Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge Full Review


Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge

The best smartphone in the world - it's a work of art
OS: Android 6.0.1 | Screen size: 5.1-inch | Resolution: 1440 x 2560 | RAM: 4GB | Storage: 32GB | Battery: 3,600mAh | Rear camera: 12MP | Front camera: 5MP

While last year's Galaxy S5 was nothing special, this year Samsung's started from the ground up to make a truly wonderful smartphone.

The camera is superb, the audio and video quality brilliant and the QHD display crammed into the 5.1-inch screen is the sharpest on the market - although it does suck down the battery rather a lot.

The design is finally something we're pleased to hold in our hand, rather than the plastic cheapness of last year, and the refined TouchWiz overlay is a lot nicer to use.
It's actually extended its lead at the top thanks to some amazing price drops - so you can now get the best phone on the market for an incredibly low price these days. A no-brainer.

Full review: Samsung Galaxy S7
Also consider: Like the phone above, this is an easy decision: go for the Samsung Galaxy S7 if you're not feeling the cost and price of the Edge. It's got all the power, but it's more compact and costs a little less. The LG G5 is nearly here too though - that could be a dark horse in the mix.

From: techradar.com

MacBook 12-inch Rose Gold Review: Apple's Latest Is Pink, Portable, Powerful


By Rhiannon Williams 
 
When Apple revived the MacBook range last year, it did so in style. The first new model since 2011, the 12-inch MacBook was the thinnest, lightest Mac to date, and signified Apple’s intentions to keep building laptops alongside its growing army of iPads and iPhones.

It featured a redesigned keyboard, glass Force Touch-enabled trackpad and Retina display, and was a dramatic departure from the previous white plastic incarnation.

In the year since that model went on sale, Apple has released what it calls its “ultimate PC replacement” (note the careful use of PC), the 9.7-inch iPad Pro, and prior to that the 12.9-inch iPad Pro. Both were designed to combine the ease of web browsing on a tablet with the practicalities of a full-size physical keyboard, turning the laptop into the device you reach for to do some ‘serious work’.



So where does this leave the new and improved version of the 12-inch MacBook? While the updated 2016 model has faster processors and longer battery life, is it enough to convince consumers they need yet another laptop in their lives?

Design

Visually, the 2016 12-inch MacBook looks exactly the same as last year’s. It’s a beautiful laptop which has borrowed heavily from the design of the MacBook Air, with tapered edges, an aluminium body and 12-inch Retina display, and is light enough to pick up and close one-handed.

The MacBook is slimmer than the width of a pencil!

While a big part of tablets’ appeal has always been their portability, Apple has slimmed the MacBook down to just 13.1mm at its thickest point and 3.5mm at its thinnest. It’s so incredibly thin because it has no fan, instead distributing heat sideways, and weighs just two pounds.

If you’re already familiar with the 2015 MacBook, you’ll already know there are no USB, Gigabit Ethernet or Display ports to be found on this laptop - only one USB-C port on the upper-left edge and a headphone jack on the far right.

This was a controversial decision last year and remains one today: in order to connect anything or even charge your phone, you’ll need to buy a separately-sold adaptor. USB-C is becoming more widely taken up, with the HTC 10, LG G5 and Huawei P9 Android handsets all ditching their micro USB ports in favour of the change. It remains to be seen whether the iPhone eventually follows suit, but for now the MacBook remains a bold compromise.

Retina Display

The 12-inch Retina display sports 3 million pixels and 2304 x 1440 resolution, offering depth of colour and shade and crisp text. The pixels have been redesigned to allow more light to pass through, resulting in more vivid brightness and tone interpretation - particularly when watching videos. The display performed beautifully in low-light conditions, but was more difficult to make out in bright direct sunlight.

