Gadgetory

this week on the cnet tech review take a look under the hood of Apple's new iOS 5 hands-on with the new HTC evo and the new HTC evo find out who's fastest in our tablet speed test and I've got all the dirt on what really goes on at area 51 it's all coming up right now I ever when I'm Hollywood 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 some unique tech wisdom in the form of the bottom line let's start with the good between all of our coverage from e3 and breaking down iCloud last week we didn't have time to tell you about the other big news coming out of WWDC specifically all the new features we can look forward to in iOS 5 as we promised in last week's show here's kent german to break it down for you hi I'm Kent chairman senior editor here at cnet com titters like a first look at the beta version of Apple iOS 5 it will run on the iphone 3gs it will run on the ipad and then i'll run on the ipod touch as well i'm going to start off with notifications because that's one of the more exciting ones luckily Apple has taken a page from androids book actually of course Apple does it differently by a pulldown menu so you just take the top of the screen you pull down and you'll see all your notification just see missed calls you see missed emails Apple added a couple new things though you do see whether current weather you can't see a stock ticker so really nice to see those notifications updates it's just something applets need to do for a while and great to see it next feature is newsstand this is very similar to ibooks looks very much like the iBooks icon you can go there you can see all your magazines in one place and then as new magazine subscriptions come in so as new issues come out they'll be downloaded the phone automatically really nice there do a better Twitter integration on iOS 5 you can tweet a photo straight from the photo application so once you take a photo you can do it all from the photo so that's really nice you can also do things like add a location you can sync Twitter with your contacts list and you can tweet directly from YouTube safari and map so nice to see there we also have a new reminders app now that a name is due to do is sort of like a to-do list and you can put them all in one thing those send you reminders is you need to the reminders also can be tied to your locations so that's a neat feature camera controls a couple things you'll be able to do is you'll be able to you can you can see gridlines when you're taking a photo you can pinch to zoom and then once you take a photo you'll get camera editing features not a real extensive amount of the but you can do things like crop you can rotate you can do red-eye reduction so nice to see there and again that's just from the photo gallery application I message this is a brand new feature it's very similar to blackberry messenger so it's a free messaging application you can do group messaging you can send multimedia messages so you can send videos or photos and so just another feature to keep in contact and more for messaging one of the best things is pc free this enables you to activate your iphone and do software updates without plugging the iphone into your computer so that's a great thing inside the email will have few options you'll be able to flag messages you'll have rich text format among other things better indentation and the ability to drag addresses between your two CC and BCC line also in the mail application you can search within the body of emails rather than just the subject to and from line so another good addition finally in the Safari browser you'll be able to add links to a read later list also have a reader up breeder feature that will strip down all the junk on a webpage and just give it a nice clean format other things you will see is you'll get a split keyboard for the iPad you get a revamped music app for the iPad also in Game Center you can buy games directly from Game Center Apple did say that we'll have 200 new features in iOS 5 so they only really went through 10 of them and I mentioned a few of those 10 here iOS 5 is a smaller update hopefully this sets us up for something bigger down the road and such as up for a new hardware maybe hopefully in the fall up to twenty eleven i'm kent german you are the first book at Iowa's fine now as Kent mentioned apples promised 200 new features in this latest smaller update stay tuned for Brian tongs look at more of those hidden nuggets later in the show needless to say iOS four running on an iPad 2 has plenty of good things going for it already processing speed being one of them but how does it stack up against a word the opponent's like the Galaxy Tab 10.1 leave it to eric franklin to put them through their paces hey guys eric franklin here i'm in the cnet labs and it's casual day apparently you know i recently called the samsung galaxy tab 10.1 the ipad 2 of honeycomb tablets thanks to a stem form factor and clean design but how does it compare to the ipad 2 in performance I've come up with three new tests to find out cue the on-screen stopwatch first up web speed loading tests will go to nba.com see how the Heat are faring and they're off and the galaxy tab is in the lead ipad 2 is up looks like the galaxy tab is about done the ipad 2 comes in right behind it so there you go website loading see second speed test downloading an app we'll see how fast download angry birds seasons alright and they're off looks like the samsung galaxy tab is on the move the ipad is on the move as well they're both going and they're both going pretty fast through ipad 2 is catching up looks like FN 20 very very close it's gonna be close very close and the ipad 2 is done same time is solid and now it's done so samsung galaxy tab few seconds behind the ipad 2 and app downloads now for our final test Facebook photo upload speed each photo has been taken with its tablets camera let's go and they're off and