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Friday, September 30
17 Fun Projects to See at Maker Faire San Diego
Very, Very Tiny X86 Systems
The most interesting market for Intel in recent years has been very, very small form factor PCs. ARM is eating them alive, of course, but there are still places where very small and very low power x86 boards make sense. The latest release from SolidRun is the smallest we’ve seen yet. The SolidPC Q4 is one of the smallest x86 implementation you can find. It’s based around the MicroSoM, a module even smaller than a Raspberry Pi, and built around a carrier board that has all the ports you could ever want from the tiniest PC ever.
The SolidPC Q4 is technically only a carrier board featuring a microSD slot, Displayport, HDMI 1.4B, two RJ45 ports with the option for PoE, three USB 3.0 Host ports, jacks for mic and stereo sound, and an M.2 2230 connector for a wireless module. The interesting part of this launch is the MicroSoM, a System on Module based on Intel’s Braswell architecture. Two models are offered, based on the quad-core Atom E8000 and the Pentium N3710. Both modules feature up to 8GB of DDR3L RAM and 4GB of eMMC Flash.
The interesting part of this launch is the MicroSoM, a System on Module based on Intel’s Braswell architecture. Two models are offered, based on the quad-core Atom E8000 and the Pentium N3710. Both modules feature up to 8GB of DDR3L RAM and 4GB of eMMC Flash. The size of these modules is 52.8mm by 40mm, or just a shade larger than the stick-of-gum-sized Raspberry Pi Zero.
The SolidPC isn’t intended to be a Raspberry Pi competitor. While those cheap ARM boards are finding a lot of great uses in industry, they’re no replacement for a small, x86 single board computer. The pricing for this module starts at $157 according to the product literature, with a topped out configuration running somewhere between $300 and $350, depending on options like a heatsink, enclosure, or power adapter. If you want a small single board computer with drivers for everything, there aren’t many other options: you certainly wouldn’t pick a no-name Allwinner board.
Filed under: news
Qualcomm Looks to Gobble Up NXP
Remember when we talked about NXP merging with Freescale to move into the top ten semiconductor companies? Yeah, that was just eighteen months ago and just barely closed before the new year. Now it looks like Qualcomm wants to acquire NXP to the tune of $30 billion.
You’re most likely familiar with Qualcomm as a cellphone silicon company. The acquisition of NXP opens up a lot of additional markets with their portfolio of chips — automotive among them thanks to the Freescale merger. Now you should be asking yourself just how big Qualcomm is already. What’s perhaps most interesting is that, as mostly a wireless chip company, Qualcomm is ranked number three in worldwide semiconductor sales. Adding NXP — a behemoth now in the top ten — adds at least 30% to Qualcomm’s numbers.
And so here we are, one step close to a monolithic chip fab that produces all computing power for the human race. Yippie!
Filed under: news
Lock Up Your Raspberry Pi with Google Authenticator
Raspberry Pi boards (or any of the many similar boards) are handy to leave at odd places to talk to the network and collect data, control things, or do whatever other tasks you need a tiny fanless computer to do. Of course, any time you have a computer on a network, you are inviting hackers (and not our kind of hackers) to break in.
We recently looked at how to tunnel ssh using a reverse proxy via Pagekite so you can connect to a Pi even through firewalls and at dynamic IP addresses. How do you stop a bad guy from trying to log in repeatedly until they have access? This can work on any Linux machine, but for this tutorial I’ll use Raspberry Pi as the example device. In all cases, knowing how to set up adequate ssh security is paramount for anything you drop onto a network.
Better than Password Security
Experts tell you to use a good password. However, with ssh, the best method is to disallow passwords completely. To make this work, you need to create a private and public certificate on the machine you want to use to connect. Then you copy the public key over to the Raspberry Pi. Once it is set up, your ssh client will automatically authenticate to the server. That’s great if you always log in using the same machine and you never lose your keys.
You need to create a personal key pair if you haven’t already. You can use the ssh-keygen command to do that on Linux. You can require a passphrase to unlock the key or, if you are sure only you have access to your machine, you can leave it blank.
Once you have the key it is easy to send the public key over to the server with the ssh-copy-id command. For example:
ssh-copy-id me@ssh.hackaday.com
You log in with your password one last time and the command copies your public key to the server. From then on, when you use ssh on that host, you’ll be automatically authenticated. Very handy.