Keyboard

Apple redesigned the MacBook keyboard by shaving the key margins, making them 17 per cent larger than the ones used on previous keyboards. The individually-backlit keys are supported with a new Apple-designed butterfly mechanism, designed to stabilise each key for greater control while typing. Keys supported by the traditional scissor mechanism tend to need to be struck in the centre to register a keystroke, whereas the butterfly mechanism’s wider structure makes the keys more responsive, according to Apple.

The redesigned keyboard is much shallower than previous versions

As I found last year, typing on the new keyboard does take some getting used to. The keys initially feel closer together, despite being larger, and because the key assembly is 40 per cent thinner, there is less of a ‘response’ when typing. I found I quickly adjusted to the new assembly, but it was a strange first hour or so using it.

Force Touch Trackpad

The Force Touch trackpad contains four force sensors to detect how much force you’re using when tapping away on the new, larger trackpad. A technology first utilised in the Apple Watch, it’s a way of using a single surface for multiple functions. Using Force Touch on the Watch’s lock screen triggers the face-change menu, for example.

The glass Force Touch trackpad generates haptic feedback to produce a uniform click!

Pressing down hard on the glass trackpad over a word on a website - known as a Force click - automatically summons a menu to search for the definition of the word, or pulls up a map when you click on an address. Underneath the glass surface, a taptic engine generates haptic feedback intended to produce a uniform click wherever you’re pressing on the pad.

Like the keyboard overhaul it’s a clever advancement, but also one that takes a while to get used to, and won’t be to everyone’s tastes.
What’s changed from last year?

Rose Gold

The biggest aesthetic change is the new rose gold finish, joining gold, silver and space grey, and joining the iPhone, iPad and Apple Watches already available in the shade. Last year it was easy to be sceptical about how many people were going to proudly tout a gold laptop, but the enthusiastic adoption of rose gold across all the major product lines suggests there’s a real appetite out there for slightly unusually coloured laptops.

You can now get your hands on a rose gold MacBook, alongside the iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch ranges

Chief executive Tim Cook has said before how Apple tailors the colour of its products to the demands of customers in China, and while there’s no way to know how well last year’s gold MacBook sold in comparison to its more conservative stablemates, you can guarantee the novelty of a pink laptop will appeal to many.
It’s the same dusty pink as the iPhone 6s, while the track pad appears a slightly darker copper thanks to its layer of glass. Like the recently-released iPhone SE, the metal Apple logo has been colour-matched to the body, reflecting a dark pink. The aluminium is delicate, and will quickly show any signs of wear and tear, so be warned.

Faster, more powerful processor

Last year’s MacBook was powered by Intel’s Core M ‘Broadwell’ processor, which was designed to keep tablets and hybrid laptops cool enough to operate without a fan. The model I reviewed then housed a Core M-5Y51 chip which ran at 1.2GHz, while this year’s unit has a 1.2GHz dual-core Intel Core M5.

The device is more than powerful enough for basic browsing and word processing!

This doesn’t actually translate into an enormous difference during normal use, but the beefier chip helps to extend the battery life (more of which later), alongside faster flash storage. Flash storage is a method of storing your data using electricity, resulting in less power being used as the machine isn’t attempting to write to mechanical drives, which in turn slows it down. Therefore launching apps and switching between them, opening documents and closing programs has all been designed to execute more quickly.

I found it handled more power-intensive applications like Photoshop and switching between demanding apps like Spotify, both Chrome and Safari with multiple tabs open and email without any performance issues or noticeable lag, and it maintained a gentle warmth rather than the overheating other machines are prone to under pressure.

Longer battery life

Although the USB-C charger is basically a slightly larger phone charger and won’t exactly weigh you down when you take it out for the day, there’s a real appeal to knowing your laptop battery is sufficient to last a day’s work.
Apple has bumped up the 2016 MacBook from a roughly nine-hour battery life when browsing the web, or up to 10 hours worth of film-watching on a single charge, to 10 hours web browsing and 11 hours of film playback due to increased battery capacity.

