Windows-Android hybrids: Beauties or beasts?

Since Microsoft first introduced the versatile Tablet PC over a decade ago, the idea of having a device that was effective as both a hand-holdable tablet and a full-on PC has been a siren’s song in tech. In the case of the Tablet PC, it was always a little too clunky, a little too expensive, and a generation behind in power — so it never sold well. Asus started nibbling at the space with its Transformer products, but until now they have been Android-only — so while they can look like a laptop, they can’t run PC software. Until this week. Asus claims its new AiO (All-in-One) will support both full-up Windows as a desktop and Android as a (huge 18-inch) tablet. Does the AiO mark the coming of age for hybrid devices, or is it another Frankenstein doomed to be relegated to the back pages of Wikipedia like the Tablet PC?

Why Android and Windows make sense together

Windows 8 tablets are attracting a lot of attention for their potential to run all the desktop applications we’ve come to rely on over the years in the trendy form of a tablet. Whether it’s needing Photoshop, Quicken, your favorite games, or just plain Microsoft Office, it isn’t easy to simply dump the PC and move to a tablet right now — even one with a keyboard like the Asus Transformer. A Windows 8 tablet — especially one using an x86 chip — could solve that problem nicely. Unfortunately, Windows 8 tablets won’t run many of the nifty tablet applications developed for Android and iOS. Sure, some top ones will be ported, and as Windows 8 becomes popular more will be moved over. But it will be years before Windows 8 catches up on tablet applications — if it ever does.

By running both Windows and Android, a hybrid device has the potential to support the best of both worlds. It would operate as a full-on desktop or laptop when assembled, or as an Android tablet when used as a hand-held device.

Android emulator or ARM chip?

Hybrids are likely to be built in two very different ways. The first will simply be a version of the Asus Transformer with an x86 chip running an emulator like BlueStacks. Asus already has a deal for BlueStacks on its other PCs, so it makes sense to try something similar with its tablets. The big advantage of this design is simplicity: Only one processor to worry about, and a proven form factor for the product.

The other, more radical, way to build a hybrid is epitomized by the newly announced AiO. Specs are scant, but while it definitely will feature an x86 chip in the dock, it is likely that the “tablet-only” mode running Android will be accomplished using an ARM chip in the tablet portion. That allows for better battery life and for leaving the x86, along with all the other “PC” hardware, in the dock. It can also guarantee full Android compatibility and performance comparable to that of a dedicated tablet.

The downsides of the dual-processor approach will be cost and complexity. Adding an ARM chip by itself won’t cost much, but it’ll require its own memory and support chips. The device will also need to integrate the two operating systems enough that users can share files and not become too confused when switching back and forth — the prototype crashed during its maiden demo at E3 trying to do just that. So, while the concept is very appealing, the devil will be in the details. I don’t think I’d want to be the first one on my block to buy one.


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Samsung Galaxy S3 snap leak

An image of the Samsung Galaxy S3 has apparently leaked online, prompting speculation that the phone could be unveiled to an expectant tech world before the month is out.

Sourced by Phone Arena, the snap shows a handset with the same super slim form factor and opinion-dividing plastic exterior as the blockbuster blower that is the Galaxy S2.

However, in keeping with more recent smartphone challengers (CF: Nokia’s Lumia 800), this time around it seems Sammy has dispensed with front-facing physical buttons in favour of on-screen pressers.

Also noteworthy is that the screen appears extended too, perhaps tallying with rumours that the S3 will feature a super-sized display in the region of 4.8-inches, almost pushing it into tablet territory.

Less convincing than the image, though, is text on the screen that suggests that the device will make its debut on March 22nd. We're very much inclined to doubt that. Not least because, as Phone Arena’s scribes point out, the font looks wrong and smacks of a Photoshop mock-up.

Also causing us to doubt its veracity is that Sammy previously warned tech fans to expect the phone in the first half of the year. That suggests to us that it’s more likely to be a second-quarter release than any time in the next few weeks.

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Faster bits and bytes

Rather more prosaic than the technologies listed elsewhere in this article the internals of your PC are also being overhauled by the powers that be. There's a revision to the SATA standard out for disk drives, and USB 3.0 is appearing on motherboards to speed up the default peripheral connection.

They are big steps forward. SATA III doubles the bandwidth available to storage from a theoretical 3Gbps to 6Gbps, while on paper USB 3.0 is a ten-fold increase from 480Mbps to 4.8Gbps for cabled peripherals.
Motherboards sporting ports of both flavours are already available from most manufacturers. Although both technologies are much faster than their predecessors, neither is likely to have a huge impact on consumer PCs.
In the world of business where milliseconds are money, the upgrades may mean something, but for the likes of us, compatible drives and peripherals will be a while coming yet.

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Augmented reality

Actually, we're kidding ourselves with this one. Augmented reality: the ability to overlay information on a live video feed of the world, is very cool, and it's impossible not to love iPhone apps like Yelp that pull in details and distances to the nearest pub or restaurants as you point the camera in their general direction.
Holding your phone three inches in front of your face as you're walking around feels a little too ridiculous to catch on, though. Perhaps it's like handsfree and Bluetooth headsets. Not so long ago people still sniggered if they saw someone using a phone without holding it to their ear, and not so long before that mobile phones themselves were devices for sales dorks.

