Mobile Devices - Page 168

Samsung Galaxy S III owners in the US have probably been wondering when their flagship smartphone would be getting the amazing Android 4.1 Jelly Bean OS, but there's some good news and unfortunately, some bad news.

The good news is that it's on its way and will arrive in the coming months, the bad news is that you'll still have to wait for those "coming months". Samsung would most likely be trapped from releasing it by the carriers, where they'll each have to finalize the update before shipping it to the public.

The update to the US Galaxy S III will bring over the usual Jelly Bean goodness like Project Butter and Google Now, and some new TouchWiz-based enhancements such as Blocking Mode, Easy Mode and a few new camera settings.

Japanese site Blog of Mobile have published images what they're claiming to be Chinese device maker Huawei's Ascend W1 Windows Phone 8 smartphone. The usual blurry images are included, but it looks to sport a bright polycarbonate body like Nokia's Lumia smartphones, as well as HTC's Windows Phone 8X and 8S.

Huawei's Ascend W1 is rumored to pack a 4-inch WVGA (800x480) display, a 1.2GHz dual-core processor, 5-megapixel rear-facing camera, VGA front-facing camera, 512MB of RAM, 4GB of internal storage and a 2000mAh battery.

It won't come close to beating most 4- to 5-inch phones, but it will give the entry-level Windows Phone 8 market something to look at when in the market for a WP8-based device.

Google and ASUS' Jelly Bean-powered Nexus 7 tablet has now become the all-time best-selling Android tablet in the UK, just three months after its release. The news comes from mobile retailer Carphone Warehouse. Graham Stapleton, chief commercial officer at Carphone Warehouse says:

At its low price tag, it has little to no competition and consumers have been loving it. Amazon's Kindle Fire HD will go on sale in the European markets soon which should give Google some competition. Apple's new iPad mini will be announced next week which should also put pressure on Google's 7-inch tablet. Stapleton adds:

Another iFixit teardown is here, this time for Apple's seventh-generation iPod Nano. The teardown notes just how much work Apple's engineers put into the new iPod Nano to make it as thin as it is, with the teardown also noting that the battery has a rating of 0.8Wh, double the rating of the previous-gen Nano.

The teardown notes that the battery, Lightning connector and volume controls are all soldered directly to the logic board itself with the button cable and headphone jack attached, too. The LCD and digitizer glass aren't fused together, which will allow those two components to be replaced individually, if they were to fail.

iFixit found components from Apple, Broadcom (Bluetooth + FM Radio), NXP Semiconductors, Toshiba (NAND flash) and Texas Instruments (touchscreen controller). The teardown team found the seventh-generation iPod Nano very difficult to repair because of the amount of components soldered directly to the board. They've noted that the battery is particularly difficult to replace. Apple's devices are not really repair-friendly, but in order to get these devices increasingly thinner, we're only going to see more of this type of design.

I've got to admit, I wasn't that excited about Microsoft's Surface tablet when we first started hearing about it, but now that it's nearly here and we have found out more on Microsoft's iPad competitor, I'm beginning to get genuinely excited.

But, how does it fare in terms of specifications against the competition? Namely Apple's third-gen iPad and Samsung's pen-toting Galaxy Note 10.1 tablet? AllThingsD have made a great little chart comparing the tablets against each other, which you can see below.

So the new Surface tablet sports a 10.6-inch 1366x760-pixel screen, compared to the iPad's 9.7-inch 2048x1536 "Retina" display, the Surface loses out in resolution, but enjoys its slightly bigger and wider display. Surface only sports 720p front- and rear-facing cameras which is disappointing in this 5-megapixel-plus rear-facing camera world we now live in. Processor-wise, the Surface comes with NVIDIA's T30 SoC which is a quad-core design, compared to the third-gen iPad's dual-core A5X processor and Samsung's 1.4GHz quad-core Exynos chip.

The new iPod touch has one feature curiously absent. If you've ever seen your old iPod touch screen brightness change when you walked out of a dark room into the sunlight, you'll know the feature I'm talking about. The new iPod touch will not have this capability and will instead force users to do it themselves.

According to Phil Schiller, this is due to the new iPod touch being just too thin to fit the required ambient light sensor. Without the sensor, the device has no way of knowing the relative brightnesses between locations and lacks the ability to adjust the screen brightness to compensate for the difference.

It's not that big of a deal, but the automatic brightness adjustment is a feature that I have come to take for granted on my iPhone. It's great for when I am using it at night and had the brightness all the way down and then wake up in a bright room. Instead of trying to see on a dark screen, it automatically brings the brightness up to a comfortable level.

When Apple introduced the new Lightning connector for the iPhone 5, many people were amazed at the cost they were charging for adapters and cables. Most people, myself included, figured that there would be knock-off cables available pretty quickly after launch, but this was before a tear-down was conducted on the cable.

