Month: May 2024
The OnePlus Watch 2 broke the nerdy covenant that smartwatch crowns must scroll
When I reviewed the OnePlus Watch 2 last month, I said it had a digital crown. I did so because it had a button with grooves that you could twist and press. I didn’t think much of it, but a few readers contested its crown-ness. This, they said, was naught but a mere button.
To that, I furrowed my brow.
The problem was that twisting the OnePlus Watch 2’s “digital crown” didn’t do anything. It broke the unspoken nerd covenant that smartwatch crowns must scroll. Pressing the button brings up an app menu, but twisting it? Zip, zilch, nada. On other smartwatches, twisting a crown generally lets you scroll through menus and notifications — whatever’s on your display. Since this button didn’t do that, the people argued, it could not be a digital crown, style be damned.
When I type “What’s a digital crown?” into Google, the top results tell me it is a large, protruding dial on an Apple Watch that’s based on a mechanical watch’s crown. It’s a means of navigating and activating features. This is a deeply dissatisfying answer.
For starters, digital crowns are not limited to Apple Watches. I’m not denying that the first Apple Watch popularized the digital crown: if you look at pre-2015 smartwatches and fitness trackers, you’ll see buttons and pushers were the more common design choice. (Some, like the LG G Watch R, had a crown-like button that could rotate, but like the OnePlus Watch 2, didn’t scroll.) But these days, digital crowns are fairly common outside of Apple’s walled garden. The Pixel Watch and Pixel Watch 2 have one. So do a bunch of my Withings, Mobvoi, and Fossil watches.
Photo by Victoria Song / The Verge
The OnePlus Watch 2’s crown rotates, but doesn’t do anything.
Secondly, digital crowns have never been the primary means of navigating smartwatch menus. The vast majority use touchscreens where swipes and taps reign supreme. (Some smartwatches don’t even have a single button!) The smartwatches that don’t have touchscreens, like some multisport watches from Garmin or Polar, primarily rely on a five-button system for navigation and selecting. Athletes swear by these buttons because they’re immune to sweat and gloves.
Out of curiosity, I rummaged through four drawers of smartwatches I’ve reviewed over the years. A trend emerged. Most watches with digital crowns — from brands both big and small — were those mimicking the feel of an analog mechanical watch.
Image: Breguet
Crowns used to wind a watch spring. Smartwatches have circuit boards, so what do we want from digital crowns?
That, in turn, made me wonder why watches had crowns to begin with. Before the 1800s, winding a pocket watch or a clock often required a special key — which could get pretty annoying. The “crown” seemingly emerged in the 1830s, letting owners turn a decorative part of their watch to wind its mainspring, thereby powering the device’s internals, too. They did it using a dial with ribbed grooves that looked like a king or queen’s crown.
But earlier inventors call it a “knob,” or simply a way to wind a watch without a key, and enthusiasts have traced keyless winding mechanisms as far back as 1686.
Image: Titles of Patents of Invention, Great Britain Patent Office
An 1820 patent: “A new and additional movement applied to a watch, to enable it to be wound by the pendant knob.”
Image: The London Gazette
The London Gazette, 1686: “Lost … a watch in a black shagreen studded case … the spring being wound up without a key, and it opening contrary to all other watches.”
In short, the traditional watch crown was both the main way of interacting with a watch and crucial to the watch’s functioning. But it was always more knob than button.
That was then. Technically, wristwatch wearers haven’t needed to use crowns to wind springs since Seiko made the Astron 35SQ, the first quartz watch, in 1969. Today, analog knobs are mostly used to set the time. The modern digital crown isn’t even necessary for that, so really, it’s all about interacting with a smartwatch.
Each smartwatch maker is different, but I’m struggling to remember a digital crown that just scrolls. More often than not, it works as a select button, a shortcut, or a way to bring up a voice assistant. Some people don’t even use the crown to scroll menus at all. (Yours truly primarily uses it to adjust volume.) So when did scrolling become the defining criterion of what makes a digital crown?
