PC gaming at E3 2014: Picking up where consoles falter...

Sarah Tew/CNET

With the new living room consoles from Sony and Microsoft still so fresh, it may be difficult for PC gaming to garner much attention at E3 2014.

Or, will it? With lingering disappointment over the so-called next-gen console graphics in hot, new games, people are looking to the PC versions to really push the visuals.

In fact, if there's one consistent story we've heard since the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 launches in late 2013, it's that content for these specialty boxes is largely not there, or else disappointing when it is. Hence a number of articles and discussion threads recently on how the graphics in the buzz-heavy new game Watch Dogs on next-gen consoles look suspiciously like previous-gen games, and how to really get a next-gen feel, you've got to get the PC version cranked up on a high-powered gaming PC.

Another knock was when high-profile MMORPG The Elder Scrolls Online saw its Xbox One/PS4 version pushed back until at least the end of this year, leaving at as a PC exclusive for now.

What this all means is that, while the category doesn't benefit from a dedicated major press conference at E3, as the Microsoft and Sony consoles do, you can be sure cross-platform games will have their PC versions emphasized as well, and there will even be a decent amount of PC hardware and accessories on display.

The slim Razer Blade 14 broke new ground for gaming laptops earlier this year.Sarah Tew/CNET

We expect to see new PC gaming hardware, especially gaming laptops, which are growing in popularity as mobile GPUs get ever better. Breaking the big, black box mentality has proven difficult, but gaming laptops will definitely need to become thinner, more stylish, and more flexible as dual-purpose PCs in order to thrive. Already this year, we've seen good examples of that, with the revamped Razer Blade 14 and the MSI GE60 breaking new ground in no-compromise gaming laptop design.

Nvidia is pushing hard to keep PC gaming at the forefront of the industry (it helps that rival AMD makes the graphics chips for both the Xbox One and PS4). The company is hosting its own E3-adjacent event, called the Nvidia Gaming Expo, at a parking lot across the street from the Los Angeles Convention Center -- which may feel familiar to any attendees who recall of the classic Gathering of Developers GoD Lot (yes, my first E3 was in 1999).

Some of the gaming laptops we've tested recently (including models with dual Nvidia GeForce 8000-series cards) can even push past 1080p into 4K resolution -- coincidentally just as 4K monitors are starting to become more affordable. Look for new monitor models at the show at lower prices.

Don't expect to see much of this guy at E3 2014.Sarah Tew/CNET

But, despite the rosy outlook, there's one major PC gaming development that we won't be seeing much of. Steam Machines, also known as Steamboxes, running high-end PC games on Valve's Steam OS, have been much talked-about and demoed in the past year, with a major collection of Steam Machine hardware announced at CES 2014. Besides doing an end-run around the difficulties in hooking your PC gaming rig up to your big-screen TV, the Steam Machine platform also promised a revolutionary new controller, bridging the gap between gamepad and mouse.

Well, it turns out that controller -- notable for its two concave circular control zones -- still needs some work, and according to Valve, the controller, and presumably the hardware platform tied to it, is being pushed back to 2015, making it a candidate for lead PC gaming story from next year's E3.

courtesy:www.cnet.com

'Giant' iOS 8 adds widgets, new keyboard, home automation, Health, Touch ID for all; arrives this fall...

Apple officially announced iOS 8 on Monday at its annual WWDC conference in San Francisco, following an annual tradition of showcasing the evolution of its software for the iPhone and iPad. Big-ticket announcements include "widgets," Touch ID for third-party apps, a brand-new keyboard that learns as you go, and software for home automation. Conference-goers get the iOS 8 beta today, while everyone else can get their fingers on the new software in the fall.

Before we get into those details, let's get one thing on the table: iOS 8 doesn't undergo changes to its visual design. Last year's major overhaul with its flat icons remains, and iOS 8 focuses heavily on building out software enhancements across the board.

What's this about widgets?

