Today at their Double Exposure event in New York, HTC has announced the Desire EYE. The major feature on the Desire EYE is its 13MP front facing camera which should hopefully take some of the best selfies of any smartphone. The internals are also an interesting story. While devices sporting HTC's Desire branding are typically more budget oriented devices, the Desire EYE packs significantly more powerful hardware than other Desire device. It has a 5.2" 1080p IPS display, and Qualcomm's Snapdragon 801. BoomSound continues to be present with two TFA9887 speaker amps. The full list of specifications has been laid out below.

  HTC Desire EYE SoC MSM8974ABv3 2.26 GHz Snapdragon 801 RAM/NAND 2 GB LPDDR3, 16GB NAND + microSDXC Display 5.2” 1920x1080 IPS LCD Network 2G / 3G / 4G LTE (Qualcomm MDM9x25 UE Category 4 LTE) Dimensions 151.7 x 73.8 x 8.5 mm, 154 grams Camera 13MP rear camera, 1.12 µm pixels, 1/3.06" CMOS size (Sony IMX214), F/2.0, 28mm (35mm equiv) lens.
13MP front camera, 1.12 µm pixels, 1/3.06" CMOS size (Sony IMX214), F/2.2, 22mm (35mm equiv) lens.  Battery 2400 mAh (9.12 Whr) OS Android KitKat with HTC Sense 6 Connectivity 802.11a/b/g/n + BT 4.0, USB2.0, GPS/GNSS, DLNA, NFC SIM Size NanoSIM

Owing to its 5.2" display, the Desire Eye has a larger height and width than HTC's M8 and E8 phones. At 8.5mm it's 1.35mm thinner than both of them, and at 154 grams its mass sits between the lighter E8 and heavier M8. Also similar to the E8 and M8 is its hardware platform which includes Qualcomm's MSM8974AB at 2.26GHz, 2GB of LPDDR3 RAM. The finish on all color variants is matte plastic throughout, and the two-tone "Doubleshot" finish really makes for an even better design than what we saw in the E8. The power button has also been moved to the side, and we see a new two-stage camera button. The latter is definitely useful, but the pressure needed to trigger the second stage is a bit too high in my experience.

The Desire EYE also sports water resistance, rated for immersion in 1 meter of water for up to 30 minutes. HTC has gone the extra mile here by implementing water resistance without annoying plastic flaps that are easily torn off. Instead, we see rubber gaskets around key areas and "short protection" on the USB port. 802.11ac isn't present, and the battery is on the small side, but overall the Desire EYE has solid specifications.

Like I mentioned in the beginning, the major marketing and selling point for the phone is definitely the front facing camera. The Desire EYE uses the same Sony IMX214 sensor for the front and rear cameras. IMX214 is formidable as a sensor for rear cameras, and this is the first time we're seeing it also implemented as a front-facing camera. By using two separate cameras instead of a rotating upper section like on the Oppo N1, HTC has been able to customize the cameras for their intended use case. The rear camera has a wider F/2.0 aperture and a longer 28mm focal length than the front-facing camera. The front-facing camera is optimised for a wider 87 degree field of view with its shorter 22mm focal length. Both cameras have a max ISO of 3200 and a max exposure time of 1/9s. In some casual testing it seems that there is a bit of color noise in low light, but it's otherwise well-suppressed. Detail is definitely good but there're noticeable sharpening kernels at the base settings which is a bit disappointing. The rear camera seems to have detail similar to the Butterfly 2, which is comparable to most 13MP cameras in flagships today.

HTC is including a number of software features that add additional camera functionality, collectively called the HTC EYE Experience. HTC's face tracking keeps the user's face in focus and crops the image to frame it. Up to four people can be tracked and framed at the same time. HTC's Split Capture feature combines simultaneously taken photos or videos with the front and back cameras into a single image or video. Voice Selfie allows the front camera to take a photo by smiling, and to take a video by saying "action" or "rolling"

HTC is also bringing over features that were introduced earlier this year with the Desire 820. Face fusion allows the user to merge their face with that of their friend or another person. Live makeup allows the user to adjust the level of skin smoothing with a live preview before capture.

Some of the HTC EYE Experience features will roll out to the following HTC devices in the coming months:

• HTC One (M7)
• HTC One (M8)
• HTC One E8
• HTC One Mini
• HTC One Mini 2
• HTC One max
• HTC Desire 816
• HTC Desire 820
• HTC Butterfly 2 

HTC plans to roll out the Desire EYE on carriers in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Asia, and the United States from October onward. Pricing is said to be around that of the One (E8), and should supersede the One (E8) in those markets.

