The other big announcement for the day is of course Apple’s new iPads, the iPad Air 2 and the iPad mini 3. As signaled by their names, neither is intended to be a massive departure from their (still for sale) predecessors. But both of them, the iPad Air 2 in particular, pack a number of improvements over the 2013 models.

In-hand, the iPad Air 2 is not as significant a departure from its predecessor as the original Air was from earlier iPads, but if you are familiar with the original Air then you can appreciate the fact that Apple has taken it down from 7.5mm thick to 6.1mm thick. The weight is roughly the same (437g vs. 469g) so it’s not much lighter in the hand, but handling it makes the change in size more apparent.

Perhaps more readily apparent is the anti-reflective coating, a first for an iPad. While Apple’s controlled demo room doesn’t give us the opportunity to introduce too much light, in what testing we could do there’s definitely a difference. Whatever it is that Apple is using, the coating doesn’t seem to have changed the clarity at all; it is seemingly still as clear as the non-coated iPad mini 3.

Meanwhile the A8X inside presents us with a new mystery. This is a new chip, and we know very little about it besides Apple’s claims of 40% better CPU performance and 2.5x better GPU performance. The CPU performance points to a dual core “Enhanced Cyclone” configuration like A8, while the GPU performance number is well in excess of what we saw going from A7 to A8. So comparing A8X to A7, we are most likely (finally) looking at a hex-core Imagination PowerVR GX6650 GPU. However, this alone does not explain where the roughly 1 billion additional transistors compared to A8 have gone. Most likely there are additional surprises to be found.

Gallery: iPad Air 2 Hands On

Moving on, we have the iPad mini 3. Unlike the iPad Air 2, Apple isn’t overhauling the hardware by nearly as much, so the iPad mini 3 is a smaller upgrade over its predecessor than the iPad Air 2 is. Size and weight stay the same, so the new mini feels the same in your hands as the old one. The display is also once more a 2048 x 1536 pixel display, though it did look a bit better than we recall the iPad mini 2’s display being, so it may be a new panel (but this is something we’d need to test).

Apple hasn’t replaced the SoC or WiFi radio – it’s still an A7 and 802.11n respectively – so performance isn’t any different either. What’s left to set apart the new mini from the old then is the inclusion of Apple’s Touch ID sensor along with a larger 128GB storage option. It’s admittedly not much, especially when the iPad mini 2 is now $100 cheaper. On the other hand it is available in Gold, and as we’ve seen with the iPhone that has proven to be a very popular option at launch.

Gallery: iPad mini 3 Hands On

Two activist groups have filed an appeal in their lawsuit against the Los Angeles Police Department and the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department to access one week’s worth of license plate reader data. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California (ACLU SoCal) lost their case before a Los Angeles Superior Court judge last month.

In May 2013, the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California and the Electronic Frontier Foundation sued the law enforcement agencies in an attempt to compel the agencies to release a week’s worth of LPR data from a particular week in August 2012.

The judge in the lower court ruling found that the law enforcement agencies could withhold such license plate reader (LPR) records through a particular exemption under the California Public Records Act that allows investigatory records to be kept private.

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We just got done with our hands-on time with Apple’s new products, and we’ll start with what’s likely the sneakiest of them, the iMac with Retina Display.

Why “sneaky”? The answer is all in the HiDPI display, which Apple calls the “Retina 5K Display”. The retina display is definitely the star of the new iMac, as the rest of the hardware is largely a minor specification bump from last year’s model. In fact turned off you’d be hard pressed to tell the difference between the 2013 (non-retina) and new retina models, but the screen is immediately evident once on.

At 5120x2880 pixels, the new Retina 5K Display is precisely 4x the pixels of the 2560x1440 panel in last year’s model. What this means is that Apple can tap their standard bag of tricks to handle applications of differing retina capability and get all of it to look reasonably good. This also means that 2560x1440 content – including widgets – will scale up nicely to the new resolution. Apple does not discuss whom they have sourced the panel from, but given the timing it’s likely the same panel that is in Dell’s recently announced 27” 5K monitor.