Battery life now lasts an average of 10 hours during medium-intensive use  

I starting the working day at 9:00 with a fully-charged battery and the display on full brightness, and nine and a half hours later by 18:30 it had dwindled to about 26 per cent. During this time I’d opened numerous tabs, surfed the web and written this review, so in terms of a light-to-moderate workload, the battery held up pretty well. It also recharges pretty quickly, at a rate of around 10 per cent every 10 minutes.

OS X 10.11 El Capitan

The new MacBook ships with OS X 10.12, El Capitan, the most recent Mac software. It has a handy focus on multi-tasking and streamlining processes. Read on for some of its key features, while a more comprehensive walk-through is available here.

Mission Control

Mission Control has been streamlined to make it easier to spot which window you're after when you've got multiple apps open and competing for your attention. The main difference is that El Capitan's Mission Control looks generally cleaner than before, with Apple claiming the windows are now spread in an even layer instead of being more randomly dispersed.

Whereas Yosemite displayed the app's icon overlaid on the open window itself along with a descriptive label of Calendar, iTunes, Contacts etc, El Capitan displays labels only once you hover the mouse over them. This is triggered either by stroking upwards on the keypad using three fingers, or by pressing the F3 Mission Control key.

It's also a smart way to quickly create multiple desktops, by dragging and dropping open apps to the top of the screen in the Spaces Bar. You can populate each individual desktop with the apps you need and scroll between them swiping left or right with three fingers, or keep just one app open full screen, as in Yosemite.

Split View

Safari is open in the left pane, with Finder on the right  

For the first time, Mac users can now automatically set two apps to run side-by-side. This is basically a slightly snazzier way of resizing two windows without having to fiddle around. You can do this by clicking and pressing down on the green dot in the upper left hand corner of the first app you'd like to resize, and choosing whether you'd like to position it on the left or right of the screen with the help of a blue veil. You're then presented with your other open apps to choose your second window, and once selected the two windows will be split down the centre of the screen. You can resize them by clicking and dragging the thick black divisory line between the two. Again, swiping to the left and right with three fingers allows you to flick between your fully-sized windows, and clicking the green button will return the windows to their previous size. You can switch the windows by dragging the top bar of the app you'd like to relocate left or right.

It's effectively the same as Windows' Snap feature, but more convenient given that you can easily choose your secondary window, while Snap works best when both windows are already active.

Notes

some important notes  

The Notes app has received one of the most dramatic overhauls of all, having acted as little more than a iOS/OS X cross-platform notepad in the past. Now you can embed photos, videos, map locations, audio files and map locations into your note in two ways. You can drag and drop your file into the note (though when done with a video, it will save it as an image. Dropping the file's url will create a video link), or right click, select Share > Notes to add the media to the note.

One you start typing in a new note, the text is automatically formatted for bold headline and a smaller font for the body text. You can quickly search for images dropped into Notes by clicking on the Attachments browser button, or create to-do lists using the Checklists button. Notes ported from numerous devices are stored on the left-hand side of the App, where new folders can be created to keep them organised.

Verdict

If you were unconvinced by last year’s 12-inch MacBook, it’s unlikely that much about the new model will change your mind. But it’s more than powerful enough to tackle the vast majority of tasks for people who aren't planning to use it for weapons-grade intensive programs, it's a delight to use and there's no denying it looks amazing.

As I've said before, the single USB-C port is the most divisive feature, apart from maybe the price - starting from £1,049 for 256GB of flash storage and a 1.1GHz processor, or £1,299 for 512GB of flash and a 1.2GHz processor. This MacBook has been designed for people who want a super-portable, good-looking laptop and who aren't concerned about plugging in peripheral attachments, rather than a machine to use in the office.

There is a chance Apple is preparing to update the MacBook Air and MacBook Pro lines at its forthcoming developers’ conference in June, so if you're after a slightly cheaper or more powerful Mac, it might be worth holding out for those. In this meantime, the rose gold MacBook is a stunning laptop, if you're willing to pay the price.




