Review: Sony's Xperia Z is the Aquaman of phones

If I had a dollar for every time I explained the ol’ “dry it out in a bag of uncooked rice” trick to a friend who had dropped his or her smartphone in various bodies of water, I could buy several bags of rice—even the fancy kind for making sushi. And if I had the waterproof Xperia Z smartphone from Sony, I wouldn’t have to waste that fancy rice saving my soaked smartphone.

Sure, nearly any smartphone can be waterproof if you ensconce it in a thick, ugly, waterproof case. But the Xperia Z is as stylish as it is splash-proof—it feels substantial and light at the same time. The glass front and back (each with a “shatterproof film”) make the Xperia feel more high-end and expensive than the Galaxy S4 with its plastic chassis. At 5.47 by 2.79 inches, it’s just a hair bigger on each side than the Galaxy S4. Both are 0.31 inch thick, but the Xperia is over half an ounce heavier at 5.15 ounces.

The Xperia’s rubbery edges make it comfortable to hold and give the device some grip—it’s much easier to hold onto than the slippery glass-and-aluminum iPhone 5. The round metal power button fits neatly under your thumb when you hold it in your right hand, which helped one-handed operation feel more natural than I’d expected on a 5-inch screen. But the plastic volume up/down rocker switch below it felt less luxurious and was easy to bump by accident when holding the phone while watching videos—I kept inadvertently covering the single speaker on the corner below the volume switch with my finger, too.

The rest of the ports aren’t visible, unless you have the eyesight of Sam the Eagle. The headphone jack, Micro-USB charge/sync port, microSD card slot (which handles cards up to 64GB to expand the 16GB of built-in storage), and micro-SIM slot are all covered with tiny panels that sit flush with the rest of the chassis except for a small ridge that you use to pry them open with your fingernail. All are labeled—if you consider dark gray text on a black background “labeled”—except the Micro-USB port, which stumped three out of four phone geeks in our random yet unscientific sampling, sending us to the directions for a diagram of where to plug in the charging cable.

Just add water

Anyway, the port covers are worth the hassle of opening and closing, since the Xperia is certified to the IP55 and IP57 standards for being dust and water resistant—it can even be fully submerged in up to 1 meter of water for up to 30 minutes.

Suddenly, hearing that telltale “plunk” sound isn’t even a cause for panic. This would have saved me considerable heartache the time I had just stepped into the shower when my iPhone 4 slipped from its precarious perch on the toliet tank and dove into the bowl. Had it been the Xperia, I could have finished a leisurely shower instead of frantically jumping back out to rescue it, risking bodily injury and soaking the bathroom floor.

Once I had faith in the waterproofness of the Xperia, I couldn’t stop thinking of new, ridiculous ways to use it. You can’t actually use the touchscreen underwater, but you could start a video clip on the side of the pool that ended up underwater in the shallow end. Or you could wash the phone off under the sink instead of futzing with alcohol pads. Experiment with pouring beer on the screen to trigger the recording of a Vine video—I couldn’t get that to work, but I was only willing to waste one beer trying. Take a call in the shower. Or just stop worrying about using your phone in crappy weather. Waterproofing is a great feature that makes more sense on a phone than on a tablet.

The Xperia Z’s 5-inch, 1920-by-1080-pixel screen lends itself to sharp text and images—its density of 443 pixels per inch handily beats the iPhone 5’s 326-ppi Retina display, and I saw no visible pixels aside from a stray low-res icon or two. The Xperia’s Mobile Bravia Engine 2 is supposed to optimize the contrast of images and video, enhance sharpness, and reduce noise. Since you can toggle Mobile Bravia Engine 2 on and off (in Settings > Display), it was easy to see its effects: Still images clearly had more-saturated colors and deeper blacks, without skin tones getting messing up.

Inside, the Xperia Z boasts a 1.5GHz quad-core Snapdragon S4 processor and 2GB of RAM. It handled big games like Temple Run: Brave and averaged an impressive 56.3 frames per second in the Epic Citadel benchmark, running at 1800 by 1080 on the high performance level. (To compare, the Galaxy S4 hit 58.5 fps at 1920 by 1080, and the Nexus 4 churned out 51.2 fps at 1200 by 768 in the same test.) The Xperia did get warm when streaming video or downloading a bunch of apps at once. It runs Android 4.1.2, but Sony promises an update to the latest version, 4.2.2, soon.

My primary Android device is a Nexus 4 by LG, and its battery life is dismal, so I appreciated the Xperia Z’s ability to go all day on a charge—as long as I didn’t keep the beautiful screen at its full-brightness glory. Plus, its Battery Stamina mode can extend standby time by shutting down apps, the Wi-Fi radio, and data transfers when the screen is off and then turning them back on when you wake the phone up again—even though calls, texts, and alarms can always get through. Using Battery Stamina mode, I didn’t notice a lag in performance when waking the phone up, either. Everything felt responsive and snappy.

