Attempting to get consumers to pay a premium for high-end HDMI cables that promise better sound or picture is a scam as old as HDMI cables themselves. It has been scientifically proven that a $3.50 cable will work just as well as a $699 cable; the nature of transmission means the picture will work or won’t work at all. Now Sony (NYSE: SNE) has joined these ranks of snake oil salesmen with its SR-64HXA micro SDXC which promises better sound through lower electrical noise.

Whether the $155 card will actually produce better sound through “lower electrical noise” is a highly dubious proposition. Other factors such as the audio file’s compression, the quality of the device’s DAC, and the speakers or headphones all play a much bigger role in audio quality than what Sony claims. Also the amount of actual read time, and thus audio degeneration from electrical noise, varies from device-to-device. Buffer and read times are unlikely a constant factor across the spectrum of audio players out there, thus Sony’s ability to claim an improvement in audio quality has questionable grounds to stand on.

Is there a market for this product? Obviously Sony thinks so, or it would not have bothered producing it. However judging by a comment a Sony spokesperson made to the Wall Street Journal, even the company has doubts about its potential.

“We aren’t that sure about the product’s potential demand, but we thought some among people who are committed to great sound quality would want it,” a Sony representative is quoted as saying.

The post Sony’s ‘Premium Sound’ Memory Card is a Fantastic Scam appeared first on VR World.

The new Samsung (KRX:000830) VR headset add-on for use with only its Galaxy Note 4 has arrived for sale on Samsung’s store for $199.99.  The device is power by Oculus-driven software to provide an immersive virtual reality experience using the Note 4 Super AMOLED display and the device itself to run the software.

Samsung stirred up a lot of talk earlier this year with the announcement that it was going to have an add-on for the Galaxy Note 4 that would make the pair a VR headset.  The Samsung Gear VR Innovator edition just popped up on the store for sale at Samsung’s website.  The good news is that this is only a $199.99 investment for those who already have a Galaxy Note 4.  The bad news for those who want to try it out and do not already own a Galaxy Note 4, is that the Gear VR  will only work with the Note 4.  This add-on most definitely will help to get more people buying the Note 4 than would if there wasn’t the Gear VR add-on.  This is a good move by Samsung for not only helping to drive VR innovation, but also to help its bottom line.  The Gear VR has access to Oculus store to have access to a fresh supply of ever growing content.

The Gear VR Innovator Edition comes with the headset, a carrying case, a replacement face cushion, a lens cloth, 16GB microSD memory card with the starter content pre-loaded, SD card adapter, user manual, and the warranty statement.  The controls that the headset has are a touchpad, a dedicated back button, focus adjustment wheel, volume keys, and a phone lock button.

Right now for those who purchase the Gear VR Innovator Edition there is two coupon codes to help get a discount for accessories.  The Samsung Gamepad is $30 off with the coupon code STAVR1, and the Samsung Gear Circle headset is $20 off with the coupon code STAVR2.

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While at Pepcom-San Francisco Kington’s representative introduced us to Kingston’s second-generation MobileLite Wireless Mobile G2 battery charger and storage device. We were hoping for a significant improvement over the first generation. We were not very enthusiastic about last year’s first generation MobileLite Wireless unit. It was strictly a wireless card reader with internet pass thru capability, plus a portable battery for charging your mobile devices. The case design and functionality left a lot of room for improvement. We have Verizon’s expensive LTE data service which is great stateside. Other BSN* editors have wireless coverage from carriers that work best at their stateside offices. However, our editors travel outside the USA and several of them live in other countries. So stateside wireless data package coverage suddenly disappears or becomes outlandishly expensive.

Specifications

This is where the Kingston MobileLite Wireless Mobile G2 steps up to store that data until you can get somewhere convenient to transfer it. It also extends your storage, streams your media, charges your devices, reads from USBs and SD cards, and allows you to connect to the web with it acting as a portable router. For those of you shooting multi-megabyte RAW photos with a Canon or Nikon DSLR camera, simply put your SDHC card into the MobileLite Wireless Mobile G2. It will easily store those images until you get back to a place with a secure high-speed WiFi or wired network. Then you switch over to your second SDHC card and continue shooting the event. If you have a partner with you, they can take the MobileLite G2 with your SDHC card in it to the nearest secure WiFi and send the images and data files to your home or office webserver via FTP.

With its built-in 3.8v Li-ion battery at 4640 mAh, it can last for up to 13 hours of continuous use. That will keep your mobile devices alive, until you get back to your car or a location with 110V shore power.

Packaging

Kingston’s package explains the features on the front and inside flap of the box.