Much more interesting is how Apple is driving it. Since no one has a 5K timing controller (TCON) yet, Apple went and built their own. This is the first time we’re aware of Apple doing such a thing for a Mac, but it’s likely they just haven’t talked about it before. In any case, Apple was kind enough to confirm that they are driving the new iMac’s display with a single TCON. This is not a multi-tile display, but instead is a single 5120x2880 mode.

This also means that since it isn’t multi-tile, Apple would need to drive it over a single DisplayPort connection, which is actually impossible with conventional DisplayPort HBR2. We’re still getting to the bottom of how Apple is doing this (and hence the sneaky nature of the iMac), but currently our best theory is that Apple is running an overclocked DisplayPort/eDP interface along with some very low overhead timings to get just enough bandwidth for the job. Since the iMac is an all-in-one device, Apple is more or less free to violate specifications and do what they want so long as it isn’t advertised as DisplayPort and doesn’t interact with 3rd party devices.

Update: And for anyone wondering whether you can drive the 5K display as an external display using Target Display Mode, Apple has confirmed that you cannot.

Meanwhile driving the new display are AMD’s Radeon R9 M290X and R9 M295X, which replace the former NVIDIA GTX 700M parts. We don’t have any performance data on the M295X, though our best guess is to expect R9 285-like performance (with a large over/under). If Apple is fudging the DisplayPort specification to get a single DisplayPort stream, then no doubt AMD has been helping on this matter as one of the most prominent DisplayPort supporters.

The rest of the package is very similar to the 2013 iMac. It comes with an Intel Haswell desktop class CPU paired with 8GB or more RAM, 802.11ac support, and Apple’s SSD + HDD Fusion drive setup. Apple now offers a higher speed CPU upgrade option that goes up to 4GHz (4.4GHz Boost) – likely the Core i7-4790K – that should make the high-end iMac decently more performant than last year’s model by about 10%.

Gallery: iMac with Retina Display

CUPERTINO, CA—Apple’s media event today was light on surprises. Apple really didn’t show anything that hadn’t already been leaked by the rumor mill (or by Apple itself), but that doesn’t mean that the upgrades to the iPad and Mac lineups are unwelcome.

We spent some quality time with the hardware after the announcement, and our impressions are below. As for the software, you can already grab OS X Yosemite for yourself now, and iOS 8.1 and Apple Pay will follow on Monday (at least for iPhone 6 and 6 Plus owners).

The Retina iMac

Andrew Cunningham

The new Retina iMac.

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CN.dart.call("xrailTop", {sz:"300x250", kws:["top"], collapse: true});The new iMac is the result of a simple equation: Current 27-inch iMac plus Retina display equals Retina 5K iMac.

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Even in the download-only era, it's easy to make yourself offline OS X install media. Andrew Cunningham

It was 2009 when Apple last released a new operating system on physical media. Things have proceeded remarkably smoothly since version 10.7 switched to download-only installers, but there are still good reasons to want an old, reliable USB stick. For instance, if you find yourself doing multiple installs, a USB drive may be faster than multiple downloads (especially if you use a USB 3.0 drive). Or maybe you need a recovery disk for older Macs that don't support the Internet Recovery feature. Whatever the reason, you're in luck, because it's not hard to make one.

As with last year, there are two ways to get it done. There's the super easy way with the graphical user interface and the only slightly less easy way that requires some light Terminal use. Here's what you need to get started.

• A Mac, duh. We've created Yosemite USB from both Mavericks and Yosemite, but your experience with other versions may vary.
• An 8GB or larger USB flash drive or an 8GB or larger partition on some other kind of external drive. For newer Macs, use a USB 3.0 drive—it makes things significantly faster.
• The OS X 10.10 Yosemite installer from the Mac App Store in your Applications folder. The installer will delete itself when you install the operating system, but it can be re-downloaded if necessary.
• If you want a GUI, you need the latest version of Diskmaker X app—we wrote this article based on version 4 beta 2, but if a "final" version is released alongside Yosemite we'll update the article. This app is free to download, but the creator accepts donations if you want to support his efforts.
• An administrator account on the Mac you're using to create the disk.

