Technology News: Computing

Samsung Galaxy S4 dimensions, weight, battery, and hardware specs confirmed ahead of launch

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Ahead of its official release later today, the first high-resolution photos of the Samsung Galaxy S4 have leaked from China. The images not only confirm the rumored hardware specs (4.99-inch 1920×1080 display, 8-core Exynos Octa SoC), but they also confirm the Galaxy S4′s dimensions (it’s super-thin!), the battery size, and introduce some interesting new software features — such as S Pen… but without the pen. 
 
First, the dimensions. The Galaxy S4 will be 140.1mm long, 71.8mm wide, and just 7.7mm thick. This means the S4 is slightly longer and wider than the Galaxy S3 (to be expected with the larger screen), but a full millimeter thinner. The Galaxy S4 weighs 138 grams, up slightly from the S3′s 133g (again, probably due to the larger screen). All in all, and as we can clearly see in the leaked images, the Galaxy S4 will physically be very similar to the S3. 
 
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On the hardware side, <a href="http://mobile.it168.com/tu/1461878_1.shtml">the Chinese photos</a> clearly show the S4′s 4.99-inch 1920×1080 display — though it still isn’t clear if this is an AMOLED or LCD display. The close-up photos hint that the Galaxy S4 will have a real RGB display, rather than RGBG <a href="http://technologynews20.blogspot.com/2014/01/what-pentile-screens-mean-for-droid.html">PenTile</a>, but we’ll have to wait until the official announcement later today to find out for sure. We also have confirmation that the Galaxy S4 — at least in China — will have an 8-core Exynos Octa 5410 SoC. The Exynos Octa uses four Cortex-A15 cores clocked at 1.8GHz for heavy lifting, and four Cortex-A7 cores in a big.LITTLE setup to perform background and less-intensive tasks. The new Cortex-A15 core <a href="http://technologynews20.blogspot.com/2014/01/arm-cortex-a15-explained-intels-atom-is.html">is incredibly powerful</a>, but at the expense of being very power hungry. The Exynos Octa will be the first mainstream use of a big.LITTLE setup, though, and it will be very interesting to see if the S4 (and Android) can make good use of those wimpy A7 cores. 
 
Rounding out the hardware, the Galaxy S4 has a tri-core PowerVR 544MP3 GPU clocked at 533MHz (the same GPU as the <a href="http://technologynews20.blogspot.com/search/label/Mobile%20Phones">iPhone 5′s A6 SoC</a>, but at a higher clock speed), 2GB of RAM, a MicroSD slot, and a monstrous 2,600 mAh battery. The larger battery will help offset the larger display and power-hungry Cortex-A15 cores. The larger battery will also help with LTE connectivity — though, curiously, there’s still no mention of whether these leaked Galaxy S4s actually support LTE. A mobile carrier in the UK has said that its Galaxy S4s will support LTE, so we’re probably still looking at at least two versions of the S4: One powered by the Exynos Octa, and another powered by the Snapdragon 600 or 800 SoC with integrated LTE modem. 
 
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On the software side, the photos show that the Galaxy S4 will support eye tracking, though there’s <a href="http://technologynews20.blogspot.com/2014/01/samsung-galaxy-s4-to-feature-eye.html">still no details on how the tracking is being performed</a>. There does seem to be a new aperture/camera at the top of the phone, which could well be the eye tracking hardware. It seems the S4 will also let you interact with the interface by hovering your finger over the screen, rather than touching it, which apparently creates an effect like the Galaxy Note’s S Pen. 
 
We’re sure that both eye tracking and this S Pen-without-the-pen feature will be shown off tonight — so be sure to check back around 7pm ET for ExtremeTech’s coverage of the Galaxy S4 launch event in New York. 
 
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Samsung Galaxy S4 dimensions, weight, battery, and hardware specs confirmed ahead of launch

Ahead of its official release later today, the first high-resolution photos of the Samsung Galaxy S4 have leaked from China. The images n...

