Hands-on with Samsung’s new Gear 360° camera

Hands-on with Samsung’s new Gear 360° camera

Tonight was the annual Samsung event at MWC, where thousands of media folk descend on the Centre de Convencions Internacional de Barcelona, situated along the waterfront, to see the latest Samsung gadgetry announced.  As is customary for my posts in the past from the event, I (mostly) ignore all the phone stuff.  It’s just not my cup of tea.  Instead, I’m focused on the wearables (none this year), however as was the case of this year – the action cam.

SAMsUNG GEAR 360 CAMERA:

Late into the presentation, they introduced their Gear 360 camera. This builds on the concepts they showed off at CES with their Project Beyond (which was aimed at pro photographers).  The new Gear 360 cam is roughly the size of a nectarine, and fits pretty easily in the palm of your hand:

The camera is capable of 30 megapixels via its combined 2x15MP cameras, each with an aperture of F2.0.  The two cameras each have a 195° field of view, with the slight overlap being used for stitching the imagery together.  The net of that is a still image size of 7,776 x 3,888px.

However, do keep in mind that anytime you talk megapixel or resolution numbers on 360° cameras, things get skewed really quick.  That’s because those megapixels and resolutions are spread out across the entire 360° view around you.  So you really need to divide it up quite a bit.  Thus when companies talk about a 4K action camera, you need to ask: Is any given view 4K?  Or just the full resolution of the 360° image?  If it’s the full resolution, that’s not so exciting.

In the case of the Samsung Gear 360, the total video resolution is a smidgen under 4K, at 3840 x 1920 (4K is 3840 x 2160).  It’s somewhat odd they didn’t find a way to bridge that tiny resolution gap, and give them the marketing perception benefits associated with 4K branding.  As for any given individual view, Samsung reps on-hand noted that it’s going to basically be 1080p.

the unit streams video to Samsung Galaxy S7/S7 Edge phones, but Samsung wouldn’t clarify yet whether it’ll work with other Samsung phones – or even non-Samsung Android phones (let alone iOS devices).  History tells us that Samsung connected accessories tend to be Samsung-only, so I wouldn’t expect to see that change here.

on the flip-side, their heavily touted partnership with Facebook (Zuck was on-hand) and the desire to drive sales to the $99 Gear VR, make it a possibility we’ll see more focus there.

Speaking of which, Facebook touted their partnership and specifically their upcoming switch to ‘Dynamic Streaming’, to ensure that the portion of the 360° video you’re looking at is ~4X higher in resolution/clarity than before.  So basically, they re-allocate the streaming bandwidth to focus on what you’re seeing at that moment, versus streaming the entire video (portions you aren’t looking at) at higher quality.  This is actually rather important – because it’s been one of the challenges of 360° video playback.  They (Facebook) plan to roll this out over the coming weeks.

When wearing the Gear VR headset with the Gear 360 cam content, you can view the video from the Gear 360 just as any other virtual reality headset.  Thus you rotate your head around and you see the portion of the video that you’re ‘looking’ at.  Speaking of which, the thousands of media/journalists/partners/etc all found Gear VR units not only on their seats, but under their seats.  After the event, all were to take one with them (the boxed one under the seat).  I figure at some point some lucky (local) DCR reader will pick it up as part of a giveaway.  Perhaps a spring-time DCR Cave event?

So is the unit defined as an ‘action cam’?  Well, sorta.  It features a standard tripod mount, so you could easily mount it to a selfie stick or any number of 3rd party mounts for your helmet or other locale.  However, by itself it isn’t waterproof. For that you’ll need a separate waterproof case that Samsung is going to sell, which will give you IP68 waterproofing (1 meter deep for 30 minutes).  Interestingly, these were the same waterproofing specs that the new G7 phones have.  They did not have the cases on-hand though.

For a video walk-through of the unit, check out the below snippet I put together:

Finally, there’s no release date available, beyond a vague ‘Q2 2016’ (so Apr 1st to June 30th).  Nor any pricing, other than saying it’ll be market competitive in price.  However senior reps I chatted with hinted that Facebook may be partially subsidizing it (similar to what appears to be going on with the Gear VR headset at $99, as Zuckerberg alluded to on stage).  If we talk normal pricing, that’d likely put it in the $399 price range, like many other 360° action cams.  However, we have the upcoming GoPro 360° action cam for consumers, likely dropping in April.  So that’ll be a driving factor as well.  And my guess is, that’s what Samsung is waiting for price-wise.

