Gadgetory

this week on the scene at tech review the Samsung Galaxy Nexus is coming sometime Motorola dust off the razor brand how to make sure siri isn't being too helpful and a new digital camera unlike any you've seen before it's all coming up right now hi everyone I'm Molly wood and welcome to the cnet tech review where we collect our hottest videos of the week and tell you what's good and what's bad in the world of tech plus offer our own unique tech wisdom in the form of the bottom line let's start things off with the good the good news is that after a short one week delay samsung and google have announced the long-awaited Galaxy Nexus it's the latest pure Android phone featuring android 4.0 ice cream sandwich the other good news it looks pretty good here's a sneak peek courtesy of our friends from cnet asia samsung is just announced the galaxy nexus smartphone together with google in hong kong this new android smartphone is the first to feature the latest Ice Cream Sandwich operating system it's hardware features include a dual-core 1.2 gigahertz processor 1 gigabyte RAM and near-field communications technology another highlight is the huge 4.65 inch touch screen with a resolution of 1280 by 720 pixels the new android 4.0 OS brought many new features here you see a unified menu screen that puts all your apps and widgets in the same place the camera app is now capable of panoramic images just use the guy and the phone will stitch the shots for you here's a demo of the camera speed this is a big improvement over previous Nexus phones and will ensure you don't miss shots because of shutter lag buttons are all software based in Ice Cream Sandwich so there are very few physical keys on the Galaxy Nexus just power and volume controls on the back is a 5 megapixel camera and a textured back cover made with a material Samsung calls hyper skin we still don't know how much the Galaxy Nexus will cost but we do know it will be available before the end of the year me personally I would have liked a firmer release date some pricing info and maybe a pre-order site but I guess you can't always get what you want the Nexus maybe the latest and greatest in smartphones but there was a time when the motorola razr was the hot phone to half and although that was ages ago in cell phone years some of you who still prefer a flip phone might still be carrying what but if the time has come to upgrade the new droid razr may be just what you're looking for hey everyone I'm Banita senior editor at cnet com and we're here in New York at a very special event where they have unveiled the motorola droid razr yes that's right the razor is back but in a smartphone form and as the previous razors it's very very thin it's 7.1 millimeters thick so as you can see really thin here but a very nice feeling phone on back you've got a Kevlar fiber backing so that's very nice and rugged it's also water repellent inside and out so if you happen to spill some coffee or splash and water it should be all right on friend here you've got a 4.3 inch super amoled advanced q HD touchscreen really really gorgeous very sharp and bright and you know better than previous Motorola phones which has just qhd display so very exciting there on bottom you've got the usual Android buttons the menu home back and search on top you've got it hdmi port as well as a micro USB port and a 3.5 millimeter headphone jack on back there is an 8 megapixel camera and it can do 1080p HD video so even though this phone is very thin it's still very feature packed and powerful it's got a dual-core 1.2 gigahertz processor as well as 4G LTE capabilities software wise it's running android 2.3 point 5 gingerbread a couple of things that Motorola added is moto cast so you'll be able to stream content from your pc to your phone such as videos and music and photos it's also got an application called Smart Actions which will help you automatically do some tasks or optimize battery life speaking of battery life it has a 1780 milliamp lithium-ion battery and they are saying the grated top time is going to be 12.5 hours so you know that was one of my concerns about a phone this size is what would happen to battery life but they're saying is going to be around 12.5 so we'll have to see once we get it in whether that's true or not I'll admit when I first heard the rumors of a droid razr I wasn't sure what to think about it but now that I've have it in hand and have been able to play with it it's really fast and gorgeous I'm really excited about it and hopefully it'll work out in performance testing and everything else the motorola droid razr will be available for pre-orders from Verizon Wireless starting october twenty seventh and the cost will be to 9999 so it is a little bit pricey it'll be available in stores in november but i don't have a specific date also available in november is the new Moto active which they also announced today it's a fitness and music device that also has a heart rate monitor and can hold about 4,000 songs and also can sync with your phone like the droid razr which has a pre-loaded on here so you can check out your workouts and also receive text messages and see incoming calls I'm Banita and this has been your first look at the motorola droid razr for Verizon Wireless okay I admit I'm the only person on earth who really wanted this razor to be a flip phone also but still I can't get over how thin it is now to all of you iphone 4s users out there take