The Static Page
Hello 2017 patented, may be a little far off, we’ll find all sorts of HUDs appearing everywhere in 2017 - from car windshields to machine repair instructions powered by devices similar to the Microsoft Hololens. AR and VR experiences should become more commonplace in the coming year. The third technology rounding off this tech triumvirate is Machine Learning. AI, as you’ll soon find out, has achieved tremendous strides already. But this year things are going to go a step further. You’ll have a ton of chatbots appearing, your everyday assistants will become smarter and there will be a predictive element in almost every service you use – be it hailing cabs via an app or online shopping. It’ll start becoming so normal that it’ll be a new benchmark in the way services ought to be user friendly. Machine learning is particularly poised to augment the other two technologies I’ve mentioned. Within IoT and home automation, using algorithmic processing of patterns your home can mould itself to your needs and even anticipate them. Even with AR and VR, machine learning can help create powerful experiences. Imagine using the power of natural language processing (NLP) to come up with more intuitive ways of interacting with these new systems. Imagine using the power of Big Data to crunch information before it gets onto your HUD - your smartness quotient (at least superficially) will go up a few notches. Lastly, in VR and gaming, the importance of AI is unmatched in providing a more “realistic” and immersive experience. Imagine a game that evolves with the user’s play style. Coupled with VR-immersion, you might not be able to tell what’s real and what’s not! I for one am looking forward to what amazing tech experiences this new year is likely to bring. Like my three-point short list, which technologies do you think will take off in the near future? Looking forward to your thoughts.
E
P
Siddharth Parwatay Managing Editor
SA
M PL
ersonally, I’m quite amazed with the way technology blazes into our life with each passing year. Inventions, discoveries, and upgrades have continually improved our digital and interconnected lives. And now that we’re at the very beginning of a brand new year, it would be nice to indulge in some crystal gazing and see how our lives will change further as the earth takes yet another trip around the sun. In many ways the issue you are holding in your hands right now has been conceived in line with this forward looking spirit. The concepts and prototypes that we aim to showcase in the cover story may not necessarily be those that will come to fruition anytime soon; however, they still give a glimpse of the future. The issue also includes features on the state of AI and one about the future of sensors and solar power. These are of course hot topics that will rule 2017, but if you were to ask for my personal take, I believe much of the innovation starting from CES will be around three very specific technology domains – a holy tech trinity if you will. And they are: IoT, AR/ VR, and machine learning. Wait, did I just say IoT? Yes, I did. I know I know, IoT has been touted as “the next big thing” for so many years now, it’s almost become a joke like Half Life 3. The thing with IoT though, especially in the smart home space, is that so far there has been a lot of fragmentation. There are hundreds of players with their own hardware, apps, and implementation methods, but no commonly accepted open standards for interoperability. With the likes of Amazon, Google, and Apple making heavy inroads into this space, I expect 2017 to really be the year home automation becomes mainstream. Even Zuckerberg has been playing with the idea of creating a Jarvis-like implementation for his home, and while I’m taking his recent video with a pinch of salt, I’m pretty sure he’ll have something interesting to showcase by mid 2017. The next technology that will see a lot of action is AR/VR. In fact, 2016 saw one of the biggest steps foretelling this wave – the now infamous Augmented Reality game Pokemon Go, which crossed a hundred million downloads. In 2017, taking things further, mixed reality will see a lot of development in terms of apps, gadgets, and content. While the smart contact lens, which Sony recently
siddharth.parwatay@digit.in
“I believe much of the innovation starting from CES will be around three very specific technology domains -- a holy tech trinity if you will.”
Reach me at: facebook.com/staticsid | @staticsid | editor@digit.in
www.digit.in | January 2017 | Digit | 1
The RSS Feed
Prototype Trump surprising that Apple wants to start making products in India as well now. I expect a lot more business to come our way if we play our cards right, because no big company in the US wants their business to be held to ransom by diplomatic ties between the US and China. Given their new president’s whimsical nature, and the matching ego of the Chinese, trouble may very well be brewing for many tech companies. Net neutrality fans might not like the ideas he and his cabinet have though, because the word is that the new government plans to do away with the new amendment to uphold net neutrality that was introduced just recently under Obama’s watch. The republicans have long since been opposed to government interference, and believe in the free market – which means let the provider do whatever it wants to, as long as you have an option to switch providers, everything will work out. Problem is, most areas in the US don’t have too many options for ISPs where they live, and providers are probably going to come together anyway, given the prospect of making more money, not just off consumers, but also off internet companies. Though this doesn’t affect India, we know that as the home of most of the internet, whatever happens in the US has a ripple effect all over the world. Another aspect of his campaign has been his promise to bring back jobs to the US, which makes me wonder how much we might lose in outsourcing revenue, even if we make some extra by manufacturing Apple devices. In the end, only time will tell how prototype Trump will impact us as President Trump, so we have to wait and watch. Either way, there certainly are interesting times ahead for technology in 2017. What do you think will be the biggest changes (if any) for India (positive or negative) because of the new US president? Write in and tell me, I’d love to hear some varied (and perhaps better informed) views on the topic.
E
H
Robert Sovereign-Smith Executive Editor
M PL
appy New Year to all of you, and thank you for sticking with Digit for another full calendar year. You better stay with us for 2017 too, because it’s going to be a wild ride in technology, and you’re going to need your favourite navigator to help you find your way through it. This month’s cover story is about concepts, prototypes and new technologies that will take off in 2017. Concepts are raw ideas that may or may not work. They often look good, but they may not be practical. Think of every concept car image you have seen. Awesome looking things aren’t they? Not practical at all, but then again since when has practical ever been fun? Then you come to prototypes. They’re often ugly looking things, and look nothing at all like the concept designs and images that inspired them, and most often they barely work, or just do enough to be a proof of concept. This is all we expect of them, because it’s only with painstaking research and development that final products get made, and yes, even final products rarely ever look like the concept devices that were pictured in the original artist’s mind. Then again, artists aren’t engineers, and nor should they be. Those of you who have read Digit for a long time will know we aren’t political, and avoid politics (and politicians) like the plague. Tech has no politics, religion and gender, and that’s why we love it so much. So why on earth is the headline of this column mentioning Trump (with a capital T)? We don’t care about his politics, and we don’t care about pretty much anything he does or says, except that which affects us as Indians, or as technology users. Whether we like it or not, the US has a tremendous hold on the technology world, and as a result, so does the supreme leader of that country. As a concept Trump is far from beautiful – no artist, no matter how skilled could ever be able to pull that off. However, as a concept he was funny, and the resident troll in us all secretly wished he’d win the election, just to see what happens. Then, when he did win, he was no longer a concept, he was now a prototype. Things suddenly got serious. And that’s the stage we’re at right now. Personally, I think his anti-China ranting is actually good for India. It’s not at all
robert@digit.in
SA
“Tech has no politics, no religion and no gender, and that’s why we love it so much. So why on earth is the headline of this column mentioning Trump (with a capital T)?”
2 | Digit | January 2017 | www.digit.in
Liked or hated this column? Let me know at: robert@digit.in | @raaabo facebook.com/raaabo
Contents JANUARY 2017
VOLUME 17 \ ISSUE 01
QUICK
NAVIGATOR
E
001 ENTER 014 DGT Desire
Greed Temptation
M PL
LIFE 028 DIGITAL Origins Feature
TECH 038 SCI Tomorrow’s Tech From the Labs Space Age
058 TOOLBOX Q&A
Workshop Tips and Tricks
073 WORLDVIEW 077 DEVWORX AND 098 TRIED TESTED
Concepts for 2017 48 17 In this calendar year, the implementations of
SA
Comparison Test Bazaar
SMART 114 STREET Agent 001 Price watch Killer Rigs Top 3 Industry connect
these 17 concepts blur the distinction between science-fiction and real life even more.
122 ESC Feature Unwind
It’s [A]l[I]ve
Right now, AI is quite capable and it’s evolution isn’t stopping anytime soon.
