Self Flying Drone

The Federal Aviation Administration expects to deliver a prototype of an automated flight certification system this year that will allow a self flying drone to fly in controlled airspace, the agency administrator said.

“This sets up what is really true integration of unmanned aircraft working in the same space as traditional manned aircraft,” Administrator Michael Huerta said May 3 at Bloomberg Government’s Next Tech event in Washington.

Under current FAA regulations, drone pilots only can operate in space up to 400 feet and their vehicles must remain in line of sight. They’re prohibited from flying over people, which rules out most urban areas, and from flying within 5 miles of an airport without notifying air traffic control.

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And people underestimate how many airports there are. Strict interpretation of the 5-mile rule means drone operators in the “whole state of New Jersey” can’t fly with without waivers, Huerta said. The current waiver process takes about 90 days and requires operators file flight plans that are then evaluated and reviewed. FAA’s automated system aims to speed that up considerably.

The Low Altitude Authorization and Notification Capability, or LAANC, will provide maps, a third-party application, and instant answer for flight plans. If approved, Huerta said the system also will automatically notify air traffic control.

FAA air traffic control historically relies on a manual process: Pilots call into air traffic control for the 50,000 flights in controlled airspace that happen each day. It took 100 years to get up to the 320,000 or so planes today, Huerta said. Compare that to the more than 800,000 drones the agency registered in a year.

The sheer numbers mean FAA and its partners NASA and various technology companies continue to look at how automation and “self-separation” play roles in the UAS Traffic Management system expected sometime in 2019.

But FAA isn’t going to flip a switch that allows drones to fly freely in the sky. Instead, Huerta said the agency aims for regular progress in “staged integration,” pressing for the highest level of safety and issue new rules when it’s satisfied with the answers.

The agency continues to work with industry partners on technological solutions to some of its pressing concerns. For example, before the agency allows operators to fly drones beyond line of sight, it needs to be satisfied sense-and-avoid technology can effectively avoid collisions.

And what happens if a drone crashes into a crowd at a concert or a random (but unfortunate) person hanging out in a park?

The agency recently released a report on drone/human collisions, some of which could be mitigated by encouraging manufacturers to use softer materials, shielded blades and software that creates a controlled descent.

“If we wanted to accept no risk, we wouldn’t allow them at all,” Huerta said.

Drone with Camera Amazon

BATON ROUGE — That buzzing you hear from the ditch may soon not only be the beating wings of flitting mosquitoes but the propellers of a large, flying mosquito killer.

In Ascension Parish, officials are close to buying a new aerial drone able to fly, hover and spray up to 20 pounds of chemicals at a time in hard-to-reach areas where mosquitoes breed.
And in Lafayette Parish, a private mosquito control company is using drones to scout for breeding sites.
David Matassa, Ascension’s director of mosquito control and brother of Parish President Kenny Matassa, said the drone with camera amazon can spray with a precision that would allow parish workers to save on cost and limit environmental impact compared with more broadly applied aerial methods. The drone, for instance, could be used to spray a ditch along a heavily traveled road with no shoulder that’s traditionally been unsafe and hard to spray.
“This is the state of the art. This is the turning corner of mosquito control as far as programs in the country going toward this type of technology,” David Matassa said.
While a parish worker is still in training and working on licensing requirements with the Federal Aviation Administration, Matassa said, the drone, which will cost $5,000 to $8,000, could be flying parish skies in time for the peak mosquito season.
The remotely operated drone won’t replace the trucks and planes that already spray periodically through the parish and which kill the adult mosquitoes.
The drone, which can spray 80 acres in a day’s work, will be used to kill larvae growing in standing water, taking out the next generation of mosquitoes before they take flight.

