Visit Rio with 360-Degree Videos and Virtual Reality

If you're not traveling to Brazil for the Summer Olympics, you can still explore the geography and culture of Rio de Janeiro, courtesy of Google.

Rio: Beyond the Map, released to the public July 29, deftly blends archival materials with stunning video, interactive media and profiles of artistic Cariocas, as natives of Rio de Janeiro are called.

The project's title alludes to Rio's favelas, the poorly mapped neighborhoods where 1.4 million people, or 20 percent of the city's population, live without addresses, according toGoogle's blog post about the project. Mapping these regions is part of another Google initiative, the "On the Map" project. [14 Strangest Sights on Google Earth]

Rio de janeiro

The experience begins with a 360-degree video of a motorcycle taxi ride up a hillside through the narrow, twisting streets of the São Carlos favela. The interactive landscape then allows users to learn more about landmarks, or watch short segments about artists from the favelas.

Beyond the Map is presented by Google Arts and Culture alongside thousands of images and video curated in partnership with local institutions. Each online exhibits focuses on different art forms and areas of the city, with interactive slideshows that showcase artwork and photography from Rio's rich past and present.

Google has also combined their familiar Street View technology with narration in virtual tours of more than 20 famous locations in Rio, such as the statue of Christ the Redeemer, with its panoramic views, or the white sand beach at Ipanema. The tours are also viewable as virtual reality experiences with a VR headset, such as Google Cardboard, and the Google Arts and Culture app on iOS or Android.

Rio de Janeiro will host the 2016 Olympic Games from Aug. 5 to 21. The Rio 2016 Paralympics will subsequently be held from Sept. 7 to 18

ants creation inspired computer network

The researchers will present their paper at the Association for Computing Machinery's Symposium on Principles of Distributed Computing conference, which will happen in Chicago between between July 25-29.

Ants, the micro icons of industriousness and organization, apparently can teach us something about how computer networks work and how they can be improved as well. A team at MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory has been studying ants to create a model of analysis of social networks, collective decision making among robot swarms, and communication in decentralized, ad hoc wireless networks.

MIT study confirms a long-held assumption in the scientific community, ants estimate their population density based on the frequency at which they bump into other ants while randomly exploring their environs. This ability appears to be key for several activities, including deciding where the colony establishes a new nest.

"It's intuitive that if a bunch of people are randomly walking around an area, the number of times they bump into each other will be a surrogate of the population density," says Cameron Musco, co-author of a paper on the research. "What we're doing is giving a rigorous analysis behind that intuition, and also saying that the estimate is a very good estimate, rather than some coarse estimate."

The researchers make a parallel between an ant's environment and a grid. An explorer ant starts at some cell of the grid and likely moves to one of the adjacent cells. It is also likely that it then moves to another cell adjacent to the one it departed from, and so on. In technical, statistical language this is called "random walk." The explorer ant counts the number of other ants in all the cells it visits.

Random walk versus random sampling

The study compares the random walk to random sampling, which is when cells are selected from the grid at random and the number of ants in each cell counted. In both cases accuracy improves with each additional sample, but the surprising factor here is that the random walk can reveal the true population density almost as quickly as the tried-and-tested random sampling method does.

The researchers say this is relevant because in many practical cases random sampling is not an option. For instance, in ad hoc networks, a given device knows only the locations of the devices in its immediate vicinity. An algorithm that uses random walks to aggregate information from multiple devices would be much easier to implement than one that has to characterize the network as a whole.

The study then gets interesting for its more counterintuitive findings.

It would be logical to assume that the explorer ant is likely to return to a cell it has already visited, so one given cell would more likely be oversampled than in the case of random samplings. But when the researchers got antsy about oversampled data and tried to filter it out, they found that, instead of improving their algorithm, it made it worse. They offer a theoretical explanation for that.

"If you're randomly walking around a grid, you're not going to bump into everybody, because you're not going to cross the whole grid," Musco says. "So there's somebody on the far side of the grid that I have pretty much a zero percent chance of bumping into. But while I'll bump into those guys less, I'll bump into local guys more. I need to count all my interactions with the local guys to make up for the fact that there are these faraway guys that I'm never going to bump into. It sort of perfectly balances out."

Graph data structure

To model the ants' environment, the researchers used a graph data structure consisting of nodes (circles), and edges, which are the line segments connecting nodes. In the grid, each cell is a node, and it shares edges only with those cells immediately adjacent to it.

