Author: batteryforpc

The Canon PowerShot Zoom has just been announced for a release in the west, after the innovative pocket camera – which features up to 800mm zoom, with image stabilized stills and video shooting – was released in Japan via crowdfunding.

One of the manufacturer’s most unusual products, the Canon PowerShot Zoom is unique in the marketplace. Featuring the same 12.1MP image sensor found in the Canon SX70 bridge camera, it combines the functionality of a pocket-sized telescope or monocular – with a three-step zoom system offering 100mm f/5.6, 400mm f/6.3 (optically) and 800mm (digitally) focal lengths.

Boasting 4-axis image stabilization, the Zoom can capture stills at up to 10fps (via an electronic shutter) as well as 1080p video at up to 30fps. This makes it a formidable tool for wildlife photographers, birders, sports and music fans (enabling you to take photographs in arenas where cameras are forbidden), plane and trainspotters, hikers and ramblers, travel shooters, news gatherers and even security personnel.

The remarkable palm-sized body weighs just 145g and is designed to be operated with one hand, ergonomically designed with minimal controls (there are only four buttons, plus the diopter and power button) that can be distinguished by their distinct tactile feel. 

It also features stereo microphones (though it has no speaker), accepts microSD cards for storage, and has a USB-C connection for transfer and charging (yes, it can be charged while in use).

At the heart of the PowerShot Zoom is a Digic 8 processor, with the same 2.36 million-dot OLED electronic viewfinder seen in the Canon EOS M50. This can be used for shooting and reviewing images, though the WiFi enabled camera also pairs with the Canon Camera Connect smartphone app – which obviously gives you the option for a much larger viewing monitor, and also enables remote shooting. 

The Zoom becomes the second concept camera we first saw at CP+ 2019 to make it to market, following the similarly quirky Canon Ivy Rec. 

The Canon PowerShot Zoom goes on sale in November with a price of $299 / £299 (AU$540). Initially available in white (“that matches any of one’s favorite team colors”), Canon is also considering making a black version. 

At the heart of all Bluetooth-based contact tracing apps is one fundamental issue: whether they actually help in the struggle to slow the spread of Covid-19. Whether they’re effective or not can be judged on two factors: epidemiologically and technically. But, months into the pandemic, there are still no clear answers.

“They’re quite unreliable,” says Douglas Leith, the chair of computer systems at Trinity College Dublin, who has been analysing how well devices can use Bluetooth to measure distance. Leith says the reliability of apps to detect other devices around them accurately and calculate their difference can vary widely. Bluetooth wasn’t designed for contact tracing, but in the pandemic era it’s being held up as a potential solution to the crisis.

Contact tracing apps using Bluetooth Low Energy – which is the majority of apps around the world, including those using the Apple and Google protocols – detect other devices around them using Received Signal Strength Indication (RSSI). In short this is the signal strength. The loss in signal strength between a transmitter in one phone and the receiver in another device is used as a way to determine distance between phones.

The distance between phones is calculated every two and five minutes, this can vary in different countries, and is used to work out if someone being close to another person increases the chances of Covid-19 transmission. Apps are based on the understanding that the virus is more likely to pass from one person to another if they’re within two metres of that person for more than 15 minutes. (Although, as the variety of social distancing measurements around the world show, the science behind distances where transmission risk changes is tricky).

“There are at least four things that can have a big effect on the performance,” Leith says. None of these come as a surprise to engineers, he adds, as Bluetooth works on the same frequency band as microwave ovens and the frequencies are well studied. The type of phone, including the antennas, chipsets and way they’re combined, can all vary Bluetooth performance. How the app was tested before being released to the public can also have an impact, as can the materials of the environment where the app is being used – think thick concrete walls versus thin glass windows. All of these alter the registered RSSI.

Phone manufacturers have been trying to iron out some of the differences in how Bluetooth performs on their devices. Google is hard at work too and has created a method where device makers can configure Bluetooth settings more easily. This involves sticking phones on a tripod, rotating them and collecting lots of data.