“That’s actually one of the most important things you can do to control the population of mosquitoes, is larvicide,” he said.
Technology pioneered by the U.S. military to observe the battlefield and, later, to kill militants, remotely controlled aerial drones are being envisioned in a growing number of civilian applications, from Amazon’s promises to revolutionize delivery with its Octocopter to experiments to use drones to monitor Gulf Coast hurricanes.
FIGHTING DISEASE
In the Gulf South, mosquito control remains a public health concern as the flying blood-suckers pose a disease risk to the population, including West Nile and Zika virus.
The drone that Ascension Parish is looking at buying — a circular, tail-less craft with eight mini-props and a tank on the bottom — had its origins in remote-control helicopters developed to spray terraced rice paddies in the hillsides of Japan, China and southeast Asia where it is difficult to bring in land-based spray equipment.
Logan Noess, one of the owners of Maverick Drone Systems of Savage in Minnesota, said those early craft, developed about 15 years ago, cost around $100,000. The latest version costs 10 percent of those early craft. The cheaper variety has drawn the interest of local governments, including Ascension Parish, he said.
Noess, whose company is a U.S. dealer for the Chinese-built craft, a DJI Agras MG-1, said his company recently conducted a series of demonstrations in eight to 10 Louisiana parishes following a national conference of mosquito control officials.
“We were just spraying water out in fields, and from everything we have seen, it should work great,” he said.
Matassa, who went to that conference and witnessed a demonstration, speculated that Ascension may be the first in the state to use a drone for aerial spraying but likely won’t be the only one for long. He said he has spoken with other program directors, and many are eyeing drones for similar uses.
“I guarantee you within a few years, most all (mosquito control) programs will have them,” Matassa said.
Matassa said the drone can fly a few hundred feet high and 8,000 feet over land in a few minutes. While the drone could be outfitted with cameras, parish officials plan to focus on the spray technology, he said.
The contractor who handles mosquito control for Lafayette’s City-Parish government already uses smaller, cheaper drones but for a different application.
Glenn Stokes, owner of Mosquito Control Contractors Inc., said he uses a few $1,500 drones outfitted with surveillance cameras to look for hard-to-access breeding sites, including the parish’s more than 1,000 residential and commercial detention and retention ponds, but he does not yet use drones for spraying.

‘GREAT POTENTIAL’
Because of the expense, that would require a change in the City-Parish contract, he said.
“The drones have a great potential, and I think you know they will be more and more in use, and at some point in time, that’s going to be in the future, they could actually replace inspectors,” Stokes said.
The use of camera-outfitted drones by businesses, law enforcement and even Stokes’ operation has generated privacy concerns, however. Stokes said his company only looks into the yards of homes that are abandoned or for which the company has received permission, though he said a major public health scare could result in broad surveys of breeding locations.
“It’s a delicate line,” Stokes said of the use drones and privacy rights.

Sky Viper Drone

The Sky Viper Drone is a racing drone, but with a twist. Available for about $90, It comes with four beacons that the drone can detect. Place these around your flying field and you’ve created an impromptu racing track. A companion app records when the beacons are detected. The combination of drone, beacons and the free app allows you to time races or create an obstacle course that the drone has to navigate. If you have more than one Hover Drone, it also creates power-ups and power-downs that you can use on your opponents, Mario Kart-style. It’s a fun spin on the idea of drone racing, and the Hover Drone is a simple drone to fly.

Design
The Hover Drone itself is a medium-size quadcopter, measuring about 11 x 10.5 x 3 inches. It’s mostly made of black plastic with some colored plastic trim to give the drone a racing look. Four 4-inch, three-blade rotors surround the body, with each rotor surrounded by a plastic ring protecting the blades.
Credit: Richard BaguleyCredit: Richard Baguley
The Hover Drone doesn’t feel particularly robust, but it stood up to many crashes and dings in our tests. Two red LEDs light up when the drone is powered on, indicating the back of the craft, but there are no other blink-y lights. It’s powered by a small 3.7V, 650mAh lithium polymer battery, which slides into the drone body and can be charged with the included USB cable.