Widgets were a major iOS rumor, but don't go imagining that they look and act as enlarged home screen icons a la Android -- they don't. Instead, think of them as enhancements to the notification center by letting you respond from events, even from the lock screen. Beyond replying to messages, you'll also be able to interact with eBay bids, for instance. iPad users get this, plus a tab view for the iPad and a sidebar for handy-dandy access.

Here's a little navigational gem: in addition to seeing the apps you've recently used, double-tapping the home button gives you quick access to the people you've spoken to most recently. A few gestures can initiate conversations with them.

Home and health

Last year Apple promised that Touch ID would work with third-party apps -- and a year later, it finally can, while keeping fingerprints secure.

Apple is extending its digital fingers into two very personal areas: your home and your heart. HomeKit(the name of the tool pack for developers) is Apple's systemwide OS foray into home automation, letting iOS device owners control elements like your thermostat, alarm, garage door, and lights. Hooking in Siri means that uttering the command, "Get ready for bed," can engage all connected devices to lock up the house, adjust the thermostat, and turn down the lights for the night.

Taking a leaf from Samsung's book on seeing digital health as the next frontier in mobile development, HealthKit and its corollary Health app will track your vitals by bringing together all your health data in one place. It'll work with third-party apps to notify the Mayo Clinic, for instance, to get word to your doctor in an emergency. It will also work with third party hardware such as the Jawbone UP or the FitBit.

Typing, messaging, and more

Apple has done some really promising work with the keyboard to make it extremely context-sensitive and adaptive to your lingo. Called QuickType, you get word suggestions (in the manner of Android) in 16 different languages. And since it learns your conversational style as you talk with certain people, it might helpfully predict words and phrases like "hecka" or "snoozer" when you chat with a friend, and pull from a different lexicon when you're talking to your boss or grandma.

The new keyboard still doesn't natively support tracing, as Android does, but there is now support for third-party keyboards, which is a big deal for iOS users who so far haven't been able to use keyboards like SwiftKey.

A little more control over messaging should go a long way with iOS 8. You'll be able to send an audio message to any contact. Apple calls this Tap to Talk, and you can listen to incoming audio messages from the lock screen, which is becoming a busy place in iOS 8.

Another feature we like is tucked into Safari, where support for extensions will let you do a number of tasks inline. Here's a good example: when you open up a Web page in a different language, you can select the Bing translate extension from a dropdown menu, then get your translation inline on the Web page to read it naturally in your language.

Here's another change: all your attachments, such as audio messages and pictures, appear in the details page for a chat thread. This means you won't have to scroll all the way through a conversation to get a specific photo, for example, because the details page keeps all attachments like photos and audio notes together in one place.

Also in the messaging realm, you'll be able to name group message threads, which will help you keep tabs on multiple conversations. Better yet, you can mute "noisy" chat threads that go off on tangents.

Email on the iPad gets some refinements as well, like even more sliding gestures in the sidebar to delete and flag emails. While you're composing a new message, you'll be able to tap and slide the menu bar to the bottom to get it out of the way so you can grab an image from elsewhere in your inbox. With the attachment copied to the clipboard, you can touch the bar at the bottom to reopen the e-mail, drop in your attachment, and send the completed email.

In this release, iOS 8 gets some feature parity with Mac's OS X 10.10 Yosemite, like iCloud Drive and the Spotlight feature. iCloud Drive works across Mac OS and iOS 8. What excites us more in terms of day-to-day use is Spotlight, which gives you a bevy of online and offline suggestions, including Wikipedia entries and suggestions for relevant apps you don't even have yet. Searching for a movie pulls up local theaters and showtimes, right on the phone, and without you having to fire up a browser.

Photos and Siri

Photos are always a big deal with Apple, and iOS 8 adds a heap of new features to help you edit, perfect, and find photos. Auto-straightening and cropping are two headline tools in the new Photos app, but you also get a couple of automatic color correction tools to make your photos look better. Fans of manual photography also get thrown a bone, because Apple announced that those controls will be available for developers to tap in iOS 8.

