Find: nice detailed review of ios 7


// published on AnandTech // visit site
The iOS 7 Review

There’s no doubt about it, this iOS update is one of the largest in Apple’s history. In the wake of the iPhone 5 launch, there was a considerable amount of criticism that iOS’ visual design was beginning to get stale. The core of the interface hadn’t really changed in either visual appearance or function. With iOS 7, those pundits get their wishes granted, as almost every part of the OS gets some kind of change.

The new UI is a dramatic reimagining of the core of Apple’s mobile operating system for iPhones, iPod Touches, and iPads. The most obvious superficial change is a completely new visual appearance with a new emphasis on minimalism and simplicity. At the same time, iOS 7 is always in motion, with transitions and other effects almost everywhere you look in the OS. It’s a change that’s bound to be jarring and solicit mixed reactions initially like all redesigns are, but our thoughts have solidified since running the earliest betas up until the latest GM.



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Find: Microsoft Announces Surface Pro 2 & Surface 2

The next attempt by ms to compete in mobiles. 

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// published on AnandTech // visit site
Microsoft Announces Surface Pro 2 & Surface 2, Shipping October 22

Microsoft just announced the long awaited successors to its Surface RT and Surface Pro devices at a press event in NYC. We were fans of the original Surface devices, however neither was quite perfect. It'll be a short while before we can actually review these things (they ship on October 22nd), but on paper we can already get a good indication of what Microsoft has done to both lines.

Surface 2

Surface RT is succeeded (not replaced) by Surface 2. The previous generation Surface RT model will remain on sale for $349, putting it at a very compelling price point in the 10-inch tablet market - especially considering that it comes with a full version of Office. The new Surface 2 takes its place at $449 and features a long list of upgrades. The display is now full 1080p with improved color accuracy compared to the outgoing model. Microsoft spent a lot of time last year talking about how it's 1366 x 768 panel was better than most thanks to its optically bonded display, but it's good to see a shift towards a higher resolution panel. The focus on improving color accuracy is important as well. In our original review of Surface RT I found its display to be ok, but hardly accurate. Given that both Apple and Google are now shipping relatively well calibrated tablet displays, it's key that Microsoft does the same. The only downside is it looks like the new display isn't full sRGB but rather a smaller gamut.

Internally Tegra 3 is out and replaced by Tegra 4. Just like last time, Tegra 4's 5th shadow core isn't exposed or used under Windows RT 8.1. I know I was personally expecting a Snapdragon 800 based device, but those initial rumors also pointed to the Qualcomm based Surface tablet being smaller than 10.6-inches as well so it's entirely possible that we'll see Qualcomm show up at a later point. The move to Tegra 4 comes with four ARM Cortex A15 cores and a much better GPU. The combination of the two should deliver a much better experience on Surface 2 than with Surface RT. The latter was simply too slow, but I'm expecting big things from the Tegra 4 upgrade. Although I completely understand why Microsoft is interested in going with an ARM partner for Surface 2, I do wonder if it might've been a better idea from a power efficiency standpoint to use Intel's Bay Trail instead. Note that with Surface 2 Microsoft drops the RT from the device's name. We'll see what happens with Cherry Trail next year.

Microsoft Surface 2/RT Comparison
Surface 2 Surface RT Apple iPad 4
Dimensions 10.81 x 6.79 x 0.35" 10.81 x 6.77 x 0.37" 9.50 x 7.31 x 0.37"
Display 10.6-inch 1920 x 1080 w/ Improved Color Accuracy 10.6-inch 1366 x 768 PLS 9.7-inch 2048 x 1536 IPS
Weight Less than 1.49 lbs 1.5 lbs 1.44 lbs
Processor NVIDIA Tegra 4 1.7GHz NVIDIA Tegra 3

Apple A6X

Connectivity 802.11n WiFi 802.11n WiFi WiFi , Optional 4G LTE
Memory 2GB 2GB 1GB
Storage 32GB or 64GB eMMC 32GB or 64GB 16GB—128GB
Battery ? 31.5 Wh 42.5Wh
Starting Price $449 $349 $499

Surface 2 retains the full sized USB port and microSD card slots on the device itself, although the former gets upgraded to USB 3.0. Internal storage options remain at 32GB or 64GB eMMC. Both front and rear facing cameras are improved over the original design as well.

The design of Surface 2 improves over its predecessor. Surface 2 is slightly thinner than its predecessor and is a little lighter as well. The device now features a silver colored VaporMg finish and a 2-stage kickstand. Although I loved the idea of the kickstand with the original Surface devices, I felt that it was often not at the right angle for me to use on anything other than a table. Surface 2's 2-stage kickstand should allow for some flexibility, although I'm curious to see how this works in practice and if there are any sacrifices to the overall stability of the stand.

Surface 2 will ship with Office 2013 RT including Outlook RT and come with 200GB of free Sky Drive storage for 2 years. The entire package starts at $449, but once again does not include a touch or type cover. The 64GB Surface 2 will sell for $100 more at $549.

Surface Pro 2

Surface Pro 2 sees a similar set of upgrades. It gets an updated display (the original Surface Pro was already 1080p) with better color accuracy. USB 3.0 support existed on the previous model as well. The big upgrade here is to a Haswell based Core i5-4200U. That's a 15W Haswell part (similar to what you'd find in an Ultrabook) but with Intel's HD 4400 graphics and not HD 5000. The move to 15W Haswell means there's no real reduction in device thickness with Surface Pro 2. This continues to be an interesting design decision on Microsoft's part. While I'd personally advocate for a lower wattage Y-series SKU, it could be that Microsoft feels the added performance of a full Ultrabook Haswell ULT SKU is necessary for Surface Pro's target market. Either way the move to Haswell should come with significant improvements in battery life (Microsoft claims a 75% improvement for Surface Pro 2, and 25% for Surface 2). 

