Gadget Blog

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It’s here: the most anticipated smartphone of the year. However, since the hype machine for the Samsung Galaxy S4 first revved its engine, we’ve seen new Android upstarts – the HTC One and Sony Xperia Z. Can the S4’s innovations help it wrestle back its crown? Time to find out…

The design, for a start, is a very gentle upgrade to last year’s Galaxy S3. If you felt the S3 looked too plasticky, you’re unlikely to be impressed, but with straighter lines and a subtle texturing effect beneath the glossy plastic, it’s not a bad looking phone. It’s the same height and 0.7mm thinner than the S3.

Despite that, there’s a bigger screen – it’s five inches instead of last year’s 4.8 inches – and it
now boasts a full-HD resolution.

Thanks to Samsung’s skill with Super AMOLED technology, the screen delivers rich, vivid, bright colours – those colours don’t look as over-saturated as they can on some other Samsung screens, either. In fact, this is
one of the best phone screens yet. The HTC One’s screen is marginally sharper, but that’s because it’s packing the same number of pixels into a smaller space.Many smartphones, especially high-end ones, prefer sealed battery units - you can squeeze in more power when you’re not wasting space on the cases removable batteries need – but not the Galaxy S4. It’s stuck with a removable back, meaning the phone creaks when flexed. Yes, you can swap batteries for extended use, but who does that? There’s another benefit to the removable back: you can replace it with an S Cover, which wraps the phone and closes over the screen with a magnet. There’s a window in the front cover, with the screen displaying the time and other important information through the gap.

So far, so safe. It’s the new, innovative features that really make this phone stand out, though. Last year’s
Smart Stay technology, where the front-facing camera monitored your eyeballs and dimmed the screen when you weren’t looking directly at it, has been enhanced. Now, if you’re watching video and your focus strays, Smart Pause stops playback until you look back again, at which point it smoothly restarts. It works splendidly and the same principle is used, in conjunction with the accelerometer, to control scrolling on
web pages – when you reach the bottom of the page, tilting your head prompts the phone to scroll back up for you. This is called Smart Scroll and, though it is more gimmicky and jittery than Smart Pause, it’s still fun to use.It’s all part of a new wave of features that mean you don’t have to touch the touchscreen. Pass your hand near the phone when it’s in standby and the screen gently wakes, shows a speckled background with
motes floating through light, and calculates how many texts, emails or missed calls you have before turning off again. Similarly, if you hover your fingers near an address book contact, more details are revealed, although only in Samsung’s Email app, not the Gmail one. It’s handier than opening individual mails and gives you a six- or seven-line preview of communications.

You can also turn pages by waving your hand over the screen. If you use your phone when cooking, on the beach covered in sun tan lotion or just have an extreme aversion to screen smears, it’s a nice (non) touch. Like some Nokia Lumias, you can also use the S4 with gloves on.

With your hands now free, Samsung wants you to get active. To this end, a builtin pedometer tracks your steps, sending a notification reward when you reach a set goal. It knows whether you’re walking, running or
climbing stairs and there are temperature and humidity sensors. It’s all part of S Health.

There’s also S Voice – Samsung’s slower sister to Siri – and S Translator where you speak a phrase at the phone to hear it parroted back in another language. A good data connection is needed for this and clear diction helps, too. The S4’s 13-meg camera delivers strong shots and is easy to use, although it has
familiar struggles shooting in low light – of its smartphone rivals, only the HTC One, with its “fewer-but-better pixels” strategy, really thrives in low light. Again, there are features galore, including the ability to shoot with the front and rear cameras simultaneously, squeezing a tiny headshot into your panoramic vistas. You can also add a short audio clip to photos, or cluster a burst of action shots in one picture.The 1.9GHz Qualcomm quadcore chip manfully handles anything you throw at it, never slowing down or hesitating, no matter how many programs you have running at once. It’s efficient, too. The battery keeps going for the whole day with ease. As with all heavily used smartphones, though, a nightly recharge is essential. The Android Jelly Bean OS again helps with smooth running.

