Samsung Gear VR: Virtual Reality in your living room

I’m standing in a shark cage, steel bars inches from my face. Bubbles rise to the surface of the crystal-clear water. I turn my head 360 degrees and see nothing but ocean and the rising bubbles. It’s a serene scene.

After a few moments, there’s movement in the distance. A dark shape slowly moves towards the cage. Then another. I can’t make them out at first they become clear soon enough. They’re great white sharks.

For a moment, I actually flinch a little when a shark gets too close to the cage. Welcome to the world of virtual reality thanks to Samsung.

.I’ve used a pair of cardboard VR goggles from the back of a cereal box before (they were pretty useless) but Samsung’s VR headset is my first experience with a modern, affordable VR headset.

20151222_145751 The headset looks like a fancy pair of goggles and is quite bulky but it’s solidly built and, surprisingly, fit comfortably on my head. A Samsung phone (in this case an S6) clicks into the front of the unit using two latches, one of which has a connector that fits into the phone’s mini USB port. There’s a scroll wheel that lets you adjust the focus. You plug headphones into the phone’s headset port..

[Update: Someone has asked me how I found the image quality: Whether I found things blurry. Some times it was a little blurry, but I wonder whether part of that was down to my deteriorating eyesight. A professional lifetime of staring at computer screens might be starting to take its toll …]

When you put the headset onto your head the phone’s software and the Oculus operating system kicks in, and this is your first experience of virtual reality. You find yourself in a large, cavernous room/apartment, with a pool at one end and wooden floors below you. I found myself rotating my computer chair so that I could take in everything around me. It’s fascinating (I really recommend if you’re going to use a VR headset, do it seated in a chair that can rotate. It helps with the experience)..

It’s hard to describe what VR is like without seeing it for yourself. You have to experience it for yourself to actually “get it” and see what it’s like. I could rabbit on for hours and hours on how I found it but you have to experience it for yourself to really understand what it’s like.

The view from the front of Gear VR. The phone clips in front of the two lenses.

The Gear VR proved a hit with my family, too, with older members reaching out and trying to touch dinosaurs that weren’t there and “Oohh” when dolphins swam past them. It showed to me that VR has no barriers and Samsung has made it accessible to the masses.

Perhaps the strangest sensation with the underwater demo is that you can’t see your hands or feet, or any part of your body. It’s quite disorientating not being able to see your limbs as you look around a virtual space but your mind is tricked into thinking you’re actually in the scene strapped to your head.

I was watching an episode of Mad Men using the Netflix apps (yes, you can watch Netflix using the Gear VR) and you’re transported to a chalet in the mountains. Out the window to your left are snowy mountains, To your right are movie posters. There’s a log fire, a plush leather sofa and a wall-mounted TV surrounded by stone columns. It’s sort of holiday cabin I wish I could afford.

Anyway, at one point, my mind started believing what I was seeing and I tried to put something I was holding in my right hand onto the right hand side of the couch. I actually believed I was siting on a couch, watching Netflix.

I demoed some first-person shooters using a supplied bluetooth controller but the technology isn’t quite there yet to create a really immersive experience. My friend Ross, who recently tested out a Samsung Gear VR as well, was able to get a VR version of Quake running. I couldn’t work it out. One thing I noticed was that I couldn’t use the headset for too long or else my eyes started getting sore.

Virtual Reality is in its infancy but if announcements at gaming trade shows is anything to go by VR is the in-tech at the moment: Is it the next 3D?

Here’s me wearing the Samsung Gear VR. It’s hard to look cool wearing a VR headset, to be honest.

What Samsung VR headset has done is bring virtual reality to the living room at an affordable price. The headset unit will set you back $200, which I think is pretty reasonable for the hardware. Of course, you’ll need a 2015 Samsung phone but lots of people have those nowadays.

I haven’t tried a Oculus Rift unit so I can’t compare the two and say whether one’s better than the other but I was impressed with the Gear VR and how immersed I felt in its virtual reality worlds. And at $199, it’s affordable but there’s one caveat: You have to have a 2015 Samsung smart phone to make it work. I don’t so I’d have to buy a Samsung phone as well as the headset so it could get pricey!

I wasn’t sure what I thought about VR until I’d tried out the Samsung Gear VR and now I’m sold. VR still has a way to go to go to make it a truly immersive experience but there’s something about being able to fool your brain into thinking that you’re actually watching a dinosaur waking up or sitting in a shark cage, surrounded by aquatic life.

Huawei Smartwatch: A classy and stylish piece of wearable tech

Since getting a Huawei smartwatch, my usual watch, an LG G Watch R, has been sitting unused and idle, gathering dust. Well, that’s not true: My teenage son has decided to flit between the LG and my FitBit surge.

