Most Galaxy Note 7 users in the US have returned their
devices. For those who haven't, Samsung will soon start limiting the
device's charging capabilities.
Samsung on Friday said 85 percent of all recalled Note 7 phones in the US have been replaced
through its refund and exchange program, "with the majority of the
participants opting to receive another Samsung smartphone." The company
didn't immediately provide information about how many phones had been
returned around the world.
For
the remaining holdouts in the US, Samsung said it will release a
software update in the coming days to limit the phone's ability to
charge beyond 60 percent. It also will issue a reminder pop-up
notification every time a consumer charges, reboots or turns on the
screen of their Note 7 device.
"We remain focused on
collecting the outstanding Galaxy Note 7 phones in the market," the
company said in a statement on its website.
Even though people have been warned to stop using their phones, some super fans have continued to hold on to their Note 7 devices.
Along with issuing the charging limitation software in other markets,
Samsung has taken more drastic measures to get people to turn in their
devices. Earlier Friday, the company said it had teamed up with carriers
in New Zealand to cut off access to wireless networks for customers still using their Note 7 devices.
Samsung aims to entice Note 7 owners, and iPhone 7 Plus gets an upgrade
Samsung hasn't yet gone that far in the US or other major markets.
The
Note 7, which hit the market in mid-August, was expected to solidify
Samsung's lead in the mobile market after a strong showing with its
Galaxy S7. The company had just begun to regain its swagger after
stumbling the previous year with lackluster products.
Then came the battery problems, which caused some units to overheat and catch fire. Samsung issued a global recall
of the popular device in September. But then some replacement units
started having the same problem. That caused Samsung to issue a second recall in mid-October and permanently stop production of the device. It's offering Note 7 owners $100 to exchange the device for another Samsung phone.
Samsung has said the Note 7 recall will cost it more than $5 billion over the next few quarters. The company on Friday also issued a recall for 2.8 million washing machines
due to injury risk. The two fiascos have raised questions about
Samsung's quality and assurance testing and have dealt a blow to its
reputation.
My colleague Vanessa Hand Orellana and I spent hours chasing pigeons, children, dogs and sunsets to put the two cameras to the test. The Pixel XL had its moments, but on the whole, we agreed the iPhone 7 Plus captured better video.
Its biggest advantages were color, image stabilization, sharpness, contrast, low-light shooting and zoom, unsurprisingly given its second camera.
The Pixel XL, which offers the identical cameras and image processing as the Pixel, did lead the iPhone 7 Plus in some areas, though. Its autofocus was faster, and it sometimes kept a nice exposure when the iPhone went overboard with brightness. Google's phone handily beat the iPhone 7 Plus when it came to slow-motion video with sharper imagery, too.
When Apple debuted the first iPhone in 2007, it couldn't shoot video at all. That's unthinkable today even for a low-end phone. Good mobile video is crucial in the era of YouTube, Facebook and Snapchat. Even if you're not into sharing, video is key to chronicling our lives. So it behooves you to pay attention to video quality.
Don't consider this a final judgment. Much of Google's approach to photography and videography involves extensive image processing, including its excellent HDR+ technology used for photos. There's no HDR+ for video, but Google still could offer camera app software updates to address some Pixel shortcomings.
Here's a look at some of the details of our tests.
Image stabilization
The two phones take a very different approach to image stabilization, a critical aspect of video quality. The iPhone 7 Plus uses an optical approach that physically moves lens elements to counteract the camera motion caused by shaky hands or movement when you're walking. The Pixel XL uses digital stabilization, which uses motion sensors and image data to try to mathematically compensate for camera movement.
Each has its advantages when it comes to camera size, component costs and other factors, but we found the iPhone's approach generally resulted in a smoother, more human feel. The Pixel XL would try hard to stabilize a shot, but when it figured out you really had pointed the camera in a new direction, there would be an abrupt stop-and-start shift to the new perspective. This made video jerky. The iPhone wasn't as good at compensating for the bobbing perspective you'll often see in videos shot while walking, but it still looked more natural.
And likely because the Pixel XL relies on its processor for stabilization, it struggled when shooting video at 60 frames per second -- double the rate of ordinary 1080p video and thus double the number of pixels to process -- or when shooting higher-resolution 4K video at 30 frames per second.
iPhone 7 Plus videos at times were overexposed, a problem I've found in iPhone photos, too, where foreheads and cheeks in the sun are glaring white, orange or yellow. In dim conditions, details in shadowy areas often disappeared into the murk. The Pixel XL handled exposure better overall, though I preferred the iPhone 7 Plus with sunrises and sunsets that are a challenge for any camera today.