Well, except for downloads over the cell network. Exclusive U.S. carrier T-Mobile’s 4G felt sluggish a lot of the time, and its LTE is available in only a handful of markets today: Baltimore, Houston, Kansas City, Las Vegas, Phoenix, San Jose, and Washington D.C. And Wi-Fi was a little finicky, too, sometimes having trouble connecting to my 802.11n home network even while multiple other devices (iPhone 5, iPad, and Nexus 4) were connecting just fine.

The 13-megapixel camera features an Exmor RS image sensor, which allowsHDR (high-dynamic range) video as well as photos. And just as in HDR photography, the camera takes dimly and brightly exposed video and combines them. Its huge range of shooting modes (including 36 scene modes such as sports, fireworks, food, portrait, backlit, and low-light scenes) make it feel as if you’re using a point-and-shoot, even if the image quality says otherwise.

Photos I took outdoors in bright sunlight or overcast conditions looked excellent, but the HDR mode was a little disappointing in shots containing detail in both light and shadow. They seemed to lose some sharpness compared to HDR images shot with the Galaxy S4. A physical shutter button would make it easier to hold the phone still, but the Xperia Z uses only the volume buttons to zoom in and out. Photos taken in low light (without the flash) were noisy and blurred, but Burst mode did a great job of getting nonblurry pictures of my toddler. As with most smartphones, the flash is awful, producing harsh light and lots of red-eye, even in Fill Flash or Red-Eye Reduction mode. Don’t use it unless you absolutely have to.

The sweep panorama feature lets you take a panorama that pans left, right, and even up and down, but its quirks made it annoying to use. Half the time I’d get an error that I was moving it too fast or too slowly, or a less-helpful error like “image has a gray area” or “can’t take photo.” I gave up on quite a few panoramas after multiple fails.

Bottom line

The Xperia Z is a great phone—the waterproof feature is incredibly fun to play with, the camera is solid as long as you have enough light, and the screen is both beautiful and responsive. Sony couldn’t help but slap its logo on the front of the phone and its mediocre software all over the home screens, but since the hardware is so high quality, it’s hard to mind much. The HTC One’s superior speaker and low-light photography give it an edge, but the Xperia Z is right up there with the top-tier Android phones, especially for fans of Sony’s other products—or butterfingers who want a stylish phone they can drop in the toilet once in a while.

At a Glance

A little water can't hurt the stylish, waterproof Xperia Z, and its 5-inch, high-def screen rocks too.

View full product specs »

Price when rated:	$100

Pros

• Dustproof and waterproof to 1 meter for up to 30 minutes
• 13-megapixel camera
• Stylish design with tempered glass front and back
• Huge, gorgeous 5-inch screen at 1920x1080p and 443 pixels per inch

Cons

• Camera's low-light and panorama performance was a little disappointing
• T-Mobile's LTE network needs to expand to more cities
• Running Android 4.1.1 at launch, instead of the most recent 4.2.2 

Written by: Susie Ochs

Source: Techhive.com

Five surefire ways to maximize your laptop's battery life

You adore your laptop. It lets you get down to business wherever you happen to be—airport lounge, coffee shop, your home office. It’s the key to your competitive edge.

That is, until its battery croaks. Just as you’re putting the final details on your PowerPoint presentation. At the airport. Two hours before takeoff. And with no power outlet in sight. At that instant, you begin to wonder why you ever bought the ever-lovin’ boat anchor in the first place.

But love will bloom anew as soon as you recharge. Avoid the heartache, however temporary: Follow these five tips for maximizing your laptop’s run time.

1. Plug in whenever possible

One surefire way to ensure that your laptop is always ready for action is to plug it into an AC outlet whenever possible. Keeping the machine fully charged makes it far more likely that you will always have the juice you need to complete your work. Purchase at least one extra AC adapter, so you’ll always have one in your office and one in your laptop bag for travel. If you work at home frequently, consider buying a third adapter to leave there.

A common misconception about laptops is that leaving the system plugged into AC power continuously will overcharge or shorten the life of its battery. Given that the lithium cells used in modern laptops will either catch fire or explode if overcharged, this is obviously not true. Lithium ion batteries stop charging once they reach full capacity, and keeping the battery charged reduces wear and tear on the power source, lengthening its useful life span.

2. Adjust the screen brightness

Modern displays with LED backlights are a major improvement over the CCFL (cold cathode fluorescent tube) backlit displays of yesteryear, in terms of both picture quality and power efficiency. Still, a laptop’s display claims a significant percentage of the power that the system consumes. As such, keeping the screen backlight low can increase your laptop’s run time noticeably. You should also take care in choosing where you work: A low backlight setting will be far more comfortable in a café with soft lighting than in a brightly lit room.

