BPI Now On Cardless Transaction

BPI Recently launched Cardless Transactions! Now, anybody can make ATM deposits to any BPI account through selected BPI ATMs even without the ATM. The same goes with bills payment.

BPI Cardless deposit and bills payment

BPI Express Teller Cardless Deposit / Bills Payment

Now you don’t have to rush to a BPI branch or spend your time waiting in line.

Because you can do Cardless Deposit / Bills Payment through any of over 400 Express Teller Machines nationwide – 24/7!

It’s so Easy! Just go to a BPI Express Teller machine with the “Cardless” sign.

Available Deposit: Current Account, Savings Account, ECash

Available Bills Payments:

• BPI Credit card
• BPI Family Bank Loan
• BPI MS
• Globe Telecoms
• Manila Water
• Destiny Cable
• Smart
• Manulife Financial
• Manulife Insurance
• Digitel
• Ayala Life
• Ayala Plans

This is a good service! It’s a new way of receiving deposits. For example, eBay.ph merchants can receive their payments via BPI ATM — their buyers don’t need to do over-the-counter deposits. (Although G-Cash is the more popular and defunct payment method).

The obvious plus side of this service is the convenience of being able to make payments at more than 400 ATMs around the Philippines (anytime!). The lines are shorter than having to wait for over-the-counter transactions.

The downside, though, is the delay before the deposit or payment is reflected. Payments will be recorded on the next banking day when the bank officers open up the ATM. There’s an alternative real-time deposit facility — but that one needs the ATM card. That’s another article.

Last week, I did a cardless deposit of P100 just to try out the service. The transaction starts with pressing Enter (I discovered this by trial-and-error).

I later encountered “transaction cancelled” twice. Ah, user problem! I was keying-in the amount instead of what the machine was asking for: the account number. Just read the instructions on the screen and you should be fine. A good addition, by the way, is that the machine asks for your contact number – so that the bank can contact you in case there’s a concern with your deposit.

For inquiries, Contact BPI Express Phone at 89-100 or log on to www.bpiexpressonline.com.

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Dream Satellite TV in the Philippines

Dream Satellite links

Subscription packages now only 390 and 650 pesos per month and no more Homebox office or Cinemax or most sports channels and no Philippine Basketball TV.

Check out their channel offerings here

Channels listing, to go directly to the channel listing click the photo at this website (strange the best channel listing for Dream is in Taiwan rather than the Philippines but they broadcast all over Asia and many dealers also in China) http://www.taiwansatellite.tv/index.php?main=tv_channels but this link is only to show you the channels on Dream not to sell in other countries sorry. A listing of their dealers can be found here

Here is how to subscribe @ http://www.dream.com.ph/

Dream TV Satellite in the Philippines has information about the NTC complaint filed against them, piracy and pirated units, customer complaints, bankruptcy (corporate rehabilitation), dealer listings, contact Dream officials directly links (they never answer their emails from my experience),I have frequently read complaints about the service provided by Dream Satellite TV, including that they operate a monopoly and recently they elimated their 790 service and those that bought ten months package did not get any compensation when the cable channel offerings were reduced to 650 and no extension of these people packages including mine! And even worse they never emailed, called, or even posted on their website any notice of this downgrade and change except to note the new packages!

Dream TV makes you call them long distance at your expense when you want to load or have problems or upgrade or downgrade instead of putting a free SUN number in and putting an instant chat program their website or even better giving you a skype number to call.Well, at last they have competition. Check out consumer concerns on Dream @ http://dreamsatellite.wordpress.com/

Note Dream has no Home Box office, Cinemax, Basketball TV channel and the others below do for the same price or less but Dream does have the Travel channel and Animal Channel.

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Globe Tattoo Huawei HG521 DSL Snap Review

The Huawei Echolife HG521 is a residential DSL modem router with the capability as a wireless access point (WAP) that has built-in internal WiFi antenna for devices conductivities  such as smartphone and Tablet likewise for lappy.

Huawei HG521: Router Design and Aesthetics

The design of the Huawei HG521 gateway is a commendable aspect. It may not look ultra-modern but its simplicity is the reason why most people are not intimidated to use it. Because it stands vertically, it is easier to find the right spot where the router can be placed. It can be put right beside the desktop computer monitor or in a small corner. Its measurement is only 118.4mm x 90.3mm x 40.4 mm.

The power button is easily accessible too. It is found in the top surface of the router so turning it on and off is quick and easy. The indicator lights are strategically placed on the left side of the router’s interface too.  Hence, a quick glance is enough to see if the connections are working fine.

Attaching the cables to the router is easy too. The left side of the router is where all ports are located so there is no problem about tangled cables.

Huawei HG521: LAN Connection Ports

The Huawei Echolife HG521 modem router is recommended for use in homes because of the limitation in the number of computers which can be connected to it for cabled internet. It has only one ADSL port for the RJ-11. It is geared with one LAN port.

Huawei HG521: Router Performance and Functions

The edge of Huawei HG521 Router over other routers which Globe Tattoo provides to their customers is that this functions for different data link protocol. It is backwards compatible for 802.11b and 802.11g. For people who would like to utilize the latest standard, this router is designed to function even for the latest 802.11n.

Globe Tattoo is known for delivering uninterrupted and strong connection signal. Thus, it is necessary to have a router which would not slow down the impressive services of the company. With the use of this router, there is no need to worry that the service being provided by Globe Tattoo might not be used extensively. Since it functions on 802.11g standard, the connection speed is stable and there are no lags. This router is also good enough for more complex online tasks like downloading, gaming and media streaming.

Huawei HG521: Router Speed

The main reason why Huawei HG521 Router do not cause speed problems is because of its commendable capacity. Of course, the data speed will vary according to the package that the customer availed from Globe Tattoo but this router can reach 24 Mbps as its maximum modem bit rate. The great performance is also attributed to the 300 Mbps data bit rate.

There are two ways on how this router can be used for internet connection—cabled and wireless. Some people are having difficulty in connecting wirelessly after setting up the cabled connection. What they do not realize is that, setting up the wireless connection needs to be done after the cables are all up and running. A separate wireless connection account needs to be created to enable the wifi.

The router initially has the default username and password which will be used before the personal setting preferences of the users can be fixed. Management of the setting and feature changes can be done using the web based configuration.

Since the router has an activated Quick Start feature, users would have a step by step guide on how the connections can be made. No more reading of manuals and hiring professional I.T guys just to create both cabled and wireless connections.

Huawei HG521: Built-in Security

LAN connection does not involve much security issues but wireless connection requires impenetrable block against hackers. The good thing about Huawei HG521 Router is that it is geared with WPA (Wi-Fi Protection Access) support. This is among the latest security features that routers these days have. WPA is pretty much like a password which is required before a computer or gadget is able to tap the wireless connection. So long as the alpha-numeric password is known only by legitimate users, there is no need to worry that someone else who is within the Wi-Fi range can use the signal.

