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Windows 10 Fall Creators update brings mixed reality and 3D to the masses

The Mixed Reality Viewer lets you bring your 3D creation into a real-life setting

If your Windows 10 PC isn’t up to date, you’re going to want to make sure you update your system with the Fall Creators Update. That is because the Fall Creators Update brings a slew of super cool new “tricks” and practical features. Specifically, on the creative front, the Windows 10 Fall Creators Update helps the “average joe” create some incredibly advanced 3D and mixed reality masterpieces. It’s no coincidence that Microsoft also announced today that Mixed Reality headsets are finally available from Dell, Lenovo, HP, and Acer, starting at $399. It’s clear that Microsoft is committed to encouraging the masses to start using Mixed Reality, and this update ensures that folks can get really creative with Mixed Reality beyond just playing games. 

Here are 15 features that the Windows 10 Fall Creators Update brings to the table:

1. The Photos app has been completely reimagined. The app now lets you easily edit and create polished video slideshows using photos, videos, and transitions. You can even throw 3D effects onto them. Available 3D effects include everything from lightning to confetti. A future update will even let you bring in 3D objects and animations.

The redesigned Photos app lets you create video slideshows, complete with Ink and 3D effects

2. Remember when the Paint app was just for scribbling? Well, times have changed and the Paint 3D now makes it incredibly easy for just about anyone to create and edit advanced 3D objects. You can create and design a 3D object from scratch, or you can import one to play with from the Remix 3D library which has thousands of free 3D objects to use. But wait – it gets better! Microsoft is focusing a lot on mixed reality in this update. But as cool as mixed reality is, until now, most users have just been end users. The Creators Update changes all of that with the Mixed Reality Viewer. Using your camera, Mixed Reality Viewer lets you bring your 3D creation from Paint 3D into a real life setting. You can also easily share your creation afterwards on social networks.

You can draw and create 3D objects from within the Paint 3D app

3. You can now bring your 3D creation into Powerpoint presentations, as well as Word and Excel documents.

You can bring your 3D creation from Paint 3D into PowerPoint

4. You can now pin your “favorite” people to the taskbar so that you can quickly communicate with them via Skype or Mail. When you want to share a file with that contact, all you have to do is drag a file directly onto the pinned contact.

5. Pinning your favorite web sites to the taskbar is back! This is one feature that I sorely missed.

6. Game Mode now enables developers to access all the power of the PC and dedicate it to games for an even better gaming experience.

7. Annotating your ebooks from within Edge is now possible. This includes being able to highlight in 4 colors, underline, and make comments.

Annotating your ebooks from within Edge

8. Microsoft Edge is coming to Android. A preview is already available in the Google Play Store, and the idea here is that just like with Chrome, you can use Microsoft Edge on your phone to catch up where you left off with the tabs you had open on your PC.

9. Do you often lose your pen? The new Find My Pen feature will tell you where you were the last time you inked on your PC, hopefully helping you figure out where you might have left it.

10. Your Pen can now be used as a PowerPoint Clicker!

11. OneDrive files can now be accessed on demand, allowing you to save disk space. So online-only files download on demand with just a double-click when you need them. Of course, you can choose to have select files readily available offline.

12. You can now recover your PIN or Password right from the lock screen – even if you’re using an AAD or MSA account.

13. The native calculator app now includes a currency converter, which even works offline for times when you’re traveling internationally and might not have internet access.

14. Filling out and annotating PDFs no longer requires a third party app! You can fill in PDFs right from within Microsoft Edge, you can ink on the PDF, highlight text and erase your annotations.

15. There have been improvements made for accessibility, including the addition of Eye Control.

EyeControl with the onscreen keyboard

Overall, the Windows 10 Fall Creators Update allows just about anyone to create advanced masterpieces for everything from videos, to 3D objects, and afterwards, that can easily bring their creations into a mixed reality setting with minimal effort.

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Windows 10 Fall Creators update brings mixed reality and 3D to the masses originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on October 17, 2017 at 9:30 am.

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Microsoft’s Surface Book 2 can replace your gaming PC (Hands-on)

The Surface Book 2 now comes in a 13.5″ and 15″ model

The Surface Book was announced way back in October of 2015, so you might say that a Surface Book 2 has been long overdue. Fortunately, the Surface Book 2 has finally arrived and it offers fives times more graphics performance than the original. Not that the original Surface Book was a slouch by any means, but the new Surface Book 2 is quite frankly a beast. To that effect, the new Surface Book 2 is 3x more powerful than the original Surface Book. Microsoft says it’s powerful enough to be your gaming PC, and also a workstation replacement. You’ll be able to play 1080p games on the Surface Book 2 Pro without a hitch. A big part of that raw power is thanks to the Intel Quad Core i7 processor and Nvidia GeForce GPU it’s running on. 

