Features

MADRID –– Fanatical players forking out money to get ahead in games such as Candy Crush Saga or Angry Birds are driving explosive growth in the multi-billion-dollar mobile gaming business.

Once hooked on free-to-download smartphone and tablet games, millions of not-so-brilliant or simply impatient gamers are ready to pay cash to obtain extra moves or new lives, or to avoid time delays standing between them and the next level.

It is a lucrative model for businesses such as Candy Crush developer King Digital Entertainment, which announced Tuesday it had filed a request for a US initial public offering worth up to $500 million (364 million euros) and an ensuing listing on the New York Stock Exchange.

Indeed, the so-called “freemium” phenomenon pushed up spending on mobile games, most of it devoted to such in-app purchases, by more than 60 percent to $16.5 billion in 2013, according to research house IHS.

Double-digit annual growth is anticipated in the next three to five years.

“The way the games are set up is that there is no real limit on how much someone will spend within a single game,” said Jack Kent, British-based mobile analyst at IHS.

“You are encouraged to keep going back and spend more,” he said in an interview ahead of the February 23-27 World Mobile Congress in Barcelona gathering industry players including top app developers.

Each in-app purchase may cost from $1 to $60 for anything from a few extra moves in the wildly popular Candy Crush game to “green Gem” currency in the strategy game Clash of Clans, or even a combined pack of in-game advantages on other titles, Kent said.

Though games account for about 40 percent of all mobile app downloads, they make up about 80 percent of the revenues, the analyst said.

The size of the smartphone and tablet games market is now more than twice that of traditional handheld consoles, such as the Sony PSP and Nintendo DS, he estimated.

Technology research group Gartner Inc. predicts overall mobile game revenue will surge from $13.2 billion in 2013 to $17 billion in 2014 and $22 billion in 2015.

This month, the Vietnamese creator of smash-hit mobile game Flappy Bird, Nguyen Ha Dong, actually withdrew his app from sale saying its runaway success had ruined his simple life.

In an interview with Forbes, he said the game, where the aim is to direct a flying bird between oncoming sets of pipes and which reportedly raked in about $50,000 a day, had become an “addictive product”.

‘The app hooks you’

Such qualms are unlikely to spread widely.

As developers try to cash in, there are now more than a million mobile gaming apps available, making it hard for individual games even to be noticed.

Lawrence Lundy, analyst at Frost & Sullivan technology research house, said mobile messaging providers in Asia were now teaming up with developers to offer games directly to their users.

Japanese mobile messaging company LINE or South Korea’s KakaoTalk, for example, have effectively become games platforms, analysts said, allowing users to challenge their friends.

“They prove it can be done and you can make a lot of money from those sources,” Lundy said.

The mechanics of the in-app purchase are key, said Brian Blau, consumer technology analyst at Gartner.

“You either get the app for free or you pay a very low price. Then, the app hooks you, gets you interested,” he said.

SAN FRANCISCO –– Google on Tuesday gave early adopters of its Internet-connected eyewear a bit of advice: don’t be “Glassholes”.

It was the final suggestion in a recommended code of conduct posted online for software developers and others taking part in an Explorer programme providing early access to Google Glass.

The California-based Internet titan appeared intent on avoiding the kinds of caustic run-ins that have seen some Glass wearers tossed from eateries, pubs or other establishments due to concerns over camera capabilities built into devices.

Don’t be “creepy or rude (aka, a “Glasshole”),” Google said in a guide posted online for Explorer program members.

“Respect others and if they have questions about Glass don’t get snappy.”

Google suggest Glass wearers be polite and offer demonstrations to possibly win over the wary. Glass fans were advised it is proper to follow the same rules set down for smartphone use in businesses.

“If you’re asked to turn your phone off, turn Glass off as well,” Google said.

“Breaking the rules or being rude will not get businesses excited about Glass and will ruin it for other explorers.”

In the wake of one early adopter claiming Glass gave him headaches, Google told users not to “Glass-out” by starring into the inset prism screen for long periods at a time.

Glass was designed to deliver helpful bursts of information conveniently to let wearers get back to doing things in the real world, according to the technology firm. “If you find yourself staring off into the prism for long periods of time you’re probably looking pretty weird to the people around you,” Google said.