Microsoft Surface Pro Comparison
Surface Pro 2 Surface Pro Apple iPad 4
Dimensions 10.81 x 6.81 x 0.53" 10.81 x 6.81 x 0.53" 9.50 x 7.31 x 0.37"
Display 10.6-inch 1920 x 1080 w/ Improved Color Accuracy 10.6-inch 1920 x 1080 PLS 9.7-inch 2048 x 1536 IPS
Weight 2.0 lbs 2.0 lbs 1.44 lbs
Processor Core i5-4200U with HD4400 Graphics (15W Haswell ULT)

Core i5-3317U with HD4000 Graphics (17W Ivy Bridge)

Apple A6X

Connectivity WiFi WiFi WiFi , Optional 4G LTE
Memory 4GB or 8GB LPDDR3 4GB 1GB
Storage 64 or 128GB (4GB RAM)
256GB or 512GB (8GB RAM)
64GB or 128GB 16GB—128GB
Battery 42.0 Wh 42.0 Wh 42.5Wh
Starting Price $899 $899 $499

Surface Pro 2 starts at $899 and now comes in four different configurations You can get Surface Pro 2 with a 64GB ($899) or 128GB SSD ($999) and 4GB of RAM, or if you want 8GB of RAM there are 256GB ($1299) and 512GB ($1799) versions as well. Surface Pro 2 retains the old front and rear cameras.

Interestingly enough, the internal shots of the Surface Pro 2 feature a SKhynix mSATA SSD. I wonder if it's using a Link_A_Media controller:

As you can see in the gallery below, the PCB for Surface Pro 2 is absolutely huge. I'm really curious to see why Microsoft went this route vs. trying to fill the device's volume with a battery like most of the other tablet makers. I know in the past Microsoft was very big on weight distribution vs. lower overall weight, but I do wonder if a lighter Surface Pro 2 might've made sense here.

A big part of the Surface story is of course the detachable keyboard covers. This generation both type and touch covers see upgrades. They are both thinner and lighter, and both are now backlit as well. The new touch cover features 1092 sensors (up from only 80 in touch cover 1), which should improve response and accuracy. If you remember back to our original Surface reviews, touch cover accuracy was one of my biggest complaints. It was better than typing on a screen, but not as good as a real keyboard. I'm wondering if the new design helps here at all.

Gallery: Surface Pro 2

The type cover sees a 1mm reduction in key travel, which helps reduce thickness of the cover itself (although potentially at the expense of typing feel). You can also now get the type cover in four different colors as well (purple, pink, blue and black), instead of just black like the original design.

Other accessories include a new power cover with integrated battery, a docking station, and a music kit that replaces the traditional keyboard with something optimized for music playback/remixing. 

Both Surface 2 and Surface Pro 2 will be available for pre-order starting tomorrow, with devices available on October 22nd.  



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Find: Moto X Update Dramatically Improves Camera Quality

The rgb clear sensor is new

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 // published on AnandTech // visit site

Moto X Update Dramatically Improves Camera Quality

In my Moto X review, I characterized camera performance and quality as very bimodal. In some scenes it could take great photos, in others it seemed to struggle and either produce images that looked somewhat washed out with weird white balance or aggressive noise reduction. In low light scenes where I expected the clear pixel to make a dramatic improvement, photos were a bit splotchier than I had hoped also from noise reduction. On paper the Moto X should’ve been a solid performer – Motorola went for a relatively large 1/2.6" format sensor, with 1.4µm pixels, a unique RGBC color filter array with single clear pixel, and an F/2.4 optical system.

The good news is that Motorola is dramatically improving the Moto X camera experience with an upcoming OTA update that’s rolling out today to T-Mobile Moto X owners, and hopefully eventually to other operators after testing and approval is completed.

Imaging performance improves dramatically indoors and out with this update. The update changes the tuning of the camera by improving exposure in outdoor and backlit scenes, white balance and color accuracy across the board, and reducing noise in low light scenes. I got the chance to play around with a Moto X with this update loaded on and of course brought along a Moto X without the update to compare side by side in my dual-camera bracket.

Moto X Not Updated: ISO 3200, 1/15s

I have to say that the changes Motorola makes to the Moto X with this update are nothing short of the biggest I’ve ever seen come across in an OTA update. There’s a lot of performance that comes from properly tuning a system, and it’s obvious that the imaging team has retuned a lot of the imaging pipeline in the Moto X with this update, as a lot of things are fixed.

That white haziness that used to cloud so many outdoors photos is completely gone, instead replaced by tuning that yields more contrasty results without that same kind of haze. White balance also improves outdoors, sometimes images had a blueish cast to them, this is now a bit warmer when appropriate. Colors also seem to pop a lot better. Outdoors the Moto X really performs a lot better thanks to improvements to auto exposure which now no longer randomly overexposes some scenes. The noise reduction algorithm that was running has also been turned down dramatically, leaving a lot more high spatial frequency detail in images, which is visible in trees and bricks especially in my sample images. I definitely prefer camera tuning that passes more detail at the expense of also passing more chroma noise, it seems that Motorola has gone that way as well with this update.

In low light the Moto X shows much of what it does outdoors – fixed white balance even under challenging sodium light sources, dramatically less noise reduction which passes through a lot more detail. Images look less like oil paintings, in the sample photo of the test scene more detail on the book makes it through, including those narrow lines which previously blurred together. There’s more chroma noise but again I like this tradeoff.

