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Waze Still Provides the Fastest Driving Directions
http://ift.tt/2BO0fZG
If you want to get to your destination fast, then you’re possibly better off using Google Maps or Waze over Apple Maps. Waze if you truly want the “fastest” option.
Tech
via Lifehacker http://lifehacker.com
February 24, 2018 at 10:08AM
DHL exec figures Tesla Semi would pay itself off within two years
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The numbers behind Tesla Inc’s long-distance Semi electric trucks are close to making sense for haulers looking at a shift away from diesel that may save them tens of thousands of dollars a year, according to an executive with DHL. Jim Monkmeyer, president, Transportation at DHL Supply Chain, was among the first to order the trucks Silicon Valley billionaire Elon Musk’s company is expected to begin churning out in 2019.
Monkmeyer says the 10 trucks ordered are a test run and that he is still years away from switching the majority of his fleet of trucks to electric. But he is taking heed of a major shift away from diesel and the money it could save DHL. He says he could potentially pay off the difference between the purchase price of a Tesla Semi and a traditional diesel truck in less than two years, thanks to savings on maintenance and fuel.
“We are estimating that we could have pay back within a year-and-a-half based on energy usage as well as lower maintenance cost,” Monkmeyer told Reuters in an interview from his office in Columbus, Ohio.
“The maintenance savings can be enormous as well. Just because the engines are much simpler in terms of the number of parts and the complexities of the parts.”
The payback benefit is one of the keys to the success of the new generation of electric trucks and DHL, a unit of Germany’s Deutsche Post, has a history in the area, having already introduced 5,000 of its own electric “scooter” vans for local deliveries. The two-year timeline also chimes with assurances being given by Daimler AG’s van unit to customers interested in its forthcoming electric Sprinter van that the total cost of ownership will be the same as the cost to own and operate a conventional van over a few years.
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Monkmeyer says he does not expect to buy just Tesla electric trucks, but the in-depth discussions on price and feasibility that DHL is running on the trucks are in line with several small and large international haulers who spoke to Reuters.
A truck runs around 65,000-100,000 miles a year, and Tesla has promised a 20-percent saving on the per-mile operating costs truckers pay now, estimating its new Semi will cost $1.26 per mile compared to what it says are industry standards of around $1.51 for diesel trucks. Analysts, however, say the figures continue to evolve; the $1.51 cost assumes prices for diesel fuel and that fuel economy costs remain static. They also say fuel efficiency for diesel trucks is expected to advance further, with a compounding improvement in the high single digits by 2020, potentially limiting the cost savings advantage suggested by Tesla.
“The problem is they (Tesla) are aiming at a moving target, and even with that the electric (trucks) would be lower cost (in terms of operation) but it wouldn’t be quite as big a difference,” Jefferies analyst Stephen Volkmann said.
Monkmeyer says the company is still mapping out costs, but believes the two trucks already look like they will be “close enough” to make the switch feasible. Still, he says larger concerns loom around Tesla’s charging infrastructure and how haulers plan to switch from pumps in depots to swift “megacharging” of electric vehicles.
“The biggest issue is going to be how is that grid provided and how is it supported and how quickly can we get a network out there for use nationwide, throughout North America, throughout the world,” he says.
“That’s a big question mark. So that to me would be one limiting factor.” (Reporting by Ankit Ajmera in Bengaluru; Writing by Patrick Graham; Editing by Bernard Orr)
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Cars
via Autoblog http://www.autoblog.com
February 24, 2018 at 10:25AM
Space Photos of the Week: Juno Helps Jupiter Shows Off Its Stripes
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Tech
via Wired Top Stories http://ift.tt/2uc60ci
February 24, 2018 at 09:12AM
Can legislation fix gaming’s loot box problem?