“So don’t read War and Peace on Glass. Things like that are better done on bigger screens.”

Google also advised against wearing Glass while playing impact sports, or being foolish enough to think the eyewear won’t draw attention.

The “do” list included venturing about, using voice commands, asking permission to take pictures, and employing screen locks to prevent use if Glass is lost or stolen.

Google last month unveiled a partnership with US vision insurer VSP to make prescription Glass and to reimburse some of the costs under health benefits.

That does not include the $1,500 price for Google Glass, which is in a test phase with a small number of “explorers” ahead of a wider release sometime this year.

Glass connects to the Internet using Wi-Fi hot spots or, more typically, by being wirelessly tethered to mobile phones. Pictures or video are may be shared through the Google Plus social network.

During the testing phase, developers are creating apps for the eyewear, which can range from getting weather reports to sharing videos to playing games.

WASHINGTON –– Thanks to smartphones, e-mail, video games and photo sharing are available at the touch of a finger.

But attach a special case and that same phone can produce an electrocardiogram (EKG) from the electrical impulses in your hand and send it to a doctor.

“It’s a neat little device,” says E.B. Fox, who uses a heart monitor and app from AliveCor to keep track of his arrhythmia.

The 57-year-old North Carolina resident says he has been using the device since October. If he thinks there is a problem, he can e-mail a reading to his doctor for an evaluation.

“I have no doubt it’s saved me one doctor’s visit at least,” said Fox.

The heart monitor is just one example of progress in the booming mobile health –– or mHealth –– industry, which is changing both the way doctors practise medicine, and the way patients handle medical decisions.

“Mobile apps are one of many mHealth tools that are helping to engage consumers and patients in their own health care,” David Collins, senior director of the mobile division at the nonprofit Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society, told AFP.

Slashing health

care costs

Doctors and developers alike are hoping that these mobile apps and devices will lead to lower health care costs.

Health care businesses such as hospitals and insurance companies traditionally focus on quantity, counting the number of patients seen and procedures done.

But as the system shifts and firms try to quantify the quality of care, factors such as whether a patient returns to the hospital within 30 days of treatment come into play, and can affect insurance payouts for care.

The idea is that if patients track their own health, using mobile apps and other tools, the extra data can reduce the number of doctor’s visits, and make each one more effective.

The Scripps Translational Science Institute in California is in the middle of a study examining the relationship between medical costs and mobile medical devices, specifically in patients with chronic conditions

Participants receive an iPhone and either a blood pressure monitor, heart monitor, or glucose meter to track their high blood pressure, arrhythmia, or diabetes for six months.

Lead researcher Cinnamon Bloss said the team will be looking to see if by monitoring their own symptoms, patients can avoid unnecessary trips to the doctor or emergency room, as Fox has.

Patient compliance

not easy

A few months into the study, Bloss has already noticed one longstanding problem that persists despite the ease of using mobile apps — patient compliance.

“We’re offering a free phone and device for a disease they already have, but many people don’t want to be bothered, don’t want to take the time,” Bloss said.

And according to Iltifat Husain, the founder of the app review website iMedicalApps.com, a lack of adherence to treatment plans can have significant financial and health-related consequences.

“Patients who are non-compliant end up costing us billions of dollars in the healthcare system. I see it on a daily basis,” he said at an event at the Brookings Institution in Washington.

“I’ll see it in patients who come in in essentially a diabetic coma because they weren’t taking their medications appropriately.”

Better apps

As smartphones are increasingly a part of everyday life, even for older Americans, Husain says mobile health tools are improving.

“The quality of medical apps has grown tremendously in the last year or two, due to people having a higher medical app literacy,” he told AFP.

That’s also due to the guidelines released by the US Food and Drug Administration in September last year, which Husain said were helping to ward off the release of dodgy apps that could put patients at risk.

“Initially you had the Wild West –– now you have a sheriff who’s come to town,” Husain said.

But in a rapidly growing field that allows massive amounts of data to be collected, Husain offered a few words of caution.

“Just because we can monitor vital signs and other things doesn’t necessarily mean we should. It doesn’t necessarily mean that it leads to a better outcome,” he warned.

“As a society, we need to figure out if we’re willing to change the fundamental physician-patient relationship.”

LONDON — A saliva test for teenage boys with mild symptoms of depression could help identify those who will later develop major depression, a new study says.