The Globe Tattoo Huawei Echolife HG521 GUI (graphical user interface) can be access via any of your favorite browser such as Chrome, Firefox and IE by pointing on the address bar thru http://192.168.254.254 with the default IP address. Once the login page prompted you may use the default username and password as "user" without the quote.

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Verizon FiOS Mobile App Snap Review

Verizon updated its FiOS Mobile application for iPad, which now streams 75 channels of live TV. Unlike some of the mobile experiences Verizon has released in the past, the new application doesn’t require you to install software on your Mac or PC to act as the intermediary - instead, everything streams directly from the Verizon router in your home.

I was drinking away from the computer last night when the app was first pushed out, but this morning I’ve finally been able to test it thanks to the holiday downtime. The mere fact that I’m writing about the application right now is a testament to its success – it’s keeping the kid busy!

One major caveat before you get too excited: Verizon says the Live TV option will only work with HD set-top boxes. Standard definition set-top boxes are not able to communicate with the remote control application, but of course, upgrading is always an option. You’ll also need a Verizon user ID and password (like what you use to log into HBO GO) as well as FiOS Internet and TV services.

The new app includes the top cable channels across categories like entertainment, info and education, music, family/movies, kids, people and culture, pop culture, sports and women, as well as premium channels (for subscribers) such as HBO, Cinemax, IFC, and Epix. (See the complete list at the bottom of this post).

Note that the FiOS Mobile app doesn’t provide streaming access to local channels like NBC, ABC, CBS or FOX, however. It also won’t include all the channels you have access to on your current FiOS subscription due to licensing concerns, but 75 is a healthy start for this sort of application.

For Parents

Parents who are planning to use the app with the children should take note of the pop-up that appears upon first launch asking if you want to enable parental controls. This feature lets you configure a four-digit PIN to control access to adult content, much like the FiOS set-top box does today. However, setting the PIN may give parents a false sense of security – the PIN alone doesn’t enable the content restrictions they may want. By default, it’s set to “ages 18 or older,” which is the first step down from the “all ages” option.

For younger children, parents will need to go into the Settings section (the bottom right button) and then choose between ages 17+, 13+ or 7+. I was surprised that there wasn’t an option to choose only “TV G” content, especially considering how useful this app would be as an alternative to constantly having kiddie cartoons on, but maybe Verizon is sending American parents a message: toddlers shouldn’t be watching unsupervised TV. Fine then.

Live TV

The Live TV channels are displayed in a grid-like pattern, and you can tap buttons at the top to sort them by channel or filter by category. A search box is also available if you’re looking for something specific. This is arguably an easier interface to use than the TV remote and TV guide on your big screen, but then again, I’m speaking from a mobile-first mindset when I say that. If you’re old-school and prefer a more traditional guide, you can switch over to that section of the app instead. The Live TV guide also lets you swap from the grid view to a list-like view if you choose.

Watching TV

When you tap to watch a show, the video doesn’t immediately go full-screen. Instead, there’s additional information about the program shown below, and off to the left is a scrollable vertical guide that lets you move up and down through the other live TV programs. (See the image at the top of this post). You have to tap a button at the top to move into full-screen mode.

For the most part, this worked well, though I did have one odd experience where I was hearing two audio streams at the same time – one from the channel that was streaming previously, and one from the new channel. Closing the app and reopening it fixed the problem, and it hasn’t occurred since.

No DVR Playback

The app features a Video on Demand section, too, where you can order and stream movies. But one of the bigger disappointments is with the DVR section. Here you can view, manage or cancel your recordings, but you can’t play them back. In terms of user experience, that’s a big miss, as much of the content we watch today is time-shifted, not live. But this isn’t Verizon’s fault necessarily – it’s the content providers who don’t want recorded content available on mobile, generally speaking. Still, since this app is tied to a home’s Wi-Fi network, it seems you could argue that the app isn’t really “mobile” so much as a TV replacement with a smaller screen.

Another section helps you find popular programs if you’re not sure what to watch. This “What’s Hot” section, like the FiOS widget by the same name, shows trending content. Verizon actually uses data from subscriber viewing patterns to generate these recommendations in real-time, as opposed to editorially selecting content, which makes for some interesting discoveries.

Overall, the app is a welcome upgrade for FiOS customers, though there’s still some lag upon loading and using navigation. This is a common complaint with Verizon’s apps, sadly – they tend to be slow. But the new interface and design is a major step up from what Verizon offered previously, and if the app was ever able to stream local channels and DVR content, it could easily go from good to great.

You can download the new app here in iTunes. The iPhone FiOS Mobile Remote app was also upgraded on the 19th, but doesn’t offer streaming.

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Sony PlayStation 4 Snap Review

Launch-day PS4 titles Knack and PlayRoom offer an interesting glimpse into the potential of Sony's new gaming console.

Sony Computer Entertainment offered a small group of international journalists hands on time with the PlayStation 4 this week, with sessions at its Shinagawa office and Tokyo Game Show. One game on show was new Sony title Knack, with game developer Mark Cerny on hand to discuss it and the console in general. As a games developer Cerny has worked on Sonic the Hedgehog, Spyro the Dragon and Crash Bandicoot, but with the PlayStation 4 he is also the console's lead architect.

I'm wondering if the decision to make the PS4 camera an optional extra is a long-term mistake,

Knack is a family-orientated character action game revolving around a main character who battles a goblin invasion and can change size by drawing in materials around him such as fragments of metal, rock and crystals. Knack consists of hundreds of small moving parts and is designed to take advantage of the advanced graphics and physics capabilities of the PlayStation 4. The game is very plot-driven, with a movie-style plot line and extra characters which give it a bit of a TinTin feel.

When you pick up the new wireless DualShock 4 control the 20gm weight gain on the previous version isn't noticeable. It utilises the same basic DualShock design, retaining the dual analogue sticks along with the d-pad on the left and the four coloured actions buttons on the right. The heads of the analogue controllers are slightly smaller but feature rubber tips to help with grip.

The big change with the DualShock 4 is that Sony has moved the Select, Start and PlayStation buttons away from the middle of the controller to make way for a small touchpad. It's designed to recognise two fingers, or more likely thumbs, and is also a button. Knack doesn't utilise the touchpad but it will be used by other launch-day titles such as first-person shooter Killzone and the pre-installed PlayRoom augmented reality suite.

To make way for the touchpad the PlayStation button has moved lower down on the controller, just above the headphone jack and extension port. The Select and Start buttons have been merged into a single Options button on the right of the touchpad, while a new Share button appears on the left.

There's also a small speaker built into the controller, below the touchpad. In Knack it produces background noises, such as pieces of rock shuffling as Knack draws them to his body. The effect is much more subtle than the noises which come from Nintendo's Wii controller, and it's possible to dip into the PS4's menus to adjust the volume. The DualShock 4 can also act as a motion controller, a feature which isn't utilised in Knack but is used by PlayRoom.

Visually Knack is spectacular, relying on a new game engine built from scratch for the PlayStation 4. It takes advantage of the improved tessellation features to produce finer textures including ripples and interference patterns in the water.