Samsung claims a choice of 16GB, 32GB or 64GB storage, but only 16GB is currently available in the UK – not much for £600. Connectivity is up there with the best, including 4G – ready for action on any of theupcoming 4G networks – plus NFC, Bluetooth and an IR sensor, which means you can use
the S4 as a universal telly remote.So, is this the best Android smartphone yet? Its combination of power and innovation certainly puts it amongst the Android elite, but for our money it falls just short of the HTC
One, while its camera is bested by the Xperia Z, which also boasts waterproofing.

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THEN A LICENCE TO PRINT MONEY?
“A revolutionary electronic currency is shaking the global money tree. It began as a toy for geeks but is now making millions for investors – and criminals.



NOW STUCK IN A BOOM AND BUST CYCLE

Although we’re no nearer to finding out the identity of the enigmatic “Satoshi Nakamoto”, the mysterious inventor/s of Bitcoin, its value has continued to rise.

And fall. And rise. If you’d bought just one Bitcoin back when T3 looked into it in December 2011, it would have set you back $15 (about £10). In April 2013, it was worth an incredible $260 (£170). In May 2013, however, it was down to $144 (£93) The e-currency has climbed to heights not imagined by financial forecasters, outperforming market expectations but, woah boy, is it unpredictable.

One of the main reasons for this virtual currency hitting headlines is the failure of traditional ones. The recent financial meltdown in Cyprus sparked fears that high-earning, domestic bank accounts would be raided. In Cyprus – and in Spain, which potentially faces similar problems – punters began trading Euros for Bitcoins.

This panic buying inflated the currency’s value, creating a classic bubble suddenly there were plenty of Bitcoin buyers, but little availability.

Of the 11 million Bitcoins currently in circulation – 10 million shy of the total number there will ever be, due to the mathematically created currency’s self-limiting nature – more than three-quarters are stockpiled by investors, with

the most high-profile hoarders being Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss, Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook foes,
who hold one per cent of the global supply.

A study by Israel’s Weizmann Institute of Science found that 78 per cent of Bitcoins are being kept under 
a virtual mattress, taken out of circulation as investors hold on to them rather than exchange them for services.

According to the currency’s online transaction log, the only place that Bitcoins are being spent in any great
number is on the gambling site SatoshiDICE. 

This void in availability has encouraged a surge in cyber crime as hackers target private investors and the
online exchange Mt. Gox, which handles much of the worldwide Bitcoin trade. The Tokyo-based platform 
was hit by a cyber attack in April 2013, with hackers seemingly bent on encouraging “panic selling”, so they
could buy up cheap Bitcoins before waiting for the currency to recover and cashing out. 

This would almost certainly have worked, because Bitcoin was suddenly earning mainstream media column
inches, attracting a flood of new investors. However, bent investors would have needed to cash in their chips
promptly as this new-found popularity sparked a market crash in April – the second in the currency’s four-year history – and its value on Mt. Gox plunged 70 per cent. “The rather astonishing amount of new accounts opened in the last few days made a huge impact on the overall system that started to lag,” read a Mt. Gox statement. “As expected in such situations, people started to panic, selling Bitcoin en masse, resulting in an increase of trade that ultimately froze the trade engine.” The computer glitches provoked frenzied selling that forced values to plunge. However, Bitcoin rallied and at the end of the most eventful week in its life stabilised at around $100 per unit – still six times its 2011 worth.

As long as the currency remains difficult to spend, it will continue to follow a boom and bust cycle. In one
attempt to get the currency moving, media entrepreneur Jeff Berwick plans to install Bitcoin ATMs in Los Angeles and Cyprus, where there is still serious distrust of government-backed money. The new holes in the wall wi convert your cash into Bitcoins, stored in a virtual wallet.