As for the beacons, they’re small rectangles a couple of inches tall, with a faux radar dish on top. Set these on the ground and turn them on, and they project an invisible infrared signal that the drone can detect when it flies overhead. After installing the app and connecting it to the drone, the beacons are labeled and remembered by the app, so it knows which beacon the drone is flying over.
MORE: The Best Drones and Quadcopters on Any Budget
Unlike racing drones, such as the Aerix Black Talon, the Hover Drone lacks a forward-facing camera, so you can’t get a first-person view of where it’s going, and you can’t record and replay a video of your flights. Most novice pilots won’t miss this feature, even if it is the best way to replay a race and get tips for how to race better. Pilots who are more serious about racing and who want to practice may want to go with the Talon.
You are going to need a lot of AAA batteries to run the Hover Drone’s combination of controller and beacons: with three batteries for the remote and two for each of the beacons, you’ll use 11 batteries in all. These do last a long time, though: we didn’t deplete a full set after several hours of testing.
Specs
Rotors: 4 (3 blades per rotor) replaceable, 4-inch diameter
Battery Size: 3.7V 650-mAh Li-ion, removable
Battery Life: 7/7 minutes (claimed/tested)
Camera: None
Smartphone Controlled: Yes, Android & iOS app
FAA Registration: No
Size:
 10.5 by 9.3 by 2 inches
Weight: 3.9 oz
MORE: Why Drone Racing is the Next Big Sport
Controller
The Hover Drone’s remote is a small, light game-controller like device, with two control sticks and lots of buttons. Like its video-gaming brethren, the controller also has two shoulder buttons on each side. The front buttons handle power, control sensitivity (with three settings), takeoff and landing, and altitude. The shoulder buttons are for the stunts the drone can do and for triggering the virtual weapons in multiuser mode. The controller connects to the app over Bluetooth, and includes a small holder that will accommodate most small cellphones. (The Nexus 5X I used to test this drone fit snugly.) However, the holder did press on the phone’s volume buttons, so I had to place the 5X lopsidedly in the holder.
Credit: Richard BaguleyCredit: Richard Baguley
The other component for controlling the Hover Racer is the Hover Racer App, available for iOS and Android. This free app connects to the controller over Bluetooth and adds a lot of features to the drone. The app can set up time trials where it measures how quickly you can navigate a course between the beacons, competitive races with multiple users or even races with multiple drones if you have them. It’s a simple app that adds some interesting new twists to the flying experience and makes things such as competitive races much easier to run. We weren’t able to test this, but the app also allows up to four drones to connect and compete directly, and zap each other with virtual weapons, such as speed-ups or laser blasts that aid or hinder other pilots.

SkyViper also offers a flight-simulator app (again for iOS and Android) that can simulate the Hover Racer if you want to get some practice in. The controller is simulated with on-screen controls, but you do get a good feel for the flying experience. It simulates the drone well, including things like the range of the controller and the auto-launch and landing features, plus a series of challenges that teach the fundamentals of drone flying. It’s well worth checking out if you want to get some experience before you fly, or practice in bad weather.
MORE: Drone Buying Guide: Everything You Need to Know
Flying
Getting the Hover Drone into the air is simplicity itself: pull the left control stick down, then hold down the Auto Launch button for a few seconds, and the drone takes off and hovers a few feet above the ground. You can raise or lower the height with the altitude buttons, or fly around with the right control stick. The left stick only controls the heading of the drone: In this auto mode, the drone uses a sensor to detect the altitude and keep a certain distance above the ground. When it is time to land, press the same button and the drone gently lands. There is no GPS or return home feature, though: the drone will land wherever it is at the time.
A number of stunt moves are also included, which are started by holding one of the shoulder buttons and moving the right control stick. Stunt moves include a barrel roll, flip and a rather spectacular spiral landing, where the drone spirals downwards dramatically, then lands softly on the ground. Hard-core drone pilots will prefer to fly the Hover Drone in manual mode, which is achieved by holding down the shoulder stunt button and pressing the auto-takeoff button. In this mode, the auto-altitude feature is disabled and the pilot is in full control.

Amazon Drone

Amazon Drone service is expanding its development operations in Cambridge, opening another 60,000-square-foot site in addition to its facility at Castle Hill, Tech Crunch reports.

Amazon said the existing Castle Hill facility would be primarily used for drone-related research and development, after the new facility opens this fall. Meanwhile, teams working on projects related to Amazon devices — like the Kindle and Echo — will be moved to the new facility.

Although Amazon has hinted at plans to bring Prime Air to the US, its increased investment in the UK suggests otherwise. Amazon would face significant challenges in bringing its drone delivery program to the US right now. The Prime Air delivery program uses autonomous drones, conflicting with Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) regulations that require drones to be within sight of pilots. And even if regulations allowed Amazon to employ a drone program in the US — the FAA currently has a 2018 deadline to authorize commercial drone delivery — the company would face the high costs of enabling its US fulfillment centers for the tech.

Testing these drones in the UK will allow it to develop and scale an effective program that can be quickly built out in the US once the FAA allows for drone delivery, giving Amazon a huge advantage.

The parcel delivery industry — a segment of the shipping sector that deals with the transportation of packages to consumers — is booming thanks to e-commerce growth, and players outside the industry want a piece of the pie.

BI Intelligence, Business Insider’s premium research service, has compiled a detailed report on the future of shipping that looks at efforts by Amazon, Alibaba, and Walmart to handle more of their own shipping and concludes that big retailers are well positioned to disrupt the parcel industry.

