Kalakshar US

The original Kona EV was appealing if you wanted a compact electric crossover, but it lost some of its appeal when the longer-ranged (and frankly more stylish) Ioniq 5 arrived on the scene. However, Hyundai just gave you a reason to consider its ‘entry’ model once more. After months of early peeks, the automaker has unveiled a sleeker second-generation Kona built with an electric powerplant in mind. That, in turn, promises some meaningful improvements to the performance and interior design.

The higher capacity 65.4kWh battery option now provides an estimated 304 miles of range using the WLTP testing cycle. We wouldn’t be surprised if the EPA-estimated figure is more conservative, but that still hints a longer range than the 258 miles of the current model. You now get battery preconditioning to improve charging times and cold weather range, and vehicle-to-load support lets you power devices both inside and outside of the car. There’s also new support for “i-Pedal” one-pedal driving. Just don’t expect the speediest charging. The Kona doesn’t have the 800V architecture of the Ioniq 5 or Kia EV6, so it will take 41 minutes to charge from 10 percent to 80 percent.

Regardless of what motor system is inside your vehicle, you can expect a larger “living space” with more storage (17 cubic feet in the trunk), a front trunk and plenty of in-cabin tech. An optional heads-up display sadly isn’t available in North America, but you will find dual 12.3-inch screens, over-the-air software updates and NFC-based digital car key support. The driver aids are also supposedly more powerful than in other mini-SUVs in this class, such as an attention monitor (to make sure you don’t doze off), a blind spot monitor and assistants for forward collision avoidance and safer highway driving.

Hyundai hasn’t detailed US pricing, although it says the Kona will still be available in combustion-only and hybrid versions in addition to the EV. It should reach US customers in the third quarter of the year. If history is any indication, the Kona should cost less than the Ioniq 5. That could make it appealing if you want to go electric but can’t justify the premium for the brand’s most advanced offerings.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/hyundais-revamped-kona-ev-offers-more-room-and-a-longer-range-151216854.html?src=rss 

Even as it has radically expanded the hands-free driver assist capabilities of its current generation Super Cruise ADAS, General Motors has been hard at work on the system’s successor, Ultra Cruise, since 2021. On Tuesday, GM finally revealed which model will be first to receive the upgraded features of Ultra Cruise and that vehicle is the Cadillac Celestiq.

“We’re trying to expand our hands-free driving experience that we have with Super Cruise to most paved and public roads,” Jason Dittman, General Motors’ Chief Engineer, said during a press call Monday. “It will be a ‘destination to destination’ experience.”

“You get in your car, use the internal nav navigation system, put a destination in it, and the car would essentially do the driving — roughly on 95 percent of the driving maneuvers on a typical drive, you’ll be able to do hands-free,” he added.

We already had a solid understanding of what Ultra Cruise would be capable of as GM went into detail when it first announced development of the system in 2021. Super Cruise currently works on around 400,000 miles of US and Canadian highways, allowing drivers to take their hands off the wheel when driving on a compatible highway or state route. It uses a mix of LiDAR, radar, GPS and cameras to know where the vehicle is on the road.

Ultra Cruise, builds off this with a new computing system, that will fuse the incoming data streams into a unified 360-degree view around the vehicle. “They’re not redundant, they’re fused together to give us the most accurate picture of the vehicle surroundings,” Dittman said. Ultra Cruise equipped vehicles will also use an interior-facing infrared driver attention monitor that will track the, “driver’s head position and/or eyes in relation to the road,” according to Tuesday’s announcement.

Ultra Cruise will work on more than 2 million miles of highway at launch. Over time, the company plans to further expand the number of roadways covered by the Ultra Cruise network to include 3.4 million miles of roadway encompassing, “nearly every paved road, city street, suburban street, subdivision, and rural road in addition to the highways that today on the super cruise operates on,” Dittman added.

Note that despite the larger number of roads the new system will work on, it still offers the same Level 2 driver assist capabilities as the rest of the auto industry, save Mercedes. That means, you will have to keep paying attention to the road you just won’t have to keep your hands strictly on the wheel.