To that, I could probably point my finger at one Sir Jony Ive, Apple’s former design chief. In an interview with Hodinkee, Ive notes that the crown is a “fantastic solution for scrolling and making choices.” Ive mentions scrolling first, and Apple itself made a big hullabaloo about the digital crown as a pioneering input method in the first Apple Watch’s marketing. But again, he primarily refers to it as an input mechanism, a means of interaction — he calls it an alternative to the “panacea” of “direct manipulation,” aka touchscreens.
In typical Ive bombast, he says implementing the digital crown “took a modicum of courage” and that it allowed Apple to “offer a ‘second button’ on the device.”
But you heard the man: it’s a button.
Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge
The digital crown, and how it could scroll, was a big part of the original Apple Watch’s marketing.
Today, Apple doesn’t use scrolling as part of its definition of a digital crown. It calls it an “important hardware input” for the Apple Watch and the Vision Pro. On the Vision Pro, turning the crown doesn’t scroll through menus at all. The rotation does, however, have a purpose. When you turn the crown, it lets you adjust your immersion in virtual environments — as in fine-tune your connection to reality. It also acts as a means of adjusting volume and an alternative to pinching your fingers when you want to select a button.
So, even Apple — which popularized the digital crown as we know it — doesn’t seem to have a hard and fast rule about the crown. Just that the rotation should be an intuitive part of the UI.
After much soul-searching, it’s clear that the OnePlus Watch 2 definitely has a crown. Whether it’s digital boils down to if that rotation truly does anything at all. It ought to have some kind of intentional purpose. Otherwise, why not just have a regular old pusher-style button?
Out of curiosity, I reached out to OnePlus.
Photo by Victoria Song / The Verge
Verdict: this is a crown, just not a digital one.
“The crown does not have any function on the device. The crown rotating when moved leads to the button being more durable than if it was rigid, especially during impacts,” says OnePlus spokesperson Spenser Blank. “Also, Wear OS 4’s intuitive interface plus the OnePlus Watch 2’s large screen allows for easy swipes and interactions, making the adjustments provided by a digital crown unnecessary.”
There you have it. I stand corrected: even OnePlus says it’s not a digital crown. The rotating serves a mechanical purpose — just not one anyone can get particularly excited about. (I know a few glove-wearing athletes who’d take umbrage with Blank’s assertion that a touchscreen suffices.) So let’s leave it at this: the OnePlus Watch 2 has a crown. It’s just not a particularly good one and definitely not digital.
When I reviewed the OnePlus Watch 2 last month, I said it had a digital crown. I did so because it had a button with grooves that you could twist and press. I didn’t think much of it, but a few readers contested its crown-ness. This, they said, was naught but a mere button.
To that, I furrowed my brow.
The problem was that twisting the OnePlus Watch 2’s “digital crown” didn’t do anything. It broke the unspoken nerd covenant that smartwatch crowns must scroll. Pressing the button brings up an app menu, but twisting it? Zip, zilch, nada. On other smartwatches, twisting a crown generally lets you scroll through menus and notifications — whatever’s on your display. Since this button didn’t do that, the people argued, it could not be a digital crown, style be damned.
When I type “What’s a digital crown?” into Google, the top results tell me it is a large, protruding dial on an Apple Watch that’s based on a mechanical watch’s crown. It’s a means of navigating and activating features. This is a deeply dissatisfying answer.
For starters, digital crowns are not limited to Apple Watches. I’m not denying that the first Apple Watch popularized the digital crown: if you look at pre-2015 smartwatches and fitness trackers, you’ll see buttons and pushers were the more common design choice. (Some, like the LG G Watch R, had a crown-like button that could rotate, but like the OnePlus Watch 2, didn’t scroll.) But these days, digital crowns are fairly common outside of Apple’s walled garden. The Pixel Watch and Pixel Watch 2 have one. So do a bunch of my Withings, Mobvoi, and Fossil watches.
Photo by Victoria Song / The Verge
The OnePlus Watch 2’s crown rotates, but doesn’t do anything.