A spreadsheet listing more than 12,000 models of phone – including manufacturers from all the big names right down to Coolpad and Tecno – shows how much variance there is. RSSI corrections range from 19 to -29 and the power transmitted ranges by up to 45 different points.

If that weren’t complicated enough, one of the most influential factors on signal strength is simply where a device is placed. “You see fluctuations due to small changes in the relative orientation of the phone,” Leith says. If your phone is in your back pocket, the signal transmitted to someone sitting or standing in front of you will be very different to if it is in your front pocket.

An experiment conducted on a tram by Leith and colleague Stephen Farrell found signal strength didn’t effectively calculate distances in that scenario. They used the app detection rules of the Italian, Swiss and German apps for their experiment. They found that similar ranges of signal strength were observed both between handsets which are less than two metres apart and handsets which are greater than two metres apart – all the way up to five metres. Such differences could have a big impact on Covid-19 transmission – but Bluetooth isn’t sensitive enough to spot them.

In the tram scenario, the lack of accuracy is caused by the metal walls, floor and ceiling, all of which reflect radio signals. “There are some places where we’re fairly sure it just won’t work. And that’s in environments where there’s a lot of metal,” Leith adds.

The inability for Bluetooth to always precisely measure how far away people are from each other is an open secret. And incorrect measurements can result in false notifications being sent. Telling people to self-isolate when there’s lesser risk of them having coronavirus can be economically damaging and erode trust in the overall track and trace system. On the flip side, not identifying people who have a greater risk of contracting the virus means it could spread more easily.

In August, ahead of the launch of the NHS Covid-19 app in England and Wales, the National Cybersecurity Centre discussed “the Bluetooth problem”. It said the issue of false positives – phones thinking their owners had been close to others when they hadn’t been within two metres – was something that was being worked on.

“If you were between 2m and 4m from an infected person, there’s currently a false positive rate of about 45 per cent,” the NCSC’s technical director Ian Levy wrote in a blog post. This means some people are sent notifications of potential infection despite being more than two metres away from someone who has tested positive for Covid-19.

“By way of a simple illustration, during the recent Leicester outbreak, the app would have generated ~50 false positives a day in a population of 330,000,” Mark Briers, from the Alan Turing Institute wrote in a blog post in August about the app’s modelling. That modelling has not yet been published.

Researchers are scrambling to improve the false positive rate. A spokesperson for the Department of Health and Social Care, the government department responsible for the app, says that since the NCSC analysis was published the false positive rate for people between two and four metres apart has been reduced by around 25 per cent. People who the app judges are at a high-risk of transmission but are actually low-risk have been reduced from 4.5 out of ten to three in ten, a DHSC spokesperson says.

They add that notifications from the app are only triggered once someone has been confirmed to have tested positive. “We are very clear, everyone who is contacted will have been in close contact with someone who has a confirmed case of coronavirus,” the spokesperson explains.

Key to the operation of the NHS Covid-19 app is a risk-scoring algorithm that combines Bluetooth distance and time data with when the person who tested positive developed symptoms. The DHSC and NHS can change the levels of risk that trigger notifications as more scientific advice becomes available. Briers at the Turing Institute and the NCSC are working to further refine the algorithm and detection methods used.

“The only way that you could minimise or decrease false positives is to decrease the sensitivity,” says Gary Hatke, an engineer at MIT and part of the PACT team working on contact tracing apps and the underlying technology. “Or you’d have to get Apple and Google to change the way the API is working.” Google says it has worked to make Android battery impact as low as possible and, along with Apple, is continually improving the notification system.

Other Bluetooth devices could tackle distance measurement better than phones. Singapore, which was first to develop a contact tracing app for Covid-19, is now trialling a wearable device. “It is possible that wearable devices could, in general, perform better than smartphones in helping to estimate likely exposure events,” says Ken Kolderup, the chief marketing office at Bluetooth SIG, the group that develops the standard. “In many cases, wearables such as wristbands are worn on the body in locations that will result in less interference, and thereby lead to more accurate estimations of the true distance between people.”

