Why the Android-powered Nokia X is great for Microsoft

There are few better ways to prove your impartiality than by letting marquee partner Nokia run a rival platform.

The new Nokia X.

You would think Nokia's first Android smartphone would make for the start of a tense relationship with soon-to-be parent Microsoft.

Well, you'd be wrong.

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Say the magic words to wake the next generation of voice-controlled devices

A new generation of audio and motion-sensing technology based on the human ear is always listening out for your voice.

In a world of smart watches, fitness trackers and other devices that don't lend themselves to keyboards or touch screens, a new generation of audio and motion technology based on the human ear could see you telling your phone what to do by waving it in the air, tapping on the table, or saying the magic words.

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Samsung Galaxy S5 to be unveiled today

Samsung Electronics will unveil its highly-anticipated Galaxy S5 at the event scheduled at the Mobile World Congress on Monday in Barcelona.

The Galaxy S5 is variously rumoured to have a fingerprint scanner on the home button; a 5.24-inch, full high-definition display; a water and dust-proof case, possibly metallic, and a 16 megapixel camera. 

Samsung has already sent out invitations for "Samsung unPacked 5" event on February 24 at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain.

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Samsung breaks from Android with redesigned, Tizen-powered Gear 2 smartwatches

Korean electronics giant Samsung on Saturday unveiled the second generation of its Gear smartwatch line, updating the wrist-worn device's industrial design and moving from Google's Android to the Samsung-backed Tizen operating system.

Samsung made the Gear 2 slightly thinner than its predecessor and relocated its camera from the strap to the watch's main body, giving users the option of changing straps. A second model, the Galaxy Gear Neo, is mostly identical but does not feature a camera.

In addition, the Gear 2 and Gear 2 Neo add built-in heart rate sensors alongside a pedometer, features Apple is rumored to include in its so-called "iWatch." Samsung promises real-time feedback "allowing users to develop a customizable fitness routine and monitor their heart rate in order to improve their overall well-being."

Both Samsung wearables sport 1.63-inch Super AMOLED displays and are powered by 1-gigahertz dual-core processors with 512 megabytes of RAM and 4 gigabytes of internal memory. Battery life from the 300 mAh lithium ion battery is said to be 2 to 3 days.

There is no word on why Samsung chose to eschew Android, though there have been reports that relations between Google and its largest OEM partners are strained. Along with the change to Tizen — the development of which is guided jointly by Samsung and Intel — Samsung has added several first-party applications including a standalone music player and television remote control.

As before, the Gear line will only connect to Samsung's own handsets. The company said they are "compatible with more than dozens of Samsung Galaxy smartphones at launch."

Samsung indicated that the Gear 2 and Gear 2 Neo will be available starting in April, though pricing has not yet been revealed. Consumers will be able to purchase the watches in a variety of colors, including Charcoal Black, Gold Brown and Wild Orange for the Gear 2 and Charcoal Black, Mocha Grey and Wild Orange for Gear 2 Neo.

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If You Own an Apple Mobile Device, Upgrade Its Software Now

On Friday night (Feb. 21, 2014), Apple announced a major security flaw in their software for mobile devices. And I do mean major—it left users open to a “man in the middle attack”. That’s pretty bad. If you used an insecure WiFi connection (at a coffeehouse, hotel, or airport, etc.), this flaw could allow someone to interject themselves electronically into transactions you make on your iPhone or iPad, allowing them to access a lot of your information you thought was secure (like, say, credit card numbers).

This flaw has been around a while (and it looks to me like it was due to a cut-and-paste error in some code), but Apple just issued a patch that should fix it. If you use an Apple mobile device, stop what you’re doing right now and upgrade to the new version of the mobile OS—ZDNet has a good article with details.

It’s easy to do the upgrade (though your kilometerage may vary). All I had to do was plug my device into my computer, open iTunes, click the button for the device I just plugged in, and then looked for the button that says, “Check for update”. Click, and away I went. In your case, it may pop up an alert kickstarting this first when you plug the device in. Another way is to do it on the mobile device itself: Go to Settings, then General, then Software Update. It'll help you from there.

 Nerdrage inception.

Photo by Phil Plait, used by permission

Of course, it wasn’t that simple for me.

Now having said that, I had some trouble upgrading. I have an iMac that’s up-to-date, an iPhone 4S, and an iPad 2. The iPhone upgraded just fine, and it took about 15-20 minutes.

The iPad upgrade, though, was something of a disaster. The device disconnected itself in the middle of the upgrade for some reason (I really don’t know why; I had it sitting off by itself on the corner of my desk; all I can think of is the cable got bumped). Interrupting the process is never good, and in this case it totallyfreaked out my iPad. I lost everything on it and it wouldn’t even show me my home screen!

Being an alpha geek, though, I had a complete backup stored on my computer, so I didn’t panic. I disconnected the iPad, reconnected it, and then reset it to the factory settings (which is just a button on the iTunes screen when you plug the iPad into your computer). I then simply restored it from the backup…

… which didn’t work. Oh, all my apps came back, but the only music that showed up in my Music app were a handful of albums I recently bought through iTunes. Last year I spent a dreadful weekend importing all my old CDs into iTunes, and those were gone off the iPad. Weirdly, they were still in iTunes on my Mac; they just wouldn’t sync with the iPad.

Then I noticed my videos were gone as well; I have a few I made on my iPhone and camera that I’d moved over to my iPad, and they simply weren’t there (though again, they were in iTunes, and marked specifically to be synched). Nothing I did would sync them back!

I poked around a bit, and saw that in the Music tab for my iPad on iTunes, my Playlists were checked to be synched, but the other lists (Artists, Albums, etc.) were not. Curious. I checked all the boxes listed under Artists, and resynched the iPad to see if at least they would get moved over.

Voilà! All the music showed up (including the other lists). Not only that, all my videos did too. They were not there before, and then they were. I have no clue why, so I assume it was gnomes (who will, no doubt,jump right to Step 3).

I’ll note that I’ve been using computers a long, long time (the first machine I ever used was a PDP 11 in case you’re tempted to get into a “well I started off using a blah blah blah” war with me), and stuff like this makes me fairly irritated. The original OS error looks like an honest if terrible mistake, and I’m sure some coder at Apple is having their head handed to them right now over this. But it’s when I try to use my stuff as a human being that I can feel my blood pressure rise. Windows, Mac, it doesn’t matter; the interface between human and computer seems to be getting more difficult, not easier. And I’m not pleased I had to spend hours diagnosing this when I have better stuff to do, like write about anti-science and politics and generally things less irritating than computer nerdery.

I don’t know if my iPad upgrade problem is common or not, though one colleague at Slate also had the same thing happen (and he has an iPad 4). I’d hate to be an Apple genius right now; the phone calls will be flooding in, I’d wager.

As it happens, my iPad is getting pretty long in the tooth, and it’s time for me to replace it. I was leaning toward getting the shiniest new iPad (I do like much of the way it works) but this has given me pause. I guess I’ll be hitting teh Interwebs and looking at reviews of what’s out there.

Thus endeth my tale of iWoe. I certainly hope things go more smoothly for you, BABloggees. And as a final note: Whether you use Apple, Windows, or what-have-you, I do suggest getting yourself a VPN. I’m not sure it would’ve helped in this case, but I find it very useful indeed when I travel. Obviously, computer security is a major issue. Our privacy online is getting eroded away, and having beefed up security is simply A Good Idea.

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