Review TechRadar: Phone and communications news 08-16-2014

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Google Now wants to take you on an impromptu Field Trip Aug 16th 2014, 15:11, by Chris Smith Google has integrated a relatively unknown app called Field Trip into its ever-improving Google Now personal assistant. The under-the-radar Field Trip app, which launched back in 2012, is a product of Google's Niantic labs and notifies smartphone users of local points of interest. Its raison d'être is to showcase cool, hidden places whenever you're in the vicinity. Field Trip runs in the background and sends users a card-based notification with information on interesting spots. Now those cards, which can include everything from historical sites to interesting architecture to the best places to shop, have been added to the Google Now experience. Travel aid "When you're traveling, you can always use a little extra help to learn more about a cool landmark, or to make sure you don't miss the most interesting local architecture or public art," Google said in the announcement. "The Field Trip app from Google's Niantic Labs was designed to allow people to discover the hidden and unique locations in the world around them - and now, when you're traveling you'll start seeing information from Field Trip in Google Now." Google Now can get you out of a jam with Waze integration Is iPhone 6L Apple's chosen name for the larger 5.5-inch handset? Aug 16th 2014, 13:07, by Chris Smith The rumoured larger iteration of Apple's next-gen handset will be called the iPhone 6L, according to a Chinese website which claims to have obtained components and spec details. The AppleDaily site has posted photos of what it claims to be the 4.7-inch and 5.5-inch display components for the respective iPhone 6 handsets. Along with asserting the iPhone 6L moniker, the report also claims the bigger model will also have a larger 2915mAh battery, while a 1810mAh cell will power the 4.7-inch version. The larger battery would be necessary, of course, to power the larger display. Just another rumour? Naturally, the report can be classed as speculation, so we'd advise you to take it with a large dose of salt. If the device does turn out to be called the iPhone 6L, then what of the 4.7-inch device? Let us know your thoughts in the comments section below. Is this the iPhone 6 in its retail box? In Depth: 10 awesome things your smartphone will do next Aug 16th 2014, 12:01, by Marc Chacksfield 10 awesome things your smartphone will do next The smartphone is the Very Hungry Caterpillar of technology, munching its way through all kinds of devices as the phone in your pocket replaces all kinds of stand-alone kit. It's already chewed through sat-navs and compact cameras, iPods and even torches - and it's still hungry. Here's what's next on the menu. 1 Keys Your phone probably won't replace your front door Yale key any time soon, but it's likely to replace other kinds of keys. The Hilton hotel chain is rolling out door locks that enable you to check in and open your hotel room door from your phone, and Hyundai is experimenting with in-phone NFC tags to replace keyless entry systems in its cars. Smartphone-controlled door locks do exist - Lockitron is currently accepting pre-orders and the impressive-looking August Smart Lock is due to launch later this year. But with prices in the $179-$200 bracket they're very expensive upgrades for your existing home locks. 2 In-car entertainment Your phone wants to do more in your car than just open the door and start the engine. Apple's CarPlay, Broadcom's MirrorLink and Google's Open Automotive Alliance all want to put your phone at the heart of your in-car infotainment system, providing everything from traffic alerts and GPS mapping to streaming music and reading out your incoming emails. That's great news, because car firms have proved again and again that software interfaces aren't really their strong point. In-car systems are currently being rolled out in a select number of brand-new vehicles, but third-party audio firms plan to bring the technology to our old bangers too. 3 Switches Belkin's WeMo and Philips' Hue products are a glimpse of a smartphone-controlled future: the former is an app-controlled power switch and the latter, app-controlled lighting. The cost of sensors and wireless radios continues to plummet, and that'll mean connected home products are no longer for people with lots of money to throw around. Some of the switches won't even look like switches: check out Google's Nest smart thermostat, which learns your routine and adjusts its programming accordingly. 4 Stethoscopes Apple's HealthKit, Google's Fit and Samsung's SAMI want to get to know you better - and the health and fitness data they collect from a range of sensors could make your smartphone better informed than your GP. The market for mobile health apps and sensors is predicted to top $20 billion per year by 2018. 