Author: azeeadmin

For a company with a two letter name, LG loves nothing so much as an unwieldy title. A form of overcompensation, perhaps? Whatever the case, the lengthening of LG phone names is one of this world’s few constants, and as such, it ought to be no surprise that the company’s first 5G handset happily continues the trend as the LG V50 ThinQ 5G.

The phone will be available for Verizon and Sprint customers “this summer”. As for price, I’d put that somewhere in the admittedly vague ballpark of “more expensive that a regular LG phone.”

The device looks to be pretty premium, sporting a 6.4 inch OLED display, Snapdragon 855 and a beefy 4,000-mAh battery. The company isn’t revealing how 5G will impact battery drain, but it’s pretty safe to say it will take a hit. On the upside, anyone who picks up a 5G phone in 2019 will almost certainly be spending a lot of their time still riding the LTE rails.

The phone could eventually be available to additional U.S. carriers.

For a company with a two letter name, LG loves nothing so much as an unwieldy title. A form of overcompensation, perhaps? Whatever the case, the lengthening of LG phone names is one of this world’s few constants, and as such, it ought to be no surprise that the company’s first 5G handset happily continues the trend as the LG V50 ThinQ 5G.

The phone will be available for Verizon and Sprint customers “this summer”. As for price, I’d put that somewhere in the admittedly vague ballpark of “more expensive that a regular LG phone.”

The device looks to be pretty premium, sporting a 6.4 inch OLED display, Snapdragon 855 and a beefy 4,000-mAh battery. The company isn’t revealing how 5G will impact battery drain, but it’s pretty safe to say it will take a hit. On the upside, anyone who picks up a 5G phone in 2019 will almost certainly be spending a lot of their time still riding the LTE rails.

The phone could eventually be available to additional U.S. carriers.

At its MWC keynote in Barcelona today, Microsoft promised to keep the HoloLens ecosystem open. That means third-party app stores and browsers, for example, with Mozilla already announcing its Firefox browser for HoloLens today.

“Developers will have the freedom to create their own stares as first-class citizens,” Microsoft’s HoloLens chief Alex Kipman said today and stressed that developers will also have the freedom to create great web browsers.

All of this should be obvious, but there have, of course, been times in Microsoft’s history where an open ecosystem was not exactly what the company focused on. And browser competition was surely not on the top of the company’s list during the browser wars. That cost the company dearly, both financially and in terms of developer goodwill. Maybe that’s why it is now making this announcement, too.

“We believe in an open API surface area and driver model,” Kipman said. “We will continue to participate in guiding open standards like OpenXR so anyone can innovate with our headset from the sensors that are being used to the differentiated experiences that are being created.”

Microsoft closed out today’s big HoloLens 2 debut with a surprise appearance by Epic Games CEO, Tim Sweeney. The gaming exec was clearly impressed by the technology’s future for both developement and consumer augmented reality.

“I believe that AR is going to be the primary platform of the future for both work and entertainment,” he told the crowd at the event.

The Fortnite creator is kicking things off on the development side, announcing that Unreal Engine 4 support will be coming to the headset. The move is part of a larger strategy for Microsoft to open the system up, as it looks to grow its key foray into the world of mixed reality.

For Epic, meanwhile, it’s part of a larger embrace of both Microsoft’s solution and all things AR. Sweeney noted that the company is not ready to announce any kind of consumer-facing AR offering, that they’re certainly on the way, and the company “will support HoloLens in all of our endeavors.”

Microsoft is really hoping to get down to business with the next version of the Hololens. In fact, the software giant announced a new customization program for the HoloLens 2.

How, precisely such customized versions of the XR headset will look remains to be seen, but the company’s first partner, construction hardware company Trimble, is offering a pretty interesting glimpse. The company joined Microsoft on-stage to debut a new collaboration.

The XR10 is a customized hardhat with a swiveling HoloLens 2 built-in, so construction works can get a heads-up display on site. This first partnership is a clear sign of where Microsoft hopes to go with this second generation of its headset, bringing the technology beyond the confines of the office and into real world site. 

Pricing is still TBD, but the headset will be available at the same time as the regular Hololens 2.

Today’s Mobile World Congress kickoff event was all about the next Hololens, but Microsoft still had some surprises up its sleeve. One of the more interesting additions is the Azure Kinect, a new enterprise camera system that leverages the company’s perennially 3D imaging technology to create a 3D camera for enterprises.

The device is actually a kind of companion hardware piece for Hololens in the enterprise, giving business a way to capture depth sensing and leverage its Azure solutions to collect that data.

“Azure Kinect is an intelligent edge device that doesn’t just see and hear but understands the people, the environment, the objects and their actions,” Azure VP Julia White said at the kick off of today’s event. “The level of accuracy you can achieve is unprecedented.”

What started as a gesture-based gaming peripheral for the Xbox 360 has since grown to be an incredibly useful tool across a variety of different fields, so it tracks that the company would seek to develop a product for business. And unlike some of the more far off Hololens applications, the Azure Kinect is the sort of product that could be instantly useful, right off the the shelf.

A number of enterprise partners have already begun testing the technology, including Datamesh, Ocuvera and Ava, representing an interesting cross-section of companies. The system goes up for pre-order today, priced at $399. 

Today’s Mobile World Congress kickoff event was all about the next Hololens, but Microsoft still had some surprises up its sleeve. One of the more interesting additions is the Azure Kinect, a new enterprise camera system that leverages the company’s perennially 3D imaging technology to create a 3D camera for enterprises.

The device is actually a kind of companion hardware piece for Hololens in the enterprise, giving business a way to capture depth sensing and leverage its Azure solutions to collect that data.

