Mobile Devices - Page 185

The Indian Government has released a new tablet computer, Aakash, dubbed "the world's cheapest". And at $35 for a student, and $60 for stores, it sure is the cheapest. Here we were thinking that Amazon's Fire was cheap, but now the Indian Government has come and knocked our socks off. On top of the price of the tablet, India is giving away 100,000 free during the launch period. The first 500 tablets released had a luke warm response, with some complaining that they were slow.

The Government hops that the Aakash will bridge the gap between the rich and poor. Kapil Sibal, communications and education minister says:

On top of Apple's announcement today of the iPhone 4S, Tim Cook has come out swinging with a bunch of Apple-related numbers to impress the world with. Starting with, there have been 16 billion songs downloaded from the iTunes store, and also 300 million iPods sold. To give you some perspective, Sony took 30 years to sell just 220,000 Walkman cassette players.

Cook also announced that "the MacBook Pro and iMac are the number one best selling notebook and desktop in the United States". Apparently, the Mac platform grew by 23 percent over the past twelve months, versus a four percent increase from the PC sector. Cook displayed a chart showing the past five years for Mac, showing that Apple is closing in on 60 million Mac users worldwide, leaving Apple short of owning a fourth of the personal computer market. Cook says "there are still 77 percent of people who are buying something else, we have an incredibly high ceiling here. We have a long way to go".

Cook has high dreams for Mac, and with the way things are going, they should have no issues getting there.

Twitter and Facebook (as well as Apple stocks) is alive with disappointed after expecting more from the "Let's talk Apple" event.

Apple left the biggest announcement of the show till the end by introducing "Siri" aka your iPA (personal assistant). Siri takes voice commands and throws the whole concept out the window with a wildly impressive new way for you to communicate with your iPhone.

Apple bought Siri (a mobile assistant app) in April last year and has spent the time since evidently doing a great job of implementing it into iOS 5.0.

The internet and its dog can relax now, Apple has just got done officially revealing and discussing its latest smartphone, the iPhone 4S.

In what seems like what the iPhone 3GS was to the iPhone 3G, the iPhone 4S looks exactly the same as the iPhone 4, but comes with a lot more power. Using the new A5 chip that is used in the iPad 2, Phil Schiller from Apple said "Dual-core CPU, 2x as fast at CPU tasks. Also dual-core graphics. Up to 7x faster in the previous iPhone. One area you really see it scream is in games."

Some may have been expected a low-cost iPhone in the 4S, but we really all should have known it would just be a supercharged iPhone 4. When I say just, that might not have been the right way to put it. I've been using my iPhone 4 since it was first released and it is getting on the slow side and with all the new features and improvements coming to iOS 5.0, the extra power provided by the A5 chip should make a big difference when comparing to a regular iPhone 4 with the A4 chip. Add on to this the iPhone 4S is not a 4G phone as was rumored, but it will be able to offer twice the download speeds of the iPhone 4 with HSDPA compliancy of 14.4Mbps versus 7.2Mbps of the iPhone 4.

Enjoy the Superman reference? If not, I meant Phantom Zone, which means that Microsoft have killed the Zune, officially. Microsoft have removed all references to the Zune HD from its Zune site on Monday and later claimed that the removal was "a mistake". I don't think so, Microsoft. It looks as though they might have removed them early, and the removal was pushed mistakenly. A new support article on Microsoft Zune's support pages makes it very clear:

This confirmation is the arrow to the heart of Zune, as they've failed to prove popular against Apple's iPod. Microsoft did kill off their original Zune-based devices earlier this year, which was the beginning of the inevitable end. Microsoft urged customers to purchase Windows Phone 7 devices for the Zune experience.

Apple seem to change their mind quicker than most companies, and this news is no different. It looks as though Apple might be working on its own GPU technology which would see an Apple-based GPU that would power more than just desktop systems, but quite possibly any future iteration of their iOS-based devices. It might seem like a stretch, but the smartphone and tablet industry is moving more and more away from CPU-based designs to GPU-based designs.

As we see the industry move away and we have companies like NVIDIA making strides in the market, Apple will obviously want a piece of this pie. Apple would obviously not want to create its own CPU as that is quite the engineering effort, and it would be a copy cat design of another company like Intel, AMD or Arm. Graphics allows innovation in new and unusual ways - plus production can be offloaded to places like TSMC.