5 TVs A recent survey for CES found that 53% of US consumers expect smartphones and tablets to replace TV sets by 2022. That might be overly optimistic, but there's a definite shift to viewing video on mobile devices. According to the Adobe Digital Index, last year saw a 246% increase in the use of streaming video apps from broadcast networks - and those figures don't include Netflix. 6 Plastic cards Google Wallet might not have set the world on fire, but both Visa and Mastercard are investing in NFC systems that use phones instead of payment cards, apps such as PayPal enable you to pay for real-world purchases as well as online ones and many retailers already offer apps that you can use to pay for their products. Starbucks' app is a good example of the latter. And then there's Apple, which is widely believed to be working on a phone-based payment system that uses its millions of registered iTunes accounts. 7 Remote controls Universal remotes' days are numbered, but while the hardware is on its way out the basic idea is even more useful in the near future. The more smart devices we have, the more remotes we'll want to replace. Apple's HomeKit shows how it might work, with devices organised into device groups and then controlled via apps or Siri. 8 Phones Smartphones are already killing off landlines, but the "phone" bit of "smartphone" is looking increasingly like an endangered species too. Texting overtook talking in the UK in 2012, and we're much more likely to send an instant message than to make a voice call. Deloitte estimates that in the UK alone, we'll have sent some 300 billion instant messages during 2014. With phone networks offering free voice-over-Wi-Fi services and similar voice-over-LTE services due to launch next year, the volume of mobile calls we make will continue to plummet. 9 Tablets If we're not holding our phones to our faces we don't need to worry about big-screened phones making us look silly when we use them - and that might explain why sales of tablets appear to be stalling while sales of large-screened phones, aka phablets, are soaring. Given the choice of paying full whack for a Wi-Fi tablet or paying considerably less up-front for a subsidised phablet, many of us are likely to plump for the big phone. The lines between phones and tablets are already getting blurry: for example Apple's larger iPhone 6 is rumoured to have a 5.7-inch display, which isn't far off the 7.9 inches of an iPad mini. 10 PCs Your smartphone is more of a personal computer than a Mac or Windows box ever was. We take our phones everywhere we go, and now that so much of our stuff lives in the cloud there are fewer and fewer reasons to turn to a PC for everyday computing tasks. We're not suggesting that phones will replace high-end workstations or tricked-out gaming rigs, but there's an entire generation growing up with smartphones, not PCs, as their primary computing devices and apps as their primary way of interacting with content and people. As smartphones get ever more powerful, batteries ever more efficient and apps and accessories ever more interesting, why would they want to use something as old-fashioned as a PC? 4K screens: madness or clearly the next big thing? Roundup: Best of TechRadar: this week's best features and hottest reviews Aug 16th 2014, 08:05, by James Rivington 25 Google search tips and tricks you need to know Search smarter with our expert guide to Google Everybody knows Google, but not everybody knows its secrets, the little things that make finding what you want faster, that make searches more specific and that uncover entertaining Easter eggs. Here are 25 of our favourite ways to find Google's G spots Meet Slice: the Raspberry Pi-powered media player with a difference Turn your media files into a personal Netflix library Anyone with a large digital media library will be familiar with the problem. Thousands of MP3, MKV, AVI, FLAC and MOV files sit at your beck and call, but how best to unleash their full potential instead of keeping them cooped up on a hard drive somewhere? FiveNinjas thinks it has the answer. It's a media player called Slice and it's set to be the first device to hit the shelves with a Raspberry Pi Compute Module at its heart. It's designed to transform your media library into a 1TB personal, portable Netflix, allowing you to plug into any TV via HDMI and play back any media file you have in your collection. Read all about it PlayStation 5: what to expect The PS5 is coming but when and in what form? The PlayStation 4 is barely out of its box in terms of a console life cycle. But with so many recent advances - PlayStation Now, pre-loading games, YouTube streaming and PlayStation TV to name but a few - we're thinking about the future of black boxes under the television. Is there one or are we just looking at Sony TVs shipping with a DualShock 4 from here on in rather than a PS5 console? A PlayStation 5 will land in some form but what's most interesting is whether it'll be the big component packed box we've grown accustomed to heating our living rooms, a palm sized streaming device or an invisible power ever present on our televisions or even iPhones and iPads. Continue reading... Another case of password theft leaves commenters feeling hacked off INFLAME All your passwords are belong to