Here are some of the key points from the report:

Transportation and logistics could be the next billion dollar opportunity for e-commerce companies. The global shipping market, including ocean, air, and truck freight, is a $2.1 trillion market, according to World Bank, Boeing, and Golden Valley Co.
There is much at stake for legacy shipping companies, which have seen a boom in parcel delivery as e-commerce spending has risen. Twenty different partners currently share the duties of shipping Amazon’s 600 million packages a year, with FedEx, USPS, and UPS moving the most.
Amazon, Alibaba, and Walmart have so far focused on building out their last-mile delivery and logistics services but are increasingly going after the middle- and first-mile of the shipping chain.
Amazon has already made major moves across each stage of the shipping journey. It launched same-day delivery service, which it handles through its own fleet of carriers, cutting out any third-party shippers. The company also recently began establishing shipping routes between China and North America.
Walmart’s interest in expanding its transportation and logistics operations is almost purely related to cost-savings. It’s begun leasing shipping containers to transport manufactured goods from China and is making greater use of lockers and in-store pickup options to cut down on delivery costs.
Alibaba has begun leasing containers on ships, similar to Amazon’s Dragon Boat initiative. This means that Alibaba Logistics can now facilitate first-mile shipping for third-party merchants on its marketplace.
In full, the report:

Sizes the market for the shipping industry.
Explains how the industry operates in broad terms.
Suggests why major e-commerce retailers should disrupt the space.
Outlines the shipping initiatives of Amazon, Walmart, and Alibaba.
Concludes how these moves might impact traditional carriers.
Interested in getting the full report? Here are two ways to access it:

Subscribe to an All-Access pass to BI Intelligence and gain immediate access to this report and over 100 other expertly researched reports. As an added bonus, you’ll also gain access to all future reports and daily newsletters to ensure you stay ahead of the curve and benefit personally and professionally. » START A MEMBERSHIP
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Phantom 4 Drone

DJI announced a new version of its Phantom 4 drone, the Phantom 4 Advanced, which offers many of the features of last year’s Phantom 4 Pro at a less expensive price point.

Those upgrades include a new camera, with a 1-inch, 20-megapixel sensor that can shoot 4K video at 60 fps, a variety of automatic flight modes (including Draw, ActiveTrack, TapFly, Gesture, and Tripod settings), and improved internal storage and battery life (up to 128GB via microSD and 30 minutes, respectively). The Phantom 4 Advanced still don’t quite match the Pro, though, with only front-facing obstacle avoidance instead of the four-sided system found on DJI’s pricer model.

Like the Pro, the Phantom 4 Advanced is also available in a Plus variant, that includes a controller with a 5.5-inch 1080p screen built in. According to DJI, the screen is twice as bright as conventional mobile displays for easier outdoor use.

The Phantom 4 Advanced is meant to directly replace the original Phantom 4, which DJI will stop selling when the Advanced releases on April 30th. The Phantom 4 Advanced will sell for $1,349, while the Phantom 4 Advanced Plus (which includes the integrated screen controller) will cost $1,649. For reference, the original Phantom 4 started at $1,399 when it first launched.

Lily Drone

Failed startup Lily drone sent a very short email to its preorder customers last night about how they can get their money back, but there wasn’t any information on how long that would take.

The company filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy at the end of February in Delaware after being sued by the San Francisco District Attorney for misleading business practices.

The email looks to be a legal notice to customers with instructions on how to submit a request to get their money back.

Those who want a refund will now have to fill out a form, but there is no time frame for when payments will be returned.

Some customers report having already received refunds, but it’s unclear exactly how many have had their money returned. More than 61,000 people preordered a Lily drone between 2015 and 2016.

The company had amassed $34.8 million from those pre-sales, as well as $15 million in investment from high-profile Silicon Valley firms including Spark Capital, SV Angel, High Line Venture Partners, Sherpa Capital and Slow Ventures.

Lily aims to auction off its intellectual property in early June, according to its bankruptcy documents.

At various times during its rise and fall, Lily maintained that it was holding onto money in order to refund customers if necessary. Lily never shipped a single drone it sold.

The funds were kept in “cold storage,” a source close to the company told Recode. Similarly, in a December 2015 blog post, Lily claimed, “We have no plans to use a single cent of that money until your Lily Camera goes into final production.”

Customers hoping to receive a Lily drone put down a deposit of between $499 and $899, depending on how early their order was placed.

In its bankruptcy filing, the company claims it had begun processing refund requests “almost immediately after preorder sales started” in 2015.

While one customer emailed to let me know he received a refund from Lily, “as promised within five days,” dozens more have called or emailed since January complaining that they have not received their refund despite multiple attempts to contact the company.

