Table of contents for July 2017 in PC & Tech Authority

Yesterday I sat through a keynote by Eugene Kaspersky at Sydney’s CeBIT event. I usually steer well clear of CeBIT due to its heavily enterprise nature. One can only tolerate so many empty server racks on display from keen vendors, or ‘NSW is on the move!” government exhibitions before the brain fades completely. I commented to a colleague who covers these things that it was all too terrifyingly real world for my consumer electronics tastes, to which he replied that this was “the tech that pays for everything.” But I went along to hear the boss of Kaspersky’s keynote, titled “Threat Landscapes: What Australia Can Expect Now & In The Future”. Unfortunately Mr Kaspersky rolled out a stock presentation that didn’t mention any Australia-specific threats or statistics, not once. A…

MUSIC Format growth and decline 2013 Streaming 6.2% Digital albums 27.2% Track-equivalent albums¹ 15.2% Physical albums 51.3% 2014 Streaming 12.6% Digital albums 25.3% Track-equivalent albums¹ 13.3% Physical albums 48.8% 2015 Streaming 22.1% Digital albums 21.1% Track-equivalent albums¹ 10.9% Physical albums 45.9% 2016 Streaming 36.4% Digital albums 14.6% Track-equivalent albums¹ 7.9% Source: Official Charts Company 1. “Track-equivalent albums” are an industry measure equating to ten separate song downloads, which is regarded as the equivalent of one album. US music revenues from streaming by % Source: RIAA PODCASTS: Listener growth Percentage of people who listen to podcasts at least once a month Source: Edison Research Listening devices – computer vs smartphone Source: Edison Research…

BALANCED FORCE Scorptech Computers Venom 1070 Quiet Gaming PC $2,349 – http://tinyurl.com/lacenkr This is a great system. A top end speedy quad core CPU ideal for current games is paired with a capable GTX 1070 for solid high graphics quality 1440p gaming. Matched with a sizeable 512GB NVME SSD and a comfortable amount of DDR4 memory is doesn’t get much better without breaking the bank. Really the only thing an owner would want to upgrade in a year or two is the graphics card, the rest of this system will easily handle the next three or more years of gaming with ease. Dropping in a hard drive for some extra mass storage down the track might also be worthwhile considering. KEY SPECS CPU: Intel Core i7 7700K Cooler: Noctua NH-D14…

Google Chrome google.com/chrome Browser choices are as personal as fashion, but there are many reasons why Chrome remains our – and indeed, the world’s – default browser. Cross-platform sync is perhaps its chief attraction, with seamless password sharing between both Android and Windows browsers, and the ability to pick up tabs left open on other devices. Didn’t get a?chance to finish reading that important report in the office? With Chrome, you can easily read it on the train on the way home using your smartphone. Chrome’s omnipotence hands it arguably the best library of extensions of any browser (Edge, for the record, has a mere 21). Pushbullet, Wikiwand and Social Fixer are among those we’d urge you to install. While Chrome certainly isn’t the sleek gazelle it lauded itself as…

IFTTT is powered by applets (previously called recipes), which are essentially user-defined scripts for particular services. Each applet needs a trigger (the “if” this happens) and an outcome (“then do that”). Applets can deal with a single service (for example, if I leave the office, unmute my Android phone), or bring together multiple services/devices (if I add a song to a Spotify playlist, tweet a link to the track). The IFTTT.com website contains many pre-prepared applets for the dozens of different services and devices that IFTTT is compatible with. If you can’t find an applet to do what you want, you can create your own by clicking on My Applets | New Applets and follow the on-screen prompts. However, in our experience, IFTTT applets can be flaky. Some work flawlessly,…

Testing times BENNETT RING EXPLAINS OUR UPDATED TESTING PROCESS THAT WE USE FOR MAINLY FOR GPUS AND CPUS We’re updating all of our benchmarks with the exception of the ever-reliable 3DMark. We’re sticking with 3DMark because it’s the most widely acknowledged, independent benchmark on the planet. While certain game engines are built closely with the assistance from AMD or Nvidia, 3DMark is built to give neither vendor an advantage. It’s been in use for over 15 years, and is built by a team who strive for one thing – repeatable, accurate tests that are as scienti. cally accurate as possible. The next test on our list is Rise of the Tomb Raider. We chose this test for several reasons. Firstly, it now o. cially supports DirectX12, an area that is…