some Russian hacker dudes Turns out it doesn't really matter how many uppercase letters, lowercase letters, numbers or words about horses you have in your internet passwords, as most of them have been hacked and stolen anyway. News this week suggested that an amazing 1.2billion email addresses and passwords have been harvested by hacking group CyberVors, which poked insecure servers with a malware botnet (and perhaps bought in more stolen data from other hackers) resulting in the biggest data collection in the history of hacks. Read all about it OnePlus women-only photo contest shows we still have a long way to go Really, a t-shirt? If you haven't already heard, OnePlus launched a contest to commemorate reaching 200,000 message board members in which only women – or "ladies" as we're referred to like a Tuesday night cover charge special – were asked to submit a photo of themselves with the OnePlus logo drawn on a piece of paper or themselves. The 50 photos that garnered the most "likes" on the predominately male OnePlus forums would earn the entrants a T-shirt. If there were at least 500 entries, OnePlus would do the gentlemanly thing and invite its "favorite photo" to buy a One smartphone. Reaction on Twitter was decidedly negative Android L (5.0) release date – when can I get it? Android L is now out in the open and it includes a handful of new features, a visual overhaul and numerous under-the-hood improvements to make if faster, more efficient and lighter on your battery, but while we know all about it, it's not yet available for public consumption. Even once it does launch it will be down to individual manufacturers to port it to their devices, so chances are you'll still be waiting a while to get it on your phone and tablet (unless you've gone full Nexus already) and most companies haven't yet been all that forthcoming with details of when they'll bring it to their phones and tablets. Find out when you'll get it How to build a Steam Machine for less than the price of a PS4 It's not hard to see why PC gaming isn't so straightforward for the modern casual gamer. Graphics can look better on PC than on console, but most people own a laptop instead of a desktop these days and the price of high-end graphics cards is still scarier than the combined efforts of a horror film festival. But there is another way Samsung Galaxy Alpha vs Galaxy S5 Mini vs iPhone 5S vs Xperia Z1 Compact The battle of the tiny powerhouses Apple has long argued for the merits of a smartphone you can use one-handed, that's why the iPhone 5S grew taller, but not wider. The idea of a scaled down flagship isn't alien to the big Android OEMs, but Sony is the only one so far to avoid scaling down the specs when it shrank the phone, which is why the Xperia Z1 Compact is the current king of smaller Android smartphones. But wait, what's this? A premium design in a small body with cutting edge specs? Samsung has been listening and it's trying to blow away the compact competition, including its own Galaxy S5 Mini, with the Samsung Galaxy Alpha. Does it have what it takes to be the leader in the category of mini hyperphones? Let's take a look Samsung Galaxy Alpha vs Samsung Galaxy S5 Samsung's new premium smartphone goes head to head with the flagship The Samsung Galaxy Alpha may not share the 'S5' moniker of the Korean firm's flagship smartphone, but this new 'premium' device certainly has several similarities to the Samsung Galaxy S5. It's fair to say that the two handsets are aimed at slightly different markets, with the Galaxy S5 one of the top all-singing, all-dancing Android smartphones on the market, while the Galaxy Alpha's approach looks to be more refined, targeted specifically at the upcoming iPhone 6. The tricky thing is, it now looks like Samsung has two top-end handsets - so which one should you choose? Read on to find out Samsung Galaxy S5 Mini review The Samsung Galaxy S5 Mini was quietly announced via press release at the beginning of July, and it's now finding its way into stores around the world, so how does the pint-sized smartphone shape up? As far as design goes there's no mistaking this is a close relative to the Samsung Galaxy S5, with the S5 Mini sporting the familiar ribbed faux-metal band around its circumference and the dimpled polycarbonate rear linking it directly to its bigger brother. It's got the HTC One Mini 2, Sony Xperia Z1 Compact, iPhone 5C and the LG G3 Beat in its sights, as these shrunken smartphones look to do battle a couple of tiers below their flagship brethren. Hands on: Samsung Galaxy S5 Mini review Samsung UE48H6700 review Selling for around £850 in the UK, the UE48H6700 is a great looking TV, with a rectangular aluminium desktop stand complete with a leaning tower column lending an industrial, though classy, look. The TV itself has a sleek-looking 9mm surround on three sides of the screen, which does create just enough of a floating effect for the money. On the underside of the TV is a transparent plastic rim, which nicely catches the light, though there's not much motion to get excited about; that desktop stand can't swivel even a few