The easy way Diskmaker X remains the easiest, most user-friendly way to get this done. Andrew Cunningham

Once you've obtained all of the necessary materials, connect the USB drive to your Mac and run the Diskmaker X app. The app will offer to make installers for OS X 10.8, 10.9, and 10.10, but we're only interested in Yosemite today.

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CN.dart.call("xrailTop", {sz:"300x250", kws:["top"], collapse: true});John Siracusa's gigantic review of OS X Yosemite tells you everything you need to know about the new operating system. The biggest, most noticeable change is the revised user interface, which has been redesigned in the image of iOS 7 even though it remains distinctly Mac-like.

When the first Yosemite Public Beta was released, we ran through a bunch of apps and compared them side-by-side with their Mavericks iterations to show just what had changed, and by how much. Apple continued to tweak the look of the interface throughout the beta period, addressing a few of our initial gripes.

Below is a comprehensive visual tour of Yosemite's new changes. Many of these screenshots are similar to what shipped with the Public Beta, so we'll be sure to highlight those elements that have changed significantly since then.

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Aurich Lawson / Thinkstock

When the book is finally closed on the product line known as OS X, last year’s release of OS X 10.9 Mavericks may end up getting short shrift. Sure, it brought tangible energy saving benefits to Mac laptop owners, but such gains are quickly taken for granted; internal changes and new frameworks are not as memorable to customers as they may be to developers and technophiles. And while Mavericks included many new user-visible features, and even new bundled applications, the cumulative effect was that of a pleasant upgrade, not a blockbuster.

But for all its timidity and awkwardness, Mavericks marked a turning point for OS X—and in more than just naming scheme. It was the first OS X release from the newly unified, post-Forstall Apple. If iOS 7 was the explosive release of Jony Ive’s pent-up software design ethos, then Mavericks was the embodiment of Craig Federighi’s patient engineering discipline. Or maybe Mavericks was just a victim of time constraints and priorities. Either way, in last year’s OS X release, Apple tore down the old. This year, finally, Apple is ready with the new.

To signal the Mac’s newfound confidence, Apple has traded 10.9’s obscure surfing location for one of the best known and most beautiful national parks: Yosemite. The new OS’s headline feature is one that’s sure to make for a noteworthy chapter in the annals of OS X: an all-new user interface appearance. Of course, this change comes a year after iOS got its extreme makeover.

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The news of Samsung's SSD 840 EVO read performance degradation started circulating around the Internet about a month ago. Shortly after this, Samsung announced that they have found the fix and a firmware update is expected to be released on October 15th. Samsung kept its promise and delivered the update yesterday through its website (download here). 

The fix is actually a bit more than just a firmware update. Because the bug specifically affects the read speed of old data, simply flashing the firmware isn't enough. The data in the drive has to be rewritten for the changes in the new firmware to take place. Thus the fix comes in the form of a separate tool, which Samsung calls Performance Restoration Software. 

For now the tool is limited to the 840 EVO (both 2.5" and mSATA) and will only work under Windows. An OS-independent tool will be available later this month for Mac and Linux users, but currently there is no word on whether the 'vanilla' 840 and the OEM versions will get the update. Samsung told me that they've only seen the issue in the 840 EVO, although user reports suggested that the 'vanilla' 840 is affected as well. I'll provide an update as soon as I hear more from Samsung.

The performance restoration process itself is simple and doesn't require any input from the user once started. Basically, the tool will first update the firmware and ask for a shut down after the update has been completed. Upon the next startup the tool will run the actual three-step restoration process, although unfortunately I don't have any further information about what these steps actually do. What I do know is that all data in the drive will be rewritten and thus the process can take a while depending on how much data you have stored in your drive. Note that the process isn't destructive if completed successfully, but since there is always a risk of data loss when updating the firmware, I strongly recommend that you make sure that you have an up-to-date backup of your data before starting the process.