note Siri might be cheating on you it turns out that Siri can be used even if your phone is locked with a passcode now whether you prefer to call this a feature or a security flaw is up to you but either way Sharon Vaknin is here to show you how to shut Siri down hey everyone I'm Sharon Vaknin for cnet and today we found a pretty bad security flaw in serie on the iphone 4s if your phone ever gets in the wrong hands anyone can activate siri even if your phone is locked with a passcode all you have to do is long press the home button and siri pops right up from there they can do a number of things like send a text ask for your friend's phone numbers or find out what your address is Siri will even display events on your calendar check it out what's Chris Parker's address kind of freaky right it's only when you try to do something like access an app that Siri asks for your passcode give me directions to Chris Parker's address Sharon I can't get maps and directions while your phones locked you will need to unlock it first thankfully though there is a fix for this head to settings general passcode lock enter your passcode and switch Siri to off where it says allow access to Siri when locked with a passcode now your phone is actually protected of course by doing this you lose the ability to quickly complete tasks with Siri when your phone is locked but the choice between security and convenience is up to you for more how to's and security tips visit how to sina com and feel free to send me any questions on twitter or my facebook page for seen it I'm Sharon Vaknin and i'll see you on the interwebs granted voice commands have been accessible from the lock screen for years but since Siri can do so much more she's exposing a lot more of your information to tampering plus it would have been nice if Apple had told us this was turned on by default or better yet if they had turned it off by default in the past we've shown you how you can create your own ringtones using iTunes but with the introduction of text tones in iOS 5 brian Tong figured it was worth revisiting the process and who am I to stand in his way Brian song here with Cena calm and one of the new features in iOS 5 allows you to use your custom ringtones as custom text tones because there's plenty of you that have reached for your phone when it was someone else who received the text message loser so we're going to show you how to do it and if you've seen our ringtones video the process is almost exactly the same but let's refresh your memory so first off let's start in itunes and find a song like this one that i want to turn into a ringtone or text tone right click on the song and select get info a window will appear with track information and you want to select the options tab and look for the start time and stop time settings click on the boxes next to those settings for now now i know where i want my custom tonus start so i'll enter in a start time and a stop time there's a 40 seconds max duration for itunes custom tones and if you want to use sound effects or sound bites from your favorite movie just make sure you have an audio file that's playable in itunes once you've set the time press ok then go to advanced on the main menu bar and select create AAC version itunes will create the shorter version of your song below the original file you'll see the duration time and you want to drag and drop that version onto your desktop to make a copy now there's a little housekeeping we need to take care of first if the option to create AAC version is not available in iTunes go to your preferences and in the general tab find the section that says when you insert a CD click on the import settings and then select import using AAC encoder the option should now appear in the menu bar you also want to go back to the original audio file in itunes and then check off the start and stop time so that it plays normally from now on okay back to our custom audio file on the desktop we're going to change the extension name on the file from m4a to m4r you'll be asked to confirm the changes and we'll use em for our now from Windows users you'll need to go to your control panel then choose appearance and personalization select the folder options and in the View tab make sure you've unchecked the box to hide extensions for known file types that will allow you to see and change the file type okay we're almost there but before you bring your ringtone back into itunes you have to delete the custom version that we initially created and if you don't do this itunes will not accept the ringtone so this is an important and crucial step once you've done that drag and drop the renamed m4r file into the source column of itunes and the word library should highlight it will copy the file into itunes check out the ringtone session and voila you have a new ringtone plug in your phone into a computer make sure you set it up to sync the ringtones in the appropriate section and your custom tones will be synced to your phone now the final step is to take your iOS device go into your settings then sound and we already know about ringtones so this time let's go to your text tones and you'll be able to choose your default sound of choice from the ones you've created and if you want even more customization you can go into your contacts and set specific ringtones and text tones for your friends I'm Brian song with your how to percussion learning jones and text tones for iOS 5 there's no