But, for the time being, Bluetooth contact tracing is will be done by millions of phones, not a smattering of wearables. Hatke says that the MIT team has shown that Bluetooth reliability can be improved on devices. He says apps can make more frequent RSSI measurements to help determine how far away other devices are, although this could require more battery power to be effective.

The other way, Hatke says, is “to do some self awareness on the phone. Every time I take a measurement, can I tell whether or not I’m in a pocket or not”. This could be through proximity sensors that can tell whether a phone’s surface is covered or near a body, or light sensors. “You could encode that information in the signal that is being transmitted,” Hatke says.

But Hatke and his colleague Marc Zissman still question the exact purpose of development for contact tracing apps. And this makes them harder to optimise. Are they meant to help find people who are unknown to those who have been infected (for instance, people on a train) or to help notify people to self-isolate faster than human contact tracing efforts can contact them?

Seven months into the pandemic, there’s still no obvious answer. Distance and time are only two indicators of transmission risk. Airflow, whether people are indoors or outdoors and the volume at which people are speaking are some of the other variables that impact the Covid-19’s ability to spread. But none of these can be measured easily by an app that collects very little data.

“We really need the data from the jurisdictions that are running this,” Zissman says. As a result, there’s little incentive for researchers to work out how contact tracing apps can be most effective. “There is no published data where we can take the country or state and tell you what these values are.”

Intel has quietly rolled out the 10th generation Intel Core i3-10100F processor. HEXUS regulars will already be well aware, from the nomenclature, that this is one of Intel’s processors with a disabled on-board GPU (‘F’ suffix). However, the best feature of the new Intel Core i3-10100F can’t be decoded from the name – it boasts Hyperthreading – as well as a slightly faster boost clock, and double the RAM capacity support, compared to its processor (the Core i3-9100F), at the same price.

The Intel Core i3-10100F processor is part of the Comet Lake-S line of desktop processors built by Intel on a 14nm process. It packs 4C/8T with a base/turbo boost clock of 3.6/4.3GHz, with 6MB of Intel Smart Cache and a 65W TDP. The Core i3-10100F supports up to 128GB of DDR4-2666 RAM in dual channel mode, for a max bandwidth of 41.6GB/s. It isn’t a straight upgrade from the Intel Core i3-9100F as the socket is of course LGA1200 now, rather than LGA1151.

If you want to do an A/B comparison with the Intel Core i3-10100(F) vs the Core i3-9100F processor, you can head on over to this Intel Ark link, which lists specs side by side. However, I think I’ve covered all the key differences above and a truncated version of the table can be seen below.

Such an entry level processor, which lacks on board graphics, is obviously meant to be paired with an appropriate dGPU. You save between US$25 and $45 by choosing this iGPU-less part, so you can put that towards an add-in card. Most are likely to want to spend under $200 on a partner GPU for PC gaming so may have the likes of the GTX 1650 or RX 5500 on their shortlists. Next year one might be able to find a suitable Ampere/Navi2 graphics card to pair with this Comet Lake-S processor to create a balanced system.

Walmart is currently offering up the most affordable 4K monitor (that doubles as TV) on the market – even cheaper than bargain basement Amazon Prime Day displays.

At just $158, the Spectre U425CV-U even undercuts most refurbished displays we’ve seen to date, and this one comes with a full one year warranty. It costs around $14 a year to run and uses a 42.5-inch LED panel, supported by two feet and surrounded by an extremely thin bezel.

Uniquely among ultra cheap televisions and monitors, it sports four (yes four) HDMI inputs, meaning you could connect up to four computers at once, should you fancy such an elaborate setup.

An absurdly cheap deal

There’s also a USB port to connect an external storage device and power smart devices such as an Amazon Fire Stick or Chromecast, plus there’s a VESA mount should you wish to mount it to your wall. 