The restoration tool has a few limitations, though. First, it will require at least 10% of free space or the tool won't run at all, and there is no way around the 10% limitation other than deleting or moving files to another drive before running the tool. Secondly, only NTFS file system is supported at this stage, so Mac and Linux users will have to wait for the DOS version of the tool that is scheduled to be available by the end of this month. Thirdly, the tool doesn't support RAID arrays, meaning that if you are running two or more 840 EVOs in a RAID array, you'll need to delete the array and switch back to AHCI mode before the tool can be run. Any hardware encryption (TCG Opal 2.0 & eDrive) must be disabled too.

In regards to driver and platform support, the tool supports both Intel and AMD chipsets and storage drivers as well as the native Microsoft AHCI drivers. The only limitation is with AMD storage drivers where the driver must be the latest version, or alternatively you can temporarily switch to the Microsoft driver by uninstalling the AMD driver. Samsung has a detailed installation guide that goes through the driver switch process along with the rest of the performance restoration process. 

Explaining the Bug

Given the wide spread of the issue, there has been quite a bit of speculation about what is causing the read performance to degrade over time. I didn't officially post my theory here, although I did Tweet about it and also mentioned it in the comments of the original news post. It turns out that my theory ended up being pretty much spot on as Samsung finally disclosed some details of the source of the bug.

As most of you likely know already, the way NAND works is by storing a charge in the floating gate. The amount of charge determines the voltage state of the cell, which in turn translates to the bit output. Reading a cell basically works by sensing the cell voltage, which works by increasing the threshold voltage until the cell responds.

 

However, the cell charge is subject to multiple variables over time. Electron leakage through the tunnel oxide reduces the cell charge over time and may result in a change in the voltage state. The neighboring cells also have an impact through cell-to-cell interference in the form of floating gate coupling, which is at its strongest when programming a neighbor (or just a nearby) cell. That will affect the charge in the cell and the effect becomes stronger over time if the cell isn't erased and reprogrammed for a long time (i.e. more neighbor cell programs = more interference = bigger shift in cell charge). 

Because cell voltage change is a characteristic of NAND, all SSDs and other NAND-based devices utilize NAND management algorithm that takes the changes into account. The algorithm is designed to adjust the voltage states based on the variables (in reality there are far more than the two I mentioned above) so that the cell can be read and programmed efficiently.

In case of the 840 EVO, there was an error in the algorithm that resulted in an aggressive read-retry process when reading old data. With TLC NAND more sophisticated NAND management is needed due to the closer distribution of the voltage states. At the same time the wear-leveling algorithms need to be as efficient as possible (i.e. write as little as possible to save P/E cycles), so that's why the bug only exists on the 840 and 840 EVO. I suspect that the algorithm didn't take the change in cell voltage properly into account, which translated into corrupted read points and thus the read process had to be repeated multiple times before the cell would return the correct value. Obviously it takes more time if the read process has to be performed multiple times, so the user performance suffered as a result.

Unfortunately I don't have an 840 EVO that fits the criterion of the bug (i.e. a drive with several months old data), so I couldn't test more than the restoration process itself (which was smooth, by the way). However, PC Perspective's and The Tech Report's tests confirm that the tool restores the performance back to the original speeds. It's too early to say whether the update fixes long-term performance, but Samsung assured that the update does actually fix the NAND management algorithm and should thus be a permanent fix. 

The EVO has been the most popular retail SSD so far, so it's great to see Samsung providing a fix in such a short time. None of the big SSD manufacturers have been able to avoid widespread bugs (remember the 8MB bug in the Intel SSD 320 and the 5,000-hour bug in the Crucial m4?) and I have to give Samsung credit for handling this well. In the end, this bug never resulted in data loss, so it was more of an annoyance than a real threat.

Andrew Cunningham

Apple announced a new generation of its tiny Mac mini desktop computer today at an event in Cupertino, California. The new version includes a Haswell CPU and PCI-e flash-based storage, among other features.

The 4th-gen Intel processors will have Intel Iris and HD 5000 GPUs, 802.11ac Wi-Fi, and two Thunderbolt 2 ports. Apple referred to the Mac mini as "the world's most energy efficient desktop." The base model includes a 1.4GHz dual-core Intel i5 processor, and the top-end end model can be specced with up to a 3.0GHz dual-core Intel i7 processor. By default, the new Mac mini models are equipped with Apple's Fusion Drives, but customers can upgrade to fully-flash-based PCIe drives for a price.

