Motorola's first Intel-powered handset launches in UK

The BBC's technology correspondent Rory Cellan-Jones takes a look at the Razr i with Motorola's Mark Notton

Google's Motorola unit has released its first Intel-powered smartphone.

The Razr i is based on a mid-range model sold in the US that features an ARM-based Snapdragon processor.
Motorola said the change of chip meant improved camera performance. However, it has also meant Google's Chrome browser is not installed on the device.
Intel recently cut its sales forecasts citing weaker demand. Although it dominates PC chip sales it is a niche player in the smart device sector.

The handset is Motorola's first to feature an Intel processor

Its existing smartphone partners - ZTE, Lenovo, Lava, and Gigabyte - are all relatively minor smartphone forces in Western markets.
So, Intel's tie-up with Google - which also makes the Android system - is widely seen as its most significant effort to crack the market to date.
The handset will be offered in the UK, France, Germany and Latin America.
It has a 4.3in (10.9cm) display making it bigger than Apple's iPhone 5, but smaller than Samsung's top-selling Galaxy S3 and HTC's One X.
Chrome compromise The Motorola device features a new Intel Atom chip which runs at 2 gigahertz - an improvement on the 1.6GHz model included in an Orange-branded model launched in the UK in May.
Intel said the chipset also included a new image signal processor that had been specifically optimised to work with Motorola's technology.
"You can be ready to take a picture in less than one second, which is about twice as fast as other products on the market," Eric Reid, general manager of Intel mobile and communications group, told the BBC.
"A lot of times you want to take multiple pictures - and you can take up to 10 pictures in a second, which is faster than many DSLRs (digital single lens reflex) cameras on the market today."
However, the inclusion of Intel's technology has meant that Google has not been able to offer Chrome as the default web browser, as it does with the handset's US counterpart, the Droid Razr M.
"Chrome is not ready for pre-loading on this device," acknowledged Jim Wicks, senior vice president of consumer experience design at Motorola.

Intel's current Atom processors use a single CPU core

"We don't want to do that unless we have complete chipset optimisation at that level."
He added that users would be able to download the software from the Google Play store as an option. The firm markets the software as having "hardware-accelerated page rendering" on ARM-based chips.
Battery life Intel opted to use a single-core CPU (central processing unit) design for its latest chip, bucking an industry trend for dual or quad-core models.
Multiple cores allow handsets to maximise battery life by only using all of the cores when they are carrying out processor-intensive tasks, but switching some of them off at other times to save energy.
Intel said it had instead used a technique it called hyper-threading which allowed its single core to carry out two tasks in parallel. It said this allowed it to complete calculations more quickly, and thus shut down the processor down faster.
"Not all cores are created equal," said Mr Reid.
"It's really about what the architecture can do and how you do it in the most efficient fashion.
"We found with the Atom processor we can deliver performance on our processor that actually beats many of the dual core processors on the market today."
Motorola said it had also included its own Smart Actions software to help the device achieve about a 20-hour lifespan between charges. The utility is not offered to other Android device makers.

Motorola's top-end Razr Maxx uses a dual-core CPU made by Qualcomm

The software studies how each owner uses their handset and then suggests times it can automatically switch off functions such as bluetooth connectivity and GPS location functionality.
"You might get up to 15% to 20% more battery life out of our devices as a result," Mr Wicks said.
Mid-range mobiles One industry watcher said it was noteworthy that Intel had deliberately decided not to target its chip at Motorola's top-end handsets.
"It may look strange that a computing company like Intel would position itself with a mid-range device," said Malik Saadi - principal analyst at Informa Telecom.
"But there is less competition in that segment, and many of the other device at that price point are lower performance, so it will get noticed.
"Intel is trying to enter the mobile market in a modest way... We expect it will launch a more expensive multi-core processor in 2013, although we don't know the partner."
Mr Wicks confirmed that Motorola planned to offer further Intel-based handsets over the coming years, but would not discuss whether they would also be restricted to markets outside the US.
Mr Reid added that Intel planned to announce further tie-ups with manufacturers before the end of 2012.

Microsoft warns on previously unseen IE bug

Microsoft has released a temporary software fix for a newly discovered bug in its Internet Explorer web browser.

The problem, which affects hundreds of millions of IE browser users, is being used by attackers to install the Poison Ivy trojan.
This piece of malware is used to steal data or take remote control of PCs.
Microsoft moved quickly to address the issue. In a blog post, it said that it was "working to develop a security update".
So-called zero-day, or newly discovered, vulnerabilities are rare. According to security firm Symantec, only eight such bugs were spotted in 2011.
Symantec research manager Liam O Murchu said they were dangerous to users because they were new.
"Any time you see a zero-day like this, it is concerning.
"There are no patches available. It is very difficult for people to protect themselves."
Alternative browsers The flaw was spotted by Luxembourg-based security expert Eric Romang, when his PC was infected by Poison Ivy last week.
Microsoft told users to download a free patch, the Enhanced Mitigation Experience Toolkit, as a temporary solution while the company continued to work on a long-term fix.
But experts warned the new software must be downloaded and manually configured, making it cumbersome for many ordinary users.
Some advised users to switch to alternative browsers, such as Google's Chrome or Mozilla's Firefox while the bug was being fixed.
It is expected that producing a proper update will take about a week.

