The rumored HTC U has a (touch) sensitive side
It looks like HTC is promoting one of its concept phones to the big time, as reports claim the phonemaker will release a new flagship phone with a unique control method this spring, called the HTC U.
Previously codenamed ‘HTC Ocean,’ the HTC U’s standout feature is a touch-sensitive frame, replacing standard buttons and volume rockers with contextual squeezing and sliding of the handset’s sides, according to trusted leaker Evan Blass, via VentureBeat .
The phone is planned to join HTC’s recent lineup of other U-branded phones, to include the recently revealed HTC U Play and HTC U Ultra .
This report lines up with another one of Blass’ leaks from earlier this year, showing a video of the presumed HTC U and its innovative control scheme.
Remember the HTC Ocean? (https://t.co/q5ghm3vQ8Z) pic.twitter.com/GtpqowETjM January 8, 2017
The leak also matches with another batch of HTC-branded uncoverings from last year (also supplied by Blass) featuring then-named HTC Ocean and its «Sense Touch» capabilities, giving us a little more context to how the just-about-buttonless phone operates.
More cool HTC stuff here (including the tablet that launched @evleaks): https://t.co/S3WaZkeog9 Check it out before it gets pulled! pic.twitter.com/YJwmZb0Sje September 20, 2016
From a technical standpoint, the 5.5-inch HTC U is said to carry HTC’s Sense 9 user interface, a Snapdragon 835 processor, microSD compatibility, internal storage of up to 64GB or 128GB, a 12-megapixel back camera and a 16-megapixel front-facing camera.
Like all leaks without official wording, it’s best to take this news with healthy skepticism but given Blass’ record and specificity, we wouldn’t be surprised if we see more of the HTC U in mid-to-late April, when the phone is expected to unveil itself.

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After testing the feature outside the US, Mark Zuckerberg’s social network is bringing the format Snapchat «pioneered» to its marquee app.
Facebook Stories, similar to Snapchat’s popular feature, is launching globally.
Facebook just made its biggest move in its war against Snapchat.
The social network on Tuesday widely released Facebook Stories, a near-identical clone of rival Snapchat’s popular feature, also called Stories. The feature lets people post a string of videos and photos that disappear after 24 hours.
If it sounds like you’ve heard this before, you have. Facebook has already brought Stories to many of its other apps: Instagram has Instagram Stories. WhatsApp has something called Status. Messenger’s version is called Messenger Day. But this is the first time Facebook is bringing Stories globally to its marquee app, which gets more than 1.7 billion mobile visitors a month. (Facebook had previously been testing the feature in a handful of countries outside the US, including Ireland and Chile.)
«Yes, this is something that was pioneered by Snapchat,» Connor Hayes, a product manager at Facebook, said during a press briefing in San Francisco on Monday. «We think they did a great job of uncovering that Stories as a format is the way that people really want to share photos and videos in social apps. »
You can add filters to photos and videos.
With Facebook Stories, you can add filters or masks — what Snapchat calls «lenses» — to your pictures or videos. For example, you can give someone a unibrow, mustache, sunglasses or glitter beard. (Yes, that’s a beard made of digital glitter.) Or you can filter a video so it looks like it was created in the style of a famous artist, like Picasso.
To get to the new camera features, open up the app and swipe right. After you’ve decided what you want to share, you can post it as a Story, post it on your News Feed, or send it to groups or individuals with another new feature called Direct. Those photos and videos you send with Direct will self-detonate too, just like on Snapchat. The features are available on iPhones and Android phones.
The updates amount to the biggest change to how people can post to Facebook since the social network introduced the News Feed in 2006 or Timelines in 2011. Hayes said that now people take a lot more photos and videos, so these products are meant to keep up with that behavior.
«We think it’s our responsibility to update the Facebook app and really upgrade it so [pictures and videos] are more a part of their experience,» he said.
