pcmag.com - Google's Project Tango has faded into the background since the announcement of Daydream, Google's virtual reality platform, but that doesn't mean it's been entirely forgotten. Lenovo showcased Project Tango devices at CES and we spent a night in a Barcelona museum with a Project Tango tablet during MWC.
Now the Lenovo Phab2 Pro is officially the world's first Project Tango smartphone. It's also the first Lenovo-branded phone to be sold in the US. I went hands on with it, as well as its two less expensive, non-Tango siblings, the Phab2 Plus and Phab2.
Design, Display, and Features
It's hard to understate the size of the Phab2 Pro. It measures 7.1 by 3.5 by 0.42 inches (HWD) and weighs 9.1 ounces. That's enormous, bigger than the 6-inch Google Nexus 6P the Samsung Galaxy Note 5 or any other phablet I've ever tested. It's unwieldy and barely fit into my pocket; you certainly won't be able to use the Pro one-handed.
Phab2 Pro in hand
The phone's build quality is good. It's covered in a gray or gold aluminum unibody that feels smooth and sturdy, though perhaps not as solid as the HTC 10$648.00 at Verizon Wireless. The front is clad in a pane of 2.5D curved glass that meets the metal frame. The back is also made of metal and contains all the modules that makes Project Tango work. From top to bottom, you'll find a standard 16-megapixel rear-facing camera sensor, a depth sensor, a motion-tracking sensor, a fish-eye camera, and the fingerprint sensor. Below this crowded setup is Project Tango and Lenovo branding.
Phab2 Pro back
The front is dominated by a 6.4-inch 2,560-by-1,440 in-Plane Switch display. It's the right resolution for a screen this size and sharp enough that you won't encounter graininess. Viewing angles seemed to be good. I didn't get a chance to test it outdoors, but the screen seemed to get reasonably bright, so it should be usable in sunlight.
Project Tango
For those unaware, Project Tango consists of a set of sensors, and software from Google, which are able to sense and map surroundings to create augmented reality (AR) experiences. Tango-enabled devices like the Phab2 Pro are able to sense physical motion and space, track depth, and visualize and understand surrounding objects. The Pro uses a fish-eye camera with a wide viewing angle in conjunction with the regular camera sensor to understand motion and identify where the Pro is within a 3D space. This kind of positional tracking allows you to use AR for a wide range of purposes, ranging from interior design to games to museum tours.
I played with an educational dinosaur app, which generated different dinosaurs in the room, including the Brontosaurus, Velociraptor, and the ever-popular Tyrannosaurus Rex. At this point, the app is still somewhat rudimentary in terms of the quality of graphics it generated, but I was able to change the scale of the dinosaur, making it true-to-life and move its position in the room in relation to other objects.
Phab2 Pro dino
Other AR apps included a shooter that used elements of the room to create a level where you could fire at approaching enemies, as well as an interior designing app that allowed you to place furniture around the room to see how it would look. The phone was able to recall where an object had been placed even if you turned away. Overall, it seemed to be reasonably functional, though graphics could have used some polish.
The overall experience was a little less onerous than our previous experiences with Project Tango, where we had to use a 7-inch developer tablet. The 6.4-inch Pro is a bit smaller, and a little easier to use with the Tango camera when playing AR games, though it's still much bigger than the 5.1-inch to 5.7-inch phones I normally use.
When the Phab2 Pro launches, it will have 25 AR apps available. Lenovo hopes to have 100 apps ready by 2017.
Processor, Battery, and Network
Under the hood, the Phab2 Pro has a Snapdragon 652 processor. My co-worker, Sascha Segan, had concerns this isn't powerful enough for Tango, but according to Lenovo, it's heavily customized and should be "enough for the first generation of a Google Tango product."
The Pro also has 4GB of RAM, 64GB of internal storage, and a microSD card slot that's capable of taking an SD card up to 128GB. I wasn't able to run any benchmarks or put the Pro through its paces, but I didn't notice any lag when I was launching apps and swiping through screens. It should perform reasonably well in most standard uses, but it remains to be seen how it'll handle high-end gaming, though I'd hope it would do well given the demands of Tango.
