Senin, 31 Desember 2018
A new Digital Cockpit in the 2019 VW Jetta is a sign of things to come
Photo credit: Josiah Bondy
One of the key tech trends with cars is that the ‘elite’ features usually found in luxury vehicles has trickled down to everyday passenger cars that are more affordable. Lane-keeping tech, adaptive cruise, and even blind spot monitoring were reserved for the upper echelon only, those who could afford a Mercedes-Benz, a BMW, or an Audi.
Ford started the break the mold when it introduced automated parking to the Focus, and even the 2019 Ford Fiesta – at a price of only $14,260 (about £11,000, AU$20,000) – now has lane-keeping tech.
Customization for all
The best recent example of that is the 2019 VW Jetta, a mid-sized sedan that costs $18,545 (about £14,000, AU$26,000) and went through a redesign recently.
A new Digital Cockpit borrows heavily from the Audi brand (which is part of VW). It’s a 10-inch display above the steering wheel, showing your speed, trip info, and other info typically found in this location, but allows you to customize what you can see using the View button on the steering wheel, switching to a digital readout for RPMs and speed, or showing a massive navigation map to help you find your destination.
Photo credit: Josiah Bondy
Audi goes a major step further with a similar display. In the A4, for example, you can see a Google Earth map that shows the terrain around you as you drive, helping you spot a lake off in the distance or track the edges of a mountain range.
Nothing quite like that here, but the Digital Cockpit is a safety feature as much as a digital age perk. You can focus on the road ahead of you instead of glancing over at the center display, which can be distracting.
Photo credit: Josiah Bondy
What’s most interesting to me about the Digital Cockpit is that these customizations are going to become more and more common, and we’re going to see more and more extra displays in cars. In reviewing the 2019 Subaru Ascent recently, that was my first discovery: that there are four different screens in the car available to the driver, including the digital rear-view.
Total control
In the Jetta, the extra screen is handy because you can customize the settings. I preferred the view that showed me my speed in the lower right corner and my current music selection. (I tend to avoid using navigation in areas where I already know the route.)
The Jetta lets you customize the interior color, picking from 10 hues. You can also set the driver preferences for seat position and even climate control, save them under your own username and reactivate the settings in one click when you first jump in.
Photo credit: Josiah Bondy
In the near future, we might personalize things much further. Once we have multiple screens, we might decide to always show a camera view behind us, or choose one display that always shows your current music selection (along with a picture of the artist).
I could even see using a dedicated screen for showing a real-time camera pointing toward the back to keep an eye on the kids. And, for a vehicle that can pull cargo, a view of the trailer you’re towing.
Photo credit: Josiah Bondy
The driver is king or queen, and in the future, we’ll be able to customize every display to our own preferences – or disable them and just focus on the road ahead.
On The Road is TechRadar's regular look at the futuristic tech in today's hottest cars. John Brandon, a journalist who's been writing about cars for 12 years, puts a new car and its cutting-edge tech through the paces every week. One goal: To find out which new technologies will lead us to fully driverless cars.
December 31, 2018 at 10:00PM
John Brandon
The best iPhone SE deals in the January sales 2019
The iPhone SE may have been officially removed from the Apple Store, but the budget Apple smartphone continues to sell at some seriously rapid speeds. That's largely because the cheapest iPhone on the market recently had yet another price drop - and on this page you'll find the best iPhone SE deals in the UK.
Following Apple's product launch back in September, it feels like the iPhone SE 2 is still no closer to being released. But that hasn't stopped tariffs falling and you can now get iPhone SE deals on contract for a mere £15 per month - that means around £400 over the course of the contract!
The tech world rejoiced when the iPhone SE was released. Finally, a new Apple phone that doesn't require you to remortgage your house - unlike the iPhone XS Max! It looks and feels exactly the same as the iPhone 5S. But instead of sporting two-year-old hardware it's fully up to date, with a super-fast CPU and graphics, and the 12MP iSight camera straight out of the iPhone 6S.
If cheap iPhone SE deals are what you seek, then you've definitely come to the right place. Use TechRadar's comparison chart to easily find the ideal plan, or scroll down further to find our pick of the best SE deals on the market.
More options: iPhone 8 deals | iPhone 7 deals | iPhone 6S deals | iPhone deals | Best mobile phone deals | iPhone SE review
Best iPhone SE deals across all UK networks:
Lower down the page you'll be able to read about all of the best iPhone SE deals on a model-by-model and network-by-network basis. But first of all here are the best deals so you can instantly see what the best offers are from EE, O2, Three and Vodafone.
Launched back in March 2016, the 'Special Edition' iPhone SE was a rare example of Apple dropping its entry-level price to allow bargain-hunters a piece of the iPhone pie. It reduced the screen size from the iPhone 6, but kitted it out with the same camera as the iPhone 6S. In short, it's a premium smartphone with a lower price tag – and we like that!
Read TechRadar's full iPhone SE review
Now let's break down the best iPhone SE deals by network...
Best iPhone SE deals on EE
Best iPhone SE deals on O2
Best iPhone SE deals on Vodafone
Best iPhone SE deals on Three
December 31, 2018 at 02:00PM
Adam Marshall