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Last year’s gaming controversy has turned into this year’s legislative battleground. Fans were outraged when Star Wars: Battlefront II launched with buyable loot boxes that unbalanced multiplayer combat, and other games like Need For Speed: Payback and Destiny 2 had their own pay-to-win controversies. Eventually, loot boxes unsettled enough constituents to rile their representatives. Legislators in Hawaii, Washington and Illinois have introduced bills to either study loot boxes or restrict access to young players, but how effective will they be? What else can lawmakers do?
Hawaii state Rep. Chris Lee, a gamer himself (he favors the Battlefield series and Rockstar Games’ oeuvre), believes there’s plenty to do. The Democrat introduced four bills last month: Two (one introduced to state House and one to the Senate) would restrict loot boxes in Hawaii to those older than 21, while another pair would force companies to disclose the odds of winning potential game items. It’s not the strongest rebuke of the games industry he and his co-authors could have made, Lee told Engadget, but it’s a step in the right direction — and it will spur conversation.
The gaming industry has been challenged by legislators before. In the 1980s and ’90s, lawmakers panicked that the violence, drugs and sexuality in gaming was affecting youth. To avoid government regulation, the industry formed the Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB), which warded off legislative oversight. But this time around, the issue isn’t moral corruption — it’s whether these particular reward mechanisms are merely gambling in disguise, and if so, should they be in games kids can play? Bills are very public statements, and those proposed by Lee and other state lawmakers have cast doubt on the future of loot boxes as they exist now.
The ESRB has staunchly maintained that loot boxes aren’t gambling:
"While there’s an element of chance in these mechanics, the player is always guaranteed to receive in-game content (even if the player unfortunately receives something they don’t want). We think of it as a similar principle to collectible card games: Sometimes you’ll open a pack and get a brand new holographic card you’ve had your eye on for a while. But other times you’ll end up with a pack of cards you already have," the ESRB told Kotaku late last year. We reached out to the ESRB for comment on the recently-proposed bills and didn’t receive a response at the time of writing.
Legislation isn’t the only tool lawmakers can use to effect change: Last week, US Sen. Maggie Hassan, a Democrat from New Hampshire, wrote a public letter to the ESRB urging it to take the loot-box issue more seriously, especially because children can easily access games with these mechanisms. Otherwise, as Hawaii’s Lee noted, connecting with different groups to raise awareness could provoke a response by, in this case, the gaming industry. His office has started talking with concerned lawmakers, community leaders, medical institutes, schools and other interested parties across the country.
Still, nothing captures America’s attention like potential new laws.
Bills proposed by other state lawmakers earlier this year have focused on whether loot-box mechanisms are gambling. Washington state Sen. Kevin Ranker, a Democrat, introduced one last month asking the state’s gambling commission to decide whether loot boxes qualify as games of chance. Separately, two Indiana state senators introduced a bill commissioning a study to determine the same, though it was effectively buried when it didn’t get a committee hearing.
Given that players often buy loot boxes with real money and receive randomized assortments of in-game items, there’s a case for considering this mechanism as gambling. If states decided they were, loot boxes would likely fall within the jurisdiction of statewide gambling commissions and be regulated just like any other pay-to-play game of chance.
The gaming industry has good reason to stamp out any loot box-gambling connection: Once states decide to regulate them as such, game studios will have to comply with each law and statute. They would have to switch off features for players in some regions and ensure compliance lest they run afoul of state authorities. This may be a big issue for titans of the industry like Activision-Blizzard, which has centralized loot boxes in many of its AAA games (Call of Duty: WWII, Destiny 2, Overwatch, Hearthstone) to drive up revenue. Smaller studios that can’t afford legal counsel but include loot boxes could suffer more if they violate state laws, according to Marc Whipple, an intellectual-property lawyer who frequently advises video-game companies.
"There’s an old saying, ‘You may not be interested in politics, but politics are interested in you.’ The same thing applies here: You may not be interested in gambling regulation, but gambling regulators are interested in you," Whipple said in an interview with Engadget.
"Because gambling is seen as a privilege, not a right, if the gambling regulators believe that you are in their jurisdiction, if they have jurisdiction over you, they can do a lot of things to you that a lot of people probably don’t understand are possible … up to and including declaring your product an unlawful gambling device and issuing a warrant for your arrest," Whipple said.