Once you have keys set up, you can disable using regular passwords by editing /etc/ssh/sshd_config. You need the following settings:
ChallengeResponseAuthentication no PasswordAuthentication no UsePAM no
That prevents anyone from breaking in by brute force guessing of passwords. It also makes it harder to set up new users or log in from a new computer.
Save the Passwords; Use Two Types
For those reasons, it is not always a good idea to turn off passwords. A better idea is to use two-factor authentication. That requires you to enter a password and also a “one time” verification code. Where do you get that code?
There are several options, but the one I’ll use is from the Google Authenticator application. You can get the application for Apple devices, Blackberries, and–of course–Android devices. You install it in the usual way for your device. The trick is how to make the ssh server on the Pi use it.
Luckily the Raspian repos have a package called libpam-google-authenticator that will do the trick. Installing it with apt-get is only part of the trick, though. You need two things. First, you need to set up your account.
Set Up a Google Authenticator Account
To set up your account, you need to log into your Pi and issue the command google-authenticator. The program will ask you a few questions and then generate a URL that will show you a QR code. It will also provide you a numeric code. You can use either of these to set up your phone. The command will also provide you a few one-time scratch codes you need to save in case you lose your authenticator device. You need to do this for any user ID that can log in via ssh (even ones where you normally use a certificate).
Tell Your Pi to Require Two-Factor Login
The other part of the puzzle requires you to make changes to /etc/pam.d/sshd and /etc/ssh/sshd_config. The first line of /etc/pam.d/sshd should be:
auth required pam_google_authenticator.so
In /etc/ssh/sshd_config you need to make sure passwords are on:
ChallengeResponseAuthentication yes PasswordAuthentication yes UsePAM yes
Just make sure you don’t mess anything up. Losing the ssh server could stop you from being able to access the machine. I haven’t messed one up yet, but the advice I hear is to keep an ssh session open while you restart the ssh server (/etc/init.d/sshd restart) so if something goes wrong, you’ll still have a shell prompt open. You might also consider running:
/usr/sbin/sshd -t
This will verify your configuration before you pull the trigger.
By the way, if you already use certificates to log in, this won’t change anything for you. The certificate authentication takes priority over passwords. That does make it tricky to test your setup. You can force ssh not to use your certificate like this:
ssh -o PreferredAuthentications=password -o PubkeyAuthentication=no me@ssh.hackaday.com
Even for accounts where you use certificates, adding the two-factor log in will prevent brute force attacks on your password, so be sure to set up for all accounts you can use over ssh.
Other Protections
There are several other things you can do to help secure your ssh connection:
- Disallow root logins (edit the PermitRootLogin line in /etc/ssh/sshd_config; you can use sudo from a normal account if you want to become root)
- Use a non-standard ssh port (edit port in sshd_config)
- Consider installing fail2ban which will block IP addresses that exhibit suspicious behavior
- Disallow any users that don’t need ssh access (use AllowUsers or DenyUsers in the sshd_config file)
- Set PermitEmptyPasswords in sshd_config to ‘no’
Not everyone will agree with disallowing root logins. However, empirically, a lot of attacks will try logging in as root since virtually every Linux system has that account. It is harder for a random attacker to know that my user ID is WetSnoopy.
There are many other techniques ranging from port knocking to locking users to their home directories. You can rate limit connection attempts on the ssh port. Only you can decide how much security is enough. After all, you lock up your cash box better than you lock up your supply closet. However, convenient and free two-factor authentication can add a high level of security to your Raspberry Pi or other Linux-based projects. If you are really concerned, by the way, you can also force two-factor for accessing sudo, as well.
Filed under: how-to, linux hacks, Original Art, Raspberry Pi, Skills
Cellular Automata Explorer
Well all know cellular automata from Conway’s Game of Life which simulates cellular evolution using rules based on the state of all eight adjacent cells. [Gavin] has been having fun playing with elementary cellular automata in his spare time. Unlike Conway’s Game, elementary automata uses just the left and right neighbors of a cell to determine the next cell ahead in the row. Despite this comparative simplicity, some really complex patterns emerge, including a Turing-complete one.
[Gavin] started off doing the calculations by hand for fun. He made some nice worksheets for this. As we can easily imagine, doing the calculations by hand got boring fast. It wasn’t long before his thoughts turned to automating his cellular automata. So, he put together an automatic cellular automator. (We admit, we are having a bit of fun with this.)