Unfortunately, current Super Cruise subscribers will not be able to upgrade to the new system once it arrives later this year. Ultra Cruise requires additional sensors and hardware to operate and GM doesn’t currently have plans to offer a retrofit kit. You’ll have to pony up the $300k Caddy is asking for the Celestiq if you want to be among the first to try it.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gms-ultra-cruise-system-will-debut-on-the-cadillac-celestiq-later-this-year-140011591.html?src=rss 

TikTok has a new plan to challenge YouTube and help creators earn more on their platform. The company is introducing Series, a new feature that allows creators to charge for collections of “premium” videos.

Videos that are part of a “series” will differ from other TikTok videos in a couple ways. First, the videos can be up to 20 minutes long, double the ten-minute limit for most other videos on the platform. And, unlike other TikTok content, series content will live behind a paywall, meaning the clips won’t show up in the app’s recommendations or be as easily shareable as typical TikTok videos. (Creators will, however, be able to link to their Series from other, non-paywalled videos.) 

Series creators have considerable flexibility in how much they charge, with one-time payment options ranging from $0.99 to $189.99 for access to video collections. In a blog post, the TikTok notes that creators are free to choose an amount “that best reflects the value of their exclusive content.”

The feature could help creators earn substantially more from their videos than existing monetization features on the platform. Creators have long criticized the company’s creator fund, which they say isn’t big enough to accommodate the app’s growing ranks of prominent users. TikTok has apparently paid close attention to that criticism as it recently introduced a newer version of its creator fund, the Creativity Program, meant to help creators earn more.

Interestingly, TikTok says that it’s not planning on taking a cut of creators’ revenue from Series, at least for now. A spokesperson for the company said that “for a limited time” creators will receive “100% of their earnings” minus app store fees. That could potentially help TikTok make its new longform offerings more competitive with YouTube, which creators often favor for longer videos because of the increased revenue potential.

Of course, a lot will depend on how individual TikTokkers use the new paywall features, and if their fans are willing to fork over for more exclusive content. For now, only a handful of “select” creators have access to Series, but the company says it will start accepting applications from more creators “in the coming months.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/tiktoks-series-feature-will-allow-creators-to-charge-for-premium-content-140033561.html?src=rss 

For the last few years Sonos has focused most of its efforts on two categories: portable speakers, like the Move and Roam; and home theater products like the affordable Ray and more extravagant, Atmos-capable Arc soundbars. The company’s main pair of music-focused speakers, the One and Five, still sound great but are getting a little long in the tooth.

That changes today with two new options: the Era 100 and Era 300. The $250 Era 100 is a totally redesigned replacement for the One with a number of improvements over its predecessor, while the $450 Era 300 is the first Sonos speaker capable of playing spatial audio. As with most Sonos speakers, you can use a pair of either of them in stereo or as rear surround speakers in a home theater setup. If you have the Sonos Arc or gen-2 Beam and Sub, adding a pair of Era 300s as your rear surrounds gives you a wild 7.1.4 Dolby Atmos experience. (If you’re willing to spend roughly $2,600 for that setup, anyway).

The Era 300 looks unlike any speaker Sonos has released before, though it still has the company’s familiar clean design language. Its somewhat unusual knocked-over hourglass shape is largely functional: it allows for the upward-facing tweeter to fire at a slight but specific angle, which the company says will deliver more room-filling reflections for spatial audio. There are three more tweeters: one dead-center and forward-firing as well as two pointing left and right. Finally, a pair of woofers on either side of the speaker provide plenty of bass.

The Era 100, on the other hand, is more obviously a tweak to the Sonos One, itself acoustically identical to the Sonos Play:1 that was released all the way back in 2013. Put another way, an upgrade was long past due. The Era 100 features a pair of tweeters for left and right stereo channels in a single speaker, as well as a woofer that’s 25 percent larger than the One’s. It may not have the spatial audio capabilities of the Era 300, but it’s still a significant update to its predecessor.

