 active when you first boot the phone, and it has several shortcuts added to the dock at the bottom, and several folders chock full of Google's apps and services. As always, you can arrange these however you wish, add widgets and change wallpapers, and add more home screens. The app drawer is now arranged vertically, rather than horizontally, and places different app suggestions at the top of the screen. The settings menus are unchanged when compared to Lollipop.
The Google Search bar is now more colorful (to match the new Google logo) and offers handy suggestions about voice commands you can give. As noted in our review of Android 6.0 Marshmallow, Google Search is able to handle far more voice-based queries and commands. You can easily open the calendar and set appointments and/or reminders; open music apps and listen to songs; and of course dictate messages. The 5X allows you to train it to respond to a catchphrase, which means you can say "OK Google" and search from just about any screen.
Now on Tap is one of the marquee features of Marshmallow. A long press of the home button will cause the 5X to perform a quick search based on what's on the display and offer information/suggestions as a result. Now on Tap is best used when discussing plans or seeking other, contextual information about people, places, locations, events, and so on. It works as long as there's something interesting on the screen that you want to know more about. Now on Tap performed just as well on the 5X as it did on the Nexus 5.
Speaking of performance, the 5X has a hexa-core processor (that's six cores). The Snapdragon 808 is joined by 2GB of RAM and either 16 or 32GB of storage. The 16GB option is rather paltry, especially considering the 5X's lack of memory card support. The 5X performs rather unevenly. As noted, the fingerprint reader is blink-and-you-missed it fast, and the home screens move fluidly and without issue. But I thought the camera app was slow, as were the Play Store and Google Photos apps. The 5X might have benefited from an octa-core design and another 1GB of RAM, but I suppose that's what the Nexus 6P is for.
The 5X doesn't have a dedicated camera button, but a double press of the lock button will rouse the camera from slumber. Like a teenager, the 5X's camera is slow to wake. You can also open the camera from the lock screen itself, or via home screen shortcut. The camera was never quick to spring open.
The camera has a fairly basic feature set. Controls are spread out all over the place. The shutter button, user-facing camera, and gallery are all positioned along the right side of the screen. There are simple tools along the top for setting a timer, setting HDR to on/off/auto, and setting the flash to on/off/auto.
There are four shooting modes: auto, photo sphere, panorama, and lens blur. The first three are old hat. Lens blur lets you create shots where the subject is sharp, but the rest of the image is out of focus (also called the bokeh effect). This shooting mode actually requires some technique, as you have to move the camera (not too fast!) while shooting the image. This allows the camera to gather some perspective data and then render the image. Rendering takes a solid 12 to 15 seconds; it's not fast. After the image has rendered, you can adjust the point of focus and how far out it spreads. I think Google's handset partners have produced easier-to-master bokeh tools that deliver dramatically superior results.
There are three ways to capture regular images: press the screen lock button, press the software shutter button, or press the screen first to focus and then press the shutter button. None of these methods is quick. The 5X takes time to focus no matter which approach you choose, which is odd given the laser-assist function that works so well on other LG phones. I obtained the best results by pressing the screen first to lock focus before pressing the shutter button. If you're trying to snag shots of fast-moving toddlers or friends zipping past on skateboards, forget it.
Need to shoot video? Swipe the screen and the 5X will jump to video mode. There aren't too many video options. You can shoot at 30 frames per second in 4K, 1080p, or 720p, or up to 120 frames per second (for slow motion results) in 1080p or 720p. That's about it.
Just for the heck of it, I downloaded and teste FV-5 from the Play Store. It, too, was slow to focus and capture images. I used the same FV-5 camera app on the Moto X, too, and it performed much faster on that handset. Clearly, the Nexus 5X is underpowered as far as the camera is concerned.
Taken as a whole, the 12-megapixel camera of the 5X produces decent images. I definitely saw a range of problems here and there, but none of them were deal-breakers. The majority of images were sharp, and I didn't see any grain issues. I only noticed a few exposure issues, but they were in difficult situations (see the overblown house above the underexposed purple flowers). White balance was good throughout, with only one example below (hot air balloon) trending toward too warm.
I'd say most people will be happy enough to use the 5X as a daily shooter, but power users — which is often how Nexus owners are viewed — may be disappointed.
Don't bother shooting 4K video with the 5X. It's not that it doesn't produce good results, but with 16GB of storage (or even 32GB), that footage will munch down memory in short order. Moreover, it's useless to you without a 4K TV or monitor. Stick with the 1080p capture mode, which does well enough to satisfy the bulk of users. I was pleased with the 5X's video footage and think it will suffice as a daily shooter for regular Joes and power users alike.
The Pure Android Experience offered by Nexus phones means you don't get any bloat, just lots of Google stuff. There are 29 apps installed on the 5X out of the box, which is about half as many as are typically packed onto phones sold by the carriers. The lack of bloatware and junk is one of the many appealing things about owning a Nexus handset.Laughter on the air! O Puck perennial!
On a stolen bank of Arden violets.
If Katharine Lee Bates' (1859 - 1929) name sounds familiar, it should be. Her poem, "America the Beautiful," was set to music and became the patriotic anthem we all know and love. Daughter of a Congregationalist minister who died when she was a month old, Katharine was an English professor at Wellesley College for many years, as well as a noted scholar, poet, and writer of books for both children and adults. Serious-looking and somewhat awkward in movement, she was nonetheless very popular with her students because of her wicked sense of humor. Many of Katharine?s photographs show her with her collie, Hamlet, who was a beloved companion.
wouldn't it be cool if someone remembered one of our poems about 80 years after we've died? Thanks for keeping Bates immortal.
Thank you for this delightful glimpse into Bates' talents.BHETA Viewpoint from Paul Grinsell, Home Improvement and Garden Sector Director at BHETA.
Like many of us in the garden market, last month saw me at Glee 2018, checking out the latest trends and product innovations and as research companies and trend forecasters have been predicting for some time, one of the most striking aspects of the show was to what extent smart technology has come of age for outdoor applications.
According to Mintel’s 2018 report on gardening trends, smart-connected devices are now moving into the mainstream. Almost half of consumers who are not already in the market are now interested in purchasing and Mintel’s figures fit right in with what Scarlet Opus calls the ‘Eco 2.0’ trend which pushes clever, environmentally conscious, adjustable controls.
Most smart garden devices do one of two things. Either they automate a task, or they monitor the environment around them and inform the gardener of what to do next. More and more often, the two combine as for example with a greenhouse vent which opens and closes automatically according to the temperature it detects, or a connected sprinkler gathering weather information, and using it to automate a watering schedule.
Not so long ago the most amazing product on demo at gardening shows was the robotic lawnmower, but now we see plant pots incorporating plant sensor technology so that they can keep the householder informed about the need for watering, sending information to phones, tablet or computer, or simply to a handy display on the pot itself. Even the most basic plant sensors measure soil moisture and compare it with a plant database to yield specific advice on when to water that species. More sophisticated products do the same for ambient light, humidity, temperature and even levels of fertilizer. They can also measure multiple plants at once, enabling the use of a single sensor to monitor a whole garden.
Take all these variations and multiply them by the number of garden products and categories to which the technology can usefully be applied – greenhouses, cold-frames and propagators, watering systems (including the water-saving benefit), pots and container gardening, garden maintenance, garden lighting – to name but a few, and you start