To make your photos look better, Apple has added two new sliders for lightness and color. But don't think of them as basic brightness controls; with each slider, the app analyzes the photo at hand and makes adjustments across several categories to give you the best looking shot. So lightness includes varying adjustments to shadow, highlight exposure, black-point, and contrast. You can still adjust each of these individually, but for a quick fix to your photos, the slider seemed to work surprisingly well.

Now, every photo you take through iOS is available on any other iOS device (with the Mac getting the same experience sometime early next year), and edits to photos and videos show up across devices as well. Search filters at the top of the app help narrow down categories like location of the shot or the date. You can search for pictures taken a year ago, or grouped by location, singly and in albums.

As we guessed it might, Siri supports Shazam music recognition for identifying songs as well as your speech, and plug-and-play compatibility with Siri in cars means that you don't have to press a button to use it, you just speak -- whether you have a Siri button built into your steering wheel or not. Siri will also support streaming voice recognition for quicker results, with support for 22 new dictation languages.

In the app store...

Another addition is to the iOS 8 App Store that lets developers create short video app previews, and sell multiple apps in bundles, which means that device owners can buy groups of apps at a discounted rate. Apple's editors' choice insignias also pop up to guide user choices, and integrated TestFlight lets developers beta-test apps to interested users without them having to buy anything or side-load apps.

Now, on the money side, parents who want a little more control over how many apps their kids buy get a little more say-so with a new feature called Family Sharing. When a kid, for example, requests to buy an app on a family account, the card owner can approve or decline the purchase. This works for up to six family members who pay for apps through the same credit card.

What else?

Gamers will appreciate this next little nugget: Apple has pledged to amp up iOS gaming with Metal, a new graphics engine that promises 3D graphics rendering that'll be as much as 10 times more efficient than before.

iOS 8 in China, specifically, gets support for the lunar calendar, better vector maps, and improved weather data.

iOS 8 in a nutshell

From what we know about it so far, iOS 8 is shaping up to aggregate a raft of minor-but-useful additions to the OS. There's no one feature to dominate headlines. Instead, we see Apple expanding a lot of existing features for the iPhone and iPad, and starter movements into health and the home.

Users of both iOS devices and Macs will see a lot more cross-device compatibility where information like text messages, photos, and even phone calls jumping seamlessly from one device to another.

Now, Apple has been known to withhold software surprises that would give away iPhone and iPad secrets. In fact, we'll expect to learn more about what iOS 8 can do when Apple launches its new mobile devices -- and the OS -- this fall.

courtesy:www.cnet.com

Why the private cloud has stalled...

The appeal of making your own data center cloudlike is easy to understand: Who wouldn't want an entirely flexible commodity infrastructure, where you can pour on compute, storage, and network resources as needed?

From the early days of the cloud, CIOs saw promise in the cloud's magic combination of reduced cost and vastly greater agility and wanted to capitalize on cloud architecture in their own organizations. But those closer to the ground in enterprise IT have always had a tendency to roll their eyes. They see the advantage of scale-out, self-service architectures for some applications -- such as dev and test -- but the return on investment in other areas is not always so obvious.

Part of that resistance is the usual allergic reaction to change, because major shakeups mean fewer resources to meet project deadlines and keep legacy systems humming. But there are also very good reasons why the private cloud is taking so long to take hold. The two leading ones are the immaturity and expense of available private cloud solutions.

Private IaaS shuffles along
The three major IaaS solutions remain the OpenStack framework-- a growing collection of open source projects revised twice a year -- and commercial IaaS solutions from Microsoft and VMware.

The word from the latest OpenStack conference is that adoption appears to have slowed, in part because OpenStack remains a moving target. To deploy OpenStack, customers generally need packaged versions -- from the likes of HP, Rackspace, RedHat, or Ubuntu -- or major professional services assistance. Both are often required by those serious about deploying OpenStack, and in the process, customers run a serious risk of being locked into the specific implementation they've adopted.