reason for you to pay money when you can do it this way hey Chewbacca just texted me use it wisely please I beg of you don't get too carried away with your text tones we just learned a few weeks ago that some of you are texting over 40 times a day I don't need to hear at katy perry song every time you do and no Bieber or if you would like to take a moment to set your phone to vibrate I'll give you the chance to do that during this break we'll be back with more tech review right after this welcome back to the cnet tech review our weekly video digest of all things good and bad we've seen here at cnet TV continuing on in the good the ultra books are coming intel announced support for this new category of ultra-thin intel-powered laptops that would compete with macbook airs and they are starting to appear Lenovo's new ideapad is possibly the best looking of the bunch let's have a look i'm dan ackerman and we are here taking a look at the lenovo ideapad u310 othr one of the new laptops in the sub category known as the Ultrabook that's an Intel invented term that refers to laptops that are very thin very light still pretty powerful good battery life kind of like a Windows version of the macbook air you know we've seen a couple of them that are the same price of the macbook air some that are significantly less expensive this model right here comes in two different configurations the one that matches up with the entry-level macbook air has a 128 gig solid state hard drive a core i5 cpu from intel if you go with that set up the window Vau you 300 s is actually a hundred dollars cheaper than the macbook air and you know what this is probably one of the nicer looking windows laptops we've ever seen so that actually seems like a pretty good deal especially if you think that this includes things like an HDMI output USB 3.0 things are not going to get on the macbook air this exact model sitting right in front of us however is the more expensive version this has a big 256 gig SSD drive at a core i7 CPU very powerful very enviable stuff that actually works out to be 1599 the exact same as the 13-inch macbook air that has that bigger hard drive and that faster cpu if they're exactly the same price I don't know I still might be tempted to go with the macbook air just because that's such a great all together system and the design and the touchpad and the keyboard everything works fantastically on that now on this model much like we see with a lot of other Lenovo's keyboard is x1 it's got a nice big touchpad the keys have that lenovo ideapad thing we they curve out just a tiny bit at the bottom I find that helps with some of my sloppy tightening I kind of catch the bottom edge of the key we're normally on a perfectly squared off key I'd miss it one not that we've got is the 13 inch screen native resolution is 1366 x 768 that's perfectly normal for a 13-inch laptop but when you get up to this price range it kind of want something a little bit a little bit nicer maybe a 16 by 9 even the macbook air is a 1440 x 900 slight difference there because that's a at 16 x 10 verses 16 x nine design of this however is really great it's super thin super light when you close it it kind of looks almost like a book from the side it's got the little lips kind of stick out a tiny bit the body is stamped from a single piece of aluminum and as you can see there are no vents on the bottom it actually uses some very subtle vents here on the side and they claim that the keyboard actually acts as a venting system itself letting heat out through the keys although we certainly didn't suffer any hot finger while typing on it this Ultrabook concept is still unproven but if we see more systems that cost the same we're hopefully less than a macbook air and that look and work as nicely as this one I think there's a lot of legs there and going into next year thereafter that hopefully we'll see a lot more super thin systems like that that will leave them become the basic standard for laptops of all sizes I'm Dan Akron and that is the Lenovo IdeaPad u310 admit I was skeptical of this fleet of MacBook Air killers but it looks like Intel could be on to something after all also I like that burnt umber color but now let's turn our attention to less promising devices in the back a fleet of MacBook Air killers might be possible but the fleet of would-be iPad killers is pretty much a sinking proposition and none are sinking faster than this fusion garage thing I love new and innovative tech well at least I'm supposed to love new an innovative tech right we're all supposed to love new and innovative things but the truth is we only love new and innovative when it's actually well-executed hi i'm eric franklin and today we're taking a first look at the fusion garage grid 10 tablet the grid team has a unique UI but okay i won't bury the lead it's not well-executed first off there's no home or back button virtual or otherwise instead you have to use two finger swipes for those commands swiping to the left takes you back and swiping down from the top takes you home now it rather have actual or virtual buttons do this well this way works fine too as long as the tablets lay down on the surface trying to swipe with two fingers while holding the tablet makes for a finger crampy and experience though also the grid tens angular pointy corners make it uncomfortable to hold and we have the bruises and our palms to prove it okay we don't have bruises but those corners