* Posts by Dave 126

10622 publicly visible posts • joined 21 Jul 2010

Danger mouse! Potent rodents 'see' infrared after eyeballs injected with nanoparticles

Dave 126

The problem depends upon the end application. If it's to allow a soldier to see enemies in low light then I wouldn't have thought it matters whether they're seeing infrared converted to avisible wavelength or if they're seeing that visible wavelength in the raw.

Foldables herald the beginning of the end of the smartphone fetish

Dave 126

Re: and want plenty of storage (say microSD).

Samsung have SD card slots and though the screens are tall 2:1, and their new UI (on the Galaxy S 9, coming soon to the S8) is supposed to place a lot of the virtual buttons at the bottom of the screen to be easier to reach with one's thumb.

Dave 126

Re: FAD ALERT - A modern day flip-top

Of course for displaying text then having two screens next to each other, akin to two facing pages in a book, is nearly as good as a single screen. It's the display of video or images that is spoilt by a bezel between the two screens.

The MS Courier featured two screens separated by a hinge. The use-case its team were pushing was using two apps at the same time - the example they gave was a browser on one screen and a scrapbook on the other, for easy copy-paste (or rather, drag n drop) from one screen to the other.

There was also a two screened clamshell Android by Weird Sony that actually made it into shops.

LG are bringing the concept back with a second snap-on screen for their latest phone.

Dave 126

> The candy bar was never a good design for a phone, the flip phone was always superior.

Can you expand upon that? Just curious.

Dave 126

Re: cynic

My Phone looks like it has a broken screen but the visible cracks are just in the glass screen protector. I'll replace it if the cracks get worse or more dust gets behind it, but til then I won't bother. The pricey screen beneath is pristine.

It might be that the phones with cracked screens you see amongst your friends are merely phones with cracked screen protectors.

Dave 126

Re: FM Radio?

I think they missed your irony Steve.

Personally I don't miss having FM radio on my phone, since I either have the phone signal to stream Radio 4 live or I am in a vehicle with an FM tuner. Most Radio 4 content I listen to after broadcast in the Radio iPlayer app so I can pause it when needed. The only music station worth listening to most of the time, Radio 6, is not on FM.

Occasionally when camping - away from data signal and battery charger - I'd like to sit back and listen to FM... but not so much that I've dug out a discrete FM radio receiver. Somewhere I've got a SanDisk Sansa Clip with FM radio but the dang thing is so small I can't find it.

The US version of my phone has Qualcomm innards and its hardware FM receiver can be activated with an app. My European version uses Samsung's homegrown silicon which can't pick up FM.

Dave 126

Yeah, I can travel places easily without a smartphone, but to do so requires a bigger gadget called a car. Public transport is just so much easier to use if you have a smartphone to see timetables, or call a cab when it transpires the bus service is evidently unaware of its own timetables.

I do take your point though about people's attention. I use a social network called a pub.

Dave 126

Re: cynic

There's evidence that phones are more durable today.

Dave 126

Re: Can we please

The Moto Force Z2 has a shatter proof screen, takes snap-on removable batteries (without requiring a power cycle) and with an attached battery will be thick. So that ticks all your boxes save the FM radio.

I say, that sucks! Crooks are harnessing hoovers to clean out parking meters in Chelsea

Dave 126

Re: Where did they get the power?

Oh yeah Juan, I now see Ryobi and Makita, and likely others, make vacuum cleaners that take their respective 18v batteries. Hmmm...

Any builders out there know how well they suck compared to a Henry?

Dave 126

Re: Start up money

Can't these aspiring dealers use crowdfunding?

http://www.27bslash6.com/guaranteed.html

Dave 126

Re: Where did they get the power?

That's a good point. I guess they're using a 12V DC to 240V AC inverter from their car's fag lighter socket. Sucking coins from a box wasn't part of the vacuum cleaner test matrix in Which? last I saw, so I don't know how well a cordless Dyson would work (and the batteries on those don't last long on a charge, and don't appear to have overcharge protection circuitry so leaving them in their wall mount means the battery is next to useless after 9 months.

In any case, if you're stealing coins having your vacuum cleaner be transparent is a bug not a feature.

Dave 126

> "We also now know from local police that this is funding further criminality in London, from drugs and trafficking to possibly violent crime,"

Am I missing something? I'd have assumed that the only reason to deal drugs and traffic women is to make money. How is it that they require subsidising?

This has got hints of Fox News reporting that Movie Piracy Funds Al Qaeda!

Lenovo kicks down door of MWC, dumps a stack of sexy new ThinkPads

Dave 126

Re: 13.3" display in a 12" chassis

UI elements should scale correctly these days. Windows was slower than OSX to put the foundations in place, and even after MS sorted it it took 3rd party application Devs to do their job properly - Adobe were notably slow, for example. There was a chicken and egg situation for ages regarding high res application support and the availablity of high res laptops, and it's only been in the last few years that laptops have shipping with high res displays.