Dark energy camera snaps first images ahead of survey

The most powerful sky-scanning camera yet built has begun its quest to pin down the mysterious stuff that makes up nearly three-quarters of our Universe.

The Dark Energy Survey's 570-million-pixel camera will scan some 300 million galaxies in the coming five years.
The goal is to discover the nature of dark energy, which is theorised to be responsible for the ever-faster expansion of the Universe.
Its first image, taken 12 September, focussed on the Fornax galaxy cluster.
In time, along with its massive haul of individual galaxies, it will study 100,000 galaxy clusters - the largest stable structures we know of - and 4,000 supernovae, the bright dying throes of stars.
This enormous survey is a collaboration between US, UK, Brazilian, Spanish and German astronomers.
The phone box-sized Dark Energy Camera or DECam is mounted on the 4m Victor M Blanco telescope at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile's Atacama desert.
While it is not the highest-resolution camera - that honour goes to the Pan-Starss instrument in Hawaii - its high resolution and extraordinary sensitivity make it arguably the world's most powerful camera.

DECam is particularly sensitive to red and infrared light, to better study cosmic objects as distant as eight billion light-years away.

More distant objects are moving away from us - and each other - faster than nearer objects, which causes a shift of their apparent colour toward the red end of the spectrum - a "redshift". But the very stretching of space can cause the same effect.

Careful studies of the shifted light from distant supernovae were what first demonstrated this expansion of the Universe, leading to the 2011 Nobel prize in physics.
What is believed to be causing this increase in the speed of expansion is called dark energy, making up more than 70% of the mass-energy - all of the "stuff" - of the Universe and the focus of the DECam's mission.
Other efforts hope to get to the bottom of the mystery, including the Boss survey and a future space telescope dedicated to the effort called Euclid.
But for now, Will Percival from the University of Portsmouth, a Dark Energy Survey collaborator, said DECam is an exciting prospect.
"This will be the largest galaxy survey of its kind, and the galaxy shapes and positions will tell us a great deal about the nature of the physical process that we call dark energy, but do not currently understand," he said.
The survey will tackle the problem in four ways.
It will study the same kind of supernovae that led to the Nobel prize, in a bid to unravel the "expansion history" of the Universe - when its expansion increased and decreased over billions of years.
It will also map out in 3D the distribution of galaxy clusters, measuring what are known as baryon acoustic oscillations - literally relics of the sound echoes of the Big Bang.

Continue reading the main story

Dark energy and dark matter mysteries

• Gravity acting across vast distances does not seem to explain what astronomers see
• Galaxies, for example, should fly apart; some other mass must be there holding them together
• Astrophysicists have thus postulated "dark matter" - invisible to us but clearly acting on galactic scales
• At the greatest distances, the Universe's expansion is accelerating
• Thus we have also "dark energy" which acts to drive the expansion, in opposition to gravity
• The current theory holds that 73% of the Universe is dark energy, 23% is dark matter, and just 4% the kind of matter we know well

• BBC Universe: Dark matter
• BBC Universe: Dark energy

By counting the clusters and plotting out when they evidently formed, the survey can feed back to computer models that map out how we think the Universe organised itself in its earliest years.

And studies of the way galaxies and galaxy clusters bend passing light - in a process called weak gravitational lensing - will help to pin down the equally mysterious "dark matter" that is believed to make up more than 80% of the Universe's mass - most of the Universe's stuff that is not energy.
DECam will now be run through a series of tests and will begin the official survey in December.
With each snapshot it acquires, it will see an apparent area of the sky 20 times larger than the full moon.
In its full five-year run, it should capture an eighth of the full sky.
"The achievement of first light through the Dark Energy Camera begins a significant new era in our exploration of the cosmic frontier," said James Siegrist, associate director of science for high-energy physics at the US Department of Energy, which oversaw the instrument's construction.
"The results of this survey will bring us closer to understanding the mystery of dark energy and what it means for the

Agent Orange chemical in GM war on resistant weeds

A US pharmaceutical company is set to introduce a controversial new genetically modified corn to help farmers fight resistant weeds.

Dow Agrosciences says its new GM product will use a chemical that was once a component of the Vietnam war defoliant, Agent Orange.
It is needed they say because so called "superweeds" are now affecting up to 15 million acres of American crops.

Dow argues the new approach is safe and sustainable.

For a farmer like Jeremy Leech who grows corn and soybeans near Humboldt, Nebraska, resistant weeds are a constant threat to his farm and his family.
Last year he spent around $7,500 on chemical sprays to combat the threat to his crops.
The herbicide failed to kill the giant ragweed that had grown on his land, strangling his soybeans and his income. Worse, the pungent pollen from the towering pests exacerbated his eight year-old daughter's asthma.
"When that stuff is pollinating it makes it hard for her to breathe outside and when you live on a farm you know the kids play outside all the time and they love it and when that pollen gets really bad she gets choked up," he says.
Farming revolution Thousands of farmers across the US now face similar problems with weeds that can withstand powerful herbicides. Scientists say it is because of the success of GM crops that were introduced in the mid 1990s.
Monsanto became a world leader in the field thanks to the introduction of Roundup-ready corn and soybeans. These crops were engineered to be able to survive spraying with glyphosate, a chemical marketed as Roundup.