He should know — he worked as legal counsel for Incredible Technologies, the company behind Golden Tee Golf, a popular cabinet game that let players participate in online tournaments for cash prizes. To operate in myriad bars nationwide, the game had to obey each state’s gambling laws. In some cases, cabinets would have features removed to comply with particular statutes.
Game studios notoriously hide their loot boxes’ odds of winning specific items. (We can guess at Overwatch‘s loot-drop percentages because Chinese law forced them to be revealed last year, though Blizzard managed to hide them a month later through a loophole).
Without pointing any fingers at anybody in the games industry, Whipple said, if you made a video slot machine and put it in a casino with the same kind of pay table used in most loot-box systems, "you would go to prison." In other words, the odds in Vegas are better — because state law requires them to be.
It’s easy to get sucked into the ‘is it gambling?’ debate. But instead, Hawaii’s Lee aimed his bills at safeguarding kids and ensuring that everyone knows what they’re really paying for by requiring transparency in odds. It’s where he sees the argument going — not continuing to debate whether loot boxes are gambling, but asking departments of health and consumer-protection agencies about the consequences and impacts of loot boxes. Because game studios don’t release data about loot-box sales and use, we only have anecdotes about when individuals suffer from these mechanisms — and they are often tragic.
"There’s no question that for a portion of the population, there is vulnerability. And for an even larger portion of the population, there is risk of exploitation by algorithms specifically designed with no transparency and, increasingly, to take advantage of players based upon their actions that they’re not even aware of. When you think of it like that, it’s a very dangerous moment," said Lee.
It’s dangerous because it’s an industry that knows what it’s doing. Lee explains: "It has employed psychologists and mental-health experts to use these mechanisms specifically to exploit human psychology as much as possible. … If the industry continues to deny or pretend that there’s a problem here, it will find itself ultimately in court in the same way that tobacco companies and oil companies denied the information that they knew all along."
Considering the dysfunction in Washington, it’s doubtful that legislation on the issue will come from Congress in the near future. To date, the only member who has publicly acted over concern for loot boxes is New Hampshire’s Hassan.
"Sen. Hassan has already sent a letter to ESRB raising concerns about the harm loot boxes could have on young gamers and called on nominees to the Federal Trade Commission to commit to looking into the issue of loot boxes, which all four nominees agreed to do," Eric Mee, Hassan’s deputy press secretary, told Engadget. "The senator is cautiously encouraged by the ESRB’s initial statement, but if the ESRB’s response is inadequate, she will work with her colleagues and consumers to consider additional steps."
Mee told Engadget it’s too early to speculate whether there will be a congressional push for hearings or legislation. State legislatures are addressing loot boxes ahead of Congress because there are simply more lawmakers across the country than in Washington. They also have more room to tackle issues that hit closer to home, like questionable mechanisms in video games. Given that state lawmakers operate on different timelines for their legislative seasons, Lee believes other states may introduce their own bills later this year. His office has been talking with lawmakers from 30 other states who may be interested in doing so. Some are starting to collect data through their departments of health and other organizations but "because nobody but the industry has the data at this time, it might take a little bit to get there," he said.
The one bright spot? Lee believes loot boxes are one of the rare issues that could inspire bipartisan support because it concerns a broad swath of constituents, from mental-health and education communities to parents and soccer moms. The issue might even expand beyond gaming: Without intervention, what’s to stop other industries from adopting their own chance-based content boxes?
Lee elaborates: "Imagine that model without any sort of oversight or regulation move into every aspect not only of gaming but of online services in general. Rather than a subscription to Spotify or buying a song through Apple, you can buy loot boxes full of albums. But you really aren’t going to know what you might get."
Tech
via Engadget http://www.engadget.com
February 24, 2018 at 09:06AM
How the South Korean Women’s Curling Team Became the K-Pop Stars of the Olympics
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In 1997, a physical education teacher from a small town in rural South Korea boarded a plane to North Bay, Ontario with a two-week supply of Korean instant noodles to learn more about a sport he had recently fallen in love with: curling.