The Pixel XL gets a big demerit in one area of exposure, though. When I shot while walking, sometimes the exposure would pulse darker with each footfall. This happened in several videos.
Color
The iPhone generally selected more pleasing, warm tones. In good lighting conditions both cameras were reasonable, but I found the iPhone 7 Plus colors to be vibrant while still natural -- perhaps a result of the wider P3 color gamut it uses compared to the Pixel XL's more limited sRGB range of colors.
Sometimes skin tones with the Pixel XL video had a yellowish cast. I think of this as the "putty effect." Under warm-hued indoor light, the Pixel XL showed people as too orange. It could switch color settings rapidly, too, in one case switching back and forth distractingly between an orange and blue tint.
Sharpness
Here the iPhone won, perhaps a result of its six-element lens design or better image processing technology that creates the video from the raw image-sensor data. The Pixel XL was usually adequate, but with videos of subjects like city skylines and nature landscapes, the edges on the iPhone were crisp without appearing over sharpened.
The Pixel XL was sharper taking slow-motion video, though. We shot at 240 frames per second, a speedup factor of 8 compared to regular video. Both the Pixel XL and iPhone 7 Plus can only shoot at 720p resolution, which is fine but not as sharp as full high-definition video at 1080p.
Of course, if you want to zoom, the iPhone 7 Plus has dual cameras -- 28mm and 56mm equivalent focal lengths -- and the 2X setup is much better for portraits, kids who aren't in front of you, concerts and many other situations with distant subjects. But there's a big caveat: there's no optical image stabilization for the 56mm camera. Because of that, and a lens that doesn't let in as much light, the iPhone 7 Plus uses the wider-angle camera in dim conditions, making it just like a plain old single-camera iPhone 7.
Lens flare
Both cameras suffered from lens flare, the streaked and washed-out areas that result from shooting toward the sun or other bright light sources. The Pixel XL sometimes would produce a ring around the sun even when the sun was outside the frame -- the Pixel XL "halo effect" that Google hopes to easewith better processing at least in photos. The iPhone 7 Plus would wash out details nearer the sun and add a green ghost image of the sun diametrically across the frame from the sun. I was disappointed in both cameras, frankly, but the edge goes to the Pixel XL for better contrast and less haze when shooting directly toward the sun.
Autofocus
I enjoyed the Pixel XL's snappy autofocus, especially its ability to lock in more quickly on close-up subjects. It also did better locking focus during slo-mo shooting, where you're more likely to notice a longer wait.
Low-light conditions
I had high hopes for the Pixel XL, whose pixels are 60 percent larger than the iPhone 7 Plus' and therefore in principle are better able to shoot in dim conditions where photons are scarce. Instead, the iPhone gave the Pixel XL a drubbing. iPhone video suffered from the transient jittering of noise speckles, but the edges were sharp, and the noise was far less distracting than the Pixel's crude, smeary noise reduction. Both cameras struggled at times to catch focus, a common affliction in the dark. When shooting indoors, the iPhone again showed superior performance, though in smaller rooms, the Pixel XL's wider-angle field of view is a big advantage.
Front camera
The Pixel XL did a nice job exposing faces and keeping focus, but it sometimes struggled with backlit faces, choosing to silhouette me. Sometimes it underexposed even without silhouettes. I liked its sharpness better, but overall the iPhone did a better job with skin tones and showed a more lifelike degree of contrast.
4K video
For this higher-resolution format, the Pixel XL was nicely exposed, but the iPhone 7 Plus outdid it when it comes to sharpness. And why bother shooting 4K video if you're not paying attention to sharpness? Again, the iPhone's optical image stabilization was more natural. On the Pixel XL, I spotted some compression artifacts in even-toned areas, a blue sky and a red ceiling.
Overall, it's an iPhone victory for video. Perhaps we'll see a software update from Google that will help it catch up.
