LG gives us our best look yet at the G Watch

A wave of Android Wear-powered smartwatches is coming later this year, and one of the first will be the LG G Watch. Details are still sketchy, but LG has now revealed more features of the smartwatch, along with a trove of images showing the device from every angle.

The G Watch will feature an always-on display, unlike the Samsung Gear 2 and some other smartwatches on the market that require a gesture or a tap to wake up. For a device that serves, among others, as a watch, that’s a pretty important feature, though the always-on screen will surely reduce battery life. LG has not detailed how it plans to mitigate this issue.

LG will offer the G Watch in at least two color options – Stealth Black and Champagne Gold. The “minimal and sleek” device will be dust and water resistant, though LG has not yet revealed its IP rating.

The only other Google partner to reveal an Android Wear product so far is Motorola. The Moto 360 features a striking round design, but the G Watch is very attractive as well. If features were the same, which device would you pick right now?

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Google researching ways to add PGP encryption to Gmail

In Just A Few Minutes, SpaceX Will Attempt To Launch A Reusable Rocket — Watch Now! (Update: It’s Over)

Quick! Tune in!

SpaceX is about to attempt something pretty historic: launching a rocket in such a way that much of it can be reused in later launches.

If the launch is successful, the payload of the rocket will spend a few days cruising to the International Space Station, then drop off a bunch of supplies. The “first stage”(the largest — and often the most expensive — engine component) of the rocket, meanwhile, will break away in a controlled fall back towards earth to (hopefully) be used again, with a pair of landing legs being deployed on the way down.

Even if the landing legs deploy properly, the landing is aimed for the water… which the legs can’t actually stand up on. They’ll simulate a landing to test that their landing thrusters seem to work — but in the end, it’ll just fall right into the water. This is more about testing to make sure the process works than trying to actually get this thing to make a perfect landing, but it’d still be damn neat to watch — alas, we probably won’t get to see that bit in the live stream.

I’ve embedded both NASA and SpaceX’s stream below, because each offers some pretty amazing angles and insight. If you watch both simultaneously, you probably want to mute one or the other.

Update – 12:26: The rocket launched on schedule at 12:25 p.m. pacific, and is currently en route to the ISS.

Update – 12:40: Success! Looks like everything went smoothly with the first segment of the launch. The rocket launched smoothly (despite bad weather), and will spend the next few days cruising to the ISS. As such, the stream is now over, so we’ve removed it. We’ll know in a few days if the test landing process went as smoothly.

Update – 5:00 pm: Elon Musk has tweeted to announce that the first stage has landed safely in the Atlantic.

Neither NASA nor SpaceX has put up a pre-cut video of today’s launch just yet – I’ll add it here as soon as they do. In its place, here’s a video of the Falcon 9 doing a short-distance test flight — it takes off from its launch pad, hovers for a second, and then lands itself safely a few feet away from its original location.

Netflix 4K streaming inches towards public release but will we be able to watch it?

Jennypdx

This week, HDTVtest found that Netflix’s 4K streaming appears to be live and operational but only to those with compatible ultra high-definition TV’s. Since the end of 2013, Netflix has stated that the company’s goal was to stream content in the 4K format by the end of 2014.

In the last year, Netflix has started offering Super HD and 3D streams if your ISP has signed up for the company’s new content delivery network. These Super HD streams need 5-7 Mbps of bandwidth while 3D streams need 6-12 Mbps of bandwidth. Netflix has previously stated that 15 Mbps will likely be the minimum needed for the format, though you’ll likely be happier with speeds of around 50 Mbps.

The reviews of the 4K streaming are positive:

“Every time the video stream switched from [1080p HD] to [2160 HD], it’s as if a veil had been lifted from the front of the screen, bringing objects – even faraway ones in long shots – into breathtaking clarity.

Whether the improvement is visible from normal viewing distances remains debatable, however there’s no denying that House of Cards S2 in 4K Ultra HD was by far and away the best-looking title we’ve seen among Netflix’s catalogue of movies and television series, making the company’s previous highest-quality [Super HD] streams seem blurry in comparison.”

Other issues with Netflix’s 4K streaming include ABC/Disney having no interest in 4K streaming and Gizmodo pointing out that binge watching a season of House of Cards in 4K will slam someone’s data usage to the tune of 75GB’s. For many on DSL connections, that puts them right up to their data cap limits while non-DSL users will see their data use rise tremendously and therefore put them closer to their caps. For example, with Comcast expanding their usage-cap trials of 300GB’s, it is not hard to see families running quite close to their data caps.

Add those issues onto the fact that someone will need a 4K display with a built-in HEVC decoder, an updated Netflix client TV, a sufficiently fast broadband speed package with high to no data caps, and an area in which Netflix has enabled 4K streaming, it is not that difficult to conclude that this product is still far away from general public use.

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Motorola names Rick Osterloh as its new President

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LG G Watch reportedly coming in early summer for under £180 in the UK, or roughly $300

Back in March Google took the wraps off its new Android Wear platform, giving us a look at what the future of Android-powered watches will have in store for us. At the time, both LG and Motorola gave us early previews of their own Wear powered devices, the Moto 360 and LG G Watch.

Speaking of the latter device, LG originally promised the watch would be one of the first to Android Wear products to ship, with a 2nd quarter release target. Now LG has confirmed to Pocket-lint that the watch will arrive before July and will cost less than £180 in the UK (roughly $300). Considering U.S. pricing is often less than a device’s equivalent pricing in Europe, we wouldn’t be too surprised if the watch arrives around the $250 mark in North America, though that’s just speculation on our part.

Aside from the potential pricing and release details, LG also confirmed that the G Watch will offer user-changeable straps for those looking to further customize the look of their device. When it comes to more detailed specs, we really know little else about the LG G Watch, other than it will utilize Google’s new watch UI and software, giving us the power of Google Now right on our wrist.

Although many of us at Android Authority prefer the looks of the Moto 360, if the LG G Watch can offer similar functionality and specs in a cheaper (square) package — it could still prove to be a major success for the company.

What do you think of the Android Wear platform, and are you more interested in the G Watch or the Moto 360? Conversely, do you feel existing watches like the Gear 2 are still the better deal, based on what we currently know?

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OnePlus One to use 2.5GHz Snapdragon 801 with 3GB of RAM

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Samsung announces new entry-level Galaxy Ace Style

Watch The Myo Armband Make One 2048 Addict Feel Like He’s “A Part” Of The Game

In a new demo video of how Thalmic Labs’ Myo gesture control armband might be used to control devices in the future, we see a player of the addictive puzzler 2048 interacting with the game with hand and finger movements, as picked up by the interface accessory. Myo developer kits are in the wild currently, and all kinds of software just like this is bubbling up as a result.

This new Myo integration is built by Brandyn White, CEO of Dapper Vision and a PhD student in computer science at the University of Maryland. His WearScript library was originally designed to make it easy to hack apps for Google Glass, but in the video above, it’s being applied to Myo programming to make it possible to control up/down/left/right movement actions for 2048, the puzzle game where you combine multiples of two to attempt to build to a score of (duh) 2048. If you’ve played Threes and have a problem putting that game down, don’t pick up 2048 by the way. Especially not the Doge version.

Myo is designed to be used with all types of devices. The most exciting yet is probably Oculus Rift integration, but this demo video starts to show how it might even provide an interesting way to work with your smartphone in the future, too.