Overall I’m hugely impressed with the improvements that Motorola made to the Moto X camera with this update. I've been carrying the Moto X as my daily for a while now and lacking imaging performance was my only major concern anymore, with this update, the Moto X moves up quite a bit in my mind. It’s great to see the Moto X move a lot closer to the imaging performance that I expected given the impressive specs and emphasis that clearly was put on that axis of performance.



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Spotted: Using smartphones to sense too much smartphone use

But what do you do when you sense it's too much? We hate technology that nags. 
 
// published on Ubiquitous Computing-Latest Proceeding Volume // visit site

Automatically detecting problematic use of smartphones
Choonsung Shin, Anind K. Dey

Smartphone adoption has increased significantly and, with the increase in smartphone capabilities, this means that users can access the Internet, communicate, and entertain themselves anywhere and anytime. However, there is growing evidence of problematic use of smartphones that impacts both social and heath aspects of users' lives. Currently, assessment of overuse or problematic use depends on one-time, self-reported behavioral information about phone use. Due to the known issues with self-reports in such types of assessments, we explore an automated, objective and repeatable approach for assessing problematic usage. We collect a wide range of phone usage data from smartphones, identify a number of usage features that are relevant to this assessment, and build detection models based on Adaboost with machine learning algorithms automatically detecting problematic use.



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Spotted: App stores as a source of data for analytics data


 
// published on Human Computer Interaction with Mobile Devices and Services-Latest Proceeding Volume // visit site

Informing future design via large-scale research methods and big data
Mattias Rost, Alistair Morrison, Henriette Cramer, Frank Bentley

With the launch of 'app stores' on several mobile platforms and the great uptake of smartphones among the general population, researchers have begun utilising these distribution channels to deploy research software to large numbers of users. Previous Research In The Large workshops have sought to establish base-line practice in this area. We have seen the use of app stores as being successful as a methodology for gathering large amounts of data, leading to design implications, but we have yet to explore the full potential for this data's use and interpretation. How is it possible to leverage the practices of large-scale research, beyond the current approaches, to more directly inform future designs?



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Spotted: Contextualise! personalise! persuade!: a mobile HCI framework for behaviour change support systems


 // published on Human Computer Interaction with Mobile Devices and Services-Proceeding Volume // visit site

Contextualise! personalise! persuade!: a mobile HCI framework for behaviour change support systems

Sebastian Prost, Johann Schrammel, Kathrin Röderer, Manfred Tscheligi

This paper presents a context-aware, personalised, persuasive (CPP) system design framework applicable to the sustainable transport field and other behaviour change support system domains. It operates on a situational, a user, and a target behaviour layer. Emphasis is placed on interlinking each layer's behaviour change factors for greater effectiveness. A prototype CPP system for more sustainable travel behaviour is introduced to demonstrate how the framework can be applied in practice.



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Brian Klug on the iPhone 5S Camera

Bigger pixels = better pictures. 

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// published on AnandTech // visit website
Some Thoughts about the iPhone 5S Camera Improvements

One of the big improvements that comes with the iPhone 5S is a new camera system, with a faster aperture for more light throughput, bigger 8 MP sensor with correspondingly bigger pixels, dual LED color temperature matching flash, and improved ISP. I thought it worth going over some of the changes before we look at it in the review since there’s already honestly quite a lot that I’ve gathered about the 5S system just from examining EXIF on the images from Apple’s uploaded sample images gallery, what I saw in the demo room on a 5S, and what has been said publicly.

Camera has become one of the major axes of differentiation in the smartphone space. It doesn’t take much inspection to see that it has become an emphasis everywhere. Nokia has had halo devices for a long time now which establish its position with dominant smartphone camera leadership, HTC recently pushed its imaging emphasis very far with the One’s camera system and arguably the system before it for the One X and S, and even the recent Moto X made an attempt to do something fundamentally different with a color filter array including a clear pixel. Obviously the iPhone sits somewhere in that fray if nothing else since Apple really started demonstrating something above normal camera competency around the 3GS and 4 by shipping a system of its own design and specification. Since then, Apple has continued to push parts of its imaging chain further with a custom Sony CMOS starting with the 5 and custom ISP with the 4S. Obviously the statistic that Apple will cite is that the iPhone cameras take the top 3 spots on Flickr for camera popularity, making them arguably some of the most important cameras out there. Given my optical engineering background, watching smartphone cameras evolve and move in different directions is of course particularly interesting since it’s a place in the camera world with unusual constraints. As a photographer I’m also interested in finding ultimately what device has the best usability to camera tradeoff ratio, and Apple has historically made sound choices with its system.

iPhone 4, 4S, 5, 5S Cameras
Property iPhone 4 iPhone 4S iPhone 5 iPhone 5S
CMOS Sensor OV5650 IMX145 IMX145-Derivative ?
Sensor Format 1/3.2"
(4.54x3.42 mm)
1/3.2"
(4.54x3.42 mm)
1/3.2" ~1/3.0"
(4.89x3.67 mm)
Optical Elements 4 Plastic 5 Plastic 5 Plastic 5 Plastic
Pixel Size 1.75 µm 1.4 µm 1.4 µm 1.5 µm
Focal Length 3.85 mm 4.28 mm 4.10 mm 4.12 mm
Aperture F/2.8 F/2.4 F/2.4 F/2.2
Image Capture Size 2592 x 1936
(5 MP)
3264 x 2448
(8 MP)
3264 x 2448
(8 MP)
3264 x 2448
(8 MP)
Average File Size ~2.03 MB (AVG) ~2.77 MB (AVG) ~2.3 MB (AVG) 2.5 MB (AVG)

With the iPhone 5S camera, Apple makes a number of interesting changes that I already touched on. Rather than march down the pixel size roadmap to 1.1µm (and beyond that the upcoming 0.9µm step) to either increase pixel count with an equivalent sized sensor, or shrink the sensor and optical stack and maintain the same number of pixels, Apple has chosen a strategy like HTC’s and gone the other way. Apple has increased pixel size to 1.5µm (from 1.4µm), while keeping pixel count the same, thus creating a larger sensor. I remember telling Anand and a number of other people that if Apple even just stayed at 1.4µm for the 5S, it would mean validation of everything I ever said about the 1.1µm size and beyond in my prior smartphone imaging and optics presentation.

