continues

December 23, 2015 By Cristopher Hall Leave a Comment

New developments have occurred regarding the discovery of Juniper Networks spy code in its ScreenOS, that took place last week.

There were no less than two backdoors, not one. Discovered by non-Juniper Networks affiliated security and cryptography specialists in the past days.

The founder and CEO of Comsecuris, a German security company, said the more exact definition of what happened would be a “backdoored backdoor”.

Apart from the unauthorized code that Juniper Networks discovered last week in their ScreenOS, there was also a major vulnerability within the authorized code itself.

Because this code included a Random Number Generator (RNG) called Dual_EC_DRBG as the basis of its encryption for NetScreen devices. And this RNG was widely known to be a major security risk ever since 2007 when two Microsoft researchers, Dan Shumow and Neils Ferguson, exposed its backdoor potential via Q, one of the constants it uses.

What’s more interesting? Though it lost it’s NIST (US National Institute of Standards and Technology) approval then, it was initially standardized and approved by NIST after it was strongly promoted by… none other than the NSA. Who also happened to develop Dual_EC_DRBG.

Take into account that the New York Times reported in 2013 (based on Edward Snowden leaks) that NSA put the vulnerability inside this RNG on purpose and it paints a pretty picture.

Even more interesting is that Juniper Networks have admitted that they consciously used Dual_EC_DRBG, despite knowing of its security risk, because they took other countermeasures to nullify it.

Namely using “self-generated basis points” instead of the P and Q constants, supposed to be points on an elliptic curve and, on top of that, using the output of Dual_EC_DRBG (the random number) as an input for another RNG called FIPS/ANSI X.9.31.

This latter RNG’s output was supposed to be used for the encryption operations. As described by Juniper Networks, the Q vulnerability (planted there by NSA or whoever did) would have indeed been useless.

But here’s the thing. The code that was supposed to pass the Dual_EC_DRGB result to the FIPS/ANSI X.9.31 RNG had an error in it. Hence, it failed and didn’t pass anything. Hence, FIPS/ANSI X.9.31 never ran and was completely useless, as pointed out by Willem Pinckaers, the security researcher who discovered this error. Which prompted Weinmann to say: backdoored backdoor.

This comes at a time when there is an increase of state-involvement in private companies’ data management and amid a push from governments and intelligence agencies to force big companies to implement backdoors for lawful use by them in investigations.

The Juniper Networks example should serve as a warning that hackers can use such backdoors too!

The good news: though real, as confirmed by the hard coded hidden password discovered by the researchers, the administrative rights vulnerability is not as extensive as previously announced by Juniper Networks.

It only affects ScreenOS versions 6.3.0r17 – 6.3.0r20.

The VPN decryption one affects versions 6.2.0r15 – 6.2.0r18 and 6.3.0r12 – 6.3.0r20.

Image source: 1.

« Previous Page
1
…
3
4
5
6
7
…
58
Next Page »