Its rated contrast ratio of 3000:1, 250cd/m^2 brightness and 60Hz refresh rate won’t set any world records, but should be good enough for most use cases. And it’s also worth noting there are two 10W speakers with ARC support and an SPDIF port.

It doesn’t do split screen – which is unsurprising at this price point – but if you use Windows 10, Snap Assist will achieve almost the same thing.

Spreadsheet users, professionals and multitaskers will love the massive real estate, which is equivalent to four 21.5-inch full HD monitors.

Samsung hopes to change everyone’s mind with the Galaxy Z Fold 2 5G, the successor to its seminal foldable. This time, Samsung’s ditched much of what made the first Fold meh, like the dinky front display and the dodgy side-notches, and smartened up the design.

Good start, yes. But this is a £1,799 phone, so saying it has to be good is an understatement. To get a recommendation for anyone without a huge amount of disposable income, the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 2 has to be near-perfect. So, is it?

DESIGN AND SCREEN: FOLD EVERYTHING

Combining a 6.23-inch cover display with an 816 x 2260 resolution, the Fold 2 is an instant improvement. The front screen is tall with a 25:9 aspect ratio, so almost as novel as the inner screen. While it doesn’t have a nippy refresh rate, it is punchy, packing Super AMOLED tech.

Clasp the top half of the Fold 2 5G with one hand, the bottom half with another, ease the phone open, and as you engage the smooth hinge mechanism, the magic happens – a big, bright, bold, notch-free tab gloriously presents itself.

The updated inner screen is slightly recessed for protection, and clocks in at a high-impact 7.6 inches with an almost square shape. Packing a resolution of 1768 x 2208 (373 pixels in every inch), it’s sharp too, and with HDR10+ support and a 120Hz refresh rate, every swipe and tap is seriously special.

Yes – there’s a crease. Unlike the Motorola RAZR 5G, Samsung’s flexible display doesn’t curl inwards when folded, so you see a visible line down the middle when viewed off-angle. You get used to it, but it’s definitely worth noting. Another point: the inner screen is plastic, flexible, and susceptible to damage when knocked – a given with all foldables. As a package, though, it feels more secure than its predecessor, the Huawei Mate Xs and the Motorola RAZR 5G.

Unfolded, the Z Fold 2 is a svelte 6.9 mm thin. Folded, that number more than doubles, making it one of the chunkiest phones around at 16.8 mm. Skinny jeans are out of the question, but that doesn’t mean the Fold 2 doesn’t look stunning – clever distraction technique Samsung.

With a similar matte glass finish to that of the Samsung Galaxy Note 20 Ultra 5G, it keeps fingerprints at bay, catches the light in a demure, diffuse way, and proudly shows off the buffed hinge, which sports a subtle Samsung insignia etched in its metal spine. The fingerprint scanner is in the power button, there’s a USB-port at the base, and the top and bottom of the phone are bookended by stereo speakers.

The design highlight has got to be just how well the hinge mechanism locks in place throughout its range of motion. Set it half-open, Nokia Communicator style (remember those?), and it balances itself up like a mini laptop – oh so satisfying.

CAMERAS: FOLD FAITHFUL

You won’t find the 108MP resolution the S20 Ultra packs here. Instead, you get three traditional 12MP cameras. The primary camera has an f/1.8 aperture and the biggest sensor of the bunch. Alongside it, there’s an ultrawide camera and a 2x zoom equivalent telephoto camera. The primary and telephoto cameras sport OIS and phase detection autofocus.

Samsung’s shooting modes are comprehensive, with AI photography detecting the scene you’re in and optimising snaps accordingly. There’s a handy Pro mode too, as well as the Single Take mode introduced on the S20 series, which makes a suite of almost perfect content to distribute across your TikGrams and InstaToks.

Photos taken on the Fold 2 5G have Samsung’s trademark punch to them, clearly sharpened with contrast boosted, but they don’t look bad. Across lighting conditions, your camera time will be helped along by a decent night mode that helps zap grain, but it falls way behind that of the Huawei P40 Pro and Google Pixel 4.