Obviously seeing Apple put up a "bigger pixels = better picture" slide during the keynote and move the opposite direction by bucking the trend just like HTC did makes me a lot more comfortable about the future of Apple’s smartphone imaging roadmap. Increasing pixel size is arguably the better but simultaneously harder direction for the industry to increase image quality, low light sensitivity, and SNR. Keep in mind that I’m talking about pixel pitch here, so Apple’s increase from 1.4µm to 1.5µm pixels really means a 14.8 percent increase in pixel area and thus integration area. If you do the math out, Apple moves from the relatively standard 1/3.2“ CMOS sensor size to around 1/3” in size, similar to the HTC One. Increasing sensor size and pixel size really will make a measurable difference in low light sensitivity, noise, and dynamic range. I don’t know any specifics but given Apple’s ability to get Sony to make a one-off custom CMOS for the iPhone 5, I wouldn’t be surprised to see Sony supply a sensor of Apple’s specification this time for the 5S, one of the nice things about having their kind of volume.

At the same time, the optical design has improved to increase the amount of light passed through the system. Apple’s 4S and 5 systems were F/2.4, the iPhone 5S system moves down a quarter stop to F/2.2. I was hoping for F/2.0 like we see a number of other OEMs shipping (HTC, Nokia) but F/2.2 might be a logical tradeoff to keep aberrations down and not run into some of the stray light issues that I’ve seen crop up in those other systems. The 5 had stray light issues that famously resulted in some purple fringing already at F/2.4, which people falsely attributed to the sapphire cover glass (which is actually colorless). It remains to be seen whether the lower F/# on the 5S increases them, though I wager the attention given to this issue probably resulted in some correspondingly better anti reflection coatings and stray light management.

Focal length changes slightly, from 4.10 mm in the 5 to 4.12 mm in the 5S. The difference in sensor size and thus crop factor gives a 35mm equivalent focal length of around 31mm in the 5 and 29.7mm in the 5S. Shorter focal length has generally been a tradeoff for a while to decrease the z-height of the module further, and you see a lot of smartphone vendors hovering around 28mm or slightly lower, which is relatively wide. Marketing will then turn around and market the wider angle like it’s some positive thing, which is hilarious. Apple has thus far been steadfast at staying around 30mm, but there’s no denying that the 5S will indeed be a bit wider angle than the 5 in practice. Ideally I’d love to have a smartphone module with around a 35mm focal length in 35mm equivalent numbers.

The most visible and talked about change for the 5S imaging system thus far is the dual LED “true tone” flash, which really is a system with two LEDs of different color temperature. Spectral output of LEDs tend to be a bunch of narrow bandwidth spikes, which results in weird color rendering (analogous to the sometimes poor color rendering index of LED lightbulbs or CCFLs). In addition, white LED flashes just end up having a blue tint compared to Xenon. The solution is to add another color temperature alongside, then mix the two LEDs to get the desired color temperature that matches the scene. I actually saw NVIDIA doing this dual color temperature LED flash mixing on their Tegra 4 reference tablet back before MWC, and this is something other OEMs have been talking about, Apple just has the first device to market with it.

I played around with the flash in the demo area, and the 5S system pre-flashes, computes the correct flash amplitude to match scene color temperature, and then fires a flash during capture with the right color temperature.

The result is a photo that does look better in terms of color rendering and temperature. Personally I still have a deep seated dislike of on-camera or direct flash, and only use it when natural light is absolutely insufficient to get a photo. I don’t think this will really change my feelings about on-camera flash, but if you do have to use flash to light a dark scene, this makes it a lot less terrible.

Finally there are improvements to ISP and video encode. The 5S includes a further improved ISP, though I have no way of knowing what’s new inside beyond what Apple stated during the keynote, and in general SoC ISP remains a closely guarded secret for all of the silicon players. Apple purports their new ISP has improved AWB, AE, new local tone mapping, new autofocus matrix metering with 15 focus zones, and automatic selection of the sharpest image in the capture buffer when you finally do press capture. Of course there’s also a new burst capture mode which activates when holding down the capture button and captures at 10 FPS. I held this down in the demo area and took around 500 images without the speed slowing down. Apple is probably buffering these in DRAM and writing them to NAND at the same time.

On the video side the 5S now includes a 120FPS capture mode. The camera UI has a “slow-mo” option beyond the video mode, which captures 720p120 video. The framerate in this mode in the camera preview is visibly faster, capture works like normal, but inside the playback UI are two scrubbers which let you play back that 120FPS video at 30 FPS, making it look 4x slower. I’m unclear whether the 5S makes the raw 720p120 video available, but I really hope that’s the case. I do wish that there was 1080p60 capture, but that might be exposed through the video capture APIs somewhere, again it’s still unclear.

