Giving Samsung tablets another chance with the Galaxy Tab Pro 8.4

BYJon Fingas @jonfingas14 hours ago

0

Samsung's tablets haven't done much for me in the past; outside of the slick Galaxy Tab 7.7, they've rarely had exciting designs or brisk performance. However, the Galaxy Tab Pro 8.4 caught my eye. It has an iconic (if very Galaxy Note 3-like) look, solid specs and the sharpest display on a tablet that size. With that in mind, I tried this smallest of Tab Pros for a few weeks this past spring to see if it could lure me away from the land of iPads.

You won't hear me gripe much about the hardware. That 8.4-inch display is just big enough for the media and websites I like, and it's so high-res that the images occasionally have a painted-on look. Also, it's a pleasure to hold. Faux leather and metal notwithstanding, it's both comfortable and light. The iPad Air is undoubtedly svelte, but it feels a tad ungainly next to the (admittedly smaller) Tab Pro -- and that's before seeing the Galaxy Tab S, which is even thinner and lighter.

To me, the real clincher is Samsung's Multi Window support. While its absence isn't a dealbreaker, I'd love if every tablet had some variant of this going forward. There's an undeniable appeal to chatting with someone on Hangouts while a YouTube video plays. It's not as elegantly implemented as in Windows, since you can't easily restore a Multi Window setup if you lose it, but it does make good use of the Tab Pro's real estate.

If only Android apps took similar advantage of that display. Titles that aren't tablet-native generally scale well enough on this smaller screen, but it still feels like there's a lot of wasted space compared to the iPad apps I'm used to. Also, some of them don't cope well with the 2,560 x 1,600 resolution; buttons and other interface elements are occasionally a little too tiny for my liking. Still, these will hopefully get better as developers get comfortable, and they're not going to sour the overall experience.

Would I toss out my iPad and get a Galaxy Tab Pro or Tab S? Probably not. The iOS ecosystem is still stronger in some places (most notably games), and the Air I already own has enough screen resolution and speed for my tastes. However, I wouldn't balk if someone made me switch, and I'd have little hesitation recommending Samsung's newer slates to anyone who wants a lot of performance in a small shell. 0 Comments

Tags: engadgetirl, galaxy tab, galaxy tab pro 8.4, galaxytab, galaxytabpro8.4, irl, samsung Next: Weekends with Engadget: Google I/O 2014, Aereo loses and more! Samsung Galaxy Tab Pro 8.4

Samsung Galaxy Tab Pro 8.4 16GB 32GB Key specs Reviews • 8 Prices Discussions Form factor Tablet Operating system Android (KitKat [4.4]) Screen size 8.4 inches Storage type Internal storage (16 GB, Flash), Memory card Camera (integrated) 8 megapixels Dimensions 5.06 x 8.62 x 0.28 in Weight 11.85 oz Announced 2014-01-06 see all specs → 8.8average user rating Features 8.5 Display 9.8 Battery life 8.3 Ease of use 7.8 Storage capacity 8.5 Design and form factor 7.8 Portability (size / weight) 9.5 Durability 9

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Scientists reverse aging in mice by giving them young blood

Plots from The Simpsons are rarely prophetic, but it appears as if, just as it did for Mr. Burns, the blood of the young could help to stave off the signs of aging. Competing teams at Harvard, Cambridge and the University of California have found that pumping the blood of juvenile mice into elderly rodents saw the latter suddenly able to run much faster, had more blood vessels in the brain and had much clearer thinking. Harvard researchers subsequently isolated a protein called GDF11, which helped both the operation of hearts and brains. Given the limits of the study, the teams are cautious about what this could mean for human biology, and there's plenty of trials still to be done, but maybe it'd be wise to start being nice to any juvenile relatives you've got -- you never know when you might be asking them for a transfusion.

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Via: Boston Globe, The Today Programme (Audioboo)

Source: Harvard, Science

Tags: Aging, Blood, Cambridge, GDF11, Harvard, Transfusion, Youth Next: HTC One Mini 2 leak reveals no depth-sensing camera .fyre .fyre-comment-divider

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NASA catches an overview of giving birth to a new moon of Saturn

For the first and perhaps the last time NASA Cassini spacecraft, whose mission is the orbit of Saturn, captured a new pop-up Moon of the planet Jupiter rings. As you know, the birth of the Moon is an extremely rare event, and in the case of Saturn, could never happen again. You see, there is a theory that was used to have a much larger ring system, which led to the formation of many natural satellites of the sixth planet from the Sun. After a huge 62 moons of labour, however, rings are now too exhausted to do more, although they seem always lush greatly. This could be our last opportunity to observe how particles of Saturn's rings formed a natural satellite that comes off of the planet and finally in orbit around it.

Scientists estimate that the newly born, called the Peggy, is only half a meter in diameter. This makes it positively tiny compared to the largest moon, Titan, which has a diameter of 3 200 km, or approximately half of the land. In fact, it is so small that Cassini can even take a decent picture, although NASA plans to watch it more closely when it the probe closer to the outer edge of the rings in 2016. Unfortunately, scientists believe that Peggy does not grow and may be collapsing, the child could never the opportunity to become a legitimate Saturn satellite.

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