LG G2 review: Fresh design, impressive display make it stand out

It has been two years since a smartphone innovation made me sit up and take notice. The last time was when Samsung showed to us that size matters with the Galaxy Note and initiated the phablet phenomenon. And now LG has captured my attention with hardware innovation in the G2.

The LG G2 came packed in a gigantic box almost the size of what shirts come packed in. I hope LG isn't intending to use the same boxes in retail sale. Retailers would surely complain about the space it eats up.

The highlight of the G2 is its rear buttons. The phone is devoid of any side buttons and both the power key and the volume rocker key - which are traditionally found on the sides - have been integrated into a single rear key located at the back just below the rear camera. The position of rear key fits into the style most of us hold a phone. Initially, I found myself accidentally pressing the volume up button when I wanted to press the power button. But in no time, my fingers automatically found the right controls. It just takes a little while getting used to.

  

Also interesting is that to wake up the phone, you don't need to press any buttons, a double tap on the display does the job.

There was a downside of the rear key that I observed while taking screenshots. I found myself employing relatively more effort while taking screenshots and it required me to use both hands. On other Android phones, screenshots can be easily taken using a single hand.

While the buttons on the rear were a definite positive, the glossy smudge-friendly rear panel was a disappointment. The pattern at the back isn't any look-enhancer.

The rounded corners and curved edges at the back make it comfortable to grip. A lot of 5-inch phones look quite bulky and are uncomfortable to carry and use, but despite being a 5.2-inch phone, it doesn't feel its size.

Yet another positive is the 5.2-inch display. There is a thin bezel along the sides of the phone which makes its display near edge-to-edge. The touchscreen is responsive and it produces rich colours and detailed results. Viewing angles are also great.

The LG G2 is powered by a quad-core Snapdragon 800 processor coupled with 2GB of RAM. Throughout the review period, I did not experience any lag on the device. The phone did not linger even once even when I was using different apps at a same time - listening to music, browsing the Internet, downloading apps, with other apps running in the background. Even when playing games with high-end graphics, it did not lurch. Watching full HD videos was another great experience. The phone comes in 16GB and 32GB. I got the 32GB model for review - which offers you storage space of 24.8GB. There is no microSD card slot, so, you can't expand its memory.

Watching videos and listening to music brought to my notice its another downside - its speakers. The phone's speakers produce fine results and are fairly loud, but I was expecting them to be much better. I found speakers on my Nexus 4 (also built by LG) better than the G2's.

I could not test the sound quality with its earphones plugged in, as the earphones were missing from the kit that was sent to me.

The phone is equipped with an impressive camera. In both low-light and daylight conditions, the phone captured impressive results. Even at places where there was no light, the phone's flash was enough to lit the area, and captured quality snaps.

The G2's Modes feature in the camera app does not merely list a range of modes, in fact, every mode is defined by an image, which makes it easy for a user to decide and select a mode. The phone supports 1080p video playback and recording.

I found myself successfully operating different TVs and set-top boxes with its Quick Remote app, but it appears to support only a few air conditioner models. If you have a Hitachi AC, as I do, don't bank on the G2 to double as a remote for that.

Its 3000mAh battery is enough to keep the phone running throughout the day. On a single charge, the battery easily lasted for around 21 hours, when used heavily and with normal usage, the phone had enough juice left even after 24 hours.

The 32GB model is priced at Rs 44,500. The phone may appear to be slightly overpriced, but compared to its rival phones, the pricing appears relatively decent.

The LG G2 makes it to our recommendation list, but there is a likelihood that the G2 may lose some of its potential customers once the attractively-priced Google Nexus 5 is available in India.

Pros

Excellent display

Fresh design

Great performance

Impressive camera and display

Cons

Ugly back

No expandable memory

Slightly overpriced

Disappointing speakers

Rating: 3.5/5

Key Specs

Display: 5.2-inch full HD (1920x1080) IPS display (423 ppi)

Camera: Rear 13.0MP with OIS / Front 2.1MP

Battery: 3000 mAh battery

Processor: Snapdragon 800 2.26 GHz quad-core processor

RAM: 2GB LPDDR3 800MHz

Internal memory: 32GB

Operating System: Android Jelly Bean 4.2.2

Size: 138.5 x 70.9 x 8.9mm

Build your own smartphone-controlled robots with MOSS

Engineers have developed magnetic robot construction kits which enable you to build your own smartphone-controlled toy robots that can drive and wiggle.

The robot construction system called MOSS uses over-molded neodymium, "rare earth," magnets and carbon steel ball bearings to build a wide variety of tiny robots.

The system developed by Modular Robotics in Boulder, Colorado does not require coding or wiring your construction.