This could have been a quick software project but half the fun is seeing the simulations on a purpose-built ecosystem. The files to build the device are hosted on Thingiverse. Like other cellular automata projects, it uses LED matrices to display the data. An Arduino acts as the brain and some really cool retro switches from the world’s most ridiculously organized electronics collection finish the look of the project.
To use, enter the starting condition with the switches at the bottom. The code on the Arduino then computes and displays the pattern on the matrix. Pretty cool and way faster than doing it by hand.
Filed under: Arduino Hacks, misc hacks
Win up to $15,000 from the Bernzomatic Grant Program
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GE Lights for Life Challenge Winners Announced at Maker Faire
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This Two-Player Mini Arcade Is Powered by Raspberry Pi
The post This Two-Player Mini Arcade Is Powered by Raspberry Pi appeared first on Make: DIY Projects and Ideas for Makers.
Maker Pro News: Connecting at Maker Faire and More
The post Maker Pro News: Connecting at Maker Faire and More appeared first on Make: DIY Projects and Ideas for Makers.
Nintendo’s Japan-only Mini Famicom lets you out-hipster gaming friends
Behold the Mini Famicom.
Sure, you might think you're the most hip, cool, finger-on-the-pulse of gaming kinda guy having pre-ordered Nintendo's upcoming emulation box, the Nintendo Classic Mini NES. But after you've invited everyone round to fawn over the detail in the Mini NES cartridge slot, served a few light beverages, and began to feel really good about your choices in life, along comes your older, beardier, always-slightly-more-trendy friend. Tucked under his arm, just in sight, is Nintendo's Japan-only Nintendo Classic Mini: Family Computer, otherwise known as the Mini Famicom.
Distraught, you begin talking about how your Mini NES comes with 30 built-in games in a vain attempt to cushion the blow, but to no avail. The Mini Famicom with its Japan-exclusive games and import-only cachet has stolen your thunder. Oh yes, check and mate my friend. You've been well and truly out-hipstered.
And why not? Just look at how much more exciting the Mini Famicom is with its chintzy red finish. It even has hard-wired controllers, just like on the original Japanese Famicom that was released way back in 1983 (two years before it was released in the US, and three before Europe). Also like the original, the Mini Famicom is functionally identical to the Mini NES, containing 30 emulated versions of classic 8-bit Famicom/NES games that it spits out over a modern HDMI cable in glorious HD. Multiple display modes—including one that simulates old CRT screens—and save states are also part of the package.
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Craft a Jack-O’-Lantern Centerpiece
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Green Bronx Machine Blends Science, Food, and Learning
The post Green Bronx Machine Blends Science, Food, and Learning appeared first on Make: DIY Projects and Ideas for Makers.
Sixth Maker Faire Atlanta Features 200 Maker Exhibits
The post Sixth Maker Faire Atlanta Features 200 Maker Exhibits appeared first on Make: DIY Projects and Ideas for Makers.
A Beautiful Turntable With A Heart Of Concrete
On the face of it, playing a vinyl record is a simple process. You simply mount it on a turntable rotating at the right speed, and insert a needle into the groove. A learning exercise for youngsters used to be a passable attempt at a record player on the kitchen table with a pencil, a large cork, a sharpened matchstick, and a piece of paper. It sounded awful, but it demonstrated well how the audio was recorded.
If you have ever looked into the operation of a more conventional turntable though you’ll know that a little more care and attention is needed. There are many factors which affect the quality of the sound, and you quickly become obsessive about tracking, and sources of the tiniest vibration. Someone who has followed this path is [Mjhara], who has made a very high quality turntable. There an unusual choice in this project: the tonearm is part of the build rather than fitting a commercial item like most turntable projects.
Sometimes audiophiles take their quest for better sound to extremes, and justification for their expenditure can be very subjective. But [Mjhara] assures us that this turntable has an exceptionally good sound, and it is certainly a thing of beauty. Full details are in the Imgur gallery embedded below the break.
We’ve featured surprisingly few home made audiophile turntables here at Hackaday, probably because classic examples aren’t hard to come by. This layered plywood example is probably the most striking we’ve shown you.
Thanks [Itay Ramot] for the tip.
Filed under: home entertainment hacks
Amazon Offers $2.5M To Make Alexa Your Friend
Amazon has unveiled the Alexa Prize, a $2.5 Million purse for the first team to turn Alexa, the voice service that powers the Amazon Echo, into a ‘socialbot’ capable of, “conversing coherently and engagingly with humans on popular topics for 20 minutes”.