Yet it is a currency that remains exciting because it is not controlled by any government. Former Facebook exe Chamath Palihapitiya has described it as “Gold 2.0… a huge, huge, huge deal”. For the same reasons, Nicolas Pottier, CEO of Nyaruka – a company that focuses on bringing software expertise to developing nations – sees it helping developing-world businesses thrive.
Bitcoin may still have a way to go before it makes an impact on the established stock exchanges, but it’s
certainly no longer just funny money for the geeks.

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NOW PREMIER LEAGUE AND INTERNATIONAL FOOTIE GETS TECHY

Once again, Germany has come out on top after a dispute over the goal line. This time it wasn’t a disallowed goal by England’s Frank Lampard that helped the Germans limp to a 4-1 win, but a decision by FIFA. Hawk-Eye, the British company bidding to provide goal-line tech for football’s big matches, has lost out to German challenger GoalControl4D.

The fight to be the official goal-line tech provider began in February 2013, when all four companies involved made presentations to international football’s governing body and demonstrated their systems at some of the
Brazilian World Cup stadiums. Reps saw how GoalRef and CAIROS used magnetic fields around the goal line and a chip inside the ball to determine whether it had crossed the line, while GoalControl and Hawk-Eye both used multiple cameras and 3D imaging to plot the location of it at any given moment.

Despite only receiving a licence to tender a month before the final rounds of testing, GoalControl was the winner, impressing FIFA with its tech, which employs seven high-speed cameras per goal-line.

The German system will now be trialled  at the Confederation’s Cup in Brazil in June, before getting the final stamp of approval. Hawk-Eye, meanwhile, is already used at Wimbledon and in cricket test matches,  and has now been selected by the English Premier League for the 2013-14 season.

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Colourful, well connected and able to form a wireless multi-room set-up: the Pure Jongo S3 is more than just a bizarre name.

With both Bluetooth and Wi-Fi connectivity, the Jongo S3 has the flexibility to play content from just about anywhere. Streaming over Wi-Fi, via the Pure Connect app for iOS, with Android compatibility “coming soon” – see bottom left – allows you to control multiple Jongos, creating an ad-hoc, multi-room setup.
Setup is fiddly over Wi-Fi, requiring you to enter a lengthy URL into your mobile browser before navigating the Setup Manager.

Connecting via Bluetooth and the bundled USB dongle is much simpler.

The five-speaker battery packed into the Jongo’s miniature casing delivers a solid sound that punches effectively at volume and beats the majority of similarly-priced Bluetooth speakers, although it can’t
compete with something like Sonos’ Play: 3 or B&W’s Z2, reviewed on p120. The choice of four audio configurations, including an “Outdoor Boost” one for garden parties – see p78 – adds a bit of versatility. More importantly, the battery life is good enough to ensure the party won’t end abruptly.

Jongo may not offer seamless setup, nor audiophile-grade sonics, but costing nearly  152,53 USD less than a Sonos Play: 3 it is a sound option for those wanting wireless tunes, plus multi-room, without breaking the bank.

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The best-looking lawn tamer to date takes the effort out of fighting summer’s turf war

The Honda Miimo HRM500 is visibly – and audibly – influenced by its ASIMO robot, and should be let loose on your greensward a couple of times a week, cutting little but often.Using a fan to suck the grass towards its flexible steel blades, it doesn’t so much mow the grass as shave it, producing 2mm-3mm grass cuttings that don’t need to be raked or collected, just allowed to mulch back into the soil. It moves quietly, in a random pattern – so as not to plough furrows into your lawn – returning obediently to its charging base when juice runs low while you get on with setting up the barbecue – see next page… 3,4276 USD honda.co.uk/garden.

