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Dell Previews 27-inch ‘5K’ UltraSharp Monitor: 5120x2880
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Dell Previews 27-inch ‘5K’ UltraSharp Monitor: 5120×2880

UHD is dead. Not really, but it would seem that displays bigger than UHD/4K will soon be coming to market. The ability of being able to stitch two regular sized outputs into the same panel is now being exploited even more as Dell has announced during its Modern Workforce livestream about the new ‘5K’ Ultrasharp 27-inch display.  The ‘5K’ name comes from the 5120 pixels horizontally, but this panel screams as being two lots of 2560×2880 in a tiled display.

5120×2880 at 27 inches comes out at 218 PPI for a total of 14.7 million pixels. At that number of pixels per inch, we are essentially looking at a larger 15.4-inch Retina MBP or double a WQHD ASUS Zenbook UX301, and seems right for users wanting to upgrade their 13 year old IBM T220 for something a bit more modern.

Displays Sorted by PPI
Product Size / in Resolution PPI Pixels
LG G3 5.5 2560×1440 534 3,686,400
Samsung Galaxy S5 5.1 1920×1080 432 2,073,600
HTC One Max 5.9 1920×1080 373 2,073,600
Apple iPhone 5S 4 640×1136 326 727,040
Apple iPad mini Retina 7.9 2048×1536 324 2,777,088
Google Nexus 4 4.7 1280×768 318 983,040
Google Nexus 10 10 2560×1600 300 4,096,000
Lenovo Yoga 2 Pro 13.3 3200×1800 276 5,760,000
ASUS Zenbook UX301A 13.3 2560×1440 221 3,686,400
Apple Retina MBP 15″ 15.4 2880×1800 221 5,184,000
Dell Ultrasharp 27″ 5K 27 5120×2880 218 14,745,600
Nokia Lumia 820 4.3 800×480 217 384,000
IBM T220/T221 22.2 3840×2400 204 9,216,000
Dell UP2414Q 24 3840×2160 184 8,294,400
Dell P2815Q 28 3840×2160 157 8,294,400
Samsung U28D590D 28 3840×2160 157 8,294,400
ASUS PQ321Q 31.5 3840×2160 140 8,294,400
Apple 11.6″ MacBook Air 11.6 1366×768 135 1,049,088
LG 34UM95 34 3440×1440 110 4,953,600
Korean 27″ WQHD 27 2560×1440 109 3,686,400
Sharp 8K Prototype 85 7680×4320 104 33,177,600

Dell has been pretty quiet on the specifications, such as HDMI or DisplayPort support, though PC Perspective is reporting 16W integrated speakers. If the display is using tiling to divide up the transport workload over two outputs, that puts the emphasis squarely on two DP 1.2 connections. There is no mention of frame rates as of yet, nor intended color goals.

Clearly this panel is aimed more at workflow than gaming.  This is almost double 4K resolution in terms of pixels, and 4K can already bring down the majority of graphics cards to their knees, but we would imagine that the content producer and prosumer would be the intended market. Word is that this monitor will hit the shelves by Christmas, with a $2500 price tag.

Source: Dell

Motorola Announces the Moto Hint
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Motorola Announces the Moto Hint

The Moto Hint is a new Bluetooth headset. While this is normally a bit boring, Motorola has put extra effort into this headset.

The size and shape is specifically made to fit in ears as well as possible and to make it less obvious than most headsets. The headset also has microphones which also serve as a method to access Google Now and Moto Voice on the new Moto X. One use case demonstrated was turn by turn navigation with the phone in a pocket and relying upon the headset for directions. There’s also a sensor that will automatically detect when the headset is removed from the ear and will shut off the headset upon detection. Finally, it will charge and store itself on a keychain charger if not in use.

The Moto Hint will go on sale later this fall. It will cost 149.99 USD in the US and will be available on Motorola’s website and expand to other regions in time for the holidays.