If the graph is not very well connected, with just a chain of nodes, each connected only to the two nodes adjacent to it, then oversampling could become a problem, with the explorer stuck in the same set of nodes. But graphs describing communication networks often feature two random walks starting from the same node and then branching out in different directions. This being the case, random walks can offer almost the same level of accuracy as random sampling.

The bigger the number of explorers, the faster an analysis would produce an accurate estimate. "If they were robots instead of ants, they could get gains by talking to each other and saying, 'Oh, this is my estimate','" Musco adds.

New study,about video games

Remember all those years you spent in your youth playing Half-Life and Timesplitters on your PS2, and how your parents would yell at you because they couldn't understand how playing video games would help you get ahead in the real world? Well, now you can call them up and show them scientific evidence that all those years you spent with a controller in your hands might just have made you a better driver.

A new study conducted by researchers from the University of Hong Kong and New York University Shanghai discovered that playing easily accessible video games with a heavy action component for at least five hours a day can improve a person's visuomotor-controls, the motor skills that are used in real-world tasks such as driving.

The study was published on Friday in the journal Psychological Science.

Researchers conducted an experiment using test subjects who did not have any previous experience playing video games and separated them into two groups.

Video games

One group learned how to play the action video game,Mario Kart, while the other group was taught how to play the non-action video game, Roller Coaster Tycoon III. Both groups played their respective video games in 10 training sessions lasting one hour each. They were then asked to participate in a driving simulation in which they were told to steer a virtual vehicle down the center lane of a road in a crosswind that affected the direction of the car. The participants also played another video game as part of a second test in which they used a joystick to keep a floating dot centered on the screen.

The participants who played the action-based video game showed a significant improvement in their visuomotor control skills in both tests. The action-based gamers had more precision in the driving simulator as they attempted to stay in their assigned lane and respond to the crosswinds that tried to throw them out of their path. Those who played the non-action oriented game showed no improvement.

Now, of course, one way to look at this study is that video gamers did better playing different kinds of video games than non-gamers. Seems like kind of an obvious leap. Before jumping to the conclusion that more action gaming makes for better driving, we'd like to see a study that tests out real-world driving ability and its correlation with video games.

One interesting point that did emerge, however, is that in a secondary study, participants played the first-person shooter game Unreal Tournament and also saw improvements in the visuomotor control skills, showing that not only driving games, but other kinds of action games could help such abilities.

"The differing effects of driving and FPS video games on the sensorimotor system suggest that for experienced drivers, who have stable control but need to improve their ability to predict input error signals, training with FPS rather than driving video games is more effective," Li explains. "In contrast, for novice drivers, who are still struggling with obtaining stable control, training with driving rather than FPS video games is more helpful."

This isn't the first study to show that video games can have a positive effect on the human brain. A study published in November of 2014 in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences showed that playing action-based video games could increase the learning capabilities people need to help them anticipate certain real-world events.

Important topics for technology research paper

Every year, technological devices become faster, smaller, and smarter. Your cell phone holds more information than the room-sized computers that sent a man to the moon. In my essay Can Today's College Students Solve World Problems?, I talk about how advances like the green revolution and more fuel-efficient cars solved many of the problems that I worried about as college freshman in 1979. Yet these new solutions also cause new problems, like how the gasoline engine made travel faster and easier but also raised concerns about air pollution and global warming.

Below, you will find many questions, ideas, links, research, and videos to get you started on your research essay and ideas for how to write about technology from different perspectives, including:

• How to Write a Technology Research Paper
• General Topics (a list of questions to get you started)
• Reproduction (including egg and sperm donation and in vitro technologies)
• Our Bodies (including organ and animal transplants and innovations in surgery technologies)
• Human Cloning Topics (including genetic engineering)
• Identity (questions about how technologies influence our identities)
• Relationships (how texting, cell phones, and social media affect relationships)

Researching technology can involve looking at how it solves problems, creates new problems, and how interaction with technology has changed humankind.

Is Digital Reading Changing Our Brains?

