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NEW YORK – Couch potatoes looking for a reason to forgo working out in the evening may no longer be able to use difficulty sleeping afterward as an excuse, according to a recent study.

Researchers found that people who exercised in the evening reported sleeping just as well as those who weren’t active in the hours before bed. People who worked out in the morning reported getting the best sleep, on average.

“Sleep recommendations suggest avoiding exercise prior to bed,” said Matthew Buman, lead author of the study from Arizona State University in Phoenix. “We found evidence to the contrary suggesting that individuals need not avoid exercise at night.”

He and his colleagues analysed responses collected from 1,000 adults participating in the 2013 National Sleep Foundation Sleep in America Poll. The telephone- and web-based questionnaire asked participants how well they felt they slept, how long they slept each night, how much time it took them to fall asleep, and whether they felt refreshed after waking up in the morning.

The poll also asked participants about their exercise habits, such as whether they worked out regularly and, if so, whether they were active in the morning, afternoon or evening. Evening was considered to be within four hours of going to sleep.

Based on the types of physical activity participants performed regularly, like tai chi, running or yard work, workouts were categorised by intensity as light, moderate or vigorous.

People who exercised vigorously in the morning were 88 per cent more likely to report good sleep quality than non-exercisers and 44 per cent less likely to say they woke up feeling unrefreshed.

Moderate-intensity morning exercisers were 53 per cent more likely to say they slept well overall, compared to people who didn’t exercise.

There was no difference in any of the sleep measures between moderate or vigorous evening exercisers and non-exercisers, according to findings published in the journal Sleep Medicine.

Experts said the study’s poll-based methods may not necessarily be the most accurate gauge of sleep quality, however.

“As strange as it may seem, self-reported sleep — whether good or bad — is not a very reliable indicator of what’s actually happening by objective measures with a person’s sleep,” Dr Matt Bianchi said. He directs the sleep laboratory at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston and was not involved in the new study.

“For example, only half of people with sleep apnoea will feel sleepy or non-refreshed about their sleep — and sleep apnoea is a fairly dramatic kind of sleep problem. I take with a grain of salt any ‘survey’-based studies such as this one,” Bianchi said.

Although the National Sleep Foundation’s sleep hygiene recommendations don’t preclude pre-bedtime workouts, they do advise sticking to relaxing exercises, such as yoga, in the evening hours.

Researchers said the online or printed resources to which some doctors direct patients advise against evening workouts.

“Generally, physicians do have patients get a sleep hygiene resource, and often not exercising close to bedtime will be on there,” said Dr James Mojica, director of the Spaulding Sleep Centre in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Mojica, who is also a sleep specialist at Massachusetts General Hospital, was not involved in the study.

LOS ANGELES  — Xbox One will soon be Twitchier than the PlayStation 4.

The popular video game broadcasting service Twitch is bringing a slew of fresh features to Microsoft’s newest console. An update next month will add the ability to live stream video games, join in on games with broadcasters, initiate game broadcasts with voice commands, archive game clips and watch Twitch streams broadcast from any device, including the PS4.

Previously, Xbox One users could only spectate Twitch streams and record game clips with the system’s Upload app.

“It’s complete integration,” said Emmett Shear, co-founder and CEO of Twitch. “It’s exciting because we’ve never had the ability to broadcast from a console like this with such a deep level of integration. The concept of being able to join a broadcasters’ party is really cool, and it’s another step in the direction of interacting more closely with broadcasters.”

The updated Twitch app will also include Twitch’s chat features and the ability for users to broadcast from their living rooms with Xbox One’s camera-based Kinect system. It’s scheduled to launch alongside the March 11 debut of “Titanfall”, the much-anticipated man-versus-machine shooter being released exclusively for Xbox One, Xbox 360 and PC.

It’s good news for Xbox One players, but what took so long?

The update is coming months after Microsoft Corp. rival Sony Corp. included Twitch streaming capabilities when it launched its PlayStation 4 ahead of the Xbox One last November. However, the PS4 version of Twitch — which Shear noted was crafted by Sony, not Twitch — only permits PS4 users to spectate other PS4s and doesn’t allow them to easily connect.