A native Full HD 1080p game, something which was rare on the PlayStation 3, Knack also displays fine details in the leaves on the trees and even the shadows of the individual leaves on the ground, which move in real time as branches sway. The shadows are particularly striking as much of the early gameplay is set outdoors in cities and mountainous regions.

Each tiny piece of Knack's body is rendered separately and tracked by the console. He is constantly changing size, ranging from three feet tall to the size of a house, as he acquires more pieces or loses them in battle. Knack can also acquire components and crystal relics to build devices and unlock new forms and moves. Body pieces can also be used as weapons to blast the area around him. Game developer Mark Cerny believes the PlayStation 4's power and flexibility to cope with such a character saved around 12 months of development time compared to the PlayStation 3.

PlayRoom is a collection of Augmented Reality mini-games which comes pre-installed on the PlayStation 4. It relies on the camera to work, even though the camera is an optional extra and isn't included with every PS4 -- unlike the Xbox One which includes the Kinect and its built-in camera with every console.

PlayRoom lets you see yourself sitting on the couch and then generates tiny robots on the screen which you can touch. Around a dozen of them can jump out of the controller and dance around on the floor, where you can knock them around with your hands and feet and even flick them face-first into the camera. Think of them a little like the minions from Despicable Me. Sony's tie-in with mobile devices also shines through here, with the ability to draw objects on the PlayStation smartphone app and then drop them into the screen as three dimensional objects for you and the robots to play with.

PlayRoom isn't really a game, but it's the kind of thing that young children will really love. It also introduces them to some of the new aspects of the PS4. You can use the touchpad to call up the PlayRoom menu, which appears on the television as if it's a hologram projected around you by the controller. You can then flick left or right and use the touchpad as a button to select your mini-game. It's easy to reach the touchpad with your thumbs and flicking it feels very natural and intuitive.

You can have one robot flying around the room, or view them all inside the controller that you're holding. They fall about as you tilt the controller and you can even see the undersides of the buttons light up as you press them. Tap a beat and the little robots start to dance. Another mini-game lets you play air hockey on a holographic field projected around you, using the touchpad to move your piece.

Between Knack and PlayRoom these titles really help show off the power and versatility of the PS4, although I'm wondering if the decision to make the camera an optional extra is a long-term mistake. When you see what's possible with the Xbox One's improved Kinect, including the non-gaming entertainment features, Microsoft may have set itself up with the more powerful platform. It will be interested to see how PS4 developers.embrace the features shown off by PlayRoom.

Sony's PlayStation 4 goes on sale in Australia on November 29, retailing for $549. Microsoft's Xbox One comes out November 22 and sells for $599.

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Valve Hints at Steam Box

Valve is teasing new hardware-related announcements coming next week. As reported by Ars Technica, Valve co-founder Gabe Newell spoke at LinuxCon in New Orleans today, saying, “It feels a little bit funny coming here and telling you guys that Linux and open source are the future of gaming. It's sort of like going to Rome and teaching Catholicism to the pope."

He continued by teasing, “Next week we're going to be rolling out more information about how we get there and what are the hardware opportunities we see for bringing Linux into the living room.”

This is hardly a surprise from Newell, who has championed Linux in the past by bringing Steam to Linux and repeatedly touting the strength of an open source future.

Earlier this year, Newell discussed how Linux can reinvent gaming, noting that Linux helps Valve “make sure we have the freedom to innovate and pursue the opportunities all of us see,” and saying that “Linux is kind of a get out of jail free pass for our industry if we need it.” He added that “our company wouldn’t exist if it wasn’t for the openness of PC. Steam wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for the openness of the internet. Our industry will be best in the long run if there’s an open platform for innovation and competition.”

Valve first confirmed hardware development last year and later put up a post seeking beta testers with a hardware beta due soon afterwards. In March, Newell said Valve was readying a prototype, but little is known about Valve’s actual hardware.

We’ve reached out to Valve for more information about its Steam Box plans and will update this story with any comment we receive.

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Globe DSL Siemens Gigaset SE260 default username password

I have decided to replaced my old legacy Prolink 9200 DSL modem to end its life because of the frequent disconnection today. Good I have this Siemens Gigaset SE260 got from a friend without power supply and I was able to managed to get the AC/DC adapter from local electronic shop.

Now my big concerned is that I use a Linksys WRT54G router for QoS and for wireless capabilities. On my Prolink 9200 I managed to enable the bridging mode. But if you try the default username and password as "user" on the Siemens Gigaset SE260 modem, you’ll get neutered options.

here's the default username and password that works for SIEMENS GIGASET S260.

URL: http://192.168.1.1 (to unlock ADVANCE tab)
Username: user
Password: user

URL: http://192.168.1.1/globe (to unlock all admin features)
Username: Admin
Password: 3UJUh2VemEfUtesEchEC2d2e

Just make sure to set your router to a different IP. For example on my Linksys, I set it to 192.168.1.100. You have to hook up your PC directly to the Siemens modem to configure it. Just use the Admin credentials.

Once you’re logged in, your first order of business is to change the password to something you can easily remember. I personally used Admin to make it idiot friendly.

Anyway, the settings you need are VPI 0 and VCI 35. Then set the connection mode from PPPoE to 1483 Bridged. Leave the LLC setting and don’t choose VC-Mux. You can just modify the original profile listed and then save changes. Also, make sure to go to LAN settings then disable DHCP. Afterwards Save and Reboot changes.

Then just go back to your router and make sure that PPPoE is enabled. The username will be your e-mail address with globe which is most likely yourname@globelines.com.ph. The password by default is your account number which can be seen on your latest bill.

If you need more help on this, hit me back or try the PinoyDSL forums. Don’t try calling Globe Technical Support. They’ll just tell you that only their on-site technicians are allowed to do so. They just probably don’t know the settings themselves. The two on-site guys who came here surely didn’t.

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$100 off Alienware X51 gaming PC plus $200 gift card

When it comes to gaming rigs, Alienware is one of the most well-known names in the business. Their extraterrestrial rigs have been ripping their way through frames and frames of games for years now. Our only complaint is that their premium systems fetch an accordingly high price tag and we don’t see sales often.

With the recent refresh of many of their systems with Intel’s Haswell chips, Alienware has been offering some rare instant discounts and bonus gift cards to sweeten the pot. The X51 mini PC has long been a favorite of ours, mainly due to its living room-friendly chassis. Right now you can get it with the new Haswell processors starting at $849 and a $200 gift card on the more powerful versions.

The sleek piano black chassis measures nearly 12.5 inches square and under 4 inches thick, letting it fit right in around game consoles and cable TV boxes. It also doesn’t compromise any features or performance with its svelte form either, offering up to 4th gen Core i7 processors, Nvidia GTX 670 2GB graphics, dual hard drives, 16GB of RAM, and more.

A base model with Core i5-4430 quad-core processor, 8GB RAM, 1TB hard drive, and Nvidia GTX 645 1GB graphics runs just $849 after $50 savings. Jumping up to a Core i7-4770 and GTX 760 1.5GB will run you $1099 after $100 instant savings, a scant few hundred dollars more than most entry-level Core i7 Haswell desktops these days.