Today is HTC's camera-centric Double Exposure event in New York. In addition to announcing the new Desire EYE, HTC is announcing a new device that occupies it's own space in HTC's portfolio. It's a small camera called the RE. As far as cameras go, the RE is fairly unique. At first glance it looks like it could be something like a flashlight, but the large glass circle is really the cover for a 16MP camera housed inside. The device is shaped so it can be held and operated with a single hand. At 65.5 grams it's also very light. MicroSD is used exclusively for storage, with an 8GB card shipping by default and support for up to 128GB MicroSDXC. An 820 mAh (3.116Wh) battery provides up to 1200 captured photos or 100 minutes of continuous video recording.

The RE is the opposite of what HTC has done with their cameras in the smartphone space. HTC is also keen to emphasize that this doesn't compete with GoPros. They were one of the first companies to start putting manual controls for white balance, ISO, and shutter speed in their camera application. With the RE, HTC is trying to create a highly automatic photography experience where all that's required is the press of a button. To do this, HTC has eliminated as many buttons, toggles, and controls as possible. The RE has no on/off button. Instead, it has a sensor in the grip which detects when it is being held and turns the camera on which uses an MCU which is likely to be a Cortex M solution. The only buttons are the shutter button on the back where the user's thumb is placed, and a slow-mo video toggle on the front underneath the lens where the user's index finger is placed. There are no dials, and no viewfinder or LCD.

Composition is an essential part of photography. To allow users to take photos without any viewfinder, HTC has used a 16MP 1/2.3" CMOS sensor with an F/2.8 aperture and a very wide 146 degree field of view which is equivalent to 17mm. The camera's wide field of view means that as long as users have a rough idea of what is being captured by the camera and point in the direction of the subject, they can crop and align photos after they are taken without cutting off any essential details. In practice, the quality is passable, although hurt by the wide field of view which reduces peak resolution in addition to the half second or so of shutter lag. The gallery below has sample photos from the RE, although HTC cautioned that both the hardware and software were non-final and that there may be significant differences in the final product.

Gallery: HTC RE Sample Shots

HTC has also announced a line of accessories for the RE, which are pictures above. The extended battery has a novel design, screwing into to the 1/4" tripod mount on the bottom of the RE and using a retractable micro USB plug. While the camera has an IP57 rating for dust resistance and immersion in 1 meter of water for 30 minutes, accessories like the extended battery do not. Users who plan on going deeper underwater should invest in the protection pack which includes a cap that improves water resistance to IP58 which allows for immersion in 3 meters of water for up to 2 hours.

While the camera can function on its own, it also integrates with Android and iOS devices that support Bluetooth 4.0 LE. The RE app that will be launching with the camera will work as a photo and video manager, and a live viewfinder. Photos can be easily shared with social networks, and automatically backed up to Dropbox or Google Drive.

HTC plans to launch the RE in the United States by October, and will expand to other regions afterward. We expect pricing in the US to be around 199 USD at launch. While it remains to be seen whether the RE is the first of many new action cameras, HTC seems to be exploring new product categories instead of following prevailing industry trends.

This image from Microsoft Research's "Mano a Mano" paper shows how three projector/Kinect pairs can create believable 3D virtual objects from two different perspectives. MSR / ACM

Microsoft may be taking an official wait and see approach before following companies like Oculus and Sony down the virtual reality headset path. That isn't stopping the company's research arm from looking into interesting ways to use Kinect and projector technology to create holodeck-style augmented reality experiences in the living room, though. Microsoft Research has prepared a number of interesting demos and papers on these lines for the Association for Computing Machinery's User Interface Software and Technology Symposium, showing off just how far those efforts have come and how they could lead to interesting new forms of gaming in the future.

The first project, RoomAlive, promises to "transform any room into an immersive augmented virtual gaming experience," as the researchers put it. The system uses six paired projector/Kinect units, mounted to the ceiling so they have somewhat overlapping fields of view. These units can auto-calibrate themselves with a series of projected light patterns, transforming their individual Kinect depth maps into a unified 3D point-cloud model of the room.