32
TRIED & TESTED
4 | Digit | January 2017 | www.digit.in
106 EPSON L655 INK TANK PRINTER
108 GIGABYTE RADEON RX 480
Superb raster prints for the average SOHO
Why go for stock when you’ve got this?
109 ASUS ZENBOOK 3 Is the latest powerful, fast and thin Zenbook a viable Macbook alternative?
ON THE DVD Learn Angular 2
This release is based on Ubuntu 16.04 (64-bit), with the Cinnamon desktop.
IntelliJ IDEA Visual Studio Code WebStorm Angular IDE Angular libraries Cross-platform development
From the good old days of 8-bit to the modern 4k 60fps wonders, we trace gaming’s evolution.
FILL SCREEN FILL SCREEN WITH IMAGE WITH IMAGE DOWNLOAD DOWNLOAD BLIPPAR BLIPPAR
Step 1
BLIPP...BLIPP...
FILL SCREEN IMAGE JUMPS IMAGE JUMPS WITH IMAGE TO LIFE! TO LIFE!
BLIPP...
IMAGE JUMPS TO LIFE!
DOWNLOAD BLIPPAR
Step 2
Download the Blippar app
Gameshow Livestream OBS Classic OBS Studio Wirecast XSplit Gamecaster
M PL
MAKE THIS ISSUE OF DIGIT COME ALIVE
Game Streaming Software
Absolver Ace Combat 7 Call of Duty World League 2017 Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy Destiny: Rise of Iron Dreadnought Gran Turismo Sport Horizon Zero Dawn Knack 2 Lara Croft GO LET IT DIE Nex Machina
E
81 SKOAR! (Now inside Digit)
PlayStation Experience 2016 Trailers
Step 3
Keep an eye out for Blip the image and get access the Blippar icon next to video reviews, interactive to some images games, and much more!
42 Sensors of the future
Beyond gyroscopes and accelerometers!
62 Live streaming
Brief Karate Foolish Cloudphobia Demo Cubotrox Demo EXIT Demo Minecraft: Story Mode – Episode 1 Neon Warp Demo The Eyes of Ara Demo
Linux Mint 18 Cinnamon Clement Lefebvre has announced a new release of Linux Mint. The new version, Linux Mint 18, is a long term support release which will receive support through to the year 2021.
Software Updates AdwCleaner AirDroid Image AMD Radeon ReLive Avast Google Chrome K-Lite Mega Pack Malwarebytes Image NVIDIA Graphics Drivers Spybot Search and Destroy Transmission-QT WhatsApp for Windows WPS Office
SA
This workshop shows you how to setup your own gaming livestream.
Games
LEARN ANGULAR 2 LINUX MINT 18 CINNAMON
DVD
111 THERMALTAKE CORE P3 The most beautiful chassis we’ve ever assembled
GAME STREAMING SOFTWARE
113 ONEPLUS 3T OnePlus just showed us how to make the best they had even better.
www.digit.in | January 2017 | Digit | 5
January 2017 • Volume 17 • Issue 01 TO ADVERTISE Email: sales@digit.in Sales Director: Lalit Arun, Mobile: +91-9582262959
Managing Director Dr. Pramath Raj Sinha Printer and Publisher Kanak Ghosh Publishing Director Vikas Gupta Editorial Executive Editor Robert Sovereign-Smith Managing Editor Siddharth Parwatay Multimedia Co-ordinator Abhijit Dey
South: Ram Sarangi, Mobile: +91-98864 06961 West: Suvarna Shringarpure, Mobile: +91-93249 28247 North: Mayank Sharma , Mobile: +91-8800661912 East: Jayanta Bhattacharyya, Mobile: +91-93318 29284
Writers Arnab Mukherjee, Manish Rajesh, Nikhil Punjabi
ADVERTISING INDEX Test Centre Asst. Technical Editor Mithun Mohandas
Brand.............................................. Page No.
Reviewers Hardik Singh, Souvik Das, Shrey Pacheco
digit.in
Shell........................................... Inside front cover
M PL
Assistant Vikas Patil
Editor Soham Raninga
TPLink........................................Inside back cover
Assistant Editor Prasid Banerjee, Sameer Mitha Features Editor Adamya Sharma
Gigabyte - 1............................................Back cover
Senior Sub Editor Karthek Iyer Mgr - Online Shauvik Kumar Design
Sr. Art Director Anil VK
Gigabyte - 2.............................................................13
Kyocera....................................................................... 3
Associate Art Director Shokeen Saifi Visualiser Baiju NV
Lead UI/UX Designer Shri Hari Tiwari
LIC............................................................................... 7
Sr. Designers Haridas Balan, Charu Dwivedi, Peterson PJ & Manoj Kumar VP
iBall - 1........................................................................ 9
Photography
iBall - 2......................................................................59
Sr. Photographer Jiten Gandhi Contributors
Bazaar OnePlus 3T LG V20 Lenovo K6 Power Corsair Carbide Air 740 Corsair VOID RGB HyperX Cloud Stinger Epson L655 RX 460 Thermaltake P3 GIGABYTE RX 480 Jabra Halo Smart Asus Zenbook 3 WD Passport external HDD Coolpad Note 5 Comparison Test ASUS Cerberus Cooler Master MasterMouse Lite S Cooler Master MasterMouse S Cooler Master MasterMouse Pro L G.Skill MX780 Gigabyte XM300 Steelseries Rival 100 Steelseries Rival 300 Razer Death Adder Elite Gamdias Zeus P1 RGB TT eSports Ventus Z Zowie EC2-A Zowie FK2 Zowie ZA11 Logitech Proteus Core G502
E
Intern Yangerlong Jamir
PRODUCTS REVIEWED THIS MONTH
ICTS.......................................................................... 11
Writers Aabir Abubaker, Abhishek Balaji, Anusha Sinha, Arjun Krishna Lal, Dhinoj Dings
SA
Production and Logistics
C II - 1......................................................................15
Manager Operations Rakesh Upadhyay
C II - 2......................................................................97
Manager Logistics Vijay Menon
Asst Mgr Production & Logistics M P Singh
Quantum................................................................ 128
Executive Mohd. Nadeem Ansari
Brand
Brand Head Mitin Kumar
Asst Product Mgr Madhuri Goel
Co-ordinator / Scheduling Kishan Singh Circulation Sales
Published and printed by Kanak Ghosh for and on behalf of the owners, M/s Nine Dot Nine Interactive Pvt Ltd. Published at A-262, 2nd Floor, Defence colony, New Delhi-110024 and printed at International Print-O-Pac Limited, C/4-11, Hosiery Complex, Phase II Extension, Noida-201306 (U..P.) INDIA. Editor : Kanak Ghosh.
GAMES REVIEWED THIS MONTH
Steep Dead Rising 4
Mobile Monthly Distraint Overpainted Dan the Man Seen Time Locker
MAKE THIS ISSUE OF DIGIT COME ALIVE FILL SCREEN Step 1 WITH IMAGE DOWNLOAD BLIPPAR
Head - Circulation Samir Mehta
Regional Mgrs Jayanta Bhattacharyya,
Norbert Joseph
Manager Circulation Dharmendra Singh Reader Services Team Leader Sudhir Patel Executives Poonam, Bhishm, Nilesh & Narendra +91-22-67899678 / help@digit.in Cover Design Peterson PJ
6 | Digit | January 2017 | www.digit.in
“We do not endorse or recommend any product or service advertised in the magazine. The advertisement’s in this magazine are for information purposes only. We doDOWNLOAD not, BLIPPAR expressly or impliedly, warrant or assume any liability or responsibility for the quality, accuracy, completeness, legality, reliability, usefulness or claims of any product or service advertised in the magazine. Our readers are strongly advised to carry out their own independent assessment of FILL SCREEN the product or services advertised in the magazine.” WITH IMAGE
DOWNLOAD Disclaimer BLIPPAR For every Digit contest, there will be only one winner, unless specified otherwise. In the event of a dispute, the Editor’s decision shall be final.