MOSS was created over 2.5 years and has been through numerous stages of development, its makers say.By attaching a Bluetooth module, players can control the robots remotely using a smartphone or tablet.

The blocks can be put together in many different ways to create unique robots, according to the company which launched the system on crowdfunding website Kickstarter.

"We're already making Moss so we don't need the Kickstarter funding. But in 2013, it seems like the place where people look for cool new tech products," chief executive and design director Eric Schweikardt told the BBC.

The robots are powered with a rechargeable lithium polymer battery. Users can plug in with the included Micro-USB cable to recharge.

The final version of the robot kits are expected to be ready as early as January or February.

Zync launches 4-inch Cloud Z401 Android smartphone

Foraying into the low-cost smartphone category, Zync has launched its Cloud Z401 smartphone. The phone is priced at Rs 4,499 and has a 4-inch IPS capacitive touchscreen. The phone runs on Android 2.3 Gingerbread (With ICS UI) platform.

The Zync Cloud Z401 is powered by a 1 GHz processor. The Z401 has a 2 megapixel rear camera and a 0.3 megapixel front camera. It includes an internal memory of 512 MB memory. This phone is available in two colours - black and white.

The phone is available on all the major e-commerce sites like IndiaTimes, Flipkart.com, HomeShop18, Infibeam. 

Samsung aims to bring its Tizen OS to your car, fridge, Tv

Most mobile phone users have never heard of Tizen. Neither have car owners or anyone with a fridge. Samsung Electronics Co. wants to change that.

The South Korean electronics giant is in a quiet push to make its Tizen operating system a part of the technology lexicon as familiar as Google's Android or Apple's iOS. Its ambition doesn't stop there. Samsung sees the software in your car, fridge and television too.

The first developer conference in Asia for Tizen wrapped up Tuesday after a two-day run, bringing together app developers and Tizen backers from Samsung, Intel and mobile operators.

Samsung promised to give out $4 million cash to the creators of the best Tizen apps.

Samsung did not announce a Tizen device, but it made a pitch for developers to create apps for the mobile operating system that is yet to be seen in the market. Samsung promised to give out $4 million cash to the creators of the best Tizen apps.

Samsung supplied about one third of the smartphones sold worldwide in the third quarter, nearly all of them running on Google's Android. Its early bet on Google's free-of-charge operating system served Samsung well and the company's rise to top smartphone seller also helped Android become the most used mobile platform in the world. According to Localytics, 63 percent of all Android mobile devices in use are made by Samsung.

But while Samsung was wildly successful with selling its Galaxy phones and tablets, it had little success in locking Galaxy device users into music, messaging and other Samsung services. Google, however, benefited from more people using its search service, Google Play app and other Google mobile applications on Galaxy smartphones. Owners of Galaxy devices remain for the most part a slave to Google's Android update schedule and its rules.

About nine in every 10 smartphone users are tied to either Google's Android or Apple's iPhone ecosystems, generating profit for Google and Apple every time they purchase a game or application on their smartphone.

That is partly why Samsung wants to expand its control beyond hardware to software, by building its own mobile operating system.

"With only hardware, its influence is limited," said Kang Yeen-kyu, an associate research fellow at state-run Korea Information Society Development Institute. "Samsung's goal is to establish an ecosystem centered on Samsung."

The consolidation of global technology companies in the last few years reflects such trends. Apple has always made its own operating system for the iPhone. Google Inc. acquired Motorola Mobility in 2011 and Microsoft Corp. announced in September its plan to buy Nokia Corp., leaving Samsung the only major player in the smartphone market that does not make its own operating system.

Samsung executives told analysts last week that the company plans to beef up its software competitiveness through acquisitions and splashing cash on the development of mobile content and services.

But Tizen's start appears bumpy. Samsung said earlier this year the first Tizen phone would hit the market this fall but it has not materialized. Samsung declined to comment on release schedules.

Even though Choi Jong-deok, Samsung's executive vice president overseeing Tizen, said a launch of Tizen phone or televisions will happen "very shortly," analysts said Samsung is unlikely to reveal the first Tizen device until February of next year, when the company said it will announce winners of its Tizen app contest.

During the developer conference, Samsung gave more clues about how its first Tizen device would look.

Tizen would work across a vast range of consumer electronics made by Samsung, encompassing mobile devices, televisions, fridges as well as wearable devices. The mobile operating system will also work with automobiles. Samsung and Intel said Toyota Motor Corp. and Jaguar Land Rover are working together to bring Tizen OS to vehicles.

"You can build an application once and relatively easily move from device to device," Mark Skarpness, director of systems engineering at Intel Corp., told the conference.