Secondly, digital crowns have never been the primary means of navigating smartwatch menus. The vast majority use touchscreens where swipes and taps reign supreme. (Some smartwatches don’t even have a single button!) The smartwatches that don’t have touchscreens, like some multisport watches from Garmin or Polar, primarily rely on a five-button system for navigation and selecting. Athletes swear by these buttons because they’re immune to sweat and gloves.
Out of curiosity, I rummaged through four drawers of smartwatches I’ve reviewed over the years. A trend emerged. Most watches with digital crowns — from brands both big and small — were those mimicking the feel of an analog mechanical watch.
Image: Breguet
Crowns used to wind a watch spring. Smartwatches have circuit boards, so what do we want from digital crowns?
That, in turn, made me wonder why watches had crowns to begin with. Before the 1800s, winding a pocket watch or a clock often required a special key — which could get pretty annoying. The “crown” seemingly emerged in the 1830s, letting owners turn a decorative part of their watch to wind its mainspring, thereby powering the device’s internals, too. They did it using a dial with ribbed grooves that looked like a king or queen’s crown.
But earlier inventors call it a “knob,” or simply a way to wind a watch without a key, and enthusiasts have traced keyless winding mechanisms as far back as 1686.
Image: Titles of Patents of Invention, Great Britain Patent Office
An 1820 patent: “A new and additional movement applied to a watch, to enable it to be wound by the pendant knob.”
Image: The London Gazette
The London Gazette, 1686: “Lost … a watch in a black shagreen studded case … the spring being wound up without a key, and it opening contrary to all other watches.”
In short, the traditional watch crown was both the main way of interacting with a watch and crucial to the watch’s functioning. But it was always more knob than button.
That was then. Technically, wristwatch wearers haven’t needed to use crowns to wind springs since Seiko made the Astron 35SQ, the first quartz watch, in 1969. Today, analog knobs are mostly used to set the time. The modern digital crown isn’t even necessary for that, so really, it’s all about interacting with a smartwatch.
Each smartwatch maker is different, but I’m struggling to remember a digital crown that just scrolls. More often than not, it works as a select button, a shortcut, or a way to bring up a voice assistant. Some people don’t even use the crown to scroll menus at all. (Yours truly primarily uses it to adjust volume.) So when did scrolling become the defining criterion of what makes a digital crown?
To that, I could probably point my finger at one Sir Jony Ive, Apple’s former design chief. In an interview with Hodinkee, Ive notes that the crown is a “fantastic solution for scrolling and making choices.” Ive mentions scrolling first, and Apple itself made a big hullabaloo about the digital crown as a pioneering input method in the first Apple Watch’s marketing. But again, he primarily refers to it as an input mechanism, a means of interaction — he calls it an alternative to the “panacea” of “direct manipulation,” aka touchscreens.
In typical Ive bombast, he says implementing the digital crown “took a modicum of courage” and that it allowed Apple to “offer a ‘second button’ on the device.”
But you heard the man: it’s a button.
Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge
The digital crown, and how it could scroll, was a big part of the original Apple Watch’s marketing.
Today, Apple doesn’t use scrolling as part of its definition of a digital crown. It calls it an “important hardware input” for the Apple Watch and the Vision Pro. On the Vision Pro, turning the crown doesn’t scroll through menus at all. The rotation does, however, have a purpose. When you turn the crown, it lets you adjust your immersion in virtual environments — as in fine-tune your connection to reality. It also acts as a means of adjusting volume and an alternative to pinching your fingers when you want to select a button.
So, even Apple — which popularized the digital crown as we know it — doesn’t seem to have a hard and fast rule about the crown. Just that the rotation should be an intuitive part of the UI.
After much soul-searching, it’s clear that the OnePlus Watch 2 definitely has a crown. Whether it’s digital boils down to if that rotation truly does anything at all. It ought to have some kind of intentional purpose. Otherwise, why not just have a regular old pusher-style button?
Out of curiosity, I reached out to OnePlus.
Photo by Victoria Song / The Verge
Verdict: this is a crown, just not a digital one.