Another way to reduce the power the display consumes is to tweak the automatic backlight controls in Windows. Open Control Panel, choose Hardware and Sound > Power Options,and click Change plan settings for the active power plan. Choosing an aggressive timeout of 1 to 3 minutes under the ‘Dim the display’ and ‘Turn off the display’ options while the machine is operating on battery power will eke out more battery life by dimming or switching off the screen after the specified amount of inactivity. You can also click theChange advanced power settings option to set the level of brightness when the laptop is in the dimmed state.

3. Track down errant apps

One culprit often responsible for draining the battery ahead of its time is the presence of errant software applications that suck up disproportionate processor cycles. Unnecessary utilities running in the background, or an app that is hanging, can also cause this effect. Web browsers are particularly prone to the latter problem, due to the multiple plug-ins, rendering engines, and scripting engines embedded within them.

Modern CPUs save power by dynamically scaling back their clock speed to the minimum possible, but they can do so only when apps aren’t active. If you fail to deal with rogue apps, they will not only drain battery power—they might also slow down your entire system. One clue to the existence of an errant app is if your laptop fan frequently kicks into high gear when the machine should be idle.

Resolving the problem is relatively straightforward: Press the Ctrl-Alt-Delete key combination, launch Windows Task Manager, and use it to identify processes that are showing unexplained high utilization. If a program won’t exit normally, terminate the offending process by right-clicking it and selecting Kill Process. For Web browsers, shutting off all instances usually works. Should all else fail, perform a system restart.

4. Disable intensive background apps

Errant apps aside, applications that make intensive use of the processor or network should remain closed when your laptop isn’t plugged in. Peer-to-peer software such as BitTorrent clients and computationally intensive applications such as distributed-computing projects (Folding@Home, for example) are out. You can also confirm that Windows Update and other software updaters are not attempting to download large software patches.

Disabling automatic Windows Update functions outright is too draconian (particularly if you forget to reinstate the feature later), but periodically checking on your network usage for unexplained spikes will allow you to identify and stop large file transfers before they gobble up precious minutes of battery life.

5. Disable unneeded devices

You can disable unneeded hardware devices or ports to squeeze out a few more minutes of power, although this option isn’t possible with every laptop. Start by disabling unneeded wireless capabilities, such as built-in data modems and Wi-Fi and Bluetooth radios (many laptops have hardware switches for this purpose).

The optical-disc drive is another power guzzler that can drain batteries fast, so don’t leave a DVD or Blu-ray disc in the drive if you don’t need it. Finally, many laptops these days come with backlit keyboards; these are great when you’re in a dark environment, but you can save precious power by doing without the feature when your laptop is running on battery power.

Written by: Paul Mah

Source: Pcworld

Remembering Douglas Engelbart, Inventor of the Computer Mouse

Douglas Engelbart, 88, passed away this week at his home. Although Engelbart's name has likely escaped you all these years, his contribution to technology has been right at your fingertip on a daily basis...

On December 9, 1968, researcher and inventor Engelbart, along with 17 members of his research team at Menlo Park, presented a variety of inter-related technologies to the audience at the Fall Joint Computer Conference in San Francisco.

During the 90 minute presentation, Engelbart and his team demonstrated one particular unassuming device that would change forever how you and I interact with information...

Engelbart, you see, was the inventor of the computer mouse.

Here's a roundup of posts from Technorati-listed blogs, with more on this incredible man's journey that led the rest of us into a more tech-friendly existence....

Tech blog GizMag recounts how Engelbart's demo of the computer mouse also provided a glimpse into remote videoconferencing over his home's archaic modem.

Entertainment and culture blog Open Culture provides even more insight on Engelbart, including an embedded video of his "mother of all demos" and pictures of his first mouse.

The Huffington Post has more about Engelbart's background and life, and mentions his contribution to the creation of the Internet itself.

Engelbart's invention was enormous, considering that in the age of digital information, he provided our primary method of interacting with everything online. Not exactly the printing press all over again — instead, something more fundamental even than that for all of us.

Engelbart's invention is akin to inventing how we flip each page.

Written by: Steve Woods

Source: Technorati

Cool down an overheated laptop

A hot computer is a bad computer. Excess heat can cause malfunctions and crashes, and permanently damage your hardware. And although laptops generally put out less heat than desktops (energy efficiency is a higher design priority), they have their own unique problems. They're rarely as well ventilated as a desktop, and much more difficult to clean.

Keeping a laptop cool is all about ventilation. If the hot air can't escape, you're going to have a problem.

Whenever your laptop is on, make sure that nothing blocks the vents (which are probably on the sides). Don't put the PC on a pillow or a soft mattress, where it's likely to sink in and get blocked.

And never, ever put your laptop in a bag unless it's off, hybernated, or in sleep mode.

