The LG G5 featured a snap-on construction that let you attach different modules to the bottom of the phone. It flopped.
LG is backing away from what made its previous top-of-the-line phone unique.
The company last year launched the G5, which ventured off the beaten path of phone design: Owners could swap out its bottom «chin» for other parts that added a camera grip or a souped-up speaker. In a sea of similar-looking phones , LG hoped that its unusual approach would turn heads.
It didn’t.
«It was a meaningful test for us,» said LG Chief Technology Officer Skott Ahn in an interview Wednesday. «Of course, we paid a lot. »
Lessons learned, the company will move away from the modular approach for the upcoming G6, which will likely be a more conventional phone.
That shift marks a turnaround effort for LG as it attempts to win back mobile customers. The company, which sells everything from refrigerators to televisions , had made headway with a portfolio of affordable phones and its G line of flagship phones, but the G5 represented a big misstep.
«We have to follow customer acceptance,» Ahn said, noting that LG’s carrier partners also nixed the modular idea.
He said the idea of a satellite of accessories wouldn’t completely disappear, suggesting other peripherals that didn’t need to be plugged in to the phone could still be available.
Ahn’s comments came against the backdrop of a big day for LG at CES 2017, the gadget extravaganza taking place this week in Las Vegas. The Korean conglomerate is showing off a wide range of gear, including a robotic lawn mower, the superthin W7 «wallpaper» TV and the Alexa-capable InstaView refrigerator with a giant touchscreen in the door.
LG isn’t the only phone maker looking for redemption these days, amid a market that has cooled significantly over the last year or so. Samsung, struggling even as it clings to its renown as the biggest seller of smartphones , is working to recover from its troubles with the Galaxy Note 7. Meanwhile, the BlackBerry brand has been reborn under the care of Chinese phone maker TCL.
Even as an underdog, LG takes no pleasure in Samsung’s troubles with the Galaxy Note 7, whose tendency to overheat, and even sometimes explde, resulted in its recall and elimination. Samsung offered a mea culpa to kick off its press conference at CES.
«We would rather learn from it, rather than enjoy it as competitors,» Ahn said.
At CES 2017, LG announces its Signature TV W. The new television is nearly as thin as wallpaper at 2.57mm thick and attaches to the wall via a magnetic bracket.
Spurred by Samsung’s problems, LG has amped up the testing that its new products receive. All of its upcoming products are going through a more rigorous process, Ahn said.
«There’s a good opportunity to learn,» he said.
Along with Motorola, LG was among the most aggressive when it came to selling smartwatches. It launched a number of different versions, but curtailed its plans late last year.
Ahn confirmed that LG is still developing smartwatches, but didn’t offer any timetable on when they would launch.
«I’m not sure when it’s the right time to dip back in,» he said.

© Source: https://www.cnet.com/news/lg-g6-phone-to-lose-modular-gimmick-ces-2017/
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Every year, the contribution limits and other details about 401(k)s change. A few of those changes this year can be particularly useful for low-income families. Here are the changes to watch for.
First, the contribution limit is still set at $18,000. That part remains unchanged. However, the Saver’s Credit gives an extra incentive to low-income families. If you’re making less than $31,000 a year as a single person, or $62,000 as a married couple filing jointly, you can qualify for a credit on anywhere from 10% to 50% of the first $2,000 you contribute per person to your plans. Those yearly income limits are slightly higher than they were last year, so if you’re not above those limits, it might be worth adjusting your 401(k) contribution.
The other change only affects high-income earners. Employers are now allowed to contribute up to $54,000 in matching contributions (up from $53,000 last year). You probably won’t notice this change unless you’re bringing home a pretty hefty salary to start with, though. Check out the post below from personal finance site The Motley Fool for more details on how the changes will affect you.
The 2 Changes to 401(k)s in 2017 You Need to Know | The Motely Fool
Photo by 401(k) Calculator .

