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mercredi 28 septembre 2016

New Amazon Fire TV Stick costs $39.99 and comes with an Alexa Voice Remote

amazon-fire-tv-stick

Amazon has just announced a hardware upgrade to its Fire TV Stick. At first glance, the new device looks just like its predecessor, but the newer iteration does come with a few surprises.

For starters, the all-new Fire TV Stick features an Alexa Voice Remote. This is not really an evolutionary change, in and of itself, as we have seen the same accessory come to the 2nd-generation Fire TV Stick. The good news is that Amazon is no longer charging an extra $10 for adding the improved remote (they did with the previous generation Fire TV Stick). Now you can grab the streaming device and its Alexa-powered remote for the usual $39.99.

fire-tv-stick-voice

Aside from the inclusion of the Alexa Voice Remote, the new Fire TV Stick has also received a 30% bump in performance. Said unit features a quad-core processor, 1 GB of RAM, 8 GB of internal storage and up to 1080p video output.

Amazon also touts "the fastest WiFi of any streaming media stick". This is mostly thanks to the stick's dual-band, dual-antenna, 802.11ac (MIMO) support.

Interested? You can pre-order the new Amazon Fire TV Stick now, but the release date is set for October 20th. And there is an enticing reason to make your purchase ASAP, as Amazon is also offering $65 in free goodies to customers who activate the device before October 31st. This includes one month of Sling TV, two months of Hulu (with limited commercials) and a $10 credit for purchasing content.

Are any of you buying it?

Buy the new Amazon Fire TV Stick now

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Alphabet’s exciting health watch apparently has a completely new design

Google health tracking wristband AA

Last year, we showed you an image of Alphabet's health watch (seen above): it's not just an ordinary smartwatch. It's designed to be used for medical research and clinical trials, measuring not only your heartbeat but also skin temperature, light exposure, and noise levels. It's an interesting project from what was known then as Google X Life Sciences.

Now renamed Verily, Alphabet's endeavors don't seem to have slowed down. According to Antonio Regalado from MIT Technology Review, who got to see the watch and had a chance to talk Brian Otis, Verily's chief technical officer, the health watch is now a real, working prototype:

The prototype I saw was set in an ordinary-looking brass-colored analog watch casing that appeared not to have any buttons. Otis called it the "Cardiac and Activity Monitor" and said it was at least the second generation of the device.

According to Regalado, the watch now has a circular, paper-white display. Although it may not be as impressive as OLED technology, using an e-paper screen makes much more sense. Considering its uses, people simply cannot afford to charge it every day.

The health watch will have various sensors as well: on the back, it will have LED lights to employ photoplethysmography to measure your heart rate. It also has raised metal pads to measure galvanic skin response and stress levels. According to Regalado, future prototypes are likely to include other measurements as well such as blood pressure.

Although Alphabet's health watch is not designed to be for commercial use, it nonetheless has very important implications, especially in preventive care and remote monitoring. Wearable technology – and especially Wearable Internet of Things – will have a huge impact on today's healthcare system. Telemedicine is already becoming a mainstream method for expanding healthcare access and reducing its cost; just imagine what IoT will do! It may not be so far into the future that a watch around our wrist will alert us when our blood pressure is too high or low and it'll be automatically reflected in our recommended diet, workout routine, etc.

Although Alphabet's health watch is not designed to be for commercial use, it nonetheless has very important implications, especially in preventive care and remote monitoring.

What are your thoughts on technology in healthcare? Let us know in the comments below!

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Xiaomi to open 1,000 stores by 2020 according to company CEO

Xiaomi Mi Max Video Thumbnail B

Even just five years ago, Xiaomi looked very different from the way it does today. From a simple tech startup to the Apple of China, Xiaomi's growth has been pretty impressive, to say the least. Now, according to Lei Jun, CEO of Xiaomi, China's largest privately funded startup has ambitious plans to dramatically expand its offline presence: from 25 Xiaomi stores right now to 1,000 stores by 2020.

Not too long ago, Xiaomi was a brand not well-known outside China, but within years, the Chinese company took off to be one of the top smartphone manufacturers in the world. With its beautifully-crafted handsets that cost less than $400, it makes sense that Xiaomi saw the huge success it did.

Xiaomi, like most Chinese smartphone manufacturers, operates its smartphone sales largely via online channels, but according to Xiaomi's CEO, things might be changing in the future:

We want consumers to touch and test our products with the core technologies in the stores. We have adapted our strategies… Xiaomi will open 1,000 stores by 2020.

