Apple has a couple new patent applications this morning, spotted by AppleInsider and detailing two very useful features for mobile devices. The first is a method for detecting and adjusting noise resulting from an iPhone vibrating in silent mode, and the second is a design for auto-zooming of content based on the proximity of a user’s face to a screen to present content at the best size for reading depending on how close they are and what they’re looking at.

The vibration motor patent is intended to make silent mode on an iPhone truly silent, by eliminating the noise it can make when the phone is on a flat, hard surface and notifications come in. With a phone call, that can become a major annoyance, especially if you’re not in a position to be able to get to the phone to silence it right away. To remedy this, Apple has worked out a system where microphones or motion sensors on a device can pick up on cues that indicate a phone is making a lot of noise, and change the vibration levels and patterns to compensate and minimize rattle.

Apple covers two types of vibration motors in this patent, including the rotational model it uses in the current iPhone 5 and older models, and the linear magnetic version it implemented in the iPhone 4S and CDMA iPhone 4. Methods to compensate for excessive vibration in both are described, and Apple also addresses how to still provide notifications that will signal a user even if vibration has to be turned way down, describing visual feedback and soft audio alerts that would actually still be quieter than an iPhone rumbling on a hard table top. Already, users can set their camera flash LED to provide notifications via their iPhone’s accessibility settings, which is one way to get around having either an audible or vibration alert signal.

The other patent filing that turned up today describes a replacement for pinch-to-zoom, which provides a way to dynamically alter the size of content based on how close a user gets to the screen. Text and images can both be enlarged or reduced according to what a device’s camera, proximity sensor or SONAR sensor (which Apple described in a previous patent) tells the system about how far away a user’s face is. In one mode called “comfort,” the system would zoom out on content when a user gets close to the screen, and enlarge it when they back further way, making it more convenient and easier to read in each situation. In another mode, called “zoom,” the action is reversed, which could come in handy for more visual content, like if you’re surveying a full painting at a distance, and then move in close for a look at some particular detail.

If executed well, this could come in handy as a replacement or supplement for the pinch-to-zoom gesture on small-screened devices especially, where zooming in and out is a constant, repetitive process, especially when viewing web content and trying to navigate full web sites not optimized for mobile. Both the zooming and the vibration alert patent show Apple’s attention to the finer details of the smartphone user experience, and while neither of these designs may ever make it to market, you can tell Apple’s aware of where its devices (and smartphones in general) offer opportunities to significantly improve a user’s enjoyment of their phone.

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Short variation: These two battery-powered bluetooth speakers are the first modern-day boomboxes created by the freshly produced subsidiary Logitech UE. Acquired in 2008, Ultimate Ears is prominent for its in-ear screens made use of by lots of artists in concert, not for its speakers. Also though the Logitech UE Mobile Boombox is restricted, it is no surprise given the entry-level prices. The real surprise originates from the big brother, the Logitech UE Boombox.

Logitech UE Boombox

Features:

• 2 woofers, 2 tweeters and four passive radiators
• Bluetooth (A2DP profile) and 3.5 mm audio output
• 6-hour rechargeable battery
• 4.4 lbs (2kg)
• MSRP: $ 250
• Logitech UE Product Page

Pros:

• Precise and very gratifying noise
• Extremely effective performance for this size
• Bass-heavy sound profile, ideal for partying

Drawbacks:

• Bass-heavy sound profile, wearing down with some tracks
• Heavy
• No audio cable in the box

Long version:

When it comes to selecting the right speaker for your demands, it ’ s frequently an extremely personal option due to appear profiles, music tastes and opposite niceties. The Logitech UE Boombox doesn ’ t modification the regulation, and it will certainly be difficult to offer a definitive conclusion for that product.

Initially, design and functions are less controversial. With a smooth grille and a rubberized lower 3rd, the unit looks both strong and sophisticated. The handle at the leading makes it very easy to pick the boombox up. However at 4.4 pounds (2kg), you might only prefer to hold it in your backyard or in yet another space. Compared with additional designs, such as the Huge Jambox, this boombox is fairly big and you ought to leave it in your house.

The big rubberized volume buttons on one side are unmissable. On the additional side, you locate the on/off switch, a Bluetooth pairing button, the 3.5 mm audio output and the power socket.