From there, RoomAlive translates the point data into a series of vertical and horizontal surfaces representing the walls and furniture, then translates that into a 3D environment in the Unity game engine. Using that virtual representation of the room, the system then figures out how to project a unified image on those walls and surfaces, warping the projection so it appears correct on each surface. The effect is akin to transforming the entire room into a computer screen or monitor, complete with player-tracking through the array of Kinect cameras.

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A San Francisco federal appeals court heard arguments today in an activist lawsuit seeking to ban National Security Letters, or NSLs, as unconstitutional. NSLs are one of the more controversial tools used by the FBI to conduct investigations, as they include a gag order preventing the recipient from talking about the fact that they got an NSL.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation filed a lawsuit challenging the NSLs as unconstitutional in 2011, well before the Snowden disclosures about widespread surveillance. Their two clients are unnamed, but one is a telecom company and one is an Internet company. The two "service providers" want to speak out about the fact that they received letters, but can't. In April of last year, they won a stunning victory, when US District Judge Susan Ilston agreed with EFF that the letters are unconstitutional. The gag order stopping EFF's clients from discussing "controversial government powers" violates the First Amendment, Ilston ruled.

The government has appealed the proceeding. Today, almost 19 months after Ilston's order came out, a three-judge appeals panel heard arguments from both sides.

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Comcast executive Charlie Herrin is aiming to improve Comcast's legendarily poor customer service. Comcast

Comcast has publicly apologized to the California man, Conal O’Rourke, who accused the company of getting him fired from his former position at PriceWaterhouseCoopers in the wake of a yearlong billing dispute. The apology comes less than 24 hours after Ars published an article detailing O’Rourke’s documented allegations.

"What happened with Mr. O’Rourke's service is completely unacceptable," Charlie Herrin, a company senior vice president, wrote in a blog post on Wednesday. "Despite our attempts to address Mr. O’Rourke’s issues, we simply dropped the ball and did not make things right. Mr. O’Rourke deserves another apology from us, and we’re making this one publicly. We also want to clarify that nobody at Comcast asked for him to be fired. We’re also determined to get to the bottom of exactly what happened with his service, figure out what went wrong at every point along the way, and fix any underlying issues."

Herrin is the same new Comcast executive who said late last month that improving customer service was his "number one priority."

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Video card overclocking has become a very popular topic amongst gamers and PC enthusiasts these days. With the release of next generation games around the corner and the growing popularity of resolutions beyond 1080p, overclocking is becoming increasingly important to users looking to squeeze the most performance possible out of their video cards. It’s been more than a decade since video card overclocking was first introduced, and while the core concept remains the same, the software has improved to make it easier and provide additional features and functionality. If you're looking to boost performance on your GPU, we're rounding up the most popular utilities to find out their pros and cons. Read on for the full guide of GPU overclocking software.

Earlier this year, Microsoft renamed its Windows Azure cloud computing platform to be just "Azure," reflecting support for operating systems other than Windows.

Today, the company made an equivalent announcement for Windows Intune, its cloud-based mobile device and application management tool. Since it supports iOS and Android, neither of which are actually Windows, Windows Intune is now known simply as Microsoft Intune. The software itself will pick up the new branding in a major update that's planned for later in the year.

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Standard fluorescence microscopy (left) and PALM images (right). Note that the scale bar in the far right image is roughly the diffraction limit. Nobel Prizes/originally Betzig et. al., Science

This year's Nobel Prize in Chemistry honors an interesting mix of developments. It honors three researchers who overcame an apparent physical limitation in our ability to image microscopic objects, in the process building microscopes that are proving to be incredibly useful for biology. But because the breakthroughs depended in part on our understanding of the behavior of individual molecules, the prize comes in chemistry.

The limit in question is the diffraction limit, first described back in the 1800s by Ernst Abbe. This limit means that the best resolution we can obtain in imaging an object is half the wavelength of the light we're using to image it. If we're using visible wavelengths, this means we can't do much better than about 250nm—a distance that dwarfs viruses and individual proteins. Although lots of improvements in microscopy have been made since the 1800s, all of them kept running into diffraction-related problems.

At least, that was the case until recently. The Nobel Prize honors not one but two distinct ways of overcoming the limit. (Conveniently, we have coverage of both—see the sidebar.) In the case of one of the recipients, it honors an idea that came to him when he had given up on research and was working in the family business.

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AT&T

AT&T has agreed to pay $105 million to settle a case with the government over alleged bill cramming that cost consumers tens of millions of dollars. It’s the largest-ever settlement over wireless bill cramming.