Samsung and Intel are also aiming to capture a bigger share of business in emerging markets where demand for cheaper smartphones is growing. Skarpness said future versions of Tizen will support lower-end phones, the same direction that Google is taking with its latest version of Android, KitKat.

"I got an impression that Tizen was benchmarking Android," said Park Minhyung, a developer who attended the conference. "Speakers at the sessions said that they adopted strong features from Android. But with Android's place well established in the market, I wonder how Tizen would undermine the front runner."

Lunar Craters Covering Moon's Near Side Are Bigger Than Far Side Due To Hemisphere Differences (VIDEO)

When the Soviet probe Luna 3 sent back the first shots of the dark side of the Moon, they showed that it was noticeably more pockmarked by craters than the near side. The nearside crust, by contrast, had more large, shallow basins. More than 50 years after those images first baffled researchers,a study published today in Science explains the observations.

Some theories suggest that the large basins on the near side were caused by impacts from asteroids bigger than those that caused the craters on the far side. But the latest study suggests that the observed basins do not accurately reflect the size of the initial impact, because as asteroids battered the lunar surface in the early history of the Solar System, the Moon's warmer and softer nearside crust melted like butter, producing giant lava flows that filled the impact craters and transformed them into basins.

To improve on previous estimates of the size and distribution of basins, the team behind the study used data from NASA’s Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory mission (GRAIL), two satellites that since 2011 have been orbiting the Moon and mapping subtle variations in the strength of its gravitational field. Basins are characterized by thinner crust, says first author Katarina Miljković, a planetary scientist at the Paris Institute of Earth Physics. The team used GRAIL's gravity mapsto find such thin crust and measure the true size of the basins.

“We didn’t have to look at topography nearly at all, just at the crust thickness,” says Miljković. The researchers found that although both sides of the Moon had the same total number of impact craters, the near side had eight basins larger than 320 kilometers in diameter, whereas the far side had only one.

Hot hit

The asteroid bombardment should have battered both sides equally, Miljković points out. The asymmetry could have arisen from comparatively small objects punching above their weight on the near side, producing basins more easily than on the far side.

Simulations showed that if the largest dark area on the near side — the plain of volcanic rock known as Oceanus Procellarum — was hundreds of degrees hotter than crust on the far side, impacts there would produce basins up to twice as large as impacts from similar-sized bodies on the far side (see video above). And indeed, around 4 billion years ago, or 500 million years after the Moon formed, the near side could have been warmer than the far side. Researchers looking at the near side have detected the presence of radioactive isotopes; their decay would have heated up the rock, explains study co-author Maria Zuber, a planetary scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge and principal investigator of GRAIL.

The findings fit well with the observations, but “there is no consensus” as to what caused the startling asymmetry in isotope content between the near side and the far side, says Jeffrey Taylor, a lunar scientist at the University of Hawaii in Honolulu. One leading theory posits that material rich in radioactive elements rose in a gigantic volcanic plume and formed a magma basin; another that it came from a collision with a sister moon around 1,000 kilometers in diameter.

William Bottke, a lunar scientist at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado, says that the work could lead researchers to revise just how dramatic asteroid bombardments were in the early Solar System. "This can be used to more accurately derive what the small-body populations were like four billion years ago.”

This story originally appeared in Nature News.

Police investigate Instagram account exposing witnesses in criminal cases

An anonymous Instagram account has outed more than 30 people as crime witnesses who cooperated with police, according to a new report, posting their photos, police statements, and testimony to its nearly 7,900 followers. The account's goal: to "expose rats," according to its Instagram bio. Philadelphia police and prosecutors are investigating the account, rats215, telling the Philadelphia Inquirer that witness intimidation has become a significant problem for the local district attorney's office.

Instagram closed the account yesterday after the Inquirer asked about it. According to the newspaper, many of the statements posted to rats215 aren't public records, raising the question of who leaked them to the anonymous account holder. (The account regularly solicited followers for pictures of witnesses.) Each photograph received scores of "likes" and generated comments urging violence against the witnesses, the report said.

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Microsoft cutting off Xbox Video support for Windows Phone 7 and Zune this February

In February, Microsoft will pull the plug on Xbox Video for anyone still using the Zune PC software, Zune devices, and Windows Phone 7 smartphones. This means that any content you've previously purchased will no longer play on the affected hardware. Microsoft says this is the result of a video catalog update that will allow the company "to more quickly and efficiently add the highest quality video content to the Xbox Video service." You still own any content you've already purchase, of course. Microsoft is quick to remind users that they'll still be able to watch on a PC or Mac at XboxVideo.com. Xbox One, Xbox 360, Windows 8 / 8.1 tablets, and Windows Phone 8 devices are also all capable of Xbox Video playback. But if you're still carrying around old hardware, you may want to consider upgrading before February.

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