If you’re really looking to get the most from your money with this rare promotion, the top-tier model with 2GB GTX 670 graphics and 2TB hard drive is marked down to $1349 and comes with a $200 Dell e-gift card. It also has some nice customization options like a 256GB SSD + 1 TB HDD or slot-loading Blu-ray drive.

All models come with eight USB ports (six are 3.0 spec), gigabit ethernet, HDMI, Wireless-N, surround sound support, and free 2-day shipping. The combination of a tiny, premium chassis and the new Intel platform make for a killer PC and this is one of the few times you’ll be able to save some cash on it.

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Linksys’s EA6900 802.11ac router Snap Review

High-end consumer routers have long been very similar to luxury cars: while the core technology is a step above lower end models, manufacturers also try to see many more features they can fit into one product. Luxury cars get cooled beverage compartments, while routers get web apps, USB ports, and media servers.

Still, these gadgets are some of the most crucial for our computing experience in this century and we’re excited to see new flagship models. One such is the forthcoming Linksys EA6900, announced just a few weeks ago under Linksys’ new parent company, Belkin. The product’s full name of Linksys EA6900 Wireless AC Router SMART Wi-Fi Dual Band AC1900 should give you a clue as to just how many features are stuffed into this beast.

The biggest difference between this the router you’re likely using now is that it supports the new 802.11ac wireless standard. In a nutshell, what you’re getting is an evolution of 802.11n that brings faster speeds and better signal coverage. But the EA6900 doesn’t stop there.

It also has the newest revision of chipsets for 802.11n, using a newer 256 QAM modulation chip that allows for a maximum of 600 Mbps throughput. Of course the 600 Mbps for 802.11n and 1900 Mbps for 802.11ac after maximum theoretical bandwidth values, but they’re still wicked fast and probably a lot faster than what you’re working with now.

Perhaps one of the biggest benefits the EA6900 brings compared to other modern routers is its triple di-pole external antennae. You can have all the latest chips in the world, but without a quality antennae to blast that signal to the corners of your domicile you won’t be getting far. External antennae also mean they will be replaceable

Aside from the benefits the new wireless platform brings you, the EA6900 has nearly anything else you could want. Two USB ports, one operating at 3.0-spec, let you access and share content on your local storage with ease. DLNA media server support means you can take the multimedia content on those storage devices and make them accessible to nearly any device on your network.

Fully customizable network controls are all baked in. From easy guest access to parental controls to QoS, there’s nothing you can’t regulate with the EA6900. It even supports NFC via the included SimpleTap card; just tap this card to your NFC-enabled smartphone (with the Linksys mobile app installed) and it will automatically connect.

There are probably some other features we’re forgetting, but you get the idea. Linksys will start shipping this new model on October 4th, but right now you can pre-order direct from the source and save an impressive $43 off the list price.

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Huawei Honor 3 Snap Review

Huawei has just released the third version of its popular mid-range phone. The Huawei Honor 3, or Glory 3 in some markets, is now available, but so far only in Chinese markets.

The Honor 3 first entered our radars back in May, when it was rumored to take on Samsung in the Chinese market, rivaling the Galaxy S 4. However, the specs that were later leaked revealed instead a mid-range phone, and it seems to have turned out that way indeed. The phone sports Huawei’s own quad-core K3V2 chip running at 1.5GHz and has 2 GB of RAM with 8 GB of internal storage, which is expandable with a microSD card. The Honor 3 runs Android 4.2.2 with Huawei’s Emotion UI on top.

That isn’t the end of the story, though. Huawei also threw in some rather interesting features. First, the Honor 3 features a 13.1 megapixel Exmor RS rear camera and a 1 megapixel front camera. It is also claimed to be water and dust resistant with a rating of IP55 or IP57, making it resistant not just to wet hands but to immersion under water. And finally, it has an infrared transmitter that the manufacturer claims is compatible with around 3,000 models of appliances ranging from TVs to set-top boxes, to even air conditioning units.

The Huawei Honor 3 is now available with a price tag of 1888 yuan, or around $310. If this smartphone has intrigued you, you might have to wait and hope for a while as there is no news yet whether it will be made available to markets other than China.

While we’ve ever covered the news about the new Huawei Honor 3 Android smartphone, is now we have a dozens picture of Huawei Honor 3 picture, this phone is very interesting since has IP57 certification, it’s mean the phone has water, dust and shock ressistant.

Huawei Honor 3 built-in new 1.5GHz Hisilicon K3V2e processor, 4.7-inch incell IPS screen with 1280x720pixel display, 2GB RAM and 8GB ROM, and 13-megapixel/F2.2 rear camera, own 2230mAh battery. While the body of Huawei Honor 3 is more thinner than predecessor with only 133×67.2×9.9mm dimension.

Here are the picture of Huawei Honor 3 Smartphone :

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GooApple Already Planning Quad-core iPhone 5 Clone!

Regular readers of Gizchina will already know Chinese iPhone clone makers GooApple for their amazing GooApple V5 iPhone 4S clone with retina display! Well reports suggest that GooApple are already preparing a quad-core iPhone 5 clone!

GooApple have announced that their all new iPhone 5 clone will be hitting stores in a few months, no much later than the real iPhone 5 launch from Apple!

Chances are that GooApple’s iPhone 5 clone will be based on the various leaked iPhone 5 parts photos which have been circling the web, and there may even be a chance that the Chinese based iPhone knock-off makers could have even rented the rear casing of the new iPhone 5 much like Chinese journalists have been doing for $8000!

GooApple have even gone on to say that the new iPhone 5 knock off will feature a Quad-core Nvidia Tegra 3 CPU, 1GB RAM and a 4 inch screen with a resolution of 1280 x 720, which if true is more than the rumored iPhone 5′s resolution which is said to be just 1136 x 640!

We can also expect to say a very convincing Android operating system with authentic looking iOS UI based on either Android ICS or Android 4.1 Jelly Bean!

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Goophone: The Cheapest iPhone 5S only $99

There is some rumors about cheap version iPhone 5S, but Apple will doesn’t confirm it before next generation iPhone unveil. Lots of market analysts think it is necessary to complete with Samsung, the latter provide more option for smartphone buyers. Apple is not so fast as before, before iPhone 5 launching, the China factory already released their iPhone 5 clone, and get patent of appearance, although they never sue Apple with this weapon, maybe it will hurt themselves. Today, something happened again, Goophone released their cheap version iPhone 5S: Goophone i5S, and only $99 for first 1000 buyers by some sellers.

The Goophone i5S has same appearance with iPhone 5, but with low-level hardware: 4 inch oneglass screen, 1GHz MTK MT6577 processor, 512MB RAM, 5-megapixel rear camera, and Android 4.1 OS is installed. This phone has 2 interface: iOS UI and original Android UI. You may switch them easily by a code.

Maybe you have doubt about this smartphone, does it work smoothly? How about playing games? Here is hands-on video, you will find how amazing the goophone i5S is.

