Asus ZenFone 2 vs. OnePlus One: Battle of the unlocked smartphones
The Asus ZenFone 2 is the Taiwanese manufacturer’s newest smartphone lineup. Aside from the initial $199 and $299 versions with a 5.5-inch display, the company just announced 5-inch and 6-inch models at Computex this week, which are sure to broaden its appeal. But let’s step back for a moment and look at that original $299 handset, which matches up with the perennial-favorite OnePlus One in a number of ways.
Both devices have 5.5-inch, in-plane switching (IPS) liquid crystal displays (LCD) with Corning Gorilla Glass 3 panels, full HD screen resolution (1920 x 1080p), front and back cameras with the same camera apertures (5MP and 13MP with f/2.0 apertures, respectively), 16GB and 64GB versions, and 802.11ac Wi-Fi. So on the surface, there are few differences between the two phones. But we’ll find them once we look a little closer.
The OnePlus One got rave reviews and won a cult following
Both front and back cameras of these two devices have the same megapixel count (5MP front, 13MP back). But the ZenFone 2 dwarfs the OnePlus One in camera features and settings; the ZenFone 2 has face detection, smile detection, touch to focus, geotagging, and a High Dynamic Range (HDR) mode. For its part, the OnePlus One supports 4K video recording and can record in HD up to 120fps.
Under the hood, the ZenFone 2 is powered by a quad-core, 2.3GHz, 64-bit, 22nm Intel Atom Z3580 processor with a PowerVR G6430 GPU and 4GB RAM. The OnePlus One contains a 2.5GHz, quad-core, 28nm Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 processor with an Adreno 330 GPU and 3GB RAM. On paper, the OnePlus One has a slightly faster clock speed (2.5GHz vs. 2.3GHz), and the ZenFone 2 has an additional 1GB of DDR3 (not DDR4) RAM over the OnePlus One. Both the ZenFone 2 and OnePlus One have less-expensive 16GB models available: the 16GB ZenFone 2 has 2GB of DDR3 RAM, while the 16GB OnePlus One has the same 3GB of DDR3 RAM.
The ZenFone 2 is the newest challenger to the OnePlus One and (now-defunct) Nexus 5
The ZenFone 2 and OnePlus One both run Android 5.0 Lollipop, Google’s most recent major Android update. The ZenFone 2 comes laden with a heavy Zen UI layer, which may bother some enthusiasts, while the OnePlus One runs Cyanogen OS (although that will change on future OnePlus handsets); the OPO’s bootloader is unlockable and root is easy to get. There’s also a new official ROM from OnePlus called OxygenOS that users can install instead.
The battery sizes are similar, though the OnePlus One slightly surpasses the ZenFone 2’s (3,100mAh vs. 3,000mAh, respectively). Unlike the OnePlus One, the ZenFone 2 has a microSD card slot, so you can boost its existing 16GB and 64GB of onboard storage. The ZenFone 2 costs $299 for the 64GB model and $199 for the 16GB model; the OnePlus One costs the same $299 for 64GB and a higher $249 for 16GB. The ZenFone 2 has two SIM card slots, which you may find helpful if you travel often.
Both phones make a compelling case. Asus and OnePlus One have shown that you don’t have to “spec-settle” to get a great phone for a great price. With these two, storage options and OS flexibility will most likely determine which one you prefer.