Jeremy Leech has battled resistant weeds on his Nebraska farm.

Farmers just needed to use this one spray on their fields and it killed all the weeds but left the crops intact. Growers rapidly adopted the new technology as it cut their costs substantially.
"Roundup was the one that was supposed to do wonders," says Jeremy Leech's father, Van.
"And it did for the first few years; anybody could raise clean beans. Obviously over the last few years, bean fields are beginning to look more and more like this," he says, pointing to a field where weeds tower over shrunken crops.
To see how bad the weed problem can get, I travelled to an experimental plot near David City run by the University of Nebraska with Prof Stevan Knezevic.
We stand in a cornfield surrounded by towering green plants. But there is not an ear of corn in sight. The stalks that surround us are Giant Ragweed, one of the "dirty dozen" weeds that have acquired resistance to Roundup.

Harvesting corn on the Leech farm in Nebraska

So powerful have these monster weeds become become that even spraying them with 24 times the recommended dose of Roundup fails to kill them.
These plants suck the light and the life from the crops. Just one resistant weed every 10 square metres can reduce the yields from productive plants by 50%.
"Over the past 15 years I said that if we continued using roundup, roundup roundup, we're going to have a problem - now we have that problem," says Prof Knezevic.
"The reason why we are here is that we all mismanaged this technology."
Back to the future Recognising the scale of the problem, the biotechnology industry believes that newer more effective forms of GM are the solution. Dow Agrosciences is now seeking US government approval for the Enlist weed control system.
Instead of the crop being resistant to one chemical, it is engineered to resist two. Dow says this is a more effective solution because it allows farmers to mix and match their sprays more effectively, making for a far more sustainable system.

What is causing controversy though is the new trait which makes the crops resistant to a chemical called 2,4-D. Developed by a British team during the war, this powerful weed killer was a component part of Agent Orange, the defoliant used extensively by the US Army during the Vietnam war.
2,4-D is currently utilised as a herbicide in agriculture, though it is used sparingly because it is highly toxic. The change here would expand options for farmers to use 2,4-D.
Although it was is one of two chemical ingredients in Agent Orange, the chemical was not implicated in causing the devastating health impacts suffered by many people exposed to the defoliant.

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Alternative approaches

• Bright orange flames shoot from the back of a propane powered weed burner as it trundles slowly across a field. This is a modern demonstration at the University of Nebraska of an old technique
• According to the university's Prof Stevan Knezevic, around 70,000 farming families in the US used flaming as their main defence against weeds in the 1950s
• The device is still popular with organic farmers who have few chemical sprays that they can utilise. But according to Dr Knezevic the rise of weed resistance is increasing interest from conventional farmers as well
• This prototype can concentrate flames at temperatures up to 1,100C, sufficient to kill most weeds
• "Any weeds that come from a seed, you can smoke it... Literally," says Prof Knezevic

Prof Dallas Peterson of Kansas State University who has co-operated with Dow in the past says this makes the chemical very suitable for working in combination with others.

"It is an old herbicide, one of the oldest synthetic herbicides around; we've used it for over 50 years in many different situations and to quite a large degree, and we haven't had many cases of resistance develop yet," he explains.
The US Environmental Protection Agency says that 2,4-D is safe for use in farming. The Department of Agriculture is expected to shortly grant final approval for planting next spring.
But weed scientists are concerned that if farmers are not educated to use the new GM product properly, resistance issues will soon re-appear.
"It will certainly help with weed resistance; it's a new mode of action," says Prof Dallas Peterson.
"But it's not a silver bullet - and if we utilise the technology too extensively and rely on it too exclusively, eventually we will develop resistance."
Back on the farm in southeastern Nebraska, Jeremy Leech is carefully cleaning his combine harvester to make sure he does not transport resistant seeds from one field to the next. He is also sceptical that a new GM alone is the answer.
"To me, it's a short-term fix. I think 2,4-D will work fine, but what I'm afraid is what's going to happen 4-5 years down the road if we keep using it. I think we 'll have the same problems we have now with Roundup."

These giant ragweeds have grown tall despite the application of herbicide

What is emerging from Dow and other biotech companies in this field is the growing acceptance that greater education of farmers and a more comprehensive approach to weed management are crucial to the success of their products.
"When we grow Roundup-ready corn and rotate it with Roundup-ready soybeans the biodiversity is out of the window," says Prof Knezevic.
"It's just two crops, same chemical. We need more biodiversity if the biotech bandwagon is to succeed, like the organic farmers who rotate their crops more."
Ironically, the future of GM may well depend on re-incorporating some of the older skills that the technology once threatened to replace.