Missing Jrump Beat Stomper Prime Peaks
FILL SCREEN WITH IMAGE
BLIPP...
IMAGE JUMPS TO LIFE!
Download the Blippar app BLIPP... IMAGE2 JUMPS Step TO LIFE!
Keep an eye out for the Blippar icon next to some images BLIPP...
IMAGE JUMPS TO LIFE!
Step 3 Blip the image and get access to video reviews, interactive games, and much more!
Contact us Tell us what you feel about Digit If you have an opinion about anything published in Digit, or about technology in general, write to editor@digit.in or call at +91-22-678 99 700. To interact with the authors of specific articles, please write to the email address specified under the author’s name Software on the DVDs To submit and suggest software or any other type of content, to be included in the Digit DVDs, write to dvd@digit.in or call +91-22-678 99 707 Q&A If you’re having trouble with your PC or a gadget, our experts can help solve your problems. Just write in to sos@digit.in. Remember to include full system configurations in your email.
http://www.facebook.com/ thinkdigit Your favourite magazine on your favourite social network. Interact with thousands of Digit readers and have some geeky fun! http://www.facebook.com/ techkranti Let’s wake ourselves up and gather the tools of tech to change the future of our great nation. Join The Revolution!
M PL
Help! For copy-related issues, delivery status or any other complaints regarding out service, write to help@digit.in or call +91-22-678 99 678
Join the group that suits your need!
E
Agent001 Our very own secret agent will give you the lowdown on what to buy, from where and for how much. Send in all your buying advice or questions to the coolest agent ever. Write to agent001@digit.in
Digit Facebook Pages
Subscribe Want to subscribe to India’s #1 Technology Magazine? You should, because we have exciting offers for everyone, and you save money in the bargain. SMS: <DIGIT SUB> to 92200 92200 or visit www.digit.in/subscribe Product testing Want your product reviewed by Digit? Contact our Test Center at testcenter@digit.in or call +91-22-678 99 708
News and new product launches To announce new product launches and press releases, email us at pressrelease@digit.in
Endorsements / reprints Interested in ordering article reprints or in using our logos? Get the requisite permissions by contacting us at reprint@digit.in
SA
Business enquiries Think we can help you grow your business, or maybe you can help us grow ours? Get in touch with us at business@digit.in
Careers Want to work for Digit? Send us your resume at careers@digit.in
Sponsorship Want Digit to sponsor your tech event? Send your proposal to sponsor@digit.in
Interact with Team Digit digit.in/twitter
digit.in/facebook
digit.in/youtube
digit.in/forum
Forum
8 | Digit | January 2017 | www.digit.in
http://www.facebook.com/ IThinkGadgets Community of People who love mobiles, laptops, cameras & other gadgets http://www.facebook.com/ consumermate Expert buying advice and some awesome offers http://www.facebook.com/ devworx.in Community of software programmers who enjoy writing code and want to grow their career in software development
DGT
14
) I'm a great fan of Digit magazine. I
love technology and gadgets. I'm a 12th std. student and I love science, especially astronomy or cosmology. I like your dmystify books very much, and want to read all the previous books. So, can I get the digital edition of all the dmystify books, and also upcoming books in digital format? Thank you! –Mohammad Rehan
The two mobile companies are back again with their patent lawsuits. Read more here: http://dgit.in/ApleNokia
Feedback for the December 2016 issue of Digit
M PL
We usually give out PDF editions with our June and December special issues, the latter is still available for order online. If you want upcoming editions in digital format, there’s an easy way out for that - you’ll have to download our app from here - http://dgit.in/ AndroidEmag
Apple VS Nokia again
E
Enter
All the latest lifestyle technology, gadgets to drool over and gizmo porn like never before. Desire, Greed and Temptation ahead...
–Abhijit
Dhruv, Your suggestions for the poster have been noted. There is a certain process for picking the artwork for the poster, which is why sometimes we can’t give a certain game. But fear not, your interests are always at our heart. As for the diary, why does it seem to me that you like reading about our sufferings? And since you’ve asked about my identity, let me refashion the now famous line from V for Vendetta. We are all Agent001, We are Digit, We are Technology, We are not biased, Write to us. ;-) –Agent001
SA
) Hello Team Digit, Greetings from one of your loyal fans. I'm a student studying in Grade 9 and am an ardent follower of Digit from the last six months. I really liked the comparisons and the reviews and tests done in the Digit Zero1 awards. I absolutely loved the blast pun you guys did on the Note7 issue. Now coming to some suggestions: 1. PLEASE PROVIDE A POSTER FOR CALL OF DUTY : INFINITE WARFARE. I beg you. 2. Provide SKOAR! as a separate magazine. (Did I mention that I'm a console head? Sorry #PCMasterRace) 3. Please increase the quantity of material in SKOAR! 4. Stop hating iPhones so much. (pun intended) 5. Increase the number of memes. 6. I have noticed that you guys have decreased the length of the Digit Diary. It is very interesting to read. P.S. How many of you made your New year resolution to finish your work on time. P.P.S. Please leak the identity of Agent001. Last thing - Can we have another Encyclopaedia Technica or another round of Crack the Code? –Dhruv Dugar
10 | Digit | January 2017 | www.digit.in
) Hey Team Digit,
I’m a very big fan of your magazine. I know you have better stuff to do so I’ll make it short. My problem is that I have a story for a game. It is a very good story for an FPS/RPG game. The problem is I don’t know programming and I don’t know anyone around me who does. So I want to know whether I can send the story to a publisher/ developer and, if so whom. Please reply quickly. Thank you in advance. –Radhika Katiki
If you trust us, you can share the story with us and we will give you our honest feedback. If we think it sucks, we will say so, and if we think it’s good, we’ll say that. We could share some pointers too and then we can help by putting you in touch with some people at game studios if we think the storyline has what it takes. –Mithun ) Hi! I’ve been a huge fan since I was
8, I’m now 17. It has been a long time reading your issues. In the beginning from my school's library and then later by saving my pocket money and getting it from the stand. Your magazine was like a part of my life. All month long I’d wait for your next issue while guessing what would be in your upcoming issue. I miss those days a lot. 1. Guys try doing some experiment in you magazine like changing your pics. 2. Try to add a page about the month’s top phone apps and games as it is all the buzz now all thanks to JIO. 3. Give some sexy posters as guys love them and put it up on walls. 4. I should salute you as you guys give such good quality stuff for this cost and that too in print.
SECTION
SUBSECTION
GREED
TEMPTATION
For those who just want more than should be humanly allowed, we have enough to satisfy your hunger...
If you’re wondering what to do with yourself or how to spend some time getting cultured, this section is for you...
THIS MONTH: Pagani Huayra Hermes Edition, Casio MR-G Gold Hammer Tone,Ixoost Esavox, The Undersea Aquahoverer and more ...
THIS MONTH: Movie: Rogue One - A Star Wars Story, Arrival and upcoming movies to watch out for in January 2017 ...
DESIRE
SHOWCASE
E
TECHNOLOGY WITH STYLE
M PL
ChainFORM C
Hy
Hy is a pair of hidden wireless earbuds that are quite discreet looking can augment your natural hearing. Hy is designed to be as unintrusive as possible and is built so that you can go about your daily activities without worry. It comes with active noise cancellation and leaves your natural hearing unaffected. Another nifty feature is that it also comes with biometric sensors for the health conscious. Moreover, the which allow for health monitoring. And yes, they will release the SDK!
hainFORM is an MIT project which is a neat little hardware system that has shape changing capabilities. It is a modular robot which, thanks to its form changing factor, can change into anything, yes ANYTHING, depending on how you put its modules together. This means you can turn into a walking robot, a clock, a joystick, the list goes on forever. With ChainFORM, you can adjust its shape, color, and even its length. Each module of ChainFORM has touch detection across multiple surfaces and also comes with blinking lights and motor actuation. The lights can also be programmed and customized to suit your needs, such as for interactive displays. ChainFORM is able
so from now. If you have a hard time picturing it, then imagine a bunch of LEGO bricks that are touch sensitive, have their own lights, are programmable and can move around on their own. With limitless application scenarios, we can’t wait to see how this project evolves and we certainly hope these evolve into nanobots!