the ipad is done the galaxy job is now done so a little bit behind the ipad but didn't really make much of a difference they both really really fast and both really really close very close results it seems a 10.1 is about on par with the ipad 2 and performance give or take a couple of seconds or more detailed test results check out crave but until next time stay for us so let me get this straight the Galaxy Tab 10.1 and the ipad 2 look alike cost the same and their performance is basically too close to call I can't imagine why Apple and Samsung are accusing each other of copying and court right now in other Android news it was like the evo fairy visited our offices this week HTC grace us with not one but two new evo models see if you can tell the difference between them 3d is a big trend in tech these days and now it's making its way into smartphones hey everyone I'm Banita and I'm here to bring you another look at the HTC EVO 3d for sprint we first got a glimpse at this android smartphone during the ctia spring show and it's finally hitting store shelves on june twenty-fourth for 1 99 99 with a 2-year contract it's the newest addition to the carrier's evil line and as you might have guessed from the name it offers 3d features first it has a glasses-free 3d display there's something called a parallax barrier that sits on top of the 4.3 inch qhd super LCD and displays two different images so you get that 3d effect without the glasses you can use it to play 3d videos and games and the phone actually comes pre-loaded with a copy of The Green Hornet in 3d and a trial version of spider-man three DD the game for some reason we couldn't get the movie to play on our review in it but we checked out some 3d videos from youtube and also played spider-man it's not going to show up in our video here but it was pretty neat to see images popping out from the screen there are also dual five megapixel cameras on back that you can use to capture 3d photos and video and you can shoot 2d as well and there's actually a convenient little switch here on the right side to switch between the two modes 2d photos looked great but the 3d pictures made my eyes crossed since it was hard to focus on them and gave me a bit of a headache Scott Stein another cnet editor here and I actually compared it to the Nintendo 3ds which also uses the same technology and we noticed that the 3d offers more depth of field so instead of objects just popping out the image goes deeper into the background which I thought provided a better 3d experience it's all pretty fun in small doses but 3d isn't the reason why you should get this phone you should actually get this phone because it offers good performance and the solid set of features the EVO 3d improves on the original evo with Qualcomm's 1.2 gigahertz dual-core processor and it also ships with larger battery definitely noticed an improvement and battery life and the phone felt very snappy the smartphone is also running Android 2.3 Gingerbread and features the latest version of HTC Sense which bring some great enhancements like the new lock screen if it could add some things to my wish list it would be more internal memory and slightly better call quality but overall I think the evo 3d ranks amongst prints best android smartphones especially if you're looking for the latest and greatest features I'm Bonnie ton this has been your first look at the HTC EVO 3d for sprint hey I'm Donald Balan today we're taking a first look at the HTC evo view 4G this is a 7-inch tablet running android 2.3 and running on sprint's 4g network it's going to set you back three hundred ninety nine dollars plus a two-year commitment to a data plan which started thirty four ninety-nine a month but a tablet contracts give you the heebie-jeebies there's a Wi-Fi only version that sells for four hundred ninety nine dollars called the HTC Flyer either way I think the price is a little steep for an Android tablet that's not running Google's latest honeycomb tablet OS the evo view is more or less just like a super-sized HTC android smartphone and that's not necessarily a bad thing personally I like the way HTC skins Android with their own interface and this 3d design style but I don't love it enough to pay this much especially when most of the interest these days are with 10-inch tablets that are running Google's honeycomb the thing that really does make this tablet special is the magic pen or the HTC scribe pen usually a stylus is a clue that a tablet is using a cheap resistive screen but this one is different you don't need the pen to use the tablet in fact you can't even use this pen for navigation it's really just here for taking notes and signing documents which might sound dull but the whole thing is very well thought-out and includes integration with Evernote to store your notes online for a limited time Sprint is bundling this pen with the tablet but if you want to replace it it still going to cost you eighty dollars so expect you probably will lose it because the round design here has a tendency to roll off tables so that's the evo view 4G from HTC and sprint now with all the great 10-inch honeycomb tablets out there for under five hundred dollars it's tough to justify the cost but if you have your mind set on a 7-inch tablet and the pen technology and the 4g wireless speed sound like something you'll really use the evo view 4g could be the perfect fit for sina com on Donald Bell well aren't I guess that wasn't that hard but there you have it thumbs up for the phone thumbs kind of sideways for the tablet let's go ahead and take a break because we still have a lot more show to come we'll be right 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 your at cnet TV continuing on in the good since Apple showed it off last week more and more of the hidden features of iOS 5 have been emerging brian Tong is up next with some secrets inside iOS 5 hey guys Brian song