According to Shanghai Daily, Xiaomi currently has 25 stores across China, which offer products ranging from smartphones, televisions, water purifiers, electric cookers among others. Although Lei hasn't specified where this offline expansion would take place, our guess is it will be primarily targeted at its home turf.

Xiaomi's strategy has long been an online-specific one, but with growing competition from fellow Chinese tech companies, it may not have any other choice but to invest in offline presence. For instance, Huawei boasts over 10,000 stores across China.

With reports estimating a 38% year-over-year decrease in its smartphone shipments in China this past quarter, Xiaomi certainly would benefit from increasing its brand recognition by providing more experience stores. Also, this may prove itself to be a good foundational step for its reported entrance into the US market. In a market where online sales are almost non-existent but everything is done through carriers, Xiaomi's limited experience may pose as a huge obstacle.

Do you think Xiaomi's increasing its offline presence will be its saving grace? Why do you think people are choosing Huawei over Xiaomi? Let us know your thoughts down below!

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Pre-order an Unlocked LG V20 from B&H Photo October 2

LG V20 review-14

Even though there's not even an image available yet on the site, the product listing for the LG V20 has received a pre-order date on the B&H Photo website. Mark your calendar for this Sunday, October 2.

The device is already slated for a South Korean launch this week, but release dates for the rest of the world remain shrouded in mystery. However, the pre-order date looks like it's just on the horizon. The variant we're seeing here is the unlocked North American version with 64GB of storage space. No price is listed.

The LG V20 is noteworthy for a number of reasons. It has the esteem of being the first Android smartphone to launch running Nougat out of the box. It's also a video machine that boasts some of the most robust camera technology that we've seen on a smartphone (Josh had a great time vlogging with it).

The V20 is also notable because LG has been in a bit of a slump. In the head-to-head combat that we saw earlier this year between the Samsung Galaxy S7 and the LG G5, the G5 didn't hold up so well in the long run. Remember all those cool modular "friends" that were going to come out for the G5? See any new ones lying around?

It didn't help that Moto Z later pranced onto the scene with a far sleeker approach to modular that, in the eyes of many, made the G5 look clunky and gimmicky by comparison. The V20 ditches any gimmicks and goes straight for the jugular: raw specs. With dual cameras on the front and back as well as standard 2016 flagship level specs, this device could be LG's chance to regain all important footing. Assuming it doesn't explode or something.

What do you think of the LG V20? Will you be pre-ordering from B&H come this Sunday? Let us know in the comments below!

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Google Translate now interprets Chinese-to-English with near human-level accuracy

Google Translate AA

The very software that thrice defeated world grandmaster Lee Sedol for the ancient game of Go is now beginning to power Google Translate. Google will now begin to translate Chinese to English using a system called Google Neural Machine Translation.

Google Translate had been using the phrase-based production system to translate Chinese to English, among other language pairs, but with little success. That was particularly so because Mandarin Chinese is notably hard to convert to English due in part to the different meanings a word could take when paired with certain characters. But that was mainly because of the differences between the Chinese and English cultures, which affect language.

The rollout of Google's neural machine translation system in both the web and mobile versions of Google Translate could significantly change that. Native Mandarin Chinese speakers may no longer cringe at Google Translate results as the AI-based tool will now look at the whole sentence structure before decoding it.

Previously, Google Translate used to parse sentences into their component words as it interpreted them, resulting in sometimes nonsense translations.

There is still a lot of work we can do to serve our users better. However, GNMT represents a significant milestone.

Based on Google's tests, the Google Neural Machine Translation system reduces translation errors by between 55 percent and 85 percent. Quoc V. Le and Mike Schuster, research scientists for Google Brain Team, lauded the GNMT approach as more advantageous than Phrase-Based translation systems.

However, the researchers acknowledge that machine translation isn't solved just yet. In a blog post, the researchers wrote:

GNMT can still make significant errors that a human translator would never make, like dropping words and mistranslating proper names or rare terms, and translating sentences in isolation rather than considering the context of the paragraph or page. There is still a lot of work we can do to serve our users better. However, GNMT represents a significant milestone.

On top of the Chinese-to-English language pair, Google also plans to implement GNMT in 10,000 other language pairs supported by Google Translate. You might want to check out the updated version of the app now and tell us how well it works.