Improved hinge

Design wise, the form factor is now more or less the same. But Microsoft has improved the dynamic fulcrum hinge for a more stable touch experience. There are now two Surface Book 2 display models to choose from – a 13.5” and 15” model. Both come with a PixelSense display and an improved backlit keyboard. The 13.5” model packs in a 3000 x 2000 (267 PPI) display, and the 15” model houses a 3240 x 2160 (260 PPI) display. The 15” model also comes with Xbox Wireless built-in.

When it comes to battery life Microsoft says that the Book 2 offers 70% more battery life than it’s predecessor and twice the battery of life of today’s MacBook Pro. More specifically, Microsoft is claiming a battery life of up to 17 hours or 5 hours in tablet mode. Microsoft has conveniently included both a USB Type-A and USB Type-C port.

Pricing for the Surface Book 2 begins at $1,499 (with a Core i5 configuration). Visit microsoft.com for more info.

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Microsoft’s Surface Book 2 can replace your gaming PC (Hands-on) originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on October 17, 2017 at 9:00 am.

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This pill bottle will remind you to take your meds and warn you if you already did

At least once a day I roll my eyes at an announcement for a new IoT (Internet of Things) gadget. Do we really need another toaster, refrigerator, or toilet that’s connected to the internet? Ok, I made up the last one… at least I don’t think there’s a toilet that’s connected to the internet – yet. But back to the point of this news post. Pillsy is a pill bottle that’s connected to an app that’s connected to the internet. Wait, don’t click your back button yet because this IoT gadget actually sounds pretty useful.

Pillsy is really a pill bottle cap that uses Bluetooth to pair with your mobile device and the Pillsy app to remind you when it’s time to take your meds or vitamins. Yes, I know you can just use the calendar app on your phone to remind you to take your meds. But Pillsy goes two steps further. It records WHEN you took the medicine AND it will warn you if you try to take another dose before it’s due. This is really convenient if you have memory issues or if two people give meds to pets and humans in the same household.

Pillsy is available with a child-resistant vial or a twist off bottle for vitamins. Either version is $49 for one cap/bottle combo which I think is a little pricey. However, the price goes down a little when you purchase additional caps. For more info go to pillsy.com.

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This pill bottle will remind you to take your meds and warn you if you already did originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on October 17, 2017 at 8:00 am.

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Memobottle is a slim way to stay hydrated

I’ve been trying to get better about staying hydrated throughout the day. In addition to the fitness and health benefits, I just feel better when I’m hydrated. To that end, I’ve been on the lookout for unique containers to carry water, and I stumbled on Memobottle. Its unique shape is what caught my eye. Memobottle has a rectangular footprint with a relatively flat aspect ratio, about the size of a medium-sized textbook. What I like about this is that it is slim and can slide right in with your notebooks, laptop, and other ECD items into your backpack, purse or gear bag and its aspect ratio means that it won’t be bulky like most water bottles, which are cylindrical. It’s also made from reusable, washable, BPA-free plastic. Available in two sizes, the more petite 375mL A6 ($28) and the larger 750mL A5 ($36). Visit memobottle.com for more info and Amazon to order.

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Memobottle is a slim way to stay hydrated originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on October 16, 2017 at 10:00 am.

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Don’t call them smart, Huawei’s Mate 10 series are the most intelligent phones ever made (Hands-on)

Thanks to artificial intelligence, the Mate 10 is able to recognize the object that the camera is looking at and it automatically switches the camera into “flower” scene mode.

Huawei’s flagship phone has landed in the form of the Mate 10 and Mate 10 PRO. The new Mate 10 series not only brings an all new glass body to the series, but it’s also the first of Huawei’s phones to come with the AI powered NPU (Neural Processing Unit) that Huawei announced at IFA last month. What does that mean exactly? It means that the Mate 10 and Mate 10 Pro are a lot more intelligent than your average smartphone because they are able to learn about your behavior and adjust to it. But more on that later. 