“The crown does not have any function on the device. The crown rotating when moved leads to the button being more durable than if it was rigid, especially during impacts,” says OnePlus spokesperson Spenser Blank. “Also, Wear OS 4’s intuitive interface plus the OnePlus Watch 2’s large screen allows for easy swipes and interactions, making the adjustments provided by a digital crown unnecessary.”
There you have it. I stand corrected: even OnePlus says it’s not a digital crown. The rotating serves a mechanical purpose — just not one anyone can get particularly excited about. (I know a few glove-wearing athletes who’d take umbrage with Blank’s assertion that a touchscreen suffices.) So let’s leave it at this: the OnePlus Watch 2 has a crown. It’s just not a particularly good one and definitely not digital.
NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope Finds Most Distant Known Galaxy
With the help of NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), an international team of astronomers discovered a galaxy at a redshift of 14.32, indicating it existed just 290 million years post-Big Bang. In a NASA release today, Stefano Carniani from Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa, Italy, and Kevin Hainline from the University of Arizona in Tucson, Arizona, described how this source was found and what its unique properties tell us about galaxy formation: “The instruments on Webb were designed to find and understand the earliest galaxies, and in the first year of observations as part of the JWST Advanced Deep Extragalactic Survey (JADES), we found many hundreds of candidate galaxies from the first 650 million years after the big bang. In early 2023, we discovered a galaxy in our data that had strong evidence of being above a redshift of 14, which was very exciting, but there were some properties of the source that made us wary. The source was surprisingly bright, which we wouldn’t expect for such a distant galaxy, and it was very close to another galaxy such that the two appeared to be part of one larger object. When we observed the source again in October 2023 as part of the JADES Origins Field, new imaging data obtained with Webb’s narrower NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) filters pointed even more toward the high-redshift hypothesis. We knew we needed a spectrum, as whatever we would learn would be of immense scientific importance, either as a new milestone in Webb’s investigation of the early universe or as a confounding oddball of a middle-aged galaxy.
In January 2024, NIRSpec observed this galaxy, JADES-GS-z14-0, for almost ten hours, and when the spectrum was first processed, there was unambiguous evidence that the galaxy was indeed at a redshift of 14.32, shattering the previous most-distant galaxy record (z = 13.2 of JADES-GS-z13-0). Seeing this spectrum was incredibly exciting for the whole team, given the mystery surrounding the source. This discovery was not just a new distance record for our team; the most important aspect of JADES-GS-z14-0 was that at this distance, we know that this galaxy must be intrinsically very luminous. From the images, the source is found to be over 1,600-light years across, proving that the light we see is coming mostly from young stars and not from emission near a growing supermassive black hole. This much starlight implies that the galaxy is several hundreds of millions of times the mass of the Sun! This raises the question: How can nature make such a bright, massive, and large galaxy in less than 300 million years?
The data reveal other important aspects of this astonishing galaxy. We see that the color of the galaxy is not as blue as it could be, indicating that some of the light is reddened by dust, even at these very early times. JADES researcher Jake Helton of Steward Observatory and the University of Arizona also identified that JADES-GS-z14-0 was detected at longer wavelengths with Webb’s MIRI (Mid-Infrared Instrument), a remarkable achievement considering its distance. The MIRI observation covers wavelengths of light that were emitted in the visible-light range, which are redshifted out of reach for Webb’s near-infrared instruments. Jake’s analysis indicates that the brightness of the source implied by the MIRI observation is above what would be extrapolated from the measurements by the other Webb instruments, indicating the presence of strong ionized gas emission in the galaxy in the form of bright emission lines from hydrogen and oxygen. The presence of oxygen so early in the life of this galaxy is a surprise and suggests that multiple generations of very massive stars had already lived their lives before we observed the galaxy.