Just three items are in the box: a 1.5 foot USB 2.0 cable, a microSD to SD card adapter, and the MobileLite Wireless Mobile G2 device. You will have to download the Kingston MobileLite Wireless app from the appropriate app store – Google Play, Apple App Store, or Amazon Apps. We tested the MobileLite Wireless Mobile G2 application with the HTC One M8 (Android 4.4.4).

There is no documentation with the unit. You have to go to Kingston’s website for the manual. Your data storage is with an SD card, either the micro-SD format using an adapter or a standard SD card. For this review, we are using the Kingston 32GB SDHC Class 10 card with 30MB/S transfer capability.

The Kingston MobileLite Wireless Mobile G2 includes 3G USB dongle support for direct connections and is compatible with Android 4.0+, iPad (2, 3rd Gen, 4th Gen, mini, Air), iPhone 4/4S/5, iPod Touch (iOS 7+), Kindle Fire, and Kindle Fire HD. When connected via USB to a PC, it can act as a USB 2.0 card reader for the system. For a desktop PC, it is compatible with many operating systems including Windows Vista (SP2), Windows 7 (SP1), Windows 8, Windows 8.1, Mac OSX V. 10.6.X+, and Linux v. 2.6.x+. The MobileLite Wireless G2 has an 802.11 g/n WiFi access point that supports WPA2 data encryption. WiFi is one of the ways to access the MobileLite G2 when using a smartphone or tablet, thus having a fast and secure 802.xx connection is important.

User Experience

The white bezel has six buttons, LEDs, and ports. Below from left to right, first is the battery LED/ power which indicate remaining battery time. Pressing the larger white Power button (fourth from left) makes the LED change colors. Green indicates 51 percent to 100 percent battery charge is remaining. Orange indicates 25 percent to 50 percent remaining, and red indicates less than 25 percent battery charge is remaining. Next is WiFi LED which indicates current status of WiFi broadcast. The next LED to the right is for Bridged that lets you know if the MobileLite G2 is bridged to an Internet gateway via WiFi or with the Ethernet cable port.

The larger Power button turns the MobileLite G2 on or off with a short one second press. Holding the power button down for three seconds will put it into WiFi mode. Next to the right is the Reset button. Holding it down for more than 10 seconds will reset the MobileLite G2 to its original default configuration. The Micro-B USB port is a multi-function port. It is the way you charge the MobileLite G2. Or you can connect to a standard USB port on your computer for data transfer. The microUSB port is to charge the device’s internal 4640 mAh battery. The battery charge status indicator LED makes sure you charge the MobileLite G2 before you walk out your home/office door.

On the opposite side of the white bezel is the Ethernet port. Using a standard Cat 5e/6 cable you can connect the MobileLite G2 to your wired network. This allows you to create a hotspot for wireless Internet access. On the end of the white bezel is the SD card slot and a USB 2.0 port. The USB port works with the USB Standard Type A plug, the most common USB male end connector.

Kingston’s MobileLite Wireless Mobile G2 app on our HTC One M8 was minimalistic. There is no GUI, it is just like an old-fashioned bare bones file directory app. This is the place where we went back to the 13 page owner’s manual. It was not very informative. The manual could use some better examples. We suggest Kingston partner with a software developer to build a full-featured GUI application. That would take care of the only short coming we found. Using our 14Mbps WiFi connection at 100 feet distance we were able to quickly load multiple music files and large video files from the Cobra ultraHD dash cam (which will be our next review). The app helps you make folders for keeping track of music, videos, and data. The app does include a basic photo viewer as well as a music player.

Conclusion

The Kingston MobileLite Wireless Mobile G2 is a light weight device which has an amazing number of features. All the Mobile G2’s features worked, however, you should allow yourself a bit of time to learn how to use them all. Pricing of the Kingston MobileLite Wireless Mobile G2 at Amazon is only about five dollars more than the eyeFi Mobi 8GB WiFi card. Plus the MobileLite G2 has battery charging with up-to 13 hours of functionality and you can use any microSD or SD card for storage. BSN* rates it as a must-have for everyone, especially those readers who have one of the older smartphones or tablets without a micro-SD expansion card slot. Special thanks to Kingston for providing the MobileLite Wireless Mobile G2 charger and storage device, and the Kingston 32GB SDHC Class 10 card and to David Leong, and Shealyn Johnson for their assistance.

The post Kingston MobileLite Wireless Mobile G2: Review appeared first on VR World.

SanDisk (NASDAQ:SNDK) yesterday reported its earnings for for the third quarter of 2014, ending September 30th.

