Mobile Devices - Page 107

Samsung recently sent out invitations for their January 5th event in Malaysia where they will unveil their upcoming Galaxy A Series smartphones.

Samsung Malaysia recently teased the water resistance feature of the Galaxy A (2017) Series, and the event invitation has the same water reference, which makes us believe that this series will be water resistant.

The current A series launched a year ago, so this is perfect timing for the new generation.

ASUS has been releasing weird and at times very wonderful tablets over the years, but the company hasn't been making profits on them, so starting in the first half of 2016 the company began restructuring its tablet business.

DigiTimes reports: "Asustek started reorganizing its tablet business in the first half of 2016 and has greatly reduced the number of its new tablet projects as well as tablet shipments in 2016. Since Asustek still has a few hundred R&D and sales staff in its tablet department, Asustek has been trying to relocate them to new businesses such as virtual and augmented reality (VR/AR) and smartphone and the process is expected to be completed by the end of first-half 2017".

This leads me to be wondering what ASUS will do about tablets at CES 2017 next week, and whether we might see a shift away from slates by ASUS.

Google might be spending tens of millions of dollars on advertising for its new Pixel and Pixel XL smartphones, but people are experiencing issues all over the place - including me. Even after AUD$1249 outright, to say I'm mad at the situation of my Pixel malfunctioning like this being disappointing, would be an understatement.

In the last week my Pixel has been really quite bad, matching up with reports online that Pixel owners have been having their phone freeze, and you can't do anything with it - and it takes up to 60 seconds before the phone starts working, very randomly. The only way to get out of it is to hard reset Pixel by pressing the power and volume down buttons at the same time, and holding them down for 10 seconds.

Not only that, but I've been noticing glitches with the camera and the fingerprint sensor not recognizing my fingerprint. A few weeks ago I was sitting in the cinema watching Arrival and at the end of the movie, I went to unlock my Pixel with my fingerprint - which was rejected, and so was my 4-digit security code. I couldn't get into my Pixel at all, and had to hard reset and wipe the entire smartphone and start again.

The Huawei Mate 9, unveiled in November, already comes in multiple colors, but the Chinese giant has now added another one - obsidian black.

Other than the new color, the specs of the phone remain the same - Kirin 960 chip, 4GB of RAM and 64GB of internal storage. The phone has a 5.9-inch full HD display, 4,000 mAh battery, fingerprint sensor and rear-dual camera system - 20MP (monochrome) + 12MP (color) with an aperture of f/2.2. The front camera is 8MP with an aperture of f/1.9.

The phone is also available in gray, silver, gold, brown and white color at a price of $776.

The Huawei P9, launched in April this year, proved to be quite popular among users, so it's not surprising that everyone is curious about its successor.

According to a recent leak, the P10 will have a 5.5-inch display with QHD resolution. The device will be powered by Huawei's Kirin 960 processor and it will come with a 4GB of RAM and 64GB of internal storage. The more powerful model should come with 6GB of RAM and 128GB of internal storage.

The latest leak, reported by the Weibo user reviewer_xiaokang, suggest that the Huawei P10 will come with a dual-curved screen and a front fingerprint sensor.

Adding new colors to existing devices proved to be popular with the phone manufacturers this year. Huawei has added a red and blue option for their P9, HTC added red color to their HTC10, and Samsung first added Coral Blue followed by Black Pearl.

Xiaomi has now added two new colors to their Redmi Note 4 device - blue and black. The device was originally available in gold, silver and gray. The new color variants are limited to the 3GB of RAM plus 32GB of internal storage and 3GB of RAM and 64GB of internal storage models, but they cost the same as the gray, silver and gold ones.

The Redmi Note 4 was released in August this year. The phone comes with a 5.5-inch display, 13MP main camera, and 5MP selfie cam. The device is powered by Helio X20 chip and comes with 4,100 mAh battery.

I still remember one of my first PCs being a 486 DX2-66, and it rocking 2MB of RAM (yes, megabytes with a 'M') and upgrading it to 4MB of RAM for a game most of you won't remember - Under a Killing Moon. Now, smartphones have 4GB of RAM, some with 6GB of RAM - and now SK Hynix is breaking into the world of 8GB of RAM for smartphones.

