iPad Mini 4 review

iPad Mini 4 – Thinner/Less Powerful than iPad Air 2

The iPad Mini 4 is said to be a thinner and slightly less powerful iPad Air 2.There are options of various superior phones together with more proficient hybrid laptops and tablets. The iPad Mini seems to be less relevant since it had been reviewed last year, Apple seems to have done some alteration in pricing in its iPad line, opposing the iPad Air 2 as a similar priced substitute. In comparison to 2014 iPad Mini 2, the Mini 4 tends to have an improved screen, faster processor, better camera and a Touch ID fingerprint sensor.

As per the company, the Mini 4’s CPU is 1.3 times quicker and its graphics performances seem to be 1.6 times faster than the Mini 2. Moreover it can also manage split-screen apps that can come useful in checking email or Twitter while working. If one prefers something small, then this could be an appropriate choice. The iPad Mini 4 tends to have almost the same specs like the bigger Air 2 with the exception of its graphics processor which seems to be more than one third slower. This can be seen while playing some of the games and when apps are switched on. Though it has a 2GB of RAM, multitasking seems to feel irritable or responsive as a year old tablet.

Strong & Premium Feeling Tablets

The battery life is not relatively good as the other Mini. Apple has two iPad Minis but if one prefers longest battery life, than the Mini 2 would be the precise choice. The iPad Mini 2 is said to be one of the most strong and premium feeling tablets in the markets and its casing could handle rough treatment. It seems to be a good looking tablet and is made available in Gold, Silver and Space Grey, with a thinner chassis and some new Smart Cover choices which look fanciful.

You could use it with one of the new Silicone Cases of Apple for the iPad Mini 4 for all-inclusive protection. Apple has stated 10 hours across all its iPad though the real results on video-playback test in airplane mode indicate some difference. The Mini 4 seems to last for 9 hours 34 minutes while the Mini 2 last for 11 hours, 20 minutes. The Mini 4 is priced as much as the bigger, faster Air 2, at $399 for 16GB and is the exact cost as the iPad Air 2. The Air 2 being a year older has slightly improved specifications.

iPad Mini Better Value

The Mini 4 and Air 2 both seem to have the same pixel resolution though the Mini 4 is in a smaller size. The iPad Mini 2 is considered a better value and is a contracted down iPad Air and gets the job done for essentials. The Mini 2 which is priced at $269/£219/AU$369 for 16 GB and $319/£259/AU$429 is still considered to be expensive. However it is often comes in sales under $200 at Target and Walmart. It is to be seen whether the Mini iPad would survive alongside phablets like the iPhone 6S Plus and Galaxy Note. Though several Android tablets could accomplish the same core tasks for less money none can match the overall experience one tend to get with the iPad Mini 4.

Android Wear Smartwatches Now Work with the iPhone

Android Watches To Connect with iPhone 
 
Google has plans of introducing an application which could connect Android smartwatches with Apple’s iPhone, mounting the battle among rivals to strap their technology on people’s wrists. This move has shoved Google to Apple’s field in an effort to boost the sales of watches running on Android Wear software.

 The program combining the devices running on various operating systems would be released soon in Apple’s app store. Android watches, as of now, tend to work only with smartphones powered by Android software, similar to the Apple Watch which is designed to be fastened exclusively to the iPhone.

The Google’s new app would however, empower the latest Android watches to connect with the iPhone, in order that users could quickly glance at their wrists for required directions, fitness information as well as notification with regards to events, emails, and Facebook updates. The devices would not be capable of being tied together in a way which would permit the Android watches in communicating with the other apps, that a user would have installed on the iPhone.

This could probably discourage several iPhone users from changing over from Apple to purchase an Android watch unless Google tends to find a way of overcoming the obstacle according to Ramon Llamas, IDC analyst. Android watches for now are expected to appeal to iPhone owners unwilling to spend extra money on a device which would be more of a novelty rather than a needed gadget.

Google is expecting the prices of Android watches to be well-matched with the iPhone ranging from $100 to $400 and Apple having a long history of challenging premium prices on its products tends to charge a minimum of £299 for Apple Watch even though its luxury products tend to cost thousands of pounds. Llamas commented that the Android watches will not be bought by `the fan boys and fan girls which should have everything with an Apple logo on it. He is referring about going after people who tend to be open to other options with what they could do with their devices.