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Lobster tennis ball machines are widely used by tennis pros and facilities around the world to  “groove their ground game” and what have you. Its Phenom 2 is as close as you’ll find to an  automated tennis coach (that resembles a large, red bucket). It can recreate anything from  ponderous, time-defying moonballs to fizzing passing shots, and is programmed with drills to  simulate every type of opponent, from “power baseliner” to “the grinder”. As a final tech flourish,  built-in Wi-Fi means you can control your robot coach with your Android or iOS device,  though presumably not while it’s powering the ball at you at 80mph. £3,995, apolloleisure.co.uk

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Would you apply for a reality show handing out one-way tickets to the  little red planet? Maybe not, but  you’d probably watch…

We’ve seen reality TV give people the chance to eat live bugs, score a record deal, re-animate a dead career and pretend to be a cat. But now, thanks to the Dutch, reality TV is going to select two would-be space colonists from a crowd of hopefuls and fire them at Mars.

Mars One is a not-for-profit organisation  that’s devised one of the most ethically  questionable media events ever conceived.

By crowd-sourcing colonists in a Britain’s Got Talent-style show it will generate the interest  and funding needed to establish the first  permanent settlement on Mars by the year  2023. At the time of writing, 30,000 people  have paid the necessary $30 to be considered  for the first two available spacesuits.

Unmanned drones will be sent up to build the beginnings of a home in the years  before the manned mission. After that, the  competition winners will just have to hop in a  space capsule and arrive at the pre-fab, droid- made Big Brother space house. Sounds easy,  but there’s a catch: they’ll never return.

Not only would it be far too complicated to  re-launch a return mission from the surface  of Mars, but after a few years in the planet’s  reduced gravity, the colonists’ bodies will  have irrevocably changed.

 “The human body will have adjusted to  the 38 per cent gravitation field of Mars, and  be incapable of returning to the Earth’s much  stronger gravity,” Mars One’s website warns.

“This is due to the total physiological change  in the human body, which includes reduction  in bone density, muscle strength and  circulatory system capacity.” Even Ant and

Dec announcing that in their cheery, Geordie  accents won’t make it any less terrifying.   Pete writes for LS:N Global, the news network  for tech trend agency The Future Laboratory.  Read more about space tourist on p96

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People wasting hundreds on “free” games may be funny but should it  really be allowed to happen? It’s  consumerism gone literally mad…

Once in a while, a news story comes  along that perfectly captures the  zeitgeist. This month’s involved a  rather miserable-looking, tattooed man in a  Rab C Nesbitt vest, holding a wildly cheery- looking, Rastafarian banana.

As you probably read, Henry Gribbohm  of New Hampshire, USA – though let’s not  kid ourselves that this couldn’t happen in  Hampshire, UK – won this slightly sinister,  dreadlocked fruit after burning his entire  life savings of about two grand, attempting  to win on a fairground game. The game?

Something to do with chucking a small ball  in an evidently not-much-bigger box. The  top prize? A Kinect… Worth about £100.  Inevitably, the response to this was  the kind of exaggeratedly straight-faced  reporting that newspapers ONLY employ  when conveying a story they know to be  piss-your-pants funny. Nobody penned any  thunderous editorials calling for the banning  of fairgrounds. No blogger demanded the  fairground folk be forced to pay the hapless  mister Gribbohm back his life savings. 

That’s odd, because apart from the  Jah-worshipping, curved, yellow chap,  this story was, in essence, exactly the  same as the flurry of reports over previous  months on in-app purchases. Someone got  momentarily, insanely hooked on a game, became determined to “complete” it, and  spent a ludicrous amount of cash doing so.

That’s why, to my mind, this is THE most  thought-provoking story involving a ganja- liking plantain and a fat man in a vest that I  have ever read. Now sure, as smart people,  we can all have a good laugh at dumbos  wasting vast sums of dosh. Many will take  the view that adults should be allowed to  spend their money on whatever they like; in  fact that this story is different to the in-app purchase stories because it involves an adult and not a child using their mum’s credit card

However, despite being generally opposed to nanny-state meddling, I’ve got to admit I  take a different view on “freemium” games,  and it’s this: they are a disgrace. Like payday loans at 3,000% APR they’re designed  specifically to exploit vulnerable people  whilst pretending to empower them; the  fact they’re allowed to be sold at supposedly reputable app stores beggars belief.