I_f there’s another segment almost as popular as ultraportable convertibles, it’s mini-PCs. Both have been driven forth by the ever decreasing amount of power required by today’s CPUs, not to mention SSDs as small as a row of stamps. One of the more intriguing mini- PCs to cross our desk lately is the HP Pavilion Wave. The most interesting facet is the custom-case. It’s covered in ‘Audio fabric’, which makes it look more like a speaker than a PC. It’s also darned small, with a height of just 25.9cm, and a width of 16.8cm. To be honest, it’s the sexiest, least-PC looking mini-computer we’ve ever seen. If only it wasn’t so damn slow… But before we get into the woeful performance, let’s take a closer look at that extraordinary design,…

Want to be sure your NAS is running at peak performance? What if you could keep your NAS up and running simply, with powerful info on the health of your system and the status of the IronWolf hard drives inside? What if you could learn in real-time ahead of potential issues arising or know with a glance that an “Abnormally high operating temperature has been detected” — and even be advised to “Please make sure that the rear ventilation ports are not blocked, and please try to lower the ambient temperature.” Or what if “Excessive vibration has been detected” or “Excessive physical shock to the hard drive has been detected” in your NAS? Wouldn’t it be useful to know, so you could make sure your system is always in good…

F_inding an affordable iphone is practically impossible if you stick to the main series of handsets. Even the iPhone 6, which is now two generations old (having been replaced by the iPhone 6s and, most recently, the iPhone 7), goes for about $1,000 SIM-free. And that’s if you can actually find it new, among the far more prevalent refurbs. Hope remains with Apple’s smaller 4in models. For minimum expense, there’s the iPhone 5c, which has fallen well below the $250 mark, albeit at the cost of a plasticky build and slow performance. By contrast, the much more up-todate iPhone SE has nailed pretty much everything: it’s got the build quality, it’s got the processing power and it’s got the camera, all packed into a neat metal chassis. What’s more, on…

W_e’ll get to the newer moto g5 soon, but it’s worth noting that for over a year now, the Moto G4 has been the yardstick by which all other budget smartphones have been judged. It’s only recently that genuine alternatives have arrived, such is its phenomenal balance of quality and thriftiness. In particular, its octacore 1.5GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 617 processor and 2GB of RAM give it serious power. In Geekbench 3, the Moto G4 scored 717 in the singlecore test and a massive 3,107 in the multicore test, about what we’d expect from a good midrange device. Indeed, these scores are on a par with those of the HTC One A9, which costs twice as much. It’s lovely to use on a daytoday basis, and it’s even a pretty capable…

T_he arrival of the OnePlus 3T at the end of 2016 was a bittersweet occasion. This was an update to one of our favourite high-end phones, the OnePlus 3, and made several small but welcome changes to the processor and battery – yet these incremental improvements came with a steep price increase, which seemed antithetical to the OnePlus ethos of creating flagshipstandard devices at knockdown prices. You couldn’t even get the older model for less, as it was canned with such remarkable speed and force that it disappeared from all but the shadiest of grey market stores That said, by any reasonable measure the OnePlus 3T is still a bargain. Going in at $539 for the 64GB model, or $709 for the 128GB model, it packs a 2.35GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon…

Y_ou might be wondering what the Galaxy S7 is doing here – aren’t we meant to be looking at more affordable current phones and older classics? Well, you’d be right in that the S7 isn’t exactly chump change, but then by the time you read this, the Galaxy S8 will have arrived to replace it as Samsung’s premier smartphone. That means price drops for last year’s model. This is great news for bargain hunters, as the S7 quickly became our favourite-ever Android handset when we first reviewed it. Not that first impressions were that great: our testing sample had fine scratches in numerous places on the display and the fingerprint sensor, and while the glass back was in better conditions, it was and remains an absolute fingerprint magnet. RESISTANCE MOVEMENT…