Samsung Galaxy S4 to feature eye-tracking tech, though we’re not entirely sure how

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The Galaxy S4, which will be unveiled on March 14 and released soon after, will feature the software and hardware to perform eye tracking. According to a Samsung employee who spoke to The New York Times, this technology will allow for automatic scrolling and page turning when your eyes reach the bottom of the screen — and, presumably, it might also allow for eye-controlled video games. At this point you are probably thinking about the Galaxy S3, which was also rumored to feature eye tracking. In the S3′s case, it turned out that Samsung was merely using the front-facing camera to perform face detection — as in, detecting whether there’s a face in front of the camera or not. As you can imagine, you can’t do a whole lot with such technology, except for turning the display off when no one’s looking. If the NYT’s report is to be believed, the Galaxy S4 will feature real eye tracking that can work out exactly where you’re looking. 
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As for how this technology will actually be implemented, though, remains to be seen. Eye tracking solutions tend to involve some kind of headset, or at least a camera that’s situated quite close to your eye. Tobii, which has developed eye-tracking hardware that can fit in the bezel of your laptop (pictured right) or desktop monitor, probably has the smallest eye-tracking solution on the market – but it’s much too big to squeeze into a smartphone. Tobii has demoed a pair of eye-tracking spectacles, but still there’s too much hardware to squeeze into a smartphone. (See: Tobii’s eye-tracking implementation in the new Hyundai concept car.) In all likelihood, we’re probably not looking at full, mega-high-resolution eye tracking in the Galaxy S4. It won’t be as gimmicky as the S3, but don’t expect to play the next Call of Duty title on the S4 using your eyes. The most likely implementation will probably involve some software that fuses together a bunch of signals from multiple sensors. One front-facing camera might track your eyes, while another might track your head movements (which need to be subtracted from your eye movements). Throw in some inertial data from the smartphone’s accelerometer and gyroscope and you might be able to work out when your eyes reach the bottom of the page. It’s worth noting that Samsung has registered the trademarks for Eye Scroll and Eye Pause, where Eye Scroll is described as “computer application software having a feature of sensing eye movements and scrolling displays of mobile devices.” Presumably, then, this feature will have enough resolution to at least detect your eyes moving up and down. It remains to be seen how much CPU time and battery life these features will consume, but I suspect it won’t be cheap. Maybe we’ve finally stumbled across a reason for the Galaxy S4 to have an eight-core Exynos Octa SoC… (See: <a href="http://technologynews20.blogspot.com/search/label/Computing">Our full Galaxy S4 hardware and software explainer</a>.)

Samsung Galaxy S4 to feature eye-tracking tech, though we’re not entirely sure how

The Galaxy S4, which will be unveiled on March 14 and released soon after, will feature the software and hardware to pe...

ARM Cortex-A15 explained: Intel’s Atom is down, but not out

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For the past two years, smartphone advances and the tablet market have been driven by ARM’s Cortex-A9. The diminutive mobile processor has proven to be extremely capable, but it’s also getting a bit long in the tooth. Custom chips from Qualcomm and Apple have taken the wind out of A9-based hardware in recent months, which makes the Cortex-A15′s debut downright timely. The best way to understand the features and capabilities of the Cortex-A15 is to keep the chip’s heritage firmly in mind. Each iteration of the Cortex-A family has increased CPU execution efficiency and performance, but always with the goal of remaining in a low-power envelope. The Cortex-A15 is meant to continue this tradition, but it’s also the first chip ARM has ever explicitly aimed at the low-end server market.  
 The logical evolution of Cortex-A9 
 
The A15 is exactly what you’d expect from a company that wants to target very different usage scenarios with the same processor. It’s a 32-bit chip that supports 40-bit physical addressing, multiple power domains, hardware-level virtualization, and several new instructions to the ARMv7 ISA. The L1 cache is twice as wide (128-bit, up from 64). The Cortex-A15 can decode three instructions per clock cycle (the A9 could only decode two), and it can issue eight micro-ops per cycle as compared to the A9′s four.  
 
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The A15′s branch predictor is more advanced than the A9′s, it can execute a greater range of instructions out-of-order, and it can execute 128-bit NEON/SIMD instructions in a single cycle. It can execute a pair of Load/Store commands simultaneously and supports multiple clock domains. These enhancements make the Cortex-A15 significantly more powerful than the Cortex-A9; Anandtech’s recent benchmarks of a new Chromebook from Samsung show it outpacing Intel’s dual-core/quad-threaded Atom as well. This is unsurprising. Virtually all of the improvements Intel has made to Atom since it launched the core in 2008 have been on the power efficiency side of the equation; the chip’s performance has scarcely budged. One of the Cortex-A15′s most important tools isn’t actually part of the CPU. Server chips require sophisticated linkages and cross-communication capabilities, but it didn’t make sense to build those components into the base CPU design when the average smartphone/tablet would never need them. ARM’s CoreLink CCI-400 (Cache Coherent Interconnect) is a separate block of silicon that connects the CPUs, MMUs, graphics, Ethernet, and memory controller. The CCI-400 is integral to ARM’s plans to push into servers. Each component attaches to the CCI using a 128-bit data path and the unit is designed to run at 50% the clock speed of the Cortex-A15s. That works out to a clock speed of between 500MHz and 1.25GHz. ARM is talking up the CCI-400 as a key component of big.LITTLE, its pairing scheme that combines Cortex-A15 and Cortex-A7 CPUs on the same SoC to maximize execution efficiency, but we expect the chip will primarily be used to connect dense server SoCs. 
 
