Lenovo Thinkpad X1 Carbon 3rd-generation hands-on

Lenovo unveiled its third-generation ThinkPad X1 Carbon Ultrabook this week, featuring Intel's 5th-generation Core processor to bring the best possible performance for the form factor.
We got a chance to play with the device while running between the booths at CES 2015.

Design
The Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon looks all but identical to its 2014 predecessor, with the same black finish and red detailing.
The updated features are subtle, but very welcome. The laptop features an even thinner and lighter chassis, weighing just under 1.3kg and measuring 17.7mm thick, almost a full millimetre thinner than last year's model which measured 18.5mm.
The laptop felt especially light and thin in our hands and we can see it being ideal for travel or business trips.
Another new feature is PCIe SSD storage in a similar vein to the MacBook Air, which can take advantage of faster onboard SSD drive storage. The laptop will ship with up to 512GB drives.

Screen
The Thinkpad X1 Carbon (2015) is available in touchscreen and non-touchscreen versions. The demo unit we tried boasted a 14in, 10-point multi-touch display, with WQHD in-plane switching.
As well as being nicely responsive to touch, the new Thinkpad X1 Carbon's screen is pleasant to look at. Using the Thinkpad X1 Carbon in the brightly lit showroom floor, the ultrabook's display proved suitably bright and remained legible even when hit with stray light.
We were also impressed with its viewing angles, as text remained crisp even when viewing the screen from the side.

Colours were suitably vibrant and, while not as crisp as the Retina displays seen on Apple Macbooks, the Thinkpad X1 Carbon's screen was far better than those seen on most competing Windows 8 ultrabooks.
The laptop will be available with FHD display options.
Performance and software
Lenovo didn't go for an Intel Core M design and instead opted for the chipmaker's latest 5th-gen Core processor. The model we tested was running a Core i7 chip, and felt super fast in our initial tests.
It seemed to handle Windows 8.1 very well. There was no lag when swiping between pages, and programs popped up almost as soon as we selected them. It handled everything we threw it at with ease.

Beyond its performance-boosting powers, the real benefit of Intel's new Broadwell chip architecture is its ability to boost ultrabooks' battery lives.
Lenovo lists the Thinkpad X1 Carbon as being able to last for 10 hours of regular use from one charge, one hour more than last year's Broadwell model.
Intel's Core update packs in 35 percent more transistors than in Intel's previous 4th-generation Haswell CPU, while also shrinking die size by 37 percent, allowing for super powerful machines with form factors like the XPS 13, so expect many more like it to pop up from other OEMs later this year.
In terms of other features, there's wireless connectivity in the form of 802.11ac Wi-Fi and a selection of USB 3.0 ports and an HDMI output.
Availability
The ThinkPad X1 Carbon starts at $1,249 and will be available in the US from January. UK release dates are yet to be announced.

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Top 10 announcements from Sony, Samsung, Intel and others Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon

7. Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon
Lenovo's ThinkPad X1 Carbon has been widely regarded as one of the premier business ultrabooks since it launched in 2012, and the firm has usually picked CES to unveil a refreshed version.
This year is no different. The latest ThinkPad X1 Carbon is equipped with Intel's 5th-generation Core processor, which was also officially launched at the show.
This new platform enables the 1.31kg system to offer a claimed battery life of up to 10.9 hours despite its thinner and lighter design compared with previous models.
The carbon fibre construction, from which the model gets its name, also helps to make it more durable, and the 2015 ThinkPad X1 Carbon also benefits from support for optional PCI Express solid state drives for greater performance.
Lenovo also took the opportunity of the launch to mark the milestone of 100 million ThinkPad systems shipped since the brand was introduced by IBM over 20 years ago.

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Top 10 announcements from others

