Posted in Uncategorized, tagged 21 iPhone functions, Business Insider, iphone, Lisa Eadicicco on April 1, 2015| Leave a Comment »
We’re nearly attached to our iPhones — we use them all day everyday, but you may be surprised to learn there are still a handful of things it can do that you probably didn’t know about.
Some of these features are buried in the Settings menu while others are hidden in plain sight.
(Note: Some of these features may only be available in iOS 8 and higher)
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Business Insider, iPhone 6, iPhone 6 camera, Lisa Eadicicco on February 8, 2015| Leave a Comment »
These days, we use our smartphones for almost everything — especially taking photos. Smartphone cameras have gotten so good that there’s really no need to carry around a separate camera for most situations.
Business Insider’s Christian Storm and Harrison Jacobs tested the iPhone 6’s camera against a Canon 5D Mark II DSLR ($3,000) and a point-and-shoot Canon PowerShot SD1400-IS ($169) to see exactly how the three compare.
Here’s the bottom line: a DSLR is always going to capture higher-quality images, and professional photographers will always need the customization that you can only get with a DSLR. But, the iPhone 6 shoots impressive images that are just as good, or better, than a standard point-and-shoot.
Still, there’s one crucial area where the gap between the iPhone 6 and a DSLR really shows itself: zooming.
The photo below was taken from our office’s rooftop with the DSLR using a 70-200mm telephoto lens. It’s so detailed you can easily make out the text on the one way traffic sign and the pattern on the sweater in the Ann Taylor store window.
Christian Storm/ Business Insider
Now here’s that same photo taken with the iPhone 6, which isn’t clear at all. Storm and Jacobs write that the iPhone camera doesn’t actually zoom — it just creates the “illusion” of doing so. Instead, you’re actually just enlarging a portion of the image.
Business Insider
To be fair, this is probably true of most smartphones, except for the few that have an optical zoom like Samsung’s Galaxy S4 Zoom. Still, it’s interesting to see where DSLR cameras shine over smartphones.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Business Insider, iPhone 6, Lisa Eadicicco on August 25, 2014| Leave a Comment »
For months we’ve been hearing that Apple’s next iPhone could focus on fitness, but now we’re seeing more details about the technology it may use to learn about your health.
Chinese iPhone repair service GeekBar has posted more leaked schematics that reportedly show what’s inside the iPhone 6. Within those schematics are details on a chip that’s codenamed Phosphorus, as G For Games first spotted on Chinese social network Weibo.
Here’s what the schematics look like:
The chip is said to be Apple’s successor to the M7 co-processor inside the iPhone 5s. The M7 is a smaller chip that Apple has created just to collect motion data from your iPhone’s accelerometer, gyroscope, and compass.
Apple’s A7 chip, which powers most of the iPhone 5s’ functionality, is capable of measuring this motion data, but Apple claims its M7 co-processor is more efficient and saves battery power. Numerous fitness apps such as Strava Run and WeatherRun integrate with this M7 chip to give you more accurate feedback about your workout.
Apple’s new chip, however, would be tasked with processing even more data such as heart rate, burned calories, cholesterol levels, and blood sugar in addition to tracking your motion, according to G For Games. The hardware would integrate with Apple’s recently announced HealthKit platform that’s set to debut with iOS 8 in the fall.
HealthKit is Apple’s new hub for monitoring your daily health stats over long periods of time. It’ll be able to talk to all of your health apps so that you can keep track of your statistics in one place, and you’ll be able to choose which information you want to share with these apps.
This is just one of several indicators that Apple is looking to push into the health space. Apple is reportedly in talks with health care providers at Mt. Sinai, the Cleveland Clinic, and Johns Hopkins about how its HealthKit platform could work with their services, Reuters reported earlier this month.
Many believe that Apple is beefing up its presence in the health industry to prepare for its much-rumored iWatch launch — which is expected to be promoted as a fitness device.
We expect to learn more about the iPhone 6 and the iWatch in the coming months. Apple is reportedly set to unveil the iPhone 6 at a press event on Sept. 9 and the iWatch could debut in October. We’ll have to wait until Apple sends out invitations to know for sure.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Business Insider, Entrepreneur, James Proud, Lisa Eadicicco on August 23, 2014| Leave a Comment »
Most 23-year-olds are just getting on their feet and struggling to make ends meet after graduating from college. James Proud, however, has already raised millions to fund his startup that creates a device to help people sleep better.James Proud is the CEO of Hello Inc., which produces a device called the Sense sleep tracker. The Sense is a tiny orb designed to sit on your nightstand and monitor the conditions in your room as you sleep.