In a couple of years time, it may seem the most natural thing in the world to see someone walking around with a phone held at arms length, directing them to food or drink with their own personal dynamic GPS system, or pulling up interesting information about the buildings and people in front of them. Yes, that's right, people.
Twitter 360 is an iPhone app that directs you to geotagged tweeters on your friends list, while TAT (www.tat.se) is working on an Augmented ID program, so if people point a camera at you various bits of information from your social feeds floating around your head. Makes stalking a lot easier then. Scary.

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Wireless power

A few years ago we saw a demonstration by a team at Fulton Innovation of a product called eCoupled. Using the principle of electromagnetic induction, by which an electrical charge can be stimulated in a wire coil by placing another one nearby, the crazy boffins were able to display wireless power transfer.
Despite being high voltage, they said, it was safe, efficient and could be applied to any surface. The demo room consisted of a kitchen without plugs, but full of lights that could be stuck anywhere and a frying pan that heated up just by sitting it on the counter. Put a phone on the same counter and it began charging. Clearly, this was the future.

Fulton are still working on wireless power, but it's a different company that's beat it to the shops, Powermat – and its products are expensive for something that replaces a 50p mains plug.
The good news is that the Wireless Power Consortium are going to be finalising a standard for wireless power called Qi later this year, which should mean prices drop and manufacturers have the confidence to build the technology straight into devices, rather than requiring an adaptor.
If you think that's crazy, though, take a look at Airnergy by RCA. It's a tiny dongle that can turn Wi-Fi signals back into electricity for charging phone batteries and the like.

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Six-core processors

You won't have to wait long for this one. Intel's Westmere CPUs may be hanging around with the dregs of processor society at the moment, chucking their chips in with the integrated graphics crowd, but they're about to grow up – and fast.
Sometime over the next few months Intel will go two better than the current line up of quad-core CPUs by launching a six-core version of its high-end Core i7 line. Based on the existing Nehalem architecture, the headline feature is a process shrink down to 32nm, while the rest of the spec sheet remains largely the same. It could be a genuine upgrade.

Games programmers are getting much better at working with multithreaded code so that most major titles, like Empire: Total War and its forthcoming sequel Napoleon, will see a much bigger performance increase when given extra cores to play around in than the often sporadic leaps in frame rate we saw going from two to four cores.
Because the benefits will be in the amount of cores, rather than the speed of things you can do at once, Intel are encouraging some developers to add extra content specifically for people with a six-core CPU. Given the plethora of disappointments we've had lately with almost every technology that's promised to increase our frame rates, we'll reserve judgement until we have one in the office.
The good news is that these hexa-powered processors will fit into most existing X58 motherboards after a simple BIOS flash. The bad news is X58 motherboards are still very expensive too.

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Hp Pavilion dv6 review

There's a certain HP style these days, with curved edges, large trackpads and subtle engravings on the case. That signature style is there in the Pavilion dv6, a machine designed to look good in a modern home. Combining a Core i5 processor with AMD's Radeon graphics makes this a powerful enough machine for most use, including gaming and working with media (and with 64-bit Windows Home Premium and 6GB of RAM, there's plenty of performance to go around).

Design

The subtle grain pattern on the dv6's lid is much less defined than many other HP case designs, with a slightly raised HP logo that glows white when the dv6 is powered up. Open the lid and there’s a metal palm rest with the same slight grained pattern. It's comfortable and the groove of the grain means your hands aren't sliding all around the keyboard while you're trying to play Portal or fill out a complex spreadsheet. You'll find your hands neatly placed over the slightly recessed keyboard, making typing very comfortable - despite the lack of any real keyboard rake. The glossy plastic screen surround works well with the bright, glossy screen, and provides a distinct contrast to the slightly matt look and feel of the rest of the machine (and for once the difference in materials looks a deliberate contrast rather than bad match). At 2.9kg it’s slightly on the heavy side for a 15.6-inch unit but it’s well balanced and comfortable to hold.

Like most of HP's laptops, the dv6 has a chiclet-style keyboard, with widely spaced black keys that are easy to find, even if you have large fingers. There's plenty of travel and good action with a nice click to the spacebar. As this is a widescreen machine, there's enough space for a numeric keypad, though this does leave the keyboard slightly offset from the large, illuminated trackpad. Gamers will appreciate the option of using the numeric keypad as an additional, much larger, set of direction keys. The keys aren't backlit, something that's slightly distracting when compared with the glowing border around the trackpad, and combined with the narrow font used for the letters on the keys, this makes the dv6 a machine for brightly lit rooms.

The function keys are set as screen brightness, volume and media controls, with a Fn key to flip them back to their original mode if required. A dedicated web button opens your web browser, something that seems redundant with Windows 7's task bar pinning. We were surprised to find very few indicators, just a light on the Wi-Fi key to show that you're online, and a subtle power light on the power button. Amusingly there's a light on the fingerprint sensor that flashes when you power on - letting you know you can log in using your fingers, not just the traditional password in case you miss the sensor amid all the stickers.

