Battle of the Super-Slim Ultrabooks: HP Spectre vs LG Gram

As well as being treated to the latest cutting-edge components, the new ultrabooks from HP and LG stand out with their super-slim, lightweight designs.

HP Spectre trims down to 10.4mm

HP has unveiled the world's slimmest laptop computer with a model that's just 10.4mm thick (compared to 13.1mm for Apple's MacBook). The HP Spectre is billed as a high-end, stylish device, loaded with the latest-generation Intel Core i5 and i7 processors.

This 13.3-inch notebook PC has a scratch-resistant glass display (Corning Gorilla Glass) plus an aluminum and carbon fiber chassis ensuring a lightweight build, at a little over 1kg. It comes with up to 512GB of flash memory (SSD) and 8GB of RAM. It also features a twin-speaker audio system, developed in partnership with Bang & Olufsen, and has three USB Type-C ports.
The new HP Spectre is due on sale April 25, 2016, via HP‘s website, with US prices starting at $1,169.

LG gram pushes under the 1kg mark

Unveiled at the CES trade fair in Las Vegas in January 2016, the LG gram comes in three screen sizes (from 13.3 to 15.6 inches) and has a similarly lightweight design, with 980g on the scales. Plus, its super-slim form factor doesn't have much to envy of the HP Spectre (from 12.8 to 16.8mm thick). The three models are all top-of-the-range laptops, using the latest Intel Core processors.

The LG gram can be loaded with up to 256GB of flash memory and 8GB of RAM, depending on the model. All versions have an instant boot function that boots the system in a second, as soon as the screen is opened.

The LG gram is already on sale in the USA, priced from $800 (13-inch LG gram with Core i5 processor) to $1,500 (15-inch, Core i7).

These Windows 10 ultrabooks offer a new line-up of alternatives to the Microsoft Surface Book, a device that's lined up as the ultimate in super-slim design in the current PC market, even though it's thicker and heavier than these two new models. Apple will also need to trim down its laptops to stay in the game, a little over a year after launching its 12-inch MacBook. Rumor has it that the firm could have two new ultra-slim notebooks (13- and 15- inch models) in the pipeline for 2016.

Explained: Camera Improvements in the New HTC 10

With the HTC 10, the Taiwanese company is promising to undo the past wrongs in the cameras of its previous flagship phones. The camera has long a weak point in HTC devices. At first, HTC sacrificed image resolution in the M8 and made the size of individual pixels larger to capture more light (what HTC called Ultrapixel). But the resulting 4 megapixel images were often fuzzy, especially when cropped or enlarged. To fix the issue, in its next flagship - the M9 - HTC went with smaller individual pixels in a 20-megapixel camera last year, but it still underperformed in extreme situations, such as indoors and close-ups. In the HTC 10, the company attempts to strike a balance with larger individual pixels (1.55µm), but not as large as before and a 12 megapixel sensor in its camera coupled with a ƒ/1.8 lens. HTC accepts that in the imaging performance in the M9 was not up to the kind of spec of what they really like to see in a flagship. HTC is giving a slight boost to the selfi...

Flexible Camera Developed That Can Be Wrapped Around Objects

A team led by an Indian-origin professor at Columbia University has created a novel sheet camera that can be wrapped around everyday objects to capture images that cannot be taken with one or more conventional cameras. "Cameras today capture the world from essentially a single point in space. While the camera industry has made remarkable progress in shrinking the camera to a tiny device with ever increasing imaging quality, we are exploring a radically different approach to imaging," said Shree K Nayar, computer science professor at Columbia University. "We believe there are numerous applications for cameras that are large in format but very thin and highly flexible," added Nayar who graduated from the Birla Institute of Technology, Ranchi, in 1984. Nayar's team designed and fabricated a flexible lens array that adapts its optical properties when the sheet camera is bent. This optical adaptation enables the device to produce high quality images over a wide ...

Samsung Galaxy J1 (2016) Leaked in Press Images

The anticipated successor to the popular Samsung Galaxy J1, tipped to be called the Galaxy J1 (2016), has once again been leaked in images on the Web. While in the previous leaks we have seen the unannounced smartphone in its Black colour variant, the new leaked image shows the handset in two additional colour variants. The image tweeted by @evleaks on Monday shows the Samsung Galaxy J1 (2016) smartphone in Gold and White colour variants. The design of the handset also fall in line with the models leaked in images previously. It is worth mentioning that the screen bezel seen in the image stay black in all the three colour variants. The smartphone is seen featuring a physical home button, along with a multi-window, and a back capacitive button on either side. At the back, the smartphone sports a camera at the centre with a LED flash and a speaker on either sides. Samsung is yet to announce the smartphone. The Samsung Galaxy J1 (2016)leaked in images last month as well...

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