The idea is to educate you about your sleeping habits and what’s waking you up in the middle of the night.
Hello Inc.’s Kickstarter campaign for the Sense just ended on Friday, and the company blew past its $100,000 goal to raise $2.4 million. But that number represents a small fraction of the total funding Hello Inc. has raised so far. Proud and his company have raised $10.5 million from a circle of well-connected angel investors, according to The Wall Street Journal, bringing their total funding to nearly $13 million.
Some of Proud’s investors include tech industry big shots such as David Marcus, the former head of PayPal, Dan Rose, a Facebook executive, and Hugo Barra, a Xiamoi executive who formerly worked as Google’s head of product for Android, as the Journal reports.
Proud said his inspiration for the Sense stemmed from a basic concept: everyone needs to sleep, and most people want to learn how to sleep better.
“Most people don’t walk a lot every single day,” Proud told Business Insider in a previous interview. “But everyone has to sleep every single day. … Your day is purely influenced by how you slept the previous night.”
Proud’s desire to create things began to show at a very young age. When he was 9 years old, Proud taught himself HTML after seeing a book called “Your Own Website” in a store, according to Forbes. By age 12, he was already building professional websites.
Proud says he always had a desire to attend college, but by the time he had graduated from high school, he had a change of heart, as Forbes reports. Instead, the South London native opted to join Peter Thiel’s fellowship in 2011 — a program in which the billionaire investor pays young entrepreneurs to skip out on a traditional college education to pursue their business ideas.
Proud’s first startup, GigLocator, was the product of his time in Thiel’s fellowship. GigLocator, a live music aggregation service, was bought by the owner of the Williamsburg-based Brooklyn Bowl venue almost immediately after Proud’completed Thiel’s program in 2012.
After GigLocator was bought, Proud began working on Hello Inc. The Sense sleep tracker is Hello Inc.’s first product, and it will retail for $129 when it eventually launches.
The secret to making a successful tech product, Proud says, is to create something that works so well it fits naturally into your everyday life.
“Technology is most valuable when you don’t have to think about it,” Proud said to Business Insider previously. “That’s when it becomes magical.”
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged 5G Networks, Business Insider, Lisa Eadicicco on July 27, 2014| Leave a Comment »
It’s hard to imagine a world in which our smartphones are faster than they already are today.
You can already reach for your phone, ask Google a question, and receive the answer within seconds.
The forthcoming generation of wireless technology will be even faster, but it’s not just about sheer speed.
The next major network upgrade will solve one of the most aggravating problems we experience today — searching for a reliable, fast connection.
The primary goal with 5G is to make it feel like the end user is always connected, regardless of whether or not you’re inside or outside, near a window or buried in a basement.
Part of the reason we’ll need such strong connectivity is because 5G will be about powering much more than just smartphones — it’ll be designed to connect smart watches, fitness bands, and smart household gadgets like the Nest Learning Thermostat among others.
The term 5G refers to the true next generation of wireless networks. Since 4G rolled on a widespread scale over the past few years, we’ve seen numerous advancements, including LTE, LTE Advanced, and Verizon’s XLTE, which essentially means the carrier is using more bandwidth.
All of these improvements build on the same core requirements and are categorized under the 4G umbrella. But 5G will be the real successor to 4G, and it will be founded on a different set of requirements than today’s existing network technology.
It’s important to understand the differences between these networks because your phone’s performance greatly depends on the type of network you’re connected to. It’s more than just a little symbol that sits in the upper right-hand corner of your phone.
The jump from 3G to 4G represented a massive improvement in high-speed downloads. It would be nearly impossible to use a service like Netflix with a 3G connection, which is one example of why 4G-level speeds became necessary for consumers within the past few years.
So what will 5G bring, and what will we need it for in the future? Those questions are hard to address at this stage since it’s so early, but industry analysts are already making projections.
There’s a common misconception that 5G simply means super fast data speeds. That’s because the early testing we’ve seen so far has emphasized how much faster 5G will be than today’s existing technology.
Kevin Smith/Business Insider
The Fitbit Force (left) and Jawbone (right).
Last May, Samsung claimed that its upcoming 5G technology will be able to transfer more than 1 gigabit of data per second, as MIT Technology Review reported.
To put that in perspective, a relatively speedy LTE connection today transfers data at about 60 megabits per second, which translates to roughly 0.05 gigabits.
A gigabit connection is much faster than any data speeds you’ve experienced with your smartphone yet. Google claims that even at a rate of one gigabit per second, you can download a full HD movie in less than two minutes.