You'll rarely find vents at the bottom of a laptop, yet heat tends to accumulate there. If the bottom is hot to the touch, consider buying a laptop cooler--a pad that goes under the laptop and whisks away the heat. Many of them have fans. Prices range from about $8 to $40.

I'm not going to recommend a particular model because I don't use one. At least for my laptop, an empty but sturdy cardboard box is sufficient.

If you let dust accumulate in a PC, you're bound to have problems. And you'll have to fix those problems with a good cleaning.

Marco Chiappetta described the cleaning process in You're a dirty, dirty, dusty PC. But he used a desktop, and desktop PCs are designed for easy user maintenance.

Laptops are trickier. You can try using a can of compressed air (I bought one recently for $4) to blow the dust away from the vents. But that's a very limited solution. The dust may get away from the vent, but it's still inside the PC.

Try this: Shut down the laptop and turn it over. Examine the bottom. You'll likely find panels that can be removed with a small screwdriver. Open them up and see what you get access to. If you see dust, clean it away with compressed air.

Unfortunately, the real dust problem may be in places that require a more complicated dismantling. If you feel comfortable taking apart a laptop, go ahead. Otherwise, you may want to take it to a professional.

Written by:Lincoln Spector

Source: Pcworld

Keep your laptop battery healthy: Use it sparingly

Here's one of those sad facts of life that you just can't avoid: Like cars, clothing, and people, batteries wear out. You can't stop this process, but with proper care you can slow it down.

What wears down a battery? Charging and discharging. Obviously, you can't avoid either of those acts entirely (although if you could, you wouldn't have to worry about wearing out your battery). The trick, of course, is to do as little charging and discharging as possible. And one way to avoid charging and discharging is to remove the battery when you don't need it.

Ideally, you would remove the battery (with the laptop shut down, of course) before plugging in the AC adapter and working at your desk. Then, before you take your PC on the road, you would shut it down, insert the battery, and let it charge for a few hours.

In reality, that's not always practical. Shutting down and rebooting your PC every time you go from portable to desk-bound quickly becomes a nuisance. Worse, you have to remember to recharge before leaving home.

A more practical solution would be to shut down the laptop and remove the battery when you expect it will stay plugged in for a week or more. And don't intentionally discharge the battery before removing it. After all, the whole point is to charge and recharge as little as possible.

Some of the charge will be lost while the battery sits unused, so it's still a good idea to recharge it before taking it on the road--even though that requires some planning ahead of time.

Written by: Lincoln Spector

Source:Pcworld.com

Samsung Galaxy S4 Review: Better, But Not Best (Update: LTE Version)

Since it arrived last year, the Galaxy S III has been the world's best-selling smartphone that wasn't born in Cupertino. An impressive feat, but one that—along with Samsung's Megatron-sized hype-machine—has made for sky-high expectations for the sequel.

Our first impressions of the S4 left us a little cold, but we've now spent a full week getting to know it better. It's definitely one of the best phones you can buy. It's just shame it couldn't stay out of its own way.

Samsung's next great hope of a superphone. It's got a 5-inch 1080p Super AMOLED screen, a superfast quad-core 1.9GHz Snapdragon 600 processor, 2GB RAM, LTE, NFC, and a 13MP camera. It also has a beefy 2600mAh battery, and an IR blaster for controlling your home entertainment system. It comes running Android 4.2.2 with Samsung's heavy TouchWiz skin on top of it. It should be available on every major U.S. wireless carrier in the next few weeks.

Design

If you're familiar with the Galaxy S III, the S4 will look strikingly familiar. It retains the same rounded-rectangle look, with metal edges and a slippery, finger-print-trapping plastic back that looks like it belongs on a far more downmarket phone. It's at least functional, though; the back is removable, so you can swap out the battery or expand your storage capabilities with a micro SD card. A lot of people prefer that added utility over the more solid-feeling, and more beautiful unibody design of, say, the HTC One.

One place Samsung does manage to score design points is growing the screen from 4.8 inches on the Galaxy S III to a full 5.0 inches on the S4, while still making the phone thinner, narrower, and easier to grip. The side bezels are shrunk down to nearly nothing, and the screen takes up almost the entire front of the device. Speaking of the screen, it is easily the nicest Samsung has ever made. The colors (especially blues and greens) really pop, and the 441 pixels per inch ensure that text is super-clear. It's also bright enough to be clearly readable on a bright, sunny day, and the Super AMOLED screen makes the blacks like staring into the abyss.

That being said, we still slightly prefer the screen on the HTC One. There's something about it that looks matte, like a magazine, and colors are more accurate.

While Nexus phones are moving away from physical buttons for navigation, Samsung has opted to include three of them here. The S4 has capacitive buttons for Menu and Back, and a physical, clickable button for Home. It's wasted space. But worse, the capacitive buttons don't light up until you actually touch them, so if you forget which side is Menu and which is Back you might end up closing out of something unintentionally. Annoying!

