Following the impressive Razer Blade we reviewed last month, Gigabyte also wants a piece of the portable gaming laptop action with its new Aorus X3 line, a sub-14-inch Windows 8.1 device that claims to be the world’s “most powerful and lightest” in its class. In terms of weight, it starts from 4.12 pounds (1.87kg) which is more attractive than the new Blade’s 4.47 pounds (2.03kg). The smaller X3 has an impressive 13.3-inch QHD (2, 560 x 1, 440) LCD, whereas the larger 13.9-inch X3 Plus lets you choose between a QHD panel and a sweeter QHD+ (3, 200 x 1, 800) version. Both variants of the gaming beast come with Intel’s Core i7-4710HQ (2.5-3.5GHz), 8GB of DDR3L-1600 RAM (with a spare slot for another 8GB) and an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 870M with 6GB of GDDR5 memory. You can have a pair of 256GB or 512GB SSDs configured in RAID 0, meaning you get super fast access to a maximum of 1TB space. Together with the macro keys plus Gigabit LAN connection or 802.11ac WiFi, online gamers should have no problem entertaining themselves with these machines — at least until the 74Wh battery has been drained while gaming on the go. As you can imagine, these gaming laptops don’t come cheap: Both the X3 and the X3 Plus will go from $2, 099 when they launch in Q3 this year, with one-year global warranty plus one-year local warranty included. Filed under: Gaming , Laptops Comments

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Here’s the world’s ‘most powerful and lightest’ 13-inch gaming laptop

Gone are the days when we thought governments could only access our phone calls through official, naive-sounding procedures like “warrants.” Nevertheless, it’s only now, after the whole Snowden / NSA blow-up, that companies like Vodafone are trying to be more transparent. In a 40, 000-word “disclosure report, ” the multinational carrier says that “a small number” out of the 29 countries in which it operates demand to have “direct access to a phone operator’s network, ” thus “bypassing” any control the operator might otherwise have had over the privacy of its customers. Needless to say, Vodafone doesn’t call out any of the culprit nations by name, since doing so would breach the same laws that it agreed to uphold in order to business with them in the first place. This isn’t the first time Vodafone has faced controversy due its dealings with various governments. During the Egyptian revolution of 2011, for example, it sent text messages to all its Egyptian subscribers, supporting the dictatorship of President Mubarak and describing protestors as “criminals.” Even today, Egypt is one of six countries that refuses to let Vodafone publish any information about government wiretaps, alongside India, Qatar, Romania, South Africa and Turkey. (Note: We can’t necessarily infer that these are same countries that insist on having direct eavesdropping access.) To be fair, Vodafone wasn’t the only operator to send dodgy text messages in Egypt, and the company’s new disclosure report emphasizes that it’s simply obeying national laws that other carriers are also forced to stick to. In other words, many phone companies may have sold to their souls, it’s just that Vodafone is now brave enough to give us a glimpse at the receipt. Filed under: Cellphones , Internet , Mobile Comments Via: Reuters Source: The Guardian

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Vodafone admits some governments have free rein to eavesdrop on calls

Amazon’s June 18th event is still mostly shrouded in mystery, but general consensus is that the e-commerce giant is releasing a phone of its own with an interactive 3D interface. Now, TechCrunch claims to have identified the technology behind that feature, and it’s supposedly Omron’s Okao Vision face-sensing system. The Amazon team reportedly customized the Japanese company’s creation so that it can be used to show 3D effects on an ordinary LCD screen without special glasses. Instead of relying on accessories, the software depends on four front cameras embedded on the device’s corners to track the user’s face, as well as on the phone’s accelerometer and gyroscope. For instance, if you tilt your face to one side, the interface shows you a hidden panel you wouldn’t see if you look at the screen from another angle. Besides being able to track faces, Okao Vision (or “Face Vision” in Japanese) can also recognize facial features and determine the user’s gender and ethnicity, though we’ve yet to find out whether Amazon has also integrated those features. We’ve reached out to both Omron and Amazon for confirmation, but in case we never hear back, you can always just start counting down the days until the 18th. Filed under: Cellphones , Mobile , Amazon Comments Source: TechCrunch

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TechCrunch: Amazon’s first phone uses ‘Okao Vision’ for 3D effects