All of these observations, together, tell us that JADES-GS-z14-0 is not like the types of galaxies that have been predicted by theoretical models and computer simulations to exist in the very early universe. Given the observed brightness of the source, we can forecast how it might grow over cosmic time, and so far we have not found any suitable analogs from the hundreds of other galaxies we’ve observed at high redshift in our survey. Given the relatively small region of the sky that we searched to find JADES-GS-z14-0, its discovery has profound implications for the predicted number of bright galaxies we see in the early universe, as discussed in another concurrent JADES study (Robertson et al., recently accepted). It is likely that astronomers will find many such luminous galaxies, possibly at even earlier times, over the next decade with Webb. We’re thrilled to see the extraordinary diversity of galaxies that existed at Cosmic Dawn!
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
With the help of NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), an international team of astronomers discovered a galaxy at a redshift of 14.32, indicating it existed just 290 million years post-Big Bang. In a NASA release today, Stefano Carniani from Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa, Italy, and Kevin Hainline from the University of Arizona in Tucson, Arizona, described how this source was found and what its unique properties tell us about galaxy formation: “The instruments on Webb were designed to find and understand the earliest galaxies, and in the first year of observations as part of the JWST Advanced Deep Extragalactic Survey (JADES), we found many hundreds of candidate galaxies from the first 650 million years after the big bang. In early 2023, we discovered a galaxy in our data that had strong evidence of being above a redshift of 14, which was very exciting, but there were some properties of the source that made us wary. The source was surprisingly bright, which we wouldn’t expect for such a distant galaxy, and it was very close to another galaxy such that the two appeared to be part of one larger object. When we observed the source again in October 2023 as part of the JADES Origins Field, new imaging data obtained with Webb’s narrower NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) filters pointed even more toward the high-redshift hypothesis. We knew we needed a spectrum, as whatever we would learn would be of immense scientific importance, either as a new milestone in Webb’s investigation of the early universe or as a confounding oddball of a middle-aged galaxy.
In January 2024, NIRSpec observed this galaxy, JADES-GS-z14-0, for almost ten hours, and when the spectrum was first processed, there was unambiguous evidence that the galaxy was indeed at a redshift of 14.32, shattering the previous most-distant galaxy record (z = 13.2 of JADES-GS-z13-0). Seeing this spectrum was incredibly exciting for the whole team, given the mystery surrounding the source. This discovery was not just a new distance record for our team; the most important aspect of JADES-GS-z14-0 was that at this distance, we know that this galaxy must be intrinsically very luminous. From the images, the source is found to be over 1,600-light years across, proving that the light we see is coming mostly from young stars and not from emission near a growing supermassive black hole. This much starlight implies that the galaxy is several hundreds of millions of times the mass of the Sun! This raises the question: How can nature make such a bright, massive, and large galaxy in less than 300 million years?
The data reveal other important aspects of this astonishing galaxy. We see that the color of the galaxy is not as blue as it could be, indicating that some of the light is reddened by dust, even at these very early times. JADES researcher Jake Helton of Steward Observatory and the University of Arizona also identified that JADES-GS-z14-0 was detected at longer wavelengths with Webb’s MIRI (Mid-Infrared Instrument), a remarkable achievement considering its distance. The MIRI observation covers wavelengths of light that were emitted in the visible-light range, which are redshifted out of reach for Webb’s near-infrared instruments. Jake’s analysis indicates that the brightness of the source implied by the MIRI observation is above what would be extrapolated from the measurements by the other Webb instruments, indicating the presence of strong ionized gas emission in the galaxy in the form of bright emission lines from hydrogen and oxygen. The presence of oxygen so early in the life of this galaxy is a surprise and suggests that multiple generations of very massive stars had already lived their lives before we observed the galaxy.
All of these observations, together, tell us that JADES-GS-z14-0 is not like the types of galaxies that have been predicted by theoretical models and computer simulations to exist in the very early universe. Given the observed brightness of the source, we can forecast how it might grow over cosmic time, and so far we have not found any suitable analogs from the hundreds of other galaxies we’ve observed at high redshift in our survey. Given the relatively small region of the sky that we searched to find JADES-GS-z14-0, its discovery has profound implications for the predicted number of bright galaxies we see in the early universe, as discussed in another concurrent JADES study (Robertson et al., recently accepted). It is likely that astronomers will find many such luminous galaxies, possibly at even earlier times, over the next decade with Webb. We’re thrilled to see the extraordinary diversity of galaxies that existed at Cosmic Dawn!