Despite the very different price points and capabilities, both of these speakers have a lot in common. Both feature USB-C ports that let you plug in a turntable or other audio equipment with an optional line-in adapter. More significantly, they both also include Bluetooth, the first time Sonos has put the feature in a non-portable speaker. They also have a redesigned set of touch controls on top – instead of taping on either side of the play / pause button to adjust volume, there’s now a little ridge you can swipe your finger across as well as dedicated forward and back buttons. Sonos also included a physical switch to disconnect the microphones. This actually cuts the connection to the mic for additional security, rather than just muting it via software.

Both the Era 100 and Era 300 also can use those microphones for Trueplay tuning, which optimizes audio for where you place the speakers in your living space. Previously, Trueplay required an iOS device; its microphone was used to listen for optimizing the sound. If you used Android, you were unfortunately out of luck. But even though Sonos has been putting microphones in its speakers for years now, you couldn’t use them for Trueplay. This new feature means a lot more people will likely take advantage of the feature – that’s good news, because Trueplay does make a big difference.

I got a chance to listen to both speakers in a variety of configurations at a Sonos press event last month, and they both unsurprisingly sounded great – but that was in a carefully arranged environment that Sonos had total control over. Obviously, we’ll need to review these speakers to see how they perform in the real world, but I was impressed by the short demo I got. The Era 100 doesn’t sound totally different from the One, but the larger woofer definitely gives it more bass presence. The two tweeters don’t give it true stereo separation, since they’re so close to each other, but they definitely provide more clarity in the high ranges than you hear in the One.

The Era 300, however, sounds quite a bit different. Sonos first showed us its chops playing back standard audio, and it has significantly more volume, bass and presence than the Era 100. Not a shock, considering it costs $200 more and has twice as many drivers. We then got to hear how the single speaker did at playing back spatial audio tracks. They didn’t sound radically different, but did less like they were coming from a single point in a room; instead, the audio was more balanced and enveloping. Of the few songs we got to hear, “A Concert Six Months From Now” by Finneas was the most impressive. His multi-layered focals felt like they were coming at me from multiple angles, but it didn’t feel like a gimmick – it was just a more immersive and more intimate presentation.

While it’s easy enough to see how the Era 100 fits into the Sonos lineup, the Era 300’s higher price tag and focus on spatial audio makes the speaker a big bet on an unproven market. For starters, the only spatial audio service it supports is Amazon Music Unlimited, which means the millions of people using Apple Music are out of luck. Apple has pushed spatial audio harder than just about anyone in the past few years, highlighting it both on its music streaming service and AirPod line of headphones. And with a new full-sized HomePod, Apple now has both speakers and headphones that can play back Atmos mixes. So, it might not be inclined to support competing Sonos hardware.

Regardless of the competition, Sonos clearly sees spatial audio as the future of music playback. The company said there’s major interest in the format from artists and producers, and claimed that the Era 300 will be the best way to hear the details of spatial audio mixes without needing a room full of audio gear. Of course, there’s only so much we can expect from a single speaker, no matter how advanced its driver array is. And while Amazon is the only service that’s compatible with the Era 300 for spatial music, Spotify, YouTube Music and others will likely start offering spatial audio sooner than later – though again, that doesn’t mean it’ll necessarily work on Sonos hardware.

Of course, the Era 300 also is an extremely capable speaker even when playing back stereo mixes. As with the outstanding but expensive Sonos Five speaker, the Era 300 will probably be a more niche product in the company’s lineup. But if the spatial audio wave is about to crest, it makes sense for Sonos to be ready for it rather than play catch-up.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/sonos-is-betting-big-on-spatial-audio-with-the-450-era-300-speaker-140041530.html?src=rss 

Hailing a ride from the airport is often a headache — ask anyone who’s navigated a maze-like terminal just to get to the pickup area. The journey may soon be less daunting, however. Uber is introducing a few updates that can streamline trips to and from airports. Most notably, you’ll get walking directions for the pickup location, and ETAs for baggage claim. You can hustle if you need a ride quickly, or take your time collecting your bags.