Phab2 Pro screen
As you'd expect for a phone this big, there's a large 4,050mAh battery with fast charge capabilities. According to Lenovo, it should have a talk time of 18 hours and a standby time of over 13 days. Once I get my hands on a review unit, I'll subject it to our brutal video-streaming test to get a better idea of what kind of usage you can expect.
The Pro will come unlocked, supporting GSM (850/1800/1900MHz ), UMTS (850/1700/1900/2100MHz ), and LTE bands (2/4/5/7/12/17/20/30). It will work on GSM carriers like T-Mobile and AT&T. With support for band 12 and band 17, T-Mobile and AT&T customers will be able to take advantage of better range and building penetration.
The Pro supports dual-band Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 4.0.
Camera and Software
Despite its focus on Tango, the Pro still has a regular 16-megapixel rear-facing camera, capable of recording 4K video. It boasts Dolby Audio Capture 5.1, allowing for 5.1-channel surround sound when recording, and Dolby Atmos surround sound. I didn't get to spend much time with the Pro's camera, but my general impression is that it's likely to be a capable shooter. Pictures in variable lighting conditions, especially low-light, will be the real test. There's also an 8-megapixel front-facing camera.
Phab2 Pro camera
The Pro runs Android 6.0 Marshmallow with Lenovo's custom UI changes, which alter app icons and the lock screen and add features. Lenovo will pre-install McAfee Security, Netflix, and SwiftKey. The unit we spent time with wasn't the final retail version, but it did have a number of AR apps installed, which we got to test out.
Phab2 Plus and Phab2
The Phab2 Plus and Phab2 aren't as unique as the Pro; neither have the Tango module, but they still share many similarities. Both phones are clad in an aluminum unibody, have roughly the same dimensions as Pro, dual-band Wi-Fi, Dolby Atmos, Dolby Audio Capture 5.1, a 4,050mAh battery, are able to take 128GB microSD cards, and run Android 6.0 Marshmallow. The big differences come down to hardware.
The Phab2 Plus has a focus on photography, boasting dual 13-megapixel rear-facing cameras, set above its fingerprint sensor. The dual camera setup allows for post-shot refocusing, swapping out the background, and AR special effects. It also offers manual controls and improved low-light performance, along with fast focusing. There's also an 8-megapixel selfie camera on the front.
That said, the Plus isn't nearly as capable as the Pro. It has a MediaTek MTK 8783 processor and 3GB of RAM, so I don't expect it to perform as well in benchmarks. It comes with 32GB of storage and the 6.4-inch display only has a resolution of 1,920 by 1,080. That's low for a screen this size, and you'll likely notice some degree of pixelation and graininess with text, video, and games.
The Phab2 is the entry-level offering among all three Lenovo phablets. It doesn't have unique features, like the fingerprint scanner, dual rear cameras, or fast charging. It also has the weakest hardware of the bunch, with a MediaTek MTK 8735 processor, 3GB of RAM, and 32GB of internal storage. Camera performance isn't likely to be as strong either, with a 13-megapixel rear-facing camera and a 5-megapixel selfie shooter. The biggest downside is the paltry 1,280-by-720 display. For a screen this size, it's just not enough. App icons are noticeably pixelated, and games and video won't look so good.
Pricing and Availability
All three phones will be available worldwide beginning in September. In the US, the Phab2 Pro will start at $499, the Phab2 Plus at $299, and the Phab2 at $199. The Pro will be sold in select Lowe's stores nationwide and online by the end of 2016. It will also be available in Best Buy. It's a fairly reasonable price given the specialized nature of the Tango module as well as the build quality, though the biggest appeal will be for phablet-lovers. Stay tuned for our full review.

computerworld.com - While mobile payment systems like Apple Pay and Samsung Pay are growing, they haven't lived up to the hype that surrounded their arrival in 2014.
But newer biometrics security technologies beyond the use of fingerprint scans could boost adoption rates when purchases are made in-store with smartphones. Those technologies include palm vein sensors or even sensors that assess a person's typing patterns or movements.
Smartphone vendors and developers of payment software need to consider the multimodal approach and a variety of new biometric techniques to be successful in coming years, according to Tiffany Huang, an analyst at Lux Research. She recently authored a 50-page report, Securing Mobile Payments with Biometric Authentication (membership required).
