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Sony Xperia Z2 Tablet Hands-On: A Familiar Waterproof Monolith

The tablet market is busier than it’s ever been, but Sony’s Xperia Tablet Z, with its waterproofing, minimalist design and super-slim frame, always felt like a unique prospect. While the impact of today’s reveal of the Xperia Z2 Tablet is lessened by familiarity with its excellent predecessor, it’s still looking like a very impressive slate.…

Nokia X: The First Nokia Androids

After much heavy rumor, Nokia has just announced that it’s launching its first Android handsets: the X, X+ and XL. https://gizmodo.com/rumour-the-nokia-x-will-be-a-super-cheap-android-1510549625 All the phones are built on the open source Android OS forked especially for Nokia. The X and X+ feature a 4-inch screen, while the XL packs a 5-inch IPS display. The X+ is…

Sony’s New Xperia Z2 Phone and Z2 Tablet Look Pretty Sweet

Surprise, surprise. Just over a month after Sony released what we thought was its flagship phone for the time being in the Xperia Z1S, it surprised us today by unveiling the upcoming Xperia Z2. It’s like a beefed-up version of its predecessor. And tagging along with it is the Xperia Z2 Tablet, which looks like…

Sony’s SmartBand Activity Tracker Is Real and Coming In March

Back in January at CES, we got a very brief look at Sony’s first activity tracker, dubbed The Core. It’s a tiny little pod that can be worn on your wrist in its SmartBand, or tucked discreetly into your pocket. The CES announcement was really just a tease, but finally a few more details have…

Nokia has confirmed that BBM is coming to its Windows Phone range.

The Moon sets behind Earth as a storm of light roars in Australia

Koichi Wakata—a Japanese astronaut now on board the International Space Station—just shared this incredible photo of the “Moon setting on the blue Earth atmosphere.” He just snapped these two awesome shots of auroras over Australia. “It looked like a storm of light,” he said. SPLOID is a new blog about awesome stuff. Join us on…

This is the oldest fragment of Earth ever found

You’re looking at the oldest fragment of Earth ever found: a zircon 4.375 billion years old, something that has deep implications in our understanding of the planet’s formation. While some scientists said other samples weren’t genuine, new research just published in the journal Nature Geoscience proves that this is the real McCoy. John Valley—a geochemist…

This MicroSD Card Packs Massive Capacity into a Minute Form Factor

At the company’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, SanDisk announced today the imminent release of the single largest-capacity MicroSD card ever created. This tiny storage medium offers an unprecedented 128 GB of space, but don’t expect it to come cheap. The 128GB SanDisk Ultra microSDXC™ UHS-I memory card provides desktop computer amounts of storage…

The symmetry of citrus is a beautiful thing

This photo by Emily Blincoe is more than a study in color, it’s a stunning tribute to the segmented beauty of citrus – to the liths and locules that every member of the genus shares in common, despite their many variations in size, savor and hue. All photos featured by kind permission of Emily Blincoe…

What the hell is this weird alien looking spiral in the desert?

Like the remains of a long lost human civilization, this formidable structure in the remote plains of El Gouna, Egypt extends over one million square feet in the Sahara Desert. It’s so big that you can see it from space—like some sort of stargate ready for an alien invasion. But, despite its appearances, the structure…

Watch this meerkat getting tickled and laughing histerically

I didn’t know that meerkats could laugh, let alone that they were this ticklish. It’s hilarious—and kind of freaky, actually. Anyone knows which other animals can laugh? Bonus video: Meerkat sleeping. SPLOID is a new blog about awesome stuff. Join us on Facebook

How Comcast’s Netflix Bullying Could Cost Us All

Earlier today, Comcast and Netflix announced that they’d reached an agreement to help end stuttery Netflix performance to Comcast subscribers. It’s actually not a breech of net neutrality; it’s a different flavor of trouble and it’s going cost all of us. https://gizmodo.com/report-netflix-agrees-to-pay-comcast-for-access-to-bro-1529115565 When a U.S. Appeals Court invalidated the FCC’s net neutrality rules, it opened…

Impressive images mix classic paintings and modern London street views

Reddit user Shystone has put together some really impressive mashups of classical paintings and Google Street View snapshots of London. They show how much and how little the city has changed in the last few hundred of years. The one above shows a 1749 Canaletto painting of Westminster Abbey. The Westminster Palace—which is the home…

Will This Watch-Controlled Smart Pistol Really Make Owning a Gun Safer?

Last week, a gun shop in California introduced a new addition to its stock: A .22-caliber pistol that only works when the user is wearing the accompanying RFID-enabled watch. It’s being heralded as the “iPhone of guns.” The gun is called the Smart System iP1, a pistol made by the German company Armatix that retails…

Are you a “Global Warming Nazi”? Probably (according to this man).

Roy Spencer – a climate-scientist-cum-climate-denier who does not believe in anthropogenic climate change – says that people who label climate deniers “climate deniers” will “kill far more people than the Nazis ever did,” and should be labeled, accordingly, “global warming Nazis.” Because that all sounds pretty reasonable, right? “They indirectly equate (1) the skeptics’ view…

The $16 Billion WhatsApp Sale Was Planned Around a Reward Miles Flight

You’d think that a $16 billion business deal would be a good reason to change your travel plans—after all, what’s it to a billionaire? But according to WhatsApp co-founder Jan Koum, finalizing the Facebook sale was organized around a plane ticket he couldn’t change because it was booked with rewards points. https://gizmodo.com/facebook-is-buying-messaging-app-whatsapp-for-16-billi-1526314666 In an amazing…

Why be just a killer whale when you could be an expert killer whale?

This is a Threadless design by Eduardo San Gil which upgrades the Orca’s other name with Assassin’s Creed duds. Can we do this for everything with “killer” in the name? Bees, for example. Let’s see “Expert Killer Bees.” Check out San Gil’s other designs, which also tend towards the geeky.

Mozilla Is Planning a $25 Firefox OS Smartphone

In developing countries, the high-end smartphone market is cornered by the big guys. But today at Mobile World Congress, the nonprofit Mozilla announced a plan to get a different slice of the smartphone pie—with a low-end Firefox OS phone that costs just $25. Since Mozilla is a nonprofit, its role in the deal will be…

Why Hipsters Are All the Same

Are you sick of so many bearded, flannel-shirted, thick-rimmed-eyeglass wearers slowing down the lines in your coffee shop before they crowd up your sidewalk as they scoot their way to their artisan butchery class? Are you tired of that quirkily homogeneous mass of humanity? We’ll tell you why it exists. There’s a reason why there’s…

These Giant Balloons Inflated Indoors Look Completely Surreal

What happens when you take a giant balloon and inflate it inside a small space? These photos show just that—and the surreal dreamworlds that result, looking like a mix between the inside of a person’s body and a ghostly construction site. The inflated interiors are the work of Penique Productions, a team of artists who…