The Alexa Prize is only open to teams from colleges or universities, with the winning team taking home $500,000 USD, with $1M awarded to the team’s college or university in the form of a research grant. Of course, the Alexa Prize grants Amazon a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free license to make use of the winning socialbot.
It may be argued the Alexa Prize is a competition to have a chat bot pass a Turning Test. This is a false equivalency; the Turing Test, as originally formulated, requires a human evaluator to judge between two conversation partners, one of which is a human, one of which is a computer. Additionally, the method of communication is text-only, whereas the Alexa Prize will make use of Alexa’s Text to Speech functionality. The Alexa Prize is not a Turing Test, but only because of semantics. If you generalize the phrase, ‘Turing Test’ to mean a test of natural language conversation, the Alexa Prize is a Turing Test.
This is not the first prize offered for a computer program that is able to communicate with a human in real time using natural language. Since 1990, the Loebner Prize, cosponsored by AI god Marvin Minsky, has offered a cash prize of $100,000 (and a gold medal) to the first computer that is indistinguishable from a human in conversation. Since 1991, yearly prizes have been awarded to the computer that is most like a human as part of the competition.
For any team attempting the enormous task of developing a theory of mind and consciousness, here are a few tips: don’t use Twitter as a dataset. Microsoft tried that, and their chatbot predictably turned into a racist. A better idea would be to copy Hackaday and our article-generating algorithm. Just use Markov chains and raspberry pi your way to arduino this drone.
Filed under: news, robots hacks
Rosetta to finish its slow descent to comet’s surface Friday morning
Livestream of tonight's festivities.
It's time for Europe's comet probe, Rosetta, to die. At 4:48pm ET Thursday, the spacecraft fired its thruster for 208 seconds, setting Rosetta on course for a controlled descent to the surface of its comet on Friday morning at approximately 7:20am ET.
In accord with the spacecraft's descent to the surface, the European Space Agency will provide live coverage via Livestream about an hour before the landing time. The live video will feature status updates from mission controllers live from the European Space Operations Center in Darmstadt, Germany.
The spacecraft arrived at the Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko, which is about 4km on its longest side, in 2014. It became the first mission to orbit around a comet and, with its small Philae lander, the first to touch down on a comet’s surface. Now the main probe will follow Philae down to the surface.
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Weatherproof Circuits With a Pouch Laminator
[Nick Poole] over at SparkFun was playing with some force resistive strips. He wanted to use them as a keyboard input. It occurred to him that the office laminator could feasibly laminate a sheet of paper and the resistor into one sealed piece.
He put the assembly inside the pouch, ran it through the laminator, and it worked! After this success he built on it to make a full resistive keyboard. Then it occurred to him to ask, as it would to any good hacker with access to expendable company property “what else can I laminate”? Basically everything.
His next experiment was an LED throwie. No problem. Bolstered by the battery not exploding, he got more creative. The next victim was one of SparkFun’s Arduino-compatible boards and his business card. Success again.
Finally he went full out. Since the input rollers to the laminator are soft silicone it can apparently accommodate a fair amount of variance in height. He threw a full noise maker keyboard with resistive pads and a USB cable into the assembly. No issue.
It seems like a pretty good technique for making keyboards, weather proof circuits, and more.
Filed under: tool hacks
Thursday, September 29
Microsoft merges Bing, Cortana, and Research to make 5,000-strong AI division
Microsoft wants to "democratize artificial intelligence" and bring AI to systems that everyone uses. So to reflect that desire, the company is shaking up its organization. The company is creating a new group, the AI and Research Group, by combining the existing Microsoft Research group with the Bing and Cortana product groups, along with the teams working on ambient computing (a world in which everything around us is computerized and connected and responsive to our presence), robotics, and the Information Platform Group (which covered both Bing advertising and natural user interfaces).
Harry Shum, Executive Vice President, Artificial Intelligence and Research Group (credit: Microsoft)
Together, the new AI and Research Group will have some 5,000 engineers and computer scientists. It will be lead by 20-year Microsoft veteran Harry Shum, who was previously the Executive Vice President of Technology and Research. It makes AI into a fourth engineering group, alongside Windows, Office, and Azure.