Source

How to Research a Technology Paper

The technology research topics below are listed in categories and include hyperlinked articles to help you get you started. Many of the essays are used in popular college research essay textbooks like Perspectives on Argument (ed. Nancy Wood), which I use with my college students. However, because technology changes so quickly, I've also included links to articles in Discover Magazine which highlight interesting new innovations. Discover is a good place to start looking for topics since the magazine is written with authoritative scientific sources for the general reader. Here are the steps to start your research paper:

1. Understand your Research Assignment: What kind of a research paper has your instructor assigned? Re-read your assignment sheet and any information in the textbook. For example, I ask my students to choose a technology topic for a Summary, Analysis, and Response essay which asks them to research three or more perspectives on an issue.
2. Find a Topic Idea: Look over the six technology research topic list categories and scan the different arguable questions. For an Exploratory paper, you will need a topic which has three or more perspectives to explore. If you are doing a Position, Argument, or a Cause paper, you will need to know the different perspectives, but you will use your answer to the question as your thesis statement.
3. Read about the Topic: Once you find one you like, you can learn more about that issue by looking at some of the hyperlinked articles. You can also look atGale Opposing Viewpoints (which is often available through your school library) to find articles that give you an overview on the issue.
4. Choose a Question to Research: After you find a topic idea you like, write out the question and make a list of other similar issues or words you could use as keywords to research. You can use the other questions on the topic list to help you out.
5. Use Your Keyword Ideas to Look for Articles: You can start by looking at Google to see what you will find, but don't use articles from Google that don't fit the type of authoritative sources your instructor requires. Use your library resources to find more academic articles.

Can Video Gaming Make a Better World?

Sample Topics

Here is a list of twenty starter topic ideas for research essays. See below for many more!

1. What are the long-term effects of living in a technological world? Are these mostly negative or positive?
2. Are children under 12 now growing up in a different world than college-age students did? How is it different, and what does that mean for them?
3. What is the most important new technology for solving world problems?
4. How has social media helped solve and create problems in countries outside the U.S.?
5. Will governments like China continue to be able to control citizens' access to the Internet and social media?
6. How do social media, texting, cell phones, and the Internet make the world bigger? Smaller?
7. What are the implications of ever-increasing globalization through technology to the global economy?
8. Technology is changing so quickly that we are frequently using computers, software programs, and other technologies that have frustrating glitches and problems. Is there a solution?
9. How does our experience of social interactions with other humans influence the way we interact with machines?
10. When does it become morally wrong to genetically engineer your child?
11. What are new ways people can use technology to change the world?
12. How is digital learning going to change schools and education?
13. Does the Internet need controls or censorship? If so, what kind?
14. Do digital tools make us more or less productive at work?
15. To what extent is the development of new technologies having a negative effect?
16. How will technology change our lives in twenty years?
17. Should people get identity chips implanted under their skin?
18. Should people in all countries have equal access to technological developments?
19. Can video gaming really help solve world problems? (see video)
20. How are brains different from computers? (see video)
21. Is organic food really better for you than genetically modified foods?
22. What are genetically modified food technologies able to do? How does this compare with traditional plant breeding methods?
23. Should genetically modified food technologies be used to solve hunger issues?
24. Since it is now possible to sequence human genes to find out about possible future heath risks, is that something everyone should have done? What are the advantages or disadvantages?
25. If people have genetic testing, who has the right to that information? Should healthcare companies and employers have access to that information?
26. If parents have genetic information about their children, when and how should they share it with the child?
27. What sort of genetic information should parents seek about their children and how might this influence raising that child?
28. Would having cars that drive themselves be a good or bad idea?
29. How might travel in the future be different?
30. Should information technologies and Internet availability make work from home the norm?

How Will Computers Change in Five Years?

Reproduction Essay Ideas

Egg and Sperm Donation Technology

Your Gamete, Myself

1. What is the importance of having a genetic connection to your children?
2. Do egg donors and children have rights to a relationship?
3. Should egg and sperm donors be compensated?
4. What makes a person a mother or a father?
5. What regulation should there be on the infertility technologies?
6. Should health insurance plans cover infertility technologies?

In Vitro Transplant Technology

The Curious Lives of Surrogates

1. Is surrogate pregnancy a good way for a couple to get a baby?
2. Is it right that surrogacy is heavily advertised to military wives?
3. What should the children’s rights be in a case of surrogate pregnancy?
4. Should surrogates be used for any reason, or only for health reasons?
5. Is it ethical for a woman to carry someone else’s child?

How Could Glass Technology Change Our Lives?

Topics About Our Bodies

Organ Transplants

The Beating Heart Donors (about organ transplant donors)

1. When is a person dead? How do we define death? Should there be changes in our definition of “brain death"?
2. Should organ donors be given pain medications?
3. Should we choose organ donation for ourselves and our loved ones?
4. Do organ donors feel pain?