Microsoft has an interesting DIY hybrid cloud solution, where Windows Server and System Center together provide both private cloud infrastructure and a bridge to the Azure public cloud, but it's still evolving. With its vCloud Suite, VMware provides the most mature private cloud solution, but it's expensive enough to make you think twice about scaling it out.

From what I've heard, for the most part, private IaaS is still mainly used for dev and test -- so developers can access self-service features to reconfigure their environments (or at least have ops do that more easily). Interestingly, if you add deployment, this is also what PaaS (platform as a service) was deisgned to do.

Private PaaS seeks momentum
Although most people think of PaaS in terms of such pubic cloud offerings as Amazon Elastic Beanstock or Heroku, I actually think private PaaS offers the most compelling value proposition for the private cloud.

Private PaaS provides a modern replacement for the application server. You develop, test, and deploy applications that scale out on commodity servers rather than scale up on premium hardware; also, you can accommodate multiple languages and (theoretically) wrap governance around application development across your organization. A scale-out platform that can embrace almost all applications you develop in-house provides the most compelling reason I can think of for building your own cloud.

courtesy:www.infoworld.com

Tech Retrospect: Apple's new Beats and Google's new autonomous ride

It's been expected for what seemed like forever, and frankly at this point we were thinking Apple might just hold off and make the announcement at WWDC. But no, this week Tim Cook & Co. pulled the trigger one one of its biggest acquisitions ever -- or certainly one of its most talked-about acquisition, anyway. The $3 billion deal gives Apple a number of things: a line of overpriced headphones, a powerful new brand partner, and a bunch of new employees.

Most notable among those? Jimmy Iovine and Dr. Dre. It's unclear what role they'll have at the company, but what is known is that Beats is getting rid of its long-time design firm Ammunition, which has certainly had a major hand in making the brand what it is today. Apple's (very capable) design team takes over from here, and what comes next remains to be seen.

These happy gentlemen just signed a $3 billion deal. From left: Beats co-founder Jimmy Iovine, Apple CEO Tim Cook, Beats co-founder Dr. Dre, and Apple SVP Eddy Cue.Apple

In various interviews all the major faces in the deal -- Tim Cook, Eddy Cue, Jimmy Iovine, and Dr. Dre -- were all quite quiet about what comes next, other than the fulfillment of a dream on one end, and a great opportunity on others. Many tech pundits of the world, however, are rather more skeptical about the deal, questioning things like whether Apple really needs a line of oversized headphones, whether the addition of the Beats brand can help the company be more attractive to users, and whether the Beats music service is really going to help Apple. One thing is for sure: as of today, Apple now has apps on both Android and Windows Phone.

Google launches new self-driving car with no steering wheel

Google's new prototype.Google

If you're leery about the concept of a car driving itself, you probably won't be assured by the latest turn of wheel from Google. It has unveiled a prototype car that seats two people who will be completely unable to control it beyond giving it a destination, or requesting that it make an emergency stop. The car, you see, lacks a gas pedal, a brake pedal, and a steering wheel. It's not only self-driving, it's truly driverless. It's just a concept for now, and it's unclear whether Google will continue testing its current fleet of self-drivers built on production cars, but I'm a little concerned that this may be taking things a bit too far.