The Goophone i5S is entry-class smartphone, of course has an incredible price. The listing price is $149.99, but on Android-sale, they will provide a big discount for first 1000 buyers at March 12th, you will get a iPhone 5 clone with $99. Wow, who will be those lucky ones.

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Android phone sells more than iPhone

Smart phones has taken the world aback. Giving us all the power to carry a pocket-sized computer and has become a daily necessity for every people. Though Apple’s iPhone made its entry in the mobile market earlier, Android has gone head to head beyond their delayed introduction.

We cannot deduce the fact that Apple Inc.’s minute devices revolutionized the world of mobile computing but with cheaper price tag and notable outstanding features this will definitely make you switch sides.

What makes Android preferred by most people?

There are several reasons why many people are going for the green robot:

• Cheap
• Multitude of free apps
• Removable and replaceable batteries
• Highly customizable through widgets and screen launchers
• Competetive performance
• A wide range of models, brands and manufacturers to choose from
• Largest community support from developers and endusers

Imagine what you can do with an android smartphone than just calling or sending text messages. It is in itself a swiss army knife for computer people. It has tapped an endless line of opportunities for smartphone users. Mobile computing in its golden age.

For sometime I did yearn to have an iPhone as part of my gadget collection but the skyrocketing cost delimits my capacity to have one. Luckily, Droid came into the scene and somehow justified my longing for a smart phone.

My experience with Android powered devices has never been more satisfying especially for a technogeek who has the passion for tinkering. The droid really did satisfy my hunger and kept me at work for long hours. Feeding my need for information, discovery and innovation. Reminding me how I did with my first PC.

I am not saying that iPhones are not that good. But if you could buy something so cheap that performs just the same as the good one. Why spend more?

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Android’s Devices battery issues

Smartphones are instantly gaining fame among seasoned mobile gadget users and newbies alike. The near desktop PC speed plus the pocketable size has turned many heads to look into the promise of this new technology.

Android, furthermore, revolutionized the smartphone market by bringing in cheaper gadgets for the populace to enjoy and take advantage. Yet, one draw backs of having an Android smartphone (and tablet) is shortage of juice (power).

Most droid powered devices can run from a meager 1800maH battery or even less giving us a few trips to our wall outlets for another recharge just to make it through the day. This is what makes many people frown and sigh in disappointment. Even so, power shortage will most likely kill the deal and potential consumers will just keep the gold for the next best device.

Despite the mediocrity of the battery issue, many apps and methods can be employed into practice to keep up with the power requirements. Several battery saving apps can turn off unnecessary features on your smartphone and conserve all you can with just a few taps on the screen. Most of the time the cuplrits are Wi-Fi, mobile data and bluetooth connectivity eating up all the resources and turning them on demand is the best practice. Rooting (establsihing admin access) your gadget can help turn off stock apps that may be using up your phone’s battery.

Conclusively, battery power is a common issue among Android users. If you are thinking of delving into the world of Android, be ready to accept this flaw. Besides, there are more workarounds to address this surfacing matter.

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Continuous Ink Supply System goes bottomless

One of the greatest offers when you go out and eat at your favorite dine-in spots is getting great value for your money. Aside from having the best tasting meal served on your table, getting unlimited drinks to go with it is a good perk to start with. Cold iced tea, sodas and even fruit juices are offered in drink-all-you-can amounts while you enjoy your sumptuous meal. But not only does the food industry feast on such a feat. The print industry is sharing the same thoughts when it comes to their inks.

Almost every well-to-do Filipino household as of this date have their own computer and sometimes a printer on the side, giving every user the capability to produce a copy of their works either for personal, business or educational use. Legal documents, photos, assignments and school projects are the common uses of the household printer. Overtime, the ink cartridge will soon dry up and require the purchase of a new one.

Unfortunately, ink cartridges are not that cheap. And buying a new one will undoubtedly give us second thoughts of replacing it. Better yet, ask a friend to have your paper work printed or visit a print shop and just pay at a much lower cost than buying a new ink.

CISS (Continuous Ink Supply System) has already been available since 2008 and has given print shops the chance to offer their services at a better price. The unlimited ink method has reduced the cost of buying ink and minimized the wastage of used up cartridges allowing up to 95% savings in ink cost. Even so, every ink will sure to be used up to the last drop compared to regular ink cartridges (particularly the tricolor one).

But the question is, “should you go for the CISS?” If majority of your answers to the questions below are YES then CISS will be a better option.

1. You regularly print more than 20 pages a week?
2. You usually print high quality photos and graphic images?
3. You frequently replace your ink cartridges in as low as once a month?
4. You have enough budget to shell out for a CISS conversion (about P 3000 or $75)?

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Adobe Illustrator CC 17.0 Portable

Adobe Illustrator is a professional vector graphics application designed for creating illustrations, digital graphics, web, video and mobile content. The new Mercury Performance System enhances your workflow, by providing greater speed on large files.

What defines Adobe Illustrator is the complex vector drawing tools that allow you to create infinitely scalable graphics. The technical terms for the vectors is “resolution independent”, which means you can resize these elements without losing quality.

This property extends to the effects section, too. Textures, blurs, shadows preserve their aspect, in spite of changing the resolution. In addition, Illustrator supports cross-media design, so the layout will adapt to your preferences, whether you draw or edit something for printing, publishing online, or displaying on a mobile phone.

The streamlined interface is intuitive and easy to work with, thus maximizing your productivity. You can fluidly move through workspaces and maintain layout changes until you decide to reset them.

Adobe Illustrator provides you with the essential tools that can ensure the best precision for your vector graphics. The image-tracing engine makes sure that created vectors are accurate and have a clean look. Gradients can be applied directly on objects or on strokes, while offering you full control over opacity and placement.

Moreover, the brushes palette is extremely rich, with the possibility to create new ones. Two quick examples are the Blob Brush, which generates a single vector shape and the Bristle brush that achieves realistic strokes for a more natural look.

Other features worth mentioning are the live distortion, 3D effects, the wide array of symbols, the possibility to blend shapes, the Gaussian blur, the Shape Builder, to name a few.

In conclusion, Adobe Illustrator does sound like a good choice for artists and designers that require accuracy and precision in digital graphics. It encourages creativity and imagination, while working at the fastest speed.

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How-To repair and revive Hard Disk Drives

Loosing precious data due to hard disk failure is something that everyone never wanted to happen. That is why, we need, you need to constantly have a fresh backup of those precious data. But, in some cases where you were unable to perform backup and the drive gone bad, fear not, for you can still repair and revive your drive and perform data recovery before your drive would be totally unusable.

One software that i have been using for quite sometime now and never failed me so far is the HDD (Hard Disk Drives) Regenerator. This great software can do the following.

• Detect physical bad sectors on a hard disk drive surface
• Repair physical bad sectors (magnetic errors) on a hard disk drive’s surface
• It works with any file systems including NTFS and FAT, also with unformatted and unpartitioned hard disk drives
• Supports bootable regenerating floppy and cd to automatically start the regenerating process

I always use this software as the last resort for reviving my hard disk drives. regeneration takes a whole night for a 40gb drive, depends on the drive capacity that you are regenerating.