We have NVIDIA and AMD fighting in the DirectX corner, but an open graphics platform allows for much more flexibility - if you can be certain of what kind of hardware you're targeting. With Apple, there is no option, so it would be a very fixed/stable environment - this is perfect for introducing a slew of new and unusual features and methodologies in a GPU. It would be very different to anything else on the market, because of Apple's very tight grip of its environment.

Samsung has expanded its Galaxy Tab range with the introduction of the Galaxy Tab 7.0 Plus. From the name, you would obviously guess its a 7-inch tablet, but it sports a PLS (Super Plane to Line Switching) display with a 1024 x 600 pixel display, running Android 3.2 Honeycomb and a 1.2GHz dual-core processor, which is looking to be the Exynos 4120. Galaxy Tab 7.0 Plus also sports quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE support and tri-band 3G with 21Mbps HSPA as well as two cameras.

First up there's a 2-megapixel, front-facing camera and a rear-facing 3-megapixel camera capable of taking 720p video. We also see 1GB of RAM and a 4,000mAh battery that is standard on all models. Honeycomb gets Samsung's splash of TouchWiz UI wonder, and size wise we get options of either 16 or 32GB. Both include dual-band Wi-Fi a/b/g/n, GPS and Bluetooth. The 7-inch tablet is quite small, measuring in at 192.65 x 122.37 x 9.96 mm and weighs in at only 0.76 pounds, or just 12.16 ounces.

JK Shin, President and Head of Samsung's Mobile Communications Business chimes in with:

Amazon has finally unveiled their Android-based tablet, which is now known as the Kindle Fire. The 7-inch, 1024x600 device will feature a heavily customized interface tailored around Amazon's services and starting at a surprisingly low price of just $200. In order to get to the sub $200 price point, Amazon have had to cull a few features from the Kindle Fire such as 3G access, a microphone and front/back cameras. Kindle Fire does however include Wi-Fi and a free 30-day trial of Amazon Prime, which is normally $79 per year.

What that means is, you'll get a taste of Amazon's collection of streaming video content and free or discounted shipping for your purchases at Amazon.com. Not only that, but you'll also gain access to the Android Appstore, Kindle books, magazines, and more - all stored for free through the Amazon Cloud Storage and synced between devices invisibly in the background. Whispersync now works with video content, so you can pick up where you left off in a movie or TV show even after switching devices.

Kindle Fire sports 8GB of internal storage, a USB 2.0 port, and battery life for up to 8 hours of continuous reading of 7.5 hours of video playback, with wireless off. Amazon is also introducing something called Amazon Silk. Amazon Silk is described as a lightning-fast web browser that takes advantage of Amazon's EC2 cloud computing engine. CEO Jeff Bezos explains that Silk splits the workload so that some web request are handled locally by the Kindle Fire, while the others are remotely handled by the cloud at Amazon, optimized and sent back to you.

Apple has sent out invitations to the media to attend the iPhone 5 introduction on October 4. All it says is "Let's Talk iPhone", it shows app icons that reflect the date, the 10AM Pacific start time, its location at Apple's 1 Infinite Loop headquarters, and the phone focus. It's presumed, although not official, that the permanent CEO Tim Cook will lead the event. The iPhone 5's design could still go two ways, a total redesign with a larger screen and a thinner body, or the conservative route with an "iPhone 4S"-type model.

But, we should still see a dual-core A5 processor, an 8-megapixel camera, and quite possibly, 64GB of storage and a dual-mode CDMA/GSM chip. We should also see finished version of iOS 5 at the show, with Android-like notification bar and improved lock screen, true independence from a computer and cloud syncing through iCloud and iTunes Match. On top of this, Twitter integration, reminders and an improved camera app.

Windows Phone 7.5 aka Mango has began rolling out to phones across the world. This is just the start and the ramp up of delivery will increase gradually, with Microsoft hoping to make the update to most customers within 4 weeks. Today Microsoft roll Windows Phone 7.5 out to more than 98 percent of existing Windows Phone customers. This is a simultaneous, coordinated, global update that cuts across carriers, phone models and countries.

Mango won't make it to everyone right away and Microsoft are doing this to contain quality issues. Microsoft aren't just delivering a new operating system, but also new software supplied by individual handset makers. This "firmware" is necessary so your phone and apps work with all Mango features. So the update is not just a one-size-fits-all, but a tweaked update to each and every phone.