Researchers measured the stress hormone cortisol in teenage boys and found that ones with high levels coupled with mild depression symptoms were up to 14 times more likely to suffer clinical depression later in life than those with low or normal cortisol levels.

The test was tried on teenage boys and girls, but found to be most effective with boys.

About one in six people suffer from clinical depression at some point in their lives, and most mental health disorders start before age 24. There is currently no biological test to spot depression.

“This is the emergence of a new way of looking at mental illness,” Joe Herbert of the University of Cambridge and one of the study authors said at a news conference on Monday. “You don’t have to rely simply on what the patient tells you, but what you can measure inside the patient,” he said.

Herbert compared the new test to ones done for other health problems, such as heart disease, which evaluate things such as cholesterol and high blood sugar to determine a patient’s risk.

Herbert and colleagues at the University of Cambridge observed more than 1,800 teenagers aged 12 to 19 and examined their cortisol levels with saliva tests. The researchers also collected the teens’ own reports of depression symptoms and tracked diagnoses of mental health disorders in them for up to three years later.

The boys who had high cortisol levels and mild depression symptoms were up to 14 times more likely to suffer from clinical depression when compared to other teens with normal levels, while girls with similarly elevated cortisol levels were only up to four times more likely to develop the condition. The study was paid for by the Wellcome Trust and the results were published online Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academies of Science.

Experts suggested that cortisol might affect boys and girls differently.

“All hormones, including sexual hormones, influence brain function and behaviour,” said Dr Carmine Pariante, a professor of biological psychiatry at the Institute of Psychiatry at King’s College London. He was not linked to the study.

Pariante said the gender-specific hormones — androgen for males and oestrogen and progesterone for females — might react differently to cortisol and could explain the difference in risk for teenage boys and girls.

Pariante said the saliva test was promising and could help target psychological help such as talk therapy for boys at risk of developing depression. Scientists are increasingly searching for physical markers in the body of psychiatric illnesses instead of relying exclusively on a diagnosis based on a patient consultation.

“This gives us a biological model to understand mental health problems the way we understand other medical conditions,” he said, comparing it to how doctors might diagnose a broken leg based on an X-ray or identify heart disease patients based on high blood pressure or cholesterol readings. “It will help us identify patients at risk so we can try to help them as soon as possible.”

NEW YORK –– For Australians over age 65 included in a new study, being obese raised the risk of experiencing a fall by 31 per cent.

“Falls are one of the most common causes of injury for older individuals and as the world population ages, the number of fall-related injuries are projected to increase rapidly,” said lead author Rebecca Mitchell.

“Likewise, rates of overweight and obesity among older individuals are also increasing,” added Mitchell, a researcher with Neuroscience Research Australia at the University of New South Wales.

Mitchell and her colleagues wanted to determine whether overweight and obesity added to the risk of falling among older adults, as well as the risk of being injured in a fall.

The researchers used information from the New South Wales Prevention Baseline Survey, a large Australian population study started in 2009.

A total of 5,681 people 65 years of age and older were asked about their history of falling, their perception of their own risk of falling, their general health status, medication use and activity levels.

Participants who had fallen one or more times in the previous 12 months as a result of accidentally losing their balance, tripping or slipping were also asked how many of those falls resulted in injury and how many required medical attention or led to hospital admission.

According to the results published in the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Public Health, 23 per cent of healthy-weight respondents had fallen once during the previous 12 months and 34 per cent had fallen more than once.

About 30 per cent of obese respondents fell once and another 45 per cent fell more than once, making the overall fall risk 31 per cent higher in the obese group.

The obese participants who fell didn’t have any higher risk of fall-related injuries compared to healthy-weight people who fell, but they were more likely to have other health conditions — such as heart disease, diabetes and high blood pressure — and to report being in moderate or extreme discomfort.

Those who were obese and fell were also more likely to be taking four or more prescription medications.

“It is difficult to know for certain why the risk of falling increases for obese individuals, but it is likely to be as a result of reduced peripheral sensation, general physical weakness and instability when standing or walking,” Mitchell said.

There are a number of common risk factors that can increase any older person’s risk of falling, she added.