Animal Transplants

How Pig Guts Became the Next Bright Hope for Regenerating Human Limbs

1. Is it ethical to use tissue from animals in people?
2. Are using embryonic stem cells necessary, or will technological innovations make these obsolete?
3. Should more funding grants from the National Institute of Health (which tend to support research projects without immediate practical applications) go to practical research projects which produce direct medical help to individuals?
4. When considering war, should we factor in the medical costs of soldiers who will return wounded?

Surgery Innovations

The Bypass Cure (using bypass surgery to correct type 2 diabetes)

1. Should bypass surgeries be used as a standard cure for type 2 diabetes?
2. What is the cause of the recent increase in diabetes in the U.S.?
3. How much of diabetes type 2 and obesity is genetic? How much is behavioral?
4. Should people with obesity and diabetes or other diseases pay more for health care?

Surgery research topic: Should bypass surgery be used to cure diabetes? | Source

Human Cloning Topic Ideas

Genetic Engineering of Humans Research Links

• Genetically Engineering Babies with Three Parents (two short articles explaining this)
• Reverse Eugenics: Choosing an Embryo With a Disability
• Help Wanted: Adventurous Woman to Give Birth to a Neanderthal Baby
• Human Cloning: Is it a Viable Option (Human Genome Project fact sheet)

1. Is human cloning a good or bad idea?
2. Should we ban human cloning?
3. What makes people human?
4. What is the role of religion/faith in making decisions about using reproductive technologies?
5. How does cloning change the value of human life?

Brains vs. Computers

Identity Research Topics

Perception of Self

Ways to Leave Your Body (out-of-body technology and brain science)

1. What is the self? Can it be found in scientific investigation?
2. Does science have the final say about who we are? Will technology create anInception effect where people will not be able to distinguish out-of-body from in-body experiences?

Brain Manipulation

The Switched On Brain (using light waves in the brain to cure psychiatric disease)

1. Is controlling brains with technology like light ethical?
2. How important is it to find alternative treatments (something other than drugs) for mental illness?
3. What is the best way to treat mental illness?
4. Has an increase in the use of technology affected the rise of mental illness in the U.S.?
5. If it were possible, should technologies be used to control drug addictions?
6. Should we seek ways to control the brain with technologies?
7. What are the social dangers of brain-controlling technologies?

Medicine, Experiments, and Human Identity

1. Should human life be deemed more important than animal life?
2. What is dignity of human life and how should we observe this in medical situations?
3. Who decides how far medical research should go?
4. Should there be limits to scientific investigation on humans?

Source

Relationships Essay Topics

Texting and Cell Phones

When Texting is Wrong, by Randy Cohen in the New York Times.

1. Should there be social rules about cell phone use in schools or the workplace?
2. How are technologies changing the way people interact in the workplace?
3. Have texting and social media damaged this generation's ability to communicate in person?
4. Do cell phones and social media make family relationships stronger?
5. How has texting changed the way we communicate with one another?
6. What are the dangers of texting?
7. When is texting rude? Has texting made this generation less respectful of other people? Who decides?

Social Media

They Loved Your G.P.A. and Then They Saw Your Tweets by Natasha Singer in the New York Times

1. How should people manage their social networking profiles? How important is this?
2. Should there be limits to the access a university or employer has to social profiles?
3. Should teachers have limits on social networking with students?
4. How should professionals use Facebook or other social media?
5. Should there be more regulations on social media privacy?
6. How large a role should social profiles have in hiring and other decisions?
7. How justifiable is it to take legal action against someone for posts on social media sites?

Who killed Dallas Shooter !!

Dallas shooting  during which five police officers were killed and seven officers were injured died after police deployed a remote-controlled bomb-disposal robot carrying an explosive device.

Dallas Police Chief David Brown explained during a press conference that police sent the robot in after negotiations with the suspect broke down and he exchanged gunfire with officers.

Robots that are capable of handling or disarming explosives have become a more common sight in police departments in recent years, due to a Defense Department initiative known as the 1033 Program, which redistributes surplus military equipment. Approximately 200 law enforcement agencies — federal, state and local — across the U.S. have at least one so-called "bomb robot" provided by the 1033 Program, according to a 2015 report published by the Center for the Study of the Drone at Bard College.

"We saw no other option but to use our bomb robot and place a device on its extension for it to detonate where the suspect was," Brown told reporters, adding that police confirmed shortly after the explosion that the suspect had died.