That improbable journey planted the seeds for the South Korean women’s curling team’s surprising rise from anonymity to dominance at their hometown Winter Olympics more than two decades later.
The…
News
via WSJ.com: What’s News US http://online.wsj.com
February 24, 2018 at 09:57AM
Inside Bigelow Aerospace Founder Robert Bigelow’s Decades-Long Obsession With UFOs
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In 1994, a Mormon family bought a 480-acre plot in in Utah’s Uintah Basin, thinking they’d get back to the land. But this particular land was weird. It came with too-large-thrice-over wolves that refused to die by bullet, cattle with their reproductive organs sucked clean out, and a multitude of UFOs, as they told the Deseret News in 1996. It was driving them bonkers.
Robert Bigelow saw their story. Today, the Nevada businessman is known for founding Bigelow Aerospace, which spun off a business to sell its expandable space habitats just last Tuesday. But in 1995, he had also founded something called the National Institute for Discovery Science, an organization built to research paranormal phenomena. Soon after reading the newspaper story, he took Skinwalker off the family’s hands, and his institute set up shop.
That, at least, is the story told in Hunt for the Skinwalker, a book that I downloaded in audio form one Friday night in January. Bigelow deactivated the National Institute for Discovery Science in 2004, after years of failing to capture the supposedly supernatural. But as the world recently discovered, he didn’t give up the cause. In December, a New York Times story revealed that Bigelow Aerospace had conducted a study on UFOs—for the Pentagon. I’d been interested in Bigelow’s anomalistic dealings since that article came out; thus, the audio book.
The Pentagon’s Advanced Aviation Threat Identification Program officially ended in 2012. But similar work continues today—involving people from both the defunct Defense Department program and Bigelow’s dismantled paranormal enterprise. They have become part of a for-profit company: To The Stars Academy of Arts and Science, which launched in October 2017 to research and reverse-engineer UFOs, among other goals.
Bigelow has gotten his fingers into lots of private UFO pies. Even before Skinwalker, he helped initiate the UFO Research Coalition, which puts his UFO-hunting career at about 24 years old. Bigelow is not officially involved with To The Stars. But its aims, and its team, seem to line up with his past and his people. So I set off to try to understand that past.
All eight hours and 42 minutes of audiobook downloaded, I got in my car at 5 a.m. the next day with my sister. Pointed toward Skinwalker Ranch, hoping for context and maybe something strange, we sped through the Rockies, trying to beat the ski traffic and a snowstorm. All the while, the staid voice of the book’s narrator described the alleged happenings at Skinwalker.
As my sister and I journeyed down I-70, the book’s authors—George Knapp, a journalist, and Colm Kelleher, former deputy administrator of Bigelow’s institute—presented the paranormal tales almost as matters of fact. Kelleher has a PhD in biochemistry, but his mindset was often anti-scientific. He took coincidences as meaningful; he aw-shucksed every time an “anomalous phenomenon” mysteriously evaded the cameras. The supposed point of Bigelow’s National Institute for Discovery Science was to get away from that kind of softness.
About four and a half hours and several hundred milligrams of caffeine in, I listened to a description of how instrument-bearing institute investigators witnessed a growing yellow light—or maybe a tunnel—from which a faceless black creature maybe emerged. I needed a break. Pausing the book, I pulled over at Rio Blanco Lake, a rare bit of water with an assemblage of red picnic tables. The lake, frozen, stretched to the scrub-covered buttes on the far shore. It was peaceful.
Then came the noises. Great metallic twangs, or thwangs, or something, that seemed to start here, no there, and rush across the landscape as if carried on an invisible wire.
They sounded like trebly light sabers. They sounded like alien spaceship chatter. Like maybe someone had pulled the power lines taut for miles and then plucked them with a giant finger.
“What is it?” I kept saying, deeply unnerved—not because I thought it was inexplicable but because I couldn’t explain it.