8. Car tech goes auto

Driverless cars and autonomous systems were the running theme for the car tech showcased at CES 2015 as major car brands demonstrated their take on technology that assists or even replaces the driver.
Most eye-catching of all the vehicles on display was Mercedes' driverless car, the F 015 Luxury in Motion (pictured). The concept car is not likely ever to be seen on the road, but indicated Mercedes' intention to develop autonomous car systems.
The car was stuffed full of digital displays controlled via touch, gesture and even eye-tracking.
BMW demonstrated how automated systems can make life easier and safer for motorists. A BMW i3 equipped with the carmaker's ActiveAssist system showed how the technology can prevent the car hitting obstacles, no matter how hard attendees at CES tried.
The ActiveAssist system uses multiple laser sensors to detect when a driver is at risk, and overrides the accelerator input and applies the brakes, in some cases avoiding crashes by mere inches.
BMW and Volkswagen showed off driverless systems that allow cars to park themselves and be summoned remotely from parking spaces to their drivers' location.
Audi decided to show off the maturity of its driverless systems by having an A7 Sportback saloon drive itself along 550 miles of US highway between San Francisco and Las Vegas.
Audi's Piloted Driving system bridges the gap between cruise control and fully autonomous driving by allowing a car to navigate open roads without driver input, handing control back to the driver when it approaches urban areas.
Other car tech was also on display, including audio technology from Harman that creates individual sound zones for each person in a car, and a platform from Nvidia that aims to put a powerful mobile chip at the heart of future cars.

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Top 10 announcements from Sony

9. Sony

Sony did not showcase any new mobile devices in Las Vegas, but did unveil new 4K TVs and a smartwatch with a metal strap, and even tapped into its past with a new Walkman.

Walkman NW-ZX2Sony shipped 220 million portable cassette players before the tech became largely obsolete, but the firm has brought the Walkman brand out of retirement.

The new Walkman NW-ZX2 has 128GB of solid state storage, designed to hold music in the high-quality LDAC format, rather than the MP3 format used on many smartphones and tablets.

The storage can be expanded to 256GB with a microSD card, which is likely to be useful as each song in LDAC format takes up to 150MB.

The NW-ZX2 aims to deliver high-quality audio in a portable format, with features that should appeal to audio enthusiasts. Due in spring 2015, the NW-ZX2 will cost an eye-watering £949.

CEO hacked-off at hackersSony took the opportunity at CES to discuss the impact of the Guardians of Peace hack on its servers and systems.

Chief executive Kazuo Hirai said that he is proud of Sony and its reaction to the incident, and that the company will always strive to protect freedom of speech.

Hirai did not dwell on the details, nor did he name any suspects, despite many suggestions that North Korea was behind the attack.

"Sony, former employees and current employees were the victims of one of the most vicious and malicious cyber attacks in recent history," Hirai said in his keynote speech.
The hack in late 2014 exposed personal details on celebrities, Sony's business partners and members of staff, current and old.

Bravia X90C TVLast year's CES saw a bevy of 4K ultra high resolution TVs and this year Sony revealed the latest 4K TV additions to the Bravia line, the 71in X90C taking centre stage.
Featuring a Floating Style form factor, the X90C is thinner than Sony's Xperia Z3 smartphone, allowing it to sit flush against a wall.
Despite its thin frame, the TV manages to squeeze in the Android TV operating system powered by Sony's 4K Processor X1, a chip that Sony says delivers 4K pictures by "evolving greater clarity, brilliant colour and high contrast" with any input.
The X90C displays images in 3840x2160 resolution, and has PlayStation Now functionality enabling PlayStation 3 games to be streamed to the TV via the cloud service.

SmartEyeglassClearly not keen to remain corralled in the smartwatch area of wearable technology, Sony also showcased its take on smart glasses.
Ready for developers, Sony’s SmartEyeglass takes the step into augmented reality made by Google Glass and builds on it. However, unlike Google Glass, the display is projected in front of both eyes to prevent any jarring visual crossover.
Control of the interface is delivered via a small puck-shaped unit with a couple of buttons and an area to rest the thumb.
Developers are being offered the SmartEyeglass software development kit so that they can explore the potential of the wearable display, from navigation instructions to augmented reality games.

Smartwatch 3 Stainless SteelSony did little to update the third generation of its smartwatch, but it did add the option of a stainless steel strap.
The watch was first released with a rubber strap, making it suitable for sport and running, but the metal strap gives the Smartwatch 3 a premium finish more like traditional watches.
The Smartwatch 3's module is easily detached from its strap, so fans of wearable technology will soon have the option to swap straps to suit the situation.
Keen wearable technology spotters could argue that Sony's addition of a metal strap is an answer to the premium and yet-to-be-released Apple Watch.