Microsoft has been pushing more intelligent services. For consumers, these include Skype Translator, Cortana, and, rather less successfully, its Tay chatbot. And the Cortana Intelligence Suite for businesses and developers has provided the option to add machine learning, image recognition, and similar capabilities to various applications. Uber is a recent client of this: it's using Microsoft's facial recognition service to ensure that drivers are using their own accounts, requiring them to take a selfie at the start of each session which is then compared to one on file. Earlier this week, the company also demonstrated the use of reprogrammable chips to accelerate AI-style neural net workloads on its Azure cloud computing service to perform high-speed text translation.
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Dealmaster: Get the new Amazon Fire TV Stick and a $10 credit for $40
Greetings, Arsians! Courtesy of our partners at TechBargains, we have a number of deals to share today. We have an early deal on the new Amazon Fire TV Stick—now you can preorder the streaming device, which features an updated processor and an included Alexa-enabled remote, and get a $10 Amazon credit, two months of Hulu, and one month of Sling TV for just $40. This is a steal for everything that you're getting, especially considering the original Fire TV Stick was incredibly popular. With the new model, you'll get more power and the flexibility of using the remote with Alexa voice-controlled features.
Check out the full list of deals below, too.
Featured
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“Patents are bulls–t,” says Newegg Chief Legal Officer Lee Cheng
Lee Cheng is one of the few attorneys to fight back against patent trolls and prevail. And at the latest Ars Live event, we talked to him about his most famous case, how people can fight patent trolls today, and what the future of patent abuse will look like in coming decades. His answers, as expected, were incredibly candid and hilarious.
In 2007, a patent troll known as Soverain had already gotten millions of dollars out of The Gap and Amazon for their online shopping cart patent when they hit Newegg with a suit. Cheng's colleagues in the legal community said you'd better just pay up—this patent is legit. Cheng didn't see it that way. Newegg had just reached a billion in sales, and he thought this piece of litigation would be the first of many lawsuits brought by companies that wanted a piece of Newegg's success. And sure enough, soon after the shopping cart claim Newegg was hit with patent claims on several aspects of online search. Cheng decided he wasn't going to lie down and take it. He thought he could win on appeal if he could just make it through the courts in the Eastern District of Texas, where 40 percent of patent infringement claims are brought.
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Boombox Doorjam Plays Your Theme Song When You Step in the Ring
Although many of us may have had childhood aspirations to be a famous wrestler in the WWE, not very many of us will ever realize those dreams. You can get close, though, if you have your own epic intro music theme that plays anytime you walk into a room. Although it’s not quite the same as entering a wrestling ring, [Matt]’s latest project will have you feeling just as good whenever you enter a room to your own theme song.
The core of the build consists of a boom box with an auxiliary input. The boom box is fed sound via a Raspberry Pi which also serves as the control center for the rest of the project. It runs Node.js and receives commands via websockets from a publicly accessible control server. The Pi is also running Spotify which allows a user to select a theme song, and whenever that user’s iBeacon is within range, the Pi will play that theme song over the stereo.
The project looks like it would be easy to adapt to any other stereo if you’re looking to build your own. Most of the instructions and code you’ll need are available on the project’s website, too. And, if you’re a fan of music playing whenever you open a door of some sort, this unique project is clearly the gold standard. It might even make Stone Cold Steve Austin jealous.
Filed under: musical hacks
Hallucinating Machines Generate Tiny Video Clips
Hallucination is the erroneous perception of something that’s actually absent – or in other words: A possible interpretation of training data. Researchers from the MIT and the UMBC have developed and trained a generative-machine learning model that learns to generate tiny videos at random. The hallucination-like, 64×64 pixels small clips are somewhat plausible, but also a bit spooky.
The machine-learning model behind these artificial clips is capable of learning from unlabeled “in-the-wild” training videos and relies mostly on the temporal coherence of subsequent frames as well as the presence of a static background. It learns to disentangle foreground objects from the background and extracts the overall dynamics from the scenes. The trained model can then be used to generate new clips at random (as shown above), or from a static input image (as shown in pairs below).
Currently, the team limits the clips to a resolution of 64×64 pixels and 32 frames in duration in order to decrease the amount of required training data, which is still at 7 TB. Despite obvious deficiencies in terms of photorealism, the little clips have been judged “more realistic” than real clips by about 20 percent of the participants in a psychophysical study the team conducted. The code for the project (Torch7/LuaJIT) can already be found on GitHub, together with a pre-trained model. The project will also be shown in December at the 2016 NIPS conference.
Filed under: software hacks
22 Reasons to Not Miss World Maker Faire New York This Weekend
The post 22 Reasons to Not Miss World Maker Faire New York This Weekend appeared first on Make: DIY Projects and Ideas for Makers.
