Edward Kiledjian

With an expected release around April, sites around the internet are buzzing with claimed spec leaks for the upcoming Samsung Galaxy S5 smartphones.

So far, we believe Samsung will release 2 version of the Galaxy S5:

• One in typical plastic sold for around $800 off contract
• One with a premium metal body that will release for around $1000 off contract

Leaks also indicate that we will see a Samsung Galaxy S5 mini and an S5 zoom

Spec wise:

• We expect a 2K QHD (sub 6") screen
• We expect 2 processors (Exynos 6 for international markets and Qualcomm 805 for North America)
• We expect a 16 megapixel backside illuminated rear camera and a 5 megapixel front selfie camera
• Android Kitkat (v 4.4)

We also know that Samsung will spend less time on goofie features (like golf swing mode in the camera app) and more time strengthening the value add functionality (to compete with Motorola's MotoX). Its important to remember that the MotoX is inferior (spec wise) to the Samsung Galaxy S4 but most reviewers, who played with both, prefer the Motorola MotoX because of these smart situation aware features and its always listening mode.

In December, I wrote an article (link) about Google working on a smart thermostat as a play for the connected home.

A couple of days ago, we learned that Google has acquired the 800-lb gorilla in smart thermostat technologies, Nest Labs. 

Nest is the first company to successfully break into the home automation mass market with its smart internet connected thermostat and fire detector. It brought the promise of long term energy savings through intelligent automatic temperature control and the ability to control it via your Android or IOS smartphone.

For now, Nest will continue to operate independently within Google (similar to how Motorola is being run) but you have to imagine that Google will eventually integrate Nest's technologies into the Google ecosystem. 

The Nest Protect fire detectors have built in motion sensors that already talk to the Nest Thermostat to ensure the temperature is kept comfortable when you are at home. Its easy to see how this type of information could be valuable to Google. They can integrate this knowledge into their Google Now product and offer more appropriate cards when you need them.

The main question is how will the market react. If history plays out, there will be small pockets of users that will be outraged at how Google will data-mine their private data but most consumers will gladly accept their new master in exchange for convenience.

I think Google could really shift the market if it can use its cash and clout to significantly drop the price of the Nest products. Imagine the Nest Thermostat at $99 or the Fire detector at $79. This could lead to a huge increase in market demand. 

Videotron has been a fierce competitor in the wireless space in Quebec and has forced other wireless carriers  into creating Quebec only low cost monthly plans to stay competitive. This is exactly what the Canadian government wanted to do when they decided to foster competition. 

Videotron spent a cool $500M  during the last AWS auction spectrum (for Quebec and some parts of Ontario). The latest stats indicate that they have picked up about 500,000 loyal wireless subscribers making them the 6th largest Canadian wireless carrier.

Now we learn that a Scotia Bank analyst, Jeff Fan, believes Videotron has signed an NDA with Mobility to explore a potential asset purchase. If this is indeed true, then it means Videotron may have expansion plans outside of the province. 

Mobility has a limited footprint in Ottawa, Toronto, Calgary, Edmonton and Vancouver with approximately 175,000 sibscribers.

Videotron is also bidding in the highly desirable 700Mhz auction so time will tell how all of this plays out.

Safespot is an Android app that helps keep you safe in unsafe situations.  The way it works is like a deadman switch. You choose a group to notify and a virtual button shows up on the screen. You keep your finger on that button as long as things are safe. The minute you let go of the button (in the event of an emergency), it notifies that selected group that you're in trouble and provides a Google Map link to your exact location.

SafeSpot

Cartt.ca is reporting that Rogers is spending more than $100M to design and launch a Canadian Netflix competitor. The report states that Rogers has already signed licensing agreements with Disney/ABC, Warner Bros, 20th Century Fox, plus a handful of Canadian content owners such as Bell Media and Shaw.

The always trustworthy (said sarcastically) anonymous source said " They are buying up all the rights, all the windows, to everything in order to keep them out of the hands of Netflix in Canada. What they also say they want to do is target all the twentysomethings who don’t have cable with this – and then hopefully pull them into the system."

I can easily believe this because Netflix's Canadian catalog sucks. It has old movies that no one really wants to watch.

The service may be called Showmi and could launch as early as this April. The source claims the pricing model will be like Hulu where a single monthly fee allows streaming to unlimited TVs, computers, tablets, consoles and smart-devices. 

Cartt.ca

The Canadian Minister of Industry, the honourable James Moore, has made it official that Canada's 2500 Mhz auction will take place April 14 2015 and applications from interested parties must be received by November 27 2014.