Bose Hearphones Helios
Hudify
Naked Case
The Hearphones allow you to control the sound around you, allowing you to tune out distractions in noisy environments, thus enhancing your conversations and focus.
Hudify turns your smartphone into a portable and transparent heads-up display for your car and gives you features like GPS and speed limit notifications and more.
Naked Case as the name implies is a case for your iPhone but one you will barely notice. The Naked Case is puncture-proof so you don’t have to worry about getting scratches.
SA
to tell how many modules are connected together and each module is capable of changing their individual function. The ChainFORM is based on a similar project from the past called LineFORM which some might be familiar with. The project is still a work in progress for the time being, but expect to see this handy gadget in markets within a decade or
Helios is a modular touch screen wall light which needs only a touch to turn on or off. Thanks to its modular design you can choose how much lighting you need in an area.
14 | Digit | January 2017 | www.digit.in
Feature
Digital life
32
A lamp with Alexa
The current state of AI reveals one big picture - AI is the tech of 2017 and the near future.
GE made a circular lamp simply called LED Lamp, with Amazon’s Alexa smart assistant build into it. http://dgit.in/AlexaLmp
PROLOGUE - THE FIRST SIGNS
I
F
or the next step, we jump forward to the later ha lf of the 20th century. In 19 71, University of Illinois student Michael Hart got unlimited acces s to the Xerox Sigma V computer in the Materials Research lab on campus. To return the favour, Ha rt wanted to do something that would benefit everyone. He took up a project to digitize more than 10,000 books by the end of the 20th century, now known as Proje ct Gutenberg. To start with, he typ ed in the entire Declaration of Inde pendence and declared it on ARPA net as downloadable. Six people downloaded it and the first e-boo k was born.
SA
M PL
n the early 1900s, ‘phonographic books’ were marketed but didn’t work due to impractical durations. Even with further developments, it couldn’t match up to print. So what pushed it further? The demands of blinded war veterans from World War II to read and learn. Also, in the year 1949, Angela Ruiz Robles, a Spanish teacher, invented an automated book reader ‘la Enciclopedia Mecánica or “the Mechanical Encyclopedia” with the objective of reducing the weight of the books her students had to carry every day. While these facts are not exactly about e-books, they were important for the world to realise that the printed word can also be improved.
E
CHAPT PROJECT GUETR 1 ENBERG
Arnab Mukherjee arnab@digit.in 28 | Digit | January 2017 | www.digit.in
From the labs
Sci-Tech
42
Space age
Gone are the days when sensors were simple technology – these are the sensors of the future.
45
A Superluminous Supernova a.k.a Hypernova is a high energy star explosion that looks stunning as well as scary.
SOLAR ENERGY IS THE TIME RIPE FOR
M PL
E
THE DREAM NOW?
Dhinoj Dings
feedback@digit.in
T
SA
esla’s project of powering an entire American island using solar power, freeing the citizens from depending on diesel energy has revived the excitement surrounding solar power. Is it a one-off or has the time truly come for solar energy? It’s no secret that the sun is a great source of energy. After all, it is what powers all the living things on this planet! In fact, the sun showers on the earth enough energy to take care of the world’s power requirements multiple times over. On the plus side, it doesn’t produce carbon dioxide emissions. So, you wouldn’t have to worry about adverse environmental effects on that front. Another advantage is that the sun is practically inexhaustible. Also, the sun
doesn’t charge any money for making use of its energy! So, the question is how the people on earth can turn the sunlight into electricity that we can use?
38 | Digit | January 2017 | www.digit.in
How to harness energy from the sun To do this, old-school solar technology makes use of large crystals that are made of silicon. These crystals generate electrical current when struck with light. The reason why silicon does this
is because the electrons in the crystal move when they are exposed to light. (In many materials, the electrons would just jiggle around when struck by lightthe reason why heat is generated.) Inside a crystal, the bonds that exist between the silicon atoms are made of electrons which are shared among the atoms in the crystal. When the light is absorbed, sometimes an electron in a bond gets excited up to a high energy level and therefore is able to move more freely than when it was bound. This means that the electron can now freely move around in the crystal, resulting in a current in the crystal. Silicon has the advantage of turning a decent amount of the light energy into electrical energy.
The downside to using silicon A red boiling pot of energy
The downside is that it’s quite expensive since big crystals aren’t easy to grow.
IMAGING: PETERSON PJ
E
M PL
SA Cover story
Cover story
as well, because the former usually leads to increased amounts of the latter. With no end in sight for population growth just yet, it’s obvious that we need to do other things to control climate change as of now. One of those things is to deal with transport caused pollution. Rapid transit systems are usually inner city modes of transport – typically metros or subway systems, and they’re environmentally better than everyone using their cars to get around the city. However, it’s not just people transport that matters, but also cargo, because most large cities are fed with supplies from nearby towns or smaller cities. Early in 2017, and right throughout, we will see a lot of activity and testing by companies around Elon Musk’s Hyperloop challenge. For those who don’t know, billionaire Elon Musk, whilst stuck in traffic,
SA TRANSPORT / TRANSIT 01 RAPID
Let’s face it, as each year passes, the seriousness of two things increases rapidly – population and climate change. Both are directly proportional
SOURCE: WIKIMEDIA
M PL
ost people will look to do forward looking stories on the first on January of every year. It’s a new year, there are 12 whole months of things that will happen, and in general, readers are psychologically conditioned to accept such stories. We were tempted to go down that expected route too. It’s a hell of a lot easier to give you a list of expected launches and rumoured features of the iPhone 8 and Samsung S8, etc. And that’s not to say we won’t cover those stories online ourselves, but for the magazine, we obviously wanted some depth… something more… Whilst discussing story ideas we realised that a lot of the things we were discussing were starting off in 2017, or would be first on display in 2017, and this led us to the conclusion that more than any other year before, 2017 paints a much clearer picture of what we can expect in our future. After a really long time of mediocrity, finally 2017 promises to be a year where science and technology will start to wow us again like it used to do 10 or 15 years ago. Another clarification we should make is that we don’t mean “concepts” in the way companies make concept gadgets… those are often just designers going wild with scribbles and are seldom based in reality. The auto industry is famous for concept drawings that look amazing, and then prototypes or actual cars that look nothing like the original drawings, because artists are not engineers, and don’t account for real-world scenarios. When we say concepts, we mean something more broader than a single design. We mean a conceptual shift in the way we will live our lives in the future. And we do mean “we” and not our grandkids, because all of the concepts we’re covering are something we expect to see in our lifetimes – as early as within the next five to ten years! Anyway, enough of the buildup, let’s get to the actual concepts. Remember to write in to feedback@ digit.in and tell us if we missed out on something, or if you disagree with our concepts, or just want to add something to the story – the best letters will win Digit T-Shirts.
E
M
BY TEAM DIGIT feedback@digit.in
Hyperloop concept art.
wished for a better transport system. While for most of us this remains a daydream, billionaires have the advantage of being able to fund their dreams. He open sourced his idea, and encouraged more companies and scientists to get on board, and get on board they did… by the thousands. There are currently many interesting candidates from across the globe vying for testing time on the few hyperloop test tracks there are, and 2017 is the year we expect to see many of those tests being conducted. Although we don’t see this as being an inner city rapid transit solution, we do see this first being implemented to transport goods between closely situated cities that have a lot of goods and cargo exchange. Sadly, you’ll probably need a visa and a flight ticket to see it. EXCITING EXAMPLES Currently, the first phase of selected finalists for hyperloop testing will be http://dgit.in/MIThyprlp conducted at SpaceX’s Hyperloop test http://dgit.in/vichyper track between January 27-29, and then http://dgit.in/bdgrloop Phase 2 in the summer of 2017. www.digit.in | January 2017 | Digit | 49
Feature
Toolbox
60
Workshop
We're past the trial stage in AR, and it's about time for you to play around with some AR dev tools.