“These can include individual factors such as: poor health, instability when standing or walking, some health conditions, such as poor vision or dementia, lack of physical activity, use of multiple medications that can affect balance, and a poor diet,” Mitchell said.

Risks can also be in an older person’s environment, including “uneven or slippery floors, unsecured floor coverings, such as rugs, inappropriate footwear or eyewear, or inadequate lighting,” she said.

“As to why fall-related injuries do not increase for obese individuals this is likely to be as a result of adipose tissue (fat) protecting bone,” Mitchell said.

Compared to the healthy-weight group, the obese participants in the study were more likely to be sedentary for eight or more hours a day, to walk less, to have problems walking and to believe that nothing could be done to prevent falls.

CHICAGO –– Social contact and regular exercise are key to ageing well and living a longer life, according to newly presented research.

In fact, feeling extremely lonely can increase an older person’s chances of premature death by 14 per cent, an impact nearly as strong as that of a disadvantaged socioeconomic status, according to John Cacioppo, psychology professor at the University of Chicago.

He noted that a meta-analysis of several studies published in 2010 showed that social isolation had twice the impact on the risk of death as obesity.

Cacioppo presented the findings Sunday at an annual conference in Chicago of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

The research carried out on a group of 20,000 people revealed adverse health effects of feeling alone, including sleep problems, high blood pressure, impaired immune cells and depression.

“Retiring to Florida to live in a warmer climate among strangers is not necessarily a good thing if it means you are disconnected from people who mean the most for you,” Cacioppo said.

Often, loneliness is accompanied by a sedentary lifestyle, which can significantly weaken one’s health.

Simple exercise such as walking regularly at a good pace can’t just cut the risk of cardiovascular and Alzheimer’s disease by 50 per cent — it can also clearly slow down the normal ageing process of an older person’s brain, Kirk Erickson of the University of Pittsburgh told AFP.

At the conference, the assistant professor of psychology presented new details of a study published in 2011 that involved 120 people aged 65 and older.

Older brain ‘highly modifiable’

With age, the brain shrinks, he said. Physical activity, however, helps improve its overall functioning and, in particular, increases the volume of the hippocampus by 2 per cent, which reverses cerebral ageing by one to two years and boosts mental capacities.

“For one, this research has demonstrated the brain remains highly modifiable late in adulthood,” Erickson said.

“Even though the brain shrinks and declines tend to happen, it does not seem to be as inevitable... and exercise seems to be a great way to take advantage of this natural capacity for brain plasticity.”

What’s more, it’s apparently not necessary to do a lot of exercise to get that result — a “modest amount” is all it takes, he said.

However, he acknowledged, “there is still a lot to learn. We don’t really know very much about how much is exactly needed.”

“Even though we have learned a lot I have to say we still have a long way to go,” he added.

“But that being said, physical activity seems to be one of the most promising approaches for positively influencing brain health in late adulthood.”

According to the Pew Research Centre, the baby boomer generation began to turn 65 on January 1, 2011, with 10,000 doing so each day until 2030, said Cacioppo.

“This has been called the silver tsunami,” he said.

Some see an ageing population as inevitably one with greater dementia and poor health, as predicted 15 to 20 years ago, he added.

“But in fact we see a decline in disability rather than an increase in part because” of medical advances and people “starting to take better cares of themselves”.

Still, a sedentary lifestyle rather than one filled with physical activity is the norm in old age, he said.

“But we have new information about how to better age.”

COLORADO — The doctors were out of ideas to help five-year-old Charlotte Figi.

Suffering from a rare genetic disorder, she had as many as 300 grand mal seizures a week, used a wheelchair, went into repeated cardiac arrest and could barely speak. As a last resort, her mother began calling medical marijuana shops.

Two years later, Charlotte is largely seizure-free and able to walk, talk and feed herself after taking oil infused with a special pot strain. Her recovery has inspired both a name for the strain of marijuana she takes that is bred not to make users high — Charlotte’s Web — and brought an influx of families with seizure-stricken children to Colorado from states that ban the drug.

“She can walk, talk; she ate chilli in the car,” her mother, Paige Figi, said as her dark-haired daughter strolled through a cavernous greenhouse full of marijuana plants that will later be broken down into their anti-seizure components and mixed with olive oil so patients can consume them. “So I’ll fight for whoever wants this.”

