This week in tech: A life-sized BB-8, a new laptop from Vaio, and a smart padlock highlights our week in tech

Teenage Pinoy builds life-sized BB-8

MANILA, Philippines - A teenage Filipino displayed shades of a young Anakin Skywalker as he built his very own BB-8 Droid seen on the latest Star Wars film - The Force Awakens.

Angelo Casimiro, a 17-year-old student from De La Salle University, was captivated by the adorable BB-8 that he had to build a life-size one for himself.

A lot of the materials you’ll need can easily be found in hardware stores including Arduino circuitry, four roll-on deodorant bottles, and a beach ball. It can’t project holograms or respond to voice commands like robotic toys made by Sphero but at about $120 (approximately P5,700), it’s cheaper and can also be controlled with your smartphone.

You can build one, too, if you carefully follow the instructions by Casimiro in a YouTube video posted on the TechBuilder channel.

Casimiro, a robotics competition champ, has always been a tinkerer. He hopes to one day mass-manufacture a Filipino-made solar-powered car.

Vaio re-enters us with the Z flip

Z Flip doesn’t sound like the name of a high-end, high performance laptop but that’s exactly the name Vaio has given its latest premium laptop.

The Vaio Z Flip is a 13-inch laptop running Windows equipped with a Core i5 or i7 Skylake processor, 8 to 16GB of RAM, and a battery that promises to last up to 11 to 12 hours.

Its specs put it in direct competition against Apple’s MacBook Pro. At $1,799, it is pricey but if you’re looking for a premium laptop and prefer Windows over MacOS, then this could be the laptop for you. Oh, and it also comes with a stylus.

Is a surface phone coming?

A tablet, a laptop, and now a smartphone?

Microsoft lit up the tech world with easily one of the best tech events of 2015 with its Microsoft Windows 10 Devices event where it launched the latest iteration of its tablet-laptop hybrid – the Surface 4, and much to everyone’s surprise, its very own laptop – the Surface Book.

It appears, though, that the team in Redmond isn’t done yet. A Reddit user pointed out that Microsoft owns surfacephone.com, further fueling speculations that the company could be working on its own smartphone which could be a rebrand of the Lumia line or it could be something totally different.

It’s not too far-fetched that Microsoft could be making its own smartphone since it is already positioning Windows as an operating system that will seamlessly run no matter what screen you’re looking at.

Tapplock: The world’s first smart padlock

It seems like everything is turning smart these days and that includes padlocks.

If you’re someone who tends to misplace little items like, say, keys to your padlock, then you probably need TappLock in your life. TappLock is a padlock you can unlock with something unique to you - your fingerprint.

Simply place your finger on the sensor and the padlock should unlock in 0.8 seconds. No keys or combination codes necessary. It even has a built-in alarm if anyone attempts to cut the lock or open it without authorization, making sure you’re alerted if your valuables are in danger.

What if you need someone else to unlock it for you? TappLock comes with an accompanying app compatible with iOS, Android, and Windows. It lets you store up to 100 fingerprints and even set how much time the other fingerprints have access to the padlock.

TappLock is water resistant and can even act as a mini power bank.

It also has a little brother called the TappLock Lite meant for securing bags and other smaller compartments. It’s everything the TappLock is except being a mini phone charger.

TappLock is an Indiegogo project that seeks to get a $40,000 funding. As of this writing it has 138 backers helping it get to $28,335 or 71 percent of its goal. They have a little over 20 days to reach their target. If you want one, make sure you back them up.

Other news

• GrabTaxi rebranded to Grab – a simple move that made sense. Since launching the service, Grab has expanded from helping commuters book a cab from their smartphones to other services like booking a car, bikes, and even delivery.

• The Lenovo A6000 Plus can be yours at a discount. As part of Lazada’s Chinese New Year sale, the five-inch smartphone from Lenovo will retail for P5,999 instead of its original price P6,999. Promo is ongoing until February.

• Facebook has officially launched Reactions worldwide — It’s an expansion of the like button that allows a user to more appropriately express how he/she feels about a post. Six reactions (love, haha, wow, yay, sad, and, angry) were part of the initial test but ‘yay’ didn’t make it. Facebook said it wasn’t a globally recognized reaction. We’re a little bit sad for ‘yay.’

• Electronic Arts (EA) – won’t be putting up a booth on gaming convention E3. Instead, EA will have its own public event on June 12 to 14, that’s right before E3, where it’ll open its game previews to the public. It will be livestreamed so people who are unable to be physically at the event can still catch it.