62
Want to show off some gaming skills or hilarious fails? Here's how you can livestream your gameplay to YouTube.
Lost Android passcode, a conked memory slot, the notorious system32 error and more such suffering A foreign problem
buttons to activate it when the phone is switched off. If the charging icon is coming up, then you haven’t reached the custom recovery. Try different variations with the hardware buttons such as power and volume down button or power and both the volume buttons. You can also try keeping the power button pressed for around 15-20 seconds to reset the device (although not all devices follow this). At the customer service, explain your exact problem and request the staff to help you out.
have more than two RAM sockets, then you’ll have to use just one stick. The only solution would be to buy a new motherboard if you really need the other RAM module.
M PL
Hey Guys! First of all, I love Digit and I’m totally addicted to it. My problem is that I have a Xiaomi Redmi Note 4 which I bought from China (as it is not yet released in India.). I switched off the phone and after switching it back on, it asked me for the backup password instead of the fingerprint. When I entered my correct password, it is not accepting it and due to this I am not able to unlock my phone. I tried to search online for an answer and it suggested to switch off the phone, press the power and volume up button for ten seconds after which the recovery mode can be accessed. But when I did that instead of the recovery mode, I got a picture of the phone and the charging cable beneath it. I also tried contacting the Mi customer care in India, but they said that since the Redmi Note 4 is not yet launched in India they can't help me. In fact, everywhere I go, I get the same statement. I am really frustrated that I have got such a great phone, yet still I am not able to use it. Please help me to get out of this mess. You guys are my last hope. – Shaurya
E
This month we came across our readers facing problems on their PC on both hardware and software; along with smartphone issues
Socket trouble
SA
Sir, I have a problem where one of my RAM socket isn’t working. How do I fix it? My PC specifications are as follows: • CPU: Intel Core i5-3470 • RAM: 2 GB • CPU: GeForce GT 610 – Aditya
Hey Shaurya, It used to be easier on devices running Android 4.4 and below, but after Android 5.0, they removed the option in an attempt to increase security. The only way for newer devices is to factory reset your device which means that you’ll be losing all your data. To reach the factory reset screen, you have to enter the custom recovery of the phone and for that you need to press the power and volume up hardware
58 | Digit | January 2017 | www.digit.in
Hey Aditya, looks like the socket has failed. To determine whether your socket or RAM module is faulty, you should try inserting your RAM stick on another socket or a friend’s motherboard. The testing depends on the number of RAM sticks you have and whether your motherboard has more than two slots. If you’re using just one RAM stick, which works fine, then you should simply switch to the other slot. If you have two RAM sticks and don’t
RAM socket failure calls for a new motherboard
Kali-brated network card
Hey Team Digit, I have a Killer Gigabit network card to reduce my ping while gaming. It's pretty good for reducing lag in gaming, so I was thinking whether it can be used in Kali Linux for better performance in monitoring mode but I don't know the concept of the Killer Gigabit card and how it works. So I kind of feel stupid about asking this question. I'm currently using an Intel Wireless 3165 adapter. I have an MSI GE62VR Apache Pro. So, if I can use the card in Kali Linux, do tell me how to change the default settings so that I can switch the network card. Thanks. – David Terros
Hey David, you shouldn’t face any problem running scans and collecting wireless data on Kali Linux with your network card. Use the appropriate kernel version since we updating the kernel might affect compatibility in Kali. Here’s a quick guide on how to setup an external network card: http:// dgit.in/NtwrkCrdKaliLinux.
The forgotten settings Sir, today I was changing the settings in my BIOS but can’t recall what I changed. It shows an error mentioning “DRIVER_IRQL_NOT_LESS_ OR_EQUAL”. On restart, each time it is dumping physical memory and restarting. Please help me. – Akhil
OUR PICK OF THE BEST TECH ARTICLES FROM AROUND THE GLOBE
(MUST READS)
[The Verge Corner]
E
THE KEY TO VIRTUAL REALITY
RASPBERRY PI GAMING
M PL
This DIY project will guide you on how to make the ultimate retro gaming machine. All you need is a Raspberry Pi, mouse, keyboard, an output display and a microSD card/card reader.
http://dgit.in/RspbryPiGM
MUSIC FOR PRODUCTIVITY
Can listening to your favourite song amidst doing some work really increase your productivity? Studies can prove that for most type of demanding tasks, anything but silence can hurt your performance.
http://dgit.in/musc4work
SA
Researchers at the Panoptic Studio in Carnegie Mellon University are trying to understand body languages to improve the way robots relate to human beings. They also believe it holds the key to the future of virtual reality. http://dgit.in/VRfutre
THE PERFECT FIREPLACE
Januarys are usually the coldest time of the year in most parts of India, and here is how you can build the perfect fireplace to beat the winter.
http://dgit.in/fireplaceBst
FIXING THE INTERNET
The internet has begun to corrode. There are so many new bugs in the system and it is being rapidly exploited by hackers and trolls. What is the cost of all this? How can we fix it entirely to make it alright again?
Wired town going wireless The Blacksburg Electronic Village at the time of their launch in the 1990s were the state of the art. Today, with the passing of internet, the once vibrant network has become obsolete.
Writing a tweetstorm Ever been annoyed when you want to write more than 140 characters on Twitter? Well, hereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s the best way you can send multiple tweets at once to form a single continuous message.
http://dgit.in/BEVabsolete
http://dgit.in/tweetstrm
Who owns CRISPR? CRISPR is a DNA cutting technique used in scientific studies. This new research is worth million of dollars and a patent hearing is tearing the scientific community apart. http://dgit.in/CRISPRcase
http://dgit.in/FixIntrnt www.digit.in | January 2017 | Digit | 73
> code / creativity / community > Angular is jumping to Angular 4 http://dgit.in/Angular4
2017 for developers
A
has open sourced it’s TensorFlow and DeepMind projects. Baidu, one of the biggest entities working on MachineLearning has also open sourced its set of libraries under the name PaddlePaddle. And lastly, Amazon has integrated MXNet into their AWS ML platform. With so many tools getting open sourced, the community is slowly going to get its hands dirty and from among all these
M PL
lot many developments have happened over 2016, quite a few trends have been over-hyped, with Big Data being one of them. And now with that having died down, the industry is making actual progress. Aside from lacking the right infrastructure and resources to base the industry on, these few years have only been good for the conglomerates that had the money to actually put big data to use. With really fast memory having arrived and compute hardware with large caching becoming more affordable, 2017 looks to be the year when we’re going to see the democratisation of big data. Anyone can easily afford consumer grade compute cards from NVIDIA or AMD and get started with the number crunching. Moreover, we now have access to Machine Learning tools that have a much more beginner-friendly learning gradient. So what do we expect from 2017? Read on…
E
>>Here are some of the key trends that have shown promise for the coming year –> by Mithun Mohandas
SA
There shall be one This last year quite a lot of proprietary Machine Learning software ended up getting open sourced by the giants from Silicon Valley. Elon Musk backed non-profit called OpenAI was set up with the aim of building AI that is human friendly. Microsoft open sourced their Cognitive Toolkit (CNTK), Facebook has been putting its weight behind Caffe and Torch while Google
Google open sourced DeepMind
will arise only one. While every Machine Learning library has its pros and cons, there are other factors that will come into play when developers start playing around with ML. These libraries will proliferate the developer community and at the end of 2017 we shall see one particular library becoming the gold standard. This gold standard will then be adopted by all major XaaS providers and will be better integrated with their platforms. Data Sets for these ML platforms will also become
*Coding Matters
*OpenAI’s AI training
>> Universe is a software platform that allows any user to measure and train an AI’s general intelligence.