SpaceX and Elon Musk unveil Dragon V2 capsule

Tim Stevens/CNET

The Space Shuttle has been properly mothballed and, with US-Russian relations having something of a retro moment, we will very soon find ourselves in need of some more reliable space transportation. Thank goodness for SpaceX. Elon Musk's startup may be headed for the stars but it's based in Los Angeles, where it unveiled the Dragon V2. It's a larger capsule than the current Dragon, capable of carrying seven passengers in reclined, carbon fiber seats, along with roughly three tons of cargo. The capsule uses a series of far more powerful SuperDraco engines than its predecessor, enabling it to actually land in a controlled manner, "virtually anywhere on the planet," said Musk. It's also able to make as many as 10 flights before needing anything more than refuelling, which could drastically reduce the cost of space travel. Want a ticket? The thing could be carrying human cargo as soon as 2016.

www.cnet.com

Beats Solo 2: Iconic headphone gets a new look and sound (hands-on)

It's been a long time coming, but a day after Beats consummated its sale to Apple for $3 billion, it's finally released a successor to its on-ear Solo, one of the most popular headphones in the world. The new, improved Solo 2 carries a list price of $200 in the US and £170 in the UK, and comes in a variety of glossy colors. (Australian details weren't available, but the US price converts to AU$215.)

The Solo 2 looks a lot like a mini version of Beats' revamped over-ear Studio (2013) headphone. For starters, the earpads have been redesigned with swankier materials that make the headphones slightly more comfortable and should hold up better over time. Those pads do offer a slightly tighter seal to prevent sound leakage, as well as better noise isolation form the outside world.

The Beats Solo 2 comes in a variety of colors.Sarah Tew/CNET

Like the new Studio, the Solo 2, which weighs in at 7.2 ounces (205 grams), is built more sturdily and has no visible screws. The curve of the headband has been changed to deliver a snugger, more ergonomic fit too. The headphones fold up but not flat and come with a soft carrying case and a detachable cord with an inline remote and microphone for making cell phone calls. (It's worth noting that the cord color matches the headphone color, which wasn't the case for the Studio Wireless I reviewed.) This on-ear model doesn't have the active noise-cancellation of the step-up Studio and Studio Wireless models.

I personally wasn't a fan of the original Solos and thought they were overpriced and lacked clarity. Like with the new Studios, Beats has tamped down the bass a little and gone with a more accurate sound profile with better detail -- that doesn't mean there isn't strong bass, but it isn't as hyped.

The Solo 2 doesn't offer quite the fullness of the larger Studio, but it's definitely more pleasant to listen to and sounds better than the original Solo. In other words, the Solo 2 is still pretty pricey, but at least its sound and build quality is more in line with a headphone that costs over $100, rather than one that costs less than $75.

The headphones fold up to fit in an included carrying case.Sarah Tew/CNET

Outlook

Beats has been gradually updating its product line after severing its partnership with Monster in early 2012. While it had huge success with the headphones and Bluetooth speakers built by Monster, it also got a bad rap with audiophiles, who considered the headphones inferior. These new headphones may not win audiophile hearts and ears, but Beats does appear to be moving away from its bloated-bass roots and staking out a more refined sound.

courtesy:www.cnet.com

Ubisoft's open-world hacking game struggles to establish a connection...

It's really not fair for a game to get the kind of hype that Watch Dogs has received over the last two years. Its publisher, Ubisoft, would never admit it, but the initial reception the game got back at E3 2012 was ridiculous. It immediately set unrealistic expectations for something that was so far away from being released, with so few people actually getting their hands on trying it.

It was one of those lightning in a bottle moments. There was an instant buzz reverberating through the show floor in Los Angeles -- and no one had a firm grasp on what the the game was really about. Interestingly enough, for a title that was able to generate such an organic groundswell for what appeared to be a fresh idea, Watch Dogs lifts influence from countless facets of modern culture, well beyond the obvious hat tip to Grand Theft Auto.

So how on Earth could anything live up to the emotional and monetary investment so many gamers have already pledged? I'm not entirely sure. Because while Watch Dogs has its moments of nirvana, there's some stuff that falls flat, and whole bunch of mediocrity jammed in the middle. In the end, the experience as a whole isn't regrettable, it's just more contrived than you might be willing to accept.