Motorola Launches the New Moto G
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Motorola Launches the New Moto G

The new Moto G effectively is a minor refresh as the SoC, battery, RAM, WiFi, and most other features. However, the display is now larger at 5″ size but is still a 720p resolution. The camera is now an 8 megapixel sensor, and the Moto G also gets dual front facing stereo speakers.There’s also TV support for Brazil and a microSD card slot. We also see a new flip case designed for the front facing speakers but the design is mostly unchanged.

While this is a mostly incremental release, Motorola revealed some surprising data in comparisons between the Moto G and flagship Android phones. In practice, the light skin on the Moto G makes the phone noticeably faster than some flagship smartphones at some standard smartphone tasks. This is far from a small difference either, as we’re looking at differences as great as .8 seconds, as seen below.

Motorola also emphasized features designed specifically for developing markets, which include Motorola Alert, Motorola Assist, and Dual SIM intelligent calling. The new Moto G is available today for 179.99 USD unlocked on Motorola’s website. It will also be available in India, France, UK, Brazil, Spain, and on Motorola Germany’s website. It will be available in more than a dozen countries and through several carrier partners by the end of the year.

Motorola Launches the Moto 360: Hands On and First Impressions
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Motorola Launches the Moto 360: Hands On and First Impressions

The Moto 360 at this point is one of the most hyped products I’ve seen this year. However, in my time with the product it seems to be a mostly standard Android Wear watch, but with a few major differences.

At the most basic level, this watch has a TI OMAP 3 for the main application processor. From a performance perspective the OMAP 3 is a solid and simple choice, packing a Cortex-A8 CPU alongside a PowerVR SGX 530 GPU, reflecting the fact that wearables don’t require anything near cutting edge performance. However this choice in SoC is oddly out of date on the manufacturing side as OMAP 3 was produced on a now dated 45nm process. Though the Moto 360 doesn’t need the performance benefits from from newer 28nm or 20nm processes, these newer processes can deliver similar performance with lower power consumption, which would seem to be a boon for a space and power constrained device such as a watch.

Otherwise, the specs are mostly within expectation. The LCD display is a 1.56″ size with 320×290 resolution, and is 46mm in diameter and 11.5mm thick. The leather strap model we’ve been sampled weighs 49 grams, and the battery has 320 mAh in capacity. Although the nominal voltage isn’t given it’s likely that it’s 3.8V. There’s 4 GB of internal storage and 512MB of RAM, a pedometer, heart rate monitor, two microphones, and the watch is rated for IP67 immersion protection, which means it is dust tight and submergable up to 1m of water for half an hour.

Motorola wanted to emphasize that this was a modern timepiece rather than a smartwatch, and they’ve implemented a great deal of new technologies in order to support the intended industrial/material design and user experience. The most obvious of these is the round display, which has no bezel except for the bottom of the watch. Unfortunately, it appears that this area at the bottom is necessary in order to fit the display driver and provide an area where ribbon cables can come out and meet the logic board.

In addition, we see custom antennas that are in the metal housing but don’t require any antenna lines. Unfortunately, there was no real disclosure on how this worked so it was hard to say how they pulled this off but there are noticeable patterns on the inside of the metal casing. New RF techniques were also used to make custom metal wristbands that don’t interfere with the antennas of the watch itself.

Motorola has also equipped the Moto 360 with dual microphones and custom noise cancellation profiles to handle different acoustics from being strapped to an arm, and it should be able to handle noisy environments better than most other Android Wear devices. The work done to enable this level of noise cancellation was done at Motorola’s main office in Chicago.

There’s also a recessed strap to improve comfort and better hug the wrist, and a custom heart rate sensor that should have better performance and reliability when compared to competing solutions.

The watch also only has wireless charging, and charging is as simple as placing the watch on the included dock. Putting the watch on the dock also automatically puts it into a custom charging mode that allows it to function as an alarm clock. It’s currently too early to judge battery life or the actual utility of the watch, but the watch was comfortable, with solid aesthetics and design.

It will start at 249.99 USD and will be available on the Motorola site, Google Play, Best Buy stores and the Best Buy website. The two metal band options will be available later this fall for 299.99 USD and the metal band will be available separately for 79.99 USD. Leather bands will also be available for 29.99 USD.