Oral-B debuts world's first smart toothbrush, coming this June for $300

                                                 

The world's first smart toothbrush was unveiled Monday, allowing you to improve your dental hygiene while sharing the results online with your dentist or to impress your friends.
Dental cleaning sessions last two minutes, divided into four 30-second segments, one for each corner of your mouth.
Shown off on the opening day of the four-day Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, the brush is connected by Bluetooth wireless technology to your smartphone, and thus to the network.
"It is a world first," said Michael Cohen-Dumani, head of Procter & Gamble's Oral-B brand, which plans to sell the product in Europe, the United States and Asia from June.
Sold for 219 euros ($300), the brush relays your toothbrushing activity to an application on the smartphone, recording whether you respect the two-minute rule and whether you brush hard, but not too hard.
If the results are satisfactory, a message appears on your smartphone: "Congratulations: your teeth are shining."
It also lets you share the information on social networks or directly with your dentist.
"Today we can see the smartphone's potential to change people's habits," Cohen-Dumani told AFP.
"It is really that trend towards the 'quantified self'", the desire to record everything, to follow your sports activities, the calories you consume or what you spend, thanks to new technologies.
The world's largest mobile fair is a showcase for that trend, with smartphone markers unveiling an array of smart watches and bracelets that can count your steps or track your heart rate, and even wifi-connected scales to keep an eye on your weight.
Larger objects, too, are getting hooked up to the network, from cars and fridges to a shop dressing room that lets you ask for new sizes and colours to try on without leaving the cabin.

Panasonic unveils two rugged 5-inch Toughpad smartphones at MWC 2014

Panasonic announced its first two enterprise-oriented rugged smartphones, dubbed the Panasonic Toughpad FZ-E1 and Toughpad FZ-X1, at the Mobile World Congress 2014 in Barcelona. 
The Panasonic Toughpad smartphones are likely to hit the shelves with a price tag of $1,300 (Rs. 80,000). The Toughpad FZ-E1 will launch in Japan in June, while the FZ-X1 will launch in August. Panasonic does plan to offer the smartphones in other countries, but hasn't detailed plans.
Both the Panasonic Toughpad FZ-E1 and Toughpad FZ-X1 smartphones come with 5-inch LCD displays with a 720x1280 pixel resolution, apart from 2GB of RAM, 32GB of built-in storage and microSD card expandability. Notably, the rugged smartphones weigh as much as many 10-inch tablets, at 430 grams. 
While the Japanese firm's Toughpad FZ-E1 runs on theWindows Embedded 8 Handheld and is powered by a 2.3GHz quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 MSM8974ABprocessor, the Toughpad FZ-X1 runs Android 4.2.2 Jelly Bean, and is powered by a 1.7GHz quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Pro APQ8064T processor.
"We decided to use Windows Embedded 8 Handheld instead of Windows Phone 8 because it offers more customizability," stated Masaki Mutou, general manager at Panasonic System Networks' Terminal Systems Business Unit.
Both the Toughpad devices besides sporting a 5-inch display are the said to be the first ones to include 3G and LTE connectivity, according to PC World. The Toughpad FZ-E1 and Toughpad FZ-X1 phablets feature 8-megapixel rear cameras, and 1.3-megapixel front-facing cameras.
It has been additionally noted that the new Toughpad smartphones feature a MIL-STD-810G military rating, and can resist a drop from the height of 3 metres, and be submerged up to 1.5 metres of underwater for up to 30 minutes. The phablets can also work in extreme temperatures, ranging from minus 20 degrees Celsius to 60 degrees Celsius.
The Toughpad FZ-E1 and Toughpad FZ-X1 phablets are both backed up by fast-charging 6200mAh batteries, along with the such connectivity options as Wi-Fi 802.11a/b/g/n/ac, Bluetooth v4.0, Micro-USB, GPS with A-GPS and GLONASS, and NFC.
The firm also launched its Toughpad FZ-M1 tablet at CES 2014. The rugged tablet, unlike previous iterations, is targeted at the enterprise segment. The tablet comes with a 7-inch touchscreen with a resolution of 1200x800 pixels with glove-touch technology and also comes with stylus support (optional).
To stay tuned to various announcements from the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, visit our MWC 2014 coverage page.

WhatsApp blames network router for 'biggest' outage, apologises

WhatsApp founder Jan Koum on Sunday issued an apology and blamed a network router for Saturday's outage of the mobile messaging app.

"We are sorry about the downtime," wrote Koum. "It has been our longest and biggest outage in years. It was caused by a network router fault which cascaded into our servers."

"We worked with our service provider on resolving the issue and making sure it will not happen again."

WhatsApp was down for more than three hours on Saturday just days after Facebook bought it for $19 billion.
Five-year-old WhatsApp currently has about 450 million users globally and has been adding a million users daily.

On Saturday, some of those users took to other forms of social media, including blogs and Twitter to report the outage and vent their frustration.

WhatsApp is the leader among a wave of smartphone-based messaging apps that are now sweeping across North America, Asia and Europe, and is known to appeal to teens and others who avoid 

mainstream social networks.
During the outage the buzz on Twitter ranged from the conspiratorial - that Facebook had really boughtWhatsApp to shut it down and funnel users to Facebook Chat - to the philosophical.

"So now that #Whatsapp isn't working I've actually talked to my family, they seem like nice people," tweeted @Ali_Hilu, a self-described social media addict in Jordan.
And @Iamhollybrown of Surrey, England, scolded, "Can't believe all these people are crying aboutWhatsapp not working, do some exercise, do some work, learn a language."
© Thomson Reuters 2014