SK Hynix will be tapping the older 21nm manufacturing process for the 8GB chips, which will be aiming towards price/performance smartphones compared to the more efficient 10nm process Samsung is using for its 8GB module.

The 8GB module from SK Hynix will be running at 3.73GHz, with each chip rocking 4 x 2GB modules, offering bandwidth of up to 29.8Gbps. The 21nm process itself might be older and less efficient, but it will provide lower/mid-range smartphone makers to bake in 8GB of RAM into their lower/mid-range priced handsets, in bigger numbers than Samsung's higher-end 10nm-based 8GB chips.

As everyone is probably aware by now - the Samsung Galaxy Note7 is banned from all flights, and there are multiple warnings at airports that remind the few users that might still have this device not to bring it on the plane.

That being said, a Virgin America flight from San Francisco to Boston was delayed and almost diverted because a passenger changed the name of his Wi-Fi hotspot to 'Samsung Galaxy Note7_1097'. This made other passengers and the crew think that there is a Samsung Galaxy Note7 onboard and is being used.

According to a passenger Lucas Wojciechowski, who took a screenshot of the hotspot named Galaxy Note7, the crew made urgent announcements demanding that the owner of the Note7 comes forward otherwise the flight will be diverted and land in Wyoming where the plane will be thoroughly searched.

LG has announced a range of new smartphones just before CES. The company unveiled their 2017 K series - the K3, K4, K8, and K10, as well as the Stylus 3.

The K10 (2017) comes with a 5.3-inch HD display, 13MP camera, and 5MP selfie cam. It is powered by MediaTek's MT6750 processor and it had 2GB of RAM and 32GB internal memory. The K10 has a fingerprint sensor and comes with 2,800 mAh battery.

The K8 (2017) has a smaller 5-inch HD display, but the same camera as K10. It runs on a Snapdragon 425 processor and comes with 1.5GB of RAM and 16GB of internal memory. The device doesn't have a fingerprint sensor and comes with a 2,500 mAh battery.

September 2017 is far away, but there are already many rumors about the next iPhone. The new rumor, posted on Chinese tech blog cnBeta, suggests that Apple is developing three iPhone models for next year.

According to the report, Apple will launch two upgraded iPhone 7 models, likely branded iPhone 7s and iPhone 7 Plus. The third phone, codenamed Ferrari, is the real star of the leak cause it will supposedly rock a borderless OLED display, wireless charging, and more.

The new iPhone will reportedly feature the same Touch ID home button, but it would integrate into the display itself, eliminating the bottom bezel 'chin.'

HTC just sent out invitations for an event on January 12th. Weird timing considering it's not even a week after CES, but I guess that's just how HTC rolls.

There is absolutely no information of what to expect, and to my email, HTC diplomatically responded with "More information will be revealed in the coming weeks before the announcement."

The invitation has a sign "For U" with HTC's logo where the letter "C" is also highlighted. The first thing that came to my mind is that HTC might unveil something related to Under Armour, a company with whom they already cooperated on some wearables.

HMD Global recently launched their first Nokia phone - Nokia 150. However, we are still waiting for the new Nokia-branded Android smartphone, which should be unveiled in February at MWC.

As we previously reported, the smartphone should come in two versions which will differ in display size and the amount of memory.

The new leak shows photos of the upcoming phones and gives us more details about Nokia phones.

Samsung won't remember this year as a successful one after the Note7 fiasco, but they are already planning their comeback for next year. Recent reports suggest they postponed the Galaxy S8 launch from February to April, and it remains to be seen what will happen with the Note series.

The Note7 was a great phone, there's no doubt about it, but the exploding batteries harmed the brand, and we will see if they will manage to rebuilt the trust with the users. It appears that Samsung will continue their Note line and they are considering LG Chem company to manufacture the batteries for their Note8 and probably other phones launching after that.

This means that the Galaxy Note8 could become the first Samsung phone to pack in an LG-made battery.