The minister reiterated that he would like to see increased competition in the Canadian wireless market and as such will adopt the same auction principles as that being used for the 700Mhz bands beings auctioned this year.

The minister will implement spectrum caps to ensure at least 4 different providers win parts of the 2500 Mhz spectrum thus ensuring competition. 

Marketwire

For some a simple copy / paste is more than enough. Others want a little more control and for them there is a free Mac app called ClipMenu (link). 

It automatically saves the last 8 items copied to your clipboard and you can easily paste any of them back by:

• invoke the app using the chosen shortcut
• choosing the item number you want pasted

That's it. Its a free app based on user donations so take it for a spin.

Think of all of the information your SD cards have seen, questionable pictures, sensitive data. Hardware hacker Bunnie Huang (link) gave an interesting presentation to the Chaos Computer Club Congress that highlighted the fact that SD cards are micro controllers with lax security that can easily be used to trick or hack you.

He first sets the tone of the presentation with this statement:

"lash memory is really cheap. So cheap, in fact, that it’s too good to be true. In reality, all flash memory is riddled with defects — without exception. The illusion of a contiguous, reliable storage media is crafted through sophisticated error correction and bad block management functions. This is the result of a constant arms race between the engineers and mother nature; with every fabrication process shrink, memory becomes cheaper but more unreliable. Likewise, with every generation, the engineers come up with more sophisticated and complicated algorithms to compensate for mother nature’s propensity for entropy and randomness at the atomic scale."

He then explains that engineers add smarts to counteract this act of god (which is where the power for evil comes in):

"These algorithms are too complicated and too device-specific to be run at the application or OS level, and so it turns out that every flash memory disk ships with a reasonably powerful micro-controller to run a custom set of disk abstraction algorithms. Even the diminutive microSD card contains not one, but at least two chips — a controller, and at least one flash chip (high density cards will stack multiple flash die)."

So these microprocessors contain special logic (algorithms) that detect defects and then only make available bits that are expected to be good. Also cards contain more space than shown as available (to ensure the promised amount stays available). This means that a "bad actor" can change the firmware on an SD card to copy data to this hidden storage space. This also means a card can show 16/32/64gB as available when it only contains 2GB (think of low cost no name SD cards from questionable Asian sources).

With this presentation, expect someone to develop an SD card hack to turn these little cheap trinkets into Arduino competitors. 

Not sure how we will secure our SD cards from compromise but I guess you should be buying your cards from reputable resellers and only buy top name brands.

You probably received all kinds of shiny new gizmos for christmas and some of them may need AA batteries. Which ones should you choose?

Devices fall into 2 categories :

• High Drain Devices - These are electronic devices that require a sizeable amount of sustained current to work (like a digital camera, camera flash, etc)
• Low Drain Devices - These require low amounts of power for short periods at spaced out intervals (like a remote control, alarm clock , etc)

There are 2 main AA disposable battery technologies:

• Lithium Batteries - These are typically more expensive and are of a newer technology
• Alkaline Batteries - These are the "standard" batteries you find everywhere at reasonable prices.

How to choose the right battery

For low drain devices, both lithium and alkaline batteries have fairly similar power performance profiles (not the same but close enough). This means that for these devices, you should buy the cheaper alkaline batteries. It is important to note that not all alkaline batteries perform the same. Many of the cheaper brands deliver terrible performance so I recommend sticking with the Duracell Quantum and the Kirkland Signature (second choice doesn't perform exactly like the Duracell but has good performance at a great price).

For high drain devices, my tests show that the lithium batteries significantly outperform the alkaline ones (often by a factor of 5-9 times more). I tested about a dozen brands and the most reliably high performer was the Energizer Ultimate Lithium. The Duracell Ultra Lithium came in as a close second but this is a part of their professional line and is much more difficult to find.

What am I looking for?

Before I review the Audiofly 78 with microphone, I wanted to take 2 minutes and explain what I look for in headphones or earphones. 

When testing audio gear (particularly headphones and earphones), I am looking for flat frequency response. Flat doesn't mean boring but rather it means the headphones reproduce the soundtrack exactly as the producer intended it.

When travelling or working, I may have my headphones on hour hours and therefore I am looking for a sound profile that doesn't tire my ears and I look for products that are comfortable to wear. 