Whether you benefit a high res display depends upon your workload, but it's invaluable in CAD and image editing.

Merely watching videos benefits more from high dynamic range than it does high resolution.

Dave 126

400-bit FHD display

I suspect that might be a 400 *nit* display, a measure of brightness. You might have a display boasting 10 bit colour space, but never anything near 400 by an order of magnitude.

This ain't a criticism - my phone autocorrected nit to bit as well :)

Spooky! Solar System's Planet NINE could be discovered in the next NINE years (plus one to six), say astroboffins

Dave 126

Planet 9 is not believed to be on the elliptic plane that the orbits of other planets follow.

Professional astronomers have no difficulty in believing that Planet 9 might exist, and that it is more than plausible that it could be hiding on a weird orbit. They are also happy to point out that they don't know that it exists and are open to other explanations as more data comes their way.

They're more excited about questions than they are answers.

Dave 126

Re: It's Dark out there.

" Why the smeg didn't you see this black hole Holly?!"

"Well, the thing about black holes, their defining characteristic if you like, is that, basically, they're black. And the thing about space is that is, well, it's black, you see....

Insane homeowners association tries to fine resident for dick-shaped outline car left in snow

Dave 126

Re: My tale of woe and dread

Sheeiiiit, even UK traffic wardens are normally more understanding that occasionally cars won't start, due to a flat battery or lost keys or whatever. Often leaving a nice note behind the windscreen is enough, or just ringing the council or parking company responsible.

Dave 126

Re: Fake news!

I read the article before looking at the actual photograph. I was imagining that the accused woman had performed some sort of maneuver such that her tyres traced the shape of a couple of adjacent circles with two lines extending from the tangent of their intersection... much like the recent case of the bored USAF pilot whose GPS log revealed him to be drawing a sky cock.

LG's new gesture UI for mobes, while technically interesting, is still a little hand-wavy at the mo

Dave 126

Re: Gestures

Mouse gestures aren't finger gestures, stylus gestures or indeed 3D space gestures a la Leap Motion.

Your conclusion is reasonable though; the Leap Motion never caught in in a big way. The Reg's Mr Dabbs said he might take a look at one at the time, evidence toy didn't have the time or a test unit.

Dave 126

It might be handy for people who use tablets in their kitchen for reading recipes, or for other situations where the user's hands are mucky.

You can use foot pedals for iPads for 'turning over' virtual pages of sheet music.

It's always tricky to sum up all the niche use cases. Indeed, some were doubtful about tablets themselves because they couldn't see a single killer app, yet what transpired was tablets were used for many niche things.

Dave 126

> LG sells excellent TVs based on its own display panels – we expect a decent true foldable will appear eventually

LGs OLEDs are excellent but their OLED phone screens were a bit dodgy in Pixel phones. The assumption is that the difference lay in TVs and phones using different substrates

Long phone is loooong: Sony swipes at flagship fatigue with 21:9 tall boy

Dave 126

Re: Ratio for video masochists

But was the person filming an escaped chimp in the zoo doing so to send to a news broadcaster or doing so to send to her friends who are more likely than not to watch the clip in portrait orientation?

That said, I would sometimes like to be able to film in landscape whilst holding the phone in portrait - it's just more comfortable and secure to hold that way.

Dave 126

LDAC

Sony contributed LDAC to the AOSP a couple of years back and so a good many phones support it. What is missing is a good range of Bluetooth headphones that support it, though Sony's widely esteemed (usually rated a bit higher than Bose's Quiet Comfort ) XM noise cancelling headphones do.

'God, Send Mobiles,' the industry prayed back in the '90s. This time, 5G actually has it covered

Dave 126

Re: Coverage? We've heard of it.

As I understand it, the frequencies for 5G are better suited to providing more cell towers in a smaller area, meaning that lots of people in a small area can access more data.

There is also talk of using 5G in place of the 'final mile' (or final ten yards) to get high speed internet to people's homes instead of digging up roads and gardens, so perhaps the smaller villages that don't yet have fibre might see 5G.

I may be wring here, so if someone more qualified can make the case for 5G please inform us!

Azure Kinect: All-seeing 3D camera shenanigans for everyone ... except consumers

Dave 126

Re: It already did

Measuring a single distance accurately can be very useful (laser range finder). Capturing an entire room as a point cloud (laser ToF 3d scanner) and then easily taking that data to create DXFs to send to the CNC router at your local timber merchants... very very useful.

But yeah, very handy for trade folk, hairy arsed or otherwise.