The company has not updated the Mac mini since late 2012, when it added USB 3.0 ports (the new model retains 4 of these, in addition to Thunderbolt 2). The new machines will retain the design of the 2012 model.

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CUPERTINO, CA—On Thursday, Apple followed its announcement of the iPad Air 2 and iPad Mini 3 with price drops across the board for older models in those lines, which will continue to be produced alongside today's newest models.

"Our lineup has the lowest price point ever for iPad," Apple Senior VP Phil Schiller said while standing in front of a slide revealing the price points. The original iPad Mini price has dropped to $249 at its smallest memory configuration of 16GB, followed by the iPad Mini 2 at $299 and the iPad Air at $399 (also set at 16GB). Each of those price drops is $100.

In terms of competitive pricing, the original iPad Mini now costs only $50 more than Amazon's Kindle HDX 7 without advertising offers and Google's Nexus 7.

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One of the big "tentpole" announcements from Apple’s event this morning was the long-awaited arrival of iMacs with "retina" displays. The flagship 27-inch iMac form factor has been updated with a high-resolution, high-DPI screen, and it's now known as the "iMac with Retina Display." It runs at a resolution of 5120x2880.

The updated iMac with Retina Display keeps the same external form factor as the existing iMacs, so externally, things are unchanged. However, the new internals include an updated LED backlight, an updated oxide TFT display panel, and an updated timing controller to push around the display's 14.7 million pixels.

Apple also says that although the display is brighter and denser than the 27-inch 2560x1440 panel on older 27-inch iMacs, the panel uses 30% less power thanks to the efficient LED design.

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Andrew Cunningham

CUPERTINO, CA—Apple has officially announced its new iPad Air 2 at today's media event on its campus at 1 Infinite Loop. The iPad Air 2 was inadvertently outed yesterday in an iBooks listing for the iPad user guide.

The new device is only 6.1 mm thick, and Phil Shiller told the audience, "In every iPad, there's been an air gap between glass and display. Now they've been bonded together. There's no air gap. Makes it thinner, and the images sharper."

The screen also has an anti-reflective coating," Shiller added, which "reduces reflections by 56 percent."

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Yosemite is here. Apple

CUPERTINO, CA—Today at a product event, Apple announced that it would be releasing OS X Yosemite to the public. The eleventh major release of OS X was announced back in June at WWDC, and Apple began sending public beta builds to interested parties in July. Though it includes other new features, the operating system's most noticeable change is its redesigned user interface, which echoes the overhaul Apple gave iOS 7 last year.

Yosemite's brighter, flatter applications and icons, its heavy use of translucency, and its switch to Helvetica Neue will be familiar to anyone with an iPhone or iPad, but as we saw in our coverage of the first public beta, Apple has been careful to preserve shadows and depth in many places throughout the OS. Along with the design overhaul, Yosemite also ushers in newly redesigned versions of OS X staple apps like Safari and iTunes.

Yosemite will be available as a free download from the Mac App Store later today, and it can be installed on any supported Mac running OS X 10.6 or later. If your Mac can run either Mountain Lion (version 10.8) or Mavericks (version 10.9), then it can run Yosemite. The full list of supported machines is as follows:

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Apple Pay is the most important thing to launch with iOS 8.1. Apple

Apple has just officially announced iOS 8.1, the first major update to iOS 8. The majority of the update's new features have already been announced, but for one reason or another weren't ready to be included in iOS 8 when it shipped last month. The update will be released on Monday.

In the update, Apple plans to add back the "Camera Roll" album in iOS 8 with 8.1 to help users find their recently taken shots. The new version will also include a beta of iCloud Photo Library. iCloud Photo Library offers users the option of either backing up their photos to iCloud or using the service as primary storage to clear up space on their devices, only downloading photos when necessary.