A Great Work Of China, New Metro Air Bus 2015
A Great Work Of China, New Metro Air Bus 2015 by shahidnabeel733
A Great Work Of China, New Metro Air Bus 2015A Great Work Of China, New Metro Air Bus 2015 A Great Work Of China, New Metro Air Bus 2015 A Great Work Of China, New Metro Air Bus 2015
A Great Work Of China, New Metro Air Bus 2015 · A Great Work Of China, New Metro Air Bus 2015 by shahidnabeel733. Posted 1 hour ago by Shahid Chaudry.Health · Sexy · Best Of · Autos · Download · Activism · Entertainment · Fights · Animals · Funny · Hack · Animation · Gaming · Movies · Beauty · Music · News ...More than 1,300 employees currently work for Airbus Group in China and its ... go to China and they prepare their strategies based on what they think is best, ... Between 2010 and 2015, China is planning to add 1,700 kilometres of metro ... to enhance product performance, create new customer benefits and reduce costs.Mar 4, 2015 - Sunday, Jun 7th 2015 11PM 50°F 2AM 47°F 5-Day Forecast ... The latest pictures have shown the final assembly work on the nation's first ... Mystery of the new Great Sphinx? ... Airbus has forecast that China's domestic aviation market will .... Part of the Daily Mail, The Mail on Sunday & Metro Media Group.Mar 4, 2015 - Sunday, Jun 7th 2015 11PM 50°F 2AM 47°F 5-Day Forecast ... The latest pictures have shown the final assembly work on the nation's first ... Mystery of the new Great Sphinx? ... Airbus has forecast that China's domestic aviation market will .... Part of the Daily Mail, The Mail on Sunday & Metro Media Group.The subway trains use Chinese mandarin, Cantonese and English to report ... Guangzhou Transportation Smart Card, like the MetroCard in New York City ... The card is widely used on bus, ferryboat, metro, telecom business and ... 23, 2015 20:55 ... May I ask how to best take the metro from Beijing Lu to Pazhou Station4 days ago - Here's the big problem with China's bizarre new censorship rules .... Airbus said Wednesday that three of the four engines on an A400M military plane failed ... AP
NASA begins testing InSight, next Mars lander, for 2016 mission
NASA has had a remarkable record when it comes to successful missions on the Red Planet, dating back to 1976 with Viking 1 and 2, Pathfinder and Sojourner in 1997, the Spirit and Opportunity rovers in 2004, and Curiosity‘s crazy ‘7 minutes of terror’ landing in 2012. Each time, the spacecraft rovers are orders of magnitude more sophisticated, and two of the last three rovers are still doing science. Now NASA’s set to do it all over again come March 2016 with the InSight spacecraft, which will launch from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California and land on Mars roughly six months later.
Once on the surface, the mission is scheduled to last two years — 720 days, or 700 sols — and begin delivering science data in October 2016.
“Today, our robotic scientific explorers are paving the way, making great progress on the journey to Mars,” said Jim Green, director of NASA’s Planetary Science Division at the agency’s headquarters in Washington, in a statement. “Together, humans and robotics will pioneer Mars and the solar system.”
InSight will be as large as a car, and instead of looking for signs of life or studying surface rock composition, it’s directed at learning more about the interior of Mars. The name is an unwieldy acronym that reflects that: Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy, and Heat Transport. Currently, NASA has begun testing the craft’s ability to operate in and survive deep space travel, as well as the famously harsh conditions on the surface of the Red Planet.
Mars InSight lander, labeled (artist concept)
The testing phase will last about seven months. During that time, NASA will expose the lander to extreme temperatures, vacuum-space conditions with near-zero air pressure, and emulated Martian surface conditions. Engineering teams will also simulate the launch procedure and examine different parts of the craft for electronic interference.
“The assembly of InSight went very well and now it’s time to see how it performs,” said Stu Spath, InSight program manager at Lockheed Martin Space Systems, Denver, in the same statement. “The environmental testing regimen is designed to wring out any issues with the spacecraft so we can resolve them while it’s here on Earth. This phase takes nearly as long as assembly, but we want to make sure we deliver a vehicle to NASA that will perform as expected in extreme environments.”
Once testing is completed early next year, NASA will begin setting up the launch itself ahead of the March target date. “It’s great to see the spacecraft put together in its launch configuration,” said InSight Project Manager Tom Hoffman at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California. “Many teams from across the globe have worked long hours to get their elements of the system delivered for these tests. There still remains much work to do before we are ready for launch, but it is fantastic to get to this critical milestone.”