http://dgit.in/UOpenAI
*AWS CodeBuild
>> AWS Codebuild is Amazon’s new build service for creating and testing new software packages.
http://dgit.in/AWScode
*Firefox hardware report >>Mozilla published analysis of hardware usage to advise web developers about hardware market.
http://dgit.in/FFxHWRep
www.digit.in | January 2017 | Digit | 77
E
M PL
SA
E M PL
SA 86 | SKOAR! | January 2017 | follow us on:
facebook.com/SKOAR
E
K U VA H S T ORY
M PL
Gaming has come a long way from its origins, and it’s seen a lot of changes along the way, in it’s relatively short life it has changed a lot, and we’re going to take a look at them changes By Manish “Trigger Happy” Rajesh feedback@skoar.com
PHOTO IMAGING BY: ANIL VK
SA
he first ever video game was invented all the way back in 1958. That’s 58 years, 58 years of gaming and we’ve seen some BIG changes along the way. We’ve come from our humble pixelated pong beginnings to games that look so real it’s hard to distinguish them from movies. Of course graphics aren’t the only thing that’ve changed over time, they’re just the most easily noticeable thing. Below the surface there’s many things that have changed as well, and the speed at which the world of gaming changes and evolves today, you could be gaming in a completely different way in just five years from now, if you’ve been a gamer for a long time; for example from back when Sega and Nintendo were the Xbox and PS of today, then you’ll probably be able to relate to a lot of what we’re about to say, so let’s get right into it.
Games too easy? Let’s address and get the first few things out of the way immediately. These are the most obvious things, and the first one we’re talking about is how games spoonfeed players these days. Now we know that there are several factors that come into play when it comes to this particular trend in
games today. The main demographics of gamers in the past used to be teenagers and kids, they were the majority of the market. Now however, the demographic has shifted to adults who are over the age of 30. It’s probably because those same kids grew up and are still gamers but what we’re getting at is that easier games are less time consuming, and adults don’t have too much time to game. However, we did see a shift recently, with the advent of Dark Souls, challenging games were becoming the “in” thing again. And all of a sudden there was an influx of games that were challenging and existing games that were already challenging saw some limelight. Games now punished players for messing up; no instructions, no guides, no spoonfeeding. Bet that didn’t stop you from going online and looking up a walkthrough though. But at the end of the day, most major game devs will lean towards wherever the money is and the money is with the working adults. Anyway, that was the why, but we’re still going to b*tch about it now. Insert back in my day meme here. If you’ve played on the old consoles, or even old PC games, then you know the struggle. You had to memorise level codes, you couldn’t save your game when you wanted, you had to progress far enough to reach a save point or risk having to do it all over again. You couldn’t look up the answer to a puzzle or anything online, you had to tough it out yourself and figure it out. There were follow us on:
twitter.com/skoar | January 2017 | SKOAR! | 87
E M PL
FINAL FANTASY. ONE OF THOSE NAMES THAT KEEPS POPPING UP IN THE WORLD OF VIDEO GAMING. IF YOU’RE A GAMER, CHANCES ARE YOU’VE DEFINITELY HEARD OF SOME FINAL FANTASY OR THE OTHER, AND THERE’S A LOT OF THEM SO THEY’D BE PRETTY HARD TO MISS. THE FRANCHISE THAT IS FINAL FANTASY IS ONE OF THE MOST, IF NOT THE MOST, POPULAR JRPG FRANCHISES OUT THERE AND HAS BEEN AROUND FOR A LONG TIME. By Manish “Trigger Happy” Rajesh feedback@skoar.in
There’s a reason behind that too, because people have come to expect a certain production value from Final Fantasy games, so to an extent they know they can’t go wrong with their purchase. There have been several Final Fantasy titles released over the past few decades, some have been great, some not so much. We can assume that most of them did well, considering the franchise is still going strong after well over fifteen titles. Almost all Final Fantasy games are based in the same universe and share certain common traits or attributes.
SA
ow let us get something out of the way immediately, we’re PC gamers first and foremost, and Final Fantasy is an almost completely console exclusive franchise, we’ve missed out on most of the Final Fantasy’s (yes including Final Fantasy VII, please don’t hate us) but we’re totally willing to jump right into the franchise and its complicated world. So that’s exactly what this particular “phranchise” article is going to be like. If you’re long time fans of the franchise feel free to let us know if we missed anything or if there’s something we should check out for ourselves. And for the rest, let’s begin our crash course in Final Fantasy!
FIRST THINGS FIRST, WHAT IS FINAL FANTASY?
From what we’ve gleaned from the Interwebs and our own experience with Final Fantasy XV, it’s messy, it’s confusing, it’s amazing; it’s basically what you’d expect from Japan(stereotyping much?). It’s a huge brand; if the game has Final Fantasy in its name, it sells like hot-cakes.
90 | SKOAR! | January 2017 | follow us on:
WHAT ARE THESE COMMON TRAITS AND ATTRIBUTES YOU ASK? Most of them don’t look similar on the surface at all, which makes one wonder why they’re sequential sometimes. Most titles feature a similar story setting, and many of the core concepts are the same. Take the magical elements facebook.com/SKOAR
for example: Fire, Ice, Wind, Earth, Thunder(Lightning) and Water. Here Fire beats Ice, Ice beats Wind, Wind beats Earth and so on. This remains true for ALL Final Fantasy titles. No, they don’t work like Pokémon elements so Wind beats Earth, don’t ask how, it just does, ok? Next is the story, which in most cases usually puts you in the shoes of a hero – or sometimes even a group of heroes – with a tragic backstory(in most cases) who has to take on some kind of behemoth task to save his or her war-torn world. The worlds are huge and full of interesting places to see and explore, all while listening to an amazing soundtrack, which is a Final Fantasy trademark now. Another common trait is the ability to collect and equip items and weapons. Most will even let you customize skills and abilities and direct your character’s growth to suit your own playstyle. Then, of course, there’s side quests, lots of side quests, but that’s something we’ve come to associate with RPGs regardless.
Column
104
Bazaar
105
All the latest and greatest products tested and reviewed so you make an informed buying decision
SA
M PL
E
Tried & Tested
There’s a dark side to the Internet of Things and you should be worried about it
A GOOD GAMING MOUSE CAN MAKE ALL THE DIFFERENCE
Abhijit Dey
abhijit@digit.in
T
he bomb’s ticking away, you have your crosshair positioned at the entry point. You spot your enemy enter and pull an inhuman flick with your scoped weapon; eliminating them and winning the round for your team. Of course, you
have exceptional reaction time and skills, but winning that round wouldn’t have been possible if your gaming mouse fell short on accuracy. While buying a gaming mouse, it’s always better to prioritise the sensor and shape rather than drooling over RGB lighting. Hence, we procured several gaming mice and compared them to find out which
98 | Digit | January 2017 | www.digit.in
one could strike a balance between accuracy, comfort and features. We’ve gone through a number of variables and tests to determine the performance and other aspects. To learn how exactly these parameters were evaluated, we recommend that you jump to the ‘How we tested’ section to know more.