Pros
1. Beautiful, lightweight design
2. New and improved battery life
3. Slightly more powerful

Cons
1. That pesky single USB-C port
2. Very expensive
3. Still not the most powerful machine around

#The 2016 MacBook is available to buy now from £1,049.



One Plus 3: Charges in 30 Minutes!

By Cara McGoogan


OnePlus, an upstart Chinese phone manufacturer, has released its latest handset in a bid to challenge Apple and Samsung's dominance over high-end smartphones. 

The 5.5-inch aluminium phablet is the range's fourth handset and comes with patented charging technology that can add a day's power in 30 minutes. OnePlus 3 has similar specs to the iPhone SE and latest Android models such as the HTC 10 and Samsung Galaxy S7, but with a significantly lower price tag of just £309.
"We really hope people like our trump card,"  said Carl Pei, the 26-year-old co-founder of OnePlus, as he showed off his own phone in the Telegraph offices.

The trump card Pei is referring to is Dash Charge - One Plus' trademarked method that reduces the heat generated during charging by charging in an adapter, rather than in the phone. The OnePlus doesn't need to slow charging down to prevent the phone from overheating so users can be messaging or playing a game and still get a full day's charge in half an hour.

"It's faster than everything else when charging normally, but it really shines when you're using the phone at the same time," said Pei.


OnePlus is known for being a digital-first smartphone maker with no physical stores. Its latest phone will be launched through virtual reality headsets distributed by the company last month, and the smartphone is available to buy immediately both through the free headsets and online.

"We don't want to be in an offline retail store and basically be sold as a vegetable," said Pei. "By sticking to e-commerce no one can touch us. In the UK the closest competition would be double the price, because they have to think about online and offline."
The 26-year-old Swedish-Chinese entrepreneur says he expected to sell 100,000 units of his new smartphone, the OnePlus One, in 2014 - its first year of production. It ended up selling more than a million.

The new OnePlus 3

Early adopters, the majority of whom Pei admits are male urban elites in their early 20s, helped OnePlus smash its targets, when they bought 900,000 in the first six months alone.

Since then, it has followed up its initial success by selling more than a million units of each subsequent model (although he won't disclose how many) and made $300m of revenue in year 1. OnePlus hasn't released sales or revenue figures since 2014, but is on track to make a profit this year.

The OnePlus 3 marks the first time that the company has opened up sales to the general public - it originally operated as an invite-only brand, generating an online craze.

But Pei maintains that the company won't be abandoning its image as a fun, geeky brand just yet.

"By choosing our model of only making high-end flagship products and selling them online, we force ourselves to not grow as fast," said Pei. High-speed growth isn't the company's main focus. Instead, it is carving itself a place as the premium phone maker that is selling its products online.

"We're the first brand to go directly to the customer with smartphones," Pei explained. "When everyone else joins later they can be free to compete with each other." 

In response to questions about the decline of the overall smartphone market, Pei admits there is some turbilence "But our market is very niche. We only make the highest end flagships and we only sell them online. There’s no one doing the exact same thing," he said.

In the UK the majority of people still buy their smartphones in stores, as opposed to online. OnePlus is happy to wait the five to 10 years that it will take for that to shift to the web. Until then, it is pleased with the knowledge that it has won over first adopters across the Western world.



 The all-metal phone comes with a 16-megapixel camera, and its own OS, known as Oxygen. This is basically a tweaked version of Android that gives users some extra flexibility. We've spent some time playing around with the OnePlus 3 and were impressed with how sleek and high-quality the phone felt - it's just 7.3mm thick with a ridiculously zippy fingerprint sensor and a super-bright screen. The screen is noticeably bright because of the AMOLED (active-matrix organic light-emitting diode), a material that has better response times and uses less battery than standard LCD displays.