Next-generation wireless networks will certainly be faster than our connections today, but that’s the least important priority for 5G, says Tod Sizer, vice president of the Wireless Research Program at Alcatel-Lucent Bell Labs.
“If you say speed is the real thing we need to improve in 5G, you’re missing the point,” Sizer told Business Insider in an interview. “The end user doesn’t really care about speed. They care about what the application [they’re using] needs.”
One of the biggest improvements we’ll see in 5G is the flexibility to support many different types of devices. In addition to connecting to phones and tablets, 5G will need to support wearable devices like fitness trackers and smart watches, smart-home gadgets like the Nest Learning Thermostat, and all sorts of sensors.
“Being able to support a hundred-thousand machines in a given area is what we’re designing for today,” Sizer said. “We do believe that in the future every person will have 10 to 100 machines they need to work for them.”
“In the future every person will have 10 to 100 machines they need to work for them.”
That’s part of why it’s so hard to confirm the requirements for what type of technology will go into 5G. It’s hard to figure out the data capacity necessary to power all of these devices.
“[It’s] not just in terms of supporting more data, but in terms of supporting more usage,” Peter Jarich, vice president, consumer and infrastructure at Current Analysis, told Business Insider. “And that becomes the real challenge. That’s an answer we don’t know yet, what capacity is needed.”
Improving end-to-end performance will be another big focus when it come to 5G, Sizer said. End-to-end performance refers to how well the cellular radio in your smartphone can maintain connections with the servers it retrieves information from.
Poor end-to-end performance isn’t very noticeable while you’re sending a text message or viewing a web page, but it can be really shows when you’re making a video call through Skype or watching Netflix, Sizer said. If you experience latency and lag when streaming video, it’s likely due to a weak end-to-end connection.
Business Insider, William Wei
Sizer said that this next generation cellular network will also usher in significant battery life enhancements for smartphones and mobile devices. According to Sizer, there are a lot of small tasks that applications need to run properly.
For example, an email application sends a bunch of tiny requests back and forth from the host service’s servers to check for new emails.
These requests, although small, end up chipping away at your phone’s battery life over time. Part of what Sizer’s team is researching at Bell Labs involves finding a better way to handle these requests.
“There are a lot of applications that have all these little messages,” Sizer said. “If I can take care of these little messages, I can dramatically improve the life of tablets.”
Part of the reason it’s difficult to understand exactly what 5G will offer is because it hasn’t even been defined. The International Telecommunication Union hasn’t revealed the specific requirements and the types of technology that will be incorporated into 5G just yet.
Nailing down the correct specifications and setting up infrastructure to deploy these networks is a slow, gradual process, Jarich explained.
The task involves defining the requirements for 5G and the technology that goes into meeting those requirements, such as achieving a certain speed benchmark and deciding which components and antennas should be added to smartphones to meet those benchmarks.
It typically takes 10 years to get a next-generation network up-and-running. Sizer and Jarich say that initial 5G deployment will probably start in 2020, and we’ll see widespread adoption by 2025.
“In order to deploy a wireless network it requires a massive investment of money and effort,” Sizer said. “It takes time to recoup that investment, which is usually several billion dollars or euros for wireless networks.”
Earlier this year, Korea’s Yonhap News Agency reported that South Korea would invest $1.49 billion into building a 5G network for the country. At the end of 2013, the European Commission kicked off a partnership that would involve the European Union investing $963 million in 5G research.
It usually requires billions of dollars to get a new wireless network fully deployed, and the cost of building 5G shouldn’t be any different than years past, Sizer said. Back in 2012, AT&T invested $14 billion to expand its LTE footprint to 300 million people by the end of 2014. That’s $14 billion one carrier spent building up LTE over the course of three years — imagine how much each carrier could spend creating 5G networks over a span of 10 years.
Both Sizer and Jarich agree that the ultimate goal of 5G is to make it feel like you’re never without an internet connection, whether you’re underground or in a remote area. But that doesn’t mean wired broadband will become obsolete just yet, Jarich said. There simply isn’t enough spectrum available to handle internet traffic without some help from wired connections.
But 5G will do its best to try.
“Those people who were born in the year 2000, they’ve never known a world where they had to share a phone with their sister, where they couldn’t get access to any information they wanted simply by reaching into their pocket,” Sizer said. “And so it’s for these folks who have never known a world where they weren’t always connected, that we’re designing the next generation.”
Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/5g-network-speed-2014-7#ixzz38gv0YdwD
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