ASUS ZENFONE 2 FIRST LOOK: A REMARKABLE PHONE WHICH NEEDS AN IMPRESSIVE PRICE TAG
Asus Zenfone 2, which was unveiled at the Consumer Electronice Show (CES) 2015 back in January is now making its way to India.
On April 23, this mid-ranger will hit the country followed by an official event in New Delhi. While Asus has had a rocking last year, it now aiming to become even more dominant handset player with the newly launched Zenfone range.
The newly unveiled Android-enabled smartphone is bigger, better and more powerful compared to its predecessor, especially with the tag of 'world's first 4GB RAM smartphone.
Running on Android 5.0, the 5.5-inch FHD handset has a 64-bit Intel Atom quad-core processor and we estimate that it will be priced around Rs 20,000 giving a direct competition to Xiaomi Mi 4 and OnePlus One.
We got to play with the unit at a pre-review event which took in Bangalore recently. So, lets head on and find out more about the incredible unit.
We were kind of impressed by the design of the Zenfone 2. Even though you won't find any breakthrough in the design department; nonetheless it still feels really innovative.
Notably, it does bear resemblance to the LG G3 with its rear-back buttons, while the phone's curves remind you of the HTC One (M8). No more the Asus Zenfone 2 boasts plastic design; instead, it now comes with brushed metallic body. It's light in weight, and feels so perfect to hold.
The Zenfone 2 sports a brilliant 5.5-inch Full HD display with a resolution of 1080 x 1920 pixels. . The 5.5-inch FHD screen should be reasonable fine to view long length movies and videos. During our testing we found the display to be just right, and the colors to be vivid in nature.
While, of course, the 5.5-inch FHD display is surely one of the highlights to own the Zenfone 2. At the same time, we instantly got immersed ourselves into the Zen UI. It's a crazy take on the stock Android user interface (UI).
Running on Google's Android Lollipop OS, Asus had made several new chances in the ZenUI. The slapped UI is simply intuitive, and it's getting more immersive with every additional update. Now it includes unique launchers and themes that'll surely get you addicted to the device.
Both Asus and Intel share a cordial relationship. As we know, the Zenfone 2 features an Intel inside processor, like its predecessor. However, the newly launched handset finally gets a 64-bit processor.
Notably, there are two variants to choose from. The high-end variant comes with 4GB of RAM (a quad-core Atom chipset clocked at 2.3 GHz and a 1080p display), while the entry-level handset boasts 2GB of RAM, a quad-core Atom chipset clocked at 1.8 GHz and a 720p HD display).
Inside the Zenfone 2 is an Intel Atom quad-core processor, which we'll need to run our benchmark tests on when we get the handset for full review. During our testing, however, we found the device to be fairly accurate and responsive. In addition to that, the Android 5.0 Lollipop mobile OS adds an extra touch.
Both variants will be made available in 16, 32 and 64 GB storage capacities and microSD card support. Connectivity features include 4G LTE (Cat.4), Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 4.0.
The Zenfone 2 is an impressive handset as far as the camera is concerned. With a 13-megapixel rear-facing f/2.0 camera and 5-megapixel front-facing camera, one should expect some really good shots.
The rear-facing shooter also sports a dual-LED Flash. Notably, the camera UI is very fast and easy to operate. In addition, users can even use operate a manual mode which is an add-on, and totally worth it, given the retail price of the device.
The front-facing camera performed brilliantly during our testing. We even tried to test the video capture feature (1080p Full HD), although we need to take more time to determine the video quality.
The Zenfone 2 comes with a 3,000 mAh battery that is non-removable. Well, to be honest, we couldn't determine any estimates just by having a close look. However, we do expect the handset to run at least a day on a single charge.