The large trackpad is slightly offset from the centre, giving you a lot more palm space rest on the right (but not enough to be quite central for typing). It's surrounded by a very bright white LED illuminated ring, and has separate buttons - unlike many recent HP devices. It is responsive, with a slightly slick feel to the surface, scaling pointer motion in response to the velocity of your fingers. Move the pointer slowly, and a full traverse is only about 60% of the screen. Faster, and you're all the way across in no time at all. You can configure the usual range of two and three finger gestures, as well as managing scrolling areas; tap the top left corner of the trackpad to temporarily disable it (and to turn the surrounding glow from white to orange).

The 15.6-inch 1366 x 768 LED-backlit screen is better than most, with a clear, relatively high contrast display that's ideal for most day-to-day PC tasks. We did find some contrast issues when looking at HD videos, with dark picture elements lost in the background. Playback of 1080p web streamed video was good. A local copy of a 720p video played clearly, with no stuttering, and with good clear sound. A drop hinge lowers the screen behind the body of the dv6, giving you a good clear viewing angle.

The dv6's speakers are behind a narrow grille under the screen, angled to direct sound at a user. They're not the highest quality, but they're clear, and a lot better than those fitted to many machines at this price point. We did find audio distorting at high volumes, and the Beats audio processing hardware left things sounding a little bass heavy, with tinny treble. You can tune Beats, but it'll take time to get the sound just right.

HP's given the dv6 plenty of ports, on the left and right sides (the drop screen means the rear is inaccessible). The left side has VGA and HDMI ports for video, as well as Ethernet and a welcome two USB 3.0 ports. There are also two headphone jacks and one microphone, so you can share the sound of a game or a movie without disturbing anyone around you. The right has two USB 2.0 ports, and a LightScribe DVD drive. On the front you'll find a media card reader, with support for SD and MMC cards. Wireless includes Bluetooth and 802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi.

Performance

Overall performance is good, with a fast second generation Core i5 processor and 6GB of RAM (there's space for another 2GB). There's plenty of storage, with a 640GB 5400rpm hard drive. It may not be the fastest on the market, but it's got plenty of storage, enough to make the dv6 suitable to be a family PC. Applications launched quickly, and performance is good even when running with integrated graphics (there's GPU acceleration on both of the cards). Battery life was reasonable; using the dv6 with Wi-Fi and using integrated graphics gave us around 3 hours of use before the machine hibernated.

The dv6 uses ATI's switchable graphics, which are able to automatically switch from the discrete Radeon HD6490M to Intel's integrated HD graphics when you swap between AC and battery power. Sadly the switch means you need to close all running applications - it's not something you can do on the fly as with Nvidia’s Optimus switching graphics. Even so, it's well worth doing, as switching to integrated graphics can nearly double battery life when using a balanced power plan, so it's something we'd certainly recommend for anyone wanting to take a dv6 out and about.

Like most HP machines there's a lot of bundled software, including Norton Internet Security and Microsoft's Office Starter. There are also installers for a range of Internet tools, including Skype and Music Station, and on screen links to eBay and HP's own games service. Perhaps the oddest piece of bundled software is Magic Desktop, a tool intended to provide a secure shell for children to use a PC - reminiscent of the much-derided Microsoft Bob. More usefully, there's also a copy of the latest version of Windows Live Essentials, including Photo Gallery 2011 and Live Mail 2011.

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The Future Of Mobile Phones

The Future of Mobile Phones
Use Any Phone on Any Wireless Network

The reason most cell phones are so cheap is that wireless carriers subsidize them so you'll sign a long-term contract. Open access could change the economics of the mobile phone (and mobile data) business dramatically as the walls preventing certain devices from working on certain networks come down. We could also see a rapid proliferation of cell phone models, with smaller companies becoming better able to make headway into formerly closed phone markets.

What is it? Two years is an eternity in the cellular world. The original iPhone was announced, introduced, and discontinued in less than that time, yet carriers routinely ask you to sign up for two-year contracts if you want access to their discounted phones. (It could be worse--in other countries, three years is normal.) Verizon launched the first volley late last year when it promised that "any device, any application" would soon be allowed on its famously closed network. Meanwhile, AT&T and T-Mobile like to note that their GSM networks have long been "open."

When is it coming? Open access is partially here: You can use almost any unlocked GSM handset on AT&T or T-Mobile today, and Verizon Wireless began certifying third-party devices for its network in July (though to date the company has approved only two products). But the future isn't quite so rosy, as Verizon is dragging its feet a bit on the legal requirement that it keep its newly acquired 700-MHz network open to other devices, a mandate that the FCC agreed to after substantial lobbying by Google. Some experts have argued that the FCC provisions aren't wholly enforceable. However, we won't really know how "open" is defined until the new network begins rolling out, a debut slated for 2010.

POST SOURCE: http://www.pcworld.com/article/152683-6/15_hot_new_technologies_that_will_change_everything.html#12