Dave 126

Re: Azure Kinect

The original Kinect was sold at a loss (plan was to recoup money via xbox software sales) which made it a compelling buy for hobbyists after a MIT student developed PC drivers within a couple of days of its release. The second version cost more and came with Windows drivers, but hardware wasn't much different other than a shorter minimum distance of use.

$400 seems reasonable for a developer version of this new version. MS have no motive to fleece a few hundred developers, since it is with their software that MS might sell a consumer version plus software to thousands.

Dave 126

Re: It already did

In the desktop / laptop space the 2013 Leap Motion, which could track individual fingers in 3D space, failed to make much of a splash. This would provide Apple with a bit of an indication of how people might or not want to work with spacial gestures even if Apple didn't conduct their own research in this area.

Are spacial gestures a better fit for mobile phones and tablets? Nothings grabbing me immediately.

Are Laser Time of Flight sensors a good fit for mobile? Yes for surveyors, product and interior designers, hobbyists and compulsive IKEA purchasers, maybe for others too. However, these trades can justify a discrete unit. Is there a compelling use case and thus business opportunity in phones featuring Laser ToF sensors as a standard feature? Possibly, but I can't think of one ( and if I would I'd be daft to share it here!)

Fan boy 3: Huawei overhauls Air-a-like MateBooks

Dave 126

Re: Well, I might give it a closer look

Just be aware that only the Pro version supports Thunderbolt 3, so the junior version isn't suitable for connecting to external GPUs ;)

Dave 126

Re: What is the point ?!?

Most Windows laptops have 16:9 screens. This doesn't, which is a step in the right direction. Reviews of last year's Matebook range were very positive, so what's a nicer, cheaper option?

Dave 126

Re: Stop, just stop

It's a laptop with a non-16:9 screen and discrete GPU. Good! Finally*, thank goodness! If the rest of it is good too, then why the hell do you care that it looks like a MacBook?

An aluminium laptop is going to look like an aluminium laptop. It's not the only suitable material but it is a good one.

*Other than the pricey Surface offerings, this combo has been rare.

This image-recognition neural net can be trained from 1.2 million pictures in the time it takes to make a cup o' tea

Dave 126

Re: El Reg mugs ...

I rather fancied a Special Circumstances mug that Elon Musk tweeted a picture if, but I can't find one online. I'm sure the millionaire has the resources to have mugs made to any design he wants though.

Dave 126

Re: You can't make a cup of tea in 90 seconds

I was going to suggest using a pressure cooker to raise the temperature of the water above 100 Deg C and thus shorten the tea brew time, but as some clever soul on Reddit has noted it takes pressure cookers a few minutes to get up to pressure.

https://www.reddit.com/r/tea/comments/27pcx9/tea_under_pressure/

It all hinges on this: Huawei goes after Samsung with its own foldable hybrid Mate X

Dave 126

Re: Er, and the OS and UI ?

https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2018/11/get-your-app-ready-for-foldable-phones.html?m=1

Dave 126

Re: Just give me a front and a back display..

OLEDs use little energy for a little bit of lit screen, would probably use more energy than eInk in direct sunlight. EInk might use energy in the dark if it needs to be backlit.

Probably best using the space an eInk display takes up by just fitting a bigger battery instead, unless the user really likes reading books on the move yet doesn't consider the bigger screen of a specialist ereader worth the bulk.

Dave 126

Re: How long before it breaks ?

A flexible, replaceable screen protector seems to be the only way to protect the screen - hard, inflexible scratch proof materials aren't an option unless in a very thin laminate.

Gorilla Glass is a hard laminate atop tougher, more flexible materials, tuned to give a balance of scratch and shatter proofing. If we take Gorilla Glass to represent the current state of the art, we can assume there's no scratch proof material flexible enougth for this foldable tablet.

The Samsung foldable is at least protected from scratches by the same means as a matt laptop screen - it lives inside the clamshell.

Still, keeping this device inside a case isn't necessary a deal breaker - if one's use-case is using it on a train commute, taking it out at the beginning of the journey and putting it back in at the end of the journey before slipping in a pocket does give it an edge over a conventional 9' tablet (though still a faff compared to a conventional phone)

Nokia 9: HMD Global hauls PureView™ out of brand limbo

Dave 126

Re: Monochrome sensors

Monochrome sensors are just colour sensors with the colour filter grid removed.

Dave 126

I was refering to a *part* of the article, the part I actually quoted. What might have seemed parody has actually been sold as a real product (consensus view is that the tech worked but the price was too high and the UI clunky, and that it seemed like a pitch for a smartphone collaboration. Which now appears to be happening)

And I wasn't my intention to throw shade upon Nokia's efforts here; who comes first is largely irrelevant to user experience.

I just thought that some people reading about a multi camera phone might be interested in other related efforts.

Dave 126

https://www.engadget.com/2019/02/21/sony-light-partnership-smartphone-cameras/

Dave 126

> That isn't as absurd as LG's 16-sensor Onion article-tribute - but Zeiss, which contributed to this device, can go up to 10.