While the U.S. military has used drones internationally as remote bombers, this could be the first instance of a U.S. police force's robot killing a suspect, said Peter W. Singer, a political scientist and strategist for New America, a non-partisan think tank addressing public policy issues.

Singer said in a tweet that he had heard of U.S. troops in Iraq using robots in a manner similar to the Dallas situation — modified to deliver explosives. While conducting an interview for his book "Wired for War: The Robotics Revolution and Conflict in the 21st Century" , he learned of an incident in which soldiers duct-taped an anti-personnel mine to a type of surveillance robot called a MARCBot, sending the machine into an alley after an insurgent.

what do you think technology will be like in the future !!

Technology is an essential part of our lives today and few can imagine living without. We achieved a lot with the help of technology, for example we have the possibility to travel, keep in touch with friends on the other side of the earth and cure many illnesses. It means more freedom and choices for people but at the same time we have to consider the social imbalance, weapons of mass destruction and natural resource depletion. Jane Godall asks for a reason: “We are the most intelligent species walking on earth, how it comes we destroy on what we depend?” What has achieved so far is irrevocable, but we can still determine where it goes in the future.

One of the most important things everybody has to deal with is to overcome the short-termism,which prevails in governments, companies and individuals. Additionally we know, that decisions one individual takes are not necessarily good for the society as a whole. This doesn’t make it easier.

Technology in future

Technology shapes the future and it can help to make it compatible with nature. It can help us to develop clean energy, transport possibilities with less emissions and low-energy houses to save resources. Technology is not only about technology itself or more efficiency and discovering new methods and processes; we have to add the component of art which is about to make wise choices for the future of technology. We should not develop technology because of itself, but to develop it, because it adds value to society and simplifies human life. For this, it needs to be discussed with experts from many fields and we have to relate the technology to the organization and the culture in which it should operate. 

I think it is important to bear in mind the mutual goal: to keep the planet with mankind and all its beautiful animals and plants alive. This implies to make technology as positive as possible for humanity and the environment in the long run. The technology we create now creates the future and it should be for the people and make things easier and not more complicated. So what kind of society will we be? they are part of the technology.

Best 5 smartphones in 2016

Best Smartphones in 2016!!

If you're looking for the best smartphone of 2016, you've come to the right place. We will guide you through the hottest mobile phones of the year to save you time when you go to your local phoneshop.

We continually update this best smartphones feature to reflect recent launches, recognise price changes, and ensure 2016's latest devices appear alongside the best of 2015 (and before, if applicable). All the listed devices have been fully reviewed by us.

Our best smartphones list covers all operating systems, all sizes, and prices, so you'll be armed with everything you need to consider when choosing to buy your next device.

Of course, the most important factor in buying a new device is making sure you have the best smartphone for you. The best for your budget, the features you need, the size that feels right and platform that suits you best.

Be sure to let us know what you think is the best smartphone in the comments below.

oneplus 3

5. OnePlus 3

OnePlus has consistently pitched its devices as "flagship killers", offering great specs for a low price point. Its latest handset saw a slightly more subdued launch, but the OnePlus 3 is one of the best smartphones on the market this year, especially at its £309 price point.

As with its predecessors, the OnePlus 3 offers incredible value for money. It has many of the same features and specifications as smartphones twice its price and there is a lot to be said for that. 

The all-metal finish of the third generation flagship killer is sleek and sturdy, making it feel like a genuinely premium device that is a far cry from the plastic-backed OnePlus devices that have come before it.

The display is fantastic too, even if it isn't Quad HD resolution like many of its competitors. The company may have shied away from the "flagship killer" branding this year, but the OnePlus 3 lays down the marker for what you can get for £300.

FULL REVIEW: OnePlus 3 review

HTC M10

                                                                                                                                 4. HTC 10

The HTC 10 marks a return to form for HTC. Leaving no stone unturned, the HTC10 addresses many of the criticisms of the HTC One M9, focusing on the things that matter in a smartphone, and ditching many of the distractions.

The HTC 10 is built to the high quality standard you expect from HTC, and it's executed with aplomb. But this isn't a showy handset, it's a handset that solid and serious, and that's a good thing.

There's an increase to 5.2-inches on the display, this time packing a Quad HDresolution, and power comes from the latest Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 chipset, with 4GB of RAM. There's also microSD for storage expansion.