You can download the demo version of the software here.

HDD Regenerator - a program to recover hard drives. Able to recover bad sectors (not hide them, namely to restore - as stated on the website). Principle of operation - the use of a special algorithm reversal unreadable sectors, allowing in many cases restore it. It uses a special boot disk / flash drive, set up after the program starts.

Key features:

• The ability to detect and fix the broken sector.
• The program ignores the file system scanning the disk on a physical level, so can work with any file system, and also with unformatted and non-partitioned hard drives.
• The ability to "direct" the work directly from the OS (WinXP and older)
• The ability to create boot disks and flash drives.

HDD Regenerator 2011:

• Prescan mode (very useful for fast determination of bad sectors location, if a hard drive has a large number of bad sectors. Saves your time. Bad hard drives are scanned in this mode even faster than good drives!)
• Normal scan mode has faster scanning speed
• 4K sector size support
• Automatic process resume in any mode (except CD / DVD)
• Multiple hard drives better support
• Real-time hard drive state monitor (will be available soon, currently limited)
• Other enhancements (including temperature indicator, convenient range of sectors selection, bad SMART status, indication, overheating indication, etc.)

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Setup SmartBro Connection Using Edimax Router

This is for the people who were asking on how to setup smartbro using an Edimax router. This guide is applicable to all Edimax routers as of this writing. as usual this guide is going to quick and straight-forward.

This guide assumes that you have a working smartbro connection and that you are able to access the internet when smartbro cable is directly connected to your computer’s LAN card.

1. Insert the smartbro cable to the WAN or Internet port of your Edimax router.

2. Using an extra cable, connect your computer to one of the LAN ports on the Edimax router.

3. Power on the router and login to the router setup page default is http://192.168.2.1, default user is admin and password is 1234.

4. Once logged in, click on the WAN link menu and click on Dynamic IP this will tell your router to send DHCP request to the smartbro base station’s DHCP server.

5. Click on “More Configuration” button, then look for the MAC Address text box then click on “Clone MAC Address” button. The default MAC address will be replaced with the MAC address of the connected computer on the router’s LAN port.

6. Verify that you have the right MAC address cloned. On your computer, open command prompt and type ipconfig/all and look for the Physical Address section and check that it matches the MAC address cloned by the router.

7. Once verified, click on Apply button and wait for 1 or 2 minutes for the changes to saved.

8. Power cycle your router and verify that it has successfully connected and assigned with an IP address, to verify, login to the Edimax router setup page and click on status then click on Internet Connection.

Tested to work on Edimax EW-7209APg, Edimax EW-7206PDg and Edimax BR-6204WG routers.

That’s all about it, you should be able to access the internet now through your Edimax router.

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How-To install iOS 7 on iPhone 4S, iPhone 5, iPad, and iPad Mini

Apple has just officially released iOS 7. If you have a compatible device (listed below), simply visit your device’s Settings menu, click to General, and then Software Update. You can also update to iOS 7 via iTunes 11.1, which was just released on the Apple website (and you will need it if you wish to sync your device via USB.) The original post is below, if for some reason you wish to download iOS 7 in a different way.

Updated: If your iPhone or iPad won’t download iOS 7, it’s almost certainly because Apple’s servers are being completely hammered. We finally managed to get a device to update, though it took quite a few failed attempts. It’s probably worth waiting a few hours until the deluge has calmed down, unless you want to sit there and constantly hit retry. Once you’ve installed iOS 7, check out our guide to all of its new features.

While iOS 7 won’t be released until September 18, it’s possible to download and install iOS 7 today, and install it on your existing iPhone or iPad. You can install iOS 7 on the iPhone 4, 4S, and 5, the fifth-gen iPod Touch, and every iPad and iPad Mini except the original iPad. Installing iOS 7 will give you access to some exciting new features, such as improved multitasking and AirDrop, and the complete visual overhaul will of course make your Apple device look completely different (and cause all of your friends to gape jealously).

There are two routes that you can take to install iOS 7 on your iDevice: You can either sign up for an Apple developer account, which costs you $100 per year, or you can install one of the leaked iOS 7 golden masters. The safest option is to sign up for the developer program, and if you split it between a few friends (you can install iOS 7 on up to 100 devices), it can be very cheap. Once you’ve signed up, you need to add your device’s UDID as a registered test device, and then go ahead and download the correct iOS 7 image for your device from the Apple developer portal. Once you have the image, skip to the installation section below.

If you don’t have $100 to spare, downloading a leaked golden master is a good second option — and, depressingly enough, it’s actually easier than installing the legitimate version. To install iOS 7, grab the correct image for your device from the list below, and then proceed to the installation section.

iOS 7 and iTunes 11.1 golden master images

If you don’t know which model you have, the model number can be found on the back of your iDevice. Bear in mind that some of these links may not work by the time you read this story (but a bit of googling can usually find you an alternative link). Also note that you will need iTunes 11.1 (link below) if you want to sync to your computer — but if you don’t want to install it, iCloud sync works just fine.

• iPhone 4 (GSM)
• iPhone 4 (GSM Rev. A)
• iPhone 4 (CDMA, Model A1349)
• iPhone 4S (Models A1431 & A1387)
• iPhone 5 (Model A1428)
• iPhone 5 (Model A1429)
• iPad 2 (WiFi)
• iPad 2 (Rev. A)
• iPad 2 (WiFi + GSM, Model A1396)
• iPad 2 (WiFi + CDMA, Model A1397)
• iPad 3 (WiFi, Model A1416)
• iPad 3 (WiFi + GSM, Model A1430)
• iPad 3 (WiFi + CDMA, Model A1403)
• iPad 4 (WiFi, Model A1458)
• iPad 4 (WiFi + GSM, Model A1459)
• iPad 4 (WiFi + CDMA, Model A1460)
• iPad Mini (WiFi, Model A1432)
• iPad Mini (WiFi + GSM, Model A1454)
• iPad Mini (WiFi + CDMA, Model A1455)
• iPod Touch (Fifth-generation)
• iTunes 11.1 Beta

Installing iOS 7 beta

Before you continue, make a backup of your device using iTunes. If anything goes wrong, you will want to boot your phone into DFU mode and then restore the backup. These images seem to be the real deal and safe to use, but we haven’t tested all of them, and of course you use them at your own risk.

With your iOS 7 image downloaded (if it’s a DMG file, you will need to open it up and extract the IPSW file), plug in your iDevice, and then open up iTunes. Select your device’s Summary tab. Under OS X, hold down Option and click Restore; in Windows, hold Shift and press Restore. Select the IPSW file from the dialog that pops up, and voila: Your iDevice will update to iOS 7. Once the update has completed, you may need to restore your device from a backup (and remember, you will need to update to iTunes 11.1).

Voilà: Your iPhone or iPad is now running iOS 7. Be sure to read our iOS 7 guide so that you don’t miss any of the cool new features.