really do dig into the palms this brings us to the way the grid 10 handles navigation to apps apps are grouped into different clusters and the clusters are by default expand it and spread across the screen it seems to be fusing garages solution for having to flip through pages of apps like on a typical tablet and works a lot like the way folders do on an iPad luckily you can edit the grid so that the clusters are closer together making them easier to find once they're all expanded however it becomes difficult to find the cluster and therefore the app you need quickly there's a little mini map in the corner to help but the fact that there's a map to help you navigate the interface leaves even more credence to the idea that the interface needed more work before release features wise the left side of the tablet hosts a headphone jack a 40 pin connector for power and connecting to a PC a microSD card slot and hole for the speakers on the opposite edge are more speaker holes a micro-sim slot unusable in our Wi-Fi version and a power button within white LED light the front side includes a low-quality 1.2 megapixel camera performance wise navigating and launching apps seems more sluggish than Don other tablets also the screen doesn't rotate to a line when in an upside down horizontal position which is kind of weird and the screen has a low brightness and darkened severely when view from the right side though innovative the grid 10 is severely held back by its user interface this overly complex inefficient you I with is ridiculously unnecessary two-finger swipe navigation is clunky to use perform sluggishly and feels unfinished there's potential here but not enough to warrant a recommendation once again i'm eric franklin and this has been a first look at the fusion garage grid 10 so that's not shooting to the top of any holiday lists sometimes multi-touch is just a little too multi sorry guys actually let's give them a break and move right along to this week's bottom line if the fusion garage grid 10 was trying to be innovative the lytro camera really is innovative I've been excited about this light field camera since it was announced back in June and I'm even more excited now that light row has shown off some working prototypes hey guys Brian song here with Cena TV and we have a first look at the Lytro camera this is the first ever light field camera now you see this design it's really unique it's not a traditional camera because this camera does not do traditional things so when you talk about your standard digital cameras you know you focus on one one angle one specific amount of light focus on a piranha subject but here this captures everything a light field sensor captures all the light information in the picture so what I'm going to do here is kind of show you an example we're going to take this camera right here now and we're going to just go up really close the beauty of this you do not need a focus I know it doesn't sound like it could happen but you don't need to focus on the picture I just snap it instantly and I have this dinosaur right here in the floor now some of the specs inside of this camera it includes an 8x optical zoom and f2 constant aperture really unheard of in any kind of camera at this size and what you can do once you have the pictures in here is you'll plug it into your computer your pc or your mac the software that comes included allows you to manipulate the picture so no matter what I take right now after the fact I'll be able to choose what I want to focus on so I mean like I said really crazy amazing stuff now if you look at the form factor on here there's not too many buttons there's really not many buttons at all you have your standard power button you also have your shutter button it's an instant shutter and you have here at the top of you kind of slide back and forth you'll have a zoom what also makes this product unique is that this glass screen in the back this is a touch screen that allows you to interact with the pictures just like you interact with it on your computer so you can swipe left or right to see some of the previous pictures you've taken and then what's a beauty of this is in the camera the software is all there which enables you to pick a focal point and then it focuses it on the camera just some really amazing software again you don't need a focus when you take your picture so the big question is when are these going to be available you can jump on a light show comms website there's a few models out there the graphite and the aqua blue color they'll be going for eight gigs at three hundred and ninety nine dollars and then if you talk about the red hot model that's going to be a 16 gig model for 499 but they'll be starting to ship early sometime in 2012 but overall this is just some really killer technology first time we've ever seen it bringing it to you in your living room i'm brian Tong christina TV with the first look at the lytro camera the bottom line this week now every side is your good side it's not often that a technology appears that's actually all new exciting and pretty affordable as for that lipstick case design hey if that's what it takes to accommodate mega ray optics I am fine with it I ordered mine in blue alright that's going to do it for this time but come back next week for an all-new cnet tech review until then there are tons of great videos available every day at cnet TV com I'll see you next time and you for watching