$80 million of the settlement will cover customer refunds, which will be distributed by the Federal Trade Commission. Another $20 million will be paid in penalties and fees to states attorneys general, and $5 million in penalties will head to the Federal Communications Commission, according to today’s announcement.

FTC

The FTC has set up a website where consumers can seek refunds until May 1, 2015. “Current and former AT&T customers who paid for unauthorized third-party charges after January 1, 2009 may apply for refunds,” the site says. Customers can fill out an online form or request a refund by mail.

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On Tuesday, a JetBlue passenger took to Twitter to publicly complain about an hours-long delay to her flight, and she accused JetBlue of delaying her return home even longer by not letting her reboard the flight.

Boston resident Lisa Carter-Knight used Twitter to report her flight's delay, using a #JetBlue hashtag to announce to her followers—as of press time, roughly 300—that the "pilot accuses passengers of accusing him of being intoxicated demands all passengers back." As she told Philadelphia's ABC affiliate WPVI, "We had been waiting an hour, so there was a joke by another passenger—it had been a long night and he hoped there was a fully stocked bar on the airplane. The pilot ran out and said, 'That's it, everybody out by the gate. I've been accused of being intoxicated."

The pilot reportedly ordered all passengers off the flight so he could take a sobriety test as mandated by law. At that point, Carter-Knight posted six tweets about the delay, commenting on an "unruly pilot" and "false accusations" of his sobriety being questioned. When she attempted to reboard hours later, she was not allowed to do so.

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A 14-year-old boy's videotape of an Indiana cop smashing an ax though a vehicle window, shooting the passenger with a stun gun, and ripping him from the vehicle has become the subject of an excessive force lawsuit.

Monday's lawsuit [PDF] is among the most recent in a wave of police encounters gone awry that have been captured on video and resulted in legal action. The incident was filmed two weeks ago in Hammond, Indiana, and it started with a motorist being stopped and pulled over for allegedly not wearing a seatbelt.

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More than 99 percent of Comcast shareholders today voted in favor of the company's $45.2 billion purchase of Time Warner Cable, Comcast announced.

The merger "is subject to various regulatory approvals and other customary conditions and also requires approval by Time Warner Cable shareholders," who are scheduled to vote tomorrow, Comcast said. If all goes well for Comcast, the merger will close in early 2015.Not many people attended the meeting in Philadelphia. "Five people spoke at a sparsely attended special shareholder meeting at the Kimmel Center on South Broad Street—three against the deal, and two for it," according to The Philadelphia Inquirer.

The real test for Comcast will be getting approval from the government. Consumer advocates have argued that the two largest cable companies in the country should not be allowed to merge, while Comcast points out that it doesn't compete against Time Warner Cable in any city or town.

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Apple

Apple is having another media event on October 16, just under a week after Re/code first predicted the date. The event will be in Apple's small town hall event space at its 1 Infinite Loop campus, implying a much smaller event than the iPhone 6 and Apple Watch event in the Flint Center last month.

If the rumor mill is to be believed, new iPads will be the headlining item for the event, and we'll also supposedly be getting the public release of OS X Yosemite. Both the iPads and Yosemite will reportedly be accompanied by iOS 8.1, the first major update to iOS 8. Other rumors also suggest we'll be seeing new Macs at the event—the most interesting ones suggest a new Retina iMac, but several other computers in Apple's lineup (including the Mac Mini and Mac Pro) are ripe for a refresh.

The event starts at 10am Pacific. We'll be on site to liveblog the proceedings and go hands-on with the new hardware afterward.

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Another day, another online-centric game launching to widespread server issues. This time it's the PlayStation 4's DriveClub, whose servers are apparently causing so many problems for launch day customers that Sony and developer Evolution Studios have indefinitely delayed a planned "PlayStation Plus" edition that would have given limited access to millions more.

"We are seeing a lot of activity and new social behaviors right now, but unfortunately this is pushing the servers to their absolute limits," Evolution Studios Director Paul Rustchynsky wrote in a Facebook post Wednesday morning. "In order to help all DriveClub players who have the game already, we're temporarily holding back the PS Plus Edition and the My DriveClub app to ease the load and traffic to the servers. This should give players a better chance of connecting to the game servers and, once the servers are operating well, we’ll be sure to let you know when the PS Plus Edition and My DriveClub app will be available to download."