Apple who had been a late applicant in the smartwatch market has quickly come to the forefront of the pack after its release in April. Apple Watches of around 4 million had been sold during the three months ending in June to control three-fourth of the smartwatch market, worldwide on the estimates from the firm Strategy Analytics and the combination of sales of Android watches which have been made by various device developers during the same time amounted to 600,000 units for an 11pc market share.

 Samsung watches on the other hand, running on Tizen software told hold of most of the rest of the market with 7.5pc share. Google is speculating that the next wave of Android Wear watches would assist in shifting the tide in their favour.

The Android watches coming up which would be functioning with the iPhone comprise of Asus ZenWatch 2 and the Huawei Watch. LG Electronic already develops Android Watch, Urbane at £175 which is compatible with the iPhone.

Functioning with the new app, the Android smartwatch would be compatible with iPhone which dates back to the 5 if their operating systems tend to have been updated to the iOS 8.2.

This Wearable Drone Could Be Your Next Smart Device

Drones – Own Application Platform/Interface Projected

The team at Frog Agency in New York have taken it upon themselves to work out on whether drones could be something we could interact with each single day as Adam Pruden from Frog had told the audience at The Conference in Malmo. Drones have already evolved directly from smartphones which are built on the same technologies, the same microprocessors as well as sensors.

At a hearing earlier in the year, the US Senate had also informed that drones were basically flying smartphones. Pruden had mentioned that what he had found interesting with regards to the comparison was the behavioural similarities instead of the technologies.

Earlier they were used for capturing political conflict in Hong Kong, the same way as smartphones, though drones were capable of capturing the magnitude of events the ways smartphone could not. Pruden states that `drones are taking self-obsession to an entirely new high with growing popularity of dronies.

Besides this, they also have their own application platform together with interfaces projected from a drone on any surface.

Wearable Drones – 15 Concept Designs

In order to set up drones and make it part of daily life in the same way as smartphones, the team realised that they would need to have two unique features.At first they would have to be capable of performing physical task and to move through physical space as well as interact with the physical atmosphere which smartphone are unable to do.

Secondly they would have to be wearable which would be used only when needed and hence they would have to be able to worn on the bodies. The team had come up with 15 concept designs in wearable drones, such as wearable dog collars, a wearable drone which could fix the makeup and hair and chose four to develop further.

The first that came up was the Flare, which was a flying tour guide as well as a navigator wherein the Flare tends to jump off an acrylic band attached to the hand and operates like a flying compass. On the other hand, the Breathe, settles on the shoulder passively measuring air quality till dangerous pollutions levels are identified. At this stage, it tends to leap up in front of the face, providing a filter for the individual to breathe through.

Drones – Integrate Into Society

A gold drone, the Parasol, hangsoff the belt or is worn as a means of jewellery and detects bad weather. It jumps up to protect the person either from UV rays or rain utilising its propellers. The Scout as much as a playmate as it is drone tends to fly above you to project a path on a rock wall to challenge the individual as they climb and doubles as fitness tracker whenever it is docked.

The designs seem to be quite cool and exciting. However there were other issues which the team found as part of the process. Pruden explains that the `key component that were not accounted for was that drones need to integrate into society’.

To integrate into society, drones would have to comprehend distance, how to interact with other drones and with the built world and with its owner’s body as well as the body of others, though also important with the soul.

Could Diesel Made From Air Help Tackle Climate Change?

Small Companies Capturing CO2 for e-Diesel

Making diesel would seem to sound like something from science fiction but small companies in Canada and Germany have come with an amazing way of capturing carbon dioxide in the making of diesel. German company, Sunfire has developed its first batch of the so called e-diesel in April.

Johanna Wanka, Federal Minister of Education and Research had put a few litres in her car by way of a celebration. The Canadian company, Carbon Engineering has built up a pilot plant to suck one to two tonnes of carbon dioxide from the air on daily basis, turning it into 500 litres of diesel.

The requirement of electricity is usedfor the process, though if the start-ups tend to use renewable electricity, it could produce diesel that is carbon neutral which means that burning it in the car would return to the atmosphere the carbon dioxide removed in the first place.

On the other hand, the fossil fuels are carbon positive meaning that the burning of it could add to the total amount of carbon dioxide in the air. Halting growth of carbon dioxide together with the other greenhouse gases is of vital importance, considering the several threats faced by climate changes.