Putting the A15 in context Based on the figures we’ve seen to date, the Cortex-A15 is one of the fastest — possibly the fastest — mobile architecture currently on the market. Much depends on implementation; smartphone/tablet performance can vary considerably depending on cache size, RAM speed, the number of memory channels, and of course the power envelope. 
 
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 The Cortex-A15 will show up in mobile phones, but this slide, from ARM’s own presentations, puts a major emphasis on tablets, notebooks, NAS’s, routers, and servers. For now, the A15 will likely be confined to high-end phones. Even there, battery life will take a hit, if ARM’s guidance on frequency is anything to go by. For now, the best way to think about the Cortex-A15 is as the architecture that puts the greatest emphasis on performance, with a subsequent hit to power consumption. It may not be as flexible as the Cortex-A9, Krait, or even Atom, but it could rack up huge wins in tablets and low-end Windows RT notebooks, where batteries are larger. Does the Cortex-A15 threaten Chipzilla’s mobile plans? 
 There are people who will look at the performance gap between Atom and the Cortex-A15 and conclude that ARM has won the day, game, set, and match. This is inaccurate. The current 32nm Atom parts (Medfield and Clover Trail) draw significantly less power than the old 45nnm hardware. More importantly, there’s the fact that no one will be squeezing a 1.7GHz Cortex-A15 into a phone any time soon. Intel’s first efforts in phones and tablets have been aimed at carving out a competitive space for itself in midrange markets. The Cortex-A15, in contrast, is a high-end part. It won’t face serious competition from either x86 manufacturer until Intel launches its 22nm Atom refresh and AMD’s 28nm Kabini debuts. Both of these events are scheduled for mid-2013. We expect ARM’s various partners to make more noise around the Cortex-A15 in servers, cloud devices, and tablets/notebooks than smartphones. It’s not a threat to Intel’s enterprise interests at the moment, but it could present Santa Clara with a problem long term if ultra-dense servers, such as those produced by AMD/SeaMicro, start gnawing into the traditional x86 market.

ARM Cortex-A15 explained: Intel’s Atom is down, but not out

For the past two years, smartphone advances and the tablet market have been driven by ARM’s Cortex-A9. The diminutive mobile processor ha...

Leap Motion review: Is it time to replace the mouse?

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The Leap Motion releases today, promising to change the way we interact with the personal computer. It delivers on that promise, but change could mean for better or worse. On which side of the spectrum does the Leap land? Perhaps oddly in this day and age, the Leap Motion is a cheap, potentially revolutionary computer and video game peripheral that wasn’t funded on Kickstarter. Essentially, it’s an inexpensive, easy-to-setup Kinect for the PC. It’s a small — 0.5 inches tall, 1.2 inches wide, 3 inches deep, and weighs 0.1 pounds (1.27×3.04×7.62 centimeters) — unobtrusive device that’s similar in shape and size to one of the rectangular iPod Nanos. With a sleek black-and-silver aesthetic, it looks like a first-party Apple peripheral for the MacBook Pro — it won’t interrupt the vibe of your sweet battle station. It plugs into your computer through a standard USB 3.0 connection, and its placement is only limited to the length of the USB cable. Setup is simple: Plug in the Leap, press “Next” a few times on the installer, make an account for the Airspace Store (the Leap’s app store), then either download or load some apps. Easy peasy. What is not easy peasy, unfortunately, is using the Leap. In its current state, the Leap provided one of the most frustrating experiences I’ve ever had with a PC peripheral. 
 