"Biometrics are needed to improve mobile payment usage," Huang said in an interview today. "It's hard to see one biometric usage winning in the medium-to-far-term."
One reason for the slow adoption of mobile payments in the U.S. is that consumers don't see the value of using a mobile device instead of a credit card, she added. The roll-out of chip-enabled credit cards in the U.S. could eventually help boost interest in mobile payments, but hasn't apparently made a big difference so far.
A U.S. Federal Reserve survey of 2,137 people published last year showed that 75% didn't use mobile payments because they felt it easier to pay with cash or a credit or debit card, while 59% were worried about the security and privacy of mobile payments.
Huang researched dozens of companies in the mobile payment ecosystem, including banks and credit companies and hardware and software designers ande evaluated new biometrics technologies for ease of use, level of security and cost. Fingerprint scans were evaluated along with scans of palm veins, eyeprints, irises, ECGs (Electrocardiograms), voices and faces.
Different biometric approaches are needed depending on the type of mobile payment. In-store, most customers wouldn't want to pose for a few seconds in front of other customers in line for a facial or voice scan. Meanwhile, Huang found that palm vein sensors would be an optimal point-of-sale authentication technology, but would be prohibitively expensive.
Palm vein sensors are rare because they require a large piece of hardware to read the palm vein patterns in a hand, Huang said. Palm veins are 100 times more unique than fingerprints and can't be easily spoofed because the veins are below the surface of the skin.
Fingerprint sensors like those used with iPhones for Apple Pay and in Galaxy phones for Samsung Pay are the most mature biometrics for payments today and the hardware is relatively cheap. But Huang also said the capacitive (pressure-based) sensors can be spoofed by duplicates of fingerprint patterns, which is one reason the payments industry wants alternatives. (Newer fingerprint sensors use ultrasound or optics instead of capacitive sensing.)
Behavioral tracking is a technology that uses the sensors already in most smartphones like the accelerometer, gyroscope, touch screen and GPS. A user can be authenticated by how he or she interacts with a smartphone, including typing patterns. And a smartwatch could authenticate based on movements of the wrist. Meanwhile, GPS could be used to see if the location of a purchase fits in with a user's normal routine. Huang found that such technology has an 80% to 90% authentication accuracy rate -- lower than other types of biometrics -- which requires then adding in a password or other authentication method.
There are numerous small startups working on behavioral sensors, including Biocatch, AimBrain, XYverify and Plurilock.
Huang, in her report, found that the mobile payments industry will be a factor in shaping which biometric technologies gain popularity. "Many companies still want proof that a particular biometric is hardened," she said. She also noted that as new mobile payment platforms get introduced by separate industry players, like Walmart, it will be harder for one biometric approach to dominate.
"Mobile payments have not gone as quickly as we thought, but this year should ramp up,"Huang said. "Once biometrics are adopted to assure users [and banks] of security, it will help drive mobile payment adoption."
In addition to certifying that biometric technologies work, she said manufacturers need to be sure they pay attention to users' privacy fears.
"There are privacy concerns for biometrics as a whole, not just for mobile payment biometrics," Huang said. "Some consumers don't want anything like a camera used in a transaction because it has a Big Brother feel. You do hear that consumers are hesitant about biometrics."

zdnet.com - Amazon Web Services is likely to have 1.3 million servers that are more than three times more efficient than enterprise systems, data centers that use space better and generate better returns of about 20 percent.
Building the Software Defined Data Center
There are massive efficiencies, agility, and manageability benefits from virtualizing your data center and running it from software.
Those high level takeaways come from an Oppenheimer research note raising Amazon's stock price target to $930.
Much of the Oppenheimer tag-team analyst note revolves around AWS and how it'll fuel earnings into the future. And yes, Oppenheimer analysts were upbeat on Amazon's e-commerce expansion plans too. But let's get real: AWS is the profit margin machine on team Amazon.
In a nutshell, Oppenheimer concludes that AWS' capital spending won't need to be as high as expected. Why? "AWS' competitive advantages in procuring, designing and architecting datacenters and compute/storage resources are driving even higher profitability and lower capital intensity than previously expected," said Oppenheimer.
Add it up and an additional 100,000 square feet of incremental data center capacity will run AWS about $376 million and generate a return of more than 20 percent.