The final touch: on top of the device is a super tiny IR blaster for controlling your TV. You'd never even notice it if you weren't looking for it, and you won't look for it.

Using It

As we noted in our original hands-on, the S4 comes packed full of "features." There's Air View, which allows you to hover your finger over the screen to see some information without actually clicking. There's Air Gestures, which allows you to wave your hand over the phone to change between tabs or photos. There's Smart Scroll, with which you tilt your device to scroll, instead of using your finger. There's Smart Pause, which will pause a video when you look away from the screen. And there's Group Play, which lets you play a handful of selected video games with friends on the same Wi-Fi network, or use several S4 phones as Sonos-like speakers.

The most important thing you need to know about these features is that you will never use any of them. Ever. Never ever. The end.

Why not? Oh, lots of reasons. Air View only works with Samsung's customized apps—not Gmail, not Chrome—and even then it doesn't work very well. Air Gestures are less accurate and less convenient than just touching the screen. Smart Scroll is totally unreliable, and Smart Pause is totally useless. The only, only justification for any of these features is that you can wave your hand over the phone to answer a call while driving, or, again, maybe if you're addicted to buffalo wings and have an aversion to moist towelettes.

Make no mistake. These "features" are nothing more than gimmicks, case studies in whydifferent doesn't always mean better, and can often be worse.

The good news is that you can turn off and/or totally ignore most of these extraneous "features," and when you do, there's a very good phone underneath. It's generally very fast, and HD games like Temple Run: Oz, Inertia HD, and Naught all ran smoothly. The pre-installed sliding keyboard is better than most manufacturer keyboards (looking at you, HTC), with plenty of space between keys and a dedicated number row, but auto-correct has a lot of issues, and we still prefer the keyboard on stock Jelly Bean or SwiftKey 4. The unit we tested was on T-Mobile's HSPA+ 42 network (no T-Mobile LTE in NYC, yet, though this phone will work with it when it rolls out); data speeds were good, and it connected reliably.

There will be a cadre of S4 accessories available (TV adapters and such) at some point, but the only one available at launch is the S View Flip Cover. It's a good-looking cover that adds almost no thickness to your phone by completely replacing the back. The phone can sense when the cover is closed, and it will only light up one little (plastic) window on the front, which should save you a little battery power (when an AMOLED pixel is black it doesn't use any power). You can swipe to accept or dismiss calls even when the cover is closed.

All of which sounds handy, but it makes the phone more cumbersome to use. It means you have to use two hands when you first pull your phone out, and when it's folded back, there's an extra piece of plastic your camera has to shoot through. It also makes the volume rocker way harder to access. In general, not worth it. Especially for the $60 price tag.

Camera

In decent lighting, the camera is among the best shooters out there. Images are very sharp and there's a surprising amount of depth of field. Colors are rich, though they border on over-saturation, and video quality is excellent. You can check out plenty of our sample shots here.

We've also included a few comparison images below to give you a sense of how the S4's shooter performs relative to the competition:

The camera app's mode selection wheel, which was lifted from Samsung's own Galaxy Camera, is the most intuitive method for switching between shooting modes on any smartphone we've tested. It has photos showing you exactly what you're getting, underneath clear text, which eliminates any guesswork.

LIKE

Battery performance on the S4 is among the best we've seen from smartphones this year, though it's still not anywhere near as everlasting as the RAZR MAXX HD. It's important to note, though, that our testing took place on T-Mobile's HSPA+ network, and not the more power-hungry LTE of Verizon and AT&T (Update: See below for test notes with LTE). With that advantage, it slightly edged out the HTC One by an hour or so on average (which itself does pretty decently)

The S4 did, though, make it to the end of the night without additional charging fairly often, thanks to both the larger battery (2600mAh vs. 2300mAh on the One) and the more economical AMOLED screen, though the processor's higher clock speed taxed it somewhat.

Speaking of which: that screen really is leaps and bounds better than the one on last year's S III. It's very sharp, pretty, and easy to read. The camera app is laid out very nicely, and the included OCR (optical character recognition) software, which can translate written words on the fly, are both examples of app actually done right. Overall, the S4 is definitely a sizable upgrade over the S III. But it's still got its issues.

No Like

Big surprise to nobody: the software is not up to snuff. Let's ignore for a moment that all of the "innovative" banner "features" mentioned above are at best useless and at worst annoying. The rest of the UI ain't much better. For example, there's a "feature" that gives you access to a little drawer of favorite apps on the left side of your screen, called the "Multi window." Just tap the little tab, and the drawer slides up. The problem? That tab does not go away. Even when you're watching a video.