I’ve hardly taken the Huawei watch off my wrist in the past two weeks. In fact, the only time I’ve taken it off is when I have a shower and when it needs charging. I really grown to love the watch, which makes my LG seem, frankly, bulky and unwieldy.

The Huawei makes a class impression from the moment you open the rather large box it comes in. The matte black stainless steel version that I had (it also comes in a stainless steel and gold versions) was nestled on a faux leather liner in the box, with the watch placed strategically in the middle. It oozed class and style.

An email notification appears on the Huawei's AMOLED screen. Swipe to the left to close it, swipe up to dismiss the program.

An email notification appears on the Huawei’s AMOLED screen. Swipe to the right to close the email, swipe up to dismiss the program. Easy.

With a 1.4-inch AMOLED screen (with a resolution of 400×400) and 4.2mm in diameter, the Huawei watch will suit smaller wrists and won’t look out-of-place on your wrist, like I feel that my LG does at times, and I liked that the watch’s strap was a standard 18mm strap, meaning you can replace it easily. It comes with all the features you’d expect a wearable to have, including a surprisingly accurate heart rate monitor. The only button on the watch is one set at the 2 O’Clock position. On the back is a heart rate sensor.

I’ve had my LG smartwatch for a few months now so I’m no stranger to Google’s Android Wear smartwatch software, so using the Huawei felt intuitive and familiar. With a smartwatch your preaching to the converted and I can’t actually imagine not having one these days. I used the Huawei’s inbuilt alarm to wake me in the morning and track my steps throughout the day.

The Huawei Smartwatch’s sporty green watch face. That green circle? That fills up the more active you are.

The screen is fantastic on the Huawei watch: Colours are bright and vivid and everything just looks much clearer than on my LG, even with my ageing eyesight. The display really is superb.

Navigating through the Huawei’s mentions are as you’d expect with an Android smartwatch: You swipe left and right through the screens, up and down to find the app you want and then tap the icon. It’s easy, to be honest.

You can change watch faces either by touching and holding the watch face itself then scrolling left and right to the face you want or through the Android Wear software on your phone. The Huawei had a good selection of watch faces that suit a variety of situations and you can buy new ones for a handful of dollars. My personal favourite watch face was green sporty, which shows your activity during the day through a green circle that progressive moves around the watch face the more steps/activity you do throughout out the day.

The Huawei uses a magnetic docking station (it attaches via some gold contact pins on the underside of the charger) and battery life was what I expect from a piece of wearable tech: I got roughly a day to a day and a half, depending on how many notifications I got throughout the day, before it needed recharging. Charging was quick, too, and I’d usually plonk the watch on the docking station when I was getting ready for work in the morning and it would be close to fully charged by the time I was ready to go.

The underside of the Huawei Smartwatch. The gold pins magnetically clip to the charging port.

The big question is: Is a smart watch essential? Well, no, it’s not but for me, as I said earlier, I don’t think I could live without one. Wearing one has made my life a whole lot easier and the Huawei looks classy enough to wear everyday.

Wearing a smart watch is part of my daily routine. And since wearing a smart watch, I don’t look at my phone nearly as frequently as I used to: The smart watch lessens the number of times I pull my phone out of my pocket to check that message, that email, that social media comment. If I get a notification (be it email, social media or email), all I do is check my watch and if it’s urgent, I’ll get my phone and reply. If it’s not, I’ll just leave it till I’ve time to answer.

If there was any negative to Huawei’s watch it’s the price: The black stainless steel watch (with matching black leather strap) will set you back around $750, while the gold-plated version is close to $1000, which makes the Huawei considerably more expensive than some other Android smart watches on the market. As a comparison, my LG G Watch R was about $479 when it first came out.

Make no mistake, Huawei’s smart watch is a premium piece of hardware with an absolutely stunning and vivid screen that makes it one of the best Android smart watches around right now, but it’s going to face stiff competition in the coming months as manufacturers bring new hardware to the market, one of those being Samsung and its new Gear S2 [Look out for a review of Samsung’s smart watch soon]

It’s going to be an interesting few months for fans of wearable tech.

Huawei P8 Lite review: A good phone but not a great phone

Huawei The mid-priced smart phone segment is a hotly contested one, with phone manufacturers trying to capture the attention of consumers not wanting to shell out more than $1000 on a phone.

Keen to roll with the momentum created by its top-end P8 smart phone, Huawei have released the P8 Lite, a budget priced phone that shares a name with its fancier sibling but is essentially a less specced version of the P8

[Note, I haven’t reviewed a P8 yet so I can’t compare the two directly.]