What’s missing from the 5S is OIS. I didn’t ever think it was in the cards for the 5S, so its absence isn’t a surprise, but it’s a substantial improvement for video and longer exposures. The reality is that an increasing number of players are including it – Nokia, HTC, and LG, and that list will only continue getting larger. Its absence isn’t the end of the world, but the stronger OIS implementations make a substantial difference for both videos and still images. Apple’s going the electronic and computational route with further improvements to its EIS auto image stabilization, which combines the sharp parts of multiple images together to get a single sharp picture. Almost every smartphone camera system now has a back buffer of images coming from the sensor, Apple purports that it is able to do some computational analysis, grab sections of the last few images and combine them to produce a sharp result. This will help in good lighting where the system can grab a lot of images quickly with good exposure, but obviously doesn’t fundamentally solve the low light problem where the exposures themselves are still longer. Grabbing photographs without blur remains a challenging problem for everyone, obviously OIS doesn’t help with scenes where the subject is moving either.

I’ll add that I’m still unclear whether the 2x2 pixel binning remains in place with the 5S camera. I would be surprised if it wasn’t in place however, especially given the 720p120 recording mode which would require it to get the higher sensitivity required for higher framerate. Higher framerate video capture means less integration time per frame to gather light.

Selected EXIF from Apple's iPhone 5S Sample Photos:

Make : Apple
Camera Model Name : iPhone 5s
Exposure Time : 1/1866
F Number : 2.2
Exposure Program : Program AE
ISO : 32
Metering Mode : Spot
Flash : Off, Did not fire
Focal Length : 4.1 mm
Focal Length In 35mm Format : 30 mm
GPS Altitude : 15.8 m Above Sea Level
GPS Latitude : 38 deg 1' 22.22" N
GPS Longitude : 122 deg 31' 22.23" W
GPS Position : 38 deg 1' 22.22" N, 122 deg 31' 22.23" W
Image Size : 3264x2448

A few iPhones ago, Apple started posting sample images from their new iPhone camera in full resolution taken straight from the device on their own site right after the announcement. That has turned into common practice now, and the 5S is no exception. I’ve gone over the images each time and looked at EXIF for whatever info is available (and the GPS tags that generally were left on), and did the same for the 5S. Interestingly enough Apple only left location tagging on for one of the 6 images (the skateboard pic) this time around.

5S: 1/2740, ISO 32

The photo samples look very good. None of the photos go over ISO 100, in fact most of them are at a very low ISO 32 which keeps noise down. Exposure times are also very fast. Only image 3 is somewhat low light looking. I was hoping Apple would include a few samples showing low light performance indoors with and without flash, but I guess I’m not surprised Apple would pick scenarios that show off the best quality rather than situations that might strain it. For that we’ll have to wait.

  • Image number one which is a macro shot of a flower has a nice looking blurry background effect without distracting or artificial looking bokeh. For a smartphone camera this looks very good.

  • Image number two is a top down shot of some chilis on a wood table, relatively planar. What’s awesome here is it lets me see immediately that there’s good sharpness across the entire field of view – the edges don’t get soft like a number of other smartphones do. Maintaining good MTF across the entire field of view is difficult, especially at extreme field angles like the corners. While there’s definitely some falloff, it’s very controlled on this 5S sample photo. In addition there’s no weird distortion, the horizontal grains in the wood remain horizontal for example.

  • Image number three is of a jellyfish, and is the only somewhat lower light photo, though I’m not convinced this is what I’d consider low light. It looks good but moreover illustrates that the auto exposure algorithm in the 5S isn’t just blindly taking exposure over the whole scene (the black aquarium) – spot metering mode is noted in the EXIF indicating the user tapped the jellyfish.

  • Image four is an impressive sunset, although here the bokeh is a bit more distracting and weird looking in the background. Sharpness is retained however in the grass close to the sunset bloom, without washing out. I also don’t see any fringing.

  • Image five is of some kids in a pool, skin tones look great here against the water, sharpness is also great.

  • Image six has action nicely frozen and was probably captured using burst mode, if there’s any opportunistic image recombination here for the scene, I can’t detect it in the output result.

The camera UI in iOS 7 also gets a substantial overhaul. Gone is the still image capture preview which is fit to the long axis of the iPhone 5/5C/5S display, which crops off the top and bottom of the image. Thankfully, Apple has come to its senses and changed the UI so the full field of view of the image is visible, and what you see is now what you get. If only Google would now follow suit and do the same to the AOSP/stock Android UI.

The camera UI has completely different iconography and styling from the old one. Gone is the video toggle, and in its place is a mode ring which switches between slow-mo, videos, photo, square, and panorama. This eliminates some of the feature cruft that was piling up in the “options” button from the old UI. There’s also the filters option which shows a live preview grid of some filters on the image – think photo booth for iOS. My only complaint is that whereas the previous iOS camera UI had more visual cues that made it easy to confirm the camera detected proper portrait or landscape orientation, the iOS 7 camera really doesn’t. Only the thumbnail and flash/HDR/front camera icons rotate. Further, the text ring switcher doesn’t rotate, which adds some mental processing when you’re shooting in landscape (which you should, especially for video).

I explored the iOS 7 camera UI and slow motion features on the iPhone 5S a lot in our hands on video which I’d encourage you to check out.