And then the lake’s ice cracked, the break spreading fast like a faultline in an action movie. The frozen water heaved itself into a new position.
With that, the noises explained themselves and stopped. We stood in the silence for a few seconds.
“That’s probably the weirdest thing that will happen all day,” my sister eventually said.
We continued on our way toward Skinwalker Ranch, where Bigelow’s people had, for years, tried to find that weirdest thing, every day. Researching UFOs seems a bit like gambling: You mostly lose, or break even, but the promise that you might hit jackpot is powerful. “The thing about UFOs that makes them so mysterious is that they disappear,” says historian Greg Eghigian, who is researching the global history of UFO sightings and alleged alien contact. “Not that they appear.” You just have to keep looking and hope they come back.
Toward the end of the book, the authors let us know that Bigelow abandoned studies at Skinwalker in the early 2000s. But he didn’t stop looking: In 2007, he got that Pentagon contract—some $22 million to study advanced aerial threats, including some that remain allegedly unidentified.
Around the same time, in 2008, Bigelow created a new company: Bigelow Advanced Aerospace Space Studies, a subsidiary of Bigelow Aerospace.
Archived versions of the Bigelow Aerospace Careers webpage say it “focuses on the identification, evaluation, and acquisition of novel and emerging future technologies worldwide as they specifically relate to spacecraft.” (Blair Bigelow, vice president of corporate strategy at Bigelow Aerospace, declined to comment.) Colm Kelleher—co-author of the Skinwalker book—was the company’s deputy administrator, according to his LinkedIn page.
Around the same time Bigelow created the new company, he also hitched a star to the Mutual UFO Network, a nonprofit that collects and investigates user-submitted reports of UFOs, according to MUFON’s executive director Jan Harzan. “If we were able to fund you so you could put investigators on the ground faster,” Harzan recalls Bigelow offering, “could you get better data on some of these reports?” Together, MUFON and Bigelow supported investigators’ fact-finding expeditions, and shared data—though for less than a year.
But that didn’t stop Bigelow from collecting UFO reports outside of the MUFON collaboration. The FAA, for instance, used to suggest pilots report UFO sightings directly to Bigelow Advanced Aerospace Space Studies. Christopher Rutkowski, who coordinates the Canadian UFO Survey, says Bigelow approached him at a MUFON conference in 2009. “He asked me to help him in his UFO-related efforts by alerting him and his team to any ‘good’ Canadian cases that needed onsite investigations,” he says. One of Bigelow’s people checked in with Rutkowski every few months following, for a year or two.
That person doesn’t call now. The FAA doesn’t instruct pilots to report to Bigelow. The Pentagon program is over. There’s no more MUFON collaboration. The National Institute for Discovery Science is kaput. So where’s a guy to get a bunch of UFO reports?
The newest answer might be To The Stars Academy—and its newly-launched “Community of Interest.” On this site, you can currently view two videos of alleged UFOs—the same footage embedded in the Times story about the Pentagon program—as well as a video interview with a Navy pilot who says he witnessed one of those events and a written report of the same encounter. In the future, the site aims to amass and analyze many more reports of anomalies.
Although a representative from To the Stars claims no affiliation with Bigelow, the overlap between its team and Bigelow’s is inarguable: Hal Puthoff, who was on the board of the National Institute for Discovery Science, is now the vice president of science and technology at To The Stars. Kelleher is now To The Stars’ biotech consultant. And Elizondo, who was reportedly in charge of the Pentagon program that contracted Bigelow’s company, is now To The Stars’ director of global security and special programs.
And if the gathered reports are public, Bigelow could check them out, same as anyone else. If Bigelow is as committed to ufology as his last two decades of work have suggested, he could do worse than striking a deal with this group.
When my sister and I arrived at Skinwalker Ranch (now owned not by the institute or Bigelow but by the mysterious Adamantium Real Estate (whoever that nerd is), we were numb to the claims of its strange happenings. To be clear, I don’t really believe in much. Not God, or miracles, or magical beasts. I don’t believe that anything “defies” the “laws of physics.”
