It’s looking to be quite a week for tech announcements. Last night Nokia teased a new camera focused lumia, with a htc one style metal enclosure. That’s announced tomorrow. The following day is google I/O which never disappoints, I’m mainly looking forward to glass launch details, though i suspect it may be some months off. And maybe a curve ball for ‘hobby’ google TV.
But basically there’s no end to the great leaps we are getting year on year and,month by month.
Stuff is brilliant.
3D printing has one issue - colour, now thats been partially solved by this 3d PAPER Printer.
http://www.mcortechnologies.com/3d-printers/iris/
I’m constantly impressed by the way 3d printing has moved on in the last few years, it’s all still a little ‘hobby quality’ but BOY its going to be an exciting field.
Skinhead wearing Brutus Trimfit, shot taken from the SS11 campaign, produced by Rich London.
Theres a new Dr Martens / Brutus Shirt collaboration coming March 29th. This time its a yellow and oxblood gingham, complete with pocket hanky. And its been sneakily on display on the Dr Martens site under accessories / braces.
HTC one launched just ahead of the Samsung S4, beating it in many areas, alongside the consumer launch they have a developer edition. No sim or bootloader load.
Good on HTC - its more of an issue in the US where getting stock devices is close to impossible.
Flagship or Midrange - which is best. I normally go for the top spec, but sometimes it is not that simple. With the Latest Lumia’s from Nokia the top end 920 is easily matched by it’s (slightly) lower end brother the 820. Which both pull away from the 7xx,6xx,5xx ranges.
Internally they have the same processing grunt, so whats the difference?
920 camera is higher spec with stella low light perfomance and has Optical Image Stabilisation for video.
820 camera is still a very good 8mp With Carl Zeiss lens.
920 wins - JUST on low light and OIS, but the firmware still needs updating to get the most out of that camera unit - in real terms I found little difference between the results.
Screen - 920 has 720p HD screen 4.5 inches, 820 has an 800x480 4.3 inch screen
Winner? - no one, yes the 920 is theoretically better but in real terms its makes no difference, day to day. Yes if you stick your face in the screen you can see the difference, but that’s not how people use devices. The 820 is arguably the optimum size.
Other difference are where the 820 starts to pull away as the one most people will choose.
920, fixed unibody, no sd card, no removable battery, wireless charging.
820 - changeable shells (with wireless and rugged options), swappable battery, Micro SD card slot.
So with the 820 you can change the cover as often as you want - want it in cyan, matte finish with wireless charging - no problem, want orange rugged - no problem.
Need to take 64gb of movies on holiday - no problem
Need a spare battery (battery life on both is excellent BTW and both last over a day on heavy use) no problem.
Add to that size and weight, the 820 is kinda just perfect in both aspects (YMMV), I don’t find the 920 too big or too heavy, but if I had to pick one up to take out with me - I’d probably take the 820.
Wow - I just shocked myself.
That said, on the previous generation of Lumia’s I also preferred the simply beautiful 800 over the (slightly) higher spec 900.
Over all the 820 wins out as a pretty much perfect size and more flexible device at a lower cost - Win, Win. Win.
That said It’s a 920 in my pocket, and I do love that camera. But I wouldn’t recommend it to everyone over the 820. For most people the 820 is simply a wiser buy.
The 920 is my personal device, I had the 820 on loan from Nokia Connects trial device program.
Currently every single execution (bar one currently unknown quantity “google glass”) of AR is universally terrible. It is the classic case of ‘money shot’ marketing product development. Basically it looks impressive in a promo video, but the reality is that its not solving any problems, and is clunky and mechanical to use.
Viewing the world through a 4 inch screen is instinctively unhuman. I can’t think of a single time (other than the one time post install demo) where I’ve seen anyone actually use an AR app to guide them. The process of waving your arm around and rotating yourself is wrong because its mechanical not natural. It’s not the way we behave, it’s reminiscent of a ‘seeing’ robot.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NC0hG0_rXs8
Scanning the world around it methodically. aside from the awkward nature of the movement, we’re able process far more things as a whole rather than limit ourselves to a blinkered window view on the world.
I tried to find a photo online of someone using AR in the real world, but could only find promo shots and mock ups, which is fairly telling in itself.
This blinkered view became apparent to me as a key limiter when someone recently got a sphero, a wonderfully ‘magical’ remote control ball. A ball you can control, change direction, stop. Balls don’t behave like that (just imaging if the tech got into sport) its incredible.
It’s wonderful and has lots of potential for play, BUT its been crippled by AR, so instead of joyfully controlling the ball in the world you view it though a tiny window with an overlaid ‘character’. Its completely unnecessary, plus its asynchronous - only the player gets that view, everyone else in the room is excluded from spectating.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NC0hG0_rXs8
jump to 1:48 for the AR bit.
See how much fun it is without the AR? the AR ruins it - luckily that’s not the USP or they would be doomed. Basically AR is like going to a football match and only watching the in stadium screen.
Humans use gestures - just watch two people speaking. And gesture control will be another great thing, but at the moment its on zx81 levels of sophistication with the kinect, thats because doing it well and in a consumer facing way is REALLY hard. Current AR and Gesture control systems are basically useless, but will lead to great things.
When AR will work is when its seamless, google glass (recording / privacy issues aside) is the first implementation that may actually begin to work - It’s probably up with the Atari ST. Because you don’t need to change your behaviour, as it’s contextual (all that google now stuff suddenly make lots of sense).
You don’t need to act in a way that no regular human would, you just look a bit of a dork :)
The good thing about all these bad developments is they are just bumps on the roadmap as we move forward. So all hail those in R&D with their currently flaky products because they are doing, making and striding forward. And boy its going to be exciting when it starts to make sense.
Outside Kemistry Gallery, part of the Jean Jullien exhibition
A phone for £3.96! madness.
Now that’s a TALL bike.
