Smart Home

Amazon has released their Amazon Key service which uses an Amazon produced smart camera, a smart lock from Yale or Kwikset, and the Amazon Cloud to allow delivery drivers to unlock your front door and leave your parcel inside.

Advertised as a communication robot, the new Sony Xperia Hello! is more than just another Amazon Echo wannabe. It can be used to make Skype or Line video calls, runs Android Nougat, and features a Qualcomm Snapdragon 650 processor.

The Samsung Connect Tag is a 0.06-pound IoT accessory with GPS, Bluetooth, and WiFi connectivity, as well as eSIM support. It runs Tizen IoT and will be on display at the Samsung Developer Conference that takes place in San Francisco later this week.

Google Clips is a small wearable action camera that automatically takes pictures of what it judges to be special moments. It learns who the important people in your life are via machine learning, and it may pose a serious privacy concern.

Google is spicing up their Home line of smart home management devices with Home Mini and Home Max. Mini is a smaller version of home, while Max is a massive smart speaker with dual subwoofers.

It doesn't look like Google will have much left to unveil at its October 4 launch event. In addition to all the Pixel 2 leaks, more details have spilled out about the new Pixelbook and the Google Home Mini intelligent speaker.

Intel's self-learning Loihi processor is built using the 14 nm manufacturing process and integrates 130,000 artificial neurons that can develop up to 130 million synapses. The chip can perform training and inference tasks, so it adapts in real time to environmental variables. Loihi could power self-driving cars in a few years, but it could also help improve education, facial recognition, manufacturing, emergency services and smart cities.

The PowerVR Series9XE GPUs are designed for entry-level mobile devices and cost-effective products, while the more advance Series9XM chips are aimed at mid-range smartphones/tablets, premium gaming set-top boxes and infotainment systems. Imagination's first NNA chip offers similar features to Apple's A11 Bionic and Huawei's Kirin 970 SoCs, but in a more energy-eficient envelope.