Ubisoft Montreal

I think Watch Dogs' debut made such an insurmountable splash because people's imaginations ran wild with suggestions of what might be possible in the game. Those expectations can doom a title out of the gate. Watch Dogs doesn't feel as "open-world" as a game like Grand Theft Auto V, mostly because it fails to blur the boundaries of what's possible in the game. Once I was able to wrap my head around the rule set of the Watch Dogs world, everything suddenly felt small and unimportant.

Hacking, the very mechanic Watch Dogs is built upon, doesn't feel strong enough to carry an entire game.

You play as Aiden Pearce, an antihero who has inexplicable hacking abilities that he shares with an underground network of quasi-acquaintances. A few months back his nefarious actions cost him the loss of a loved one. Since that night, guilt has been eating away at him and it's chewed through his relationship with his family. Now it's time for Pearce to get to the bottom of a corrupt world of surveillance and control in order to make sense of who is responsible for his pain.

The game takes place in an alternate present-day Chicago where the entire city is accessible through an all-seeing, interconnected network known as CenTral Operating System, or ctOS. It's the intravenous lifeline of the city, with its tentacles dipped in every aspect of everyday urban life.

Ubisoft Montreal

Pearce can jack into all of these utilities through his smartphone. He can piggyback into security cameras, trigger traffic lights to switch, cause drawbridges to rise, control trains, and more.

In close-quarters situations Pearce can force electrical boxes to explode, steam pipes to burst, activate forklifts, open gates and unlock doors. These assets form an diabolical sense of playing boobytrap puppetmaster, especially when you're conducting the chaos hidden behind a corner.

Aiden can enter a "profiling mode" at any time that sniffs out top-level information about anyone in the city. It's a neat trick, but it only allows you to steal their bank account balance, unlock a type of car, or eavesdrop on a random call or text. Occasionally they'll lead to a side-mission, but it's overlap that you can access other ways, sometimes contextually within a campaign mission.

Not every area is immediately available to Aiden's smartphone. A district's ctOS mainframe must first be exploited before he has unrestricted access. Think of these as the "viewpoint" locations from the Assassin's Creed series.

The lifeline of the game is centered around security cameras though, as they allow you to chain hacks together as you sort of "Spider-man" from viewpoint to viewpoint. Anything you can see through the lens of a camera is vulnerable.

Players are presented with an deceptively overwhelming amount to do from the start. You can dive right into the campaign to chase down the narrative of Aiden's shattered past and present, or you can spend some time looking for hidden items, compete in races or intercept convoys, among other objectives.

Ubisoft Montreal

The campaign takes a few hours to gain some momentum, but it's not without the constant bombardment of HUD items distracting you from the game's other features. Some of the extra items are fun to investigate, but others aren't worth more than a first try. There's also a handful of activities that you're bound to have seen before. Can anyone really stomach another round of Texas Hold 'em? A lot of the extras in the game aren't worth the time spent completing them. After a while, earning more cash turns stale and collecting XP feels fruitless. Beyond completionists, most players will get tired of them quickly.

Watch Dogs doesn't do a great job of explaining the circumstances that I, playing as Aiden Pearce, found myself in. At first I thought I'd be maneuvering through the game mostly as a stealthy hacker, secretly infiltrating highly classified areas -- you know, controlling the show from behind the curtain. I was able to piece together that I've assumed the role of a vigilante of some sort, but overall I found my role conflicting. Eventually I was told I need to buy a gun, and all of a sudden I realized, "I need to start killing these people."

courtesy:www.cnet.com

Stepdown Samsung smartwatch is a better deal...

The Good Samsung's Gear 2 Neo comes with a more attractive price, a feature set that's nearly identical to the more expensive Gear 2, and a lot of bells and whistles including apps, offline music playback, and heart-rate monitoring.

The Bad Many of the extras don't work as smoothly as you'd expect. Fitness features aren't well thought out, need polishing. Works only with Samsung phones and tablets.

The Bottom Line The Gear 2 Neo offers the best balance of features and price among Samsung's three 2014 smartwatches, but it falls short of must-have status.