DeepMind’s work with kidney patients is perhaps the best-known example of deep learning or artificial intelligence used in medicine – not because of the project itself, but because of the criticism it sparked on data management. British deep-learning startup, which in 2015 announced it was working with the Royal Free Trust in London on a kidney disease monitoring app called Streams; the app would analyse data and suggest interventions failure. Owned by Google’s parent firm Alphabet, DeepMind is a Britinterventions to avoid kidney failure. Shortly after the trial kicked off, a report in New Scientist revealed that the hospitals had shared a wider range of patient data than expected, across 1.6 million patients. The NHS and DeepMind responded by tweaking the data-sharing agreement, but an academic report from the New…

FEATURES + ASHAMPOO UNINSTALLER 2017 + ABELSSOFT ANTIRANSOMWARE 2017 + ASCOMP BACKUP MAKER + NOVAPDF LITE 8 FEATURED APPS + SECURITY + CODING & PRODUCTIVITY + MEDIA & ENTERTAINMENT DRIVERS + ATI CATALYST + NVIDIA FORCEWARE HELP DISCLAIMER + DAMAGED OR FAULTY DVDS + USING THIS DVD + INSTALLING SOFTWARE EDITORIAL + BURNING AN ISO IMAGE + PC&TA EDITORIALS TROUBLESHOOTING + SERIAL CODES + BLANK REGISTRATION WEBSITE + CAN’T FIND A FILE? + INSTALLATION ERROR WINDOWS + 7ZIP + CCLEANER + CLASSIC SHELL + CUTEPDF + DEEPBURNER + DEFRAGGLER + FLUX + FOXIT READER + GREENSHOT + APPLE ITUNES + LIBRE OFFICE + OPEN OFFICE + MALWAREBYTES’ A/M + SANDBOXIE + VLC MEDIA PLAYER MAC + ALFRED + BETTERTOUCHTOOLS + APPLE ITUNES + DROPBOX + FLUX + GOOGLE CHROME +…

E_very day nearly 180,000 people move to cities, resulting in more than 60 million new urban dwellers each year. Such rapid growth puts pressure on a city’s infrastructure (transport, energy, water, housing), and scarce infrastructure aggravates civil issues such as law and order and the delivery of basic services. For instance, studies suggest a typical driver spends 106 days of his/her life looking for parking spaces. In response to pressure from organisations and citizens, “smartening up” cities has become a priority for policy makers. The “smart city” label has been applied to a range of technology developments powered by city data and digital technologies. It’s hoped these will help cities plan for population growth, introducing a more sustainable model for urban development. We’ve already seen progress. Smart electricity grids, energy-e.…

I_f there’s a single measure to apply to modern businesses then this year is all about agility. Despite the fact that nobody has standardised the unit of agility, everybody thinks they can measure it and demonstrate what it means. When trying to make sense of this type of problem, I fall back on a simple technique known as derailing someone’s smooth sales presentation with a silly question. You see, silly questions are much more powerful than sensible ones. Especially when someone agile has been through and whipped up a show, a market, an economy, or the whole world into a turbulent mess in their passing wake. When things get extra turbulent, the silly question moves the conversation forward, by reminding us that there really are no sensible anchors in R&D,…

ULTIMATE ATARI Check this lot out Ben… all the old computers we fondly remember! These all still work and I have all of the software as well. The 8bit Atari days were special to me, I did a lot of programming and the sound of a set of daisy chained “happy” drives churning away was special. I’ve taken a photo for you which includes a couple of extra Atari machines and also two of the Atari 810 ‘happy’ disk drives. Also just for interest is a photo of a review of my fractal program coded on the Atari ST published in Atari ST User issue 53 July 1990. Some of the other memorable and fun times included the anticipation of hand typing in the program listings from magazines and the…

THEY’RE ALL ON THE DVD! Here at PC & Tech Authority we keep our promises, and in last month’s roundup of free software we gave you time-savers, delivered lots of great creative tools and offered utilities galore. But we promised you more, and here, in our second and final roundup of the best free software, we focus on three very different areas. First, a selection of nine brilliant tools for keeping your PC safe from threats. Then, Paul Ockenden gets personal and reveals his favourite free coding tools as part of our Coding & Productivity section. Finally, we go wild with a selection of Media & Entertainment apps. Enjoy! CONTRIBUTORS BARRY COLLINS, TIM DANTON, MAX FIGGETT, DARIEN GRAHAM-SMITH, PAUL OCKENDEN, DAVEY WINDER CONTENTS Security AdwCleaner Avast Free Antivirus F-Secure Rescue…