The P8’s 5-inch 720p IPS screen is powered by a 1.5 GHz octa-core processor, 2GB RAM and 16Gb of built-in storage. It’s packing a 13 megapixel main camera and a 5MP front-facing camera.

The P8 Lite is a nice looking phone that feels comfortable in the hand, and it’s solidly constructed with a sleek profile. It looks exactly like the flagship P8 – so Huawei have done an excellent job there – but instead of the brushed aluminum back plate of the more expensive P8, the P8 Lite has a plastic panel with a brushed aluminum look to cut down weight (and cost).

The phone has the normal buttons you’d find on a smart phone and two speaker grills at the bottom edge. For some strange reason, though, only one of the grills contains an actual speaker, which will muffle audio playback, depending on how you hold the phone.

The camera produced good images and video and while call quality was good, colour reproduction just wasn’t as sharp as I’d have liked. The P8 Lite is packing a 720p display which compared to other smartphones on the market is a little disappointing.

The P8 Lite is running Android 5.0.1 (Lollipop) which Huawei has customized with its own Ui over the top. It’s smart looking enough but there’s still slight lag (it’s barely perceptible) when you swipe between screens. It’s not major but I noticed it.

One great thing about the P8 Lite is the price: You can pick it up for around $350 [probably less if you search online] so it’s a good price for a budget smart phone, especially if you want something for yourself or a teenager that looks smart, does what it says on the gox and won’t break the bank.

Huawei’s P8 Lite is segmented into a competitive price point and consumers have a lot of better phones to choose from. The P8 Lite had some things I really liked and some things I didn’t. Overall, it’s a good phone that does the job but it doesn’t do enough to stand out from the crowd.

Fly 6 review: Eyes at the back of your head

Fly6 integrated rear bicycle tail light with built-in HD camera

I guess you could think of Cycliq’s Fly6 integrated tail light and HD camera as eyes at the back of your head as you ride your bike. Or an insurance policy that you’ll hopefully never need.

Funded through a Kickstarter campaign by Australian cyclists and tinkerers Andrew Hagan and Kingsley Fiegert, the Fly6 is one of those gadgets that you hope you’ll never need to rely on but are rest assured that it’s there just in case something goes wrong.

In fact, Fiegert came up with the original idea of the Fly6 after he was hit in the arse by a slingshot projectile while he was out riding his bike. Ouch!!

I was lucky enough to win my Fly6 through a Tour de France competition that Cycliq was running during the three-weeks of the cycle event. I’m not usually a winner when it comes to competitions so I was chuffed that I’d won this.

Eyes open: The Fly6 is bulker than a standard rear flashing bike light but that's because it has an HD camera inside [and a rechargeable lithium ion battery]

Eyes open: The Fly6 is bulkier than a standard rear flashing bike light but that’s because it has an HD camera inside [and a rechargeable lithium-ion battery]

Compared to most rear bicycle tail lights, the Fly6 is bulky, but that’s because this one incorporates an HD camera into the mix [it’s the large round lens underneath the Fly6 logo]. Outputting at up to 30 lumens, the tail light is bright enough to be seen by motorists [it has two flashing modes and one solid mode thanks to the three lights] and the camera records video at 720p [1380 x 720 resolution]. Cycliq says the internal 2600mAh lithium-ion rechargeable battery will give up to six hours recording and lighting time, depending on use.

Filming you: The large lens is the HD camera. The flashing strobe unit is visible underneath.

Filming you: The large lens is the HD camera. The flashing strobe unit, which illuminates to indicate that the camera is recording, is visible underneath.

The gadget comes with an 8Gb microSD class 10 memory card already installed so everything you need is in the box to get started. The unit is charged via a supplied microUSB cable and will emit a variety of beeps when you turn it on to indicate the battery charge status. Cycliq says if the battery drops under 5% capacity while you’re using it, three long beeps will sound, the audio and video capture function will switch off but the light will continue to work for about 1 1/2 hours.

Installation

Good to go: The Fly6 fitted to my road bike’s seat post.

Fitting the Fly6 to my road bike was incredibly simple: I slid the camera/light unit onto the right sized seat post mount [the box comes with two] then secured it to the seat post using two of the supplied rubber straps. It took maybe a couple of minutes to get it fitted. The box also comes with some spacers to ensure a more snug fit on your bike’s seat post, an SD card adapter and a microUSB cable to attach the unit to your computer to upload captured video, which can then be viewed using program VLC Media Player.

Testing

I’ve probably had the Fly6 for about three weeks and have used it extensively when I’ve gone for bike rides, generally during the day so I can’t say how bright it is during darkness hours. The video below shows how bright it is.