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiD3k8UJtK3ygItyDShuZvmGKygH2kRzmA2Q9qjTj8OHO9v8DnrhxLTIsRTpVP95aXht6NiPiT9wtUrQx-EAhasBP_dluce4UxDxElIEu7DKhvIuXhd3I8k5RkUiJUy2rmm0LpfP2FstmBC/s1600/Leap_Dropchord.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="Leap-Motion-review: Is-it-time-to-replace-the-mouse?" border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiD3k8UJtK3ygItyDShuZvmGKygH2kRzmA2Q9qjTj8OHO9v8DnrhxLTIsRTpVP95aXht6NiPiT9wtUrQx-EAhasBP_dluce4UxDxElIEu7DKhvIuXhd3I8k5RkUiJUy2rmm0LpfP2FstmBC/s1600/Leap_Dropchord.jpg" title="Leap Motion review: Is it time to replace the mouse?" /></a></div>
 The goal of the Leap, of course, is to allow you to just sit back in your chair, relax, and effortlessly wave a hand or poke a finger in the air to interact with your computer. It has not yet achieved that goal, mainly because of that “effortlessly” qualifier. Using the Leap is a chore. The Leap creates a three-dimensional motion and gesture recognition zone around itself that measures in at eight cubic feet. Eight cubic feet sounds like a pretty large area in which to wave your hands, and considering both you and the Leap are sitting comfortably in each other’s vicinity, you would think that eight cubic feet would allow you to sit back, relax, and control your computer with the ease of a technopath. Unfortunately, the Leap seems to have a sweet spot of recognition much smaller than that eight cubic feet, and even more unfortunately, the sweet spot doesn’t ever seem to be in the same spot from app to app. To make that matter even more frustrating, you aren’t ever in the same spot. When you use your computer, you likely shift around in your chair, maybe lean your head in one hand while you use the mouse with another, sit up straight, slouch, and so on. Sneezing even puts your body in a slightly different place. While using the Leap, you constantly lose that sweet spot of being recognized, even if you’re completely aware that you have to remain still.

Leap Motion review: Is it time to replace the mouse?

The Leap Motion releases today, promising to change the way we interact with the personal computer. It delivers on that promise, but cha...

Nvidia Shield benchmarked and torn down: Is this the first and last Tegra 4 device?

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Yesterday, Nvidia’s Shield handheld game console was finally released to the public — and today, it has been torn down and bench marked, revealing impressive performance figures for the Tegra 4′s first outing. The first batch of Shield reviews were generally mediocre, citing a high price and limited games library, but they did all agree on one positive point: The crippling lack of functionality aside, the hardware itself is seriously impressive. The Android-powered Shield comes with a quad-core Tegra 4 SoC (four Cortex-A15 cores, plus a fifth low-power Cortex-A15 “companion core” that performs background tasks), a 72-core GPU, 5-inch 1280×720 display, 16GB of storage, and 2GB of RAM. There’s also a couple of speakers that reviewers are generally very complimentary about, and the usual WiFi and Bluetooth connectivity. Benchmark-wise, <a href="http://technologynews20.blogspot.com/search/label/Laptops">Tegra 4</a> is the currently the fastest Android device on the market, beating out Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 800 — though the iPad 4′s GPU still beats the Tegra 4 GPU in some tests. Due to its much larger form factor, though, it doesn’t really make sense to compare the Shield’s performance to smartphones and tablets. Where the Shield has a 28.8 watt-hours battery — and a fan! — to keep the power-hungry Cortex-A15 cores fed, a smartphone battery might only have a capacity of 6 watt-hours. It’s very rare for ARM-powered smartphones and tablets to have a fan, too. As a result, the Shield can run its CPU and GPU at much higher clock speeds — and thus post some impressive benchmark scores. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQ7SEVJwoXmflMhOsIWQBogyFSvslugG-MBma2qs4a9Ee2JB0JblZt_fSZsG_DgYWBHptpMTLyMyZu6z4vmTEv_mD5WyLFJXJPZ50TtRqdWQh2l7BzfpvTHoVDlnZ-SpL_qheMRrrjoPyd/s1600/nvidia-shield-logic-board.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="Nvidia-Shield-and-torn-down: Is-this-the-first-and-last-Tegra-4-device?" border="0" height="376" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQ7SEVJwoXmflMhOsIWQBogyFSvslugG-MBma2qs4a9Ee2JB0JblZt_fSZsG_DgYWBHptpMTLyMyZu6z4vmTEv_mD5WyLFJXJPZ50TtRqdWQh2l7BzfpvTHoVDlnZ-SpL_qheMRrrjoPyd/s1600/nvidia-shield-logic-board.jpg" title="Nvidia Shield benchmarked and torn down: Is this the first and last Tegra 4 device?" width="640" /></a></div>
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 The teardown, of course, is courtesy of <a href="http://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Nvidia+Shield+Teardown/16212/1">iFixit</a>. Inside the Shield (which is around the same size as an Xbox 360 gamepad but twice as heavy), there is a main logic board, three huge batteries, another board that manages all of the gamepad inputs, and the screen. There aren’t really any surprises here; it’s basically just a high-powered portable gaming machine. The Tegra 4 SoC (28nm) is around the same size as the Tegra 3 (40nm), with the extra space granted by the die shrink being gobbled up by the larger CPUs and GPU. It is amusing to see a fan, though; those Cortex-A15 cores must really be drawing a significant amount of power. The motherboard also provides the micro SD, mini HDMI, micro USB, and 3.5mm headphone connectors. Overall, iFixit gives the Shield a repairability score of 6 out of 10, losing points due to a tricky-to-replace battery and display. 
 