A real company made and sold a smartphone-sized 16 lens / sensor camera called the Light L16. This week it was announced that Light are working with Sony - makers of most sensors in smartphones - to create a multiple camera smartphone reference design.

Samsung pulls sheets off costly phone-cum-fondleslab Galaxy Fold – and a hefty 5G monster

Dave 126

Re: Only five cameras? Get woke go broke...

Nokia are bringing out a phone with 5 rear-facing cameras:

https://thenextweb.com/plugged/2019/01/03/nokias-5-camera-phone-leaked-in-all-its-glory/

Dave 126

And to think of all those years I spent watching 4:3 content!

I don't think I've ever seen Back to the Future or E.T in wide-screen.

The filmmaker's vision is already buggered by watching it on a small screen, so a crop is only a bit more compromise.

Dave 126

Re: It's a fold up 2K tablet

Ultimately:

Nine times out of ten the times I want a tablet are the times I have hand luggage - i.e train and plane journeys. Carrying a tablet in a rucksack is no inconvenience, so no gain to it being foldable.

I might revise this if Android tablet software was actually any good, but even Google has conceeded the tablet space to Apple. Down the line we'll have either Chrome OS or Fuschia... but I don't see myself with a full blown Photoshop + Illustrator in a trouser pocket device for some time.

It's far more likely a jacket pocket Photoshop will come first, in the form of an iPad Mini Pro. Technically speaking, Apple could do it tomorrow - it's a business decision for them, not a engineering challenge.

Dave 126

Re: Where's the laser range finder?

Sony are busy building laser range finding sensors for OEMs. Qualcomm have worked on the related silicon - they released a demo of a point cloud of a pianists fingers being tracked in real time last year, but using IR matrix. Google have worked on this for a few years since Project Tango, but using multiple cameras instead of laser time of flight. Apple are very keen to exploit 3D scanning, their silicon is leading the game, rumours suggest they'll be using Sony ToF sensors in the next generation iPhones.

Dave 126

Some reports suggest that the under screen fingerprint reader does't like screen protectors, so if this important to you then wait a few weeks for somebody else to test this.

The cheaper model has the fingerprint reader mounted on the side of the phone.

The bigger they are, the harder they fall: Peak smartphone hits Apple, Samsung the worst

Dave 126

Re: Well well well ....

Yeah, the S9 didn't offer much over the S8, but the release of the S9 knocked a few hundred quid off the price of the S8 - making it the same price as the inferior OnePlus. A win for the consumer but not for Samsung's bottom line.

I'll stick with my S8 until a model with a rear-mounted Time of Flight sensor so I can easily grab 3D scans of rooms and objects. A flexible phone won't interest me until it is cheaper than buying a phone and tablet - and maybe not even then.

Samsung Galaxy's flagship leaks ... don't matter much. Here's why

Dave 126

Re: Twenty-Teens

> The arguments for non-swappable batteries come down to water-proofing, generally

That's not the reason behind non-swappable batteries. Batteries inside phones dont have a case around them, but instead live inside a thin polymer bag. This is fine if they are protected from puncturing inside a phone, but if they were swappable then some people would inevitably leave the spare in the bottom of a tool bag amingst screwdrivers or on a hot car dashboard. Fire. You know it. The extra few mm of material that would be required to protect a swappable battery is instead used to make the battery capacity bigger or phone slimmer.

Then of course there is the fact that phone vendors would rather you buy a new phone than replace an aging battery.

There have been waterproof phones from Sony and Samsung with swappable batteries, and there are lots of non-waterproof phones without swappable batteries.

AGM X3: Swoon at this rugged interloper mobe then throw it on the floor to impress your mates

Dave 126

There's no downside to adding the protection after buying the phone ( i.e buying a rugged case for a normal waterproof phone). The advantage of doing so is that there are more phones to choose from and better deals to be had.

Also, if you're ever want to resell your phone you can pop it out of its scuffed case and it'll be close to pristine, making a difference to it's resale value.

Dave 126

Re: So...

Most of the storage on my Samsung is taken up by slo-mo video of dogs shaking off water after climbing out of a river. It looks like their heads are about to unscrew at times, and their skin reverses direction of twist some time after their skeleton does!

This isn't the most productive use of high res high frame rate video and the fast storage it requires, but it makes me smile! Waterproofing in this context is invaluable too!

Dave 126

So...

There's no final judgement on whether this tough phone is any tougher than a a normal waterproof phone (Samsung, Sony, Apple) in a rugged case. I do appreciate the reviewer doesn't have an unlimited supply of test phones, however.

My mechanic uses an iPhone 5 in a case that adds about 3/4" of foam rubber around it. Physics suggests that it'd be a strong contender in a drop test.