Worse, you'll accidentally click it when scrolling through your email or web pages. You can disable it entirely, but isn't there a way to have it be there and be a hinderance to your productivity? [UPDATE: Allow me to admit my wrongness. As commenters have pointed out, the Multi window can be disabled or enabled by holding down the Back button. This is not intuitive, per se, but once you know that's how it works, it's certainly easy enough to do.] Or there's the Watch ON app, which is a combination of a program guide and a universal remote. Aside from the fact that it's hard to navigate, it gets your TV's inputs all mixed up, despite the fact that I was testing it with a Samsung TV. Or it let me control my Roku player, but it forgot to include a home button, so you can't switch out of HBO Go and into another application. The phone is full of little face-palm moments like this.

But the software's worst offense? It makes the phone slow. Well, not slow, exactly, but much slower than it should be. The Galaxy S4 has a 1.9GHz Snapdragon 600 processor. The HTC One has the exact same processor, but it's only clocked to 1.7GHz. So the S4 should be faster, right? Wrong. Despite that fact that the S4 benchmarks better, the HTC One leaves the S4 in the dust in every practical way possible. The One boots up three times faster, navigates the UI quicker, scrolls smoother, opens apps speedier, and most importantly, takes photos with no shutter lag, whereas the Galaxy S4 generally takes about a second to fire off a shot.

Can you solve that by rooting your Galaxy S4? Probably. But we're reviewing the phone as it will be sold to you. And that phone has no excuse for being this laggy.

Sound on the S4 is another problem. It still has just one tiny, tin-can-sounding speaker on the bottom back of the phone. It's quiet enough that I often missed a call or text even when I was just one room away. This problem is exacerbated if you put the phone down screen up (as one usually does), especially on something soft like a couch. Here, again, the HTC One blows the S4 out of the water, with its dual, stereo, front-facing speakers which are both very clear and loud enough to give you a heart attack in the morning if you set your alarm too loud.

1

And while the camera on the S4 edges out the HTC One in bright daylight, the HTC One absolutely stomps the the S4 in low-light. Spot much of a difference in the photo above? The phrase "it's like night and day" has never been more apt. To be fair, you can manually flip it into Night Mode, which will have the same effect as cranking your ISO waaay up. In other words, you'll be able to see more, but it will be noisy as hell and lose a lot of detail in the fuzz, and it's just inconvenient to have to do that, anyway. In terms of design and build-quality, the One just feels like it's one or two tiers above the S4. There's simply an "Oooh!" factor that the S4 lacks, and all of Samsung's bells and whistles can't hide it.

Should I Buy It?

The S4 is a very good phone, but there are very few compelling reasons to buy it over the HTC One. Let's list them.

You Should Buy the S4 Over the HTC One IF...

• 1. You're on Verizon. Unfortunately, Verizon is the only major carrier who won't be carrying the HTC One. If you're a subscriber, you can and probably should yell at them about that. UPDATE: Actually, Verizon just announced it will be carrying the One as well.
• 2. You absolutely must have expandable storage and/or a removable battery.
• 3. You really need that extra hour of battery life.

And that's about it.

The S4 is far from a bad phone. In fact, were it not for the HTC One, it would be the bestAndroid phone you can buy. And one can't help but think that had Samsung poured all of its innovation into maximizing the practical user experience—instead of highly ignorable gimmicks—it might have taken the crown.

UPDATE (6/3/13): We just spent the last week with Verizon's LTE version of the Galaxy S4, and we have good news. The LTE radio really doesn't seem to have impacted battery life at all. We still made it to the end of the night more often than not with medium-heavy usage.

Data speeds (tested around New York City) are nice and fast. Average download speeds were roughly 15Mbps with peaks around 22Mbps. The slowest we ever got was 9.2Mbps, which is still extremely fast. The upload side was a bit of a surprise, though. The average upload speed was 2.2Mbps. That's slower than we're used to seeing from Verizon. Still, fast enough for everyday communications, it'll just be annoying if you're uploading a ton of HD video (which you probably want to be doing over Wi-Fi anyway).

In general, we're still really enjoying using the S4 and we're still calling it our second-favorite Android phone. Whether you go with this or the HTC One, you'll be happy with your decision.

Samsung Galaxy S4 Specs

• Network: All major U.S. carriers
• OS: Android 4.2.2 with TouchWiz UI
• CPU: 1.9 GHz quad-core Snapdragon 600
• Screen: 5-inch 1920x1080 Super AMOLED (441PPI)
• RAM: 2GB
• Storage: 16 or 32GB + micro SD up to 64GB
• Camera: 13MP rear / 2MP front
• Battery: 2600 mAh Li-Ion
• Dimensions: 5.38 x 2.75 x 0.31 inches
• Weight: 4.59 ounces
• Price: Starts at $200 with a two-year contract

Written by:BRENT ROSE

Source: Gizmodo

Razer Blade 2013: Now This Is How You Make a Damn Windows Laptop

Everyone’s first impression of the 14-inch Razer Blade, even more than its 17-inch older brother, is Ha, they made a MacBook. But then, Oh—wait. They made a MacBook. And actually, it's even better than that. 