The 30-minute charging trick seems to work like a charm. A "full day" in OnePlus terms means playing 2K video on normal brightness for seven hours. We tested out its capacity by listening to music on Spotify, watching YouTube videos and generally surfing the web, on full brightness and it performed consistently.
There were some minor bugs that will presumably be worked out in future versions. For instance, when you play audio from two separate apps (say, Spotify and podcasts), they play simultaneously, rather than the iPhone's smart muting of one. Unplugging headphones means music blares out of the speakers, which can be awkward in public.

The screen wraps all around and is touch-sensitive at the edges, so it's almost hard to find a place to hold without pressing a button, but a smartphone case solves that problem. Also the volume controls are so sleek, you can't tlel whether you're going up or down.

But overall, a smooth and fun experience and particularly valuable for the speedy charging




Feeling blue? Apple’s rumored space gray-replacing iPhone 7 color might cheer you up

By




Samsung Galaxy S7 review

By

The Samsung Galaxy S7 finds itself in a slightly tricky situation. Samsung needed a big win from the Galaxy S6 in 2015, which it got after reinventing the design of its flagship smartphone, but you're not going to get the same degree of evolution again just a year later.
This means the Galaxy S7 falls firmly into the iterative camp, building on the solid foundations laid by its predecessor without fiddling with the winning formula too much.

Some will argue this phone should be called the Galaxy S6S, but are they right? I've put the Samsung Galaxy S7 through its paces to see if it's a worthy seventh-generation flagship, or a just cheeky six-point-five instalment.

There's initial good news in the fact that the S7 isn't competing as closely with the Galaxy S7 Edge as the S6 was with the S6 Edge last year, with the curved display variant getting a bump in screen size this time round, taking it more into phablet territory.

Check out our Samsung Galaxy S7 video review:



That leaves the way clear for the 5.1-inch Galaxy S7 to make its mark as the core flagship handset, and it commands a price tag which places it at the top of the mobile tree. Yet, unlike its predecessor it only comes in one variant (32GB of storage), making pricing more straightforward.
In the UK you're looking at £529 SIM-free, while those in the US will have to part with $199 upfront as part of a two-year contract. In Australia the SIM-free price is set at AU$1,149.
Those prices pretty much match up with the 32GB Galaxy S6, so at least Samsung isn't trying to short-change us, but it's still a considerable amount to part with for a device which isn't exactly reinventing the smartphone wheel.





That said, it's hard not to like the Samsung Galaxy S7. It takes the much-improved, premium design from the Galaxy S6 and reinstates a few features from the
Galaxy S5 which were shockingly missing from its successor.
The package is an enticing one, but 2016 is a tough year for flagship phones. The LG G5 has launched with a unique modular pull, the HTC 10 is looking to rekindle some of the Taiwanese firm's former glories and the Huawei P9 offers up a slightly more affordable, yet still premium experience straight out of China.
Then there's the Sony Xperia Z6 and, of course, the iPhone 7 expected to arrive later this year too.
Samsung may have been first out of the flagship blocks, but it needs to make the most of its strong start to stay ahead of the pack.

Design

At first glance you'd be forgiven for thinking the Samsung Galaxy S7 looks almost identical to the Galaxy S6. And that's because it is.
Samsung has reused the premium glass and metal finished it employed on the S6, which finally saw the manufacturer move away from its reliance on plastic to materials which better reflected the flagship price tag it was slapping on its top phones.
On closer inspection though, you'll begin to notice the subtle differences that make the Samsung Galaxy S7 the best looking, and feeling, Galaxy ever.
Samsung has dropped the metallic rim around its iconic physical home key, enabling it to blend a little more seamlessly into the overall aesthetic of the S7, almost masking its existence.