SAMSUNG S7 PHONE TIDBITS:

Now regulars around here know that I don’t really cover the phone segment.  Just not my thing.  There are plenty of awesome sites out there that cover them well.

However, there were a few tidbits that I thought were interesting from the 45+ minutes of that portion of the presentation I had to sit through pondering where I was going to get pizza afterwards.  These tidbits are most applicable to the sporting realm.

– The Samsung S7 phone is IP68 waterproof: Now you’ll remember that Samsung introduced waterproofing some time ago for their phones.  However, the official specs of the waterproofing were questionable at best (though it generally did well in tests).  However now this official spec means it can last 30 minutes at 1-meter deep of water.  That’s reasonably impressive.

– You’ll get a Gear VR (virtual reality headset) when you pre-order the Samsung S7: There have been some that have toyed around with VR units in bike trainer rides.  I’ve actually tried some of these out over the years, and thus far – the experience is sick.  No, not sick in a good way, but sickening.  Seriously, you’ll get sick trying to pedal (stay upright) and orient yourself.  This isn’t really a Samsung problem, but just the reality of the situation today.  This market has huge potential, but applying it to a cycling trainer so far doesn’t work well for me.  Still, there’s huge market for many other areas.  For example, just watching the Tour de France in 360° could be super cool with 360° cams situated on moto support or team car vehicles.

– Includes a MicroSD card storage slot: So now you can buy that $12 micro-SD card, instead of spending $100-$200 more for the same storage.  This is useful if you’re using your phone as a replacement action cam.  And given said phone is now legit waterproof, this is actually quite a valid use.

– Still dual ANT+/Bluetooth Smart Enabled: Samsung has long had ANT+ connectivity within their phones, and that continues as well with the S7.  Of course, like every other smartphone on the market, it also has Bluetooth Smart support via the full Bluetooth stack.

With that – stay tuned for all sorts of new stuff coming out this week here at Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona.  This place is just getting warmed up!

After Apple .. Mozilla intervene in a dispute with the FBI

It seems that the Bureau of Investigation, the US federal "FBI" problems with digital companies in the world will not end yet, after Alhz and attractions, which lasted for months between him and Apple, the same story is renewed this time with the Mozilla Foundation developers of web browser famous Mozilla Firefox, and It is clear that the story of the evolution of a candidate in the coming days.

And media reported over the weekend that the Mozilla Foundation has appealed to the FBI need to enable them to know the loophole exploited by the office in the "Tor / Tor Browser browser" for access to important information and dismantle the criminal network operating on the sexual exploitation of minors.

And this was the case back to the end of 2015 and beginning of this year, where the FBI dismantled a criminal network based in the dark Internet hotbed her through the Tor network and it comes to a pornographic site for the exploitation of minors, where the FBI to exploit a loophole in the Tor Browser and but not only this, but the astronauts for weeks to monitor the location and access to more than 1,300 IP address and the rhythm of hundreds of users by malicious software.

And Taatmouka Mozilla Foundation in this case, given that the Tor Browser is based in large part on the source own browser Mozilla Firefox code, and is prompting the organization to ask the FBI necessity of knowing the loophole that enabled it to penetrate the Tour as soon as if it comes Bshifrh Mozilla, and it is demanded by defense lawyers as well as the defendants in this case, while the FBI has not yet responded to this request.

Google signed the end of Flash content on their browser

Company "Google" decided to stop display the content made technology Flash on the browser for the Web, "Google Chrome" and so no later than the end of the current year 2016, and this decision is mainly which preceded Google to him a number of other companies to the many and serious gaps that have become Flash technology-threatening.

And were many gaps in the recently discovered in flash technology and contributed to exposing millions of users to security risks have contributed to making Google for this procedure, where the company is heading for compensation made with Flash-enabled content to the content developer of Web programming language HTML5 on the browser, Google Chrome where he began HTML5 earns a lot of space on the Flash account in a number of locations and who became surpassing.

Although the Flash technology will always be present on the Web browser Google Chrome in some locations that allow it, however, it is that HTML5 will be enabled by default, and requires activation flash feature a user does this individually, and according to the company before the end of this year.