Can you imagine how much a large software company would charge you for a code development system that supported programming languages such as C#, Visual Basic, F#, C++, HTML, JavaScript, TypeScript and Python, and allowed you to deploy your code onto Windows, Android, iOS or web servers? Such a tool sounds really expensive, doesn’t it? Well, as you’ve probably guessed it’s free, and the software I’m talking about is Visual Studio Community from Microsoft (visualstudio.com/vs/community). It’s a great mature platform, and for many programmers it provides everything they need without stumping up for the paidfor version of Visual Studio. Sharing a similar name, look and feel – but not much else – is Visual Studio Code.(code.visualstudio.com), also from Microsoft. It’s a lean tool compared to the other Visual Studio offerings.…

As the name suggests, Microsoft Flow aims to smooth the automation of tasks, streamline communication between apps and, most importantly, make power users’ lives easier – without the need for time-consuming scripting. Released to take on established services such as IFTTT and Zapier, Microsoft Flow is designed to be implemented in businesses of all sizes. It can, therefore, automate jobs involving a wide range of services (110 to be precise), including big names such as SharePoint, Office 365, OneDrive, Dropbox, Gmail, Google Drive, MailChimp, Slack, Todoist, Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest and Instagram, as well as comparatively obscure choices such as Toodledo, Typeform, SendGrid and Redmine. As with IFTTT, you can create your own applets, unappealingly called “Flows”, by picking from a dropdown list of services and “triggers” (for instance, when a…

2D TESTS Desktop PCs and laptops are tested using our own custom bench testing suite, which has been carefully designed to test all aspects of a system and rate them in a way that’s useful to you. Our benchtesting cover three main tests: a typical video editing test, a demanding 4K video editing test and a multitasking test that stresses all aspects of the system. We look at the time it takes for each test to run, which is then compared to our reference PC to produce a normalised result. This score is shown on a graph, and to help you understand just where the PC we’re reviewing sits in the grand scheme of things, we will often include other system’s scores. PC&TA LABS BENCHTEST PC Intel Core i7-7700 CPU;…

Netgear’s Nighthawk range of wireless routers have been among the most technically advanced – and expensive – routers for power users, and the Nighthawk X8 AC5300 VDSL/ ADSL Modem Router continues this proud tradition. While the design is a little more subdued that its wedge-shaped predecessor, the Nighthawk X8 is nonetheless a fetching bit of kit, with an undulating ventilation grid on the top, a column of white LEDs to signal internet connectivity, Wi-Fichannel status and Ethernet connectivity, and three buttons on the front to enable/disable the LEDs, WPS and Wi-Fi, respectively. Speaking of LEDs, the four external antennas possess their own blue LEDs that circle the tips. While dismissing them as a design touch at first, I came to appreciate them for signifying the status of the Wi-Fiat a…

W_hile we’re fond of the Pixel and Pixel XL, Google’s most recent smartphones, they both went down the ultra-premium route, abandoning the surprising a? ordability of the previousgeneration Nexus 6P and Nexus 5X. Happily, the latter is still an excellent choice. It doesn’t make the best first impression; made of plastic, it looks like a budget handset, with utterly featureless side buttons that are so simple as to appear an afterthought. It’s great to hold, though. The plastic finish provides plenty of grip and, at 136g, it’s among the lightest phones around. The shape is good too, with the rear panel neatly meeting the front bezels. The frontfacing speakers provide better audio than any tiny port tucked away at the bottom of some flagship smartphones. POKE’S ON YOU Underneath the…

T_his should be an exciting occasion: the follow-up to 2016’s best budget phone by a mile, the Moto G4, updated with stylish metal bodywork and the latest Android 7.0 Nougat. Sadly, though, the new Moto G5 is a device we can only appreciate with caveats. Let’s start with the good. As mentioned, both this and the larger Moto G5 Plus (which we’ll cover in more detail in a future issue) have ditched the plastic backplates of previous Moto G handsets in favour of a sleeker, slinkier metal design. Although there’s the risk that this will scu. , scratch and dent rather more easily than the textured plastic rear of previous generations, out of the box the Moto G5 looks very fine indeed. In fact, this is a lovely phone to…

