The iPhone 7 is on its way. But a major redesign apparently isn't. Photo: Ste Smith/Cult of Mac
The iPhone 7 is still four months away from debuting, but a new picture “leaked” online appears to give us another early glimpse of the next-gen handset — suggesting once again that this might not be a significant redesign from the current iPhone 6s.
Check it out below.
Apple’s next iPhone? Photo: Weibo
Circulating on Chinese microblogging site Weibo, the image apparently shows the back panel of a gold 4.7-inch iPhone 7.
While it overall looks very similar to the current generation iPhone 6s, however, there are a few notable differences: antenna lines which are moved from their current prominent position to the top and bottom of the handset, and a new module between the iSight camera and LED flash that could hint at a possible laser auto-focus system.
It should be pointed out that this image doesn’t look particularly legit — and given how easy it is to fake such things on Photoshop I wouldn’t necessarily put a whole lot of stock in it. The additional laser auto-focus system module (or whatever it might be) also doesn’t appear onother purported photos we’ve seen of the iPhone 7.
Still, it does back up some of the other rumors we’ve heard about Apple’s next-gen iPhone, so as a worst case scenario, it’s not a bad mockup of how Apple’s next iPhone may look.
Since Apple is apparently saving its best innovations for the 2017-era iPhone 7s, I’m not particularly enthused by what I’ve seen or heard about the iPhone 7 — although it appears that it may get a few more tweaks than we had initially figured.
Are you currently planning to get an iPhone 7? What would it take to make you shell out the money? Leave your comments below.
Samsung’s Unpacked event for 2017 was filled with a lot of excitement and anticipation. The tech giant gave us many treats today and not all of them start with the word ‘Galaxy’.
After the spectacular unveiling of this year’s flagship smartphones, the tech giant moved on to something different. Partners, products and services, the Korean firm said were the three pillars it stands on today just after it was done showing off the extremely powerful S7 devices. We had a session where the company went on and on about its partners.
Samsung then announced that Samsung Connect Auto will now bring cloud analytics and data to your car as well as connectivity. This means that you’ll get wireless connectivity wherever you go via LTE. It also provides data to everyone on board via a WiFi Hotspot. It also promotes better and safer driving habits and adds features like keeping tabs on maintenance, helping you find your parked car and alerting your contacts if you’re ever involved in an accident.
The next big announcement was a new 360 camera. It looks like a small ball and can use it to capture the new type of VR. The videos can be played on your smartphone or even use the Gear VR. The device itself is made of two F2.0 lenses. It can wirelessly connect to your S7 or S7 Edge and you can stream live from either device.
Next up, we had Mark Zuckerberg on stage. Wait! What?
That’s right folks, we had Mr. Facebook at Samsung’s launch event. The first thing of note is that as soon as Zuck stepped on-stage, the media went crazy. The co-founder of the world’s largest social networking site was at Samsung’s event today because he had good news for us regarding Virtual Reality.
As established earlier, Mark Zuckerberg believes a lot in VR. So much in fact, that his company acquired Oculus, a firm specialized in VR. Zuck praised Samsung for its Gear VR saying is by far the best mobile VR experience. And that’s because it combines the best hardware from Samsung and the best VR software from Facebook. For those of you who do not know, the Gear VR was partly made by Oculus.
Zuck then went on about how Facebook and Samsung have been working hard to make VR tech better and more mainstream. He then announced what the big dudes like to call dynamic streaming for VR videos. This, Zuck said, the company to deliver a video with a much higher resolution while simultaneously reducing the network bandwidth. He also added that this, along with many other exciting features in the area of VR, will start rolling out in the next few weeks. He later finished by saying “the best is still to come.”
All in all, the Samsung event today came with lots of amazing news.
aiwan’s top financial regulator Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) is scheduled to gather opinions about Apple Pay’s planned entry into Taiwan from all sides and submit the information to the Executive Yuan before May 20, when the new administration will be inaugurated.