“That’s a very certain type of experience,” said Yusuf Mehdi, Microsoft’s vice president of marketing and strategy for Xbox. “For us, we thought that was too limiting for what our fans would want. Our fans really want the full next-gen service, so that’s why we decided to take our time, do it right and have it come out in this fashion.”

Twitch, which features one million live broadcasters and 45 million viewers a month, has become an ESPN for gamers. The service’s live and recorded broadcasts include such content as comically narrated clips of games, matches from seasoned e-sports athletes, “speed runs” — clips of players plowing through games — and streams of everyday gamers playing online.

“This will open up the social aspect of Xbox One in a new way,” Mehdi said. “The community of Twitch is huge, and this allows us to type into that, and frankly do something that’s never been done before on consoles. You’ll be able to broadcast to any device and consume anyone’s broadcast from any device. It’s a console experience unique to the Xbox One.”

Microsoft and Sony have both billed their latest consoles as more social and interactive machines with no technological barriers to sharing live game footage because the PS4 and Xbox One, which respectively sold 4.2 and 3 million units worldwide last year, don’t require additional technology like video capture hardware to stream content. It’s built in.

Twitch said last month that 20 per cent of its broadcasts between December 23 and January 3 were from PS4 owners and that more than 1.7 million streams have been broadcast through PS4 since the console’s November 15 launch. Shear said he hopes the new capabilities of Twitch’s app Xbox One will eventually come to other devices, including the PS4.

BARCELONA – A small band of upstarts is chipping away at Google’s mighty Android, hoping one day to overthrow the system that runs eight in 10 smartphones sold worldwide.

Mozilla’s Firefox OS and the Samsung-promoted Tizen staked a small claim to the market at the industry’s largest fair, the February 24-27 Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain.

If there is a threat to Android’s dominance, however, it could emerge from a slowdown in saturated smartphone markets and the birth of a new interest in smart watches, bracelets and glasses, analysts say.

Android powered 78.4 per cent of all smartphones sold in 2013, according to industry analyst Gartner Inc. Apple’s iOS mopped up most of the rest, taking 15.6 per cent.

“There is little doubt that 2013 was the year of Android,” said a report by industry research house Strategy Analytics. 

“However, Android’s annual growth rate slowed to 62 per cent in 2013, its lowest level in the platform’s history,” it added.

“We expect Android’s growth to slow further in 2014 due to market saturation, and rivals like Microsoft or Firefox will be ready to pounce on any signs of a major slowdown for Android this year.”

California-based Mozilla would not disclose how many Firefox OS smartphones have been sold since the first such handset was launched last July.

In Barcelona, however, it announced that Firefox, which is targeting emerging markets, would power a new category of smartphones priced at around $25 (18 euros), and relying on integrated circuits made by Chinese electronics manufacturer Spreadtrum.

Mozilla also unveiled new Firefox OS devices, two smartphones made by China’s ZTE and five Alcatel OneTouch tablets.

“It is not enough to have two operating systems in the telecoms world,” Firefox chief operating officer Jay Sullivan told a news conference.

No ‘great success’ for Firefox 

Despite the buzz around Firefox, Greenwich Consulting senior partner Magnus Rehle said it had not seen “great success”.

Samsung, the world’s biggest smartphone manufacturer and leader of a consortium developing the rival Tizen operating system, could be a more important rival to Android.

“They have the muscle to do it. But what added value does it give to the consumer?”, asked Rehle. “Nothing, I would say.”

Samsung seems to be drawing the line at allowing Android to run other smart devices such as its newly unveiled smart watches.

On Sunday, it revealed a new smart watch, the Samsung Gear 2, which runs on Tizen, and boasts a camera, sports tracking software and even a heart rate monitor.

But even in smart watches, Android remains the king, powering 61 per cent of the roughly two million sold in 2013, according to Strategy Analytics.

Most of that growth, ironically, was due to the sales of Samsung’s first smart watch, the Samsung Gear, which relied on Android.