I believe that you get what you pay for and I am willing to pay for quality products so I also expect my gear to be durable,

I tend to use my audio gear in noisy environments (on city streets, in a crowded office, on planes, on trains, etc) therefore I prefer devices that offer passive noise isolation ( I find active noise cancellation products tiresome after an hour or two of use.

Finally I pay close attention to the price/value ratio of the products I buy and test. Like most of my readers, I am prepared to pay more for quality and performance but don't have an unlimited budget.

What is the Audiofly 78 with microphone?

I tested the Audiofly AF-33 headphones in June (link) and was disappointed with the product.  When I decided to test the higher end Audiofly Af-78 earphones, I was cautiously pessimistic but I was wrong... These are fantastic and keep reading to find out why.

Fit, design and build

The kit comes comes with sizes of silicon eartips and 2 pairs of Comply Foam tips. Like every other in-ear earphone that I have tested over the last 5 years, it is critically important (for noise isolation and sound quality) to find the right sized tip. After testing the silicon tips (medium worked for me), I went back to the Comply Foam tips they provided. Almost every earphone that I own is equipped with these tips because they provide an excellent seal, great noise isolation and are comfortable enough to wear for hours. I love the fact that they included Comply Foam tips in the base kit (great decision).

You'll notice that each earpiece has a larger enclosure than most in this class and I was worried this would make the umcomfortable for extended wear but it didn't. The design of the earpice is well thought out and the weight is properly balanced on the base of the ear therefore there is no excessive  weight to carry.

Audio fly describes the AF078's cable as:

"twisted core, Kevlar® reinforced conductors and a CORDURA™ fabric outer sheath for outstanding durability."

Marketing speak aside, the cable feels extremely durable (much better than the original cable provided with the UE Triple-Fi 10 or the Etymotic HF3). The cable feels solid, well built and is fairly tangle resistant. 

The design decisions do mean that you won't be able to wear the headphones "behind the ear style" but I don't wear my headphones like that anyway so this really doesn't impact me. 

There are 2 versions of this product:

• without microphone & remove
• with microphone & remote

I tested the later and call quality was excellent on both ends. I tested the call quality on a busy street, in the car while driving highway speed and in a quiet room. In all 3 cases the other party (to the call) didn't know I was using a headset and when asked said the quality of the call was excellent.

It's all about the sound

The headphones are rate for 18 Hz - 22 Khz which is a fantastic range. These specs should provide an incredibly wide soundstage and clear separation. Do the earphones deliver? In a word Yes.

Before testing the headphones, I ran them through 50 hours of burn-in as such

• 10 hours of white noise
• 10 hours of pink noise
• 10 hours of brown noise
• 10 hours of sweeping audio which pushes the drivers though different frequency responses (low medium and high)
• 10 hours of various types of music

Once these were completed, I then performed a series of objective audio tests (most reviews just play music they like to evaluate headgear, I wanted something more).

Frequency Response tests

First I tested the bass extension using frequencies from 10 hz to 200 hz. This test is meant to confirm the low range frequency response of the headphones. The AF78 passed this test

Then I moved to the treble extension test which tests the high end frequencies from 22Khz to 8 Khz. Again the Af-78 performed very well and passed this test with flying colours.

Dynamic range of the AF-78

The purpose of this exercise is to compare how the earphone reproduces sound between the highest signal and the quietest. This is a great way to test the isolation capabilities of the headphone as you compare the loudest and quietest sounds together. 

In my tests (un the quiet room), I was able to hear 66 db below full scale which is an excellent result. This shows that the earphones isolation is great and will allow for the reproduction of delicately nuanced music.

This test was performed in a quiet room, on a busy city street and in the middle of a busy retail store full of shoppers. Performance was excellent in every one of the scenarios.  

Testing for internal build quality

I have a special soundtrack that plays sweeping bass frequencies (used at high volumes) and I am looking for rattling sounds, buzz or other audio artifacts which would indicate bad build quality. 

The Audiofly AF-78 passed this test with flying colours. No artifacts were introduced.

3D audio test

I have various high quality 3d (holographic) soundtracks which allow me to test how well the earphones reproduce 3D sound. 3D sound is a reproduction of hour the human ear works and reproduces sound where you can clearly make our the origin of the sound in a 360 degree soundstage (even estimating distance).

The Audiofly AF-78 passed this test with flying colours.

Wiring test

I have an spoken word audio track that has cleanly separated left and right channel audio (each clearly identified as left fed or right fed audio). This is a simple test to ensure the right channel is wired into the right earphone and that there is no crosstalk.