here with cnet com and apple recently announced some of the new features that we can expect to see in iOS 5 for idevices when it's released this fall we have the developer version so we wanted to show you some of the hidden features in iOS 5 you might not know about now customization has always been one of iOS is weaker points and they aren't bringing widgets but there are other ways to trick out your phone how about keyboard shortcuts go into general and your keyboard settings and you can now create a shortcut you type in that will display a phrase to make life a whole lot easier Apple's also improve the accessibility options that can be helpful for all of us you can turn on the LED flash for alerts but you can also turn on custom vibrations on your iPhone now it's not what you think so you guys can stop giggling now go to sounds and find vibration patterns you have the ability to enter and use pre-made ones or create your own custom vibration by tapping on the screen for a contact that you know is more important than others now on the iPad you can also use a custom gesture to open different menus on your screen by turning on assistive touch at the moment you can't assign it to unlock your screen or launch any apps but it's probably coming in the future and the multi-touch gestures we've seen from previous builds have returned in iOS 5 the Notification Center is one of the big revamps and you can create the alert style if it's more important the option to view it in your lock screen and how many notifications show up at one time you also have the option to purchase more ringtones or alert tones in the preferences if you check out the photo app it allows you to create albums on your idevice and also move photos into different albums Safari the web browser has a nice option that allows you to open a new page in the background instead of interrupting the current window you're viewing and the weather app has a panel for your local weather instead of adding a new one for every city you visit and for all you sketching was something to hide you will now be able to delete individual calls from your call list plus one of the biggest ones you can't see right now iOS 5 supports 1080p video playback which sets them up for better video output directly to TV sets and higher resolution displays for future I devices now there's plenty of other features buried in here but we wanted to show you a few of them that you can expect to see in the fall i'm brian Tong with your first look at some of the hidden features in iOS 5 use it wisely that local weather screen is pretty nice such a drag to have to manually enter the town's name whenever you travel to a new location especially if there isn't like a bank with a thermometer nearby ask your parents about that one but first let's see what's wrong with the world this week in the bed for many people driving a hybrid brings with it a feeling of satisfaction we're doing one's part to protect the environment and slow down global warming well I hate to break it to you but you're driving one of the cars on our top 5 list this week I wouldn't be bragging too much some cars do indeed get much greener in their hybrid version others are a different shape I'm Brian Cooley with top 5 brownest hybrids for 2011 rolling piles of green wash that get barely better MPG than their conventional version and charge you plenty for that lack of improvement we've ranked these guys by the skin difference in their average mpg over the non-hybrid version and when there was a tie we broke it by looking at tailpipe emissions and price penalty so the hybrids that made this list are sorted dirty piggy and expensive not what you had in mind is it let's do it number five is almost a caricature it's the cadillac escalade hybrid one of the first cars that signaled this whole hybrid thing is going to get a little out of hand it gets just five mpg better than a conventional laid but that's at least good enough for 21 mpg average versus a hoggish 16 on the straight gas engine model but you'll pay eight thousand dollars more for that lift number four is the BMW x6 activehybrid that kind of coop utility vehicle average mpg of 18 just for mpg better than a gas v8 and it sports a huge price bump almost twenty grand more than the gas engine ride while delivering the worst emission numbers of any car in this list talk about some inconvenient truths number three brings us another BMW the active seven hybrid just three mpg average better than a regular 750 I though to be fair with this guy lacks in MPG improvement it makes up in speed it's really quick like four and a half seconds 0 to 60 but I'm sorry the regular gas engine 750 s no slouch either and for the extra 13 grand you can easily soothe your ego with a really nice bottle of some bold losing ye every time you lose a drag race number two on our list of the brownest green cars is the VW touareg hybrid get this just to em gee better than a straight-up touareg without an electric motor and it costs 16 grand more presciently VW calls this the rare beast in its lineup and with numbers like these my hunch is it'll stay that way before I take you to the number one brownest hybrid for 2011 let's restore your faith in the most hyped cars on earth here is a list of some hybrids that do deliver stellar double-digit MPG gains over their conventional counterparts those guys will change your fundamental fuel outlet okay the number one hybrid car that makes you mouth the word idiot when its owner turns away is the lexus LS 600h l also just to MPG better than a non-hybrid LS 460 l with a middling 20 MPG average and for that you pay sit down 37 thousand dollars more I know the equipment levels will vary between these models but still you could buy an entire lincoln MKZ hybrid for the premium it takes to get a lexus LS hybrid and still have a couple grand left to go buy some carbon credits or something okay if this whole