I'm a fan. It makes for a cleaner look, and that look is further improved with the color-coded earpiece grille, which was also metallic on the S6.
The corners are more rounded, and the aluminum frame that's sandwiched between the front and rear glass is less obtrusive, with less of an overhang than its predecessor. That means there is less metal against your skin, which initially makes the S7 feel a little less premium than the S6, but once you've got used to it you'll find it's still a stylish presence in the hand.
While the Galaxy S7 sports the same size 5.1-inch display as the S6, Samsung has managed to shave off a fraction of the bezel around the screen, reducing the handset's height and width slightly.


That gives you dimensions of 142.4 x 69.6 x 7.9mm – and it's that last number which is the most interesting. At 7.9mm thick the Galaxy S7 is fatter than the S6 by 1.1mm, but holding it in your hand you won't know.
That's because of the gently sloping edges on the rear of the handset. The finish, which is mirrored on the rear of the Galaxy S7 Edge, is borrowed from the Galaxy Note 5, and enables the phones to sit more snugly in the palm for a firmer, more comfortable hold.
The Galaxy S7 is a phone you can grip confidently – unlike the iPhone 6S and LG G5, with their flat backs resulting in a slightly awkward position in the hand. The metal and glass doesn't offer much in the way of grip, but because the phone is better positioned in the hand I felt like I was less likely to let it slip compared with the iPhone or S6.



The size, shape and general design of the Galaxy S7 means it's easier to hold and operate one-handed too. I could reach the other side of the screen with my thumb with far less strain, and it required little to no shuffling in the hand to move around the whole display.
The power/lock key on the right and volume keys on the left also fall nicely under thumb and finger, although you'll still have to juggle the S7 a bit to reach the fingerprint scanner, which is embedded under the physical home key.
Returning to the rear of the Galaxy S7, the square camera bulge is still there, but this time around it's less protruding. Samsung has managed to flatten its snapper considerably since the Galaxy S6 – it's now down to just 0.46mm, and while it's still not flush with the body of the S7, it's far less volcanic.
It's not totally flat, which is something Huawei CEO Richard Yu was more than happy to tell us about at the launch of the P9 - a phone which has, as Yu put it, "no bump, no bump!"



Alongside it you'll find the LED flash and heart rate monitor – a feature Samsung insists on putting on its top-tier handsets, even though a smartwatch or fitness tracker is much better placed for this tech. It also measures stress and O2 saturation levels, although it's unclear just how accurate these sensors are.
It's there if you want it – just head to the S Health app – but I can't see it getting much use.
What I noticed almost immediately, however, was just how much of a fingerprint magnet the Galaxy S7 is. The glass looks great, but I found myself frequently reaching for my microfiber cloth to smarten up the appearance of the S7.


It's exactly the same issue the Galaxy S6 had, and it's surprising that Samsung hasn't tried to address this with the S7.
There was hope Samsung would address the single speaker setup it placed on the Galaxy S6, but alas it hasn't. It's kept the single speaker on the base of the Galaxy S7, rather than opting for dual front-facing offerings like HTC and Sony.


It's not a huge issue, but the result is sound from your movies, games and music can end up being muffled by your hand.
Samsung has resurrected two features from the Galaxy S5 though, with a microSD slot and dust and water resistance both appearing on the Galaxy S7. The microSD port shares a tray with your nanoSIM, which can be slid out of the top of the handset.
This lets you build on the 32GB of internal storage by up to a further 200GB, giving you plenty of space.


Meanwhile, the IP68 water resistance has improved from the S5, allowing submersion of up to five feet for 30 minutes, plus there's no annoying flap covering the charging port.
The microUSB port has been waterproofed, but the S7 won't charge if it detects water in its hole. If you've taken the phone for a plunge in the bath, you'll need to dry the charging port before plugging in.
Samsung hasn't reinvented the wheel with the design of the Galaxy S7, but it didn't need to. The Galaxy S6 was an excellently styled device, and the S7 has managed to improve on that.

Source : http://www.techradar.com/reviews/phones/mobile-phones/samsung-galaxy-s7-1315188/review#best-price-article-top




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