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
NYT Connections today: See hints and answers for May 31
Connections is a New York Times word game that’s all about finding the “common threads between words.” How to solve the puzzle.
Connections is the latest New York Times word game that’s captured the public’s attention. The game is all about finding the “common threads between words.” And just like Wordle, Connections resets after midnight and each new set of words gets trickier and trickier—so we’ve served up some hints and tips to get you over the hurdle.
If you just want to be told today’s puzzle, you can jump to the end of this article for May 31’s Connections solution. But if you’d rather solve it yourself, keep reading for some clues, tips, and strategies to assist you.
What is Connections?
The NYT‘s latest daily word game has become a social media hit. The Times credits associate puzzle editor Wyna Liu with helping to create the new word game and bringing it to the publications’ Games section. Connections can be played on both web browsers and mobile devices and require players to group four words that share something in common.
Each puzzle features 16 words and each grouping of words is split into four categories. These sets could comprise of anything from book titles, software, country names, etc. Even though multiple words will seem like they fit together, there’s only one correct answer. If a player gets all four words in a set correct, those words are removed from the board. Guess wrong and it counts as a mistake—players get up to four mistakes until the game ends.
Players can also rearrange and shuffle the board to make spotting connections easier. Additionally, each group is color-coded with yellow being the easiest, followed by green, blue, and purple. Like Wordle, you can share the results with your friends on social media.
Here’s a hint for today’s Connections categories
Want a hit about the categories without being told the categories? Then give these a try:
Yellow: A collection of written text
Green: Famous mountain tops
Blue: Parts of a vinyl
Purple: Shake this
Featured Video For You
Here are today’s Connections categories
Need a little extra help? Today’s connections fall into the following categories:
Yellow: Corpus
Green: Mount___
Blue: Components of an LP
Purple: Things People Shake
Looking for Wordle today? Here’s the answer to today’s Wordle.
Ready for the answers? This is your last chance to turn back and solve today’s puzzle before we reveal the solutions.
Drumroll, please!
The solution to Connections #355 is…
What is the answer to Connections today
Corpus: BODY, CANON, OEUVRE, WORKS
Mount___: FUJI, HOOD, OLUMPUS, WHITNEY
Components of an LP: INSERT, JACKET, RECORD, SLEEVE
Things People Shake: HANDS, MARACA, POLAROID, SNOWGLOBE
Don’t feel down if you didn’t manage to guess it this time. There will be new Connections for you to stretch your brain with tomorrow, and we’ll be back again to guide you with more helpful hints.
Is this not the Connections game you were looking for? Here are the hints and answers to yesterday’s Connections.
‘Wordle’ today: Here’s the answer hints for May 31
Here’s the answer for “Wordle” #1077 on May 31, as well as a few hints, tips, and clues to help you solve it yourself.
Oh hey there! If you’re here, it must be time for Wordle. As always, we’re serving up our daily hints and tips to help you figure out today’s answer.
If you just want to be told today’s word, you can jump to the bottom of this article for May 31’s Wordle solution revealed. But if you’d rather solve it yourself, keep reading for some clues, tips, and strategies to assist you.
Where did Wordle come from?
Originally created by engineer Josh Wardle as a gift for his partner, Wordle rapidly spread to become an international phenomenon, with thousands of people around the globe playing every day. Alternate Wordle versions created by fans also sprang up, including battle royale Squabble, music identification game Heardle, and variations like Dordle and Quordle that make you guess multiple words at once.
Wordle eventually became so popular that it was purchased by the New York Times, and TikTok creators even livestream themselves playing.
Not the day you’re after? Here’s the solution to yesterday’s Wordle.
What’s the best Wordle starting word?
The best Wordle starting word is the one that speaks to you. But if you prefer to be strategic in your approach, we have a few ideas to help you pick a word that might help you find the solution faster. One tip is to select a word that includes at least two different vowels, plus some common consonants like S, T, R, or N.
