Supermarket News

Qualcomm was looking to put the disastrous Snapdragon 810 in the rear view mirror when it began shipping the Snapdragon 820 a while back. Now, it's putting more distance between itself and ARM's reference cores with the Snapdragon 821. This is the second chip with Qualcomm's custom 64-bit CPU cores, and it's apparently as much as 10% faster than the 820.

Like the Snapdragon 820, the 821 is a quad-core chip based on the custom Kryo cores. The 810 was octa-core, based on the ARM reference Cortex-A57 and A53. With the 820 (and now 821), the four Kryo cores operating at varying clock speeds can offer better performance without as much heat. The Snapdragon 821 will come in clock speeds as high as 2.4GHz compared to the 2.15GHz for the 820. Maybe that's the entire basis of Qualcomm's 10% improvement claim.

This isn't the end of the road for the 820. We'll probably still see plenty of phones shipping with it before the Snapdragon 821 becomes more common. Maybe those Nexus phones will be among the first with the 821?

Amazon is celebrating its 20th birthday using with a massive sale, which it is dubbing Prime day in a concerted effort to remind those who are yet to sign up to its pricey Prime package that it exists.

In an attempt to make your day of grabbing presents from the virtual aisles easier, WIRED has scoured the deals for the top bargains.

B&O BeoPlay A2 -- 6:10pm until 10:10pm -- £TBC

Credit Amazon

Recently review in Wired as the most stylish BT speaker in class, with 3-inch drivers and tweeters, plus a pair of passive bass radiators. There’s a built-in battery and USB output so you can charge your phone, too. Bass isn't superb but overall it delivers a clear, rounded sound.

Recently review in Wired as the most stylish BT speaker in class, with 3-inch drivers and tweeters, plus a pair of passive

We all get stuck at the supermarket checkout from time to time when the assistant can’t get an item’s bar code to scan. We’re left watching in awkward silence as the flustered employee waves the item every which way, upside down, back and forth, at an angle, until they’re left literally rubbing it on the scanner in the vain hope that the machine will do us all a favor, recognize that it’s a loaf of bread and beep.

No beep means caving in and keying in the code. Of course, that’s no great hardship, but it takes time, and when the checkout has a whole load of people waiting in line, it’s no fun for anyone.

But thanks to engineers at Japanese electronics company Toshiba, those days may soon be over. They’ve come up with a scanner that can recognize items — no bar code required. The Object Recognition Scanner (ORS) works by utilizing pattern and color recognition technology being developed by the company.

Toshiba’s Keiichi Hasegawa explained that although the special scanner is able to recognize any supermarket item, it will be particularly useful when it comes to fruit and vegetables.

“Fruit and vegetables in supermarkets don’t usually have bar codes because they’re put out while they’re fresh, so these items can’t be read at the register using bar codes, which means staff need to input data to record them,” Hasegawa said. “If staff are part-time employees, they may not recognize

Sainsbury's had discontinued it's budget range of food items. CREDIT: GETTY IMAGES There’s something poignant about the loss of childhood innocence, even when to retain it would be an encumbrance. You know the sort of scenario: suspicions raised when the tooth fairy forgets to come, or St Nicholas commits a wrapping-paper infraction visible only to a nosey eight-year-old.

Or when, as happened this week, it turns out that the big brands we know and trust have been having a giggle behind our backs. Ahead of an official report into misleading offers, a number of our leading supermarkets have announced they are to discontinue multi-buy deals. It turns out that bogofs – buy one, get one free offers – are a false economy, making us fork out on average over £1,000 more a year than we planned. A supermarket aisle Tesco, Asda, Morrisons, Sainsbury's and Ocado were all found to be offering misleading deals CREDIT: ALAMY I wish I had filmed my teenage daughter at the moment she discovered that the supermarket (OUR supermarket!) had been tricking us! Us! Its loyal customers! Who shop there all the time! The conversation went something like this. Me: “Can you fetch me a pack of mushrooms, please?”

Her: “Here you go,” dropping carton into the trolley. Me: “Not those ones, the others are cheaper.” Her: “Durr, no they’re not. Compare the prices?” Me: “Durr, compare the weights? And then compare the prices?” Shopping trolley with food in it Buy one get one free deals cause shoppers to spend £1000 more a year than they planned. CREDIT: ALAMY She paused, and as she did the hasty calculation, she gasped.

“That’s terrible,” she said, reeling at the blatant legerdemain. “It’s almost like the supermarket Wants. To. Rip. Us. Off.” “No, darling, it’s not almost like that,” I soothed. “It is exactly like that.”