This isn’t nearly the cheapest Samsung handset around, but the latest Galaxy A5 is appealing as a value purchase because it has much more in common with the Galaxy S7 than it does the budget Galaxy J series For starters, there’s the flagshipbothering build quality. The Galaxy A5’s clean metal frame and all-glass front are incredibly handsome for a sub-$600 smartphone, and its tapered back helps it fit snugly into the palm of your hand. It’s also the first iteration of the A5 where the rear camera is totally flush with the body. It’s a lovely phone to hold and behold, then, but then last year’s Galaxy A5 was pretty nice, too. The key di. erences lie beneath the phone’s glossy exterior, with a new processor, more RAM and a…

S_ince the next cheapest option in sony’s smartphone range is the rubbish Xperia XA, the dinky Xperia X Compact looks like the family’s best balance of a? ordability and quality. It is, however, something of a Frankenphone, combining some features from the top-of-the-line XZ with some from the older Xperia X, all in its 4.6in chassis. So instead of the octa-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 processor from the XZ, the X Compact has the hexacore Snapdragon 650 from the X – yet it inherits its camera lock, stock and barrel from the XZ. Honestly, this is a slightly disappointing departure from Sony’s previous Compact models, which were typically just as powerful as their flagship brethren, just in a smaller body. SQUARE’S BREADTH The fit-and-finish isn’t great either, with unsightly gaps at…

ADA Ada is a smartphone app that “talks to you like a really good doctor would,” taking into account your history and symptoms. It’s now being ported to Amazon’s Echo, so you can ask such questions to the Alexa voice assistant, too. Rather than act like a symptom checker online, each aspect of a question is actually computed for results, offering advice and next steps – including whether you should go and see your human doctor. Naturally, there are disclaimers: Ada is not a medical diagnosis, so see a doctor if you’re worried. DEEPMIND AND MOORFIELDS DeepMind’s kidney app was its first project; the second is a partnership with Moorfields Eye Hospital, which aims to help optometrists detect common eye disorders by letting deep-learning systems look at scans. It takes…

T_he launch of a new file system is a rare event. There are good reasons for this: moving over an entire community of users from one file system format to another is a big deal. No, scratch that – it’s a huge deal. And it’s the sort of hugeness that means you can do this only once a decade. Even that would be considered almost rashly hasty If you think about it, the PC/Windows world has seen remarkably few file systems over the history of the PC. We started with MS-DOS, and then subdirectories were added – oh, the naughty radicalism of that move! MSDOS evolved from FAT to FAT32, and then stopped. NTFS came with Windows NT in 1992, and it had tiny evolutions in the first decade, before…

Colour me shocked. It appears the NSA has been collecting a treasure trove of hacks for Windows, both desktop and servers, covering all versions of the OS bar Windows 10. And this toolbox of capabilities, which also included ways to get into banking and other related systems, has leaked to the public.I suspect your jaw isn’t gaping in surprise. What’s followed has been just as predictable. First, there’s shock that the NSA might have built such a collection of exploits. Sorry, what do you expect the NSA to be doing? Creating toolkits that can be used against undesirables is what it exists for. Injecting custom spyware onto the laptop of a terrorist could bring up incredibly useful intelligence information, after all. Then there’s the public horror that the NSA didn’t…

WHO WANTS TO KILL THOUSANDS OF IOT DEVICES? Permanent denial-of-service attack hints at price war among Internet of Things hackers Security experts are puzzling over the motivation behind a new threat that can permanently damage IoT devices. The devices have been a target before because they are often poorly secured with old versions of Linux and default passwords. Botnets built using IoT devices infected by the Mirai malware were blamed for attacks that brought down several websites last year. Researchers have been monitoring the progress of a new form of attacks – permanent denialofservice (PDoS) – that are targeting IoT devices with the aim of damaging them beyond repair. They’re a step beyond DDoS attacks. “If you DDoS a service it recovers straight away after the attack, but with PDoS…