Overall the improvements to the 5S camera system are very positive and I’m very happy to see Apple going the direction of bigger pixels rather than marching down the pitch size roadmap and trading off sensitivity. Larger pixels and bucking that trend is absolutely positively the right direction to go. If Apple went the other way I’d start getting concerned about the camera team over there. Obviously the choices made in the 5S do a lot to put me at ease and reassure that there’s still some sanity in the smartphone imaging space. Likewise the dual color temperature LED flash system is another low light improvement, even if I still dislike on-camera flash in general and will probably never use it – every iPhone I’ve ever owned has had flash set to off rather than auto. Faster F/# is a big improvement along that same axis as well, letting in more light and possibly giving more shallow depth of field at some focus positions. High framerate video coming to the 5S was a no brainer given the new APIs and features added to iOS 7, I just assumed it’d be 1080p60 rather than 720p120, although there’s still a chance that 1080p60 is an option through the capture API rather than the camera UI. Finally I’m very happy that Apple has sorted out the aspect ratio cropping issues in the camera UI that really frustrated me with the iPhone 5’s display ratio change.

Most of my time getting hands on with the iPhone 5S in the town hall demo room was spent playing with the camera UI, but there’s only so much you can really tell given a few minutes. Either way the iPhone 5S looks to be another big improvement to Apple’s very popular camera system. 



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Finds: Indystate - Android reaches a billion

first, windows; second, Facebook 
 
 
// published on asymco // visit site

Third to a billion

Android is the third platform to reach a billion users[1] . The first was Windows and the second was Facebook. Apple sold around 650 to 700 million iOS and is expected to be the fourth to a billion sometime next year.[2]

If we define the Race To a Billion to be bounded by a time limit of 10 years, then Windows does not qualify and Android is actually second. The race is shown in the following graphs (the one on the left is logarithmic scaled, the one to the right includes only a few contenders for illustrative reasons).

Screen Shot 2013-09-06 at 9-6-4.06.29 PM

Android’s activations as reported are shown in the following graph:

Screen Shot 2013-09-04 at 9-4-1.15.38 PM

Without qualification, Android has been a viral success story. It reached one billion activations in about five years, almost half the time it took FaceBook and far faster than Windows.

However, Android growth can be qualified. I added another set of data which is the number of US Android phone users as deduced from measurements by ComScore.[3]

One way to read the two graphs is: Between March and August, of the 250 million Android devices activated, 4 million were to new Android consumers in the US. In other words, In the last six months, 1.6% of Android activations went toward new usage in the US. The equivalent figure for iOS is about 6%. Note that these are new users, not included are upgrades. It’s likely that more of the US buying goes toward upgrades because iOS has been in use longer.

So whereas Android is growing very rapidly, there is a question of reliability of that audience. Engagement is one thing, but in the market which shows highest penetration (and deepest distribution of an alternative) Android is peaking.

 Notes:

  1. Although activations are not users, I’m assuming that usage is not far behind and the cumulative sales figures I gather are roughly comparable.
  2. Separately, iTunes reports 575 million account holders.
  3. ComScore surveys users on their primary phone. Survey includes only those aged over 13 years and excludes phones issued by businesses.



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Horace Dedieu on the decline of gaming consoles, as mobiles rise

In the long run, I think specialized devices do have a future, especially in the home. But the old mass markets are gone forever. 

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// published on asymco // visit site

Game over

In the “Race to a Billion” there is a graph showing Android reported activations and iOS cumulative unit sales alongside cumulative console sales. The contrast between mobile phone platforms and game consoles is striking, with an order of magnitude difference in consumption. The best performing console to date is the Wii with about 100 million units sold so far.

[UPDATE: Thanks to Danny Nemer cumulative sales of Sony's PlayStation 2 (using production shipments from FY 2000-05 and recorded sales for FY 06-12) is 155.81 million units]

However, that is an incomplete picture of the game platform business primarily because consoles are not the entirety of the business. Mobile (but dedicated) gaming platforms have been sold for some time.

To give a better picture of the game business we prepared the following graphs. The first shows Nintendo’s product lines with actual unit shipments (shown as colored dots in millions of units per quarter) and the trend (shown as trailing twelve months’ average trend lines).

Screen Shot 2013-09-09 at 9-9-4.45.30 PM

Note that fixed and mobile products are both shown on the same graph. The picture that emerges is that for Nintendo, its mobile platforms combined are more popular than its fixed consoles with a total of 186 million mobile devices sold since 2003.

There is also a pattern of generational change. The GBA, DS and GameCube era was superseded by the DS Lite, DSi, Wii era. The Wii era (or generation) was significantly more popular than the GameCube generation. If there is a problem however, it seems to be that the new generation devices or consoles are not forming a new era. The Wii U and 3DS are not growing nearly to the level of the previous generations and have faded quickly.

To summarize, the unit volume graph for Nintendo is below.[1]

Screen Shot 2013-09-10 at 9-10-10.25.23 AM

To confirm that this is indeed disruption we should look at the pattern for another competitor in the console market: Sony.[2]

Screen Shot 2013-09-10 at 9-10-11.09.16 AM

The graphs above combine both Nintendo portable/consoles and Sony portable/console sales. Note the similarity in patterns of growth. It’s one thing to suggest that Nintendo consoles have “failed”, it’s another to show that Nintendo consoles and portables have failed, and yet another to show that two competitors in the games business seem to be failing in unison across all their product lines. The cyclicality is also over a long period of time: The peak for the combined Sony/Nintendo was in 2008, five years ago.

The chief criticism to the industry-wide view of decline is that there is a new generation of consoles right around the corner. This is the eighth generation of consoles which, it is presumed, will bring growth back to the industry.

But the Nintendo 3DS, launched two years ago, was meant to kick off the eighth generation, and the PlayStation Vita was Sony’s response. Then the Wii U was also billed as the successor to the Wii. They have so far failed to re-ignite growth. One might reply that they were merely appetizers and that the main course of the next gen are the PS4 and Xbox One.