After the Galaxy Note7 fiasco, Samsung has boosted the advertisement of their only flagship this year - Galaxy S7. Many analysts initially thought that Samsung might rush with their next phone, but the new reports suggest that the Korean giant decided to go for a different approach.

According to a report from Naver, Samsung's executives decided at a recent meeting in New York to postpone the introduction of Galaxy S8 from MWC in Barcelona at the end of February to April 2017.

It is possible that the company wants to distance themselves from the Note7 fiasco and take more time to build the trust with their customers.

Huawei decided to end the year with their new concept phone introduced under Honor brand - Honor Magic.

The Honor Magic does have the word "magic" in it, but there is very little magic in this concept phone. Yes, it is Huawei's curviest phone so far, but when a company is introducing a concept phone, it is expected that they will try to push the boundaries of conventional phone design and introduce something new or different. But that's not the case with the Honor Magic.

As mentioned earlier, the Honor Magic has every edge and corner curved which gives a somewhat different look to the phone. The device comes with a 5.09-inch AMOLED display with a resolution of 2560 x 1440 pixels.

LG is set to throw a huge CES 2017 this year, with no less than 6 new smartphones to be unveiled at the show - and then we'll reportedly see a high-end flagship handset unveiled during Mobile World Congress the month after.

LG will be pre-announcing their new smartphones before CES, with the K-series handsets shipping in the middle of January. The Stylus 3 will ship in mid-February, the X calibur shipping in mid-March, and the X power 2 towards the end of April.

As for the new smartphones to be unveiled, here's what to expect:

While we are still waiting for the new Nokia-branded Android smartphone, which should be unveiled in February at MWC, HMD Global launched their first Nokia phone - Nokia 150.

The phone comes in two versions - Nokia 150 and Nokia 150 Dual SIM. Both phones have 2.4-inch QVGA screen with a resolution of just 320 x 240 pixels. They come with a built-in FM radio and MP3 player.

The 1020 mAh battery gives you up to 22 hours of talk time and up to 31 days standby time for Nokia 150, while the standby time drops to 25 days for Dual SIM. Oh, and did I mention the Nokia 150 and Nokia 150 Dual SIM have a keypad?

Earlier this year Nokia signed a strategic brand and intellectual property licensing agreement enabling HMD Global (a Nokia Corporation, the original Nokia, affiliate) to create a new generation of Nokia-branded mobile phones and tablets. HMD announced that it has agreed to acquire from Microsoft the rights to use the Nokia brand on feature phones, and certain related design rights.

Next year will bring us the first Nokia-branded smartphone by HMD Global. There are reports the company should introduce the phone, currently known as the Nokia D1C, in February next year, at MWC.

The smartphone will be launched in two versions which will differ in display size and the amount of memory. The more expensive variant should come with 3GB of RAM and a 5.5-inch display. The expected price is $200.

Today, Synaptics announced their new optical fingerprint sensor - the FS9100, which is capable of high-resolution scanning through 1mm of full cover glass and enables clean button-free industrial designs.

The fingerprint sensor is designed to be placed under coverglass, meaning it doesn't require its own separate button. The FS9100 can be integrated into a single piece of glass on the front of the phone, so hopefully we can say 'goodbye' to separate buttons for fingerprint sensors and hello to even sleeker phone designs.

The FS9100 optical fingerprint sensors are designed for placement under the cover glass, including 2.5D glass, located in the front, bottom bezel of devices. The real innovation is being able to work through the existing device glass, up to 1mm thick, meaning that the fingerprint sensor is now as durable as your gorilla glass (or other glass) screen.

The HTC 11 should be unveiled sometime next year, possibly at MWC at the beginning of February, or shortly afterward like they did with the HTC 10.

Not much is known about the phone at this point, but a photo of the HTC 11 recently leaked on the Chinese social network Weibo. Have in mind to take the photo and the leaked specs with a grain of salt since they can not be confirmed at this point.

The leaked photo shows that HTC 11 features a dual rear camera with 8MP selfie camera. The post says that HTC 11 will have a beefy 3700 mAh battery, an improvement from 3000 mAh battery that HTC 10 has.