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Weekly Recap: Essential and Moto Z2 phones, Ballmer’s regrets, Swift Playgrounds and robot, etc.

June 2, 2017.

Essential Phone

Essential PH–1.

Essential PH–1.

Essential PH–1. © Essential Products.

Last January, Andy Rubin, the creator of the Android operating system, founded a startup focused on consumer electronic devices, called Essential Products. At the Code Conference, Rubin unveiled the first Essential phone, which runs on Android (unsurprisingly) and a Snapdragon 835 processor. With a 5.7-inch LCD screen that covers almost the entire front of the device, the phone would be typical of today’s industry offering, except for the U-shaped notch cut out of the top of the screen to accommodate the camera. Like the iPhone, the Essential has no mini audio jack. But the Essential innovates with the accessories which, like the 360° camera, connect to the phone with magnets, communicate with it via 802.11ad Wi-Fi and power up through pogo pins on the back of the phone. The system is reminiscent of Motorola’s Moto Mods. Available by preorder for US$690, the Essential PH–1 will ship in about one month.

Ars Technica, “The father of Android builds a smartphone: The ‘Essential Phone’ is official.”

Essential Products.

 

Moto Z2 and GamePad

GamePad for Moto Z.

GamePad for Moto Z. © Lenovo.

Motorola unveiled the Moto Z2 Play, a midrange smartphone running on Android 7.1.1. Nougat, with a 5.5-inch display, more RAM, and a better camera. It will sell for $499 and will be available from Verizon or unlocked from Motorola’s website this summer. Of the four new Mods Motorola also revealed, the one that has us most excited is the Moto GamePad, which includes dual control sticks, a D-pad and four buttons. It has a 1,035mAh battery so it doesn’t rely on the phone’s battery for power. Motorola says it was developed in partnership with the gaming division at parent company Lenovo.

The Verge, “Motorola announces the Z2 Play and a bunch of new Moto Mods.”

 

Steve Ballmer’s great regrets

Steve Ballmer.

Steve Ballmer. © Mathat/Recode.

What Steve Ballmer coulda shoulda done but didn’t.

One of Steve Ballmer’s great regrets in life is missing the hardware boat. “I was too slow to recognize the need for new capability, and particularly in hardware,” he said at Recode’s Code Conference. “…one of the new expressions of software is essentially hardware.” This tenet is exemplified by Microsoft’s Surface products, where hardware and software complement one another. Microsoft did try to expand its hardware development capability to include smartphones, but its Nokia phone did not exemplify hardware as an “expression” of software. On the flip side, Microsoft was front and centre in the cloud, which it leveraged to develop new products, new software services, new approaches to iterative software, and a new subscription and usage-based sales model.

Also at the Code Conference, Ballmer talked about another of his brainwaves, the USAFacts project, designed to give taxpayers a better view of how government raises and spends money.

Ars Technica, “Steve Ballmer: ‘We should have turned Microsoft into a world-class hardware company’.”

 

Swift Playgrounds and robots

Lego Mindstorms EV3.

Lego Mindstorms EV3. © Lego A/S.

Next Monday, Apple will be launching the latest update for Swift Playgrounds, the iPad software for learning to program in Swift. This version will control robots and drones! Apple announced that many products are already compatible with the application, for example the Lego Mindstorms EV3 kits, the Sphero SPRK+ ball, and several Parrot drones, among others, which all connect to the tablet via Bluetooth. While the educational application primarily targets youth, we believe that the ability to control robots through code will also appeal to the not-so-young… in fact, Apple noted that Swift Playgrounds is being used by over one million people all over the world.

The Verge, “Apple’s Swift Playgrounds coding app now supports robots, drones, and toys.”

 

ARM-powered Windows 10 PCs are coming

Windows 10 ARM-powered PCs at Computex.

Computex. © The Verge.

Microsoft revealed its partners for Windows 10 ARM-powered PCs at Computex. Asus, HP, and Lenovo will be the first PC makers to develop what are described as “mobile PCs” powered by Qualcomm’s latest Snapdragon 835 processor. Microsoft first revealed its plans to bring Windows desktop apps to mobile ARM processors last year, with laptops as the first devices in the market with a version of Windows 10 that supports ARM. The first wave of Windows RT devices included devices from Asus, Dell, Lenovo, Samsung, and Microsoft itself with the Surface RT.

The Verge, “Asus, HP, and Lenovo will all build ARM-powered Windows 10 PCs.”