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Top 10 announcements from Sony, Samsung, Intel and others

So CES 2015 has come and gone for another year. It leaves behind a mountain of announcements ranging from new laptops and wearable gizmos to all kinds of weird and wacky inventions from firms that may well not exist by 2016.
With so many products being unveiled and announcements being made it can be hard to keep track of it all, especially coming in the first week of the new year.
So V3 has put together a top 10 of what we think were some of the biggest announcements from major companies at the show.
10. Samsung

The Galaxy S6 predictably failed to make an appearance, and the firm disappointed many with the lack of a major product launch, but Samsung still made a few interesting announcements. Here are our top picks from the Vegas show floor.
Samsung Portable SSD T1Samsung unveiled the Samsung Portable SSD T1, a solid state drive (SSD) available in 250GB, 500GB and 1TB storage capacities. The Portable SSD T1 will launch globally in 15 countries across the US, Europe and Asia later this month, including the UK.
Samsung said that the Portable SSD T1 is ideal for business travellers, creative professionals and content creators who need secure local storage that they can take on-the-go and use to quickly transfer large amounts of data.
Built with the same technology as Samsung's internal SSDs, the drive has sequential read/write speeds of up to 450MB/s with a USB 3.0 super speed interface and random read/write speeds of up to 8,000 inputs/outputs per second and 21,000 IOPS respectively.
Depending on the file size, the Portable SSD T1 has a data transfer speed four times faster than an external HDD. It takes only eight seconds to transfer a 3GB movie file and 27 seconds for a 10GB movie file compared with an external HDD, which takes 26 seconds and 85 seconds respectively.
The Portable SSD T1 comes with a three-year limited warranty, and is available in 250GB, 500GB and 1TB models with a starting price of £154.79.

SUHD televisions
Samsung revealed a new standard in UHD content, which aims to elevate the viewing experience in its new range of TVs.
The SUHD standard aims to offer a better colour quality in TV displays and Samsung claims it to be the most colour efficient available.
"For the most accurate colour display, we achieve this from a combination of hardware and software to make TV look as good as on the big screen," said Samsung.
SUHD is a proprietary nano-crystal technology, which uses an engine to remaster picture quality. Samsung will use it to improve curved TV products.
Internet of Things fundingSamsung chief executive BK Yoon used CES 2015 to promise more than $100m in funding for developers and to create an open system to kickstart an Internet of Things (IoT) revolution.
Samsung sold 665 million devices last year, many of which already have internet connectivity. But Yoon promised that by 2017 90 percent of those devices will plug into the IoT ecosystem, and 100 percent in five years.
"I've heard people say they want to create a single operating system for IoT, but these people only work with their own devices," Yoon said in his CES 2015 keynote.
"We can deliver the benefits of IoT only if all sensors can talk to each other. I'm making a promise that our IoT devices and products will be open. We will ensure that others can easily connect to our devices."

Galaxy E5 and E7Samsung went for the mid-range and low-end phone market with the launch of the Galaxy E5 and E7.
Offering 5in and 5.5in screens respectively, they cost a good deal less than Samsung's other large-screen phones.
The Samsung Galaxy E5 and E7 have been announced only for the Indian market at present, but their INR19,300 and INR20,500 prices put them around the £200/$300 mark.

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CES 2015: LG G Flex 2 hands-on review

LAS VEGAS: LG announced its latest curved smartphone at CES this week, the G Flex 2, and we managed to spend a short time with the phone at the firm's booth at CES ahead of its release.

Like its predecessor the G Flex, which was announced in October 2013, the G Flex 2 lacks physical buttons on the front or side, relegating the home and volume buttons to just below the rear-facing camera. But it also brings some new features in a smaller form factor.
Design
The G Flex 2's curved display means the phone sits more comfortably than most when held in the palm of the hand and up against the curved contour of the face.
LG claims that the shape is "optimised for the average face", offering better voice quality as the microphone is closer to the mouth when making calls.

The problem we had with its predecessor was that the handset's large size meant that you're still likely to look pretty odd holding it up against your face when making voice calls.
That's probably why LG has shrunk the size of the G Flex 2, although only slightly, as it now features a 5.5in plastic OLED (P-OLED) screen as opposed to the 6in display on the G Flex.
The device is truly flexible too, meaning that you can push down on the handset's screen, and the phone, as its name suggests, easily flexes itself back into shape. We can't see a practical use for this, but it's likely to get heads turning nonetheless.