8.1 will also mark the formal release of Apple Pay, the contactless payment system Apple teased when it unveiled the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus in September. The new iPhones can store credit card data locally in what Apple calls the "Secure Element," which also contains a Device Account Number unique to each phone. Stored cards can then be used to make purchases by using TouchID to authenticate and NFC to transmit the data. The Device Account Number and randomly generated per-transaction codes are used to obfuscate your credit card data, which isn't exposed directly to retailers or to Apple. App developers can also integrate Apple Pay buttons into their apps to be used in lieu of credit card numbers. Apple stated that it plans to roll out Apple Pay in November.

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Greetings, Arsians! Our partners from LogicBuy are back with a ton of new deals for this week. At the top is this deal for a 24" Dell UltraSharp IPS monitor with a 1920x1200 screen for $279.99.

Featured deal
Last Day for 30% Off UltraSharp Sale! Dell U2415 24" UltraSharp 1920x1200 IPS Monitor w/ 3-year warranty for $279.99 plus free shipping (list price $399.99)

Monitors

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Apple

Gather 'round, friends—it's time for another Apple media event. This morning the company will take the wraps off its next wave of new products, one that's expected to include new iPads and Macs as well as news about the public release of OS X Yosemite.

Last month's unveiling of the iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus, and Apple Watch was held at the Flint Center for the Performing Arts, a larger space that Apple uses mostly for announcements that it considers capital-I-Important. The October event is being held in its small town hall auditorium on its campus at 1 Infinite Loop. The size of the venue doesn't necessarily correspond to the size of the announcements, but we're expecting mild generational bumps rather than wildly reimagined gadgets. We anticipate at least one new iPad, perhaps with TouchID and a new, more powerful A8X processor; a release date (and perhaps the actual release) of OS X Yosemite; and maybe even a Retina iMac.

Whatever Apple announces at the event, we'll be there on the ground to give it the liveblog treatment and then go hands-on with any new hardware afterward. We'll get started at 10:00am Pacific time—the handy counter below will show you when it begins in your time zone.

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When the console is smaller than the controller, it has really earned the term "microconsole."

We didn’t have a chance to evaluate the PlayStation TV before its North American release Tuesday, but we have now picked up a retail unit and put it through its paces for a few hours over a couple of days. What we've found so far is a device that's perfectly fine when it works as intended, but quite a few important limitations get in the way of its advertised functionality.

For those who may have missed the previous announcements, the PlayStation TV can be best thought of as a $100 PlayStation Vita without the screen. The microconsole hooks up to a TV via HDMI to let you play Vita games (originally designed for portable play) on the big screen. In addition, PSTV supports many downloadable PSOne and PSP classics, PS3 games streamed via the PlayStation Now service, and remote play off a PS4 connected to the same network. Basically, it’s the PlayStation ecosystem’s version of the Ouya or a cheap Steam streamer box—a cheap, low-power device designed for smaller titles and remote play of bulkier titles running elsewhere.

Right out of the box, it’s striking just how small the PlayStation TV is. If you have room for a deck of playing cards under your TV, you have room for its tiny, rounded plastic form. Setup was a painless process. Plug the box into the wall and to the TV via HDMI, then sync a Dualshock 3 or Dualshock 4 controller via USB (you can unplug it afterward), and you’re off and running. Going through initial menus to set things like the time, the Wi-Fi connection, and my PSN account took about five minutes.

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Flickr user: Creativity103

Bacterial infections remain a major threat to human and animal health. Worse still, the catalog of useful antibiotics is shrinking as pathogens build up resistance to these drugs. There are few promising new drugs in the pipeline, but they may not prove to be enough. Multi-resistant organisms—also called “superbugs”—are on the rise, and many predict a gloomy future if nothing is done to fight back.

The answer, some believe, may lie in using engineered bacteriophages, a type of virus that infects bacteria. Two recent studies, both published in the journal Nature Biotechnology, show a promising alternative to small-molecule drugs that are the mainstay of antibacterial treatments today.