Android has several challengers in the smart watch industry including Firefox and Pepple Technology’s Pebble OS, which lets its own watches communicate with Apple’s iOS and Android, said Woody Oh, senior analyst at Strategy Analytics.

“But none of them are a major threat at this stage because of their relatively limited ecosystems and modest retail presence,” Oh said.

The main challenge to Android’s dominance in smart watches could come from Apple iOS, Microsoft, and perhaps Tizen or the Chinese state-sponsored COS –– or China Operating System, he added.

“These four brands have the potential scale or marketing power to offer a credible alternative to Google’s popular platform.”

BARCELONA — Samsung’s upcoming Galaxy S5 smartphone will be at least the third to have a fingerprint sensor for security but it’s alone in letting you use that for general shopping, thanks to a partnership with PayPal.

The sensor brings convenience for entering passcodes and could encourage more people to lock their phones. But fingerprint security isn’t foolproof.

Here’s what to know as you consider whether to place your trust in it:

How does it work?

The S5 has a sensor on the home button, just like Apple’s iPhone 5s. On the S5, you train the phone to recognise your finger by swiping on it seven times. You also enter a passcode as a backup, so you’re not locked out if the device doesn’t recognise your print. On the iPhone, that can happen if your hand is greasy or wet, for instance.

The phone then converts the fingerprint information into a mathematical representation, known as a hash, and stores that in a secured location on the device. Samsung says that information stays on the device and is never shared.

When you want to unlock your phone, you simply swipe on the home button. A hash is again created and must match the one the phone already has. Otherwise, the phone stays locked.

You can do this with up to three fingers on the S5, compared with five on the iPhone. On the S5, you must swipe down. On the iPhone, you simply hold your finger on the home button, and you can do that sideways or upside down as well.

What can you do with the fingerprint?

All three devices let you skip the passcode and unlock the phone.

You can also train the HTC phone to open a particular app automatically depending on the finger used. Apple lets you use the finger to authenticate purchases through its iTunes store, but it’s keeping the system off-limits to outside parties. Samsung lets you make PayPal payments.

If you’re at a retail store that accepts mobile payments through PayPal’s app, for instance, you can use the fingerprint instead of your usual password. That’s also the case with online transactions using PayPal on the phone. The hash doesn’t get sent to PayPal. Rather, the phone verifies for PayPal that the fingerprint has been verified.

Anuj Nayar, senior director for global initiatives with eBay Inc.’s PayPal business, says there’s usually a trade-off between security and convenience. Beef up security, and it’s tough to use. Make it convenient, and open up windows for breaches. With fingerprint IDs, he says, you can have both.

Are you really getting security?

It’s more secure than not locking your phone with a passcode at all. It’s also more secure than using a four-digit passcode, as there’s a greater chance of guessing that than the particular hash used. But there’s never a guarantee.

Shortly after Apple started selling the iPhone 5s, a German hacking group said it managed to bypass the fingerprint system by using a household printer and some wood glue to create an artificial copy of a genuine fingerprint.

The group said the fingerprint ID system was easy to trick, though it’s not something easily pulled off in the real world. You need to have that specific phone and the fingerprint, for one thing. And then you compromise only that one phone.

Security experts point out that once a finger’s compromised, you can’t replace it the way you can a passcode. That doesn’t mean someone can use an S5 breach to unlock an iPhone, though, as the hash formulas used are typically proprietary and kept secret.

But it’s not a threat to take lightly, either.

Should you use it?

PayPal officials point out that behind the scenes, it’s still performing the usual anti-fraud checks. If the account is used to buy a television in California just five minutes after you buy coffee in New York, it’ll suspect something is up.

If the phone is lost or stolen, or your fingerprint is somehow compromised, you can contact PayPal to de-register that device from future use.

Drew Blackard, director of US product planning at Samsung Electronics Co., says other forms of authentication have their flaws, too. Android phones let you swipe a pattern on the screen in lieu of a passcode, but Blackard points out it’s possible to guess the pattern by examining the screen for smudges.

It’s not bulletproof security, but it’s more secure than existing methods, he says.

