By providing an ultra-high native resolution chip with built-in binning of pixels, Sony hopes to let smartphone users have their cake and eat it too — both amazing detail and good low-light performance.
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Category: mobile phones
Researchers have identified a group of materials that could be used to make even higher power batteries. The researchers, from the University of Cambridge, used materials with a complex crystalline structure and found that lithium ions move through them at rates that far exceed those of typical electrode materials, which equates to a much faster-charging battery.
Although these materials, known as niobium tungsten oxides, do not result in higher energy densities when used under typical cycling rates, they come into their own for fast charging applications. Additionally, their physical structure and chemical behaviour give researchers a valuable insight into how a safe, super-fast charging battery could be constructed, and suggest that the solution to next-generation batteries may come from unconventional materials. The results are reported in the journal Nature.
Many of the technologies we use every day have been getting smaller, faster and cheaper each year—with the notable exception of batteries. Apart from the possibility of a smartphone which could be fully charged in minutes, the challenges associated with making a better battery are holding back the widespread adoption of two major clean technologies: electric cars and grid-scale storage for solar power.
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You should already be using two-factor authentication to prevent unauthorized access to your online accounts. While your phone is up to the task of helping you with that, Google believes it’s time for to take the next step: using a physical security key.
At its ongoing Google Cloud Next event, the company announced that it’s launched the Titan Security Key, which lets you log in to your account on your desktop by authenticating your identity with over USB or Bluetooth.
Check out TNW’s Hard Fork.
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That may be about to change. Behind the scenes, big tech companies are funding secret projects to develop robots. Amazon.com Inc. has been working on a robot version of its Echo voice-activated speaker for a while now and this year began throwing more money and people at the effort. Alphabet Inc. is also working on robots, and smartphone maker Huawei Technologies Inc. is building a model for the Chinese market that will teach kids to speak English.
Alphabet and Huawei join Amazon in the race to build androids, the first of which could debut by 2020.
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The Casimir force and superconductivity are two well-known quantum effects. These phenomena have been thoroughly studied separately, but what happens when these effects are combined in a single experiment? Now, Delft University of Technology have created a microchip on which two wires were placed in close proximity in order to measure the Casimir forces that act upon them when they become superconducting.
Is vacuum really empty? Quantum mechanics tells us that it’s actually swarming with particles. In the 1940s, Dutch physicists Hendrik Casimir and Dirk Polder predicted that when two objects are placed in very close proximity, about a thousandth of the diameter of a human hair, this sea of ‘vacuum particles’ pushes them together – a phenomenon known as the Casimir effect. This attractive force is present between all objects and even sets fundamental limits to how closely we can place components together on microchips.
Superconductivity is another well-known quantum phenomenon, also discovered by a Dutchman, Heike Kamerlingh Onnes, in the early 20th century. It describes how certain materials, such as aluminum or lead, allow electricity to flow through them without any resistance at cryogenic temperatures. Over the last 100 years, superconductors have revolutionized our understanding of physics and are responsible for magnetically levitated trains, MRI scans and even mobile phone stations.
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Scribit is a drawing robot that can turn your walls into a work of art. The little bot raised over $1.6 million on Kickstarter, crushing the company’s $50,000 goal in just two hours. Scribit uses four erasable markers to draw images up to a 6.5 ft x 6.5 ft on your wall. Images are uploaded from a user’s phone to the robot and automatically starts drawing. It’s held to the wall with just two nails and guide wires that move it along the wall. The company says the $450 device is slated to ship by the end of the year.
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Smartphones have disrupted transportation, payments and communication. But the underlying technology has tangentially changed a completely different sector: satellites.
The advances made in miniaturizing technologies that put a computer in your pocket — cameras, batteries, processors, radio antennas — have also made it easier and cheaper for entrepreneurs to launch matter into space. And investors are taking notice.
The chart below shows worldwide venture and PE investment in satellite technology companies.
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