Games can put people in an altered state  where their judgement is flawed. Having a  mechanism to extract repeated payments  from players that can eventually total large  amounts is pure, spivvy exploitation. Yes, th people who suffer most are generally stupid but what are governments and bodies such  as the OFT for, if not to protect stupid peopl from themselves? In-app purchases that  make it possible to spend more than, say,  £20 during the entire time you own a game  shouldn’t be allowed. It’s bananas. Duncan hosts the T3 Podcasts every Friday

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Want to get cage-fighter ripped? Reigning UFC champ Georges St-Pierre has an app for that…

As routes to well-being go, being fit enough to defend yourself from  facial pounding whilst locked  in a cage isn’t bad. So it follows a bloke  who’s won multiple cage fights is a good  fitness role model. Canadian beefcake Georges St-Pierre is the mixed martial-arts welterweight world champ, and this  smart app channels his plyometric- and  gymnastics-fuelled success into a rounded  workout for you, sir.

It does a pretty good job, too, with 500  video exercises, plus input from trainer Patrick Beauchamp and nutrition coach Dr John Berardi, covering everything from  supplements to stock up on to recovery routines, with the app responding to   real-time user feedback and “tailoring each  individual workout to your current level   of fitness,” as St-Pierre explains it.

While this will reap major rewards for  serious gym bunnies with an unwavering  focus on rock-hard legs and core, there’s also plenty here for the casual user. For one, the  exercises mostly require minimal equipment, so you won’t need to buy an entire home  gym to feel the burn. We suggest you leave  actual cage fighting to the pros, though.

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Troubling examination of the hunt for Bin Laden is somewhat more enjoyable than being waterboarded

In the post-Homeland world, Kathryn Bigelow’s Oscar-winning  War-on-Terror treatise suffers somewhat from being rooted in  that boring old place, reality. As ultra-motivated yet conflicted  Carrie, sorry Maya (Jessica Chastain), searches desperately for  terror leader Abu Nazir, sorry Osama Bin Laden, the excitement  is reduced by the fact we know perfectly well how this story pans  out: a raid, a brief shootout and the cold corpse of a dangerous man  being “buried at sea”. Along the way, there’s a lot of “enhanced  interrogation” (torturing people), but ZDT is nowhere near deep  enough a film to make that feel like anything more than an incidentaldetail. However, as always with Bigelow, the action scenes and the  everyday details of people doing extraordinary jobs, from Navy  SEALs to CIA interrogators, do ring absolutely true.  

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Make Something Unreal Live, the international student game-making competition organised by Gears of  War maker Epic Games, has been won by  Sweden’s Dead Shark Triplepunch.

The fantastically titled team from the  Blekinge Institute of Technology nabbed the  top prize of commercial Unreal Engine 3   and 4 development licenses for its unique  sports game Epigenesis (pictured above),  which is now set for a full release.

Based on the competition’s theme  of Mendelian genetics, the five-on-five,  multiplayer-only game is a mix of first-person shooting, 3D platforming and basketball that  has you marking your territory literally by  growing strategic defensive or offensive flora.

The live final, in which the Swedes saw off Staffordshire University’s Kairos Games, Bournemouth’s Static Games and  the University of Abertay’s Team Summit,  extended over the week of Gadget Show Live  at Birmingham’s NEC, with the teams taking  on feedback from the public and mentors  including Ninja Theory, Climax Studios,  Lucid Games and Splash Damage.

Games industry gurus such as Sensible  stalwart Jon Hare, Grand Theft Auto creator  Dave Jones and Sports Interactive’s Miles  Jacobson also aided the teams’ development.