What Is It 

A 14-inch gaming laptop that's small and light enough to be your everyday machine.

Why Does It Matter
For years now, laptops have been getting smaller, thinner, and overall just better. But only a certain, extreme kind of thin has gotten any design consideration to speak of. Anyone who wanted more power from their laptop was basically stuck with a clunky box if they wanted something that could play games (or crunch numbers) well and run Windows. 

The 17-inch Blades from last year were wholly impressive from the standpoint of bringing the contents (more or less) of a massive gaming laptop into something much smaller than we had ever really considered. But 17 inches is still too big for most of our bags, and for most of us in general, really. Fourteen inches, though, is an almost perfect size for anyone who doesn’t need the tiniest of laptops. If the 17-inch Blade was a Humvee, the 14-inch is a tricked out Mustang.

But the real reason that this machine and others like it are important is what it means for the next few generations of laptops. We're not done yet. Integrated graphics are improving rapidly—Haswell is really impressive in a lot of ways—but only in the context of the way we game and use computers now. For the next level stuff, things like the Oculus Rift, or stuff we haven’t even thought of yet, we need more power. We’ll have to draw the same graphics twice, for each eye, or appease some other crazy contortion. The Ock lags on even solid hardware, like last year’s 17-inch Blade (now Pro) refresh. We want smaller, more beautiful laptops. But we’ll also need raw power. And this is the best shot at combining the two.

Design
All black; so beautiful. The Blade is anodized black aluminum that’s gorgeous to look at, although it attracts fingerprints and other smudges like a black hole. It’s as slim as a MacBook Pro Retina 13, and has similar hard lines, as opposed to the old 17-inch’s more rounded form. It’s also ditched the Switchblade hotkeys and instead has a single trackpad in the center of the body. Instead of being a single piece of glass, like most premium laptops, it’s got two buttons at the bottom of the trackpad. There are two speaker grills along the sides of the keyboard. The keys are back-lit in green and actually look pretty awesome whether lit or unlit; the lid has Razer’s garish logo illuminated in green as well.

Using It
When you first sit down with the Blade, you don’t really want to change a thing. It feels impossibly thin for something you expect to squeeze good game graphics out of, and as solid as anything that’s ever come out of Apple. The most impressive part, maybe, is all the little things it gets right that old school laptop makers consistently get so wrong. The hinge on the lid is perfect—no wobble, but not too stiff to move. The body itself is clean, clear of any excess ornamentation (beyond that hideous logo). The speakers are a bit of an eyesore, but Razer’s been over-conscious about sound since a few reviewers killed them about the first Blade’s anemic speakers. (The left speaker on our model did have one edge that wasn’t flush with the chassis, which was a bit distracting and the only manufacturing imperfection we saw). Even the keyboard and trackpad are wonderful. The keyboard is properly spaced for typing, with good travel distance to type full speed on, but also with enough distance to WASD with precision.

The biggest issue with using it day to day is the idiotic buttons at the bottom of the trackpad. They’re flimsy, too small, and given how well the rest of the trackpad responds, totally unnecessary. Yes, they’re included to save on cost (mechanical parts) and space in the body. But that’s not a good compromise to make; get the trackpad right, it’s one of three things on a laptop that really affects your senses (along with screen and keyboard). Of course, while gaming, the downside minimized. But for a “gaming” laptop with so much potential to just be the single best Windows laptop (and it probably still is for the weight class above ultrabooks), it’s borderline unacceptable.

Gaming is what you’d expect given the hardware. The Nvidia GeForce GTX 765M is a fairly decent card, and you’ll be able to run most modern games on High settings and get extremely playable frame rates. BioShock Infinite was well over 60 FPS at High. Skyrim was in the high 40s; Dishonored in the 50s (with a few dips); and congested areas of WoW 25-35. All of which is to say, this is an extremely capable setup, though certainly not top end.

Battery life isn't what you’ve been seeing from other Haswell computers. It’s not the 12+ hour MacBook Air, or even the 8-10-hour Vaio. But it’s not all that bad. We got 2 hours and 45 minutes of battery with mixed usage (1 hour Skyrim, 1 hour assorted web browsing, 45 minutes BioShock infinite; 60 percent brightness, back-lit keys off), and over 2 hours of Team Fortress 2 at the same settings. The original Blade ran TF2 for 49 minutes before crapping out. For everyday work, the 14-inch was generally just under five hours (plug in in the early afternoon). So this is progress.