But for anyone who uses Snapchat, those products are anything but new. Facebook has a long history of trying to edge out its younger competitor, which is beloved by teens and young adults. Nearly 70 percent of all 18- to 24-year-olds in the US use the app, according to ComScore.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg famously tried to buy Snapchat for $3 billion in 2013, only to have Snapchat cofounder Evan Spiegel balk at the offer. Facebook also built two Snapchat ripoffs, called Poke and Slingshot, that never caught on. They’ve both been killed. Meanwhile, Snap, Snapchat’s parent company, grew to become a formidable Facebook opponent. Earlier this month, Snap went public in a $3.4 billion IPO .
You’ll see Stories about your News Feed.
But while Facebook’s early attempts foundered, the company has found some success in trying to clone Snapchat Stories. Instagram Stories, which debuted in August, now has 150 million users a day, and the company said earlier this year that ads are coming in the feature.
For the Facebook Stories launch, the company partnered with two artists, Vancouver-based Douglas Coupland and London-based Hattie Stewart , to create art for some of the filters and effects. Facebook also partnered with movie studios to create masks for movies including «Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2,» «Wonder Woman» and «Despicable Me 3. » That last filter turns your image into a Minion. But Facebook declined to discuss the terms of those partnerships, or its ad strategy going forward.
Zuckerberg seems convinced products like Stories are the way to go. «In most social apps today, a text box is still the default way we share,» Zuckerberg told financial analysts in November. «Soon, we believe, a camera will be the main way that we share. »
Now, he’s taking that bet to hallowed ground for the company: Facebook itself, the social network he created in his dorm room 13 years ago. So get ready, here come the glitter beards.

© Source: https://www.cnet.com/news/facebook-stories-snapchat-snap-main-app/
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Late last year, Razer acquired the majority of THX , and while it may have seemed like something outside their normal realm,…
Late last year, Razer acquired the majority of THX , and while it may have seemed like something outside their normal realm, today Razer is announcing an updated Razer Blade Pro, with THX Certification. For those unfamiliar, THX has been certifying audio and video equipment for decades, with an initial focus on the cinema, and then branching out in to consumer electronics. With their new parent company, it makes a lot of sense to branch into computer certification.
First, let’s go over what’s new on the Razer Blade Pro. Just this month, Brandon finished his review on the Razer Blade Pro which launched late last year. The updated model launching today has some decent upgrades over the original model. First off, the CPU has been upgraded to Kaby Lake, but rather than doing a straight swap from the Core i7-6700HQ to the Core i7-7700HQ, Razer has gone with the Core i7-7820HK processor, which is 2.9-3.9 GHz, but it is also an unlocked processor, and Razer is supporting CPU overclocking in the Synapse software. One of the issues Brandon pointed out in the review was that Razer was billing the Razer Blade Pro as the ultimate laptop, but they went with the same quad-core processor as far less expensive laptops, so this is a great change. There’s only one quad-core mobile part over this, and it’s not unlocked, and being unlocked is going to improve the appeal to this market. In addition, Razer has bumped the RAM frequency to DDR4 2667 MHz, up from 2133 MHz DDR4 previously. It’s a small change, but a welcome one.
The other specifications have not changed. It still features a NVIDIA GTX 1080 8 GB graphics card, driving a 17.3-inch UHD 3840×2160 IGZO G-SYNC display, with 100% Adobe RGB color gamut, and 512 GB to 2 TB SSD support in RAID 0 with two SSDs. We’ve said this before, but honestly one good SSD would be better for most users, but it seems like the gaming market is migrating towards RAID 0 again. The form factor, light weight for a laptop of this performance, and other items remain.
The big new feature is THX Certification, and the Razer Blade Pro is the first laptop to be qualified for THX Mobile Certification. I spoke with Razer and THX about what this entails, and it appears to be good news for end users. THX tests several models from the pre-production phase onwards, with feedback from the first test looping back into the hardware configuration until the later generation units meet the testing guidelines. What those guidelines are, are unfortunately still a mystery, since THX and Razer have not gotten back to us yet on their targets, but if they do we will let you know. THX did say that they test panel performance on brightness and contrast, and are including a color profile to give a white point of D65, Rec. 709 color gamut, and low error levels, although low wasn’t defined at our meeting. The color gamut support here is important, since previous to this, the Razer Blade Pro only displayed in the Adobe RGB color space, which is much wider than sRGB. This leads to blown out colors, unless the app itself is color managed, which is a rare thing in Windows. This new color profile from THX should alleviate one of the biggest issues with the Razer Blade Pro in day to day use.