Despite the risks, Bennett says he sees potential.

“If it results in more people locking their phone,” he says, “it improves security.”

PARIS – Investigations in nine European countries have given statistical backing to claims that patients’ lives may be at risk when nurses are overworked, specialists said on Wednesday.

Published in The Lancet, the study touches on a sensitive topic in countries where health budgets are under strain.

Researchers looked at survival rates after surgery in 300 hospitals, and matched these against the workload and education of their nurses.

They looked at data from the surgeries of more than 420,000 patients aged over 50 who had common operations such as hip or knee replacement, appendix removal or gall bladder surgery.

The number of patients who died in hospital within 30 days of admission was low, on average. It ranged from 1 to 1.5 per cent depending on the country.

Within a country, though, the death rate varied widely according to the hospital. In some hospitals it could be less than 1 per cent, in others more than 7 per cent.

Two big factors correlated with higher mortality –– a bigger workload for nurses and a lower level of nurses’ education.

Each patient added to a nurse’s workload increased the risk of a patient dying by 7 per cent. Every 10 per cent increase in bachelor’s degree educated nurses was associated with a 7 per cent fall in this risk.

“Nurse staffing cuts to save money might adversely affect patient outcomes,” said the paper. “An increased emphasis on bachelor’s education for nurses could reduce preventable hospital deaths.”

It offered this statistical scenario: In hospitals where nurses cared for six patients each, and 60 per cent of them had bachelor’s degrees, the risk of patient death was nearly a third lower than in places where nurses cared for eight patients and 30 per cent had a degree.

The investigation was carried out in Belgium, England, Finland, Ireland, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland.

The findings in Europe closely mirror a previous probe in the United States, said Linda Aiken, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Nursing, who led the research.

“Our data suggest that a safe level of hospital nursing staff might help to reduce surgical mortality, and challenge the widely held view that nurses’ experience is more important than their education,” she said in a press release.     

What a wonderful scientific world we live in these days where medical advancement has ensured we have longer, pain free lives. Most of the diseases can be diagnosed and treated by the innate skills of the physicians and surgeons. Jordan is a country especially popular as a healthcare hub in the Middle East, where scores of patients troop in on a regular basis. The doctors are exceptionally brilliant and have a cure for almost all bodily ailments. 

There is no dearth of psychologists and psychiatrists here too. The shrinks, as they are commonly called in colloquial slang, are people who look after our mental well-being. So if one is suffering from depression, melancholy, despair or an unexplained bout of sadness, one seeks them out. 

I was always intrigued with the idea of visiting a shrink. The closest I have ever come to one is via a Woody Allen movie. For some reason, a majority of his films have scenes that are shot in a shrink’s chamber. The doctor usually sits behind a desk while the patient half lies on a couch-like sofa. In this posture, the specialist listens to the constant chatter that pours forth from the sufferer. Occasionally, he jots down notes on a writing pad or if the prattle subsides, he prods the talker with some pertinent queries. 

I liked this portrayal of psychologists; I really did. I mean, I lived in a house where nobody had the time or inclination to listen to my complaints. And here was a person whose sole occupation was to hear me out. I could not wait to get myself to a Hollywood-type shrink. All I needed was an appropriate ailment which would help me get an appointment with one of them. 

I am not really an unhappy person so depression was ruled out. I do not have much patience for melancholia and sadness also but I do call myself a perfectionist and like to keep my home and hearth spotlessly neat and clean. I do not think that is a negative quality but if I presented it as an obsessive compulsive disorder then maybe the doctor would give me that much needed chatter session on the couch.  

Moreover, I was fascinated with both the words obsession and compulsion. The former means being continuously preoccupied with a fixed idea, feeling or emotion and the latter is an irresistible urge to behave in a particular manner despite the consequences. I admired obsessive compulsion. The only disturbing thing was the “disorder” term associated with it. 

Next day I called up the clinic and fixed a scheduled time with the consultant. At the appointed hour I presented myself at the hospital. The doctor made me sit at his desk while he excused himself to make a call. 