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Razer’s Chroma branding has signified a rich, multi-colored lighting ability for many of Razer’s products, whether they be mice, headphones, laptops, keyboards, and more. Chroma offers the user to configure the color scheme with up to 16.8 million colors, in a variety of zones, or even per-key lighting schemes, all controlled through the Razer Synapse software. With the addition of Chroma supported apps and games, lighting can be controlled from within the program as well, so, for instance, if you are running low on ammo, your keyboard can flash to let you know.
Chroma has been one of Razer’s strongest assets in its accessory lineup, and last year they even brought their per-key RGB backlighting to the Razer Blade Stealth Ultrabook, then later to their Razer Blade, and now the Razer Blade Pro. At the time, the Stealth was the first notebook to offer per-key RGB backlighting, and in practice it’s much nicer to use than something with zoned lighting.
At CES 2017, Razer is announcing that they are now bringing Chroma lighting to the entire room, with Project Ariana. This is a concept project at the moment, but the idea is pretty interesting, and it can possibly bring even more immersion to the gamer.
At the center of Project Ariana is a high-definition video projector, which features an ultra-wide fish eye lens for maximum room coverage. It features a pair of 3D depth sensing cameras in order to calibrate itself to the room it is in, to provide the best projection for any room.
When in the game, the projector can be used to augment the room lighting to bring a deeper experience, and you can imagine lightning or gunfire flashes around the room bringing a whole new complexity to the involvement of the gamer. As a video projector, it can also be used for exact that as well.
It’s certainly an interesting concept, but likely needs to be seen to be experienced fully, and Razer will be demoing Project Ariana this week at CES, so we hope to get some hands-on time with it.
In addition to the expansion of Chroma to the room, Razer is also expanding Chroma support to third parties. Razer has sold over five million Chroma devices, and they have worked with developers to add Chroma app support to top games like Overwatch, and more, so it makes a lot of sense for them to bring other device manufacturers on-board. With one larger ecosystem, they would hope to get even more developer support, and from the third-party point of view, they will have a turn-key solution without having to develop an entirely new one – at a licensing cost of course.
Razer has announced they have several hardware partners already lined up to support Chroma on their own products, including Lenovo, NZXT, Antec, Lian Li, Wicked Lasers, and Nanoleaf. Several of these companies have already worked with Razer in the past on devices, so this extension of cooperation isn’t too surprising.
Project Ariana is currently in the prototype phase, so it will be a little while before Razer is ready for production, and therefore pricing is a long time away yet, but this seems like a natural extension to the Chroma ecosystem they’ve already created, and could bring a lot of “wow” factor to a gaming room.
Source: Razer

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AMD’s Vega graphics processors, featuring what the company has called Next-Generation Compute Units, have some major architectural changes — but will that translate into improved real-world performance? AMD has officially taken the wraps off its next-generation Vega graphics processor architecture, pointing to the improvements it hopes will help it win back market share lost to discrete graphics leader Nvidia.
Vega, due to launch early this year and appearing first in the company’s Radeon Instinct accelerator family , is being positioned by the company as being a major leap over previous generation graphics processors. In support of this claim, the company has treated the tech press to a technological overview of just why Vega should have a place in everything from gaming rigs to high-performance computing projects.
The company’s promises for Vega begin boldly, with the claim that it includes ‘ the world’s most scalable GPU memory architecture ‘. Using High Bandwidth Memory 2 (HBM2), the company is claiming a doubled bandwidth per pin and eight-fold capacity increase per stack, along with a halved footprint compared with off-chip GDDR5 memory. A high-bandwidth cache controller linked to system RAM, meanwhile, is claimed to offer smart movement of data between system RAM and video RAM — resulting, the company claims, in lower overall VRAM requirements when running games at Ultra HD resolution.
Vega also includes an entirely refreshed programmable geometry pipeline, offering a claimed doubling of peak throughput per clock, which combines nicely with what the company describes as an ‘ Intelligent Workgroup Distributor ‘ for improved load-balancing between the processor’s various components and pipelines.
The meat of Vega, though, comes in what the company calls its ‘ Next-Generation Compute Unit ‘, or NCU. This, the company claims, offers 512 8-bit, 256 16-bit, or 128 32-bit floating-point operations per clock and can be split for high-performance, mixed-precision mathematics. The chip is also optimised for both higher clock speeds and increased number of instructions per clock (IPC), packing up to four operations where the company’s previous compute units would have managed only one.
Additional improvements promised in the Vega architecture include a draw stream binning rasteriser, which is claimed to both boost performance and reduce power draw, while the shifting of render back-ends to act as clients of the level two (L2) cache boost the performance of deferred shading.
There’s one thing that didn’t form part of AMD’s presentation, however: real world figures. While the company has crowed about the potential improvements available from Vega as a result of its architectural changes, it has not yet put its money where its mouth is and subjected Vega-based cards to real-world benchmarking. AMD has also yet to formally confirm launch dates and card specifications for Vega’s release.

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