The handset release date is scheduled for Q2 2015 in India, as confirmed by Peter Chang, Regional Head, Asus India, during our conversation at CES 2015. No word on pricing though.
We were really astonished to see the Zenfone 2. It has got all the right incidents to surpass consumer expectations. We wish it would come at the right price. For full verdict, we'll have to wait and see how much the device costs in India.
Magic Today Is Just Technology in the Future, Says Illusionist Marco Tempest (Video)
“Cyber illusionist” Marco Tempest has been using technology to pull off magic tricks on YouTube and at live events for years. But at the Code Conference today in Rancho Palos Verdes, Calif., Tempest explained that he has to follow technological progress closely — lest it put him out of a job.
“Science will make real what once was considered magic, which is why magicians must stay ahead of the reality curve,” Tempest said. “Magic is about making possible today what science will make a reality tomorrow.”
Not unlike Facebook’s Michael Abrash, Tempest proposed that the world will one day take technologically-generated realities more seriously. Magicians today find the “possibility of illusion in the everyday,” and Tempest compared them to hackers in their attempts to subvert things’ intended purposes.
“To magicians, the world is like ‘The Matrix,’ where surface familiarity hides a far more interesting domain where objects and ideas can be twisted, morphed and manipulated to do things they were never designed to do,” Tempest said.
He then showed off an illusion made in collaboration with Qualcomm: A simple card trick powered by an augmented reality app. When he held a box with an AR marker in front of an iPad, the box “opened” to reveal five playing cards. A little more expensive than a deck of cards, but …
Neuroscientists Identify Brain Circuit That Controls Decision-Making Under Conflict
This image illustrates nerve fibers that originate in a part of the prefrontal cortex associated with emotion. The green shows the termination of fibers from a part of the prefrontal cortex in the striatum; the red depicts striosomes; and the yellow shows their overlap. The researchers found that the striatum — particularly the striosomes — may act as a gatekeeper that processes sensory and emotional information from the cortex to produce a decision on how to react.
A newly published study details how neuroscientists from MIT identified a neural circuit that controls decision-making under conflict.
Some decisions arouse far more anxiety than others. Among the most anxiety-provoking are those that involve options with both positive and negative elements, such choosing to take a higher-paying job in a city far from family and friends, versus choosing to stay put with less pay.
MIT researchers have now identified a neural circuit that appears to underlie decision-making in this type of situation, which is known as approach-avoidance conflict. The findings could help researchers to discover new ways to treat psychiatric disorders that feature impaired decision-making, such as depression, schizophrenia, and borderline personality disorder.
“In order to create a treatment for these types of disorders, we need to understand how the decision-making process is working,” says Alexander Friedman, a research scientist at MIT’s McGovern Institute for Brain Research and the lead author of a paper describing the findings in the May 28 issue of Cell.
Friedman and colleagues also demonstrated the first step toward developing possible therapies for these disorders: By manipulating this circuit in rodents, they were able to transform a preference for lower-risk, lower-payoff choices to a preference for bigger payoffs despite their bigger costs.
The paper’s senior author is Ann Graybiel, an MIT Institute Professor and member of the McGovern Institute. Other authors are postdoc Daigo Homma, research scientists Leif Gibb and Ken-ichi Amemori, undergraduates Samuel Rubin and Adam Hood, and technical assistant Michael Riad.
Making hard choices
The new study grew out of an effort to figure out the role of striosomes — clusters of cells distributed through the the striatum, a large brain region involved in coordinating movement and emotion and implicated in some human disorders. Graybiel discovered striosomes many years ago, but their function had remained mysterious, in part because they are so small and deep within the brain that it is difficult to image them with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI).
Previous studies from Graybiel’s lab identified regions of the brain’s prefrontal cortex that project to striosomes. These regions have been implicated in processing emotions, so the researchers suspected that this circuit might also be related to emotion.