I saw his table was cluttered with knick-knacks. Before I could stop myself, I tidied it all up, putting the magazines in a neat stalk, pens in the pen stand and the used coffee cup in the side tray. 

“What are you doing?” asked the shrink.

“I am just putting things in order,” I smiled. 

“Why?” he inquired.

“It was messy so I cleared it,” I replied.

“It was my mess,” he said belligerently. 

“But it was on my side of the table,” I insisted. 

“Confirmed OCD,” he stated.

“You or me?” I muttered under my breath.

“What did you say?” he thundered. 

“‘Nothing! I have to go, sorry,” I said, beating a hasty retreat. 

BARCELONA – They are free to download, fun to play, and fiendishly addictive: Mobile games like Candy Crush Saga, Angry Birds and Clash of Clans want to get you hooked, then get your money.

Whether you are paying to obtain extra lives, buy “gems” to use as a virtual currency, or just to carry on playing without delay, the “freemium” games boom is a money-spinner for the most successful developers.

In-app purchases helped to drive up spending on mobile games by more than 60 per cent to $16.5 billion (12 billion euros) in 2013, according to research house IHS.

“What we have done is bring the thought processes and skills of selling and marketing more clearly into the game,” said Nicholas Lovell, author of The Curve, a book about making money in a world of free digital content.

In any given month, only about one in 20 players of a given “freemium” game makes an in-app purchase, Lovell said, meaning the most devoted end up paying the most, while others enjoy it for free.  

“If you are heavily invested in a game world and you are putting your emotions and your friendships in that game world then the psychology can become a lot more powerful,” he said ahead of the February 24-27 World Mobile Congress in Barcelona, Spain.

Once a player has downloaded a free game, the holy grail of designers is to keep him or her playing, hopefully with various 10-20 minute bouts in a day and a longer session or two in the evening.

The most committed players are the most likely to spend, said Lovell, who is also the founder of Gamesbrief, a blog that advises games developers on business strategy.

For example, a player may pay to avoid waiting 24 hours before advancing to a key goal. 

Then there is the chance to avoid “the grind”.

A player might need 10,000 gold coins to obtain a crucial object, requiring the completion of 1,000 quests, each of which earns 10 coins. 

Within a “freemium” mobile game, you can spend weeks to complete the “grind” of 1,000 quests or just pay some money to avoid the task altogether. 

“That devalues it in some people’s eyes. It is not evil. It is bloody annoying if you are the kind of person who thinks like that,” Lovell said.

‘Atmosphere of fear’       

The industry expert welcomed new principles released by Britain’s Office of Fair Trading to ensure parents authorise children’s in-app purchases and to prevent unfair and aggressive sales techniques to which minors may be susceptible.

Apple and others should introduce a child mode that lets parents block unauthorised activities on their smartphones and tablets, he said. 

Nevertheless, Lovell believed variable pricing would become a model for all digital content, not just games.

Brian Blau, analyst at technology research house Gartner Inc., said consumers were making in-app purchases simply because they wanted to play games. 

NEW YORK – People who eat a vegetarian diet tend to have lower blood pressure than non-vegetarians, according to a new review of past studies.

Researchers said for some people, eating a vegetarian diet could be a good way to treat high blood pressure without medication.

Vegetarian diets exclude meat, but may include dairy products, eggs and fish in some cases. They emphasise foods of plant origin, particularly vegetables, grains, legumes and fruits.

High blood pressure contributes to a person's risk of heart disease, stroke, kidney disorders and other health problems. For many people, the only treatment has been medication, but that means costs and possible side effects, lead author Yoko Yokoyama told Reuters Health in an e-mail.

"If a diet change can prevent blood pressure problems or can reduce blood pressure, it would give hope to many people," Yokoyama said. She is a researcher at the National Cerebral and Cardiovascular Centre in Osaka, Japan.

"However, in order to make healthful food choices, people need guidance from scientific studies," she said. "Our analysis found that vegetarian diets lower blood pressure very effectively, and the evidence for this is now quite conclusive."