By law, after shipping delays beyond 30 days, Lily is required to provide customers an option to be fully refunded or obtain consent for further delays. But Lily announced delay after delay without offering refunds. During this time, the company continued to collect preorder payments, according to the lawsuit from the district attorney.

Lily launched in 2015 with a dazzling promotional video that went viral, showcasing footage that was supposed to be from the Lily drone. But according to the lawsuit, the Lily drone wasn’t used to shoot the video.

Rather, the video was captured by a “GoPro mounted to a Lily prototype,” wrote Lily CEO Antoine Balaresque in an email obtained by the district attorney.

VR Headset for Samsung Galaxy S7

Identifying trends in hindsight is easy. The transformation of the tech industry from a PC-centric to a mobile one is obvious in retrospect, for example, but who could blame Steve Ballmer for saying that “There’s no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share. No chance” in 2007, when smartphones hadn’t yet proven themselves? That’s why it’s always risky to step out and make tech predictions. But heck – it’s almost 2016, and that’s exactly what I’m going to do. Here are the big trends to look for in the coming year for the VR headset for Samsung Galaxy S7.

1. We’ve seen Peak Screen Size. For the last few years, smartphone screens have been getting larger and larger, initially giving rise to the infamous “phablet” form factor with Android devices like the Samsung Galaxy S4. Last year, even Apple finally conceded that users wanted bigger screens and introduced the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus. But a funny thing happened in 2015: smartphones sizes topped out. The iPhone 6S and 6S Plus are the same size as their older siblings and no Android devices have challenged the top end. Pockets simply can’t accommodate bigger screens, and so phone sizes have stabilized.

2. But substantive improvements in battery life will arrive. Larger displays and speedier processors continue to tax smartphone batteries, which have improved incrementally at best for many years. Unlike computer processing speed, chemical engineering doesn’t follow Moore’s Law. What batteries have needed is a fundamental technological breakthrough, and after lots of false starts for a number of years, it looks like some big changes are afoot for 2016. A number of technologies – like “nano yolk” and solid-state batteries – are all converging on the market in the near future. They’ll offer significantly more capacity or faster charging. Recently, Qualcomm announced Quick Charge 3.0, which will charge a typical phone from 0 to 80 percent in about a half hour, and a company called StoreDot promises even faster charging next year: a full charge in just 30 seconds. And they say it’ll be for sale in 2016.

3. Virtual reality goes mainstream. Virtual reality headsets have been a staple of future tech since the dawn of the PC age in the mid-1990s. What’s different is that the gold standard in VR, Oculus Rift, will finally hit the market in the first quarter of 2016. Indeed, Oculus Rift has been the rising tide that’s lifted all the boats in the VR harbor. A number of competitors, partners, and not-quite-competitors will all be arriving around the same time. Expect to see the Oculus Rift appear with applications for science, education, and gaming, while we’ll also get to choose from the HTC Vive (a gaming headset designed to run on Steam), the Samsung Gear VR, and Microsoft’s HoloLens (which is more of an augmented reality headset, but promises to offer some of the same general experiences).

4. Yet Smart Homes and Internet of Things remain just for tinkerers. An entire industry has sprung up around another bleeding edge tech: the Internet of Things (IoT). This is a wide field – everything from DIY alarm systems and connected webcams to smart doorbells and door locks to connected weather stations, music systems, and personal assistants (like the Amazon Echo). One of the cleverest new entries is Flic, a Bluetooth-connected button you can stick on any surface anywhere in the house. It can execute almost any action via your phone thanks to IFTTT and other Internet of Things services. But therein lies the problem: The IoT is still a hacker’s playground, with too much fiddling and tinkering needed to make it all work effectively. We’re still a few years – and the arrival of standards and simplified tech – away from the day that Smart Home gadgets go mainstream.

5. Laptops and desktops become increasingly marginalized. It’s been a rough downhill slide for traditional computers. Whether you attribute it to the rise of the smartphone and tablet computing (and you should), to the marketplace failure that was Windows 8, to the increasing longevity of older PCs that have processors which don’t become obsolete every couple of years, or some combination of all of those factors, dramatically fewer consumers are buying laptops and desktops anymore. When tech pundits once mused if you could replace a desktop with a laptop, now they wonder if it’s possible to just carry a tablet. And for many kinds of users (especially more casual ones), the answer is “yes.” Sure, we’ll still use traditional PCs for some time to come. But 2015 will see sales slump even further, with the slack picked up by the enormous iPad Pro, the Samsung Galaxy View, and Surface Pro tablets.