CPU AMD FINALLY BACK IN THE SERVER GAME AMD’s new server grade CPUs previously known by its codename, Naples, has been unveiled at its financial analyst day as ‘Epyc’. Oh yes “I just bought an Epyc server!” will be causing meme levels of Picard facepalms everywhere. I like it. And what’s not to like? A 32-core, 64-thread monstrosity sitting in a single socket truly is “Epyc”. It’s not a single chip monolithic design though, a de-lidded Epyc CPU was shown and it’s actually four octo-core CPUs combined together on the one MCM package. The magic tying them together is AMD’s infinity fabric which we’ve seen before in the Ryzen desktop parts. AMD is exploiting this Infinity Fabric for not only module to module communications on the same package but also…

Jaimie, Leader Computers: “At Leader we have seen fantastic take up on the Intel NVME based 600P series, their price point put NVME within reach of the average punter for the first time, especially in the 128 and 256GB sizes. At the time they were released, all of the other brands were significantly more expensive and they have had to adjust their pricing substantially to compete. Along with Intel’s new Optane technology, the 600P is one of the best performance upgrades you can make for the money. There have been shortages on the 256GB, this is mainly due to their excellent value proposition, I don’t think Intel forecasted as well as they could have and there have been some NAND shortages in general which may also have contributed. The 250GB…

A popular stat repeated in recent times to help try and understand this comes from Monash University, stating that 90% of the world’s data was created in the last two years alone. And that was calculated in 2015 – imagine where we are today? Ever keen to try and help blow your mind, Monash also put it another way: that by next year, 2018, we will have stored more bytes of data than there are stars in the universe. And there’s a key word there – store. I highlight this not in the sense of merely having a place to put it – we don’t as a civilisation seem to have an issue with creating ever-denser storage mediums – but instead in terms of what we do with it. Just…

AdwCleaner malwarebytes.com AdwCleaner was a popular tool long before it was swallowed up by Malwarebytes, and for good reason: similar to the Junkware Removal Tool, it’s a speedy way to check if adware has hooked its claws into your system. Its particular specialism is the sort of junk that’s installed when you download a piece of freeware: think browser toolbars and unwanted extra programs. It’s easy to use but, as with RogueKiller, you may be left wondering what to do with the information it provides – bleepingcomputer.com is your friend here. Avast Free Antivirus avast.com It may be free but, in AV-Test.org’s most recent round of tests, Avast achieved a perfect 100% protection rating against never-before-seen “zero-day” attacks, and a 99.8% rating against widespread threats. That puts it several points…

EDITOR’S PICK Freemake Video Converter freemake.com “The whole line of software from Freemake is brilliant,” Jake Harris told us, “but for me, the?most useful of their applications is Freemake Video Converter. I’ve been using it for around five years now and it has become my go-to way of managing all the different video file types on my PC. “Freemake’s software can deal with almost any file format, as well as download and convert videos from places such as YouTube. There are very basic video-editing capabilities, such as being able to cut, join and rotate videos. The software is consistently updated to support new devices, meaning you can select the device you intend to play your video on and it will automatically know which format works best. “For me, Freemake Video…

We’re all plugged into dozens of different web services and devices – but all of them work in their own little silos. You might have an Android smartphone, Philips Hue lights, an Apple iPad, accounts with Dropbox, Gmail and Wunderlist, but making this diverse set of digital accoutrements work with one another is tough. Services such as If This Then That (IFTTT) are the glue that bind these services together. Using a simple web interface or app, you’ll find it’s possible to get your iPhone talking to your smart plug, your Spotify playlists backed up in a Google spreadsheet, your eBay listings automatically tweeted to potential buyers. Better still, it can make smart home devices even smarter. Alexa can be told to dim your lights, turn down the heating or…

Simplicity is the name of the game with Zapier. Released in 2012, the automation service has become the go-to alternative to IFTTT, being rightly lauded for its clarity, ease of use and huge selection of apps. While Microsoft Flow can often feel unwieldy, Zapier – according to its website – wants to “empower businesses everywhere to create processes and systems that let computers do what they are best at doing and let humans do what they are best at doing”. It’s an admirable ambition that’s reflected in the speed with which its applet templates – satisfyingly called “Zaps” – can be modified: providing you’re signed up with the necessary web apps, the process can take under a minute. It’s really that simple. As with both IFTTT and Flow, you can…