According to the American Heart Association, blood pressure readings under 120mm Hg systolic and 80mm Hg diastolic (120/80) are considered normal. High blood pressure starts at 140/90.

The new review, published in JAMA Internal Medicine, combined results from 39 previous studies, including 32 observational studies and seven controlled trials.

"Observational studies show what happens when people have chosen their own diets and stuck with them, often for years," Yokoyama said. "Controlled trials are different — a diet is given to people who had not tried it before, and that will show the effect of beginning a new way of eating."

Together the studies included close to 22,000 people.

The researchers found that in the observational studies, people who had been eating a vegetarian diet had an average systolic blood pressure that was about 7mm Hg lower than among meat-eaters and a diastolic blood pressure that was 5mm Hg lower.

Participants in the clinical trials who were given vegetarian diets to follow had, on average, a systolic blood pressure that was 5mm Hg lower and a diastolic blood pressure that was 2mm Hg lower than participants in control groups who were not on vegetarian diets.

"Unlike drugs, there is no cost to a diet adjustment of this type, and all the ‘side effects' of a plant-based diet are desirable: weight loss, lower cholesterol, and better blood sugar control, among others," Yokoyama said.

She said a plant-based diet is typically low in fat and high in fibre, so it helps people lose weight, which, in turn, causes a healthy drop in blood pressure.

"But there is more," Yokoyama said. "Plant-based foods are often low in sodium and are rich in potassium, and potassium lowers blood pressure."

The same foods are also very low in saturated fat — the type of fat in meat and cheese — and eating less saturated fat means blood can circulate more easily, she explained.

"I would encourage physicians to prescribe plant-based diets as a matter of routine, and to rely on medications only when diet changes do not do the job," Yokoyama said. "And I would encourage everyone to try a plant-based diet, and especially to introduce plant-based diets to their children — they could prevent many health problems."

Alice Lichtenstein, director of the Cardiovascular Nutrition Laboratory at Tufts University in Boston, said the results of the review are encouraging, but added that it didn't take sodium in the diet and lifestyle factors into account.

"Individuals who adhere to vegetarian diets are likely to use fewer processed foods, the major source of dietary sodium, and adhere to healthy lifestyles behaviours such as maintaining a body weight in the optimal range and engaging in regular physical activity," Lichtenstein told Reuters Health in an e-mail. She was not involved in the new research.

"Until we understand the contribution of these factors we can't attribute the effect observed solely to adhering to a vegetarian diet," Lichtenstein explained.

"We certainly would not encourage substituting a slice of quiche for a grilled chicken breast for dinner, due to the sodium, calories and saturated fat," she said.

What's more, the findings do not mean that people taking blood pressure medication should go off their drugs in favour of diet changes without talking to a doctor.

Yokoyama said doctors who would like to prescribe diet changes need tools.

NEW YORK — Samsung is banking on people shaping up this spring.

The company on Monday unveiled its new Galaxy S5 smartphone, which is set to go on sale in April, along with a pair of fitness-themed watches. And many of the features included on the devices focus on fitness.

Considering America’s continued fascination with fitness and fitness products, this is probably a good idea. What Samsung has attempted to do is combine the best attributes of the top-of-the-line fitness trackers currently on the market with those of its own phones and smartwatches.

The S5 and the watches were unveiled at an event at the Mobile World Congress wireless show in Barcelona, Spain. I had a chance to briefly test out all three products in New York on Monday.

The S5 includes a built-in heart rate monitor, pedometer and fitness tracker, though I’m not sure how useful they actually are. For instance, to check your heart rate, you hold your finger over a sensor on the back of the phone — something I can’t imagine doing in the middle of a jog.

True fitness buffs will probably head straight for Samsung’s Gear Fit smartwatch, which also does all of those things, but in a much more user-friendly way. Want to check your heart rate? Just open up the app for that and it gives you a reading within seconds.

While many people have become accustomed to wearing fitness bands either constantly or for their workouts, I think a lot of them would balk at going running with, or perpetually being tethered to, a phone as big as the S5.

