The Xiaomi Mi Note and Note pro

Xiaomi’s latest offering is out and looks pretty promising, the Mi Note, which aims to compete with the Samsung Galaxy Note 4 and the Apple iPhone 6 Plus. The event, which took place in Beijing, saw constant comparisons between the Mi Note to the iPhone 6 Plus.

Display: The Mi Note features a 5.7-inch screen – slightly larger than the 5.5-inch iPhone 6 Plus. It’s a full HD display with a pixel density of 386ppi.  The Mi Note’s display features a Nela Tech LCD , which Xiaomi claims offers a higher contrast and dynamic pixel adjustment for better readability outdoors and improves contrast of darker areas in photos. Xiaomi also claims it has improved the colour reproduction from the Mi 4. The display is protected by a layer of Corning Gorilla Glass 3.

Camera: The Mi Note has a 13MP rear camera with optical image stabilisation. It uses Sony’s CMOS sensor, with a f2.0 aperture for low-light shots. The company claims that it uses a dual-tone flash developed by Phillips for more natural-looking colours in photos. Taking a dig at Apple once again, Xiaomi said that the Mi Note’s main camera does not protrude out like the iPhone 6. Mi Note has a 4MP front camera with large 2 micron pixels.

Build: Similar to the iPhone 6 and the 6 Plus, the front panel of the Mi Note features a 2.5D curved glass and a 3D curved glass rear panel. However, Xiaomi claims that it is thinner than the iPhone 6 Plus, with dimensions 155.1×77.6×6.95mm (hxwxd) and weighs 161g. There’s a metallic rim around the sides and the back camera. Also, like the larger iPhone 6 Plus, the Mi Note has a one-handed mode that minimises the size of app windows for easier one-handed use.

 Features: The Mi Note is powered by a 3,000mAh battery, comes with dual 4G Sim slots and runs a Snapdragon 801 processor backed by 3GB Ram. It will be available in 16GB and 64GB storage options and there’s no card slot for increasing the storage capacity. Out of the two SIM slots, one supports a nano Sim while the other is for a micro Sim. The Mi Note also claims to pack a hi-fi audio system with ESS ES9018K2M audio decoder for minimum distortion and lossless playback at 24-bit/192KHz.

Mi Note’s official price is 2299RMB or about Rs 22,900, while the 64 GB model set to launch for RMB 2,799 (Rs 27,900) later this year.

There’s also a Mi Note Pro version of the smartphone, which runs on Snapdragon 810 with 4GB RAM and 64GB of built-in storage. It also features a higher resolution display (2K) 2560x 1440 pixels. The Xiaomi Note Pro is priced at 3299 RMB, which is around Rs 32,900. Xiaomi also announced Mi Box mini  – a set up box that is smaller in size than its predecessor.

LG fingerprint sensor sits beneath smartphone screen

Fingerprint readers are increasingly ubiquitous in smartphone design, so much so that the question is not whether to include one, but where to put it. Where some manufacturers have chosen to add readers into buttons on the front or raised sections on the back of their devices, LG Innotek has a new idea — put it under the phone's screen. The LG affiliate announced today that it had developed a new fingerprint sensor that it has slotted into a tiny 0.01-inch (0.03 milimeter) space cut into the underside of smartphone cover glass, allowing device designers to incorporate fingerprint readers without dedicated buttons, pads, or other exposed elements.

Fingerprint modules regarding smartphones typically require you to press your finger roughly a raised button, meaning they must be mounted externally. LG's South Korean society Innotek is innovating upon this stomach, even though, and has created a fingerprint sensor that doesn't require a button at all and is mounted beneath the screen, for that defense offering the functionality without interfering behind the form.

With the sensor out of the way, companies can be more pardon once their smartphone designs.   The sensor is said to be safe thanks to tall-strength lid glass which protects it from water and scratches, even if a proprietary adhesive keeps it safe even after high impact. It's also said to have an totally low traitorous appreciation rate of 0.002%.

Segway Advanced Personal Robot

Segways were already a little ridiculous, but now they have a robotic face on them—but hey, no CES is complete without some old fashioned robotics. This new product from Segway is somewhere between a personal assistant and a mode of transportation, which isn’t the craziest thing in the world when you think about it. Much of the potential behind such a product lies behind what developers will do with its open SDK. Here’s to hoping for a robot that isn’t a vacuum cleaner that could actually be useful around the house! 