…STYLE Samsung Galaxy S7 It’s the most expensive smartphone in this group test, but not only is the Samsung Galaxy S7 still a sizable wad of cash less than the newer Galaxy S8, it’s also the most luxurious model here. From its glass and aluminium construction to its sleek, tapered edges and gorgeous display – which is almost bezel-less on the left and right edges – the S7 is a perfect showoff handset. It’s not just trading looks for practicality, either. That glass – on both sides – is highly damage-resistant Corning Gorilla Glass 4, and the handset meets the IP68 standard for dust- and waterproofing, so it will survive a dunk in any puddle or sink. …CUSTOMISATION Motorola Moto Z Play The Moto Z Play’s versatility is mainly derived…

A_lthough lg didn’t stick with the g4’s leather backing for its G5 and G6 handsets, it was still a fantastic flagship smartphone when it launched in 2015 – and now that it’s over $600 cheaper than on release, it makes a great alternative to newer mid-rangers Measuring 149x75x8.9mm, it’s not the slimmest of phones, but the leather cladding adds a real premium feel. The same goes for the 5.5in display, which has a 2,560x1,440 resolution producing a crisp 534ppi. LG’s IPS Quantum panel helps out here, showing lovely rich, vibrant colours and eye-searingly bright whites. We measured peak brightness as 505.66cd/ m2, so colours look just as punchy out in the sun as they do indoors. Blacks were deep at 0.27cd/m2, and the huge contrast ratio of 1,715:1 stands up…

L_ike the Oneplus 3t, the Moto z play aims to provide flagship-quality features while undercutting them on price. Take, for example, the big 3,510mAh battery inside – that even dwarfs the 2,600mAh of its own bigger brother, the Moto Z. It thus lasted almost twice as long in our continuous video loop benchmark, clocking in at an outstanding 23h 45m. It’s clear where Motorola has stashed all those extra milliampere hours in the Moto Z Play. Measuring a sizable 6.9mm at its thinnest point, the phone feels positively behemoth-like compared with the svelte 5.2mm Moto Z, and its lightly chamfered edges are sharper and harder against your palm. That’s not to say the Moto Z Play is uncomfortable to hold, but it definitely feels a little gawky compared to its…

E_ven at the ripe old age of two years old, the Galaxy S6 still impresses – after all, it was the first Samsung smartphone to look and feel like a truly premium product, without the plasticky panels of what came before It’s not as eyecatching as the S6 Edge, with its tapered screen, and also doesn’t feel as grippy in the hand, due to the S6 having smoother, more rounded edges. Still, these are minor quibbles, and there’s much more to like about the design than not. It only weighs 138g, for starters – that’s a good 17g less than the LG G4, which is also 1.9mm fatter – and while the glass backplate attracts fingerprints, it and the aluminium frame make for a vastly betterlooking device than the old…

I thought I’d follow on from last month’s column by starting to show you how to build a genuinely useful Internet of Things (IoT) “thing”. And to prove there’s plenty of choice in the marketplace when it comes to ultracheap wireless platforms, I’m going to change boards. Last month was mostly about the ESP8266-based NodeMCU development kit; this month I’ll focus on the Raspberry Pi Zero W. Why? Well, because it’s fairly new (the “W” wireless variant first went on sale at the end of February). I’m sure many of you already know this, but the Raspberry Pi Foundation is a charity, founded in Cambridge, and its stated aim is to “promote the study of computer science and related topics, especially at school level, and to put the fun back…

W_ay back at the start of the 1990s, Phil Zimmerman wrote an essay displaying remarkable perception of what was to come as the internet matured. “Email messages are just too easy to intercept and scan for interesting keywords,” Zimmerman wrote. “This can be done easily, routinely, automatically and undetectably on a grand scale. Remember that this was almost 20 years before Edward Snowden blew his snooping whistle loudly – and with such reverberations within the world of cryptology. Zimmerman then stated: “The government will protect our email with government-designed encryption protocols. Probably most people will acquiesce to that. But perhaps some people will prefer their own protective measures.” Phil Zimmerman was, in case you need reminding, the creator of Pretty Good Privacy (PGP). His journey towards fame – or infamy,…