Affichage des articles dont le libellé est usable. Afficher tous les articles
Affichage des articles dont le libellé est usable. Afficher tous les articles

lundi 6 juillet 2015

Kickstarter: this Nikola Samsung Galaxy S6 case converts wasted energy from your phone to usable power



nikola energy case


Battery-packed cases are nothing new, but one firm is looking to create a power case that draws its energy from elsewhere: your phone. This is the Nikola Phone Case, and its creators — Nikola Labs — invented a way for the case to capture the energy your phone emits when it’s searching for a cellular signal.



Their original theory was that phones emit way more energy looking for a signal than is actually needed. Instead of that energy just evaporating into nothingness, the case captures it and transforms it into usable DC energy that can power your smartphone.


The result is a phone that lasts a bit longer than it would otherwise. The downside is that it probably won’t add more energy than a battery case could, but the upside is that the lack of a battery means you won’t need to charge the case, and it doesn’t add nearly as much girth. And if Nikola Labs’ claims are anything to go by, it does add a substantial bit of juice:


nikola case gif


So how much, and when? You can get the case at its standard price of through a Kickstarter pledge, with shipment slated to be fulfilled as soon as January 2016. It’ll be available in four different color combinations — Black / Gold, White / Grey, White / Gold, Black / Grey or Red / Grey — as well as a neat t-shirt to profess your love for Nikola Labs.


The project is sitting at ,000 of its doable 5,000 goal with a full 36 days to go, so there’s a really good chance this thing is getting funded. Be sure to throw your dollars into the hat if you want one.


[via Kickstarter]





Only 1.26GB of the Sony Xperia M4 Aqua’s 8GB of storage are usable



sony xperia m4 aqua


It’s become an industry expectation to have less available storage than what’s advertised on the box, but we’re not sure the Sony Xperia M4 Aqua’s case can be excused. The phone apparently comes with just 1.26GB of usable storage out of 8GB.


8GB of storage isn’t a lot by today’s standard, mind you, but it should be enough to have at least 4GB of freely available storage, if not more. According to the storage analysis on Android 5.0, the phone’s system is taking up roughly 4GB alone, while pre-installed apps account for over 2GB.


Even more damning is the fact that the device’s user manual suggests there should be as much as 3GB of usable storage, which is double of what is actually available (but still a pretty pathetic expectation). Some will point out that you can expand storage thanks to the device’s microSD card slot, but that does nothing for things that can only be placed on internal storage such as apps and cache.


The crime here isn’t that the phone has 8GB of storage. It’s a budget phone that will naturally come up short in this area. The problem is Sony (and probably Google with all of the apps these companies are required to include as part of their Android license) are not doing proper optimization of their user experience to give as much of that storage to users as they can, and we hope they’ll address it in a future software upgrade. We’ll be reaching out to the company for a comment on whether this is an error, and whether they have plans to eradicate it at some point.


[via XperiaBlog]