On to the music

The AF78 is a balanced and dynamic armature setup which means everything you listen to sounds spacious, clean and crisp. It reproduces sound with a nice balanced tone and has the ability to churn out clean, crisp bass when called for. 

I tested the Audiofly AF78 with many different styles of music and it performed properly for all types (which is what I was expecting with a properly balanced sound profile): rock, hip hop, R&B, jazz, metal, bluegrass, country, acoustic, opera and classical.

Comparing this to other earphones in its price range, it performed fantastically well. The only negative comparison I could make was with comparing the vocal quaity (opera) of this versus my Triple-fi 10 pro. The triple-fi seemed to offer better vocal output. Its important to remember that the triple-fi 10 is a considerably more expensive earphone and has "3 individual speakers and an integrated passive crossover circuit board directs low-end frequencies to a dedicated speaker for bass".

When listening to an orchestral recording, I could easily make out each instrument. Everything sounded natural as if I was listening to it live. It didn't feel like the music was being pushed through a small device but that it was surrounding me with well spaced airy reproduction. 

Quality of music

Most earphones I test are not this high quality so I don't notice a difference between an MP3 recording or a lossless format. The AF78 is different. Because of its great sound reproduction capabilities, I could hear the quality difference between lossless and lossy formats.

This means the earphones are truly well designed and high quality. It is also important for me to note that the quality of your recordings is important. If your entire collection is based on 96kbit/s MP3s then you won't be getting the best performance from these little earphones. 

If you use iTunes Match, even your crappy recordings will be made available in 256-Kbps AAC which will greatly increase audio quality.

Verdict

Audiofly has done something fantastic with these sub $200 headphones. The balanced armature and dynamic driver combination are not unique to Audiofly but still very rare. I enjoyed testing these earphones and highly recommend them. 

BBM for IOS and Android has been available for some time but it still lacks many of the features found on the BB10 version. Now Blackberry has let the cat out of the bag and everyone can expect functional parity between all of the different versions in 2014.

You don't use a BB10 device so you're wondering what's in store? 2 features:

• BBM Voice - Is a VOIP service similar to Skype or FaceTime Audio
• BBM Channels - Is Blackberry's own social media network that reminds me of twitter.
• More Sharing - Better sharing options for pictures and locations.

Source: Blackberry blog

In the age of the internet, traditional print advertisements may seem boring but Motorola will be jazzing it up in the January issue of Wired.

Motorola released a US custom built Android smartphone called the MotoX. Motorola created a special website called Motomaker which allows US buyers to customize their device. 

Now they are bringing this customization to this unique print ad campaign which will allow you to see how the different MotoX colours look in realtime in the magazine. 

This is an interesting development that no one was expecting. TheInformation.com and EVLeaks have confirmed that Google is working on an internet connected thermostat (similar to the Nest). 

The current rumour says Google is developing the software and backend controls but the actual device will be developed by a third party. It is also expected to work on Android and IOS. 

It is exciting to think of what Google may be able to do combining a WIFI thermostat with their huge cloud number crunching AI.

Source: TheInformation

Open the Safari web browser on your iphone

Go to [www.google.com](http://www.google.com)

Search for Let's Go Caroling

Voila.... You get the above screen with 5 popular christmas songs ready to go

No one likes paying retail and I'm always looking for ways to save. RetailMeNot has both a US and Canadian site. Its sole purpose in life is to provide money saving coupons for online sites you already use.

You go to the site and search for the retailer you are about to conduct a transaction with:

Most of the time, you will be presented with a series of discounts for each retailer, you select the promo that looks the most attractive and click on the Show Coupon Code. The site opens the retailer in a new browser window and displays the discount code:

The voting allows users to confirm the validity of a deal and the description provides the condition of the offer. Typically they display the hottest most popular deals on their homepage.

The iPad has captured most of the Canadian education market (some have pegged it's market share at 90%). The Canadian Research Chain in Technologies in Education recently undertook an interesting study of 6000 iPad totting Quebec students.

The study found that for every 60 minute chunk of class, 88.5% of students used their device for at least 30minutes. What did they do you ask? Most used them as expected to read textbooks or take notes. It was surprising to see that students typically used these devices as teaching support aids (exactly as the educators intended)and not entertainment devices. While in class, they did not browse social media sites or consume multimedia content.

Outside of class, it seems over 75% of the devices use was for social media, multimedia content consumption and general amusement. 

I guess we'll have to wait and see if educational think tanks will be able to create unique educational strategies for these new classroom aids.

The iPad in education report (link)