Will they create growth again? Surely not for Nintendo, but I would argue that not for Sony or Microsoft either. There might be a burst of sales at launch as the hard core gamers upgrade, but they are unlikely to recruit new gamers the way the Wii did. In other words the PS4 and Xbox One are unlikely to win against non-consumption.

That is where mobile is the clear winner. More people will hire mobile devices for their primary gaming activity. And as mobile devices get inexorably better, they will be hired for use in the setting where consoles have been king: the living room.

The implications are that Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft are beyond the point of no return in this industry. Gaming, as a business, cannot be sustained as a platform independent of a general purpose computer. Like other “applications” that used to have systems built around them conforming to their needs[3] the dedicated-purpose solutions came to be absorbed into the general-purpose platforms. And the modern general purpose computer is the smartphone.[4]

UPDATE: I added Microsoft console shipment data which became available after 2008. Notes:

  1. This is a smoothed graph showing what sales would have been if they had been evenly spread out over a 12 month period. The actual sales would total to the same area but would be much more seasonal and thus noisy.
  2. We would like to show the pattern for Microsoft but there is no regularly reported Xbox shipment data.
  3. Applications such as word processing, financial calculation, media editing, music playback, etc.
  4. One interesting question is why didn’t the general purpose personal computer absorb console gaming. My answer is that personal computers could not conform to the experiences around the “10 foot” interface and still function well at their main jobs. In contrast, mobile devices through screen sharing have the ability to be much more malleable.



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Find: Apple rejecting NFC in favor of its own standard?

Certainly in the usa at least, android hasn't been able to make NFC happen. Apple's advantage in having a mobile "monoculture" as well as a flourishing payment system may prove to be what was needed all along. 

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// published on Daring Fireball // visit site

‘With iBeacon, Apple Is Going to Dump on NFC and Embrace the Internet of Things’

Hari Gottipati, writing at GigaOM:

Apple has avoided NFC, and all the rumors about NFC getting added to iPhone 4 and iPhone 5 are turned out to be false. Instead of NFC, Apple worked on alternatives using Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. During the introduction of iOS 7′s AirDrop at WWDC in June, Apple’s mobile development chief Craig Federighi said, “There’s no need to wander around the room, bumping your phone,” referring how NFC phones need to be very close to transfer the data.

iBeacon has flown a bit under the radar thus far. Could be huge combined with Touch ID.




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Find: nice analysis of iPhone 5c 5s intro from John gruber

Highlights:

Apple isn't changing the markets it's going after, just working them more effectively by making its middle tier phones much more appealing and profitable (5c). 

The extra location chip in the 5s eliminates the power cost of continuous location tracking. 

On this latter point, I could see future iPhones becoming very context sensitive, functioning differently depending on context: eg when driving. Like the motox. 

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// published on Daring Fireball // visit site

★ Thoughts and Observations on Today’s iPhone 5C and 5S Introduction

I got this one wrong.

I fixed my thinking by this week, but as of a month ago, I had it wrong when I wrote “The Case for a New Lower-Cost iPhone”.

Here’s the thing. The iPhone 5C has nothing to do with price. It probably does have something to do with manufacturing costs (which are lower for Apple), but not price. Apple’s years-long strategy hasn’t really changed. They offer three phones:

  1. This year’s, with the latest technology.
  2. Last years’s, starting $100 lower.
  3. The two-year-old model, with meager storage, free on contract, $200 lower unsubsidized.

It’s just that instead of putting the year-old iPhone 5 in slot #2, they’ve created the 5C to debut in that slot. The 5C is, effectively, an iPhone 5. Same A6, same camera, same just about everything — except for the most obvious difference, its array of colorful plastic shells. This is not an iPod Touch with a cellular antenna (the iPod Touch, which was not updated today, still has an A5 chip and roughly 4S specs). The prices of the iPhone tiers remain the same as last year. What changes with the 5C is that the middle tier is suddenly more appealing, and has a brand of its own that Apple can promote apart from the flagship 5S.

In marketing, what looks new is new.

Yes, it’s plastic, but there’s nothing cheap about it. It has a far better fit and finish, and feels way better in your hand, than Apple’s previous foray into plastic iPhones, the 3G and 3GS. The 5C feels like a premium product.

This move is about establishing the iPhone as a two-sibling family, like how the MacBooks have both the Airs and the Pros. Think of the 5C as the Air, and the 5S as the Pro. Or iMac and Mac Pro. The iPhone is growing up as a product family.

This is the first year when last year’s specs remain good enough to serve as the mass market new iPhone. Take a look at apple.com today and note which new iPhone appears first: the 5C, not the 5S. Which phone did they show a commercial for during the event? The 5C. Part of this too is that the 5C is going to be available in greater numbers sooner. Apple is taking pre-orders for the 5C but not the 5S because, I have reason to believe, they expect the 5S to be in constrained supply. That’s not surprising — plastic is easier to manufacture than aluminum, and the 5C’s components are all a year old. And it makes sense to promote the phone that you can actually fulfill demand for.

Schiller repeated, almost mantra-like, that the 5S was Apple’s “most forward-thinking iPhone”. In his wrap-up, Tim Cook echoed that line. This isn’t about downplaying the 5S, but rather, I think, about establishing the 5S as the top tier in what is now a two-tier lineup. The Lexus to the 5C’s Toyota; the Banana Republic to the 5C’s Gap. (The 4S is Old Navy.) Soon enough, all iOS devices will have 64-bit CPUs, motion-tracking sub-systems, fingerprint sensors, and point-and-shoot caliber cameras. But you get those things first in the iPhone 5S.

