Samsung’s anticipated Berlin Unpacked event is quickly approaching, with the center of the show likely to be the Samsung Galaxy Note 2. What’s even more important for Galaxy S3 users, though, is what is going to happen in the aftermath of the event. Sometime after the Unpacked Event, Samsung Galaxy S3 is getting an official upgrade to Android 4.1 Jelly Bean- though that really comes as no surprise to Mobile Magazine. The update is expected to roll out internationally to several different countries, though it unclear exactly when the U.S. And Canada will receive the update on their LTE-capable Galaxy S3 variants.
What can you expect with the upgrade? Obviously the essential changes like speed improvements and Google Now, the Siri-like voice search assistant, are some of the big changes. Beyond Jelly Bean specific changes, the update will also have improvements to the TouchWiz UI such as a dormant mode for improved notifications and alert management. The TouchWiz UI will also add an easy mode that will allow for a simpler home-screen experience.
With just a week or so away from an official upgrade to the latest version of Android, an already appealing smartphone has now become even better. For those that are interested in purchasing a Galaxy S3, check out the deals at Amazon Wireless from a variety of different carriers.
For current S3 owners, how excited are you about getting your hands on Jelly Bean?
No buttons, no scrolling wheel, no wires: The Manhattan Stealth Touch Mouse relies solely on touch gestures to perform the tasks needed to control your computer.
If Apple’s Magic Mouse, the touch-based, clickless, wireless mouse had a darker twin cousin, it would be the Manhattan Stealth Touch Mouse. The all-black matte mouse has similar design functionalities as Apple’s original gadget, featuring a pressure-sensitive body that recognizes controls without the click of any button. With technology embracing touchscreen interface, it’s no surprise that even the simplest of gadgets are getting a revamp. But is the buttonless mouse as good as it sounds?
Look and feel
The Manhattan Stealth Touch Mouse has a pebble-like design that fits snugly in a palms of one’s hand. Compared to the average mouse, Stealth is definitely a tiny device, measuring just about 2 x 3.5 inches. The sleek matte overlay helps to keep the grease off the mouse, making it perfect for prolonged use, provided you supply it with one functional AAA battery. On the underside of the mouse, you’ll find a USB connector that pops out and connects to your computer.
Setting up, however, proved to be a bit of an issue. When I tried hooking the Stealth Touch Mouse to my 2007 MacBook Pro, the computer attempted to install a new drive. The mouse’s setup instruction advised me to close this window and use the mouse as normal, but the devices seemed to be disconnected. I attempted to test the mouse on my colleague’s 2010 Sony VAIO running Windows 7 and that didn’t work either. It was only until I used it one last time on a 2012 MacBook Air that the mouse linked with no installation prompt, leading me to believe it may be incompatible with older devices. This note was nowhere to be found on the mouse’s user manual.
Utility
Since the Stealth Touch Mouse is wireless, it can be used as a regular mouse for your computer or held upright as a presentation clicker. This allows you to use swiping motions to turn pages, or up and down strokes to scroll. While you’re doing so, you can hear an artificial scrolling noise if you happen to miss the wheel that comes with most traditional mice.
I tested the device mostly as a computer mouse, and I have to admit I was slightly underwhelmed. Perhaps I’m personally light when it comes to touch, but it took some harsh tapping to get Stealth to recognize the clicks. Right click was even more difficult to achieve, as I would click to get the menu to show up and it would almost immediately disappear. If you are resting your fingers on the area of the mouse where the device should recognize touch, you also have to lift and hit the area again to register that click. This takes a lot of getting used to, but would probably be easier to adjust if the clicks registered more seamlessly.
If you’re using a MacBook Air like myself, you might also be better off sticking with the built-in touchpad on your laptop. Most modern computers are incorporating various touch-based gestures, such as pinch-to-zoom, or two-finger page sweeps. This feature is sadly missing on the Stealth Touch Mouse, which is unfortunate when you consider its $70 price tag.
In presentation mode, however, the Stealth Touch Mouse is much more appropriate. Perhaps it’s the act of simple scrolls that register better, but it did felt more natural to use the device to control pages than a whole computer. It’s also got decent range at 2.4GHz, so you can walk around a conference room and still be able to control your presentation screen.