ONE PART HOVERBOARD, one part robot butler. Three parts super adorable. The Segway Advanced Personal Robot will hide away while you ride on its two wheels, then can pop out and carry your groceries or answer your doorbell. You can attach arms or other appendages, and turn the robot into basically anything you want. Intel CEO Brian Krzanich has five, apparently, but we’d take just one.


Segway, Intel, and Xiaomi are working together to build not just one rideable robot, but many. The Advanced Personal Robot is a long-term plan for the three companies, which plan to work with developers all over the world to make the robot respond to voice commands, see in the dark, and generally become both better and more adorable. When a rideable could also be your best friend and personal assistant, why would it ever be just a rideable anymore? It may not hover, but this is the coolest hoverboard we’ve seen in a while.

GOOGLE ANDROID WEAR

THE WEARABLE OPERATING SYSTEM

Every major hardware manufacturer is clamoring for its share of the smartwatch action. This year alone, Motorola, LG, and Apple joined the fray, yet a true leader in wearables has yet to emerge. Instead of stepping into the hardware battle, Google leveraged what it knows best: code. In the past, each smartwatch ran its own proprietary operating system (OS), limiting the number of apps and functionality available to users. Android Wear gives Google an edge on the competition by standardizing the operating system across most manufacturers—much like Android did with its smartphone OS seven years ago. A unified OS means developers can create thousands of apps that easily sync with Android devices. With them, users will be able to place calls, control Netflix and other media players, track steps, and navigate an unfamiliar route, all from a tiny screen on the wrist. Oh, yes, and they’ll be able to tell the time too. Android

Scientists 'Visits' Mars with Augmented Reality: NASA EXHIBIT LETS YOU VIRTUALLY TOUR MARS

In order to bridge the decade-plus gap between the present and Mars (and probably to drum up public support for crewed Mars missions), NASA is unveiling Destination: Mars, a virtual reality-heavy exhibit opening this summer at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex.

At the exhibit, a visitor will wear Microsoft's augmented reality headset, the Hololens, to 'visit' Mars. Once inside the virtual world, visitors will be treated to a guided tour of the surface, with guides Erisa Hines, who drives the Mars Curiosity Rover, and astronaut Buzz Aldrin. NASA describes the exhibit as 'mixed reality' so there will be some physical elements stirred in to the virtual experience.

Hines and other NASA scientists have gotten to use this kind of technology already. NASA scientists like Abigail Fraeman, another Curiosity researcher, use a program called OnSight that takes images collected by the rover and creates a virtual reality version of Mars to explore.

"OnSight makes the whole process of analyzing the data feel a lot more natural to me," Fraeman said. "It really gives me the sense that I'm in the field when I put it on. Thinking about Martian geology is a lot more intuitive when I can stand in the scene and walk around the way I would if I were in the field."

"We may not be able to actually go to Mars yet, but we can go there virtually," said Parker Abercrombie, a software engineer at JPL who investigates different ways that software can enable augmented exploration.

And because the software was created using actual observations, researchers will be able to conduct valuable science, even while being more than 140 million miles (225 million kilometers) away. For instance, scientists could scale an escarpment to survey the view from that vantage point, or get on their hands and knees for a close-up view of the planet's rocky terrain.

"What's really exciting about this is [that] what we're looking at is a reconstruction of Mars from real data sent from the Curiosity rover," Abercrombie said. "This isn't an artist's conception of what Mars looks like. This is actually what Mars looks like."

Additionally, because Curiosity's mission is ongoing, JPL engineers will be able to make modifications based on the latest data.

"As the rover drives and takes more pictures, our reconstructions are constantly being updated and improved," Abercrombie said.

This holographic technology is also helping NASA build new spacecraft and rovers. At JPL, the HoloLens is being used to design the agency's next Mars rover, which is slated to launch in 2020. By projecting a virtual model of the rover in 3D space, engineers can get close-up views of how the various components fit together, add or move parts around easily, and even walk right through the model to see its inner workings. [Our sister site, Tom's Guide, put together a guide on the best VR headsets on the market right now.]