Some other thoughts and hands-on experiences from today’s event:

iPhone 5C

The default wallpapers, color coordinated to match the device’s hardware, make for a neat effect. iOS 7’s home screen parallax effect seems designed for this — it’s like a software version of the old see-through iMac hardware, as though your home and lock screens let you see through to the back of the device. (All the wallpapers are available to all iOS 7 users. Interesting that Apple chose not to default to the dynamic/animated ones, but there are color coordinated versions of those too.)

As stated above, the 5C hardware feels solid. And the hardware colors are exactly in line with the new color palette of iOS 7. Looks like an iPod-style “fun” design, way less serious than the 5S or any previous iPhone. I think iOS 7 looks great on the iPhone 5 and 5S, but it looks perfect on the 5C.

One interesting note: the 5C and 5S have a price overlap at $199. At that price, you can get either a 32 GB 5C or a 16 GB 5S. For those who don’t care about technical specs, I think the $199 5C is going to win.

iPhone 5S

Apple’s pitch on the 5S is remarkably simple.

First, it’s faster (seemingly way faster, far faster than the mere “S” tacked onto the end of its name would imply). They’re calling it “desktop caliber” performance, and I don’t think they’re exaggerating. Now that they’ve gone 64-bit, I’ve got to start wondering about ARM-based MacBooks in the near future.

Next, it has an intriguing “motion coprocessor”, which I think pretty much means you can use your 5S as a fitness tracker with almost no effect on your battery life. Fitness apps don’t need to be running in the background — instead, the M7 tracks your motion and the apps can read the logged data when you launch them. That’s huge — and perhaps bad news for dedicated fitness tracking hardware like Fitbit.

The camera is seriously upgraded. The slow-motion video mode is simple and fun, and the burst mode for stills is terrific. When you take a burst batch, after you pick which one (or ones) you want to keep, you can delete the remainder of the burst batch in one action. So you can take 30 photos in a three-second burst, pick two, and delete the other 28 all at once. Seems perfect. With no hyperbole, I think Apple is gunning to obviate the point-and-shoot camera industry. They’re on the short end of the stick when it comes to optics — the iPhone camera is small, and size (lens, length, sensor) matters in photography. But they’re working wonders on that end, and when it comes to software, I don’t see how traditional camera companies like Canon, Nikon, and Fuji can compete.

Lastly, there’s the Touch ID sensor. It’s fairly quick to train, and once trained, it is really fast, and in my brief hands-on testing, very accurate. The optimal way to use it to unlock your phone seems to be to tap the home button once to wake the phone, and then just keep your thumb or finger on the button for just another moment. Boom, unlocked. It’s very impressive technology. I already feel silly tapping in my passcode to unlock my iPhone.

When it comes to colors, the silver model seemed more or less unchanged from last year’s silver 5. The black one, which Apple is calling “space gray”, definitely has a different anodized color. It’s lighter and more metallic looking. I like it, and I think it will age better when you get wear and tear along the edges.

Then there’s goldie. I can’t say it’s my cup of tea, but it does look good, and not at all cheesy. Maybe a little blingy, but my hunch is that it’s going to prove wildly popular. If one color 5S proves harder to get than the others, it’s going to be the gold one I think.

iPods and iPads

No news at all is the only news regarding iPods. Apple has never held a “music event” without at least some new iPod models, but this year, nothing. Maybe next month, alongside new iPads — or maybe they’re going to stick with last year’s lineup for another year. I’m not sure what to expect.

If they’re holding new iPods until next month, my guess it’s because they wanted the iPhone 5C to be the only “available in an array of five bright colors” product in the spotlight today.

Speaking of next month, last year Apple held events on September 11 (iPhone 5, iPods) and October 23 (iPads). I feel pretty sure I’ll be flying back out next month.




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Find: Apple's iPhone 5S — fingerprint scanner, 64-bit cpu, 120 hz camera

Nothing earth shattering here. The earth moves only when apple creates a new category. Watches or tvs anyone?

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 // published on Ars Technica // visit site

Apple unveils 64-bit iPhone 5S with fingerprint scanner, $199 for 16GB

As expected, Apple has taken the wraps off of its latest flagship smartphone at its Cupertino media event today. The new iPhone 5S is an upgrade in the vein of the previous iPhone 3GS and iPhone 4S—it is outwardly similar to last year's iPhone 5, but it includes a few key upgrades to keep the design going for another year.

The 5S still has a four-inch 1136×640 display and a Lightning connector, and it retains the iPhone 5's taller and slimmer profile relative to older models like the iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S. However, it includes a new 64-bit "desktop-class" system-on-a-chip (SoC) dubbed the A7 that boosts CPU and GPU performance over the A6 in the iPhone 5.

The chip has twice the general-purpose and floating point registers of its predecessor and is up to twice as fast at performing CPU tasks. The phone supports OpenGL ES 3.0, and Apple claims that the graphics performance in the 5S is 56 times better than in the original iPhone released six years ago.

Read 12 remaining paragraphs



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Find: what mobile phones remove human experience #finds #mobiles #social #videos

How can we put it back? 

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// published on NYT Bits // visit site

Disruptions: More Connected, Yet More Alone

A YouTube video about pervasive smartphone use may have landed at a moment when people start questioning if something has gone too far and start doing something about it.

Find: How did things get so bad for BlackBerry? Here's the full story

Excellent history. 


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// published on The Verge - All Posts // visit site

How did things get so bad for BlackBerry? Here's the full story