As most now know, Apple included an authenticator chip inside the end of the Lightning cable which is making it harder for third-party cables to be made. Chipworks wasn't going to just let it sit there, so they instead have conducted a tear-down of the new cable's chip and found out some information in regards to its security.

The tear-down revealed that the chip included does seem to feature security in some form or another, though nothing like that found in modern printer cartridges. Chipworks found circuitry that is "consistent with a serial communication chip including some simple security features."

Pricing on the new Microsoft Surface RT tablets is now known as Microsoft has put the tablets up for pre-order and the general consensus is that the pricing is just a wee bit, OK, quite a bit, too high. However, there are arguments for the other side saying that it is just right. My fear is that if this is what a Windows RT device costs, imagine what a regular Windows tablet will cost.

As you can see in the picture above, the basic 32GB Windows RT Surface tablet will set you back a costly $499. Note that that does not include the keyboard cover. For that, you'll have to shell out an additional $100, bringing the total price up to $599. For $699, you can get a 64GB system with the keyboard cover.

Most people have taken to Twitter to express concern over the pricing. "Sadly it looks like I'm out for the new Microsoft Surface, the price is too high for the low end model" and "They've priced it too high if they're just trying to get into the market." What are your thoughts on the pricing? Too high, too low, or just right?

I'm surprised it took this long to see the iPhone 5 blended. Blendtec, which started blending iPhones and other weird objects on video back with the first iPhone, has traditionally been very prompt about attempting total destruction on the latest and greatest Apple product, so having to wait nearly a month has been devastating.

But that's OK because the founder and PR manager have returned from Down Under (yes, they were in Australia) and tossed in not just an iPhone 5, but the Samsung Galaxy S III in an attempt to make an epic face-off between the two flagship devices. Of course, by now, I figure you've already watched the video. If not, go watch it then return here. I'll wait.

Back? Good. As you saw in the video, the Galaxy S III held out a little bit longer than the iPhone 5 did. In fact, the iPhone 5 was destroyed almost from the very beginning whereas the Samsung Galaxy S III survived for a good little while there. So, what can we take away from this? If you happen to be working over a giant, over-powered blender, the Galaxy S III might just survive long enough for you to pull it out.

ASUS teased us last week on their Facebook page about their PadFone 2, but now the day is finally here - introducing, the ASUS PadFone 2. Is it a smartphone? Yes. Can it be a tablet? Yes. It's the best of both worlds, and something revolutionary in an other wise same ol', same ol' smartphone world.

Not to say the rest of the phones on the market are boring, but ASUS are going out on a limb once again with the successor to the PadFone with PadFone 2. Spec wise, we're looking at ASUS' PadFone sporting a 4.7-inch 1280x720 Super IPS+ display, a 1.5GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 quad-core processor, 2GB of RAM, a 13-megapixel rear-facing camera, up to 64GB of internal storage, backed up by 50GB of ASUS WebStorage.

All of this finds its way into a sleek-looking, 9mm thick device that weighs just 135g. Battery life should be quite good with its 2140mAh battery that ASUS reckon is good for 16 hours of 3G talk-time, and 13 hours of Wi-Fi web browsing.

Japanese telco NTT DoCoMo has unveiled a great-looking smartphone from Sharp, the Aquos Phone Zeta SH-02E, the first smartphone to bake the IGZO display. IGZO's display uses indium gallium zinc oxide technology that promises higher translucency compared to normal LCDs.

This technology reduces the demand for backlighting on the screen which should result in reduced battery use. The phone sports a 4.9-inch, 1280x720-pixel display, a 16-megapixel rear-facing camera, 1.5GHz quad-core Snapdragon S4 Pro chip, Adreno 320 graphics, NFC and 4G LTE compatibility through NTT DoCoMo's network.

The IGZO display-powered Sharp Aquos Phone Zeta SH-02E comes with Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich out of the box, which is probably the only downer on an otherwise well-specced smartphone. There's no word on whether this will land anywhere outside of Japan, yet.

Verizon will begin selling the DROID RAZR HD and DROID RAZR MAXX HD on October 18. The new devices continue the design of the popular DROID Android devices that Verizon has been selling for several years now. Of course, they feature updated specifications to keep up with the competitors offerings.

The devices sport a 4.7-inch 1280x720 resolution screen powered by a 1.5GHz dual-core Snapdragon S4 processor. Wireless is complete with 4G LTE and NFC connectivity, still features saved for higher-end models. The RAZR HD sports 16GB of internal storage and will set you back $199.99 with a new two-year contract.

The RAZR MAXX HD is very similar, but will set you back $299.99 with a new two-year contract. Why the cost difference? Well, the MAXX comeds with a 30 percent larger battery and 32GB of internal storage. Verizon's full press statement is below:

The rumors proved correct in this instance. Today, Samsung has officially outed the Samsung Galaxy S3 Mini, the little brother of their flagship Galaxy S3 device. I just want to take a moment to complain: why did they have to continue to extend the name of the device? The name was already long enough before they attached "Mini" to it.