On the design front, the Mate 10 and Mate 10 PRO sport an all new glass body that is curved on all four sides. That means that there are no sharp edges, so they are comfortable to hold. But there are significant differences between the Mate 10 and the even more premium Mate 10 PRO. For starters, the Mate 10 packs in a 5.9” FullView display with a 16:9 aspect ratio and a barely-there-bezel, while the Mate 10 Pro packs in a 6” OLED FullView Display with an 18:9 aspect ratio and a high screen-to-body ratio. The 6” display on the PRO is packed into the body of a 5.5” device, and its 18:9 aspect ratio allows for a neat smart split screen multi-tasking mode on the PRO. Both phones are also powered by a Kirin 970 processor that offers 20% better performance over the 960.

Both devices pack in a large 4,000 mAh battery, but neither of the phones come with wireless charging. Huawei explained to us that between the large capacity battery and SuperCharge, there isn’t much need for it. To that effect, SuperCharge provides a full day’s charge in just 20 minutes, and it’s also 4x faster than wireless charging. Huawei is also proud to show off that the Mate 10 series phones are the first phones to meet qualifications for the TÜV Safety certification, so you can be sure the phone won’t explode on you. And for those who are still paying attention to headphone jacks, the Mate 10 has a 3.5mm jack on top, while the PRO has a type c jack only, but it does come with a 3.5mm adapter.

Aside from sporting the larger display of the two, the Mate 10 PRO is IP67 certified for water and dust resistance, which is something the Mate 10 lacks. Another significant difference between the two models is that the Mate 10 PRO houses its fingerprint reader on its back side, while the Mate 10’s fingerprint sensor is located on its front side.

Both Mate 10s’ dual-lens cameras were co-engineered with Leica to produce 12-megapixel RGB + 20-megapixel monochrome sensors, optical image stabilization, an aperture of f/1.6, an AI-powered bokeh effect and AI-powered digital zoom.

The Mate 10 will be available in several colors including mocha brown, champagne gold, pink gold, and black, while the PRO will be available in midnight blue, gray, pink and mocha brown, and there will also be a Porsche Design version of the Mate 10 PRO.

Mate 10 PRO

But enough about the hardware – the Mate 10 series also represents a major leap forward for phones thanks to its NPU. This starts with EMUI 8.0 (Huawei jumped from EMUI 5.1 to EMUI 8.0 so they could align better with Android 8.0). EMUI 8.0 unlocks machine learning and artificial intelligence from the NPU. This brings everything to the table from better performance to improved battery optimization. You know how most Android phones slow down with age? Even a year old phone can get quite sluggish. Fortunately, when it comes to performance, EMU 8.0 helps make sure that your phone is “born fast, stays fast”. The NPU helps make that possible through its performance engine. Battery life is also improved thanks to the AI which learns about how you’re using your phone and optimizes for the best possible battery life.

A Food scene is automatically recognized thanks to the NPU

The AI even helps improve the experience of taking photos. To that effect, the phone understands what the camera is looking at, and does real time scene and object detection all powered by AI. Essentially, the phone processes what it’s looking at – as if it were a human brain, and it will set the best camera parameters based on what it recognizes. For example, the Mate 10 recognizes when it’s taking a photo of a sunset vs a plate of food, and it will automatically optimize the camera settings for the object it’s taking a photo of in that scene. It can even recognize when you’re taking cat photos and optimize accordingly! We briefly got to try this feature and were impressed with how quickly the Mate 10 recognized flowers in a scene and automatically optimized the camera for the flowers to create a beautiful photo. In addition to cats and flowers, there are scenes for food, stages (if you’re watching a show), outdoor landscapes, snow, water, low-light, sunsets, plants, portraits, and dogs, and Huawei says that future updates will bring additional scenes.

Mate 10 (Left) and Mate 10 PRO (right)

But this is just the beginning. Huawei has built out a 3rd party app engine with APIs so that app developers can further take advantage of the NPU. With the Mate 10 series, Huawei has become a pioneer in the AI space, and we expect other phone manufacturers to try and play catch up soon.

Last but not least, the Mate 10 has the ability to transform into a mobile PC. That might not sound so unique right off bat, but it actually is. That is because unlike the competition which offers similar functionality, Huawei doesn’t require you to invest in a pricey dock. Instead, you can use just about any inexpensive USB-C to HDMI or USB-C to DisplayPort cable to connect your Mate 10 to a monitor and keyboard for a full desktop-like experience.

Pricing and availability for the Huawei Mate 10 and Mate 10 PRO are not available yet, but we’ll update this story once we have it.

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Don’t call them smart, Huawei’s Mate 10 series are the most intelligent phones ever made (Hands-on) originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on October 16, 2017 at 9:00 am.

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