Combining the boombox with an iPhone, an Android 4.0 phone and a Mac was extremely easy. The A2DP audio profile guarantees that a huge number of devices will certainly work. It ’ s even easier in iOS 6 with the Bluetooth settings now front and center in the Settings application. With an iPhone 4, audio didn ’ t drop even with roughly 30 feet of distance between the two devices in an office environment.

Yet, as audiophiles will certainly see you, A2DP is not ideal for audio fidelity. The audio is very first compressed on the phone or tablet utilizing SBC, or optionally AAC or MP3. For instance, iOS now supports AAC up to 128 kb/s in addition to SBC, which is quite reasonable. In addition, reencoding a lossy track, such as a tune got in the iTunes Store or streamed in Spotify, with a lossy codec is one of the worst thing to do for sound quality. It ’ s like taking a picture of an image.

It still seemed really good, specifically when you contrast it to using the interior speaker of your smartphone. But you absolutely lose sound clearness in the greater and lower ends of the audio spectrum. That ’ s why Logitech UE should have put an audio cable in the box. It ’ s a high-end speaker.

Discussing audio spectrum, the Boombox is plainly skewed to reduced mids and basses. I typically utilize really neutral equipment, such as studio tracking headphones (Sony MDR-7506). It is more noticeable when playing some tunes, especially electronic music tracks with a deep and clean beat. Additional times, it makes the track more delightful. However when it ruins a timeless, you have no choice but to skip the track.

Yet, as the name recommends, the Boombox was meant to produce booms. If you intend to use it to party, to fill a congested room with a sound that is pleasurable to listen to, then it is the right option.

We have a Jawbone Big Jambox in the office. When playing the very same tune on the 2 units, there was no space for discussion. The Logitech UE Boombox is the clear winner, with a much clearer and richer noise than the minimal Huge Jambox. The Boombox is much larger, however $ 50 less expensive than the Huge Jambox. Picking Logitech ’ s speaker is a no-brainer if you are not constrained by size.

Logitech UE Mobile Boombox

Features:

• Compact speaker
• Bluetooth (A2DP profile) and 3.5 mm audio output
• 10-hour micro USB chargeable battery
• MSRP: $ 100
• Logitech UE Item Web page

Pros:

• Extremely very easy to hold around
• Better sound than the speaker of your smartphone
• Perfect for podcasts

Cons:

• Not very effective

Long variation:

Don ’ t anticipate any magic from this Mobile Boombox. It is an economical speaker to throw in your bag when you are going to the beach, the park or hiking. You don ’ t get a whole lot of information, particularly with messy and tough to render tracks. However if you really have to listen to music with a speaker in those scenarios, the Mobile Boombox is a great flexible option.

If you insist on using it in your residence, there is another use that makes it really helpful, podcasts. I hear a lot of podcasts and don ’ t use iTunes anymore, also if Apple organizes to release an entirely redesigned variation. I handle all my podcasts in Instacast on my iPhone and hear podcasts solely on my iPhone, utilizing headphones, AirPlay or the internal speaker.

You can make use of the Logitech UE Mobile Boombox to listen to podcast while doing the dishes and cooking for instance. Voices sound much better than with the interior speaker and you won ’ t have to invest a great deal of money for a kitchen speaker.

Conclusion

These 2 speakers are extremely capable for different uses. While you won ’ t take the Boombox with you, it will be an extremely polyvalent and delightful speaker in your residence. The Mobile Boombox, on the additional hand, can easily make an exceptional speaker to pay attention to podcasts in your kitchen area, or a correct transportable speaker for the park or the beach. I wasn ’ t really confident when turning those speakers on due to the brand. Logitech isn ’ t a famous audiophile brand. Those anxieties vanished quickly.

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Headphone designer AiAiAi and designer Yuri Suzuki have actually collaborated to create the Sound Taxi– a speaker-equipped black cab that converts London street noise into popular music. Any sort of surrounding horn blares, sirens, or background chatter are picked up by a microphone connected to the vehicle’s roof, and fed into software application developed by sound designer Mark McKeague. This program then analyzes each sample and uses Ableton Live to convert it into music. The resulting tones are then played with the Noise Taxi’s huge Indian horns, filling the streets with real-time samples based on its prompt surroundings.