The Fischer-Tropsch Process

Awareness of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere reached 400 parts per million in 2012-2013, which was the highest since the scientific measurements had started while the year July 2014-June 2015seemed to be the warmest on record according to the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.Chemistry to develop the fuel from carbon dioxide is not particularly difficult.

Water needs to be split into hydrogen and oxygen through electrolysis and hydrogen added to carbon dioxide in order to make carbon monoxide and water and then plug in more hydrogen to build up hydrocarbon chains. The last process is known as the Fischer-Tropsch process which dates back to 1920s. However, the technologies are capturing the carbon dioxide directly from the air which is new and presently becoming cheap to be feasible.

The greatest challenges in technology have been focused on the high temperature furnaces according to chief executive of Carbon Engineering, Adrian Corless. He states that there is yet a month of hard work, to get these to function, as the company would want it.

Cars Running on Fuel Made From Thin Air

However, he commented that it has also been the company’s main innovation, precipitating captured carbon dioxide into solid calcium carbonate pellets which can be washed and dried with ease.Thereafter, the pellets are heated to 800-900 C, wherein they release a pure carbon dioxide stream. As a filtrate, they tend to leave calcium oxide which can be fed back to the first air capture stage.

There are also other alternatives for selling carbon dioxide, besides fuel. Climeworks, a Swiss company which rolled off from a local university is now gearing for its first commercial scale plant in selling captured carbon dioxide to a nearby greenhouse. The Swiss company foresees a long term market in the supply of fizzy drinks bottlers in Africa, Japan and difficult to reach island by putting up locally and overcoming the transport expenses.

Expenses of compressing, liquefying and shipping carbon CO2 seems to be ten times more in these places, stated the firm’s chief operating officer, Dominique Kroneberg. Climbeworks and Carbon Engineering state that their modular technology would make it easy to scale up to larger projects.

 In the meanwhile, the US Naval Research Laboratory has informed its interest in using e-diesel to fuel it ships and one could marvel on having their car running on fuel made from thin air very soon.

Google Docs Voice Typing Blocks Swear Words

Google is set to energize its Docs, which is a free Office software available to all the users across the globe completely free of cost. It has unveiled a whole set of new features and functions in the Docs which includes much needed and widely discussed voice dictation technology.

The power of dictation with wise censorship

Google had brought the voice-typing feature at the disposal of all the people by integrating this feature in its Google Docs. Before the advent of this free and very powerful voice typing user had to rely on the third party software and had to shell out thousands of dollars.

Google is revolutionizing the voice typing with its incredible and it is thankfully backed by an inbuilt censorship. This censorship simply states what can and can’t be dictated by using its Google latest software. Swearing words are completely barred from being picked up by the voice-typing feature, which will ensure the respect and essence of the messages and other written materials.

Swearing papers with first letter followed by asterisks

The voice typing technology carefully and intelligently understands the swearing words and simply replaces it with asterisks.

Therefore when a user uses the common swear words then it get replaced by asterisks in this manner, “s***’ and “f***”. Some swear words are spelled in full like “b**ch” and “w***ker” but in order to avoid any chances of offending someone then middle letters had been blanked out with asterisks.

The objection to the swearing words in the Google Docs by first noticed by a blogger who goes by the name of Grethen McCulloch.

Google aims at bringing a formality and ethics in the voice typing

Google had miffed the users and was heavily criticised by the same for censoring the swear words in its Google translate and Android based voce-to-text feature.

This time Google had brought a more refined and much better voice typing technology, which can assist in the wide range of function on its popular Google Docs. Goggles aims at bringing formality and high level of productivity to its users by bringing an advanced new set of tools in Google Docs.

Apart from the much talked voice typing feature Google brought some new research features in the Docs which can help in saving facts, images and quotes along with an explore functions in the Sheets. Google also brought some new interesting templates for the Forms, Sheets, Slides and Docs.

New set of features gets praised and increases productivity

Voice typing has the ability to support over more than 40 languages. A user is just required to click on a microphone button and press on go to activate the voice dictation feature. It will be an added advantage to the users while using the Google Docs, as the Microsoft’s popular Office software doesn’t have the speech recognition.

 Google’s Docs has been gained praise earlier for making it easier for the team members to collaborate and work simultaneously on the documents. The new set of tools and features are expected to make working on documents more fun filled and productive.