Download Google Translate from the Play Store

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Apple Watch Series 2 vs the competition

Apple Watch Series 2

Just a few weeks ago, Apple unveiled the Watch Series 2 alongside the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus. While the overall design may not stray too far away from the first Watch, Apple has made a few changes this time around that might make you second guess your recent Android Wear or Pebble Time 2 purchase.

It seems as though Apple is taking a more fitness-focused approach with the Apple Watch Series 2. Featuring water resistance up to 50 meters, GPS and a brighter display, it's hard denying that the Watch Series 2 is a big step up from its predecessor. But you may be wondering – how does it compare to the Android Wear competition? What about Samsung's new Gear S3? Or the countless number of fitness trackers on the market? We've rounded up some of the most notable specs and features from each of the top wearables on the market in hopes to help you decide which device is right for you.

Don't miss: The best smartwatches48

Today we'll be comparing the Apple Watch Series 2 against the Samsung Gear S3, Moto 360 (2nd Gen.), Pebble Time 2, Fitbit Blaze and Garmin vívoactive HR. So without any further delay, let's take a look at the specs:

	Apple Watch Series 2	Samsung Gear S3	Motorola Moto 360 (2nd Gen.)	Pebble Time 2	Fitbit Blaze	Garmin vívoactive HR
Display	38mm: 1.3-inch OLED, 340ppi 42mm: 1.5-inch OLED, 390ppi	1.3-inch Super AMOLED, 278ppi	42mm: 1.37-inch IPS LCD, 233ppi 46mm: 1.56-inch IPS LCD, 263ppi	1.5-inch LCD, 202ppi	1.25-inch LCD, 240ppi	1.38-inch LCD, 183ppi
Water resistance	5 ATM Up to 50 meters ISO standard 22810:2010	IP68	IP67	3 ATM Up to 30 meters	No	5 ATM Up to 50 meters
Battery life	Up to 18 hours	Up to 4 days	Up to 1.5 days	Up to 10 days	Up to 5 days	Up to 8 days
GPS	Yes	Yes	No	No	No	Yes
Heart rate monitor	Yes, optical	Yes, optical	Yes, optical	Yes, optical	Yes, optical	Yes, optical
LTE	No	Classic: No Frontier: Yes	No	No	No	No
Bluetooth	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Wi-Fi	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	No	No
NFC	Yes For Apple Pay only	Yes	No	No	No	No
Speaker	Yes	Yes	No	No	No	No
Microphone	Yes	Yes	Dual digital mics	Yes	No	No
Software	watchOS	Tizen	Android Wear	PebbleOS	Fitbit	Garmin
Compatibility	iOS	Android	Android, iOS	Android, iOS	Android, iOS, Windows	Android, iOS, Windows
Colors	Too many to list here	N/A	Case: Silver, Black, Gold Band: Cognac Leather, Black Leather, Silver Metal, Gold Metal, Black Metal	Silver, Black, Gold	Black/Silver, Blue/Silver, Plum/Silver, Black/Gunmetal, Slim Pink/Gold	Black (with interchangeable bands in Lava Red, Force Yellow and White)
Interchangeable bands	Yes Proprietary	Yes Standard 22mm straps	Yes Standard 22mm straps	Yes Standard 22mm straps	Yes Proprietary	Yes
Price	38mm: Starts at $269 42mm: Starts at $299	N/A	$299.99	$199.99	$199.95	$249.99

Since there's so much information in the table above, we're going to walk you through what you need to know about each device. Let's start off with the under-the-hood specifications.

Now, it's going to be a little tough to compare all of these devices fairly in each category, but bare with us. As you can see, each device has a display measuring around 1.3 inches. They're all touchscreen displays (aside from the Pebble Time 2), but each one is very different. Apple chose to employ a square OLED panel on the Watch Series 2, while Samsung is using a circular Super AMOLED panel on its Gear S3. Motorola is also still going with a (mostly) circular LCD panel, save for the "flat tire" on the bottom that houses the ambient light sensor.

While these three devices sport the clearest, brightest panels on the list, they also have the worst battery life

While these three devices sport the clearest, brightest panels on the list, they also have the worst battery life. The Apple Watch is said to only last around 18 hours on a single charge, the Moto 360 can only last about 1.5 days (with moderate use), and, while we haven't tested it yet, Samsung says the Gear S3 can last up to 4 days. This is definitely something to consider when making your next wearable purchase.