The Sound Taxi invested the last couple of days travelling around London and collecting samples, prior to ending its run on Friday afternoon. Its collected …

Continue reading & hellip;

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Remember Audience? Sure you do. The outfit was behind the iPhone 4′s noise-canceling wizardry that would be later built directly into the 4S’ A5 heart. Now, the company has announced its earSmart eS110 advanced voice processor for feature phones. Touting “the same voice quality” as those more expensive phones that we all covet, the single microphone tech will suppress unwanted noise like cars passing by or that loud guy next to you at a bar. The eS110 offers crisp calls for both handset and speakerphone uses thanks to processors designed around how humans filter the sounds that we hear. Entry-level smartphones are targets as well and the kit’s 3.5 x 3.5mm stature should make for easy integration. Audience says that samples will be sent out to manufacturers in March and should show up in handsets by the end of the year. In search of a few more details? Hit the full PR below to find out more.

Continue reading Audience earSmart eS110 brings its voice processing and noise suppression to low cost feature phones

Audience earSmart eS110 brings its voice processing and noise suppression to low cost feature phones originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 28 Feb 2012 16:56:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Wow. We expected a lot of news out of Mobile World Congress but who knew HTC would have so. freaking. much.

I was having trouble keeping track of it myself, so for the good of the both of us, I thought it might be fitting to bundle all this news up into something a tad more easily digestible.

And off we go…

The first thing you should know is that HTC is changing up its current branding strategy. Most notably, we have the freshly announced One series which comprises three different phones: the One X, One S, and One V. (More on those later, of course.) HTC has already stated that it would be focusing on more hero devices, rather than pushing out experimental failures like the HTC Status.

While unifying offerings under a singular flagship brand — like Galaxy, Droid, etc. — is great for brand awareness, HTC ought to be careful with the phone-specific naming. Right now we’re seeing the X, S, and V, and Chris Velazco brought up a great point in noting that there’s really no way to logically figure which phone is the “best.” I, personally, have found crazy long names (like Samsung Galaxy S II Epic Touch 4G… or whatever) incredibly annoying, but I’d rather have too much to remember than something vague that I can’t remember.

In other news, HTC has launched version 4.0 of its Sense overlay. While zero percent of the people I talk to actually enjoy vendor skins, these OEMs keep slapping them on their handsets like it’s all that matters. Luckily, Sense 4.0 doesn’t seem to bog down Android the way other skins do, and runs like a breeze on both the One X and One S (we weren’t able to see software running on the V).

The clock and weather widgets are great, as usual, but HTC really put in some extra effort on the camera front. Hardware aside, the Sense camera app can take shots at .2 seconds, meaning that in burst mode it’ll take five pictures in a second flat. There are also plenty of setting controls and fun stuff like that.

Now let’s get to the phones because I’m sure that’s the reason most of you are here.

The One X is officially HTC’s new flagship. Running Android 4.0 ICS along with Sense 4.0, this may be one of the most impressively spec’d phones we’ve seen to date. And even though the spec is apparently dead, HTC has all kinds of crazy numbers to throw at you with this guy.

To start, the One X is powered by a quad-core 1.5GHz Tegra 3 processor and packs 1GB of RAM under the hood of its 9.7mm frame. You’ll also find a 4.7-inch 720p S-LCD screen up front, along with an 8-megapixel rear-facing camera capable of video capture in 1080p and a 1.3-megapixel front-facer for video chat.

I actually played around with the One X this morning, and have to say that it’s quite stunning. Take a look at our hands-on video straight from Barcelona here.

Following just behind, the One S is meant to be HTC’s mid-range device, but thus far I personally prefer it to the One X. The One S sports a 4.3-inch Super AMOLED qHD screen, with Android 4.0 and Sense 4.0 in tow. It runs on one of Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon S4 processors (1.5GHz dual-core, to be exact) and touts 1GB of RAM under the hood.

Its aluminum unibody design is just what we’ve been looking for in a sea of cheap-feeling plastic, and we’re pleased to see little to no difference in performance between the quad-core packing One X and the One S. (Man, I’m already tired of all this “One” business.)

The same camera specs hold true between both models, and you’ll find Beats Audio integration in both as well. Check out our hands-on video in Barcelona here.