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Exploring the new iOS 7 features, changes, and interface

Later today, September 18, Apple will release iOS 7 — the biggest update to iOS since the first iPhone launched way back in 2007. In some ways, iOS 7 merely brings Apple’s mobile OS up to feature parity with Android and Windows Phone — but in other areas, iOS 7 leaps ahead of the competition. If you want to find out more about iOS 7′s new features and changes, read on. If reading isn’t your thing and you own an iPhone or iPad, go ahead and download and install iOS 7 today, ahead of the official release.

iOS 7′s radically different new look

After six years of looking exactly the same, iOS 7 finally delivers a massive visual overhaul that will make your iPhone or iPad actually look modern. In general, iOS 7 is flatter, more colorful, and lacks skeuomorphism (interface elements that resemble real-world objects/materials, such as wood paneling or a leather ledger). Despite the new look, though, iOS 7 still feels very familiar; everything’s still where you expect it to be. It just looks fresher. We’ve been using various beta versions of iOS 7 for a few months, and while there’s a bit of an adjustment period, Apple has somehow ensured that almost everything is surprisingly familiar.

In-line with newer versions of Android and Windows Phone, iOS 7 also now makes much more significant use of typography; in many cases, where there used to be an icon, there is now simply a label with the action/function spelled out. Underlying changes have been made to iOS 7 to give developers easier access to advanced typography features, too, such as kerning and ligatures.

iOS 7 is also more dynamic. The new Control Center (more on that later) is semi-transparent, allowing you to see the colorful Home screen beneath. Likewise, the Notification Center (which is significantly upgraded) is semi-transparent. When you tilt your iDevice, your Home screen icons move independently of the background, creating a cute parallax effect.

iOS 7 Control Center and Notification Center

Once you look beyond the visual overhaul, which actually provides very little in the way of new functionality, the most significant changes in iOS 7 are the new Control Center and the updated Notification Center. Control Center is a new panel that is revealed by sliding up from the bottom of the screen. Control Center finally lets you configure iOS without heading deep into Settings. You can enable airplane mode, toggle WiFi/Bluetooth, change screen brightness, control music playback, use your camera’s LED as a flashlight, and more.

Notification Center has been significantly updated in iOS 7, so that (just like Control Center) it provides much the same functionality as Android. Instead of a single panel, you now have three — Today, All, Missed — that show you your notifications, appointments, emails, stock tickers, and so on.

iOS 7 Multitasking

Always one of iOS’s weaknesses, version 7 also improves multitasking. Now, instead of just a small tray at the bottom of the screen when you double tap the Home button, you get a full-screen interface with app thumbnails. Instead of having to push-and-hold to close programs, you can just swipe the preview image off the screen.

Apple also claims that iOS 7 can learn your app usage schedule, and trigger updates just before you open an app. If you always check Facebook at 9am, iOS 7 will apparently check Facebook for updates just before, so that your feed is ready and waiting. Presumably this will save some battery life over the conventional method of constant push notifications — though, to be honest, these are probably still turned on by default anyway.

iOS 7 Camera and Photos

As much as the tech press hates to admit it, faster processors and fancy features are really rather superfluous: What the vast majority of iPhone users really care about is the device’s ability to snap photos. In iOS 7, the camera app now lets you shoot in square format (ideal for Instagram), and a range of filters can be applied in real time — and you can remove filters from images later, if you don’t like it. If you have an iPhone 5S, Camera also lets you shoot in slow motion, which is pretty awesome (but the question is, will it still be awesome once you’ve seen a million slow-mo videos on Vine, Instagram, and YouTube?)

The Photos app (pictured above) has been significantly overhauled to introduce Years, Collections, and Moments — essentially new ways of viewing your photos that have been automatically organized by certain criteria. Collections and Years are self-explanatory (iOS automatically collates your photos), and Moments tries to highlight important photos, such as your visit to Times Square. If you snap a lot of photos on your iPhone, these new views provide some much-needed organization.

iOS 7: AirDropiOS 7 AirDrop

AirDrop closely mirrors Samsung/Android’s S Beam, but with the usual dollop of Apple flair and polish. Basically, AirDrop lets you easily share any file on your iPhone or iPad via WiFi or Bluetooth, with any other iOS 7 device that’s in range. Discovery of other devices is very slick and quick, and you can remain invisible if you prefer. This is obviously a lot easier than emailing a file, or sending a low-res photo via SMS/MMS.

Other changes to iOS 7

Siri has been updated so that it checks more sources for information, and so that it can interact with new features such as iTunes Radio (pictured below) — which, incidentally, is essentially free Pandora radio for every iOS user, and ad-free if you sign up for the $25/year iTunes Match.

The App Store now has Apps Near Me, which shows you apps that are relevant to your current location — and, more importantly, the App Store can now automatically update your installed apps!

Find My iPhone/iPad/iPod Touch has been updated, so that it requires your Apple ID and password to turn the feature off, or to erase or activate your device.

Safari has been significantly updated, too — now it feels a lot more like a modern browser, such as Chrome. There’s a unified search box (a la Chrome’s omnibar), and the tab switcher is very slick. Though it won’t be ready for release, iCloud Keychain will allow you to securely store/share your passwords and credit card details between your iOS 7 and OS X Mavericks devices.

All in all, iOS 7 is one of Apple’s largest and best software updates. In testing, we have found iOS 7 a lot easier and quicker to use than its predecessors. One of the biggest complaints — that too many features are buried away in menus — has been soundly addressed. In a story later today, we’ll be investigating whether iOS 7 compares favorably against Android 4.3, or whether Apple still has some ground to cover.

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Crucial M500: The first 1TB SSD, priced at just $0.60/gig

That day has finally arrived: Crucial is selling a 1TB SSD for just $600. Not only is this the first mainstream SSD to offer a terabyte (960GB) of capacity, but it also clocks in at just 60 cents per gig — by far the cheapest high-capacity SSD on the market. Crucial’s 1TB drive is actually significantly cheaper (per gig) than the smaller drives in the same range.

Crucial’s new drives, which launch under the M500 moniker, are fashioned from Micron’s 20nm MLC NAND and a Marvell 9187 controller. There are 120GB ($130), 240GB ($220), 480GB ($400), and 960GB ($600) models, all of which are theoretically capable of 500MB/sec sequential read, and up to 400MB/sec sequential read on the 480GB and 960GB models. In actual benchmarks, the 960GB and 480GB M500 is a mid-range SSD that’s outpaced by its contemporaries, including the Samsung 840 Pro. Its performance is by no means bad, though — and really, let’s be honest here: The M500′s main selling point is its ability to offer a truly usable amount of storage space at a reasonable price. The use of MLC should mean that the M500 has greater endurance than its TLC-based counterparts, such as the Samsung 840, too.