Samsung has three smartwatches in its early-2014 lineup. How many of them are good, and which one should you buy? It's not easy making a decision when most people aren't even sure if they want a smartwatch -- anysmartwatch -- in the first place. And honestly, it's not a good time to recommend buying anything, especially with the first wave of Google Android Wear smartwatches coming soon.

But if you're dead-set on getting one and want one made by Samsung, know this: there's the Gear Fit ($200 in the US, £170 in the UK), the Gear 2 ($300 in the US, £250 in the UK), and the Gear 2 Neo (priced identically to the Fit). The Fit is a fitness band with some extras, but doesn't track fitness very well. The Gear 2 has lots of features, but is expensive. And then there's the Gear 2 Neo, which has nearly everything the Gear 2 has but costs considerably less.

Left to right: Gear 2 Neo, Gear Fit, Gear 2Sarah Tew/CNET

Keep in mind that you need a Samsung phone or tablet to use the Gears at all. Are you that person? Do you own one of the supported Samsung devices? Then maybe the Neo could be of interest. It's useful at times -- it's a pretty decent watch, too. But it's too fidgety and gimmicky to be a really good gadget.

The Gear 2 Neo is the ultimate hedge bet: it's the least-expensive way to own the most full-featured Gear. It runs the same apps as the Gear 2, has the same screen and processor, and does absolutely everything the Gear 2 does, including track heart rate and change the channels on your TV -- except it lacks a camera, and it's made entirely of plastic. (Given the similarities, this review will only focus on the differences that the Neo offers; see the Gear 2 review if you want my full, in-depth take.) It's more useful than the sexier-looking Gear Fit. If I were buying a Gear, I'd probably buy the Gear 2 Neo.

But, considering that the wearable world is still in flux, and how most of the Gear's features are novelties more than necessities, none of the Gears are "must-have" products, at least for me.

Gear 2 Neo (left) and Gear 2 (right). Slight differences in design.Sarah Tew/CNET

Design

Black, gray, or orange: the Gear 2 Neo comes clad in one of these colors, from wristband to watch body, in basic plastic. The display, glass-covered, has a brilliantly bright AMOLED touchscreen. In plastic, the Neo feels more like a futuristic Swatch than the more metal-clad Gear 2.

The watchband can be replaced, either with another Gear band or most 22mm watchbands. It involves sliding a pin out and possibly removing links if the replacement is a metal band, but at least the Neo's own band has easy pop-out pins. It still feels like a project.

The Neo charges via Micro USB but needs a clip-on plastic dongle to attach to the Neo's rear contact points. It's annoying but a lot more compact than last year's Galaxy Gear charging cradle. A full charge, which take a couple of hours, lasts around three to four days while connected to your phone, longer if offline.

This year's Gears are all water- and dust-resistant, too, so you could wash your hands or even shower while wearing one. That's what all wearable tech needs to be, but not all are.

CNET

Gear 2 Neo as smartwatch

The Gear 2 Neo has a ton of baked-in features: a stopwatch and timer, a weather app, an IR-based WatchOn TV remote control, notifications for all apps that ping your Samsung phone regularly, an onboard offline music player, a heart-rate monitor and pedometer, and a microphone and speaker for making phone calls, recording voice memos, using S-Voice voice recognition, and playing back music loudly to annoy everyone around you. That's lots more than the Pebble watch offers, on paper.

Sarah Tew

Most of these features are at least competent, and some are really good. Voice memo is helpful; the offline music player can load tracks, albeit slowly, and play back up to 4GB of music via Bluetooth headphones while on the go. It's a clever trick to be able to change TV channels using your watch, and being able to quickly answer phone calls can be handy.

Getting notifications is the real killer app, and the Gear 2 Neo does it nearly as well as the Pebble. You need to tap a notification once it appears on the Neo's screen, however, so your latest Twitter reply or Facebook update isn't quite as instantly glanceable.

courtesy:www.cnet.com