The world's first Tango smartphone - the Lenovo Phab 2 Pro - is now finally available to buy. The smartphone was due to go on sale online in August and hit retail shelves in September, but then got delayed to October and thenNovember, before finally getting a November 1 release date in the recent past. The smartphone is now available to buy via the company's website, priced at $499 (roughly Rs. 33,300).Availability in other markets is not known yet. As per an earlier report citing a company representative, the Phab 2 Pro will be available in those Asia Pacific markets where Lenovo has launched smartphones before - this will include India, Indonesia, the Philippines, Laos, Thailand, Vietnam, Hong Kong, Cambodia, and Myanmar. It is not listed on the India website yet however.
To recall, the Phab 2 Pro is the first Tango smartphone, the first commercial product from Google's Project Tango team that was working on machine vision in mobile devices. The smartphone bears a camera and sensor setup to enable motion tracking, depth perception, and area learning. All this is meant for augmented reality (AR) applications like indoor navigation, search, and gaming.
Lenovo had announced special Tango app store will be ready with 25 apps at launch, with hope to reach 100 apps by year-end. Accompanying the launch of the smartphone, Google in a blog post on Tuesday said over 35 of the apps have gone live on Google Play, where it is also featuring some of them. Phab 2 Pro users can also easily download the Tango app to see all available experiences.
Apps and games include a measurement app called Measure; furniture apps such as Homestyler Interior Design; world builders like Towers for Tango, and games such as Domino World, Crayola Color Blaster, and Slingshot Island.
Tthe Lenovo Phab 2 Pro sports a 6.4-inch QHD IPS display, and a total of four cameras. It bears a 8-megapixel front camera, a 16-megapixel rear RGB camera, a depth-sensing infrared camera with an imager and an emitter, as well as a motion tracking camera. It's powered by an octa-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 652 SoC, coupled with 4GB of RAM. The Phab 2 Pro bears a 4050mAh battery that's promised to deliver a 15-hour battery life. It also sports Dolby Atmos audio technology for its speakers, apart from Dolby Audio 5.1 Capture technology for recording 3D sound.
The Apple Watch does a lot of things, but it didn't have a camera. Now it does, thanks to a new band. Are you ready to start taking wrist-snaps?
Glide, makers of a video chat app for iPhone, just launched CMRA, a new Apple Watch band that has dual cameras built in. Much like Samsung's long-departed Gear watches with cameras onboard, the CMRA will let you take photos and even videos on the fly. The band has an 8MP outer camera and a 2MP selfie cam, along with 8GB of in-band storage for photos and video clips.
CMRA band in all its colors (the sides get thick).
Glide
The band also has its own shutter button for photos.
CMRA promises real-time video chat via the Apple Watch Glide app, plus instant on-watch sharing of photos and videos to Twitter, Facebook, Facebook Live and YouTube. The band syncs content to the iPhone when the Apple Watch is paired.
The CMRA band comes in four colors, and has a rubberized design that looks like a thicker version of Apple's elastomer sport band. It doesn't ship until spring 2017, but the early-order price is $149 instead of $249 later on. The band also comes with a charging dock but you'll need to supply your own Apple Watch charge cable.
I haven't tried one out yet, but it certainly sounds promising. CMRA requires WatchOS 3 and iOS 10 to work.
Apple can’t seem to keep the Chinese market hooked on its products.
The tech giant’s overall retention rates fell to 75% in September compared to 82% during the same period a year earlier, according to a semi-annual survey from UBS. After polling some 6,500 consumers across five countries, UBS found that demand for the iPhone 7 was much lower in China than in the U.S.: Smartphone users who were “very likely” or “somewhat likely” to buy the iPhone 7 fell to 43% from 54% for the 6s and 64% for the 6.
That’s largely because Apple aapl has lost a significant chunk of users in China to domestic brands like Xiaomi and Huawei. As Apple demand wanes, Chinese competitors are stepping up to offer better products, according to the Wall Street Journal.
While UBS projects the company will have a “soft” fiscal year in China in 2017, the firm believes Apple’s brand “remains strong.” As a result, UBS kept a “buy” rating on the company’s stock, predicting iPhone unit growth of 6% in fiscal year 2017 and 16% in fiscal year 2018.
Shares of Apple traded down 2% Tuesday, before remaining largely flat in after hours.
UBS’ survey results come on the heels of Apple’s disappointing fiscal fourth quarter in late October. The tech giant reported its third consecutive quarter of flagging iPhone sales, with revenue down 9% to $46.85 billion. Shares of Apple have fallen 6% since earnings were announced