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LG G8 ThinQ review: A wasted opportunity
A few years back, LG for Mobile World Congress showed off one of the wildest devices I had ever seen. With a bit of finagling, you could pop off the bottom of the G5's body and swap it out with a camera controller or a high-quality audio DAC. The idea didn't last long, but it spoke to the kinds of risks the company was willing to take to build (what seemed to it, at least) like a winner. I bring up the G5 now, years later, because it was ambitious and interesting in a way most smartphones weren't back then. With LG's new, $820 G8 ThinQ, that unorthodox thinking is once again on display. Sure, it does basically the same thing as every other pricey smartphone this year -- short of folding in half, that is. But there are a few extra tricks here that you won't find elsewhere, and they're interesting enough on paper that LG's flagship once again earns points for ambition. Ambition without concern for usability, however, is the perfect recipe for disappointment. Is it any surprise that's exactly what the G8 turned out to be?
Engadget test-drives Festo AirMotion Ride, humiliates self (video)
Festo may've already stirred up plenty of attention with its mesmerizing AirPenguin blimp, but let's not forget its other weapon -- fluidic muscles (elastomer tubes that contract when filled with fluid). At The Gadget Show Live in the UK, this German company was also showing off its AirMotion Ride car-racing simulator -- essentially a driver's seat suspended from just six fluidic muscles for the six degrees of freedom, while sound and vision are handled by its 5.1 surround sound speakers and a projector. The company claims that each of these lightweight muscles can generate forces of up to 1,600N, and since there are no mechanical parts inside, they make an ideal replacement for conventional hydraulic plungers as used on Force Dynamics' and Motion-Sim's simulators. You can see Festo's machine in action after the break, but promise us that you won't judge our driving ability.%Gallery-90032%