6. Likewise, smartwatches will flounder. Smartwatches have been vying for attention for a number of years now, but they’ve yet to go truly mainstream. And 2016 is unlikely to change that; no manufacturer (Apple included) has been able to tell a compelling story around wearable devices, and there’s no sign that anything fundamentally different will happen next year, either. The devices released in 2015 were incremental refinements; Apple Watch tried to marry fitness and notifications in a pretty form factor, while Pebble, Motorola, Martian, and others tried making more watch-like discs. Certainly, there’s a market for people who want smartphone notifications on their wrist, but average consumers would rather wear an inexpensive fitness band, it would seem, if anything at all.

7. There will be consolidation in the streaming business. There’s little doubt that traditional media companies – TV, cinemas, and music labels – have been thoroughly disrupted. We’ve watched as streaming devices like Roku, Chromecast, and Apple TV have replaced cable and trips to the theater for many people, and of course music streaming is now the standard way most people access their music. But the proliferation of streaming services can’t go on forever, and the cracks are already starting to show in the music world with the collapse of Rdio. On the video side of the business, there’s a limit to consumer patience for fragmentation. To have all the options cable subscribers were used to, you now need to pay for Hulu, Netflix, HBO, Amazon, and more. Next year, CBS will launch its own subscription streaming service with original content. At some point, the industry will need to simplify this ecosystem or risk losing customers to a better disruptor.

8. While crowdfunding grows amid greater scrutiny. Sites like Kickstarter and Indiegogo launched a revolution in venture capital, and consumers have responded enthusiastically. Crowdfunding has essentially doubled in size year over year for the last few years – $16B in 2014, these sites collected over $34B this year and are on track to surpass the established, traditional VC industry in 2016, which is just $30B. On the other hand, look for more regulation for crowdfunded campaigns in 2016 or soon thereafter. A handful of lawsuits in 2015 – like the FTC’s case against a video game developer who spent his campaign’s earnings on personal items and never delivered any of the promised rewards — have exposed deceptive campaigns that essentially stole backer’s money in what is today an almost completely unregulated space.

9. Passwords will start to become obsolete. There is no doubt that the Internet is an increasingly dangerous place, and passwords are perhaps the weakest link in your online armor (with the possible exception of social hacking). Passwords are probably going to be with us for a while, but it’s becoming less and less necessary to enter them by hand. Instead, 2016 is going to see more and more alternative input systems, especially biometric. Many phones already use fingerprints, for example, and Windows 10 works with a small number of cameras to perform face recognition. With widespread understanding of the weakness of passwords, this trend will only accelerate.

10. While mobile payments proliferate. Finally, 2016 will be the year that the nails finally get driven into the coffin of cash and credit cards. Consumers have been slow to adopt mobile payments, but that’s changing, especially now that retail locations and more reliably accepting mobile payments and the technology is becoming more dependable. Apple Pay finally takes Discover, for example, Samsung has acquired LoopPay, giving them acceptance at a staggering 30 million retail locations (that’s compared to less than a million for Apple Pay), and universal electronic credit card Coin is rolling out an EMV-compatible version

VR Headset for Galaxy S4

You may have thought the recent OnePlus 5 spec rumors were fake due to them skipping over the OnePlus 4. While those spec rumors may be fake, and we’ll talk about those here too, it looks as if the next flagship smartphone from OnePlus will actually be called the OnePlus 5. For those who are unaware, this is likely due to Chinese culture, in which the number 4 is bad luck (similarly to how Americans feel the number 13 is unlucky) and it is generally avoided if possible.

We’re used to OnePlus using model numbers like A1000, A2000 and A3000 so when A5000 showed up in China’s Radio Regulation Authority database, it made people pay attention. The certification database entry doesn’t reveal much in terms of specs, but it does show what this specific model will have in terms of wireless and cellular capabilities.

As mentioned, there have been some rumors surrounding what type of VR headset for Galaxy S4 hardware will be used in the upcoming OnePlus 5. Publications have talked about a 1440p display, 6/8GB of RAM, 7mm thin body, and the Snapdragon 835 SoC. They’ve also mentioned a 3,000mAh capacity battery, and a 16MP front-facing camera paired with a 23MP camera on the back of the phone as well. We never published those rumored specs because we have yet to be given a reason to believe they’re actually legit.