Another interesting feature of the LG G Flex 2's design is that, like the G Flex, the handset's main hardware keys are on the rear of the device and these seem to fall into a natural position when the phone is held in the hand.
Measuring 7.1mm thick and weighing 152g, the G Flex 2 is much thinner and lighter than its predecessor, which measured 8.7mm thick and weighed 177g. Like the original, it doesn't seem bulky or unwieldy either, and feels really natural to hold.
Screen
While the design of the G Flex 2 is impressive, the screen is its most impressive feature. Measuring 5.5in with a full HD 1080p screen, the updated display beats the previous model's 1280x720 resolution and it looks stunning.
The curved P-OLED display, despite our doubts, does match LG's claims that viewing images and video on the device is more immersive than on regular smartphones.
Blacks are really black and whites appear exceptionally crisp and bright. The OLED technology really does make colours look vibrant and natural, too, while the slightly concave curve of the screen offers an immersive viewing experience.
Performance and software
Under the bonnet, the LG G Flex 2 is the first smartphone to boast Qualcomm's Snapdragon 810 processor, touting a 2.0GHz CPU speed alongside 2GB RAM. It also runs the latest Android 5.0 Lollipop mobile operating system.
Although we have yet to benchmark the phone, we found the device impressively nippy, and despite putting it thoroughly through its paces - opening apps, browsing the web and multitasking - the phone showed no sign of stuttering.

LG has left the Android mobile operating system largely untouched on the G Flex 2, which we liked, offering a clean, almost vanilla user interface. However, it has added a few software features to the bendy smartphone, including a light beam notification feature, which lets users preview incoming notifications while the phone's screen is off by swiping down from the top, and saving battery life by not using the phone's whole screen real estate.
LG hasn't quoted battery life, but said that the G Flex 2 will go from zero to a 50 percent charge in under 40 minutes.
Since its unveiling, Vodafone has announced that it will be exclusively offering the LG G Flex 2 for six weeks in the UK. Pricing details have not yet been revealed.

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iPhone 6 Plus vs Nexus 6 review Battery

Battery performance hampers most smartphones. Despite advances in other areas, most handsets still struggle to offer more than two days of moderate use from one charge.
The iPhone 6 Plus and Nexus 6 don't radically change this, but they are both fairly impressive by today's standards.
Our test involved burning the iPhone 6 Plus 2915mAh battery and Nexus 6 3220mAh battery by constantly looping a video file stored on the handsets. Both performed fairly well, but the Apple phone had a definite lead.
The iPhone 6 Plus lasted an average of nine hours before dying, while the Nexus 6 made it to a still reasonable eight hours.
The burn scores rang true when we gave the iPhone 6 Plus and Nexus 6 power intensive tasks like 3D gaming.
For example, when playing Grand Theft Auto 3 the iPhone 6 Plus generally lost 12 to 15 percent of its charge for every hour played. The Nexus 6 lost 20 percent every hour.
The Nexus 6 doesn't last as long as the iPhone 6 Plus, but it's important to note that it charges significantly faster than the Apple phone thanks to the inclusion of Motorola's Turbo Charger.
Turbo Charger is based on Qualcomm's Quick Charge 2.0 technology and can load the Nexus 6 with six hours of power from a 15-minute charge.
Winner: iPhone 6 Plus
Storage
The iPhone 6 Plus features a more storage options than the Nexus and is currently being sold with 16GB, 64GB or 128GB of internal space. Google is currently offering the Nexus 6 with 32GB or 64GB.
We'd like to have seen a 128GB option for the Nexus 6, but the wealth of cloud storage services for both devices mean that space shouldn't be much of a problem for either handset.
Disappointingly, neither smartphone features microSD card slots, meaning that buyers will not be able to upgrade the physical storage after purchase.
Winner: iPhone 6 Plus
Price
The Nexus 6 and iPhone 6 Plus are not cheap. However, the Nexus 6 is the less expensive option, starting at £500 for the 32GB model and £550 for the 64GB.
The basic 16GB iPhone 6 Plus is currently retailing for a hefty £620, while the 64GB and 128GB models will set you back a whopping £700 and £790.

Winner: Nexus 6
Overall winner: iPhone 6 Plus
Offering a sleeker design, better performance, longer battery life and sharper display, the iPhone 6 Plus is currently the ruler of the phablet market, and the Apple device wins six of our rounds compared to two for the Nexus 6.
However, with the most basic 16GB model costing £120 more than the Nexus 6, which features a superior camera, the iPhone 6 Plus' perks come at a premium.
We'd wholeheartedly recommend the iPhone 6 Plus to anyone with a surplus of income, but we'd also recommend the Nexus 6 to those outside Apple's ecosystem unwilling to shell out more than £500 for a smartphone.

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