“Azure Kinect is an intelligent edge device that doesn’t just see and hear but understands the people, the environment, the objects and their actions,” Azure VP Julia White said at the kick off of today’s event. “The level of accuracy you can achieve is unprecedented.”

What started as a gesture-based gaming peripheral for the Xbox 360 has since grown to be an incredibly useful tool across a variety of different fields, so it tracks that the company would seek to develop a product for business. And unlike some of the more far off Hololens applications, the Azure Kinect is the sort of product that could be instantly useful, right off the the shelf.

A number of enterprise partners have already begun testing the technology, including Datamesh, Ocuvera and Ava, representing an interesting cross-section of companies. The system goes up for pre-order today, priced at $399. 

Microsoft unveiled the latest version of its HoloLens ‘mixed reality’ headset at MWC Barcelona today. The new HoloLens 2 features a significantly larger field of view, higher resolution and a device that’s more comfortable to wear. Indeed, Microsoft says the device is three times as comfortable to wear (though it’s unclear how Microsoft measured this).

One of the knocks against the original HoloLens was its limited field of view. When whatever you wanted to look at was small and straight ahead of you, the effect was striking. But when you moved your head a little bit or looked at a larger object, it suddenly felt like you were looking through a stamp-sized screen. HoloLens 2 features a field of view that’s twice as large as the original.

“Kinect was the first intelligent device to enter our homes,” HoloLens chief Alex Kipman said in today’s keynote, looking back the the device’s history. “It drove us to create Microsoft HoloLens. […] Over the last few years, individual developers, large enterprises, brand new startup have been dreaming up beautiful things, helpful things.”

The HoloLens was always just as much about the software as the hardware, though. For HoloLens, Microsoft developed a special version of Windows, together with a new way of interacting with the AR objects through gestures like air tap and bloom. In this new version, the interaction is far more natural and lets you tap objects. The device also tracks your gaze more accurately to allow the software to adjust to where you are looking.

“HoloLens 2 adapts to you,” Kipman stressed. “HoloLens 2 evolves the interaction model by significantly advancing how people engage with holograms.”

In its demos, the company clearly emphasized how much faster and fluid the interaction with HoloLens applications becomes when you can use slides, for example, by simply grabbing the slider and moving it, or by tapping on a button with either a finger or two or with your full hand. Microsoft event built a virtual piano that you can play with ten fingers to show off how well the HoloLens can track movement. The company calls this ‘instinctual interaction.’

Microsoft first unveiled the HoloLens concept at a surprise event on its Redmond campus back in 2015. After a limited, invite-only release that started days after the end of MWC 2016, the device went on sale to everybody in August  2016. Four years is a long time between hardware releases, but the company clearly wanted to seed the market and give developer a chance to build the first set of HoloLens applications on a stable platform.

Kipman noted that HoloLens 2 will launch with a full set

It’s worth noting that Microsoft never positioned the device as consumer hardware. I may have shown off the occasional game, but its focus was always on business applications, with a bit of educational applications thrown in, too. That trend continued today.

“When you change the way you see the world, you change the world you see,” Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said, repeating a line from the company’s first HoloLens announcement four years ago. He noted that he believes that connecting the physical world with the virtual world will transform the way we will work.

Microsoft unveiled the latest version of its HoloLens ‘mixed reality’ headset at MWC Barcelona today. The new HoloLens 2 features a significantly larger field of view, higher resolution and a device that’s more comfortable to wear. Indeed, Microsoft says the device is three times as comfortable to wear (though it’s unclear how Microsoft measured this).

One of the knocks against the original HoloLens was its limited field of view. When whatever you wanted to look at was small and straight ahead of you, the effect was striking. But when you moved your head a little bit or looked at a larger object, it suddenly felt like you were looking through a stamp-sized screen. HoloLens 2 features a field of view that’s twice as large as the original.

“Kinect was the first intelligent device to enter our homes,” HoloLens chief Alex Kipman said in today’s keynote, looking back the the device’s history. “It drove us to create Microsoft HoloLens. […] Over the last few years, individual developers, large enterprises, brand new startup have been dreaming up beautiful things, helpful things.”

The HoloLens was always just as much about the software as the hardware, though. For HoloLens, Microsoft developed a special version of Windows, together with a new way of interacting with the AR objects through gestures like air tap and bloom. In this new version, the interaction is far more natural and lets you tap objects. The device also tracks your gaze more accurately to allow the software to adjust to where you are looking.

“HoloLens 2 adapts to you,” Kipman stressed. “HoloLens 2 evolves the interaction model by significantly advancing how people engage with holograms.”

In its demos, the company clearly emphasized how much faster and fluid the interaction with HoloLens applications becomes when you can use slides, for example, by simply grabbing the slider and moving it, or by tapping on a button with either a finger or two or with your full hand. Microsoft event built a virtual piano that you can play with ten fingers to show off how well the HoloLens can track movement. The company calls this ‘instinctual interaction.’

Microsoft first unveiled the HoloLens concept at a surprise event on its Redmond campus back in 2015. After a limited, invite-only release that started days after the end of MWC 2016, the device went on sale to everybody in August  2016. Four years is a long time between hardware releases, but the company clearly wanted to seed the market and give developer a chance to build the first set of HoloLens applications on a stable platform.

Kipman noted that HoloLens 2 will launch with a full set

It’s worth noting that Microsoft never positioned the device as consumer hardware. I may have shown off the occasional game, but its focus was always on business applications, with a bit of educational applications thrown in, too. That trend continued today.

“When you change the way you see the world, you change the world you see,” Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said, repeating a line from the company’s first HoloLens announcement four years ago. He noted that he believes that connecting the physical world with the virtual world will transform the way we will work.