A solar-powered airplane finished crossing the United States on Saturday, landing in New York City after flying over the Statue of Liberty during its historic bid to circle the globe, the project team said. The spindly, single-seat experimental aircraft, dubbed Solar Impulse 2, arrived at New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport at about 4 a.m. local time after it took off about five hours beforehand at Lehigh Valley International Airport in Pennsylvania, the team reported on the airplane's website. Such a pleasure to land in New York! For the 14th time we celebrate sustainability," said the project's co-founder Andre Borschberg on Twitter after flying over the city and the Statue of Liberty during the 14th leg of the trip around the globe. The Swiss team flying the aircraft in a campaign to build support for clean energy technologies hopes eventually to complete its circumnavigation in Abu Dhabi, where the journey began in March 2015. The solar cr...
Samsung has announced two new large high-end Android handsets: the Galaxy S6 Edge+ and the Galaxy Note 5. Both phones have 5.7 in (14.5 cm) screens and are going on sale earlier in the year than their previous generations. The launches follow five successive falls in Samsung Electronics' quarterly profits. Analysts say the popularity of mid-range phones from Chinese rivals, and Apple's shift to bigger iPhones, have dented demand for Samsung's devices.
However, the firm remains the world leader in terms of overall smartphone shipments. The announcements were made at a press conference in New York.
Like previous versions of the Note, the new version comes with a stylus - which Samsung says makes it suitable for productivity tasks. But the phone now has metal edges and a glass back to give it a more "premium" feel.In a change of strategy, the South Korean firm has no plans at present to release the Note 5 in Europe - a decision it says is purely for marketing reasons. One company-watcher said that could be a mistake.
"The Note would have been a good fit for Europe's enterprise
The "plus" in its name refers to the fact that its screen is both 0.6 in (1.5cm) larger than the earlier edition and more scratch-resistant. It now has an extra gigabyte of memory, taking it up to 4GB of RAM to aid multi-tasking, but uses the same in-house Exynos processor as before. This marks a change from the S5 Plus, which was the same size but contained a faster processor than the original S5.
The two new phones also introduce a couple of new features:
A button in their camera apps activates a "live broadcast" mode, which streams 1080p high definition video to YouTube and sends invitations to selected acquaintances. They support the ultra-high quality audio (UHQA) format. A new hardware component means there should be "less sound distortion" when files saved in the codec are played. Users can also use bundled software to "upscale" existing MP3s. "It's fair to say that we're in a market which has competition, and we welcome that - it's a maturing market all around the world and we thrive in developing new opportunities, new devices that will grow the business." One tech industry analyst addressed the point more directly.
"Mid-August is an unusual time for a launch - it's a quiet month when half of Europe is on holiday," said Ian Fogg from IHS Technology.
"One reason Samsung may have done this was to get the announcements out ahead of all the other smartphone makers - both those at Ifa and Apple afterwards. "The other rationale is that it needs to get these new models into the market quickly because it's under competitive pressure, and has accelerated its launch plans."
Samsung's launch, however, has coincided with Xiaomi's surprise unveiling of a new phablet - the Redmi Note 2 - earlier in the day at a Beijing event.
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