THE COMPETITION Our search came down to 15 of the most popular gaming mice in the market across a wide price bracket. This comparison will act as a guide that you can return back to whenever you’ve made up your mind to buy your next gaming mouse. Apart from the specifications and scores, the pros and cons of each mice
Column
It’s a (r)IoT
T
mithun@digit.in
E
The momentary relief I experienced when I’d zeroed in on the cat as the culprit completely vapourised the second I saw my router pop up on Shodan. I’m not going to mention the make or model (obviously). But it’s a well documented issue with a really popular brand. With even the most recent firmware not addressing the issue, there wasn’t much I could do to quickly remedy the situation. While it was really cool to screw around with my own router remotely, you soon realise how helpless you are. I now have DD-WRT running with an additional script that activates periodically to issue a kill command to the httpd service, so the issue’s taken care of. The ease with which someone could locate an exploitable router, find the exploit description and command line parameters via forums, and then proceed to take control, within hours can get anyone paranoid. Using Shodan anyone can locate unprotected IP cameras, webcams and proceed to view the feed. We hear Mark Zuckerberg tapes over his webcams for the same reason. Security is pivotal for anything connected to the Internet but the lax attitude with which companies treat it is heartbreaking. Security researchers have been talking about IoT for ages but not much in the form of a unified framework has come forth. Even the router issue had been flagged for over 4 months yet nothing was done to patch the same. It’s only when the issue reaches mountainous proportions that governments and companies take action. So with that, I hope doom unto you all. I hope your nudes get captured via unsecured webcams and released on the internets. I hope that industrial secrets get leaked thanks to easily exploitable backdoors in IP cameras. I hope this issue affects enough of you for the authorities to accelerate work on a unified security framework, especially for the banking sector. As we move towards going cashless, it’s a lot better if your privacy gets compromised rather than your life savings.
M PL
Mithun Mohandas Asst. Technical Editor
he Internet of Things grew bigger than most of us expected and it’s continuing to grow at a really fast pace. Too darn fast. Rapidly advancing technology is a geek’s wet dream but something as pervasive as IoT which has digital communication as its core philosophy is missing one key ingredient – security. Every vendor has their own security framework, some are stringent while some are akin to a town crier who shouts out everything he hears. All vendors are quick to claim that their devices use encryption while communicating but not many are willing to divulge any details. Given that the more energy efficient IoT devices don’t have SoCs powerful enough to handle SHA-256 encryption, they resort to using weaker hashes like MD5. To reuse the previous analogy, this would be like the town crier who’d been gagged but allowed to write and display whatever he heard. MD5 hashes are so weak that you can look up their plaintext counterparts on Google. Towards mid-November we saw the first ever massive IoT botnet takedown an ISP and multiple popular services like Netflix and Twitter with relative ease. It gets worse. The Mirai botnet, like all massive botnets in the past decade, has started to evolve. It’s finding newer ways to infect devices which till now were assumed to be relatively safe. This is where the creepiness begins. One month after Mirai had struck, I was casually browsing and started to notice my mouse cursor slowly creep to the left. These things tend to happen every now and then, I wasn’t using a mouse pad with my G502 and it never needed one. I let go and observed it for a while, hoping that I could catch a little twitch on the cable that might have triggered the ghost movement. Nothing. I forgot about the incident but a few days later, it happened again… There’s a little thing about paranoia – the magnitude of irrationality varies from person to person. I prefer the term ‘cautious’ but the moment my mouse started moving on its own again, paranoia kicked in. It didn’t take long to hunt down the source of the ghost movements (it was my cat) but I discovered something else during my little security audit. My router could be accessed from anywhere on the internet.
SA
“I discovered something else during my little security audit – My router could be accessed from anywhere on the internet.”
Let me know your thoughts on this column at: @mithun_mohandas
104 | Digit | January 2017 | www.digit.in
INSIDE
Page 107
Bazaar
Page 108 GIGABYTE Radeon RX 480 G1 GAMING 8G
M PL
THE LATEST PRODUCTS REVIEWED FOR YOU
E
LG V20
The Digit Test Centre receives hundreds of products every month. Each of these products is put through a series of tests and is finally given a score. The final score is arrived at after considering a number of factors and evaluating them in terms of features, performance, value for money, build quality, and, in the case of software, even ease of use.
Page 109
ASUS ZenBook 3
Page 110 Jabra Halo Smart
For better understanding of our ratings, hereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a quick guide to our overall score to
30
Extremely poor product.
Keep away!
SA
10
31
to
50
Strictly OK.
51
to
70
Decent product.
71
to
90
91
to 100
Page 111 Thermaltake Core P3
Page 113 OnePlus 3T
Not recommended
Go for it, but there may be better products out there.
&MORE...
Very good product.
Highly recommended.
Ground-breaking product. Weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve never seen anything like it before. A definite must buy!
www.digit.in | January 2017 | Digit | 105
AndroidThings by Google
New Nokia handsets
Google launches the first developer preview for its new IoT platform, Android Things. http://dgit.in/AndrdThngs
Bazaar
HMD Global Oy, announces two new Nokia feature phones following a comeback in the mobile market. http://dgit.in/Nokia150dSim
EPSON L655 VOID Wireless Ink Tank System Dolby 7.1 RGB Great immersion and comfort; build Printer quality could have been better
T
T
Price99 14,9
M PL
Price99 24,9
he 7.1 Dolby surround sound works through software, not independent drivers, as there’s only one 50 mm driver in each earcup. The headset provides a huge soundstage for games and we were able to distinguish the sounds from the left, right, front and back. Long pressing the dial on the left earcup disables surround sound. The audio quality is immersive for FPS and open world games. It’s also great for watching movies but not for music. The quality of the mic is only good enough for in-game chat and TeamSpeak. The microphone was found to have a hollow and muffled sound signature. The headrest and
E
Superb raster prints for the average SOHO
he most prominent upgrades to the EPSON L655 over the L455, which is the last EPSON printer that we’d gotten our hands on, are the additions of an Automatic Document Feeder, and automatic double sided
SA
75
printing thanks to the ADF. The nozzle configuration has also changed for the better with a more densely packed arrangement. EPSON has replaced the SD Card slot with Ethernet. As for the printing performance, the denser nozzle arrangement sure does a much better job as it produces really accurate prints. Moire patterns are hardly seen, we had to really squint to notice some within the innermost circles of the standard Siemens-star. Even fine raster lines were accurately reproduced. Photo prints weren’t as impressive as we could easily notice grainy texture over human skin, however, when we tried printing high-poly count CMYK colour wheels, we couldn’t notice banding at all. Quite impressive! The EPSON L655 does charge quite the premium, but the total cost of ownership is way better than cartridge based inkjets in the same price segment.
Performance.............................78 Build............................................70 Value for Money.......................80 Features.....................................70
Specifications
Nozzle configuration: 400 Black, 128 Colour; Droplet size: 3.3 pl; Ink: Black - pigment, colour - dye; Printing resolution: 4,800 x 1,200 DPI; Printing speed: 33 ppm mono, 20 ppm colour; Scanning resolution: 1,200 x 2,400 DPI; ADF capacity: 30; Interfaces: Wi-Fi, USB, Ethernet, Wi-Fi Direct; Weight: 7.4 kg
Contact Epson Phone: 1800 425 0011 Email: NA
Website: www.epson.co.in
106 | Digit | January 2017 | www.digit.in
Mithun Mohandas
63 Features.....................................75 Build Quality.............................65 Value...........................................50
Specifications
Frequency response: 20-20 kHz; Impedance: 32; Drivers: 50 mm; Mic frequency response: 100-10 kHz; Mic impedance: 2.2; Mic sensitivity: -37 dB (+/-3 dB)
Contact
Corsair Phone: NA Email: corsair.secure.force.com Website: www.corsair.com/en
earcups use memory foam for comfort and the foam is covered with a meshed fabric for ventilation. They might look heavy due to the size but the headset is light, and you can wear it for long gaming sessions. But we received an older unit and the swivel joints had become really loose. Even the headband clamping pressure was weak, and sudden jerks would displace the headset and the mic’s stem. RGB lighting is present in two zones on each earcup and we observed that keeping them switched off using the CUE software extends the battery charge immensely. The reasons to buy the VOID RGB are if you wish to own a wireless headset with great audio immersion, RGB lighting to match your rig and lastly, if you’re a Corsair fan, to colour coordinate your for maximum RGB madness. If not the RGB, then the stereo and regular black versions of the headset are available at lower prices. Abhijit Dey
Price watch
Street smart
117
This time it’s all about smartwatches and mobile phones under `25K which are some of the most popular segments
Killer rigs
118
We tell you about the best components to look for at various PC rigs at different budgets
The Chromebook query of hardware and software – that I was not completely sure of until that point. For starters, there are a lot of them in all shapes and sizes and specifications. While the India availability is sketchy, it would be wrong to deny that there are Chromebooks that satisfy almost every specific requirement need. Hmm, interesting! So what exactly was my friend thinking when he got a Chromebook for his brother?