This efficiency for AWS---and likely other cloud providers---is going to create a flywheel of scale. Oppenheimer's team of analysts noted:
We believe that Internet and the major cloud providers represent over 45% of total global compute capacity, which is likely to be closer to 65% in five years, at which point we believe will represent a steady state in terms of global capacity.
In fact, Oppenheimer is betting that AWS and Microsoft Azure will combine for 12.6 percent of the server installed base by 2020. If you toss in IBM and Google you see where this is headed: Server vendors will largely be selling to just a few big buyers.
If this efficient cloud model plays out AWS should be on track to produce $5 billion in free cash flow by 2018, up from Oppenheimer's previous estimate of $3.2 billion.
Oppenheimer's AWS revenue estimates are a bit stunning through 2023. Oppenheimer is projecting AWS to have 2016 revenue of $12 billion with $16.81 billion in 2017. In 2018, AWS revenue will be $22.2 billion jumping to $33.29 billion two years later in 2020. By time 2023 AWS revenue is in the books it'll hit the $57.5 billion mark.
The AWS flywheel effect isn't an entirely original idea. Evercore analyst Ken Sena handicapped Google's cloud investments of late, but ultimately concluded that the AWS lead was too much. Sena said:
Amazon's level of investment and geographic scale is conservatively nearly 5x that of our current Google estimate,looking at just the last two years, and many times that of other providers. Moreover,as it currently stands, we see Amazon's lead in market share, capabilities, and geographic scale as developing a flywheel effect whereby enterprises and/or developers can adopt core AWS functions like Compute and ultimately transition into newer services such as Redshift (a data warehousing service), QuickSight (businessanalytics), or Lambda/Elastic Beanstalk, making AWS a fuller-service PaaS offering as opposed to simply infrastructure. Analogously, as Amazon has attracted a host of managed service partners on top of AWS, the ecosystem around their products has inevitably grown stronger.

money.cnn.com - As smartphones become ubiquitous and drones get ready to fill the skies, the need for batteries becomes even more acute.
But battery technology isn't exactly state-of-the-art -- there hasn't been a major breakthrough in more than 25 years. So a number of tech companies and startups are racing to make batteries that are more efficient, cheaper and longer lasting.
Here's a few key things we can look forward to as batteries improve.
Renewables generating all our electricity
There's one big problem with solar and wind power: The sun doesn't always shine, and the wind doesn't always blow.
So the renewable energy sector needs to find an efficient way to store some of that energy so it can be used later -- instead of relying on fossil fuels to fill in the gaps.
About two dozen companies currently offer batteries big enough to store energy to feed the electric grid, and even more have options for homeowners with solar panels.
Tesla (TSLA) is one example. The company recently launched two battery products: The Powerpack, a 7 kWh Powerwall for individual homes, and a massive 100 kWh battery intended for industrial use.
Tesla's in-home Powerwall on display in Auckland, New Zealand.
But experts say energy storage technology has a ways to go before it makes financial sense.
Take West Texas, where windy plains are filled with turbines generating electricity so cheap, it's practically free. On a windy day, the turbines are generating more electricity than the grid needs.
But a battery big enough to store that power would cost millions of dollars, and it would only survive about 500 charges. So, for the time being, it's cheaper to rely on fossil fuels when the wind stops.
"It would be a huge asset to have batteries that can instantly discharge [electricity to the grid], but they just don't last a long time. It's still really expensive," said Robbie Searcy, a spokeswoman for the Electric Reliability Council of Texas.
No more 'range anxiety' with electric cars
Fully electric vehicles aren't a huge part of the car market. They can be unnerving for customers concerned that the car's battery will die before the driver finds a charging station.
Tesla's $70,000 Model S can travel the furthest of any electric vehicles before it needs a recharge: 265 miles with an 85 kWh battery, according to the EPA.
Most other current models can only go about 100 miles, which makes long trips unappealing.
So unless electric car companies invest in thousands of charging stations, they'll need better batteries to relieve that "range anxiety."
Everlasting mobile devices
Imagine a world where laptops never run out of juice and cell phones never die.
It's not so farfetched. There are a number of promising new ways to pack more power into small batteries.