Uber Reserve will also be more useful for scheduling your ground travel. The company now allows booking rides up to 90 days in advance instead of 30, making it easier to plan every step of your vacation. Reserve will also be available in many more North American cities (over 7,300), and New York City customers can book UberX, XL and Comfort rides in addition to Black and Black SUV. A Business Comfort tier, meanwhile, will provide a “unique” experience for work travellers.

The pickup directions are available at just over 30 airports around the world, including the NYC area’s big three (JFK, LaGuardia and Newark) as well as hubs like Chicago O’Hare and Atlanta. More are due in the months ahead, Uber says. Walking ETAs will “soon” be available in over 400 airports. The Business Comfort option will be available sometime in the near future.

The motivation behind the upgrades is clear. Airport rides play a major role in Uber’s business, and it’s competing with Lyft, taxis and even car rental agencies. You may be more likely to use Uber if it can guide you every step of the way.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/uber-wants-to-make-navigating-the-airport-less-of-a-nightmare-120040525.html?src=rss 

Many Twitter users feared that the platform would fall apart after Musk took over Twitter in October and swiftly fired thousands of employees and contractors. That hasn’t happened yet, but links failing to work, yesterday, is likely connected to the company’s recent tinkering with APIs.

On Monday, links and images completely broke on Twitter for a spell across the company’s website and mobile apps. “Some parts of Twitter may not be working as expected right now. We made an internal change that had some unintended consequences,” Twitter shared on its Support account at 12:19 PM ET, Monday. It took roughly less than an hour for most of the social network to start working again.

Twitter CEO Elon Musk tweeted: “A small API change had massive ramifications. The code stack is extremely brittle for no good reason. Will ultimately need a complete rewrite.” Twitter is restricting its APIs, the tools developers use to hook into the platform, and the company said it would start charging for access to them in early February.

Clicking on a link raised an error message that read: “Your current API plan does not include access to this endpoint, please see https://developer.twitter.com/en/docs/twitter-api for more information.” That link was also broken for a while.

– Mat Smith

The Morning After isn’t just a newsletter – it’s also a daily podcast. Get our daily audio briefings, Monday through Friday, by subscribing right here.

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Microsoft is holding a ‘future of work’ AI event on March 16th

You may see OpenAI technology powering Microsoft’s business services.

Now everyone is excited about something Microsoft is working on, the company is going hard on events. It’s holding another AI event, focused on what it says is “the future of work.” Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and Microsoft 365 lead Jared Spataro will host the presentation. A leak from The Verge suggests Microsoft may introduce AI-equipped versions of Microsoft 365 apps like Outlook and Word. While the exact functionality isn’t known, The Information claims Outlook could use AI to improve search results and suggest email replies.

Continue reading.

Nothing will show off the Ear 2 earbuds on March 22nd

Not sure bugs and in-ear buds should be associated, though.

Those looking for more details on Nothing’s next earphones won’t have to wait much longer. The company will reveal the Ear 2 on March 22nd. The latest teaser image suggests the transparent aesthetic will continue in the follow-up headphones, with an image showing a beetle pushing what appears to be a charging case out of frame.

Continue reading.

Microsoft’s Outlook is now free to use for Macs

You now have another major alternative to the built-in Mail app.

Microsoft is staying busy this week. It has made Outlook for Mac free to use. You previously needed either a Microsoft 365 subscription or an Office purchase to use the email client. It’s available now through the Mac App Store. Microsoft pitches this as a good complement to Outlook for iOS, as you can now hand off an email draft to your iPhone if you haven’t finished writing it on your Mac.

Continue reading.

Honda’s latest autonomous robot packs things around construction sites

Asimo was cuter.