The FSC recently met with representatives from the Ministry of Finance, the Central Bank, the bankers’ association, the National Credit Card Center, the Financial Information Services Co., major credit card companies, local mobile payment operators, as well as Apple, HTC and Samsung to discuss potential Apply Pay entry into Taiwan. Much of the discussion surrounded the token service provider (TSP) that will work with Apple Pay. The FSC said all opinions will be submitted to the Cabinet, which will make the final decision.
The meeting also discussed potential issues that can arise with an overseas TSP. TSP is a service that generates a temporary alternate personal account number during credit card mobile payment. The service can increase transaction security because the alternate account number would have been useless after the transaction even if somehow obtained by a third party.
Lu Hui-rong, deputy director-general of the FSC’s Banking Bureau, said opinions were divided at the meeting. Lu said one group of the representatives favored a domestic TSP, while the major credit card issuing banks believed it should be decided by market mechanism, in which a mobile payment provider will choose its own TSP.
Representatives from Apple said the company is open to both ideas, but added that in consideration of the company’s resource allocation and timetable, using a domestic TSP may delay Apple Pay’s entry into the country.
Individuals at the meeting in favor of a domestic TSP expressed their concern about possible leakage of personal information and improper use of personal data. A TSP based overseas may affect or delay transaction and handling of controversies in the event of disconnection or system malfunction in the overseas locations, they added. These individuals also warned of a larger effect that other brands may follow in Apple’s footsteps — assuming Apple worked with an overseas TSP — and choose to work with foreign TSP, which will eventually hurt the local industry.
Local TSP operators contended that since over 90 percent of the transactions made with cards issue domestically take place in the country, Apple Pay should work with a local TSP. They also added that doing so may help domestic industries develop more advanced mobile payment technology.
However, major credit card issuing companies suggested returning it to the market mechanism. Currently, most countries allow mobile payment providers to choose TSP based on data security, transaction stability, operational cost and efficiency.
Representatives from the banking industry were also in favor of overseas TSP, saying that major issuing firms like Visa have all used the services of foreign TSP. These representatives said that using a local TSP may delay the process because the TSP operator will first have to obtain certification from EMVCo.
Meanwhile, in response to the Central Bank’s previous concern that a local TSP may make it earlier for the government for the purposes of regulation and tax audit. The Ministry of Finance said after the meeting that tax audit and collection will not be affected by where the TSP is based.
Consumer virtual reality is still so new that we don’t know much about how it’s being used. But Oculus is sharing some details about the smartphone-dependent Gear VR headset it developed with Samsung—including the statistic that over a million people used it in April.
During a small media briefing Tuesday meant in part to show off some new content that will be coming out for Gear VR, Oculus’s head of mobile, Max Cohen, said, “We were not expecting to be at a million right now.”
Gear VR, which—unlike recently released higher-end headsets like Oculus Rift and HTC’s Vive—relies on one of several high-end Samsung smartphones to work, has been out since late 2014; a new version of it launched near the end of 2015. On its own, the headset costs $100. There are now more than 250 apps for it, many of them games and videos.
One factor that might have helped reach that usage mark: Samsung gave away the Gear VR and six games with preorders of its new Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge smartphones from late February through mid-March.
Cohen noted that people who are playing with Gear VR use it for about 25 minutes per day. He added that usage tends to increase over the holidays as those who own it share it with other people.
And video in particular is what a lot of people are doing with their Gear VR headsets. Eugene Wei, Oculus’s head of video, said that 80 percent of people who use the device watch videos, and that they will soon have watched more than three million hours of video cumulatively (Facebook, which owns Oculus, and Samsung have previously said that users had watched two million hours of video).
If robots are going to take over the world, they could at least have the courtesy not to bump into us while they’re at it. That’s not as easy as it sounds, though, especially when a robot is trying to make its way through a bustling space like a mall, hospital, or crowded city street.
Thankfully, researchers have developed an algorithm that could give robots the ability to deftly maneuver through spaces packed with unpredictable humans.
Robots are gradually leaving controlled spaces like labs and factories and edging into more settings in which they will inevitably encounter human beings (see “Are You Ready for a Robot Colleague?”). We navigate hectic spaces by reading other people’s movements and planning our paths accordingly. Robots tend to just barrel ahead, and then stop suddenly when someone gets in the way.