It’s a funny but as a bike rider, you never really think about what is happening behind you when you’re riding your bike, unless you look behind to see whether it’s safe to make a turn or whether there’s room for you to avoid a parked car. If the Fly6 has done one thing, it’s made me more aware of what’s actually happening behind me and shown me just how close vehicles sometimes get to cyclists.

I like to think I’m a considerate cyclist: I stay to the inside of the white line as much as practicable and where applicable [sometimes, of course, you have to move across the line for parked cars, road works, potholes in the road] but I’m still amazed at how close some motorists get to me as they drive past.

Watching captured video when I get home is generally uneventful – and that’s how I’d like it to stay. That’s why I said at the beginning that the Fly6 is like an insurance policy that you never want to use: It’s there, covering your back, just in case you need it, but for most of the time [hopefully] the footage it captures is uneventful [apart from seeing the odd motorist behind me talking on a mobile phone, which is illegal in this country].

Verdict

While a rear facing HD camera isn’t a necessity for a cyclist, the Fly6 is a nice thing to have in this age where motorists seem to be a more and more aggressive to cyclists, especially lycra-clad cyclists.

The capture quality is good enough to pick out number plates if you need to, and the device records in 10 minute blocks, so if you go for, say, an hour bike ride, you’ll have six recorded segments. I tended to watch through the footage, see whether anything was worth keeping, then delete it from the camera.

As I said in the beginning, the Fly6 is a set of eyes watching your back as you cycle and is essentially an insurance policy just in case an incident happens, and you need evidence to back you up – and that’s reassuring. It could be seen by some as pricey for a light, though: With postage, the Fly6 will set you back $214, but for serious cyclists who don’t bat an eyelid at $1000 wheels & bikes that cost thousands of dollars, it’s a small price for peace of mind.

*Cycliq is also in the prototype stages of a front-facing camera/light called the Fly12 which will have a 400 lumens front-facing light, a 1080p camera, Wifi capabilities and a smartphone. I’m following its progress with interest.

FitBit Surge review: Part two

OK, in the first part of my review of FitBit’s Surge (Super Fitness Watch) I covered some basics about the watch itself. Today, I’m looking at how it actually functions during exercise (I mean, that’s what it’s primarily for, right?)

FitBit’s smart phone app tracks all your exercise so that it’s easy to go through.

Over the past two weeks I’ve used the Surge during bike rides, walks with the dog and walks/runs during the week. The exercise function is accessed by pressing the button on the watch’s left side, which gives you the option to record runs or exercise.

The exercise option is broken down into several options: Currently I have Hike, Workouts, Weights, Spinning, Biker and Walk but the watch will let you customise up to seven options ranging from Kickboxing and Yoga to Stair climbing and Golf.

I was particularly interested to see how the Surge worked with bike rides and while I don’t ride my bike as much as I used to, I still like to pedal the tarmac a couple of times a week. I was particularly interested in having an active heart rate monitor that didn’t require me to wear a cumbersome chest strap.

Not long before I got the Surge, Strava, a bike recording app, had announced it was compatible with the Surge so rides would be saved to the Strava app, which is great because I use that app on my LG smart watch to record bike rides as well as a Magellan Cyclo 100 cycle computer. I was also interested to see out of the Surge & the Magellan which was most accurate.

Starting the Surge to record activity only requires a couple of button presses and I found that it generally found GPS satellites quickly (there is an option to do a quick start which starts recording your activity and will vibrate when it’s located satellites).

I found that the Surge found satellites much quicker than my Magellan cycle computer, which I was most pleased with. During one ride, the Magellan didn’t lock onto a GPS signal until about 2 minutes after I’d actually started my ride, meaning it was already behind recording my activity.

The Surge will track overall distance using GoogleMaps and its inbuilt GPS.

The bike setting recorded all the stats that I needed: Average speed, distance covered and heart rate and I noticed that when I put in a really hard effort, such as sprints or climbing, the heart rate would pop onto the display. Uploading the details to my PC broke down the information even further, telling me how long my HR had been in the peak, cardio and fat burning zones.

My heat rate broken down by the FitBit Surge into peak, cardio and fat burning periods.

My heart rate broken down by the FitBit Surge into peak, cardio and fat burning periods.

Looking at the information in more depth, graphs for speed, calories burnt and HR actually have sliders which can show you exactly what speed you were doing at each point during your ride, how many calories you were burning a minute and what your heart rate got up to.

For example, when I was averaging 30km/h, my HR was peaking at 158bpm (beats per minute) and I was burning 7.6 calories a minute. That’s quite mind-blowing.