Back in late 2011, after it had announced the first Blade, Razer told us that the reason it went with 17 inches was that that’s the smallest possible screen that you can use and still easily immerse a viewer into the environment. Any smaller and you’re not getting a full experience. The 14-inch version more or less confirms this. It’s perfectly okay for games, but you’re going to want to hook it up to a larger monitor if you’re at a desk—for the extra real estate/immersion, but also for the hunched-over factor of gaming on a 14-inch laptop.

The screen itself is one of the few weak points here. It looks fine—in games more than when browsing the web or using other apps—but the 1600 x 900 resolution just doesn’t feel in line with the rest of the machine. 1080p would have been ideal, especially with Windows 8.1 handling the higher density displays a little better now, but richer colors with more contrast would have been an improvement too. The matte finish is nice, but with the rest of the laptop collecting every fingerprint it comes in contact with, the message feels a little skewed. The Blade draws to 1080p displays just fine, so it’s not like the Razer Edge, which was forced into its 1366x768 display because of horsepower.

Like

This is very close to a perfect body for a gaming laptop. The Blade is gorgeous and well built. There is zero flex anywhere. It runs current games on high graphics settings at good-to-acceptable framerates. The trackpad is more responsive than the majority of Windows laptops' and the keyboard is just about perfect. While the body gets hot during gaming, the fans do a good job of not letting it affect performance without sounding like a wind tunnel.

No Like

The mostly awesome trackpad is almost completely submarined by its idiotic buttons. Battery life is hugely improved from your standard gaming rig, but you're getting nowhere near the six hours claimed by Razer. The screen is sub-optimal, on color performance and viewing angles (a problem for a matte display), and at 1600x900, feels like by far the weakest link and the piece that will age the poorest.

Test Notes

• As you’d expect, it gets HOT. But within reason. The Blade actually does a really nice job of controlling its temperature (without a ton of fan noise) when you’re not gaming; doing everyday tasks, it was rarely above room temperature. Once you start gaming, however, the heat cranks up. It gets hot enough to physically burn you if you do something dumb like rest it on your chest, and the dual exhaust fans on the bottom line up almost exactly with where you’d rest it on your thighs/knees (sigh). Still, the heat stays closer to the bezel of the screen for the most part, and the palm rests and keyboard area were never worse than warm. Extended sessions also didn’t cause any slowdown to framerates in-game, which is nice for anyone who’s ever had to prop up their laptop and point a fan at it to keep a game running for more than 30 minutes.

• Razer does a pretty good job of shipping without any bloatware. You have some Razer component stuff, but you’ll want those for keeping drivers up to date anyway. Otherwise, it’s just a few Intel and Nvidia shortcuts.

• You will miss the screen not having touch if you've gotten used to using a Windows 8 device that has it. It's another cost- and space-saving move, but you'll feel this more in the years coming up, too.

• As you’d guess, the drivers aren’t perfect with Windows 8.1 yet. For the final day or two testing, I stuck 8.1 on the Blade and the 14-inch screen is very improved by the new Snap.

• I can’t stress enough how many fingerprints this thing collects. Wiping it down with a microfiber is enough to get rid of them, but it can be distracting.

• The speakers are loud and clear, but also quite tinny. The bass is almost non-existent. But you’ll be able to make out voices and sound cues in games, and it’s more or less acceptable for movies and TV.

• At startup, the Blade would occasionally make a noise like a cicada was being spun through a bicycle tire’s spokes, which was likely coming from the fan, but really I have no idea.

Should You Buy This?

Yes. The standard line for Razer hardware has usually been, “Hahaha, NO. Unless you lactate liquid gold.” Here, though, the price is still steep, but not insanely steeper than its peers. 

Toshiba’s KiraBook starts at $1700; the Blade at $1800, and the comparison isn’t even close. A 15-inch MacBook Pro non-retina with an inferior graphics card and less RAM costs the same $1800.

The Blade isn’t perfect—it’s really hard to forget how awful those trackpad buttons are, and that screen is going to be regrettable in a year or to, if it isn't already—but it’s a freaking awesome computer that is somehow also a decent value. Get it if you’re looking at getting a nice laptop to game on that you can use for just about anything else, too, without breaking your back or your bank account.

For a more gaming-focused review of the 14-inch Razer Blade, check out our friends at Kotaku.

Razer Blade Specs as tested:

Processor: Intel Core i7 2.2GHz Haswell

Graphics: Nvidia GeForce GTX 765M (2GB GDDR5 VRAM; Optimus); Intel HD 4600

Memory: 8GB RAM

Display: 14-inch 1600x900 matte LED backlit

Storage: 256GB SSD

Ports: 3 USB 3.0, HDMI Out, 3.5mm audio

Dimensions: 13.6 x 9.3 x 0.66 inches

Weight: 4.1 pounds

Price: $2000

Written by: Kyle Wagner

Source: http://gizmodo.com/razer-blade-2013-now-this-is-how-you-make-a-damn-windo-647053117