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 While the hardware is impressive, then, it’s a shame that the device as a whole leaves much to be desired. The fact that there are very few good games for the Shield, coupled with its exorbitant price point ($300), makes it very hard to recommend the Shield as a handheld gaming machine. Game streaming from your PC to the Shield is an exciting prospect, but it only works on your local network; the PS4, which costs just $100 more, will be able to stream games across the internet with Remote Play. You could possibly make the argument that the Shield makes for a high-powered smartphone or tablet replacement, but the fact that it doesn’t contain a cellular modem, is cumbersome to hold in one hand, and doesn’t fit in your pocket precludes this. The bigger question, of course, is whether we’ll actually see the Tegra 4 SoC in more than a handful of devices. Its performance can obviously competitive in the right setting — but if it needs a huge battery and a fan, then it’s easy to see why smartphone and tablet makers have almost universally opted for Qualcomm SoCs with its Krait CPU cores, rather than the SoCs based on the Cortex-A15 CPU.

Nvidia Shield benchmarked and torn down: Is this the first and last Tegra 4 device?

Yesterday, Nvidia’s Shield handheld game console was finally released to the public — and today, it has been torn down and bench marke...

Walk on Mars using the Oculus Rift and Omni treadmill

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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGZg-W69FW6wwbVpArTX_Yerca0QoKYYHsBvUJ347Z8IXocJFL3JAnPVIGtzkm-WTb9xPprLFn5-Sjtf34Dqev1gaEaRYqN4_az7nQ3UsWcDShS438BRYFYV2UxbLzy8_Q5pwgNBVptHnt/s1600/rifting.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="Walk-on-Mars-using-the-Oculus-Rift-and-Omni-treadmill" border="0" height="353" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGZg-W69FW6wwbVpArTX_Yerca0QoKYYHsBvUJ347Z8IXocJFL3JAnPVIGtzkm-WTb9xPprLFn5-Sjtf34Dqev1gaEaRYqN4_az7nQ3UsWcDShS438BRYFYV2UxbLzy8_Q5pwgNBVptHnt/s1600/rifting.jpg" title="Walk on Mars using the Oculus Rift and Omni treadmill" width="640" /></a></div>
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
The Oculus Rift is still in development kit mode, with no timetable for an official retail release on the horizon. When the Rift’s tech demos work, they work well, but they’re very simple and often don’t allow the user to do much. NASA got ahold of a Rift and an Omni — an omnidirectional treadmill — and created a tech demo in which you can walk around on Mars. 
 
The Rift has been given quite a bit of press since it was released. We live in an age where the tech world is experiencing new devices trying to be revolutionary on a regular basis more than ever before. Out of all of these devices that have launched within the past handful of months — the <a href="http://technologynews20.blogspot.com/search/label/Games">Ouya</a>, the <a href="http://technologynews20.blogspot.com/2014/01/nvidia-shield-benchmarked-and-torn-down.html">Nvidia Shield</a>, the <a href="http://technologynews20.blogspot.com/2014/01/leap-motion-review-is-it-time-to.html">Leap Motion</a>, and the <a href="http://www.geek.com/review/the-razer-edge-on-the-edge-of-something-special-but-not-quite-there-1544385/">Razer Edge</a> — only the <a href="http://technologynews20.blogspot.com/search/label/Computing">Oculus Rift</a> seems poised to change the industry. It does, however, have a set of drawbacks. Using it with a mouse has so far been unintuitive, and you have to use a keyboard to move around, which means you can’t spin around in place and look behind you without either a mouse or halting your movement. 
 