degrees. Does it look as good as Samsung's curved TVs? No, but it's pretty close and a fraction of the cost. Read: Samsung UE48H6700 review John Lewis 55JL9000 review Having successfully introduced its branding to other electronics products, predominantly in the white goods arena, it makes perfect sense for respected retailer John Lewis to turn its attention to big-screen TVs. However successful John Lewis might be as a retailer, though, it isn't in a position to suddenly start building TVs from scratch. So it's had to turn to an established manufacturer for its big own-name TV debut, the 55-inch John Lewis 55JL9000. And that manufacturer is… [drum roll please] … LG Electronics. Read: John Lewis 55JL9000 review Amazon Fire Phone review Don't buy the Amazon Fire Phone. It's very rare that we'll say that to kick off a verdict, but that's the bottom line with this device. We don't need wax philosophical about its implications and its competition. We don't need to talk about Amazon's strategy in depth. Do not buy this phone. First, it's expensive for what it is. If you buy this on contract, it will cost you the same as an iPhone, HTC One M8, LG G3 or Galaxy S5. If you buy it off contract, you're nearing the $700 territory, and the Fire Phone is closer to a midrange device than a high end one. Read: Amazon Fire Phone review Acer Chromebook 13 review Chromebooks have come a long way since their debut just over three years ago. In their first year, Google's laptops sold to the tune of tens of thousands. This year, some firms estimate sales in the tens of millions. But even with such meteoric growth, at least one of the search giant's partners isn't sitting on its laurels. The latest leap forward in the category comes from a newcomer to the space that would be surprising if not for its rapid branching out from its bread and butter: Nvidia. Hands on: Acer Chromebook 13 review T-Mobile's unlimited data is only unlimited if you follow the rules Aug 15th 2014, 21:07, by Michael Rougeau T-Mobile has worked hard to cultivate its image as the "un-carrier," but that doesn't mean it has no rules for users. Those on unlimited data plans, for example, can only use those plans for approved purposes, the carrier has revealed. Customers who use their T-Mobile unlimited data plans for things like peer-to-peer (P2P) sharing or always-on webcams or servers will soon receive notices from the carrier, reports Re/code. T-Mobile wants to reach out to them and "help them change," Chief Marketing Officer Mike Sievert told the site. No rules Word of T-Mobile's initiative to stop certain heavy data users in their tracks first leaked as an internal memo that the company says was widely misinterpreted. T-Mobile isn't throttling its unlimited data users on a large scale, the carrier says, but it will take measures against users who it says are breaking the rules. That includes any P2P file sharing using T-Mobile data network, as well as excessive data use while tethering to a PC. Interestingly, Sievert said the carrier is starting by reaching out to just 20 customers, though it's unclear how far the problems extend beyond those. If the customers don't comply, T-Mobile may throttle or even discontinue their service. But Sievert added that when compared with actions being taken against unlimited users by other carriers, like Verizon and Sprint, T-Mobile's measures are "so apples and oranges it's absurd." Sprint wants to be the new T-Mobile, starting next week Sprint wants to be the new T-Mobile starting next week Aug 15th 2014, 19:35, by Michael Rougeau T-Mobile has made a name for itself as the "un-carrier," bucking trends and shaking the wireless industry up at regular intervals. And now Sprint wants to do the same, according to fresh-faced CEO Marcelo Claure. "We're going to change our plans to make sure they are simple and attractive and make sure every customer in America thinks twice about signing up to a competitor," he told a company-wide town hall meeting on August 14, reports Light Reading. He added that Sprint's plan prices will become "very disruptive" beginning next week. If you can't beat 'em T-Mobile's infamous un-carrier moves have included stunts ranging from dropping domestic overage fees to unleashing free, unlimited international data and texts. The carrier has cultivated something of a rock star image with these moves and the statements of its politically incorrect CEO, and it's unsurprising that T-Mobile's rivals want to get in on the same action. This isn't the first time, either - just look at how Sprint transformed its "One Up" plans into the more T-Mobile-like "Easy Pay" program earlier this year. Better than the rest It was rumored this year that Sprint might buy T-Mobile, but that may have fallen through when Claure took over earlier in August (or even before then). Now he plans to leverage Sprint's relationship with Apple - and possibly his well-publicized personal relationship with David Beckham, he joked to employees - to make Sprint the "best" carrier in the US. Too bad Spring throttles speeds for heavy users

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