Bottom Line
The Manhattan Stealth Touch Mouse is one gorgeous piece of accessory, but it’s fairly overpriced for what it should be capable of doing. It’s not updated with complex gestures to fit the modern computers, and is incapable of syncing with older models. This feels like a lose-lose, and a frustrating act of programming. As nicely as it works as a presentation controller, it still does little to deserve a price tag that high.
If you use your mouse to just scroll, the Stealth Touch Mouse is great. If you want to use it for every other function a mouse should be capable of performing, you’ll probably want to stick with traditional, click-based mice. I want to embrace this new technology, but the lack of security that comes with physical clicks is still something I want if it means actual functionality. So who knows, maybe it’s just me.
Manhattan Stealth Touch Mouse is available now at a retail value of $70, but is currently on sale at Best Buy for $50.
Many gadgets are me-too products, and that's no bad thing: technology is all about standing on the shoulders of giants, with firms taking and refining each others' ideas.
But which technologies were truly transformative, leaders rather than followers, blazing trails that the rest of the tech industry would soon follow?
The following ten-ish gadgets are our nominations, and our rules are simple: it has to be everyday tech, so for example computers and sat-nav devices count but hospital hardware and systems such as ABS definitely don't, and it must have had an enormous impact.
Think we've missed something? Let us know @TechRadar.
1. Sony Walkman - 1979
Imagine a world without Cliff Richard's Wired For Sound. That's what you'd have without the Walkman, which first appeared in 1979 and transformed the way we listened to, and thought about, music. With the Walkman, everyday reality was a movie, you were the star and your tapes were the soundtrack. It was mind-blowing then, and it's still pretty impressive today.
2. Diamond Rio PMP300 -1998
19 years after the Walkman, Diamond took Sony's ball and ran with it. The Rio wasn't the first mass-produced, solid-state digital music player - that was the SaeHan MPMan F-10 - but the 32MB Rio was the one that kickstarted the digital music revolution. If the heads of major record labels could travel back in time and kill something, the Rio would be top of their list.
3. Amazon Kindle - 2007
Is your gran reading Fifty Shades of Grey? Blame Amazon: the Kindle is the iPod of ebooks, and while the first generation was rather clunky the third generation cracked it and started not just an e-reading boom, but the self-publishing boom that's created superstars such as Fifty Shades filth-monger EL James.
Compaq may deserve the credit for popularising it, but IBM invented it: the IBM Personal Computer, or PC for short, was widely cloned by obscure firms such as Dell, Compaq and HP, creating a de facto industry standard that enabled the personal computer boom of the 1980s and 1990s. Today's PCs look very different from IBM's original, of course, but everything from Ultrabooks to iMacs has the PC in its DNA.
5. Sony PlayStation 2 - 2000
Games consoles had been around for a long time, of course, but the PS2's blockbuster sales made gaming massive - and its inclusion of a DVD drive not only helped cement the then-youthful format's place in our front rooms, but also paved the way for today's consoles as hubs for all kinds of home entertainment.
6. Motorola DynaTAC 8000X - 1983
Image credit: Redrum0486, wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0
It looks hilarious now, but every time you update Facebook from your phone you owe a debt to the DynaTAC. The DynaTAC 8000X was the first commercially available portable cellular telephone, a phone you could carry around without being tied to a car or an enormously heavy briefcase. Instead of connecting to a single transmitter, the DynaTAC 8000X used a network consisting of "cells" spread over a wide area, hopping from cell to cell as you moved around.
7. Kodak Digital Camera - 1975
Image credit: Kodak
Steve Sasson, an electrical engineer who worked at Eastman Kodak, invented the digital camera in 1975. It used tape rather than solid state storage, its resolution maxed out at 10,000 pixels rather than today's multi-megapixel monsters, and it looked rather like a cassette recorder that had fallen on hard times, but it would prove revolutionary - and sadly, its descendants would ultimately kill Kodak's consumer business.