Developing for Apple Watch

With Apple Watch, users can now access information in a way that is both distinctly personal and unobtrusive. With just a raise of the wrist, users can receive and respond to notifications, see essential information in a complication or a glance, and much more. Developing for Apple Watch means providing your users with important, helpful, and impactful information in the most immediate, convenient way (Figure 1-1).

Figure 1-1The Apple Watch Home screen

The projects you create for Apple Watch consist of two separate bundles: a Watch app and a WatchKit extension. The Watch app bundle contains the storyboards and resource files associated with all of your app’s user interfaces. The WatchKit extension bundle contains the extension delegate and the controllers for managing those interfaces and for responding to user interactions. While these bundles are distributed inside an iOS app, they are then installed on the user’s Apple Watch and run locally on the watch.

A watchOS project must include a Watch app, but may also include a glance, custom notifications, and complications. Each of these interfaces provides a unique way for users to interact with your app, often conveying important information to the user more quickly than the app’s main interface. Although optional, these interfaces should not be considered secondary. In fact, the glance, notifications, and complications are the primary interfaces for many users.

The glance, notifications, and complications are not separate executables. Instead, the interface for the glance and notifications are included in your Watch app’s storyboard. The code for managing the glances, notifications, and complications are part of your WatchKit extension.

The Watch App

The Watch app is the actual app that the user launches from the Apple Watch Home screen. The Watch app presents your app’s full user interface. The app supports one or more screens of custom content that you define. Use the Watch app to present all of the content you support on Apple Watch, which is often only a subset of the content you support in your iOS app.

To create a Watch app, see UI Essentials.

The Glance Interface

As the name implies, a glance is meant to be looked at quickly. With a swipe from the bottom of the watch face, a glance displays only your app’s most important information. Glances are nonscrolling; the entire glance interface must fit on a single screen, and the information in a glance is read-only, so glances do not contain buttons, switches, or other interactive controls. Tapping a glance launches your Watch app’s main interface.

To create a glance interface, see Glance Essentials.

Custom and Actionable Notifications

Apple Watch works with its paired iPhone to display local and remote notifications. Initially, Apple Watch uses a minimal interface—called a short look—to display incoming notifications. If the user’s wrist remains raised, the minimal interface changes to a more detailed interface—called a long look—displaying the contents of the notification. You can customize the long look, adding custom graphics or arranging the notification data differently from the default interface provided by the system.

Apple Watch also provides automatic support for actionable notifications. Actionable notifications let you add buttons or text input to your notification interface, so that users can respond directly to the notification. For example, a notification for a meeting invitation might include buttons to accept or reject the invitation.

When your iOS app registers support for actionable notifications, Apple Watch automatically adds buttons for notification actions to the notification interfaces on Apple Watch. All you need to do is handle the user’s actions in your WatchKit extension.

NOTE

For text input actions, watchOS displays a button showing the action’s title. If the user taps on the button, the system displays the full text input interface, including options for dictation, emoji, and suggested responses.

To create custom notification interfaces and actionable notifications, see Notification Essentials. For more information on registering actionable notifications, see Registering Your Actionable Notification Types inLocal and Remote Notification Programming Guide.

Complications

Complications are small visual elements that appear directly on the watch face and convey important information to the user. Complications are automatically visible whenever the user looks at Apple Watch to check the time. Most watch faces support at least two or three complications, and the user can customize which complications are displayed. Apps may use a complication to display app-specific data.

For information about complications and how to implement them, see Complication Essentials.

Designing Your User Interface

The personal nature of Apple Watch requires a different approach when it comes to designing Watch app, glance, notification, and complication interfaces. Your interfaces need to display information quickly and facilitate fast navigation and interactions. Creating that kind of interface means you should not simply port your existing iOS app behavior over to Apple Watch. Instead, create a complementary experience to your iOS app.

Additionally, the Watch app, glance, notifications, and complications each have their own unique role. Complications provide immediate access to information directly on the watch face; however, they are limited in both the amount and type of information they can present. Notifications are presented to the user as an alert, giving them a way to take a specific yet quick action. Glances are easily accessible with just a swipe from the bottom of the watch face. They give the user a more information than a complication but are still focused on quick, easily digestible pieces of information. Finally, the Watch app can provide a richer experience with an opportunity for further interaction and input by the user, but should still be designed for quick, streamlined interactions.

For guidance on designing interfaces for Apple Watch, see Apple Watch Human Interface Guidelines. In particular, the App Components section describes the differences between the Watch app, glances, notifications, and complications.