Doctors warn there is no proof that Charlotte’s Web is effective, or even safe.

In the frenzy to find the drug, there have been reports of non-authorised suppliers offering bogus strains of Charlotte’s Web. In one case, a doctor said, parents were told they could replicate the strain by cooking marijuana in butter. Their child went into heavy seizures.

“We don’t have any peer-reviewed, published literature to support it,” Dr Larry Wolk, the state health department’s chief medical officer, said of Charlotte’s Web.

Still, more than 100 families have relocated since Charlotte’s story first began spreading last summer, according to Figi and her husband, and the five brothers who grow the drug and sell it at cost through a nonprofit. The relocated families have formed a close-knit group in Colorado Springs, the law-and-order town where the dispensary selling the drug is located. They meet for lunch, support sessions and hikes.

“It’s the most hope lots of us have ever had,” said Holli Brown, whose nine-year-old daughter, Sydni, began speaking in sentences and laughing since moving to Colorado from Kansas City and taking the marijuana strain.

Amy Brooks-Kayal, vice president of the American Epilepsy Society, warned that a few miraculous stories may not mean anything — epileptic seizures come and go for no apparent reason — and scientists do not know what sort of damage Charlotte’s Web could be doing to young brains.

“Until we have that information, as physicians, we can’t follow our first creed, which is do no harm,” she said, suggesting that parents relocate so their children can get treated at one of the nation’s 28 top-tier paediatric epilepsy centres rather than move to Colorado.

However, the society urges more study of pot’s possibilities. The families using Charlotte’s Web, as well as the brothers who grow it, say they want the drug rigorously tested, and their efforts to ensure its purity have won them praise from sceptics like Wolk.

For many, Charlotte’s story was something they couldn’t ignore.

Charlotte is a twin, but her sister, Chase, doesn’t have Dravet’s syndrome, which kills kids before they reach adulthood.

In early 2012, it seemed Charlotte would be added to that grim roster. Her vital signs flat-lined three times, leading her parents to begin preparing for her death. They even signed an order for doctors not to take heroic measures to save her life again should she go into cardiac arrest.

Her father, Matt, a former Green Beret who took a job as a contractor working in Afghanistan, started looking online for ways to help his daughter and thought they should give pot a try. But there was a danger: Marijuana’s psychoactive ingredient, THC, can trigger seizures.

The drug also contains another chemical known as CBD that may have seizure-fighting properties. In October, the Food and Drug Administration approved testing a British pharmaceutical firm’s marijuana-derived drug that is CBD-based and has all its THC removed.

Few dispensaries stock CBD-heavy weed that doesn’t get you high. Then Paige Figi found Joel Stanley.

One of 11 siblings raised by a single mother and their grandmother in Oklahoma, Stanley and four of his brothers had found themselves in the medical marijuana business after moving to Colorado. Almost as an experiment, they bred a low-THC, high-CBD plant after hearing it could fight tumours.

Stanley went to the Figis’ house with reservations about giving pot to a child.

“But she had done her homework,” Stanley said of Paige Figi. “She wasn’t a pot activist or a hippy, just a conservative mom.”

Now, Stanley and his brothers provide the marijuana to nearly 300 patients and have a waiting list of 2,000.

SAN JOSE, California — It used to be that “hacking” was just a type of crime, a computer break-in. But today, the term is also part of a growing — and perfectly legal — mainstay of the tech sector.

Computer programming competitions known as “hackathons” have spread like viruses in recent years as ways for geeks, nerds and designers to get together to eat pizza, lose sleep and create something new.

The formal, marathon group brainstorming sessions are focused on everything from developing lucrative apps to using computer code to solve the world’s problems. This year a record 1,500 hackathons are planned around the globe, up from just a handful in 2010.

“A hackathon is the fastest way to actually do something about an idea,” said Nima Adelkhani, organiser of the weekend-long Hack for Peace in the Middle East competition in San Francisco this month.

Law enforcement hasn’t abandoned the term. Dozens of federally convicted “hackers” are serving prison sentences for computer fraud and other cyber crimes. And the Justice Department’s cyber crime budget this year is $9 million to target offences that include “hacking.”

But the new uses have popped up with increasing frequency since a pair of tech events in 1999 where developers worked together to write programmes. Yahoo gets recognition for the first official hackathon in 2005. And Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been largely credited with helping broaden the definitions by urging his staff to “hack” by “building something quickly or testing the boundaries of what can be done.”