To squeeze 1TB into a single SSD, Crucial uses Micron’s new 128Gbit (16GB) 20nm MLC NAND die — double the previous max of 64Gbit (8GB) per die. To achieve such a huge density, Micron had to increase the page size from 8KB to 16KB, which increases the die’s density — but also the latency, thus reducing overall performance. Micron squeezes four of these dies into a single chip, for a total capacity of 64GB per chip — and then Crucial shoehorns 16 NAND chips into the drive, for a total capacity of 1024GB (960GB usable). The M500 is the first drive to use the 128Gbit die, which is why no other drive comes close to it in terms of capacity or cost-per-gig. We can expect other drive vendors to follow in the M500′s footsteps and release 1TB (or perhaps even larger) drives later this year.

SSD prices have been slipping below the $1/GB threshold for the last few months, but only at smaller sizes (120GB and 240GB). For a 1TB (960GB) to drop so far below $1/GB is quite simply extraordinary. To reach that density, Crucial had to make some performance sacrifices — but, put simply, Crucial couldn’t care less that the M500 is 10% slower than a drive that can only manage a puny 512GB of storage. Crucial has launched the first ever mainstream, 1TB drive at below $1 per gig — and that’s a big deal.

If you want to get your hands on a M500 drive, Newegg has some in stock at $650; Amazon is already out of stock. For benchmarks, see the always-ineffable Anandtech.

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Five-dimensional glass memory can store 360TB per disc

Scientists at the University of Southampton in the UK have succeeded in creating five-dimensional (5D), ultra-high-density storage on standard silica glass discs that, unlike DVDs or Blu-rays, seem to be capable of storing data for an unlimited period of time without a reduction in data integrity. The scientists say that 5D optical storage could allow for densities as high as 360 terabytes per disc, and unless you crush it in a vice, these discs are so non-volatile that data stored on them should “survive the human race.”

At first glance, five-dimensional storage might sound a bit like pseudoscience — but, in this case, the data really is stored on five different dimensions (surfaces, planes). There are the usual two dimensions (width, height) provided by a piece of silica glass, and depth is provided by writing at three different depths (layers) within the glass. The fourth and fifth dimensions are provided by nanostructuring the surface of the glass, so that it refracts and polarizes light in interesting ways.

To record data, spots are imprinted on the glass (pictured below) using a femtosecond laser. A femtosecond laser, in this case, produces bursts of laser light that last for just 280 femtoseconds (280 quadrillionths of a second). These spots, thanks to the nanostructuring of the surface, and some hologram cleverness, are capable of recording up to three bits of data in two “dimensions.” By varying the focus of the laser, the team are able to create layers of dots that are separated by five micrometers (0.005mm) in the z-axis (the third dimension). Then, by simply moving the laser horizontally and vertically, these tri-bits can be stored in two more dimensions, bringing the total to 5D. The image at the top of the story helps illustrate this concept.

To read these spots, an optical microscope that’s capable of untangling the polarized light reflected by the three-bit spots is used. There’s no word on whether these silica glass discs can be rewritten, but the research paper [PDF] makes it sound like this is a write-once-read-many (WORM) storage method.

As you can imagine, storing a tri-bit in a single dot, and then storing these dots in a three-dimensional medium, allows for utterly insane storage densities. The researchers say that 360 terabytes could be stored on a single 5D disc — by comparison, quad-layer Blu-ray discs that store just a single bit per pit have a total capacity of 128 gigabytes, or almost 3,000 times less. The best hard drive technology, heat-assisted magnetic recording (HAMR), which will soon make its way into commercial drives, will max out at around 20 terabytes per disc.

Furthermore, the scientists report that their glass discs are thermally stable at temperatures up to 1000 degrees Celsius, and the imprinted spots don’t seem to degrade over time. This led Peter Kazansky, the group’s supervisor, to pipe up with this particularly memorable/questionable soundbite: “It is thrilling to think that we have created the first document which will likely survive the human race. This technology can secure the last evidence of civilisation: all we’ve learnt will not be forgotten.”

Moving forward, the University of Southampton is now looking for industry partners to commercialize this technology. Obvious applications include archival storage, where the management of huge repositories of tapes and hard drives is expensive, complex, and time-consuming business. Eventually, assuming the complex laser/microscope setup can be miniaturized, these discs might offer an upgrade path from DVDs and Blu-rays.

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Samsung debuts monster 1.6TB SSD XS175

Samsung unveiled its new XS175 line of SSDs today, with capacities of up to 1.6TB and a brand-new storage interface. The new drive uses the Non-Volatile Memory Express (NVMe) standard, which is meant to boost SSD performance by transitioning to using PCI Express for transfers rather than conventional SATA.

The Serial ATA standard has been extended multiple times since it first debuted in 2003, but it was fundamentally designed for spinning disks. Many of the features that the SATA/AHCI interface enables, like NCQ (Native Command Queuing) were designed to address problems with that type of media — not for modern SSD architectures. (See: Crucial M500: The first 1TB SSD, priced at just $0.60/gig.)

Normally, enterprise products aren’t of much interest to the consumer market, but NVMe is a feature that’s headed for the consumer space before too long. The performance benefits over AHCI are significant — NVMe is designed to allow a drive to create multiple queues, using a model that more closely maps to the multiple NAND channels in an SSD rather than relying on spinning media to access data sequentially. It supports up to 64K submission and completion queues, with each queue holding up to 64K of entries. Queues can be prioritized or weighted differently to speed system accesses.

Samsung is the first company to implement NVMe, and it claims the standard will offer significant performance advantages. While plenty of other SSDs have used the PCIe bus before now, the benefit of NVMe is that it’s a standardized interface that won’t require specific manufacturer drivers in the future. Once widely adopted, you’ll need just a standard driver that can easily be bundled with the operating system.

Those of you who follow the storage market may be aware that the next generation of SATA controllers, dubbed SATA Express, are adopting PCI Express as their interface. SATA Express and NVMe are complementary, not competing technologies. Specifically, SATA Express specifies the design of the physical connectors and hardware, while NVMe provides the driver and interface. According to the consortium that’s in charge of SATA Express, the decision to move to NVMe was made because it offers increased performance and significantly improved power management without requiring a full doubling of bandwidth.

The current SATA transfer rate tops out at 6Gbps, while SATA Express bumps this to 8Gbps. That might not sound like much, but the SATA-IO working group believes that the benefits of NVMe, combined with the modest bump in raw bandwidth, will deliver a satisfying performance kick.

The first SATA Express chipsets are expected in 2014, with Intel’s Broadwell. SATA Express is backwards compatible with AHCI as well as supporting NVMe — there’s no reason to worry about drives becoming incompatible due to the shift.

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Hands-on with fake iPhone 5

Apple’s (AAPL) next-generation iPhone becomes a reality in just over a week, and a staggering amount of leaks and rumors will surface between now and then. As is always the case, some will be real and some will be fake. 

Just because something is fake doesn’t mean we can’t gain some insights by examining it, however, and The Verge managed to track down an “iPhone 5” mock-up while attending the IFA trade show in Berlin last week. The mock-up is said to have been created for testing purposes by a third-party case manufacturer using actual specs and measurements from Apple’s upcoming sixth iPhone. In the video below, we can see exactly how it stacks up against the current-model iPhone 4S.

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