Not all wearables will monitor your heart rate accurately. But out of the many devices out there, the Apple Watch (the 2015 version, at least) is one of the better ones, according to a study featured in the peer-reviewed medical journal, JAMA Cardiology.
Intel's followed up on its acquisition of Altera by baking a microprocessor into an field-programmable gate array (FPGA).
The Stratix 10 family brings to fruition Chipzilla's long-rumoured desire to put an x86 on an FPGA ARM core into a 14nm-process FPGA.
Samsung is still facing a serious issue with the Galaxy Note 7. After a worldwide recall due to explosive batteries, the company has been trying to get replacement models back into the hands of consumers and back on store shelves. However, even with a significant amount of replacement devices out in the wild, reports are coming in that the "safe" replacements are still exploding.
So far we've seen six such reports this week, with five claimed to be replacement devices and one with an unknown replacement status:
I had an old Nokia 1100 phone laying around and wanted to find some way to reuse it, so I decided to see if I could turn it into a smartwatch. Taking it apart, it had a nice, hackable screen as well as a little vibrating motor for notifications. With help of a few resistors, I was able to get the screen working using an Arduino. Then with a bluetooth module and a little bit of code, I was able to send it phone and text notifications from my phone (as well as time and date, of course). A 3.7v rechargeable battery and a charging board was used for power.
Google’s Daydream View feels nothing like other virtual reality headsets I’ve tried. It’s not heavy or plasticky, it doesn’t take an hour to set up, and it doesn’t require a high-end PC. No cables appear to be involved. Really, the only similarity between the View and the Oculus Rift or HTC Vive is that you look silly wearing it.
Google just unleashed a whopping five hardware products today, and I spent plenty of time trying them. The first and most important release is the Google Pixel, Google's new flagship smartphones.
At $649 for the Pixel and $769 for the Pixel XL, Google is charging a lot more for the Pixel than it has for the Nexus devices. It's attacking the premium end of the market, and these definitely seem like premium phones. In fact, they remind me a lot of one particular premium smartphone—the iPhone.
The recently released iPhone 7 looks a lot like its predecessor, which in turn looks a lot like the iPhone 5.
It's a practical design, but some Apple fans would like to see a more drastic change in the aesthetics. YouTube channel ParipateticPandas is one of those.
In the lead up to the October 4 announcement, it seems someone at Canadian operator Bell has pulled the trigger a little early on Google Pixel marketing materials. First spotted by Steve Hemmerstoffer, the carrier seems to have mistakenly put a Pixel render and promotional blurb up on its Galaxy Note 7 business order page.
The render in question shows the Pixel in white and silver; so far we've only seen the black variant in two leaked renders that emerged last week.
Back in the old days hardware manufacturers felt safe in the knowledge that no mere hardware hacker could attempt to recreate their inventions. From Sony to Philips to LG to Samsung, the consumer electronics industry was locked up and no one could crack the case. Until those meddling Arduino kids came along…
Microsoft is embarking on a major upgrade of its Azure systems. New hardware the company is installing in its 34 datacenters around the world still contains the mix of processors, RAM, storage, and networking hardware that you'll find in any cloud system, but to these Microsoft is adding something new: field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs), highly configurable processors that can be rewired using software in order to provide hardware accelerated implementations of software algorithms.