A new Facebook option that went live Thursday allowing users more than 50 ways to identify their gender beyond male and female was conceived during a company hackathon four months ago.

This month, the first global hackathon for Black Male Achievement was held in Oakland, California. Music Hack Day is coming in Tokyo and Hackomotive competitors will develop apps in Santa Monica, California, that make it easier to buy and sell cars.

During these sorts of tech-heavy, weekend competitions, teams of computer programmers, software engineers and developers huddle over monitors for hours, working up new apps for smartphones or other devices. A panel of judges selects winners, and prizes are usually awarded.

“Developers are a rare breed where they get paid a lot of money to do this job during the week, and they enjoy it so much they want to do it more on the weekend,” said Jon Gotfriend, who’s been going to hackathons for more than three years.

As such events have become more popular, a set of rules has coalesced. Teams are typically made up of a handful of people. Designs, ideas and even mock-ups can be worked on in advance, but everyone starts writing code at the same time. And teams own whatever they come up with.

The opening stages of a hackathon can be exciting as challenges, prizes, teams and judges are introduced. But within hours there’s a quiet buzz and lots of keyboard clicking as programmers make their ideas a reality.

Participants arrive with sleeping bags, deodorant, toothbrushes, pillows and laptops. By morning’s wee hours, pizza, energy drinks and bean bag chairs are in hot demand. Candy of all kinds is consumed, and by the time the buzzer goes off after 24 or 48 hours, most participants are dishevelled and a little loopy.

Like the tech industry itself, hackathon participants are mostly men. But some organisers are trying to change that.

Introduced one year after its coupe sister, in 2011 in entry level guise and joined by the featured and upgraded GT version in 2013, the Mercedes-Benz AMG SLS63 Roadster nears the end of the road as production is set to cease this year, to give way for an anticipated smaller sports car. While the new model is expected to be a more powerful and modern turbocharged rival for the Jaguar F-Type and Porsche 911, the outgoing SLS is flamboyant grand touring supercar with a gloriously potent large displacement naturally aspirated V8, at its most glamorously nostalgic in its rag-top Roadster version.

Classic proportions

While the expected departure of the SLS63 Roadster will still leave Mercedes with a big and brutally powerful grand touring roadster in the AMG SL63, the SLS is nevertheless a more sporting, viscerally inspired and special machine, with both its naturally aspirated power plant and cloth roof — rather than twin-turbo engine and folding hardtop — separating it. However, what distinguishes the SLS Roadster is its sense of style and its classic sports car architecture, the former of which is partly dependent on the latter’s front-mid engine and rear transaxle gearbox configuration, which allows for and necessitates its distinctively long and slinky low bonnet.

Paying homage to the classic 1950s 300SL Coupe and Roadster, the SLS63 GT is low and wide with a distinctly rearwards cabin and one of the longest snouts in the car business. Though its proportions are classic and its slim but wide one-slat wire-mesh grille certainly hark to the past, the SLS isn’t an overtly “retro” design, and in Roadster guise trades the coupe’s trademark up-swinging “gullwing” doors for regular doors. With low and rakish windscreen, cabin-rear design and short and low boot, the Roadster may not be as dramatic as the Coupe, but is probably the prettier and more glamorous of the two

Consistent urge

Set low and far back in its bonnet, the SLS’ massive 6.2-litre V8 engine is one of the world’s great engines, with consistent abundance, progressive character and high-rev precision. Soon to be discontinued too, in favour of lower revving and less charismatic but more powerful and efficient forced induction engines across the board, the SLS’ big naturally aspirated V8 was only introduced in the mid-2000s. AMG’s first fully in-house developed design, the high revving 6.2 allowed one to more precisely dial in power for better handling characteristics in not un-sticking the rear tires too easily or unintentionally, and features a long-legged range of charisma and aggressive acoustics.

An upgraded version for most markets and a replacement for the regular SLS63, at the heart of the GT version is a 20BHP power hike, which raises output to 583BHP at 6,800rpm, while torque remains the same at 479lb/ft at 4,750rpm. With crackling immediacy, the GT Roadster launches off-the-line without delay and rips through the revs with a consistent and seemingly never-ending urgency. Responsive and abundant, the GT Roadster’s large displacement means that its eagerness and throttle precision don’t sacrifice brutal low- and mid-range flexibility, and its feels prodigiously powerful at virtually any speed or gear, as it briskly accumulates speed.