For the third quarter of 2014, SanDisk reported earnings of $263 million on a record $1.75 billion in revenue, this translated to an earnings per share of $1.09, compared to profits of $277 million last quarter ($1.18 EPS) and $274 million in the same quarter a year ago ($1.14 EPS). As a result, SanDisk’s investors were not happy to see the company’s earnings shrinking even though revenue continues to increase. In fact, SanDisk posted record revenues this quarter, even with declining profitability.

Even so, SanDisk continues to be on a march to ensure that solid state technologies are the leading technology in the storage industry. This was made clear by the acquisition of FusionIO, which completed this quarter and should help pump up their enterprise offering, as well as their expansion of consumer flash products for mobile and photography. SanDisk now has a 512 GB SD card as well as 128 GB microSDXC memory cards which are capable of 4K video capture. In fact, there’s a very good chance that a lot of people will be buying lots of SanDisk microSDXC memory cards for their new GoPro Hero4 cameras (which we’re reviewing) this holiday season. After all, SanDisk’s 128 GB microSDXC card will only yield 4 hours of 4k footage on a GoPro Hero4 camera.

SanDisk saw channel revenue grow 13%  while retail shrunk 2%, channel revenue was mostly driven by SSD growth in both enterprise and consumer, which offset the losses in retail, resulting in a record revenue quarter. SanDisk also talked about their ramping of their fabs from 19nm to 15nm and how they will slowly begin to make the transition over the course of the next year, which will start to yield them cost savings as opposed to pure operating expenditures.

The company also issued forward looking statements for Q4 2014 as well as 2015, stating that they expect to reduce inventory levels in order to fulfill demand across all key product categories as their customers are indicating to be true. However, the company is cautioning that it expects to be “in supply allocation” and that will constrain their growth in some areas in Q4.

Problems with supply

One interpretation of the term “supply allocation” is a euphemism for a shortage of some resources or manufacturing in order to properly supply demand from customers. The company then proceeds to say that it will, “prioritize our business according to our strategic priorities and customer relationships,” which essentially translates to larger and more loyal customers are going to get what they order when they ask for it and everyone else is going to have to wait. But even so, its forecast for  the fourth quarter of 2014 indicates revenues of $1.8 billion to $1.85 billion, which would be another record revenue quarter for the company.

Based on yesterday’s earnings announcement, SanDisk’s investors did not seem pleased by the company’s earnings report. In fact, SanDisk today closed down nearly 3% in regular trading, this was even though many of their competitors closed the day up, clearly indicating a reaction to yesterday’s earnings.

The post SanDisk Reports Lukewarm Earnings for Q3 2014 appeared first on VR World.

Motorola already changed the world quite a bit when they released the midrange Moto G for $179. Now, they’re trying to change it again by releasing the Moto E for $129 and at the same time release an LTE version of the Moto G for $219. The Moto E is Motorola’s attempt to lure the ‘dumbphone’ crowd into the smartphone era without making them commit to anything major in terms of cost or complexity and making sure it will ship with the latest version of Android. They even started a campaign called #GoodByeDumbphone and tried to promote their launch of the Moto E with the idea that people can throw away their dumbphones in favor of this cheap and simple smartphone.

Moto E Cases

The Moto E comes in black or white, but allows you to basically grab any color shell that you want to customize the overall look of the phone to your desires. Additionally, they’ve gone with a very low cost Qualcomm Snapdragon 200 SoC, which is basically the slowest smartphone chip that Qualcomm offers today. And considering the overall goal, which is price, it would seem that nobody would expect this phone to work as quickly as a much more expensive Moto X. What’s very smart on the part of Motorola is that they’ve opted for a fairly large 1980 mAh battery, even though the Snapdragon 200 is a very low power chip. This, combined with the Corning Gorilla Glass and the water resistant design of the phone and you’ve got a pretty sweet little phone in the Moto E. Not just that, but the Moto E can double as a perfect backup phone if anything were to happen to your current Android phone without costing an arm and a leg. The Moto E also comes with a microSD card slot that supports memory cards up to 32GB, which supplements the phone’s existing 4GB of meager storage capacity.

Moto E Black

The Moto E also has a slightly smaller 4.3″ qHD display compared to the 4.5″ display on the Moto G, which may actually be more attractive to some because it results in a smaller phone and a higher pixel density since they both have the same 960×540 resolution. Ultimately, Motorola is making  a very simple incremental step up from each of their phones, even though I don’t think the Moto X should be priced at where it currently is and they need a real flagship phone that can compete with Samsung, LG and HTC’s flagships.

The Moto G is also getting an upgrade, primarily with a $40 price premium for the LTE version, enabling cheap phone shoppers to gain fairly good performance on a cheap phone without compromising on cellular connectivity.

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