Reviews

Two chips. Two operating systems. Dual GPS. It seems the “2” suffix in the OnePlus Watch 2’s moniker holds deeper meaning than just pointing towards the second-gen aspect of the brand’s smartwatch. Come to think of it, the OnePlus Watch 2 is so drastically different from the first one that it can’t even be called a successor in the truest sense. Upping the ante significantly, the Watch 2 comes across as more premium, and given that it runs Wear OS, more capable too. Let me dive into some more detail.Design and displayThe…

Unlike many of its competitors, Lava takes a modest approach to its smartphone launches. The domestic smartphone maker introduces a limited number of devices, with many, particularly in the Blaze series, proving to be quite enticing. A recent add-on to this lineup is the Lava Blaze Curve 5G – priced below Rs 18,000. It competes against popular smartphones in the market such as the Redmi Note 13 (review) and Realme 12. Read this Lava Blaze Curve 5G review for details on the smartphone’s real-world performance, camera…

Projectors have been around for decades but their use cases have traditionally been limited. The most common issues users face are with the physical dimensions of the device, the slow response time, the requirement for a large space, and the lack of colour accuracy in comparison to TVs and monitors. As a result, projectors have mostly been used in dedicated home theatres for watching movies, or in classrooms, or boardrooms. All that said, BenQ seems to be on a mission to acquire a whole new audience through its new…

Allison Murray/ZDNETWhat is the deal?The medium-sized Wacom Intuos Prodrawing tablet is made for creatives, and it feels like pen to paper when you're drawing or sketching on it. If you're looking to detail finer strokes or have a super responsive drawing tablet, this is the one. Full disclosure: I am not an artist. However, I am a tech reporter who's tested various tablets and knows the ins and outs of what makes a good tablet. And the Wacom Intuos Pro is a good tablet. Also: The best drawing tabletsThis drawing…

June 2023 Astronomy should, in principle, be a welcoming field for blind researchers. But across the board, science is full of charts, graphs, databases, and images that are designed to be seen. So researcher Sarah Kane, who is legally blind, was thrilled three years ago when she encountered a technology known as sonification, designed to transform information into sound. Since then she’s been working with a project called Astronify, which presents astronomical information in audio form.  For millions of blind and…

In training AI systems, games are a good proxy for real-world tasks. “A general game-playing agent could, in principle, learn a lot more about how to navigate our world than anything in a single environment ever could,” says Michael Bernstein, an associate professor of computer science at Stanford University, who was not part of the research.  “One could imagine one day rather than having superhuman agents which you play against, we could have agents like SIMA playing alongside you in games with you and with your…

Methane emissions are responsible for nearly a third of the total warming the planet has experienced so far. While there are natural sources of the greenhouse gas, including wetlands, human activities like agriculture and fossil-fuel production have dumped millions of metric tons of additional methane into the atmosphere. The concentration of methane has more than doubled over the past 200 years. But there are still large uncertainties about where, exactly, emissions are coming from. Answering these questions is a…

Mr. Mussabeh Al Kaabi: Hydrogen and CCS offer great promise, but, like any other transformative technology, they require R&D attention, investment, and scale-up opportunities. Hydrogen is an abundant and portable fuel that could help reduce emissions from many sectors, including transport and power. Meanwhile, CCS could abate emissions from heavy, energy-intensive industries like steel and cement. These technologies are proven, and we expect more improvements to allow wider consumer use. We will continue to develop…

The key is contrails, thin clouds that planes produce when they fly. Minimizing contrails means less warming, and changing flight paths can reduce the amount of contrail formation. Read more about how in the latest from my colleague James Temple.  Keeping up with climate   New rules from the US Securities and Exchange Commission were watered down, cutting off the best chance we’ve had at forcing companies to reckon with the dangers of climate change, as Dara O’Rourke writes in a new opinion piece. (MIT Technology…

The news: A new AI agent from Google DeepMind can play different games, including ones it has never seen before such as Goat Simulator 3, a fun action game with exaggerated physics. Unlike earlier game-playing AI systems, which mastered only one game or could only follow single goals or commands, this new agent is able to play a variety of different games, including Valheim and No Man’s Sky.  How they did it: Researchers were able to get it to follow text commands to play seven different games and move around in three…