Honda is known for its vehicles and robots, and over the last few years, it has tried combining those two things with the Autonomous Work Vehicle (AWV). It just unveiled a new third generation, designed to transport up to two palettes worth of goods around worksites with no human assistance. Compared to the second generation, the latest AWV has a larger bed size (two pallets) and higher capacity (2,000 pounds); a higher self-driving speed of up to 10 MPH; a larger battery for up to 10 hours and 28 miles of endurance. Honda says the AWV will allow construction and other companies to address issues like labor shortages and worksite transport. After extensively testing the last model, it said the AWV 3.0 is now ready for field trials.

Continue reading.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/the-morning-after-every-link-on-twitter-briefly-broke-121538863.html?src=rss 

Your Google Docs, Sheets, Slides and Drive might look quite different in the coming days. The tech giant has started rolling out the updated look and feel it promised for them last month based on its Material Design 3 language. In Docs, Sheets and Slides, Google is making it easier to find frequently used actions with a simplified user interface. The company is also moving some elements around to reduce clutter, including putting the edit and version history under a single clock icon at the top right corner of the app. Plus, Google is improving Docs’ commenting experience — even adding emoji reactions that can be used to emphasize, upvote or disagree with responses — and updating its rulers and gridlines. 

As for Drive, the tech giant is introducing the ability to select multiple items at once to enable batch actions. It’s adding new search categories, such as type (PDF, documents, videos and zips), owner and last modified, as well, to make sorting and finding files a lot easier. Those two combined could cut the time you need to do frequent tasks involving several files of the same type. Within individual files, Google will now start surfacing key actions inline “for quick access and increased productivity.”

These features are now making their way to users, but it could take up to 15 days before they reach your apps. When Google announced its Workspace redesign in February, it also launched other features that included adding a stopwatch directly inside Docs that you could use to boost productivity. For Sheets, it added the capability to put Maps links directly in the app to aid in event or logistics planning. The app also got new shortcuts that let you quickly add relevant dates to a sheet simply by typing in @ with the appropriate keyword, like @today. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/google-rollout-new-look-docs-workspace-apps-124542742.html?src=rss 

I’ve always thought the folks at reMarkable were missing a trick by not offering a keyboard for their e-paper tablet. I’m a fan of portable, distraction-reducing writing machines, and when my brain gets too cluttered, I go stand by my window with a keyboard-equipped iPad in front of me. reMarkable’s community has already found ways to jerry-rig a keyboard to the machine, but I’d much prefer to get a finished package than something knocked together on the fly.

So I was excited to learn that the company is now launching its own keyboard, stand and cover accessory in the form of the Type Folio. It’s the company’s take on the cover-stand-keyboard unit offered for pretty much every other tablet on the market. But it’s also blessed with its own quirks, designed to ensure that it won’t ruin the skinny silhouette of the existing hardware.

For the uninitiated, reMarkable 2 is an e-paper tablet promising paper-like responsiveness, letting you read, amend and write documents with a stylus. Its low weight, long battery life and the stripped-down nature of its offering has earned it plenty of plaudits from its hardcore fans. But while it makes many of its (intentional) limitations into virtues, it is still quite niche. As my beloved former colleague Chris Velazco said two years ago, “This is a device for people who care about writing and reading to the exclusion of just about everything else.”

To get started with Type Folio, you just slide reMarkable 2 into it, connecting to a small chin on the slate’s left hand side/bottom. Unfold the case and the stand will hold it upright to expose the keys underneath, and once it’s clicked in, the tablet reorientates itself to landscape mode. Flip the tablet back down to cover the keys, and it’ll jump back into portrait mode, in a way that feels natural, and seamless.

reMarkable opted to make the letter keys full size, sat over rubber dome switches with 1.3mm of travel. The number and other keys are compressed to fill space left over, but while I expected to need some adjustment time, it all came together fairly instantly. I was also delighted that the arrow keys (vital when moving the cursor around) were left in space to help your fingers find them.

In fact, I think I probably made just two more errors writing the first draft of this piece on the slate than I would on my regular keyboard. The lack of autocorrect and spell check could be an issue if you enjoy, or need, the assistance offered by most normal systems these days. If you use this for nothing more than first and second drafts, before finishing things on a different screen, then I can’t imagine it being an issue.