They very well may be real, but until we hear something from a reliable source, we tend to avoid rumors like this. OnePlus has been rumored to use a 1440p display since the OnePlus 2 and it just hasn’t happened yet. The OnePlus 5 could be their first time doing so, but we’ll just have to wait and see what the company announces.

Nexus 7 VR Headset

The Android parent was expected to refresh its Nexus 7 VR headset offering last year but sadly this didn’t happen. Even though Google postponed Nexus 7’s launch date, the entire Android community is still anxious to get a chance to get their hands on the highly anticipated tablet. The device is now expected to arrive in late 2017 alongside the Pixel 2 smartphone.

Google has yet to confirm the tablet’s existence but fortunately for us, the internet is filled with rumors and speculations about the tablet’s features and hardware. We have rounded up the most reoccurring and liable ones and we’re going to present them right now.

Best VR Headset for Nexus 6

Think of it as the Galaxy S6…S. The Samsung Galaxy S7 ($672 for 32GB as tested on Verizon Wireless; $699.99 unlocked) looks so much like the Galaxy S6 that you’d be excused for thinking it’s not a major upgrade. Rather than reinvent the design like it did last year, Samsung has focused on performance improvements in the S7, restoring crowd-pleasing features that were missing from the S6 (like a microSD slot) and boosting battery life. It’s the best Android phone available in a truly one-handed form factor. That said, we’re giving our Editors’ Choice to the very similar Galaxy S7 Edge, which has more functionality and better battery life in a package that’s not much bigger.

Size and Design of the Best VR Headset for Nexus 6
There’s been a lot of talk over the last year about how smartphones are getting boring—essentially, how they’ve plateaued in terms of changing our lives. I think the industry is just taking a breath before it goes crazy with virtual and augmented reality, which we’ve started to see with Samsung’s Gear VR.

View All 6 Photos in Gallery
But smartphones are still our most personal computers. They’re our always-ready cameras with which we record our lives. They’re our cloud-based brains that Waze us around town or Google the answers to pressing questions. They’re our connections to our friends and family, via Facebook, or text message, or old-fashioned phone calls. They’re essential, used hundreds of times a day, and even an incremental improvement in how they work is still an improvement in our lives.

Here’s an incremental improvement, for instance. As someone who uses my phone on the subway a lot, I’ve been raging for years about phone size bloat—how smartphones are getting wider and wider, making them harder to use with one hand. I’m happy to say that the 2.74-inch S7 is actually narrower than the S6 (2.78 inches), making it the same width as the HTC One M9, and narrower than any other high-end Android phone I can think of. That will make the S7 the go-to device for anyone who thinks that high-end phones are just too big.

The Galaxy S7’s AMOLED screen is the same size (5.1 inches) and resolution (2,560 by 1440) as the S6’s screen, but as Dr. Ray Soneira of DisplayMate Labs points out in a detailed report, Samsung amped up the brightness quite a lot. The S6 already had an excellent, highly visible screen; the S7 is even better. Both phones put the iPhone 6s to shame.

Samsung has returned waterproofing to the Galaxy S7, without the need for the irritating port cover from the Galaxy S5. This time, it’s using a water-repellent coating inside the device. I washed and dried the phone, and even spilled hot coffee on it, with no issues. The phone is rated IP68, which means it’s fully submersible and dustproof.

Samsung Galaxy S7

From left to right: Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge, Samsung Galaxy S6, Samsung Galaxy S7, Apple iPhone 6s
But yes, otherwise, the S7 looks a lot like the S6, although its slightly more rounded back is just a touch thicker, to allow for a bigger battery. The bigger battery, in turn, gives the phone less of a protruding camera bump on the rear. At 5.36 ounces, it’s heavier, too (the S6 is 4.87 ounces). But it’s still a metal-and-glass unibody design, coming in black or gold, with a physical Home button that functions as a fingerprint sensor below the display. The sensor is the same as the one in the S6; very good, but it’ll miss an off-center touch. The phone also still uses traditional micro USB, not USB-C, for charging and accessories.

While the phone is about the same size as the Galaxy S6, many existing Galaxy S6 cases just barely won’t work on the Galaxy S7. It’s a real pity. When I slotted the S7 into an S6 case, I found the headphone jack was moved slightly to the right, so the hole for the jack on the case was in the wrong place.

Phone and Network Performance
Qualcomm is back. Last year was a bad one for the leading chip manufacturer, during which it put out some decent processors and one real disappointment, the Snapdragon 810. Well, the Snapdragon 820 is no 810. It has the finest modem in the business, and what’s looking like highly competitive app performance.