I do believe that we probably misunderstand some laws of physics, that our knowledge is, in some cases, incomplete, or even drop-dead wrong. I believe there are things in the universe we don’t get yet, that our scientific explanations haven’t caught up to. But I also believe that they can. Anyway, I’d driven all the way to the Uintah Valley, and I was sure going to try to look for something strange in the sky. We found a legal gravel pull-off that looked down on the semi-martian land of Skinwalker, and stared at the sky, waiting.
I added an extra layer to my clothes, blew hot air into my gloves, and found a nearby rock suitable for sitting, surrounded by broken glass and scattering of half-smoked cigarettes. And so my sister and I sat, mock-gasping at the lights from low-flying planes.
And then the clouds, which had hung low all day, began to clear. The stars—some of them perhaps supporting life that almost certainly has not come here, but, you know, maybe—were crisp and clear. I turned Hunt for the Skinwalker back on, my phone’s speaker pulsing from my pocket.
We scanned the skies; we listened to the tall tales.
“It’s good out here,” I said to my sister. “But you were right about that ice.”
“What?” she said.
“That it was the weirdest thing that would happen all day.”
Tech
via Wired Top Stories http://ift.tt/2uc60ci
February 24, 2018 at 06:06AM
Cat at MWC 2018: S61 Smartphone with FLIR Cam, Laser Distance Measurer, Air Quality Sensor
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BARCELONA, ESP — Bullitt Group has announced its new flagship Cat-branded rugged smartphone, which is listed with improved performance and new features over its predecessor. The Cat S61 is aimed at people who work in harsh environments and require special-purpose tools, such as a thermal camera, a laser-assisted measurement tool, or an air quality sensor.
Ruggedized smartphones are not uncommon, especially in environments that have harsher condititions than an office. While the latest handsets from the main Android vendors are splash-resistant, and some also enhanced protection against liquids and drops, these are still aimed at the bulk of the professional market that do a lot of sitting down. By contast, there are a number of companies building smartphones for severe environments, so ruggedizing itself is both an additional step up, but no longer a unique differentiator. Users that actually need smartphones with enhanced protection usually have to do work that requires various special-purpose tools.
Cat/Bullitt realized this several years ago and decided to build the Swiss-army knife smartphone that would offer more special-purpose capabilities than other ruggedized handsets. The first of this family was the Cat S60, with an integrated FLIR thermal imaging sensor, released in 2016. Apparently, market response was good, so the company decided to enhance feature set of its Cat S61 even further by integrating more special-purpose hardware.
The new Cat S61 has FLIR’s latest Lepton thermal sensor and software that can measure temperatures from -20°C to 400°C and features an HD resolution. The manufacturer claims that the new sensor not only improves precision/quality, but also enables new use cases. In addition, the Cat S61 comes with an indoor air quality sensor from Sensirion that can detect indoor air pollutants (Volatile Organic Compounds or VOCs) and notify users when an unhealthy environment is detected. In addition, this sensor can detect humidity and current temperature. Finally, the Cat S61 also has a laser assisted distance measurement tool.
While the advanced sensors that Cat has integrated into its S61 provide valuable capabilities, the combination of these features essentially transforms the smartphone. Just like its predecessor, the Cat S61 is completely dust- and water-proof, and the IP68 rating means it can survive for one hour if it is submerged three meters underwater (the S60 is rated for five meters). It can also be repeatedly dropped from 1.8 meters on concrete without fatal consequences due to reinforced aluminum die-cast frame and Corning Gorilla Glass 5 display protection. Speaking of the LCD, Cat has upgraded it from top-to-bottom: it is now 5.2-inch in size and has a Full-HD (1080p) resolution. It is designed to be operated with wet fingers or while wearing gloves.