To test this idea, the researchers studied mice as they performed five different types of behavioral tasks, including an approach-avoidance scenario. In that situation, rats running a maze had to choose between one option that included strong chocolate, which they like, and bright light, which they don’t, and an option with dimmer light but weaker chocolate.
When humans are forced to make these kinds of cost-benefit decisions, they usually experience anxiety, which influences the choices they make. “This type of task is potentially very relevant to anxiety disorders,” Gibb says. “If we could learn more about this circuitry, maybe we could help people with those disorders.”
The researchers also tested rats in four other scenarios in which the choices were easier and less fraught with anxiety.
“By comparing performance in these five tasks, we could look at cost-benefit decision-making versus other types of decision-making, allowing us to reach the conclusion that cost-benefit decision-making is unique,” Friedman says.
Using optogenetics, which allowed them to turn cortical input to the striosomes on or off by shining light on the cortical cells, the researchers found that the circuit connecting the cortex to the striosomes plays a causal role in influencing decisions in the approach-avoidance task, but none at all in other types of decision-making.
When the researchers shut off input to the striosomes from the cortex, they found that the rats began choosing the high-risk, high-reward option as much as 20 percent more often than they had previously chosen it. If the researchers stimulated input to the striosomes, the rats began choosing the high-cost, high-reward option less often.
Paul Glimcher, a professor of physiology and neuroscience at New York University, describes the study as a “masterpiece” and says he is particularly impressed by the use of a new technology, optogenetics, to solve a longstanding mystery. The study also opens up the possibility of studying striosome function in other types of decision-making, he adds.
“This cracks the 20-year puzzle that [Graybiel] wrote — what do the striosomes do?” says Glimcher, who was not part of the research team. “In 10 years we will have a much more complete picture, of which this paper is the foundational stone. She has demonstrated that we can answer this question, and answered it in one area. A lot of labs will now take this up and resolve it in other areas.”
Emotional gatekeeper
The findings suggest that the striatum, and the striosomes in particular, may act as a gatekeeper that absorbs sensory and emotional information coming from the cortex and integrates it to produce a decision on how to react, the researchers say.
That gatekeeper circuit also appears to include a part of the midbrain called the substantia nigra, which has dopamine-containing cells that play an important role in motivation and movement. The researchers believe that when activated by input from the striosomes, these substantia nigra cells produce a long-term effect on an animal or human patient’s decision-making attitudes.
“We would so like to find a way to use these findings to relieve anxiety disorder, and other disorders in which mood and emotion are affected,” Graybiel says. “That kind of work has a real priority to it.”
In addition to pursuing possible treatments for anxiety disorders, the researchers are now trying to better understand the role of the dopamine-containing substantia nigra cells in this circuit, which plays a critical role in Parkinson’s disease and may also be involved in related disorders.
The research was funded by the National Institute of Mental Health, the CHDI Foundation, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the U.S. Army Research Office, the Bachmann-Strauss Dystonia and Parkinson Foundation, and the William N. and Bernice E. Bumpus Foundation.
New Algorithm Lets Robots Autonomously Plan for Tasks
MIT researchers tested the viability of their algorithm by using it to guide a crew of three robots in the assembly of a chair.
Researchers from MIT have developed a new algorithm that lets autonomous robots divvy up assembly tasks on the fly, an important step forward in multirobot cooperation.
Today’s industrial robots are remarkably efficient — as long as they’re in a controlled environment where everything is exactly where they expect it to be.
But put them in an unfamiliar setting, where they have to think for themselves, and their efficiency plummets. And the difficulty of on-the-fly motion planning increases exponentially with the number of robots involved. For even a simple collaborative task, a team of, say, three autonomous robots might have to think for several hours to come up with a plan of attack.
This week, at the Institute for Electrical and Electronics Engineers’ International Conference on Robotics and Automation, a group of MIT researchers were nominated for two best-paper awards for a new algorithm that can significantly reduce robot teams’ planning time. The plan the algorithm produces may not be perfectly efficient, but in many cases, the savings in planning time will more than offset the added execution time.