Microsoft are trying to keep problems isolated and if they pop up they want to stamp them down quickly. This week, Microsoft will make the update available to 10 percent of customers, if it all goes to plan, they'll open up the floodgates to 25 percent. Then they'll hold off for two to three weeks and ramp up to 100 percent, monitoring quality the entire way. This way they can ensure Mango updates all go according to plan.

It's about time. Facebook for iPad is set to launch on October 4 at the iPhone 5 launch event according to Mashable. In addition, Facebook is also expected to launch a revamped version of its iPhone app that may unveil an HTML5-based mobile app marketplace. The Facebook iPad app has been the source of many news bits across the world this year and caused that much stir that even former Facebook engineer Jeff Verkoeyen left Facebook to work at Google partially because Facebook had been sitting on the completed app since May.

Why the delay? This stems from a combination of timing and a strained relationship with Apple. It is no secret that the two companies have been at each others necks previously, with examples such as Facebook pulling the plug on Facebook Connect in Ping because Apple didn't give Facebook any warning about the feature, which took a chunk out of bandwidth on Facebook's side.

There were also the rumors of Facebook being integrated into iOS, this was meant to happen years ago but Apple ended up integrating Twitter into iOS 5. But now with the shared goal of beating Google, Facebook and Apple might need to hug it out. Facebook doesn't have a mobile platform and Apple doesn't have a social platform. This is where the launch of Facebook for iPad at Apple's iPhone 5 media event comes into play.

Word came out just yesterday that Amazon is preparing to hold a press event in New York City on the 28th of September for an unveiling of sorts.

The event will take place at 9am on said date, but it can only be speculated at this time as to what little trick, or tricks they have up their sleeve. The most likely purpose of the unveiling however is to officially introduce its long-awaited "Kindle" (name yet to be confirmed) Android running tablet.

There's been a number of rumours floating around about it for several months now, but we were recently given more of an idea on what to expect when TechCrunch said it managed to get hands on with it. It was said in this report that it will hit shelves in late November at $250US.

The Kal-El-powered second-generation ASUS' Eee Pad Transformer has not been shy from the news lately and now the benchmarks for the "ASUS Transformer TF201" have floated up from the depths of the unknown and onto the Internet. The results have been taken down, but the magic involved in Google's cache have bought them back to life and they paint a glorious picture. When benched against the Acer Iconia Tab A500, which sports a Tegra 2 system-on-a-chip, the Transformer 2 scores 40.6 fps versus the 17 fps of the A500 in the "Egypt Standard" test in the GLBenchmark site.

Not only that, the "Offscreen 720p test" saw the Transformer 2 score 65 fps versus 21 fps which is not too bad at all. Considering that Kal-El's power consumption is meant to be lower than the Tegra 2, it offers much more performance as well as better battery life.

Kal-El has had a lot of news since it was first announced, but now NVIDIA have said it will not only arrive sometime in Q4, but it will sport a fifth core which is a "companion" core. This is built using a "special low-power silicone process" which works on tasks at a low frequency. NVIDIA calls this approach "variable symmetric multiprocessing" and it basically allows it to use this extra core for handling low overhead tasks such as e-mail syncs, social media syncs, etc.

Each core is an ARM Cortex A9 CPU that is individually enabled and disabled based on the workload or task, but all five can't run at once. The low-power 'companion' core runs at a lower voltage than the other four cores and is only used when the performance state requested by the OS/apps isn't higher than a predetermined threshold. Once the threshold is reached, the low-power core is disabled and the high-performance A9 cores take over, enabling between 1 and 4 cores as needed.

The result? A quad-core processor that consumes less power and yet provides higher performance than the Tegra 2.

J.P. Morgan analyst Mark Moskowitz expects that two new iPhones will launch this fall, with the iPad 3 delayed into 2012. This speculations comes from conversations with industry insiders and was detailed in a note to clients, according to reports. The iPhone 5 is reported to sport a lighter, thinner form factor as well as packing a larger display and an 8-megapixel camera. It is also rumored to be both GSM and CDMA-capable, making it a "world-mode" smartphone. It is expected to not include LTE connectivity.