Stanford's JackRabbot robot will explore busy spaces while trying to respect people's boundaries.
“The challenge is how to program these devices to respect human social conventions,” says Silvio Savarese at Stanford University.
Savarese and colleagues developed a computer-vision algorithm that predicts the movement of people in a busy space. They trained a deep-learning neural network using several publicly available data sets containing video of people moving around crowded areas. And they found their software to be better at predicting peoples’ movements than existing approaches for several of those data sets.
Savarese's team is testing its algorithm on a mobile robot called JackRabbot developed at Stanford. The two-wheeled robot, which is equipped with cameras, range sensors, and GPS, will explore busy indoor and outdoor spaces to test the approach in real situations.
At the moment, the most notable example of robots interacting directly with members of the public is Google’s self-driving vehicles. The company has acknowledged that its cars, while predominantly safe, have indirectly contributed to accidents due to a failure to understand the social norms of the road (“Google’s Self-Driving Car Chief Defends Safety Record”). As robots begin to proliferate into settings like shops and offices, awkward run-ins could become more common.
“The first problem is to understand the mostly unstated rules that people follow,” Savarese says. “How do people behave in crowds? How do they share resources, like sidewalks, parking spots? When should a person (or a robot) take its turn?”
A startup called Starship Technologies, which makes robots that deliver packages, is also working on this problem. The company has been testing its robots at several locations in the U.S. and the U.K., and besides dealing with uneven sidewalks and navigating around random obstacles, encounters with pedestrians pose the biggest challenge.
“Our robots have now come into contact with over 230,000 people around the world,” says Henry Harris-Burland, a spokesperson for Starship. Engineers at the company monitor the robots remotely as they go about mock deliveries. “Social acceptance is a core focus at the moment,” he says.
That goes way beyond just predicting a person’s movement. Forlizzi’s own research has involved trying to get robots to move around spaces in such a way that they form natural-seeming clusters with people. She says there is a definite need to teach robots how to blend in.Jodi Forlizzi, at Carnegie Mellon University’s Human Computer Interaction Institute, says the Stanford algorithm adds to other research aimed at making robot behavior more humanlike. “Much research in human-robot interaction has looked at whether we can replicate the norms of human social interaction,” she says.
“There’s a whole class of robots that will be working with people and close to people also, so we need to understand how they should behave,” Forlizzi says.
Many new cars come with automatic braking as an option, but for the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), this isn’t enough.
According to a report in The Detroit News, the NTSB is pressuring the U.S. Government to make automatic braking a federal mandate. Its argument is safety features like airbags and seat belts come standard, so more advanced safety like collision warning and automatic braking — which, they argue, can prevent injuries and fatalities— should come standard as well.
Collision warning systems use various combinations of radars, cameras and proximity sensors to warn a driver if they are too close to an object, with auto-braking taking it a step further by actually bringing the car to a stop if necessary. Generally, these features are available on high-end cars, though, they’re trickling down to the mainstream on models from Subaru, Chrysler and others.
In the European Union, cars must come equipped with these safety features in order to receive the highest crash test scores–- something the NTSB wants incorporated in U.S. crash testing. For this to happen, the National Traffic Highway Safety Administration (NHTSA) would need to develop standards to test the performance of these active safety systems.
The NTSB wants NHTSA to mandate collision warnings first, with automatic braking mandated once clear standards are in place.
Automakers are opposed to the mandating of these active safety systems because they feel like the addition of these systems should be the consumers choice. In addition, automakers claim the inclusion of active safety systems would increase the cost.
It should also be noted that automakers generally make most of their profits on charging extra for options and packages consumers want. This is why a company like Porsche, which has notoriously expensive options for its cars, made $23,000 on average for every car they sold in 2013.
This is a tricky debate because on one hand a reduction in collisions is inarguably a good thing, but on the other hand maybe humans need to be more proactive in preventing them. Perhaps a combination of better driver training in America and wider availability of active safety is the answer.