Now that that is out of the way, let's move on to what you really want to hear about, the specifications. The device sports the rumored 4-inch screen, which should give it broader appeal among customers. It's powered by Android 4.1 Jelly Bean, which is in turn interpreted by a dual core 1GHz SoC.

The device's design is extremely similar to its larger older brother. It features the same NFC, S Bean feature, and curvy design elements. The rear-facing camera is a 5 megapixel sensor if auto-focus and flash. It sports 8GB of internal storage and up to a 32GB microSD card. Customers should be able to purchase the device in early November.

It looks like I'm not the only one not impressed with the iPhone 5, with Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak wishing that the new sixth-generation iPhone 5 wasn't just a taller, thinner, faster iPhone 4S. Wozniak says Apple were arrogant in their decision of keeping just a single 4-inch sized iPhone 5.

He notes that the Cupertino-based company should've created two sizes, a smaller iPhone, and a larger as well as wider iPhone. His chat with TechCentral gave quite a lot of insight, and opinion into the company he helped form:

It looks like Samsung is ready to launch their Galaxy S III Mini, which should sport a 4-inch screen and compete directly with the iPhone 5 on screen size. But Mobile Geeks are reporting on a leaked price, with the model number of GT-I8190 and GT-I8190N popping up some online retailers from Switzerland and Austria.

The Galaxy S III Mini is being priced by some Austrian stores at 390 to 540 francs, which when converted is around 323 Euros, or roughly US$399 or so. An expected availability date has been given with the earliest time to expect these mini S III's is October 16, or early-November most likely.

The new Galaxy S III Mini will be made available in the two colors its bigger brother launched in, Marble White and Blue Pebble. We should expect the 4-inch display to sport a resolution of 800x480 pixels, and a less-powerful rear-facing camera. We should expect just a dual-core version of the S III Mini, but that should be fine given that the device is more than powerful enough, even as a dual-core smartphone.

ASUS have used their Facebook page to tease that their upcoming Padfone 2 is coming on October 16. There's not much else they say about the phone, apart from "it's intuitive!" and that "it's coming on October 16".

We should expect the ASUS Padfone 2 to really make a big splash for ASUS, as they've been doing the tablet world a good deed with their Transformer range of slates. The Padfone 2 should hopefully rock a quad-core processor, and have its usual tablet accessory, which turns your smartphone into a tablet.

This is quite the design shift from other manufacturers who sell you a tablet or a smartphone, but ASUS let you slide your phone into a bigger device where it turns into a tablet. This is great as you'll then have the one device, with all of your pictures, movies, tunes and more.

LG's Nexus-branded phone continues to make waves on the Internet, where some new photos of the device have popped up. The black plate looks like Sprint's model of LG's Optimus G smartphone, with the front of the device looking like Samsung's Galaxy Nexus - so you'll hear no complaints from most people as it looks great so far.

It does sport a chrome-like bezel, with a speaker grille sitting at the top of the device. The home screen and buttons all look Nexus-like, which should be expected. But, now we have some specs:

So we're looking at a powerful device, sporting a quad-core processor clocking in at 1.5GHz, but also 2GB of RAM. 8GB of internal storage is included without an expandable microSD slot, which is a disappointment but these specs could change over time. Android 4.1 Jelly Bean fills out the software side of things, and the screen has a resolution of 1184x768, which should give us a DPI of around 320 and works out to an approximately 4.7-inch display, and finally, an 8-megapixel rear-facing camera.

The new iPhone 5 is far from perfect, but there have been some issues with the camera on this model. If you've used an iPhone 5, read our review, or read many of the other reviews out there, you'd have seen that the iPhone 5 has an issue when snapping photos.

The iPhone 5, when held at the right angle and near the right light source, will give off a purple haze on the photo. It's not a deal breaker, but it's something worth noting when buying (or reviewing) a device like this. Apple have come out over the weekend, posting a support notice for it, stating:

Symptoms

It was only a few days ago that reports were landing that Google wanted a repeat of the Nexus 7's success, but in smartphone form, and now there's some hands-on reports of LG's Optimus G Nexus.

Android and Me are reporting from multiple sources that have told them that LG are working on a Nexus phone, with some hands-on information to go with it. Their source claims that he's not an employee of Google, but has access to one of the Nexus devices that were handed out last week for testing:

The cheap $199 Nexus 7 tablet from ASUS and Google was a huge success - I rated it very well and still use it as my everyday tablet. But it looks like Google wants to hit the homerun again, but with a smartphone this time.

Sources have told DigiTimes that Google are working with manufacturers "to launch smartphones based on its Nexus 7 platform". DigiTimes reports that Google are letting OEMs have more free rein on design and hardware specifications as long as they "are based on its latest native Android system".

I really hope we see this happen, and I have no doubt that we will. I expect a launch in early-2013 of the next iteration of Android, which should be Android 4.2 Key Lime Pie, on a Nexus handset. Bring it on.