Watch the MIT researchers’ team of robots collaborating to build a chair. The robots autonomously plan how to grasp the parts and how to position their bases. Courtesy of the researchers
The researchers also tested the viability of their algorithm by using it to guide a crew of three robots in the assembly of a chair.
“We’re really excited about the idea of using robots in more extensive ways in manufacturing,” says Daniela Rus, the Andrew and Erna Viterbi Professor in MIT’s Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, whose group developed the new algorithm. “For this, we need robots that can figure things out for themselves more than current robots do. We see this algorithm as a step in that direction.”
Rus is joined on the paper by three researchers in her lab — first author Mehmet Dogar, a postdoc, and Andrew Spielberg and Stuart Baker, both graduate students in electrical engineering and computer science.
Grasping consequences
The problem the researchers address is one in which a group of robots must perform an assembly operation that has a series of discrete steps, some of which require multirobot collaboration. At the outset, none of the robots knows which parts of the operation it will be assigned: Everything’s determined on the fly.
Computationally, the problem is already complex enough, given that at any stage of the operation, any of the robots could perform any of the actions, and during the collaborative phases, they have to avoid colliding with each other. But what makes planning really time-consuming is determining the optimal way for each robot to grasp each object it’s manipulating, so that it can successfully complete not only the immediate task, but also those that follow it.
“Sometimes, the grasp configuration may be valid for the current step but problematic for the next step because another robot or sensor is needed,” Rus says. “The current grasping formation may not allow room for a new robot or sensor to join the team. So our solution considers a multiple-step assembly operation and optimizes how the robots place themselves in a way that takes into account the entire process, not just the current step.”
The key to the researchers’ algorithm is that it defers its most difficult decisions about grasp position until it’s made all the easier ones. That way, it can be interrupted at any time, and it will still have a workable assembly plan. If it hasn’t had time to compute the optimal solution, the robots may on occasion have to drop and regrasp the objects they’re holding. But in many cases, the extra time that takes will be trivial compared to the time required to compute a comprehensive solution.
Principled procrastination
The algorithm begins by devising a plan that completely ignores the grasping problem. This is the equivalent of a plan in which all the robots would drop everything after every stage of the assembly operation, then approach the next stage as if it were a freestanding task.
Then the algorithm considers the transition from one stage of the operation to the next from the perspective of a single robot and a single part of the object being assembled. If it can find a grasp position for that robot and that part that will work in both stages of the operation, but which won’t require any modification of any of the other robots’ behavior, it will add that grasp to the plan. Otherwise, it postpones its decision.
Once it’s handled all the easy grasp decisions, it revisits the ones it’s postponed. Now, it broadens its scope slightly, revising the behavior of one or two other robots at one or two points in the operation, if necessary, to effect a smooth transition between stages. But again, if even that expanded scope proves too limited, it defers its decision.
If the algorithm were permitted to run to completion, its last few grasp decisions might require the modification of every robot’s behavior at every step of the assembly process, which can be a hugely complex task. It will often be more efficient to just let the robots drop what they’re holding a few times rather than to compute the optimal solution.
In addition to their experiments with real robots, the researchers also ran a host of simulations involving more complex assembly operations. In some, they found that their algorithm could, in minutes, produce a workable plan that involved just a few drops, where the optimal solution took hours to compute. In others, the optimal solution was intractable — it would have taken millennia to compute. But their algorithm could still produce a workable plan.
“With an elegant heuristic approach to a complex planning problem, Rus’s group has shown an important step forward in multirobot cooperation by demonstrating how three mobile arms can figure out how to assemble a chair,” says Bradley Nelson, the Professor of Robotics and Intelligent Systems at Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich. “My biggest concern about their work is that it will ruin one of the things I like most about Ikea furniture: assembling it myself at home.”
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