Garmin vivoactive HR review AA 7

Moving on to the Pebble Time 2, Pebble decided to stick with an e-paper LCD display that should be great for battery saving purposes. It may not be the brightest or highest resolution panel out there, but it should allow the Time 2 to last around 10 days on a single charge. The Fitbit Blaze also comes with an LCD display, but this one is touchscreen and is very easy to read outdoors. In our full review, the Blaze was able to achieve around 5 days of battery on a single charge. Last but not least, Garmin's vívoactive HR comes with a comparatively low resolution LCD panel. It's not the easiest to read outdoors, though the device can last around 8 days on one charge.

There are a few key differences between smartwatches and fitness trackers

Now, as you're probably already aware, the Apple Watch Series 2, Moto 360, Samsung Gear S3 and Pebble Time 2 are all squarely in the smartwatch category, while the Fitbit Blaze and Garmin vívoactive HR are fitness trackers. That doesn't mean the smartwatches on our list are completely without fitness tracking features, nor does it mean the fitness trackers are without smartwatch features. But we think it's fair to consider the first four devices on our list as primarily smartwatches, while the last two devices are mainly fitness trackers.

samsung gear s3 first look aa-16

As a result, what you can expect on the software front from the Apple Watch, Moto 360, Gear S3 and Time 2 is a more robust, productivity-focused software interface. Each of these devices may handle certain things their own way, but they're built to handle notifications, music control, calendar events, voice commands and other functions better than the current crop of fitness trackers on the market.

Alternatively, the Blaze and vívoactive HR, for the most part, sport much clunkier interfaces. Both devices can handle things like notifications and music control, but they're not as intuitive or convenient to use as the smartwatches on our list.

If you're looking for a wrist-mounted wearable that will be used as more of a smartphone companion rather than a device that can track your workouts, you should choose one of the first four devices on our list. But if you need something that will mainly be used for fitness tracking and not so much notifications, music controls and other smartwatch-y features, you'll definitely be happier with the Blaze or vívoactive HR.

Okay, okay. What if your mind isn't made up yet? In the table below, you'll find a list of what each of these wearables track when it comes to fitness:

	Apple Watch Series 2	Samsung Gear S3	Motorola Moto 360 (2nd Gen.)	Pebble Time 2	Fitbit Blaze	Garmin vívoactive HR
Steps taken	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Distance traveled	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Calories burned	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Floors climbed	No	Yes	Yes	N/A	Yes	Yes
Sleep	Yes, with third-party apps	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Running	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Biking	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Swimming	Yes	Yes	No	Yes	No	Yes
Automatic activity recognition	No	Yes	No	Yes	Yes	Yes Limited to Move IQ

All of the devices on our list are more than capable of tracking daily activity metrics like steps taken, distance traveled and calories burned. They'll even track your sleep, which can be an extremely useful metric when looking at activity levels overtime. Plus, because all these devices come with optical heart rate sensors, you'll be able to check on your active and resting heart rate to make sure you're staying healthy.

Google Allo rockets past 5 million downloads

android apps weekly

When Google Allo went live, it saw a flurry of downloads as users rushed to make the search giant's new messaging platform their go-to communication app. Indeed, just four days ago it surpassed 1 million downloads. It seems the ferver isn't dying down, because as of today, Allo is sitting pretty at over 5 million installs.

Indeed, Allo rode the number 1 slot in the Google Play Store's rankings over the weekend. Although it's slipped to number 8 by now, adoption still appears strong. However, if the buzz quickly dies, it wouldn't be an outcome without recent precedent.

Google Duo, the company's recent Facetime competitor, saw a similar burst in popularity upon release, but the shine quickly faded – in spite of a strong advertising push on the part of Google. Indeed, Duo is now lying all the way down at number 85 on the free charts, but it's worth mentioning that it has over 10 million downloads.

It wouldn't be a surprise to see Allo follow a similar trajectory. Although the much-anticipated app handles the basics with aplomb, users were irritated with what they felt was a very beta experience. The platform just doesn't feel polished, and even though the developers are promising that more updates are on the way that will bring them the features and services they desire, it might be too little too late for Allo.

Allo rode the number 1 slot in the Google Play Store's rankings over the weekend.

The app does have two things going well for it right now. First off is Google Assistant, which has proven to be both a blast to play with and fascinatingly useful. Second, the app is adept at spreading itself by pushing notifications to non-Allo recipients encouraging them to download the app. Who knows? If this app gets the features users want in time, it may survive with a viral-like explosion of adoption.

What do you think of Google Allo's early proliferation in spite of lackluster first impressions? Will it take off as a go-to messenger? Let us know your prediction in the comments below!

Get it in the Play Store

Next: Google Allo: Everything you need to know32

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