When paired with the Oculus Rift, the multidirectional treadmill, the Omni, alleviates the issue of a paired movement device because you can not only walk in place to move within the virtual space, but spin around in any direction. Cost and the technical know-how to combine the Rift and Omni aside, the biggest issue currently facing the Rift is that it’s a dev kit, and there isn’t anything inspiring on it to play with. Team Fortress 2 is easy enough to set up, but it’s a chore to control. The other (working) demos are either completely automated and on rails, or allow you to move around a small, simple environment. 
 
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, however, has found a much more inspiring use of the Rift. By combining it with the Omni and a stereoscopic 360-degree panorama of Mars, they created a walking-on-Mars simulator.

Walk on Mars using the Oculus Rift and Omni treadmill

The Oculus Rift is still in development kit mode, with no timetable for an official retail release on the horizon. Whe...

Riffing on the Rift: Oculus Rift gets big Crystal Cove hardware upgrade at CES 2014

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Out of all the weird, wacky devices and gizmos that have been releasing lately thanks to Kickstarter — <a href="http://technologynews20.blogspot.com/search/label/Games">Android gaming consoles</a>, omnidirectional treadmills, 3D printing pens — only one really seems to be onto something big: the Oculus Rift. An affordable virtual reality headset, the Rift actually works as promised — something many other Kickstarter projects fail to do. Now, at CES 2014, the headset has received a hardware upgrade, making it an even better device. 
 
For the uninitiated, the Oculus Rift is a Kickstarter project that aims to provide an affordable, consumer-grade virtual reality headset to the masses. Unlike a huge swath of Kickstarter projects, the device works as described, and doesn’t disappoint. However, in this case, “virtual reality” isn’t what years of science fiction movies have suggested. The Rift won’t provide a Matrix or .hack-like experience; you won’t put the headset on and suddenly feel like you’re in another world. Instead, your head and neck will essentially replace the mouse, and the <a href="http://technologynews20.blogspot.com/search/label/Mobile%20Phones">Rift</a> will allow you to look around in-game by moving your head, rather than a mouse. Regardless, the immersion is prominent, and using it feels like the future of video games. 
 
Unfortunately, the Oculus Rift does have some drawbacks — mainly that you’re still stuck in a desk chair, shackled facing one direction because that’s where the keyboard and mouse is located. When paired with something like an omnidirectional treadmill, the Rift becomes much more immersive, albeit much more expensive. While the Rift team can’t quite tackle adding a treadmill into the mix just yet, it was able to tackle some smaller immersion issues with the release of a newer development kit, dubbed Crystal Cove. 
 
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The two 640×800 screens within the original Rift are essentially smartphone screens that together create a 1280×800 panel. In order to scale the image larger, magnifying lenses are placed over both eyes. On a non-Retina class display, if you stick your face right in front of the screen, you can see the individual pixels, and the overall image then looks much worse. Placing those magnifying lenses in front of the screens within the original Rift did the same, so even though the Rift worked — it didn’t look very good. Now, Crystal Cov has replaced those old screens with what equals a 1080p OLED. 
 
While a 1080p OLED display makes for much higher image quality, the original Rift’s biggest issue was that of motion blur. You may like the effect in your third-person shooter of choice, but it basically crippled the Rift. After all, the whole point of the device is to look around, but looking around isn’t very fun when you can’t see anything because it’s blurry and making you nauseous. The Crystal Cove upgrade has eliminated the motion blur, also eliminating the headache you receive after using the Rift for too long. 
 
Finally, Crystal Cove — which sounds more and more <a href="http://creepypasta.wikia.com/wiki/Candle_Cove">like creepypasta</a> with each mention — also adds a camera and sensors to not only track the position of your body, but the depth of the Rift in relation to it. The Rift can now display more accurate movement, though you’ll still be chair-bound while that’s being provided. 
 
Overall, Crystal Cove is a significant upgrade to the Rift. However, though the Rift is perhaps the most promising gaming tech on the horizon, the device still has plenty of issues to overcome, such as being stuck to a chair and shackled to a keyboard and mouse. It’s worth pointing out that Crystal Cove is still very much a developer kit, too — there is still no sign of the eventual, consumer-grade version of the Oculus Rift.

Riffing on the Rift: Oculus Rift gets big Crystal Cove hardware upgrade at CES 2014

Out of all the weird, wacky devices and gizmos that have been releasing lately thanks to Kickstarter — Android gaming consoles , o...