Testing the Speed-of-Light Conspiracy
There are a number of ways to measure the speed of light. If you’ve got an oscilloscope and a few spare parts, you can build your own apparatus for just a few bucks. Don’t believe the “lies” that “they” tell you: measure it yourself!
OK, we’re pretty sure that conspiracy theories weren’t the motivation that got [Michael Gallant] to build his own speed-of-light measurement rig, but the result is a great writeup, and a project that includes one of our favorite circuits, the avalanche transistor pulse generator.
If you happen to have a photomultiplier tube in your junk box, you can do away with the amplifier stage. Or if you have some really fast logic circuits, here’s another project that might interest you. But if you just want the most direct measurement we can think of that’s astoundingly accurate for something lashed up on breadboards, you can’t beat [Michael]’s lash-up.
Oh and PS: He got 299,000 (+/- 5,000) km/sec.
Filed under: misc hacks
Chemistry, Music, and Parkour Blend at Maker Faire Galicia
The post Chemistry, Music, and Parkour Blend at Maker Faire Galicia appeared first on Make: DIY Projects and Ideas for Makers.
Taking a U2F Hardware Key from Design to Production
Building a circuit from prototyping to printed circuit board assembly is within the reach of pretty much anyone with the will to get the job done. If that turns out to be something that everyone else wants, though, the job gets suddenly much more complex. This is what happened to [Conor], who started with an idea to create two-factor authentication tokens and ended up manufacturing an selling them on Amazon. He documented his trials and tribulations along the way, it’s both an interesting and perhaps cautionary tale.
[Conor]’s tokens themselves are interesting in their simplicity: they use an Atmel ATECC508A specifically designed for P-256 signatures and keys, a the cheapest USB-enabled microcontroller he could find: a Silicon Labs EFM8UB1. His original idea was to solder all of the tokens over the course of one night, which is of course overly optimistic. Instead, he had the tokens fabricated and assembled before being shipped to him for programming.
Normally the programming step would be straightforward, but using identical pieces of software for every token would compromise their security. He wrote a script based on the Atmel chip and creates a unique attestation certificate for each one. He was able to cut a significant amount of time off of the programming step by using the computed values with a programming jig he built to flash three units concurrently. This follows the same testing and programming path that [Bob Baddeley] advocated for in his Tools of the Trade series.
From there [Conor] just needed to get set up with Amazon. This was a process worthy of its own novel, with Amazon requiring an interesting amount of paperwork from [Conor] before he was able to proceed. Then there was an issue of an import tariff, but all-in-all everything seems to have gone pretty smoothly.
Creating a product from scratch like this can be an involved process. In this case it sounds like [Conor] extracted value from having gone through the entire process himself. But he also talks about a best-case-scenario margin of about 43%. That’s a tough bottom line but a good lesson anyone looking at building low-cost electronics.
Filed under: hardware
The Power of Kids and Science
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Building a Life-Size Replica of Poe Dameron’s X-Wing
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Mold Chocolate to Create a Candy-Filled Jug
The post Mold Chocolate to Create a Candy-Filled Jug appeared first on Make: DIY Projects and Ideas for Makers.
Sony Xperia X Compact review: Small Android is still good, but not much better
Video shot/edited by Jennifer Hahn. (video link)
Sony's Xperia X Compact is basically the newest version of the Z5 Compact that hit the US earlier this year. But just because it's a newer version of the (comparatively) tiny handset doesn't mean it's an upgrade in every way. Sony is pushing the camera sensors in the X Compact and the flagship-level XZ, as well as new features like five-axis image stabilization and HDR photo mode. Sony knows cameras, so we know the shooter in the X Compact will at least be competent. However, it has to be good enough to encourage photography buffs to shell out $499 for this unlocked handset while delivering solid performance across the board as well.
Look and feel
The X Compact is cut from the same cloth as the Z5 Compact. It's a little brick-like handset that measures 5.0 x 2.56 x 0.37-inches and its diminutiveness at first struck me as cute, but then became somewhat frustrating. My daily smartphone is an iPhone 6—not even the big 6 Plus—and everything about the X Compact felt small to me. I became frustrated with things like the onscreen keyboard in particular; my fingers would often miss keys or hit the wrong ones while typing out messages at my normal texting speed. But size is a matter of taste, and the X Compact's smallness is part of the point—I like something a little bigger, but if you want a smaller Android phone, this is still one of just a few options.
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