Not to be overshadowed by any means, next up we have the little guy: the HTC One V. I actually kind of fell for this little hunk of aluminum at HTC’s media event in NYC (even without seeing any hardware). Don’t get me wrong, the sexy feel of the One S and the gorgeous screen of the One X are worth getting excited about, but the One V gave me this overwhelming sense of nostalgia and I’m actually very sure at this point that I’m just fine with smaller phones.

See, the One V is meant to be the lower-end model in the series, packing just a 3.7-inch 480×800 screen, a single-core 1GHz processor, and a 5-megapixel camera. Still, the little guy runs Android 4.0, Sense 4.0 and feels wonderful in the hand.

But just because these ICS-flavored Android phones are its MWC sweethearts, don’t think HTC has given up on Windows Phone. After sitting down with our own Ingrid Lunden to chat out future plans, chief marketing officer John Wang promised “we have not given up on Windows Phone.” Clearly the focus right now is on Android, but anyone who’s given WP a shot can tell you it’s ready for the main stage.

HTC has also signed a deal with Dropbox to better compete against iCloud. Now that Apple has its own cloud-syncing service (along with Motorola, and others), HTC saw fit to get a cloud service of its own. But rather than bake it up in the HTC labs, the Taiwanese company called on the Michael Jordan of cloud storage, Dropbox.

This means that anyone who buys a One series device will get 25GB of storage free for two years. To put that in perspective, it currently costs Dropbox users $ 9.99 a month for 50GB of storage and the only free offering from the service is 2GB.

So what do you think? In my book, HTC made quite the showing at MWC, but I guess we should wait until the show’s over before we start handing out awards.

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Continue reading Elgato’s Thunderbolt SSD brings no noise, brings no painless operation

Elgato’s Thunderbolt SSD brings no noise, brings no painless operation originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 09 Jan 2012 11:14:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Got some mysterious white powder sitting on your coffee table? A new, suitcase-sized device can tell you whether you’ve got dandruff, or anthrax. Developed by researchers at Cornell and the University of Albany, the detector uses a microfluidic chip (pictured on the left) to collect and purify the DNA on a given sample, before conducting a series of polymerase chain reactions — processes that can quickly identify biological materials. The machine, which has been in the works for seven years, is powerful enough to deliver test results in just one hour (requiring a sample of only 40 microscopic spores), but is slim enough to fit in an airline’s overhead luggage bin. Scientists say their creation could also be catered to pick up on other pathogens, including salmonella, and may even pay dividends for crime scene investigators handling forensic evidence. No word yet on when the device could hit the market, but we won’t touch an ounce of sugar until it does.

Portable device can sniff out anthrax in an hour, won’t bring the noise originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 02 Aug 2011 14:05:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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With point and shoot cameras apparently now up against a megapixel wall, manufacturers are focusing on adding quirky new features to keep you hooked on the upgrade cycle. Sony’s new Cyber-shot TX55 includes several such additions, such as ‘amazing’ 3D image capture, ‘extremely low’ noise, and a new digital zoom technology called By Pixel Super Resolution, which promises to double the camera’s 5x optical zoom range while still capturing 16.2-megapixel images at full quality. We’re a bit skeptical about that last one, but if the $ 350 camera really can deliver on its promise, then we may just have a winner. Sony says there’s also high-speed autofocus that can lock onto subjects in 0.1 seconds, optical image stabilization, a 3.3-inch OLED touch-screen, and 1080i AVCHD video. It also includes some features found on the higher-end NEX-C3, such as Picture Effects, and a 42.9-megapixel Sweep Panorama mode. Sony has yet to completely nix the Memory Stick slot, including one with the TX55, though there’s also MicroSD support for those who prefer to take advantage of that more affordable memory card standard. We’re not yet convinced that all of the point-and-shoot cam’s new features perform as well as Sony suggests, but if they do, the TX55 may even be worth its $ 350 price tag when it hits stores in September.

Continue reading Sony Cyber-shot TX55 packs 16.2-megapixel sensor, promises ‘extremely low’ noise in dim light

Sony Cyber-shot TX55 packs 16.2-megapixel sensor, promises ‘extremely low’ noise in dim light originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 25 Jul 2011 00:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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