Machine learning is everywhere. It's an integral part of our smartphones and smart home appliances, running customer service chat bots for big retailers, and hard at work recognizing people and actions in security systems, among numerous other applications. Neural networks are the backbone of the robotics and...
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When you think of Dell or its Alienware brand, the first thing that comes to mind is probably PCs, and not peripherals. Be that as it may, Dell is uniquely positioned to capitalize on the peripheral market as part of a larger play, one in which it can sell gamers on a unified ecosystem through its Alienware division...
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Owners of the ASUS ZenFone AR may be tempted to ask their friends and co-workers, "Do you even AR, bro?" Actually asking that question is a surefire way to solicit puzzled (and perhaps annoyed) looks, but once they see what the ZenFone AR is capable of, those dirty glances and quizzical faces will quickly morph into...
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Although the brand isn't very well known here in the U.S., Huami is actually the second largest manufacturer of smart wearables in the world. As such, it was only a matter of time before the Chinese manufacturer, which provides wearable technology to Xiaomi, made its way onto our shores. Huami and Xiaomi...
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Internet privacy is kind of like a VCR or CD player, in that one day our kids will ask us “you used to have that?” It’s staggering how much of our online activity is tracked, catalogued, and used for a wide array of purposes, most of them related to commerce. But if you’re a dissident, journalist, someone who lives in...
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Though it still hasn't grabbed consumers like some manufacturers had hoped, the smartwatch market is growing rather quickly, and a number of good options are currently available. For some users, price may be one of the key factors holding them back from buying a smartwatch. While many watches cost at least $250, and...
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In November, Amazon announced the latest addition to its hardware line-up, the Amazon Echo. The Echo smart speaker doubles as a digital assistant and home entertainment device. It’s an always-connected, always-available Siri or Cortana-like device designed for your home that can provide answers to common questions...
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At this point, it is clear that virtually all of the major mobile device manufacturers are laser focused on the wearables market. While one could argue that the war for the wrist began a couple of years ago, most of the smartwatches that have shipped thus far have served only a small niche. Early adopters have peeked at the Moto 360,...
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ASUS recently refreshed its 7-inch MeMO Pad 7 tablet with Intel’s new Atom Z3745 Bay Trail-based processor. Having overcome its rocky start, the latest generation of Atom processors is building a reputation for power efficiency and computational chops. Despite its early days in ill-fated netbooks, today's Atom looks to be a good...
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LG’s new G Flex smartphone is the “world’s first curved flexible smartphone” according to the company. We’ve seen smartphones that have curved bodies before, but this is the first smartphone to feature a display and battery that are curved as well. LG claims the curved design of the G Flex is optimized...
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I recently had the good fortune to sit down with David Drum, Research Manager at MOREnet and Google Glass Explorer, to get some hands-on time with the high-tech face computer that Google is testing in the wild. Over a cup of joe at a local coffeeshop, David gave me a chance to play with Google Glass for myself. The first thing I realized upon...
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There are some interesting things happening in the tablet world. Perhaps the biggest development of all is that Apple's iPad family is finally starting to yield market share to the competition, and that's primarily due to the increasing number of affordable Android slates being pumped out by name brand manufactures. At first, pedestrian price...
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If you've been waiting for the other shoe to drop in the tablet market, today is the day. We're a few days ahead of Microsoft's Surface and Windows 8 launch on October 26th but the folks at ASUS (and other OEM partners) have been given the green light to let fly with their Windows RT tablet offering today. Microsoft is allowing...
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Apple upped the ante in the tablet market with its Retina display found in the third-generation iPad, which offers a resolution of 2048x1536. Since then, some Android tablet manufacturers have followed suit by increasing screen resolution and providing a better display overall. Acer's latest Iconia Tab A700 is one such tablet that aims...
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Apple's iOS 6 is now available to download, and Apple has been quick to tout some "200 new features" over iOS 5. But of those 200, only a select few are noticeable to the end user. While a ton of stuff has been tweaked under the hood to enhance or otherwise modify the OS, not all of it is apparent to the end user. There are...
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There are generally two types of iterative processes that manufacturers go through with respect to product development and refinement; there are feature and performance enhancements that result from market feedback and there are enhancements as a result of technology advancements and cost reduction (or both combined). When it launched...
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When we first received the new NVIDIA Tegra 3-powered Asus Eee Pad Transformer Prime for testing, we had solid communication from both Asus and NVIDIA that this tablet was one of Google's test vehicles for their upcoming Android 4.0 operating system, also referred to as Ice Cream Sandwich. Besides the fact that...
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It sometimes rolls this way. One of the most hotly anticipated product launches of the year and, you guessed it, the prized package drops on your doorstep for testing and evaluation literally hours before the official launch hits. Have we had nearly enough time with this sleek little minx? Absolutely not. But when the...
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Half-baked. That would describe the large majority of Android-based tablets we've seen come through our test labs here at HotHardware thus far. Even Motorola's Xoom, though infused with Google's latest Android 3.0 (Honeycomb) release, felt like it could use a bit of polish in spots, though most of the refinement wouldn't need to come...
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The Asus Eee Pad Transformer tablet is one of the more interesting Android tablets on the market in that it has a keyboard docking station that essentially allows it to convert to an Android 3.0 Honeycomb-based netbook on the fly. Add to that a powerful dual core 1GHz NVIDIA Tegra 2 processor and a reasonable MSRP of $399 (just the tablet,...
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Dell's fairly recent entrant into the tablet market certainly made a splash when it hit the scene a few months ago, with the company's CEO and namesake randomly making cameo appearances with the device in hand, like one of his one personal private stock toys. Of course, once we got our hot mitts on it for a proper man-handling, we became...
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In early September, Steve Jobs took to the stage and unveiled the new-and-improved Apple TV. What was once considered a “hobby” device was reworked, streamlined, made more affordable, and aimed squarely at the masses. It enters an increasingly crowded market of devices that offer near-instant access to libraries of recent movies...
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