piece is just backfired horribly and now you want to buy one of these dubious rides head over to cars cnet com where we have most of them reviewed and for more top pods like this go to top five dot cnet com I'm Brian Cooley thanks for watching actually I think the message is pretty clear there watch all the top fives you want but do not buy any of those cars I mean that Lexus thing ought to be a crime fact while I go call the green police let's wrap things up with this week's bottom line now a couple of weeks ago brian Tong filled in for me while I went on a secret assignment but now I can tell you all about it I went with the CBS early show crew to interview the author of a controversial new book about area 51 and I talked to some of the guys who worked there so let's get straight to the crazy stuff shall we area 51 wouldn't be area 51 unless there was controversy and conspiracy and Annie Jacobson's new book area 51 delivers both she cites an anonymous source who told her a surprising story about the Roswell UFO and it's connection to the mysterious Nevada military base well you know what I write in the book has made some people uncomfortable because it's not reflective of what they want to believe the government does or did at area 51 and in the end of my book I reveal what someone told me an engineer who was a source for me what the source told me was that a flying disc really did crash in New Mexico it was taken to wright-patterson and then it did wind up at area 51 hence the name area 51 it went there in 1951 and that he was one of five engineers who reversed that reverse engineered that craft it did not come from Mars it came from Russia and Joseph Stalin apparently engineered this craft sent it as part of a disinformation and fear campaign the craft is believed to have been built by two former third reich airplane designers name Walter and Reimer Horten and they had the blueprints on this craft and apparently Stalin got a hold of it and sent this craft as a means of a hoax allow the War of the Worlds and her source told her there were little green men inside the aircraft but not the kind you think this is the information that came to me from the stores who I absolutely believe I stand by I've spoken with him since the book has been published and what he said was that the child sized aviators had been the byproduct of this horrific human experimentation program by Stalin in collaboration with the doctor from Auschwitz dr. Josef Mengele eventually my source told me we chose to do the same thing and that upsets a lot of people this idea that the United States government could have experimented on humans the allegations have shocked readers and some of the veterans of area 51 I can't conceive of it I that was that was not the atmosphere we weren't that desperate at that time I can't even picture Stalin being that desperate but then again people they do crazy things sometimes in the interest of you know I just can't picture it because I would then be forced to saddle want to be part of it we don't know we can't you know it's just personal opinion everybody's got their own opinion about certain things and for me it's completely plausible because I looked at the entire landscape of area 51 and that need to know and the compartmentalization of secrets and I believe that something like this a rogue program could have happened area 51 says Annie Jacobson is a story of incredible feats of technology but also a story about a place far out in the Nevada desert with hardly any oversight and hardly any rules we had no bosses you might say waiver top was it we were top of our field and everyone anyone superior just and we reported to no one except the customer I rather see it as a clear progression of what can happen because one of the themes that I write about in the book is using the Lord Acton quote power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely some of the men in the book show great moral courage no matter what and I right about that these these are America's cold warriors but what I also write about in the book is a number of men who experience a downfall when power sort of overwhelms them and you have the old archetype of hubris taking over and they push things too far and there's very serious repercussions remember that area 51 was set up to push military science and technology faster and further than any other nation that is what we did and the rogue program is an extension of pushing science over the edge into black science or wicked science now since we interviewed Annie Jacobson TD Barnes and Jim Friedman for this piece controversy about these allegations has continued to grow the Roadrunners the group of area 51 veterans that meet to talk about their experiences there now say they feel blindsided by the story and they've emailed us to try to discredit the tale what would you hope would come out of this well I would hope that people would read the whole book and be able to make that judgment for themselves at the end because everyone gets to have an opinion about whether or not they believe the veracity of my source as I do and if it is even remotely possible what he said happened then there are questions to ask about black operations at area 51 one thing is clear and probably always will be very few people will ever know the whole truth about area 51 the bottom line this week god I'd love a conspiracy I got to say there are plenty of people who are shocked and outraged by the allegations in Annie Jacobson's book but I for one and with her read it for yourself and draw your own conclusions let me tell you it's a hell of a read and head over to cnet com for other videos in our series about how to get to area 51 or as close as you can get and a video on all the cool tech and inventions that came out of the place all right folks that's our show 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 thank you for watching you