The second part of THX Mobile Certification is for audio, and while you may be expecting this to apply to the speakers, it’s actually certification for the headphone jack. This might seem a bit odd, but with the noise level of a thin and powerful system, certifying the headphone jack is arguably the better call, and honestly there’s little chance for small laptop speakers to meet much of a certification anyway. On the headphone jack, THX certification means that there has to be a flat frequency response, even with different impedance loads from different headphones, along with low distortion and high power, and a low noise floor to ensure there is no background hiss. Assuming the Razer Blade Pro didn’t already meet these targets, this should mean an improved experience from the headphone jack, although as with the display certification, we were not provided exact certification standards.
There are certainly going to be people who feel this kind of certification isn’t necessary, but there definitely is some extra confidence when you purchase something as expensive as a Razer Blade Pro, and you are ensured that the display and audio meet a certain threshold of performance. The addition of a Rec. 709 color gamut profile from THX for the Razer Blade Pro is a big win for end users as well, since there was no way before to cap the color gamut for apps with no color management.
With the new overclockable CPU, faster memory, and THX Certification, Razer has also bumped the starting price to $3999.99, and availability will start in April on Razerzone.com.
Source: Razer

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Netgear introduced their first product in the Wi-Fi system / mesh category, the Orbi, in August 2016. Its dedicated wireless backhaul (4×4 802…
Netgear introduced their first product in the Wi-Fi system / mesh category, the Orbi, in August 2016. Its dedicated wireless backhaul (4×4 802.11ac / 1733 Mbps) and 2×2 radios with MU-MIMO support for the clients (on both the router and the satellite) made it one of the best performing Wi-Fi system kits in the market. Since the introduction of the Orbi RBK50 (AC3000), various vendors in the Wi-Fi market have come with their own variants. The increasing competition has turned out to be good for consumers, resulting in kits getting introduced at very competitive price points.
Many mesh systems come in packs of three, but, Orbi stood out with its claim of being able to blanket a 4000 sq. ft house with just a router and a satellite. Despite the high price (mainly due to additional hardware, compared to a regular router), mesh / Wi-Fi systems have been enjoying very good market reception. In order to tackle the increased competition (often coming in at a lower price point compared to the Netgear Orbi RBK50 kit), Netgear is introducing two additional members in the Orbi family — the RBK30 and RBK40. Like the RBK50, the main unit and the satellite in the RBK40 are similar in appearance and available interfaces. However, the physical dimensions of the RBK40’s components are smaller than that of the RBK50. The RBK40 and the RBK30 share the same router, but, the satellite in the latter is of the wall-plug variety and has no wired ports. The other differences between the three are summarized in the table below.
Netgear is able to reach these lower price points due to the following changes compared to the RBK50:
During the press briefing, Netgear emphasized that they support both PC-based and mobile app-based setup for the Orbi. Particular stress was also made on the ability of the Orbi kits to operate effectively without any reliance on the cloud (unlike products such as the Google OnHub that have encountered various issues due to over-reliance on the cloud for day-to-day operation).
Netgear is also making the satellites available for purchase separately. The price points for these extenders range from $150 for the wall-plug variety to $250 for the one with the 4×4 backhaul link.
The new Orbi products also use the same Qualcomm Atheros IPQ4019 network processor SoC, along with the Wi-Fi SON features. While retaining the same feature set, the RBK30 and RBK40 expand the target market for Wi-Fi systems. The lower price points will also help Netgear in tackling the increasing competition.

© Source: http://www.anandtech.com/show/11231/netgear-expands-orbi-wifi-system-family-with-ac2200-kits
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