The judging panel included Populous and  Theme Park creator Peter Molyneux, Epic Games’ Mike Gamble, The Wellcome Trust’s Iain Dodgeon, UKIE CEO Jo Twist, Nvidia’s Phil Wright and T3 deputy editor Matt Hill.

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Up, up and away in our beautiful, crowd-funded flying machine…

EVER DREAMED OF OWNING YOUR  own  Jetsons-style, one-chap ’copter? Well,   you fanciful devil, you may be in luck  if this IndieGoGo-funded concept gets   off the ground.

It’s called the PSH-M1. That we know.
The rest of the details are sketchy as the  Netherlands-based design team iron out a few thornier details. So far they’ve vowed  that it will run entirely on electricity and  be capable of an hour’s flight at a speed of 178mph – so you won’t be crossing the  Atlantic in it, but it will make for a flash arrival in the Morrison’s car park.

Operated by joysticks, it’ll have a heads- up display to paint relevant info – speed,  altitude, etc – onto the windscreen, while  sensors placed around the craft will warn  you if you’re veering near obstructions  such as buildings, powerlines or childrens’  soft heads. Operation of functions such  as cruise control via an iPad is also on the  cards – what could go wrong with that?

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Tablet or laptop? Lablet? Taptop? Quit  your arguing, guys: this Windows 8 Pro Toshiba is the latest hybrid device offering a bit of both. Rip the detachable, full-HD,  11.6-inch touchscreen tablet from the  splash-resistant keyboard dock and input  switches from backlit keys to ten-finger  multi-touch accordingly. An Intel Core  processor – precise model unconfirmed  as yet – two USB slots, HDMI and an SD  card reader all feature, while a solid- state drive keeps moving parts to a  minimum and the thickness to just  19.9mm. Sexy it ain’t, but the Z10t  does feel reassuringly businesslike.

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MICROSOFT’S KINECT MAY ALLOW you to interact physically with games, but the  big M’s latest concept, IllumiRoom, will take  it one step further: making the game interact  with not just you but your walls, coffee table,  furniture, sofa and beyond.

Currently in the early stages of  development, IllumiRoom extends the  game world beyond the confines of your TV  screen, bleeding it into your living space.

First, Kinect’s camera is used to map the dimensions of your lounge, noting the position of furniture and knick knacks. Once it’s cased  and calibrated your gaff, a wide-field projector  goes to work, extending the action around the  room. It’s a little like Philips’ Ambilight tech,  but with some very significant bells on.

Not only does the widened viewing area allow you to spot things creeping up in your  peripheral vision, if you’re walking down the  dank corridors of a tense, first-person shooter,  say, your room will become the corridor,  adding to the feeling of claustrophobia.

You can tinker with what’s projected  too, so rather than extending the action, the  room can be transformed into a grid layout  that moves as you do, or give the impression  of explosions literally sending shock waves  up your walls using lighting effects – what

Microsoft charmingly calls a “radial wobble”.

Selective elements of the game can also  be thrown out into the real world, breaking  the fourth wall. So tracer fire streaks across  the room straight at you as enemies attack, or  radar indicators bleep in the corner of the wall  giving you directional info and turning your lounge into mission control.

It’s even possible for objects to “leave”  the screen and interact with your soft  furnishings. Grenades will bounce out of the  telly, roll across your Ikea rug and come to rest menacingly against your sofa – resisting
the urge to duck and cover may be tough.  

Clearly, this could have applications for  more than gaming; TV and film hope to get in  on the act, with the BBC’s R&D department  already working on its own ‘surround video’  tech. Imagine that lank-haired goth woman  from The Ring actually crawling out of your  tellybox and across your lounge floor towards  you, or David Cronenberg’s surreal perv-o-rama Videodrome spewing its choice brand of  weird all over your living space. Or, you know,  something for the kiddies.

All you need to bring to the party are  reasonably light-coloured walls for effective  image projection, but don’t move your  furniture around without recalibrating.