While DriveClub does have a limited single-player mode, operating servers are necessary to join clubs with other players and compete in the online challenges and time trials that form the bulk of the game. The PS Plus edition, which was supposed to launch alongside the full game, will give PlayStation Plus subscribers free access to 11 tracks and a limited selection of cars.

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Minneapolis

While the use of renewable energy is booming, the boom started from a very low point. We're only now reaching the stage where renewable power is providing a substantial fraction of the energy used in some developed economies. Pushing things further and faster would require a lot of resources as, per unit of electricity produced, renewable power equipment takes more material than fossil fuel plants. Plus, at least initially, a lot of the manufacturing will be powered by fossil fuel plants.

How does all this balance out? An international team of researchers has looked at the material demands and pollution that would result from a push to get the globe to 40 percent renewables by the middle of the century. The analysis finds that despite the increased materials and energy demands, a push like this would result in a dramatic reduction in pollution. And for the most part, the material demands could be met, with the possible exception of copper.

The work involved what's called a life cycle analysis, which tracks the material and energy demands of items from the production of the raw materials through to obsolescence and recycling. Normally, these studies are done with static assumptions; take the life cycle of copper in 2011, for example, and use that figure for the entire analysis. In this case, however, being able to shift values over the course of the study period was essential. For example, as more renewable energy is produced, the pollution associated with producing new equipment will go down, as less of it will be provided by fossil fuels. Meanwhile, demand for raw materials could shift mining to sources that result in higher environmental damage.

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Apple Pay is one of the biggest features expected to launch with iOS 8.1 later this month. Apple

Last week, numerous publications (including Ars) reported seeing references to iOS 8.1, 8.2, and 8.3 in their site analytics pages. iOS versions 5, 6, and 7 only saw one major point update apiece during their respective lifespans, so evidence of three different updates being tested simultaneously just weeks after the release of iOS 8.0 came as a surprise.

It looks like we'll be seeing the first of those updates sooner rather than later. Today Apple pushed out the second beta build of iOS 8.1 in as many weeks to its registered developers, and the final version of the software is rumored to be released at or near Apple's event later this month.

Obviously such a quick turnaround time will make iOS 8.1 a smaller update than iOS 7.1, which gestated for around six months and fixed a host of problems when finally released. But the update is still rumored to include a handful of significant features—here's a list of the most important additions.

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NVIDIA just launched their new GTX 980M/GTX 970M GPUs, and unfortunately we were unable to get a notebook in time for testing… which just changed a few hours ago. With an MSI GT72 Dominator Pro in hand, we're ready to see just how fast the GTX 980M is when it comes to playing games. Here's a hint: the 1080p display may prove to be the limiting factor in quite a few titles.

Free Press

Wireless carriers like to say that monthly data caps are necessary to prevent heavy users from slowing down less active ones.

After surveying the four biggest carriers this year, the US Government Accountability Office reported that “some wireless ISPs told us they use UBP [usage-based pricing, i.e. data caps] to manage congestion.” Verizon Wireless has insisted to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) that data caps are so effective at reducing congestion that they eliminate the need to throttle most customers.

I won't argue that data caps have no positive impact on wireless networks—they can prevent the most egregious overuse of what is a limited resource. But it's a crude tool at best, targeting monthly averages with no regard for whether the network is congested at a particular time or place.

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BBC Click gets rare access to the twin of Nasa's Curiosity Mars rover which is helping scientists solve problems on the Red Planet.

Conal O'Rourke remains frustrated after his year-long battle with Comcast, which allegedly led to his termination. Cyrus Farivar

OAKLAND, CA—Speaking over lunch last Friday, a Northern California man named Conal O'Rourke laid out what admittedly sounds like a crazy story: a year-long billing dispute over his home Comcast service that ultimately resulted in Comcast getting O'Rourke fired from his job at PriceWaterhouseCoopers (PWC) in nearby San Jose earlier this year.

But O’Rourke arrived to last week’s lunch meeting with Ars with an astonishing amount of documentation: he has pages and pages of Comcast invoices. He has a spreadsheet, photos, notes, business cards, and complaint letters. He and his lawyer, Maureen Pettibone Ryan, happily provided digital copies of these materials to Ars, which we have re-published with his permission here.

As a result of his firing, O’Rourke has hired a local attorney and is now threatening to file a lawsuit against Comcast if the company does not agree to his demands, which include "a full retraction and apology, his re-employment with his former employer, and $100,312.50" by October 14.

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