The second rumored phone is reportedly going to be the iPhone 4-plus and will launch alongside the iPhone 5. The iPhone 4-plus is based on the current-generation iPhone but will feature a few improvements. This handset could target the mainstream price point and focus on the China market, but it's reported to not be exclusive to that region.

The iPad 3 is said to be delayed until 2012, mostly because Apple is currently dominating the tablet market. While they're ahead, why not push further? Why wait just because you "dominate" the market. The iPhone market will only peak with Android phones coming in from left, right and centre. These lawsuits against Samsung aren't doing Apple any favours.

Archos, maker of well priced Android tablets is set to launch the first of its G9 tablet series before the end of this month in the U.S. - the Archos 80 G9 8GB. Costing $299 USD, the tablet uses Android 3.2 (Honeycomb) and runs off a 1GHz OMAP 4 dual-core processor. It sports an 8-inch (1024 x 768) touchscreen and packs an 8GB SSD. Archos has said it will be available for preorder from the 20th of this month, and online availability is planned for the 30th.

Come October, another four models will enter the G9 series, all using 1.5GHz dual-core OMAP 4 processors. They include the :-

- Archos 80 G9 with a 16GB SSD - $329

Qualcomm have come out swinging with their roadmap for their Snapdragon range of mobile processors during their Innovation Qualcomm event in Istanbul. We should be expecting their next-gen chips to be available at an astonishing 2.5GHz. The roadmap (as seen in the pic below) shows that there will be four new Snapdragon classes. S1 class will be for the mass market with speeds of 1GHz and Adreno 200 graphics. S2 will be for high-performance smartphones and tablets based on a 45nm process with 1.4GHz processing speeds and an Adreno 205 GPU.

Next up we have the multi-tasking and advanced gaming devices which will have 1.5GHz dual-core chips slapped inside, with Adreno 220 graphics, 3D and 3G HSPA+. Finally, there's the next-generation devices which will get the S4 polish which includes a 28nm-based manufacturing process, up to 2.5GHz CPUs which will be made available in single, dual and quad-core configurations, dual or quad-core next-gen Adreno graphics and 3G/4G LTE networking.

Still sitting down, or are you on the floor in a puddle of drool? These new Snapdragon parts should be sent to manufacturers by years' end and consumer-based products should launch in early 2012. This means we might see some mobile phones at CES 2012 at the earliest, if not, possibly the Mobile World Congress shortly after. Excited?? I am!

Microsoft is prepping to show off a Windows 8-based, Intel-powered, Samsung-built tablet at the Microsoft conference this week with at least one of the tablets being shown will not only be distributed to some attendees, but will be built from Intel silicon. People were expecting a move to ARM-based processors, but Intel seems to have won that battle. ARM-based providers such as Qualcomm, Texas Instruments and NVIDIA all provide hardware for Motorola, Samsung and Sony tablets that are Android-powered.

It's not yet known if the Windows 8 tablets will be running ARM, but Intel is reported to be a go. ARM processors are generally favored for their power efficiency over Intel CPUs, but we should see a change in the wind coming in the form of next-gen Atom chips from Intel coming soon.

Apple's next-gen iPad 3 is set to have a "massively upgraded" battery, but will cost Apple anywhere between 20 and 30% more per unit according to Cens.com. The new battery is reported to go into production early next year and has been designed to be both thinner and lighter with a longer service life than the current iPad 2. With the iPad 3 rumored to have a higher resolution screen, this would impact battery life. Apple would be smart to combat this with an upgraded battery.

The news site says:

While the wraps are still tightly sealed on the iPhone 5's complete official specs, many reports floating about combine to give a fair idea of what's on the cards with Apple's 5th gen smartphone.

There's still quite a bit of umm'ing and ahh'ing going on, but the folks over at Tech-Reviews help and draw a conclusion as to the most probable specs of the phone, basing their thoughts on the many reports and tid bits of info that have leaked in recent months.

As suspected for quite a while now, they believe the phone will use the new A5 dual-core CPU found in the iPad 2, a 3.7-inch display (but are hoping for a 4-inch using the latest Quantum Dot LED Technology), an 8MP camera, possibility (but not a probability) of 4G LTE support and NFC (Near field communication) Payment, a vaguely heard of, super convenient payment technology that simply requires the phone be waved in front of the counter in stores. They also acknolwedge reports that indicate Apple might be partnering with Paypal for NFC.