Week in Tech: Watch out, here comes LG

Week in Tech

What's square, a bit boring and a total lightweight? No, not sleazy cheesemonger Robin Thicke: we mean LG's G Watch, which we've been waving at people all week. It's part of the ongoing wearables craze that's also seen new kit from Adidas, new tracking tools from Apple and yet more iWatch rumours. But that's not all: we've seen the next generation of Intel chips, a nifty Nokia, the next generation of Windows and the future of all intelligence. Not bad for a single week in tech.

G whiz

When the best thing you can say about a gadget is that it doesn't weigh too much, you know you're struggling for positive points - and that was definitely the case for John McCann when he put the LG G Watch through its paces. LG's first Android Wear device has a boring design, he says, and "the jury is still out on whether the world needs, wants and is desperate for a slew of smartwatches". LG's offering is unlikely to convince the jury.

Our Adidas

If you fancy a FuelBand but don't like its looks, allow us to introduce the Adidas FitSmart. It's "a rubberised watch-style wearable" and it's really nice in every respect bar one: the price. As Gareth Beavis says, "at £199 it's just too costly for many people, and especially too much of a gamble for those that aren't into fitness." We wonder what Run DMC would make of it.

Cupertino caffeine counting

The latest iOS 8 beta has unveiled some interesting new goodies: Apple's Health app won't just record your heart rate, but your caffeine intake too - although in our case it could guess that by measuring how much we vibrate and the fact we're sweating pure espresso. The app taps directly into the M7 motion tracking hardware of the iPhone 5S, which means there's no need for an iWatch or any other fitness device.

Jonathan Ive's glass eye

Apple design boss Jonathan Ive has designed an iPhone made entirely out of glass. It probably won't be ordinary glass, though, as Apple has been working with super-tough Sapphire glass. As this video shows, sapphire glass can survive a knife attack - which is brilliant for anyone who's sick and tired of their phone getting stabbed.

Microsoft embraces Android

Now that Microsoft has taken over Nokia, you'd expect the Finnish firm to, ahem, finnish using Android. Nope! Hot on the heels of the Noka X, we're hearing tales of an Android-powered Lumia. All we know so far is that it is a "strange looking device". Bet it isn't as strange as a BlackBerry Passport.

Broadwell, Haswell and Windows 9

Intel has unveiled the fifth generation of its Core series processors, known as Broadwell. Its tiny transistors promise processors that are 30% more efficient than Haswell ones, using 30% less power at the same clock speed. As Andrew Williams says, "Finally, we'll have laptops that can outlast current tablets."

Broadwell will herald a new era of affordable ultra-high res laptops, and the first ones should ship later this year - just in time for Windows 9, which is coming sooner than most people expected: we should see it in some form this Autumn.

What's the first rule of Drive Club?

Fancy some next-generation rain? Sony's got you covered with Driveclub, its incredibly realistic driving game. We got to see its impressive world-building tech this week, and it's confirmed what we said last month: if this doesn't impress PS4 gamers, nothing will.

All hail our AI overlords

There's a good chance computers will be smarter than you in three decades - unless you're Robin Thicke, in which case you're already lagging behind electric toothbrushes. We sat down with Murray Shanahan, professor of cognitive robots at Imperial College London, and he told us: "THE ROBOTS ARE COMING! RUN FOR THE HILLS!"

No, not really. Shanahan thinks AI is making great progress, but we're missing a vital piece of the puzzle: "We're a way off understanding how to achieve that artificial general intelligence," he told us. "There's a trick that nature has discovered, that evolution has discovered, that we're not making the most of yet." Looks like the rise of the robots is still some way off.

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