Among the noteworthy is a "solid state" Lithium-ion battery from researchers at Samsung and MIT. They say it can survive hundreds of thousands of chargs, store 20% to 30% more power, and isn't as susceptible to overheating. The university says it could be a gamechanger for powering cellphones, laptops and electric cars.
And in March, researchers at South Korea's Pohang Univeristy said they developed a fuel cell battery that can power smartphones, drones, laptops or even electric vehicles.
"With this fuel cell, drones can fly more than one hour, and the team expects to have smartphones that charge only once a week," the university said in a press release.
But just because researchers are crying breakthrough doesn't mean the next iPhone will be packed with twice the power. What works in a research lab doesn't always translate to a commercial version.
That's happened with several headline-making "breakthroughs" in recent years -- including a battery cell from a startup called Envia, and an electric car battery from now-bankrupt A123 Systems that used MIT-developed technologies. Large-scale production versions of those batteries didn't end up working.
And because switching to a new charging method is expensive and time consuming, most mobile device makers are waiting until these burgeoning technologies are fully vetted -- and cheap enough to mass produce -- before they invest in a switchover.

money.cnn.com - When people panic, they tend to turn to a trusted source for advice. Like the Google search bar.
Google's search team has noticed that people regularly type the phrase "I lost my phone." Instead of just returning articles with conflicting advice on what to do when your phone is stolen or hiding under the bed, Google will direct people to a new Find My Phone page.
It's one a handful of features the company is adding to its My Account hub.
Introduced last year, My Account is a central place for people to control privacy and security settings for their various Google accounts, like YouTube, Gmail and Google Maps. It was an attempt to make Google's settings less opaque, and to put people at ease by giving them more control over the massive amounts of data stored with Google (GOOGL, Tech30).
"We know that from research, users are curious or concerned about what data Google has about them," said Guemmy Kim, Google's My Account product manager.
Android and Apple have long offered settings for finding lost phones, but this is the first time they're collected in one place and integrated with search results.
Owners of a lost mobile device can text or ring their phone or tablet, disable any Google accounts remotely, or see it on a map. For some of the options, iOS users are redirected to the iCloud page.
There's even a link to "reach out" to the nearest Lost and Found office. Kim says this is a fairly effective option in Europe and Asia. (In San Francisco, I was directed to the police station or the Lost and Found Beer Garden, possibly to console myself.)
One of the most common Google search queries is people looking up their own names. In a few weeks, the first result won't be an arrest history or Facebook page, but a link to the My Account settings. If you're not logged in, you'll still be able to see what data Google has associated with your history.
More than a billion people have used the tool in the past year, but many probably still don't know that it exists. Now anyone who ever vainly Googles themselves late at night can take a moment to improve their privacy and security settings.
The Find My Phone tool is available now in My Account, coming soon to your panicked search results.

money.cnn.com - Is this the world's most secure phone?
A new $14,000 device from Sirin Labs that went on sale Wednesday claims to be just that, incorporating military-grade security and technology used by intelligence agencies.
Special features on the company's "Solarin" smartphone include a switch that activates a "security shield" and enables extra encryption. It also comes with a remote application that allows the owner to locate, lock or even wipe the phone.
Sirin Labs was co-founded by Google alum Tal Cohen, Kazakh businessman Kenes Rakishev and Israeli venture capitalist Moshe Hogeg.
The trio hope to cash in on rising privacy concerns among high-profile corporate executives.
"Cyber-attacks are endemic across the globe," said Cohen. "Just one attack can severely harm reputations and finances."
Sirin said it has raised $72 million in venture funding, including an investment from Chinese tech firm RenRen.
There are other smartphone manufacturers who claim their phones are super secure, such as Silent Circle' Blackphone, which is sold for $799. But Sirin said that high-end design and features set Solarin apart.
The Android phone was developed in Sweden and Israel over a two-year period. The device is made up of over 2,500 components and can be used anywhere in the world.
It has all the classic smartphone features, including a 23.8-megapixel camera, 2k resolution screen, 128 GB internal memory and a fingerprint sensor.
Solarin is heavy, though. At 250 grams, the smartphone weighs almost twice as much as an iPhone 6.
Sirin Labs' roster of advisers reflects the company's emphasis on luxury, security and tech: They include a former chief technical officer at Sony Mobile, a former Israeli military intelligence commander and a former executive at Hermes.