What happened to the Wordle archive?
The entire archive of past Wordle puzzles used to be available for anyone to enjoy whenever they felt like it. Unfortunately, it has since been taken down, with the website’s creator stating it was done at the request of the New York Times.
Is Wordle getting harder?
It might feel like Wordle is getting harder, but it actually isn’t any more difficult than when it first began. You can turn on Wordle‘s Hard Mode if you’re after more of a challenge, though.
Here’s a subtle hint for today’s Wordle answer:
Complete disorder.
Does today’s Wordle answer have a double letter?
There are no extra letters.
Today’s Wordle is a 5-letter word that starts with…
Today’s Wordle starts with the letter C.
The Wordle answer today is…
Get your last guesses in now, because it’s your final chance to solve today’s Wordle before we reveal the solution.
Drumroll please!
The solution to Wordle #1077 is…
CHAOS.
Don’t feel down if you didn’t manage to guess it this time. There will be a new Wordle for you to stretch your brain with tomorrow, and we’ll be back again to guide you with more helpful hints.
Reporting by Caitlin Welsh, Sam Haysom, Amanda Yeo, Shannon Connellan, Cecily Mauran, Mike Pearl, and Adam Rosenberg contributed to this article.
Acer launches a compact SpatialLabs camera for 3D photos and videos
Acer has unveiled the new SpatialLabs Eyes Stereo Camera specifically for those who want to take 3D photos and videos. Users can not only use it to capture 3D content, but also to livestream in 3D on YouTube and other platforms, as well as to make 3D video calls on Teams, Zoom and Google Meet. The company describes the camera as “compact” and “pocket-sized,” with dimensions measuring 4 x 2.6 x 0.9 inches.
It has a resolution of 8 megapixels per eye and a built-in selfie mirror encased in a weather-proof shell. The more casual users can take advantage of its Electronic Image Stabilization (EIS) feature, along with its auto and touch focus capabilities. But experienced photographers can customize their output as much as they want to in manual mode, which will allow them to adjust the camera’s ISO, white balance and shutter speed settings.
The camera’s 3D livestreaming feature will be enabled by version 3.0 of Acer’s SpatialLabs Player, while high-resolution 3D video conferencing will be made possible through the company’s SpatialLabs video call widget. It will, of course, be compatible with Acer’s range of SpatialLabs devices, including laptops with glasses-free 3D screens. But you can view 3D content captured by the device even on other companies’ AR or VR headsets and 3D projectors.
The Acer SpatialLabs Eyes Stereo Camera will be available in the third quarter of the year with prices starting at $549 or €549 in the US and in Europe, respectively.
Acer
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/acer-launches-a-compact-spatiallabs-camera-for-3d-photos-and-videos-060035723.html?src=rss
Acer has unveiled the new SpatialLabs Eyes Stereo Camera specifically for those who want to take 3D photos and videos. Users can not only use it to capture 3D content, but also to livestream in 3D on YouTube and other platforms, as well as to make 3D video calls on Teams, Zoom and Google Meet. The company describes the camera as “compact” and “pocket-sized,” with dimensions measuring 4 x 2.6 x 0.9 inches.
It has a resolution of 8 megapixels per eye and a built-in selfie mirror encased in a weather-proof shell. The more casual users can take advantage of its Electronic Image Stabilization (EIS) feature, along with its auto and touch focus capabilities. But experienced photographers can customize their output as much as they want to in manual mode, which will allow them to adjust the camera’s ISO, white balance and shutter speed settings.
The camera’s 3D livestreaming feature will be enabled by version 3.0 of Acer’s SpatialLabs Player, while high-resolution 3D video conferencing will be made possible through the company’s SpatialLabs video call widget. It will, of course, be compatible with Acer’s range of SpatialLabs devices, including laptops with glasses-free 3D screens. But you can view 3D content captured by the device even on other companies’ AR or VR headsets and 3D projectors.