"It allows us to attain perspectives that are difficult, or even impossible, to attain with a physical model," Valderrama said. "It brings them out into the world so that our engineers can begin to reason and communicate about the models long before any physical artifact exists."

A close look at Microsoft’s new Ink Workspace

Ink Workspace is really more of an Ink Hub

The Ink Workspace is a menu of ink-related apps and features you can access from the taskbar or by clicking a button on your stylus. Not nearly as interesting or useful as the Air Command menu on Samsung’s stylus-equipped models, but certainly a nice start. The Workspace menu doesn’t appear to be configurable (at least not yet), so it’s mostly only useful if you want to get to Microsoft’s new Sketchpad or Screen Sketch apps. You also get one-click access to an updated version of Sticky Notes, and you can search the Windows Store for pen-enabled apps. That would be more useful if Microsoft’s new apps were more useful

Windows has always been at the forefront of making human–computing interaction more natural, and with the digital pen in mind, we have delivered powerful features in Windows 10 such as Web Notes on Microsoft Edge and all the pen goodness we have built right into OneNote. However, we still see that for many of our customers, using a pen on Windows can be a complicated place. With the Anniversary Update to Windows 10, we have set out to greatly simplify your pen experience and deliver on the promise of making your digital pen as easy to use as pen and paper. Because your digital pen leaves digital ink, we can go beyond that and give your ink super powers. With digital ink you can get more done, faster, and in a more natural way.

Screen Sketch is another un-needed new app from Microsoft

Microsoft loves to create great new tools and then, just when everyone falls in love with them, start over. The many iterations of photo galleries and Live tools are a perfect example. So is the new Screen Sketch. Microsoft’s Snip is already an excellent, well-behaved, free tool for capturing screens, windows, or areas of a screen. It has good annotation tools, and reasonable sharing and saving options. Simply binding a key (on the stylus or otherwise) to Snip (which is already pretty easy to access) would have been a lot more useful than inventing a new tool with hardly any features. Screen Sketch only works on an entire screen, doesn’t allow saving directly to disk, and requires learning a new interface.

All in all, it’s good to see Microsoft continuing to improve the Active Stylus on the Surface product line. However, after all these years, and all its investment in pen computing (including the excellent handwriting and equation recognition technology in Office), the company is certainly capable of something a lot more exciting and powerful than the current version of the Ink Workspace — which is essentially a couple trivial apps and a shortcut menu, plus some much-needed updates to Settings.

Hackers Charge $130 To Hack a Gmail Account, says report from Dell

Rates for hacking social media websites are also on this report. Hacking a social account like Facebook and Twitter accounts in the United States will cost users over $129. The rates vary when hackers are hired to hack popular social websites based in Russia like VK.ru and Ok.ru.

Hackers can also provide fake identification to the users. You can get a physical counterfeit driver license in the US, UK, Germany & Israel at $173.

Dell reports,“Prices and goods are not the only way sellers are distinguishing themselves. There also continues to be a focus on salesmanship. Compared to the report last year, our security experts noted this time around that many hackers were expanding their working hours to include weekends and even promising to be available 24 hours a day.”

This is the company’s third report and reveals the ups and downs in the prices since 2013. The report also tell’s us about the strategy followed by Russian hackers to ensure customer satisfaction by increasing their working hours and using guarantors.

The report points towards Russian and English underground markets as well and “covers the third quarter of 2015 to the first quarter of 2016 time frame”.

The report also discloses the prices that hackers demand for hacking accounts from various websites, like they presently charge $129 to hack the accounts of popular email providers like Gmail, Yahoo and Hotmail. Moreover, they also proceed after corporate email accounts charging about $500 per mailbox.

Hackers charge slightly lesser amount to hack popular Russian email accounts than US Based accounts, like they charge $65 – $103 to hack Russian email accounts. Also, hackers charge $129 for hacking Ukrainian email accounts. Besides hacking email accounts, hackers charge $90 for hacking the IP address of a computer user.

Dell claims that this information was collected by two intelligence analysts from the company’s CISCO Intel team, who reportedly traced hackers on several underground hacker forums across the world.