The Fold 2 5G shoots up to 4K resolution video at 60fps, and supports Pro Video capture, so you can get manual with your moving images too. The most exciting thing about the camera experience is using the gorgeous tablet screen as a viewfinder – maximum novelty-factor. Using the Z Fold 2 half-folded as its own ‘tripod’ is also fun and handy.

Not content with one selfie camera, the Galaxy Z Fold 2 5G packs in two, one on the front and another inside. They both shoot 4K resolution video at 60fps, making them exceptional on-paper, and very good in the flesh.

SOFTWARE: NOT QUITE FLEXIBLE ENOUGH

Samsung’s had to get heavy-handed with its customisations to make Android 10 play nicely with a folding form-factor, and there are both wins and woes here.

Many apps seamlessly transition from the external screen to a tablet view when the Fold 2 5G is opened up, but not all. To access them in a different view, they need to be force closed and reopened.

You can multitask across up to four apps simultaneously on the tablet – a bit much, but still cool. That said, when you close the Fold 2 and open it again, you’ve lost your carefully orchestrated layout. Again, annoying.

Then there’s the core UI. When in the camera app, if you half-open the Fold, the interface reorients to beautifully occupy the two halves of the screen optimally. Go back to the home screen, however, and you’re forced into portrait mode.

The orientation can be changed in the settings, however, even when corrected for, it doesn’t beautifully divide the display as per the camera app, so you lose elements in the crease. This lack of TLC given to using the Fold in its ‘laptop’ orientation is a massively missed trick from an ‘ooooh’ and ‘ahhhh’ point of view.

Thankfully, Google Play Store access means lots of apps, Samsung’s UI optimisation coupled with the 120Hz screen means smooth interaction, and the fact the Galaxy Z Fold 2 doesn’t sport an Exynos processor means decent heat management.

PERFORMANCE AND BATTERY LIFE: 22-CARAT FOLD

What you do get from the Galaxy Z Fold 2 5G, however, is beautifully nippy performance. Powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 865+ paired with 12GB RAM, it’s one of the most powerful Android phones money can buy right now. You’re paying for it with that £1,799 price tag, but the internals make the Fold 2 5G much easier to stomach than the midrange-powered Motorola RAZR 5G (£1,399).

Gaming is a treat on the Fold, with the stereo speakers booming, both displays shining brightly and the power under the hood able to keep framerates up and lag down. After an hour of playing Genshin Impact, the phone warmed up, though not uncomfortably so. Unlike most Samsung phones, there’s no microSD card slot here, though the 256GB starting capacity should suffice for most.

Finally, the 4500mAh battery lasts a full day very easily. You’ll get great mileage from it if you mainly use the front screen, which is entirely doable now it isn’t awful. Sorry original Fold. Open it up a bit more often and by 8pm 10-15 per cent should be left in the tank if you’re anything like us; whatsapping, watching, and gaming a bit too.

Another highlight – the Fold sports 25W fast charging and 11W fast wireless charging (plus 4.5W reverse wireless charging).

SAMSUNG GALAXY Z FOLD 2 5G VERDICT

The Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 2 5G is a glimmer of hope that foldable phones can be excellent. It isn’t the best camera phone around, nor does it charge the fastest – but who cares? It folds and doesn’t do anything badly.

Everything the Z Fold 2 does, it does at least well. It’s reassuring (glorious-looking) design delights every time you look at it, and the masterful hinge makes the two-in-one functionality we’ve been craving a reality. A handsome front-display only adds to the utility and enjoyment the phone delivers.

At £1,799 for the 256GB storage version, it doesn’t matter how good it is; the Galaxy Z Fold 2 won’t appeal to most people. Nevertheless, the annals of technology history will remember the Samsung Galaxy Fold 2 as the first foldable that was great – all-fold, no caveats.