Bass and brawn

At 1,735kg, the GT Roadster is marginally heavier than the 1,695kg Coupe and with traction being paramount in translating its staggering power into off-the-line acceleration, its 3.7-second 0-100km/h headline acceleration figures — and 320km/h top speed — don’t differ. Brawny, bassy and bellowing, the GT Roadster’s deep and rich audios are aggressively insistent, and grow to sustained WW2 fighter plane-like howls at speed. In fact, even with the Roadster’s fabric roof, the 6.2’s charismatic acoustics have a greater and more visceral presence. With a more enjoyably textured soundtrack, one better appreciates exhaust pops and crackles than in the hardtop Coupe.

With the gearbox located on the rear axle and a race-style dry sump design for more consistent oil lubrication through strong lateral g-forces and compact size, the GT Roadster’s engine is set low and far behind the front axle for improved weight distribution and a low centre of gravity. With revised shift points, the SLS63 GT’s seven-speed automatic gearbox felt smoother and more concise in its’ automatic Sport mode, while Sport+ mode drove in a highly aggressive fashion, holding gears longer and downshifting eagerly, to keep the engine raring to go. Manual shifts through the steering-mounted paddle shifters also seemed quicker and more responsive.

Viscerally charged

Set low and far back in the GT Roadster’s hunkered down cabin, one’s view line includes an upright leather-bound dashboard with classic inspired cross-hair air vents, clear instrumentation and the thick contoured sports steering wheel and to the long bonnet beyond, whose length one adapts to when negotiating tight and quick slaloms. During slaloms the GT Roadster turned in crisply, with quick steering, taut body control, precise throttle control and good rear grip allowing one to weave through briskly. However, driven more with less finesse and more outright aggression, the immensely powerful GT Roadster can easily break rear traction and grip to set off its electronic stability controls.

Driven too aggressively the GT Roadster’s electronic stability controls are effective at keeping things in check, but it is far more entertaining and rewarding to drive on the edge of its mechanical grip limits. Driven at the Yas Marina Formula One circuit in Abu Dhabi, the GT version however seemed to benefit from less intrusive electronic stability controls than the regular SLS63, while revised adaptive suspension rates kept it taut and poised through corners. A more viscerally charged experience than the more refined and rigid GT Coupe, the Roadster felt a little more thrilling through tight hard corners and on high speed straights.

SPECIFICATIONS

Engine: 6.2-litre, dry sump V8-cylinders

Bore x stroke: 102.2 x 94.6mm

Compression ratio: 11.3:1

Valve-train: 32-valve, DOHC, variable timing

Gearbox: rear-mounted 7-speed MCT wet-clutch automatic, rear-wheel-drive

Gear ratios: 1st 3.4:1; 2nd 2.19:1; 3rd 1.63:1; 4th 1.29:1; 5th 1.03:1; 6th 0.84:1; 7th 0.72:1

Reverse / final drive ratios: 2.79:1 / 3.67:1

0-100 km/h: 3.7-seconds

Maximum speed: 320km/h

Power, BHP (PS) [kW]: 583 (591) [435] @ 6,800rpm

Specific power: 93.9BHP/litre

Power-to-weight: 336BHP/ton

Torque, lb/ft (Nm): 479 (650) @ 4,750rpm

Specific torque: 104.7Nm/litre

Fuel consumption, urban / extra-urban / combined: 19.9 / 9.3 / 13.2 litres/100km

CO2 emissions, combined: 308g/km

Fuel tank capacity: 85-litres

Luggage volume: 173-litres

Length: 4,638mm

Width: 1,939mm

Height: 1,262mm

Wheelbase: 2,680mm

Track width, F/R: 1,682 / 1,653mm

Kerb weight: 1,735kg

Aerodynamic drag co-efficient: 0.36

Steering: power assisted, rack and pinion

Turning circle: 11.9-meters

Suspension, F&R: Double wishbones

Brakes, F&R: Ventilated discs

Tyres, F/R: 265/35R19 / 295/30R20