8. TiVo - 1999
Image credit: Jared C Benedict, wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0
TiVo wasn't just about the hardware, although of course a digital video recorder is a handy thing to have. It was important for its software, too, which can recommend programmes it thinks you might like, find films starring your favourite actors or ensure you don't miss any episodes of Breaking Bad. Time-shifting and ad-skipping made it the networks' enemy and telly addicts' best friend.
9. Honda Electro Gyro-Cator - 1981
Image credit: Honda
A shoo-in for the best product name of all time, the Electro Gyro-Cator was important for another reason: it was the first commercially available automated in-car navigation system. It used a gyroscope rather than GPS and transparent maps rather than computer-generated directions, and it was both enormously heavy and ridiculously expensive, but both sat-nav devices and apps can legitimately call the Gyro-Cator "granddad".
10. A whole bunch of Apple stuff - 1970s onwards
Image credit: Danamania, wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0
We've lumped a whole bunch of influential Apple things together so that they don't take over the entire list. The iPhone stands out of course, but the PowerBook 100 changed laptop design by shoving the keyboard back and putting a pointing device in front of it, while the MacBook Air would, ahem, inspire PC makers 20 years on. The iPod changed music and the iPad tablets; the QuickTake brought digital cameras to the consumer market; the original iMac helped kill the floppy drive and influenced the design of everything from steam irons to sex toys... the Apple II... the Lisa... the Macintosh... the LaserWriter...
T-Mobile is set to introduce an “Unlimited Nationwide 4G Data” add-on to its voice and text plans. It will offer throttle-free and cap-free data on its HSPA+ network.
As the demand for data has grown with the advent of 4G networks and smartphones we’ve seen the major carriers switch their plans. Once, they offered unlimited data alongside tiered monthly tariffs for call minutes and texts, now they have reversed the equation. New plans from Verizon and AT&T this summer offer unlimited minutes and texts, but charge for data usage. Take a look at AT&T Mobile Share vs. Verizon Share Everything to see how they stack up.
T-Mobile has decided to buck the trend and offer “Unlimited Nationwide 4G Data” on its HSPA+ network as an add-on for all of its voice and text plans. This is completely uncapped and throttle-free data. Add it to a Value plan which isn’t tied to a subsidized device and it will cost you an extra $20 per month. Add it to a Classic plan and you’re looking at $30 per month extra. That shakes out at $70 per month for unlimited talk, text, and data on the Value plan, and $90 for the same on a Classic plan.
T-Mobile’s new plans will be available starting on Sept. 5 and many consumers are liable to be tempted by what look like straightforward plans at reasonable prices — a far cry from the complicated new plans from AT&T and Verizon.
The only downside is that you can’t take an unlimited data plan and use your hotspot capability to tether other devices to your smartphone. If you want to use your phone as a hotspot, you’ll have to stick with one of the limited plans which throttles once you reach your monthly limit.
According to The Verge, T-Mobile would not confirm whether the plans would still be available when 4G LTE rolls out.
New and existing customers can sign up for the new plans at T-Mobile stores or online Sept. 5.
HTC is going after the space increasingly left by RIM in the enterprise sector after a big investment in Magnet Systems.
The Taiwanese brand has splurged $35.4m (£22m) on the deal, which sees it nab a 17.1 per cent stake in the firm.
Magnet Systems is run and created by Alfred Chuang, who previously created business software with BEA before selling to Oracle for a multi-billion sum. He since founded the new firm, which created the WIN platform, for more tailored enterprise support.
It created Sales WIN last year, which models the way salespeople interact with customers to provide in-depth data which can be used to improve the overall platform, helping make businesses more efficient through software.
In it to WIN it
What HTC intends to do with the stake is unclear, although it's highly likely to want to use some of the tools in its range of smartphones.
WIN will be available at a charge to businesses, so one possibility is HTC will be a vendor of compatible handsets, leading to attractiveness when larger businesses are looking to equip their sales force with smartphones.
It's a bold move for HTC given the current financial situation it finds itself in: despite critically-acclaimed smartphones, the brand is still lowering profit estimates and recently lost $40 million through its OnLive investment.