But the real interest will be in the camera. Taking no chances, there's a 12-megapixel rear camera with large pixels to absorb more light, along with optical image stabilisation. The front camera also offers OIS and autofocus, a rare thing indeed and giving great photos.

The result is power, performance, great design and camera performance, held together with fuss-free software that's slick, fast and free from bloat. The battery life isn't the best and the display could be better, but there's no doubting that BoomSound Hi-Fi is the best in the business.

FULL REVIEW: HTC 10 review

Apple iphone 6s

 3. Apple iPhone 6S

The iPhone 6S takes a strong design and supercharges Apple's smartphone. TheiPhone 6S might be an "incremental" model, with no changes to the exterior design, but under the skin there's a lot that's new in the iPhone 6S.

A natural starting point is the display. Although it isn't the highest resolution handset out there, Apple has introduced pressure sensitivity to the new iPhone and called it 3D Touch. It's not unique, but the depth to which Apple has empowered this new feature stands it aside. Being able to trigger alternative actions, peek into apps and then pop them open, changes navigation around the phone.

This is a more powerful handset than previously, so things are slicker and faster, but there's also been a refresh to the camera, the first update in a long time. A new 12-megapixel sensor powers proceedings, with new features, including 4K video capture. You can now take Live Photos, bringing movement to stills, as well as an improved selfie experience, with the display firing as a flash.

The result is an iPhone in which it looks like not much has changed, but in reality, it has. It's a better, faster, more engaging experience than it was the last time around. It is, however, still one of the most expensive smartphones around at £539, and although it offers a premium experience, some will see that the iPhone is behind the curve in some areas, such as display resolution.

FULL REVIEW: Apple iPhone 6S review

SG S7

2. Samsung Galaxy S7

Following a strong showing from the SGS6, some might have been surprised by how little changed in the Samsung Galaxy S7. Launched alongside a larger S7 edge model, the SGS7 takes what the SGS6 started and refines it. It tweaks the design slightly bringing better aesthetics, reducing the camera bump on the rear and adding curves to the back edges for a nicer feel. It's more natural and less slab like.

Visually, that's about the only difference you'll see, but the SGS7 brings with it a whole lot more. It adds IP68 protection against water and dust and importantly, it brings the microSD card back, so you have more storage options.

Internally there's plenty of power for a slick performance from the Exynos or Qualcomm chipset and 4GB of RAM, and a wonderfully vibrant Quad HDAMOLED display. The S7 edge is more impactful in the display, larger at 5.5-inches, but both offer plenty of punch.

There's a hugely wide range of functionality offered through Samsung's TouchWiz reworking of Andorid Marshmallow, and although this perhaps throws up more features than you'll ever use, the important point is that it's beautifully optimised, so it doesn't feel like it's ever slowing the phone down. 

Pair that will improved batter performance and a camera that's consistent and dependable and you have the recipe for the most compelling smartphone on the market. The regular SGS7 is the smaller, with a 5.1-inch display, but is also cheaper at £569. However, the S7 edge is likely to be the more popular device, despite the £639 asking price.

This was the best handset of 2015 and it looks like a repeat performance in 2016.

FULL REVIEW: Samsung Galaxy S7 review

S7 edge

1. Samsung Galaxy S7 edge

Taking the top two places might be a little excessive for Samsung, but that's an indication of the triumph that the Galaxy S7 is. While the flat handset is certainly one of the most appealing devices out there, the S7 edge pips it to the post, taking pole position as the more desirable handset around.

The Samsung Galaxy S7 fuses power with performance, offering a 5.5-inch display with a Quad HD resolution and plenty of punch, but differentiating itself with those curved edges. The edge functions may be little more than novelty, but from a design point of view, the SG S7 edge is unique and distinctive.

The increase in size over the smaller handset brings appeal. There's more space to play, but without this handset getting too large. The build quality now matches the best of the handsets out there and the addition of a microSD cardslot makes this handset all the more practical.

But the bigger size also gives more space for battery, meaning that you'll get plenty of life out of this handset too. The software has a heavy Samsung TouchWiz treatment to it, but importantly, although offering more options than you'll ever need, the software doesn't get in the way of performance. It's slick and fast and every inch the flagship experience. 

This is topped-off with a slick fingerprint scanner and a camera the matches or betters the best out there, delivering the whole package. The Samsung Galaxy S7 offers the whole package.

FULL REVIEW: Samsung Galaxy S7 edge