From basic to synthetic biology

Nearly every living organism seems to have evolved simple mechanisms to protect itself from harmful pathogens. These innate immune systems can be a passive barrier, blocking anything above a certain size, or an active response that recognizes and destroys foreign molecules such as proteins and DNA.

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My take on thin phones is not a positive one. This comes from two main areas. Firstly I like my phone to have some form of bulk – this way I know it is in my pocket and I would notice if it went missing. Secondly, going thin often brings about several compromises, namely performance (due to heat dissipation), camera quality (due to z-height restrictions) and battery life. As a reference point, my daily driver is a 5.9-inch display with a 3300 mAh battery that measures 10.9mm and weighs 217g, so that device probably will not go missing unnoticed and I get a good range in performance and battery life.

At a MediaTek conference this week in London, as part of MediaTek’s strategy to educate the mobile media and analyst community about their strategy and goals, they invited Kazam’s CEO Michael Coombs to show and formally announce the MediaTek powered Tornado 348, the world’s slimmest smartphone. Kazam is a smartphone maker based in Europe formed by a number of former senior sales and marketing executives from bigger mobile companies. The company was founded earlier this year and have several models on the market already. The Tornado 348 is their latest model, with pre-launch stock already sold to distributors.

The phone itself is rather surprising. Despite being as thin as it is, it was relatively sturdy with no obvious issues by opposing pressure on opposite corners despite the metal frame design. The white model I played with felt comfortable in the hand with a rounded edge, using fixed android buttons on the bottom bezel (which I prefer) and a 4.8-inch 1280x720 AMOLED screen that came across as rather vibrant. Under the hood is MediaTek’s ‘True Octa-core’ MT6592, with eight Cortex-A7s at 1.7 GHz and a Mali 450-MP4 for graphics. Normally if you hear ‘eight Cortex A7’ it seems odd to combine eight power efficient cores together for performance, especially in such a thin device. Kazam’s CEO said that they initially wanted to run with one of MediaTek's 4-core, but the 8-core ended up more efficient in tasks as by using MediaTek’s CorePilot they are able to keep control of enabling cores and frequencies but overall performance reasonable. The proof will be in the pudding for sure.

While Android 4.4.2 version the device had on the day was the near-final version for the device, and scrolling felt snappy and program selection felt responsive. There was a little stuttering when quickly swiping between screens, and the settings menu was in a different place than what I was used to, but at the end of the day this is not aimed at the high end flagship market. The device comes with 1 GB of DRAM and 16 GB of storage, but due to the stock (or near-stock) Android used in the final version, space should be suitable. Due to the size of the device there is no SD card slot, and the 2050 mAh lithium polymer battery is fixed into the device. Perhaps surprisingly, it requires a micro-SIM rather than a nano-SIM. With the battery, Kazam is quoting 6 hours of talk time.

The main camera is good for 8MP and 1080p30, with the rear camera being a 5MP fixed-focus device. One area Kazam wants to push ahead of their rivals on is the 12-month screen protection service with the Tornado 348, allowing one free screen replacement in those 12-months. Users will have to log in and send their device away for a week or so, but it is reassuring to know that this service comes free with the device.

Overall device dimensions come in at 139.8mm x 67.5mm x 5.15mm and 95g weight (compared to the iPhone’s 138.1 x 67 x 6.9 and 129g), although only GSM 850/900/1800/1900 and 3G 900/2100 are supported – no LTE here due to the mid-range it aims for. Kazam’s CEO told me that due to Mediatek’s structure for customers like Kazam it allowed him to get a handset from idea to market in only a few months, rather than the 9/12/18 month cycle required going through someone else.

The Tornado 348 is due out in November, with pricing in the UK around £250. At that price it pushes against that mid to high barrier albeit without 4G, wireless charging, more storage or a better camera design that has crept down from the high end over the last few quarters. This might limit the device in terms of future-proofing, but in the brief time I held it and used it, I could see it being used as a daily driver for many of my family members. I will look into it further if I get an opportunity to hook one up to the internet and download our testing tools. However, from the few moments I used the device I was suitably impressed.

Gallery: Thin is the New Thin: Hands On with the 5.15mm KAZAM Tornado 348