The smartphone is based on the Qualcomm Snapdragon 630 SoC (four ARM Cortex A53 cores running at 2.2 GHz and four more A53 cores clocked at 1.8 GHz, Adreno 508 graphics, a dual-channel LPDDR4 memory controller, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 5.0, an integrated X12 LTE modem with Cat 12/13 baseband capabilities, etc.) that is outfitted with 4 GB of LPDDR4 DRAM and 64 GB of NAND flash storage (expandable using microSD cards). Since we are dealing with the A53 cores, we do not expect the S61 to set records in benchmarks, but because the target audience of this handset hardly uses demanding games or data intensive applications, but rather prefers long battery life, the choice of low-power cores seems logical. In addition, the developer equipped the S61 with a 4500 mAh battery to maximize its life on one charge. As for imaging capabilities, the device comes with a 16 MP rear camera with a dual LED flash as well as an 8 MP front camera. Last but not least, the S61 now uses a USB Type-C interface for charging and connecting to computers.
| The Cat S61 Ruggedized Smartphones with Special Features | |
| Specifications | |
| SoC | Qualcomm Snapdragon 630 4 × ARM Cortex-A53 at 2.2 GHz 4 × ARM Cortex-A53 at 1.8 GHz Adreno 508 |
| RAM | 4 GB LPDDR4 |
| Storage | 64 GB + microSD |
| Display | 5.2″ 1920×1080 (423 ppi) ? nits brightness ? contrast ratio ? NTSC color gamut Corning Gorilla Glass 5 |
| Network | 4G/LTE Bands: EU/ROW: 1, 2, 3, 5, 7, 8, 19, 20, 26, 28, 38, 39, 40, 41 Americas: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 12, 13, 17, 25, 26, 28, 29, 66 3G Bands: EU/ROW: 850, 900, 1700, 1900, 2100 Americas: 850, 900, A WS, 1900, 2100 2G Bands: 850, 900, 1800, 1900 |
| LTE | Down: 600 Mb/s Up: 150 Mb/s |
| Sensors | Thermal camera (FLIR) Indoor Air Quality Sensor (humidity & temperature) E-compass Proximity Sensor Ambient Light Sensor Accelerometer Gyroscope Location Barometer |
| Fingerprint | No |
| Dimensions | 150 × 76 × 13 mm |
| Weight | ? grams |
| Ingress Protection | IP68: Sand, dust and dirt resistant Waterproof: Up to 3M for 60 minutes |
| Military Standard Tests | MIL SPEC 810G Thermal Shock: handles low to high temperature differences between -30°C (-22°F) to 65°C (149°F) for up to 24 hours Resistant to vibration: Category 4 Resistant to humidity and salt mist |
| Rear Camera | 16 MP with autofocus, PDAF, dual LED flash FLIR Lepton thermal sensor |
| Front Camera | 8 MP |
| Battery | 4500 mAh |
| OS | Google Android Oreo |
| Connectivity | 802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 5, USB-C, 3.5mm TRRS |
| Navigation | GPS, GLONASS, Galileo, QZSS, SBAS, iZat, BeiDou (select SKUs) |
| SIM Size | Nano SIM/Dual Nano SIM |
| Colors | Black + Grey |
| Launch Countries | U.S., U.K., E.U.,etc |
| Price | €899/£799/$999 |
The product will be available in Q2 at an MSRP of €899/£799/$999. The Cat S60 used to carry a €649 price tag when it was released in 2016. Given that the S61 does not have direct rivals with the same set of sensors, its price point can arguably be justified. Moreover, given its capabilities, most of these phones will be sold to businesses, not to individuals. Companies are naturally less worried about the actual price and performance of smartphones in general applications but are more concerned about the advantages these devices might bring to their businesses immediately and going forward. To ensure that buyers can deploy the Cat S61 quickly, the manufacturer will offer a catalogue of pre-selected applications for ruggedized smartphones. Furthermore, Bullitt will ship the S61 with Android 8 (Oreo) to ensure compatibility with the latest software today and going forward.
Tech
via AnandTech http://ift.tt/phao0v
February 24, 2018 at 07:09AM