The Snapdragon 820’s X12 modem supports LTE download speeds up to 600Mbps and uploads up to 150Mbps, using technologies that help with every carrier. 4×4 MIMO will make for faster speeds on T-Mobile and Verizon, while 3×20 carrier aggregation becomes important on Sprint.

I couldn’t perform any tests that pushed the limits of LTE performance, but I could check Wi-Fi and weak signal conditions. The phone had no trouble with a 150Mbps symmetrical Wi-Fi connection. On Verizon’s network, the S7 did a better job holding onto LTE in poor signal conditions than the iPhone 6s, pulling out better data rates. My first day with the phone, I saw some odd behavior involving the phone not recovering or trading up to 4G LTE from dead zones, but that seemed to sort itself out after a few days.

The phone supports voice-over-LTE (VoLTE) and Wi-Fi calling. The unlocked model supports all US carriers, even Verizon and Sprint. If you buy a model directly from a carrier, it will exclude certain frequency bands for each of the other three carriers. The phone will work on other carriers, but not as well as that carrier’s model or the unlocked unit. So if you buy a carrier unit, it’s best to treat it as a phone exclusively for that carrier. If you want to move it around, get the unlocked model. (We have tested the Galaxy S7 on Verizon, Sprint, and T-Mobile.)

Call quality is fine, but I wish it was a little better. The earpiece is plenty loud, and there’s no distortion; that’s not the problem. And noise cancellation is excellent. I suspect the issue is just Verizon’s voice codecs. With standard calling, voices sound a bit harsh with a trebly punch. On VoLTE, you get a more balanced sound without the harshness, but it’s not HD-level precise unless you’re calling another phone on your carrier.

Samsung Galaxy S7
Battery life on the sealed-in 3,000mAh cell is noticeably better than on the S6. I did more battery tests than usual on this phone, because the Galaxy S6 had an annoying habit of draining its battery really quickly in standby mode. Unfortunately, this behavior tended to appear only after a month or two, and I haven’t had the S7 for a month or two. But early signs are promising. The S7 got 9 hours in our video streaming rundown, as compared with 7 hours, 13 minutes for the S6. In standby mode without heavy CPU usage, the S7 drained 11 percent of its battery in eight hours. Not bad. Intense usage killed it in about 6.5 hours, which isn’t too bad either.

The phone supports both fast charging and dual-standard wireless charging. Using the included fast charger, we got the phone from zero to fully charged in around 90 minutes.

Android Performance
The Galaxy S7 runs Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow with Samsung’s skin over it, on a 2.15GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 processor. It’s the first of several Snapdragon 820 phones we’ll see this year, most notably, the LG G5 will join it very soon.

The Snapdragon 820 benchmarks faster than any other chip we’ve seen in an Android phone. With Geekbench scores of 2,333 single-core and 5,330 multi-core, it beats the Galaxy S6 (1,440 single/4,811 multi) and the Galaxy Note 5 (1,472 single/5,020 multi) handily. GPU performance is also better, taking the GFXBench Manhattan test from 15 frames per second (fps) on the previous generation, to 25fps here.

Now, whether it’s faster than the iPhone is another question. The iPhone 6s still benchmarks faster in single-core mode than the Snapdragon 820 does, with a Geekbench score of 2,475, and it does much better with on-screen graphics frame rates because of its much lower resolution screen. The question of whether single-core performance or multi-core performance matters more is still intensely debated in programming circles.

What really matters is how the phone performs in practice. I like to use the controls of Asphalt 8 to check for responsiveness, and the S7 is as smooth as butter—as you’d expect. Apps launch quickly and there’s no lag. The S7, like the past two generations of Galaxy phones, also has dual-window or pop-up multitasking.

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Samsung has, once again, tried to lighten the burden of its Android skin. While the icons are still all restyled, Samsung ditched its Briefing screen to the left of the main home screen. It has also resisted the current, horrid trend to get rid of the app drawer in favor of a more iPhone-like interface.

One likable customization is the always-on screen, which floats the time, date, battery status, and basic notification information on the screen at all times; you can swap it out for a calendar or one of a few preset images. The always-on screen information is convenient, and doesn’t appear to consume much battery. And you can always turn it off if it’s not for you.

But there are a ton of bloatware applications, consuming a total of 9.17GB on our Verizon device. As Verizon only sells a 32GB model, that’s pretty rough. And bloatware apps can’t be deleted or moved to SD cards. The other carrier versions were also loaded up with bloatware.