It’s worth mentioning too that the Fit Gear is very nicely styled. I have to admit, I wasn’t a fan of Samsung’s first Galaxy Gear smartwatch, because it felt heavy and clunky and was just too big for a normal-sized woman’s wrist. But the Fit solves that problem. It’s thin, light and features a curved color screen. If you don’t mind wearing something like a Fitbit Force or a Nike FuelBand, you won’t mind this product either.

The trade-off is you can’t place or answer a call from the Fit, but it will notify you of things like calls, e-mails and text messages. There’s also no camera.

Samsung’s new Gear 2 watch also comes with basic fitness features including the heart rate monitor and pedometer. While it’s still too chunky for me, it is significantly lighter and thinner than the original version. Unlike the Fit, you can still place calls from it and shoot pictures and video from its camera.

And unlike Samsung’s first smartwatch, the new ones pair with a host of Samsung phones, giving consumers more options for their primary device.

Samsung also plans to introduce a slightly cheaper version called the Gear 2 Neo, which won’t have a camera or come in as many colours. The company has yet to announce pricing for any of the new products.

Fitness aside, the S5 phone includes some other significant upgrades from its predecessor. Some of the biggest changes are in its camera. Its 16 megapixels make it sharper than the S4, which had just 13. It’s also designed to focus faster and lets you blur the foreground or background of an image to emphasise a subject.

The phone also has a fingerprint sensor to use in place of a pass code to unlock the phone or make mobile payments. And it is splash and dust resistant, which is bound to prolong the phone’s life for many people.

An added incentive for parents is the phone’s “Kids Mode”, which lets you hand your phone off to your child without fear that they’ll stream something inappropriate from your Netflix cue or access your e-mail.

In short, the S5’s improvements might be enough to entice current Samsung fans to upgrade their devices, while its fitness features could draw some converts as well, especially those interested in purchasing a smartwatch to go along with it.

BARCELONA, Spain — BlackBerry will release a low-cost phone in Indonesia in April and plans a broader release of a phone that restores a beloved row of control keys with a track pad.

The Indonesia phone, the Z3, will sell for less than $200 without subsidies, the company said Tuesday. It will later expand to other markets in southeast Asia. BlackBerry Ltd. CEO John Chen said a version with faster, 4G connectivity is planned for the rest of the world “sometime in the future before I die”.

It’s the first phone made under a new five-year partnership with Foxconn, the Taiwanese company that assembles products in vast factories in China.

Meanwhile, Chen said it will restore the keys in a new phone he termed “Classic”. He said the new Q20 is a response to lacklustre sales of last year’s Q10, which has a physical keyboard but lacks the track pad or keys for functions such as going back. He said the company got many complaints about that.

BlackBerry also announced plans to expand its services for businesses needing secure communications, particularly in regulated industries such as health care and financial services. There are plans, for instance, to go beyond securing just e-mail and messaging.

It’s part of the company’s plan to focus on its strengths in business services. BlackBerry Ltd. strayed from that as it tried to lure consumers with new devices.

The BlackBerry was the dominant smartphone for on-the-go business people and other consumers before Apple introduced the iPhone in 2007, showing that phones could handle much more than e-mail and calls. BlackBerry was slow in modernising its operating system, and once it did, the much-hyped system flopped.

Chen was brought in as CEO late last year after talks to sell the company collapsed. Although he has been credited with turning around Sybase, a data company that was sold to SAP in 2010, Chen has acknowledged that reviving BlackBerry will be his most “complicated” challenge.

In the latest quarter, ending November 30, BlackBerry Ltd. reported a $4.4 billion loss and a 56 per cent drop in revenue. But the company said it had plenty of cash to engineer a turnaround.

The new partnership with Foxconn will help reduce much of BlackBerry’s manufacturing costs. Foxconn, known for its manufacturing contract work on Apple’s iPhones and iPads, will jointly design and manufacture most BlackBerry devices and manage inventory of the devices.

Chen said BlackBerry will now target the heavily regulated industries that require greater security. It will simplify its pricing and let people upgrade to the latest systems for free this year. It will also offer free services this year for companies that had left BlackBerry for rivals.