Page 25 - Computeractive - January 2, 2018 UK

WHAT W E D ISLIKED…

BIGGEST L ET DOWN WEIRDEST DESIGN
Kab y Lake p rocessors Apple i Phone XX

If you d idn’t k now t he new p rocessors that turned up in PCs at The iPhone 8 w as great, but not much
the s tart of 2017 had b een c obbled t ogether t o fi ll in for a d elay different f rom t he iPhone 7. So to keep
to Intel’s p lans, y ou’d probably have guessed. Performance its fans amused, A pple a dded a nother
improvements were so small w e b arely n oticed them, a nd laptop model. I nstead of the i Phone 9 , t hey
battery l ife o ddly seemed to go down rather than up. I t‘s O K t o called it the i Phone 1 0 a nd spelled i t
admit i t w hen s omething isn’t fi nished, I ntel. W e’ll wait! ‘iPhone X ’. Excitingly, t hey m ade t he
screen go all t he way to the e dge, but thenhen
they remembered the f ront camera a nd
wedged it into an unattractive cut-out att
the t op. W ith n o r oom f or a fi ngerprint
sensor, t hey s witched t o f ace recognition.n.
Now y ou can pay £ 1,000 for a p hone withith
a c hunk out of its screen that you h ave t oto
point a t y our h ead t o b uy a s andwich.

MOST HEROIC FAILURE MOST OVER HYPED TECHNOLOGY
Palicomp A u gmenteded

Luminosity reality

If 2016 was t he year virtual-
reality h eadsets finally
worked, 2 017 w as the y ear
manufacturers a ccepted that
only a f ew of us were ever
going t o b uy them. S o t hey
turned from VR to AR
(augmented r eality), offering
apps and g ames that brought t he
real world, via your phone camera, into tasks f rom fi nding
monsters to measuring y our s ofa. It’s all f un, b ut mostly pointless. Look
out for n ew tech in 2018 that makes A R a m ust-have! M aybe.

As frustrated as we were by Kaby Lakef As s t t ed b K ab Lak LE
LEAST N ECESSARY FEATURE
processors, P alicomp – o ne of the
4
UK-based fi rms that builds PCs based o n 4Konthe S ony
these components – h ad an answer:
X
overclocking the i 5-7600K chip to a XperiaXZPremium
searing 5GHz. E yebrows w ere n ot so
much raised as singed when our t ests,
designed t o p ush P Cs beyond their A A s creen n eeds more pixels if it’s bigger, b ut fewer i f i t’s f urther
s c
from your face. S o F ull HD looks sharp
comfort z one, sent the p rocessor to from i n t he cinema, on your
over 100°C before it turned itself o ff. It TV and s martphone. 4K, w ith f our t imes more pixels, l ooks
TV
bri
worked fine w hen s lowed d own a b it, a s brilliant i n t he cinema a nd on TV, a nd on a p hone… w ell, to
did a ll the o ther PCs we’ve s een f rom dete
detect the b enefit y ou’d have to put the p hone inside your eye.
Palicomp. A h w ell – i f w e g et a c old Th S ony i ntroducing a 4 K s creen o n i ts 5.5-inch
That d idn’t s top
Xp
winter we can always s it round i t. Xperia XZ Premium. Why , Sony? W hy?
20 December 2017 – 2 J anuary 2 018 25