Overall, I was impressed with FitBit’s Surge, given that it’s a good all-rounder for a variety of exercise options. I like it so much that it’s knocked my LG Smart Watch off my wrist and it’s making me keep active during the day.

While it might not be cycling-specific (if you’re the kind of person who wants a cycling-specific monitor then you’ll probably want to look at something from Garmin, perhaps), the Surge ticked all the boxes for me as someone who likes to do a variety of activities.

The Surge gets two thumbs up from me.

Fitbit Surge: Part 1

Fitbitsummary

This is the first part of several posts on my time with Fitbit’s Surge super fitness watch. For this one, I pretty much just talk about the watch.

It’s amazing how one image can convey so much information about what’s happened during one week.

The image above is a screen grab of my Fitbit dashboard and its tells me – and now you if you click on it (you’ll also see what other tabs I’ve got open) – how active I’ve been over the past week, thanks to Fitbit’s Surge Super Fitness Watch (hence forth just to be called Surge).

See the green circle at the top left with the black lightning bolt in it? That’s congratulating me on doing 80 minutes of exercise today (at time of writing, July 23). Underneath the “How much exercise minutes I’ve done” graph are little Google Maps icons showing the places I’ve travelled so far during a week of bike rides and walks.

That bar graph next to it? With all the different coloured bars? That’s telling me how many steps I’ve taken during the day. If I hover over each bar I can find out how many steps I took each hour.

The dashboard tells me that I should be aiming for 70,000 steps a week – 10,000 a day: As of Thursday night, July 23 I’ve managed 73,369.

I’ve only had the Surge for one week and already I can’t live without it. It’s replaced my LG Smart Watch, too (at least for the time being) and I’m just amazed at the plethora of information that the Surge gives me about my sleep and how active I am during the day. It’s on my wrist 24.7 (apart from when it needs charging).

I’ve always tried to keep fit: Riding my bike as many times during the week as work and family commitments allow, walking with my wife during the weekends and talking the dog for a walk most days. When I bought an HTC One M8 phone earlier this year it had Fitbit software pre-installed and I was fascinated at how many steps I could walk during a typical day.

My current part-time job can involve a lot of walking, depending on the job I’m doing that day, and I started using the Fitbit software to compare days, seeing which days I was most active and which days I needed to up the activity.

So when I was offered a Fitbit Surge to review, I jumped at the chance. I’m going to do this review over a few posts, too: There’s just too much for one post.

The Watch: simply if a little chunky

The watch itself has an active backlit OLED touch screen, a nice flexible rubber strap and three buttons: One on the left, two on the right.

It’s quite chunky, though, and on the back is a USB charging port (but it’s not a standard USB fitting) and the optical Heart Rate monitor, which continuously scans your heart rate using two (safe) green LEDS which measure your heart rate by detecting blood flow and capillary size changes under pressure.

It’s all very technical but it’s nice to see a sports heart rate monitor that doesn’t force you to wear a chest strap. (As a comparison of the HR monitors, my LG Smart Watch has an HR function which I find next to useless: I have constant trouble trying to read my HR with it).

One of the several watch faces you can pick on the Fitbit Surge.

The step counter shows how many steps you’ve done in a day.

The Fitbit Surge has a continuous optical Heart Rate monitor.

The Surge measures all the things you’d expect a fitness watch to: Calories burned, steps, distance and heart rate, as well as the number of floors you’ve travelled. You can access all those metrics by swiping the screen.

The data can be synchronised to your smartphone where you can see things in more details (and in colour: the Surge’s screen is monochromatic). I found that I got a few steps when I did simple things like move my wrist to pick something up so while you might find a few extra steps at the end of the day, I found the Surge to be accurate. You also get a nice notification when you’ve reached 10,000 steps for the day.

I found the watch comfortable to wear – the rubber strap is soft and flexible – but you have to make sure that it’s not too loose otherwise the HR won’t be able to get an accurate reading.

Another useful function is that you can track your sleep with the Surge and it will breakdown how many hours you got and how many times you were restless or awake.

Fitbit touts that the Surge has a battery life of five to six days but I found that using the GPS functionality every day meant that I was getting around three to four days on a single charge. That’s still good, in my book. It comes with a wireless dongle that plugs into a USB port on your computer so you can sync the data from your watch easily.

As I said, I’m wearing the Surge pretty much 24/7 and am so far really impressed with what it’s capable of. I’ve used it for several bike rides and walks but more on that in another post.

OK, that’s it for this post, in the next one I’ll go into more detail about how the watch handles strenuous exercise and go more indepth about what all the graphs mean.

GamejunkieNZ [2.0]

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