The Acer SpatialLabs Eyes Stereo Camera will be available in the third quarter of the year with prices starting at $549 or €549 in the US and in Europe, respectively.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/acer-launches-a-compact-spatiallabs-camera-for-3d-photos-and-videos-060035723.html?src=rss
Acer’s new batch of Predator gaming monitors feature faster OLED screens
Acer has added three new gaming monitors to its Predator lineup, all of which have OLED displays and speedy refresh rates. The models — Predator X27U F3, Predator X34 X5 and Predator X32 X3 — work with NVIDIA’s G-SYNC and AMD’s FreeSync Premium Pro technologies to prevent tearing, stuttering, ghosting and input lags while you’re gaming. They also feature true 10-bit color depth enhanced by a 99 percent coverage of the DCI-P3 color space, which means more color depths, higher contrasts and deeper blacks. The models come with stands with adjustable height that can tilt and swivel, and they’re all equipped with two 5-watt speakers.
The Predator X27U F3 is a 27-inch monitor with a 2,560 x 1,440 pixel resolution and a 480 Hz refresh rate. It’s outfitted with a USB-C and two HDMI 2.1 ports, and its stand has a tripod mount socket that can support streaming accessories like lights and cameras. The model will be available in the third quarter with prices starting at $1,200.
Meanwhile, the Predator X32 X3 monitor is a 4K UHD OLED display with a refresh rate of 240 Hz, though you can get that up to 480 Hz if you don’t mind gaming in Full HD resolution only. The 31.5-inch monitor also comes with one Type-C and two HDMI 2.1 ports, and it will be available in the fourth quarter of the year for $1,200 and above.
Finally, the Predator X34 X5 has a 34-inch curved OLED screen with a 1800R curvature and a resolution of 3,440 x 1,440 pixels. It also has a 240 Hz refresh and a 0.03 ms response rate like the Predator X32 X3 model, though it doesn’t seem like you can get a speedier refresh rate in exchange for lower resolution. The monitor has two HDMI 2.1 ports, a DisplayPort and USB Type-C port, and it will be available in the fourth quarter for at least $1,100. This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/acers-new-batch-of-predator-gaming-monitors-feature-faster-oled-screens-060033834.html?src=rss
Acer has added three new gaming monitors to its Predator lineup, all of which have OLED displays and speedy refresh rates. The models — Predator X27U F3, Predator X34 X5 and Predator X32 X3 — work with NVIDIA’s G-SYNC and AMD’s FreeSync Premium Pro technologies to prevent tearing, stuttering, ghosting and input lags while you’re gaming. They also feature true 10-bit color depth enhanced by a 99 percent coverage of the DCI-P3 color space, which means more color depths, higher contrasts and deeper blacks. The models come with stands with adjustable height that can tilt and swivel, and they’re all equipped with two 5-watt speakers.
The Predator X27U F3 is a 27-inch monitor with a 2,560 x 1,440 pixel resolution and a 480 Hz refresh rate. It’s outfitted with a USB-C and two HDMI 2.1 ports, and its stand has a tripod mount socket that can support streaming accessories like lights and cameras. The model will be available in the third quarter with prices starting at $1,200.
Meanwhile, the Predator X32 X3 monitor is a 4K UHD OLED display with a refresh rate of 240 Hz, though you can get that up to 480 Hz if you don’t mind gaming in Full HD resolution only. The 31.5-inch monitor also comes with one Type-C and two HDMI 2.1 ports, and it will be available in the fourth quarter of the year for $1,200 and above.
Finally, the Predator X34 X5 has a 34-inch curved OLED screen with a 1800R curvature and a resolution of 3,440 x 1,440 pixels. It also has a 240 Hz refresh and a 0.03 ms response rate like the Predator X32 X3 model, though it doesn’t seem like you can get a speedier refresh rate in exchange for lower resolution. The monitor has two HDMI 2.1 ports, a DisplayPort and USB Type-C port, and it will be available in the fourth quarter for at least $1,100.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/acers-new-batch-of-predator-gaming-monitors-feature-faster-oled-screens-060033834.html?src=rss