And for people who need something a little more limited to help keep their minds focused, this is a delight. I could well imagine myself taking this, rather than my iPad, over to the window when I need to avoid the numerous temptations of the internet. I especially liked the ability to make live notes with the stylus when proofing the draft while sat eating lunch, too. It’s as close to being able to print out and amend your work as I’m likely to get until I finally give in and buy a printer again.

Type Folio comes in two faux-leather finishes, the Sepia Brown I tried and an Ink Black. It’s slim and light enough that it doesn’t feel like too much bulk has been added to the already pretty slender tablet. Given that you’re now able to do a lot more with it than you could before, it feels like there’s been very little trade off or sacrifice made here.

If there’s one place I feel compelled to take points off, it’s in the price, which fails the “would I spend my own money to buy this” test. The slate itself is $299, and only really works if you buy a stylus priced at either $79, or $129 if you opt for the built-in “eraser.” So it’s hard to swallow when the keyboard folio is $199, a full two-thirds of the price of the main hardware itself, as much as I think it’s a beautiful and well-engineered piece of gear. I do imagine that, for most would-be reMarkable buyers, price is less of a consideration than it is for other gadgets. But, in aggregate, the sticker gets close to the point where you start asking questions about how much you’d need this over, say, a 9th generation iPad and its own stylus and keyboard folio. By comparison, reMarkable remains a product that you’ll need to fall in love with before you start forking over that much cash, but mercifully, it’s also very easy to fall in love with.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/remarkable-2-type-folio-keyboard-hands-on-130057978.html?src=rss 

Apple is keeping up its recent tradition of adding new iPhone colors in the spring. The company has introduced yellow versions of the iPhone 14 and 14 Plus — sorry, no Pro equivalent this year. They’re identical in functionality and price to other hues, of course ($799 and $899 respectively), but don’t be surprised if you start humming tunes about yellow submarines or bananaphones.

Customers in over 60 countries (including the US, UK and Canada) can pre-order the yellow iPhone 14 family starting on March 10th at 8AM Eastern. The new versions will be available on March 14th alongside new silicone case colors that include a canary yellow.

This certainly isn’t the first time Apple has offered the iPhone in this color. The iPhone 5c had a particularly bright yellow option, and you could buy the iPhone 11 in a paler shade. However, the modern iPhone design hasn’t been available in that color at all until now — you’ve had to be content with mostly subdued tones outside of Product Red models.

The strategy behind this isn’t surprising. A new color theoretically boosts iPhone sales in the middle of the product cycle. It also gives the company an excuse to update Apple Watch bands for the spring. Still, you might not mind if you’re in the market for a phone and want something livelier than the monochromatic options that define the landscape.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/the-iphone-14-now-comes-in-yellow-133841844.html?src=rss 

Hogwarts Legacy won’t be making its way to the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One until May 5th, so you’ll have two more months of waiting to do if you have an older console. That is, if Warner Bros. Games and Avalanche Software don’t push back its release date yet again. They had postponed the game’s launch several times over the past few years, and they were supposed to release it for all consoles on February 10th. Less than a couple of months before that, though, they revealed that Hogwarts Legacy will only be available for the PS5, Xbox Series X/S and PC in February, while the PS4 and Xbox One are getting it on April 4th. 

Hogwarts Legacy is an action role-playing game with an open world you can explore and a character builder you can use to choose your own name, gender, voice and appearance. It takes place within the Harry Potter universe you’re familiar with, but way before The Boy Who Lived was born.

In the developers’ announcement, they said they’re “working hard to deliver the best possible experience on all platforms” but that they “need more time to do this.” They didn’t expound on what they meant by that, and it basically echoes what they said when they announced that the game won’t be released for older consoles in February. The developers didn’t mention anything about the Switch, though, so that version is still likely scheduled for release on July 25th. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/hogwarts-legacy-release-ps4-xbox-one-delayed-may-5th-094148707.html?src=rss