M PL
E
Sometimes, all it takes is a CS:GO match to be convinced about the pros of a Chromebook. Confused? Read on...
Form factor
Agent 001
agent001@digit.in
O
over, I couldn’t stop thinking about Chromebooks. I had tried one in its initial days and frankly, it wasn’t that great. The idea behind it - I liked that part. But mostly it was almost destined to fail, the way it was at that point. In fact, even my reviewer buddies at Digit thought so. Has something changed over this time? This definitely warrants more research.
SA
ne thing about the PC master race is that we consider ourselves superior - and with that comes the implied conclusion that everything else is inferior. Consoles? Macs? It is a generally accepted idea that nothing really measures up to the glory of a full fledged all-component-blazing PC, and everyone should go for it. I have a lot of friends who swear by the PC master race and I am somewhat of a loyalist myself. The thing is, sometimes it can get difficult for anyone to get a point across to some loyalists. On one Sunday afternoon, in between a few heated CS:GO deathmatches, one of my friends told the rest of the group that he had purchased a Chromebook for his freshly graduated kid brother, who is an aspiring automobile-blogger. Of course, what followed immediately was a massive session of hilarious jokes and geeky insults (we all know what I am talking about here, eh?), all targeted at the poor fellow who couldn’t really say anything in his defence. But this brief exchange had set some mental cogs into motion and even after the CS:GO session was
114 | Digit | January 2017 | www.digit.in
Google’s computing experiment - the Chrome OS The initial idea behind Google’s ChromeOS felt quite impressive and audacious to me - an entire computing platform that ran nothing but a browser. Wow! Right? Over the years, I have noticed that the majority of us spend most of our computing time on web browser windows. So I had a lot of expectations when Chromebooks hit the stores – a paradigm shift, computing overhaul, etc. – but was disappointed soon enough. It was after I began my research afresh recently that I came across a few interesting confirmations about certain Chromebook updates – both in terms
Well, I am aware since day one of the ChromeOS that it is intended to be lightweight. I can hear you smirking, “Chrome and lightweight?”. Well, not if you’re a heavy handed multi-tasker like me. But for a major section of consumers, whose only needs are to browse, watch videos and use some apps, say, a 2 GB RAM Chromebook with a mid level Intel Processor would make sense. And due to being light on the specifications, Chromebooks can be built to be extremely portable yet inexpensive at the same time. I mean, would you believe that there is a Chromebook at the price of a mid range smartphone? Turns out there is. That somewhat ticks off one major box making it gift friendly. Someone’s getting one! What else? Hmm, the guy wants to be a blogger, so mostly he would be working on documents, browsing online, maybe upload a few pictures or watch some videos. A Chromebook and Google’s suite of cloud based applications are perfect for this use case. Heck, even I could use a Chromebook if that was all I did! But if I remember correctly, that kid brother of my friend was complaining about the spotty internet connection in his hometown the last time we spoke. When offline, Chromebooks were little other than a dead laptop the last time I had laid my hands on them. Somehow, it didn’t make sense and at this point I had to verify some-
Unwind
126
Netflix Offline
Netflix has enabled offline viewing on their mobile apps http://dgit.in/FlixOffline
M PL
E
Esc Esc
2016 really wasn’t the upbeat year we were hoping for, so here’s the Pessimist’s Guide to 2017. Just in case.
NEW YEARIS RESOLUTIONS FOR GEEKS AND HOW TO KEEP THEM ITIS THAT TIME OF THE YEAR AGAIN, WHERE PROMISES TO ONESELF ARE MADE TO BE BROKEN. BUT NOT ANYMORE!
Arnab Mukherjee arnab@digit.in
SA
N
the one we all make, to save money. Somehow, even though we try to keep track of every single rupee, at the end of each month we have to get really lucky to have some money left with us. Well, why does this happen? Mostly because at any given point of time, we have to rely on our mental estimates to track how much money we have. In fact, relying on mental estimates not only botches up the overall number but even leads to misconceptions regarding which area of spending needs more focus.
ew year resolutions have become an annual joke for most of us – we make them with total dedication on day one of a new year and sometimes fail to keep them the very next day. Rather than looking at them as a cultural phenomenon that you need to follow, seeing them as an effective way to change things in your life is a much better thing to do. And if you allow technology to help you keep them, there is actually no way that you’re going to fail. Here are some resolutions that geeks should find easy to keep with the help of technology.
I will keep track of my money One of the most popular resolutions – one that even fails as popularly – is
122 | Digit | January 2017 | www.digit.in
There are too many money management apps out there for anyone to even try to complain about not having what they want. Whether you want location based tracking (Wally+), or something that supports family input (HomeBudget), or bill splitting features and more extra features (Walnut) there is literally something for everyone. So the next time you think about saying that you can’t save - have a look at your smartphone.
I will not pre-order! This cannot be stressed enough - do not pre-order games. Or devices, for that matter. Companies that make these things are repeatedly using pre-order as a mechanism to push their product even before actual launch. What does this do? It leads to a situation where a lot of people get a product without knowing if it’s
Digit Subscription Form . Duration
Cover Price
You pay
Assured Gift
You Save
Money Saver offers (With Fast Tracks & DVDs)* 6 Months
` 1,250/-
` 999/-
Cash discount of ` 251/-
(20%)
1 Year
` 2,500/-
` 1,899/-
Cash discount of ` 601/-
(24%)
3 Years
` 7,500/-
` 5,499/-
Cash discount of ` 2,001/-
(27%)
Magazine - Only Package (Without Fast Tracks & DVDs)** 1 Year
` 1099/-
` 1,500/-
(27%)
You Save ` 401/-
*Includes regular issues of ` 200/- each and higher priced special issues per year ** Includes 12 regular issues of ` 125/- each per year
Start / Renew my subscription from
m m
y
y
Name ______________________________________________________________________________________________ (First Name)
(Middle Name)
(Last Name)
Occupation_______________________Company___________________________Designation_______________________ Delivery Address _____________________________________________________________________________________ City _______________________ Pin Code ___________________ State ________________________________________ Telephone_____________________ Mobile_______________________ E-mail ___________________________________ (STD Code) (Phone Number)
(Please mention an active email-id to receive your copy dispatch details)
Subscription Number ______________________________________ (Only for existing subscribers)
Payment Details Enclosed Cheque/DD No.________________ (Kindly add ` 50 for cheques not payable at par in Mumbai) dated ______________ favoring Nine Dot Nine Mediaworx Pvt Ltd from Bank _____________________________
Nine Dot Nine Mediaworx Pvt Ltd B-205, Arjun Centre Station Road, Govandi (E), Mumbai 400 088 Board line: 022-67899666 Fax: 022- 67899667
Subscribe online at www.digit.in/subscribe OR SMS “DIGIT SUB” to 92200 92200 For quick customer service, email us at help@digit.in OR call (022) 678 99 678
TERMS & CONDITIONS: This is a limited period offer | Rates & offer valid in India only | Allow 5-6 weeks for processing of your subscription | Free assured subscription gift will reach you within 8 - 10 weeks of commencement of your subscription | Orders once placed will not be terminated or transferred | Specific colors and features of the guaranteed free assured gifts are subject to change depending on availability of the stock with the manufacturer | Destinations not covered by courier will be serviced by post under a certificate of posting | Replacements will be made upon receipt of the damaged goods within 30 days of sale | Above schemes are valid till 31st January 2017 | Price of assured gift may vary, but specifications will be unchanged.
SUB JAN 17
Mail this form alongwith your cheque/DD to: