Laptop-DRV » Phones

New York Times: Apple Is Not Making the Smaller iPhone

admin — Fri, 18 Feb 2011 21:26:27 +0000

The side of a white iPhone 4. Photo by Jon Snyder/Wired.com

TheNew York Times has poured cold water on the gossip that Apple is scheming to sell a smaller version of the iPhone.

The report conflicts with stories published progressing this week by Bloomberg as well as The Wall Street Journal, who both explain that Apple is making the not as big iPhone which relies heavily upon cloud-based storage and media streaming.

Citing an anonymous source, NYT explained which Apple is operative on methods to move costs of the iPhone down, and the smaller iPhone wouldn’t indispensably be cheaper to furnish, nor would it be simpler to operate.

Two vital publications say something is happening, and one vital announcement is saying it’s not. We’re inclined to hold NYT, however, since the explanation seems more rational. Reducing storage and distance wouldn’t move down costs most, as well as the different shade distance would additionally cause fragmentation in a App Store.

Hands-On With HTC Incredible S

admin — Tue, 15 Feb 2011 22:52:30 +0000

BARCELONA — Amidst the spew of product announcements comes HTC’s brand new flagship phone, a Incredible S. If you already have the Droid Incredible S, it might look familiar, but a HTC-branded version is essentially pretty different.

First, it has HTC’s poetic Sense UI, this time built on tip of Android 2.2. Sense creates the whole Android knowledge much slicker and more intuitive to make use of. Coupled with a spectacular shade, a four-inch Super LED with a 800 x 480 fortitude (the Droid has a 3.7-inch OLED display), swiping around is the lot of fun. A 1GHz Qualcomm CPU, 768MB IMPEL and a gig of inner storage complete a mechanism partial, as well as then we get upon to a cameras.

Up front is a 1.3MP webcam, and around a behind is an 8MP, autofocus behemoth, additionally capable of sharpened 720p video.

Flip a Incredible S upon its side as well as not usually does the picture stagger, as you’d design, but a little light-up capacitive buttons upon the side also rotate to stay “upright”. It’s the nice hold.

Despite the bigger shade, a Incredible S feels pretty slim and light, and I’d be happy to put one in my pocket. Unfortunately, a HTC stand at the Mobile World Congress has all wired up parsimonious to screeching alarms, so I left a monitor unit where it was. Available in a second entertain of the year.

Microsoft-Nokia Hookup Leaves Symbian Devs Hanging

admin — Tue, 15 Feb 2011 17:00:16 +0000

When Nokia teamed up with Microsoft to contest with smartphone rivals Apple and Google, the association was putting something profitable during risk: the faithfulness of a programmers who emanate apps for a Nokia ecosystem.

After the companies voiced their partnership final week, many die-hard Nokia programmers posted comments in forums and blog posts, expressing feelings of profanation while threatening to formula for Android instead.

“Developers have been angry since they feel that Nokia has betrayed them as well as sold them out to Microsoft,” pronounced Andres Kruse, a programmer who creates apps with the Qt toolkit that will not be upheld upon Nokia’s Windows phones.

Developers have been the consequential resource for every major record company’s media ecosystem. Programmers’ apps in conclusion determine what the company’s product can do, as well as constrained apps can serve as a vital attractor for consumer sales. Apple, Google, Nokia as well as Microsoft have aggressively recruited developers to have apps for their platforms as if they’re soldiers going to fight.

Many cruise Nokia’s Symbian handling scheme to be outdated compared to Apple’s iOS as well as Google’s Android, though a Finnish phone company has cultivated the development village for over a decade. One of the many popular programming toolkits developed by Nokia is Qt (pronounced cute), an open source application horizon which can create software that works upon mixed platforms.

Microsoft and Nokia last week cut the trade, in that Nokia would adopt Windows Phone 7 as its primary mobile handling system. The agreement reportedly price Microsoft billions of dollars.

One major side effect involved in the Nokia-Microsoft partnership is which going forward, Qt will not be upheld on Nokia’s Windows phones. Nokia will continue to sell Symbian phones ancillary Qt over the subsequent two years, and Nokia claims it will continue to rise Qt, though in the future a association will transition to Windows Phone 7 as its first OS.

“By changeable the prospect smartphone plan away from Qt there is a strong clarity of disappointment from those who have invested in Qt for mobile development,” Nokia’s Aron Kozak pronounced in a blog post. “We sympathize and we understand…. There is no magical matter we can have that proves things will be good, however we will try to maintain open information exchange as we progress.”

However, Kruse pronounced he felt pressured to confirm either to reconstruct apps for Windows Phone 7, or to take an wholly brand new route such as Android.

“This is the company where it feels similar to they’ve been you do all for them as well as now their association is capitulating,” pronounced Gartner researcher Michael Gartenberg, regarding Nokia developers who reacted negatively to a Microsoft partnership. “You can imagine which if Steve Jobs came back to Apple in 1997, if he said ‘We’re done with Macintosh, we’re just starting to setup Windows PCs,’ you would’ve seen a same greeting in the Apple community.”

Brian Watson, Microsoft’s executive of developer evangelism for Windows Phone 7, explained that Nokia as well as Microsoft opted against supporting Qt in sequence to say the integrity of the Windows Phone height. Apps grown for all Windows Phones contingency be done with Microsoft’s native toolkits such as Silverlight as well as XNA.

“It might be the difficult tablet to swallow … but it’s for a better,” Watson said.” Any great developer is going to sense brand new languages entrance along. It’s about finding the right collection to get the pursuit done.”

But for Qt developer Kruse, Nokia’s switch to Windows Phone 7 equates to the lot some-more than just learning new programming languages. It’s a matter of a risks as well as costs concerned in coding for a single platform and afterwards being sealed in. By contrariety, with Qt, Kruse could have an app which runs upon Nokia phones, Windows as well as Macs with minimal bid.

“In the box we make program for infirm people, as well as the marketplace is so tiny which we simply cannot afford to develop for a platform whose success is by no equates to certain,” Kruse said. “Qt would have taken that risk away. Now we will have to go for Android. At least there we know this is not starting away.”

Watson said Microsoft understands the significance of the Nokia developer village, as well as the association would work hard to keep the community loyal in light of the brand new partnership. To recruit developers for Windows Phone 7, Microsoft has handed out free inclination for programmers to exam their apps, and infrequently even offering to fly them to the Microsoft campus to get the crash march, Watson said.

“Our idea is making developers happy, creation developers successful, creation developers rich and important,” Watson pronounced. “They’re the really scarce apparatus and … I don’t wish to remove any of them. We’re starting to be really creative with things we can do.”

Video: Hands-On With a PlayStation Phone

admin — Tue, 15 Feb 2011 07:41:49 +0000

BARCELONA — Sony Ericsson’s Xperia Play is a phone we have wanted ever given Sony’s PSP was invented. It is, in any meaningful approach, the first official PSP phone, as well as we got to play with it at the Mobile World Congress. How does it do?

Pretty good. With the gamepad tucked out of the approach, the Play is a sincerely humdrum Android phone, using 2.3 Gingerbread upon a Snapdragon processor and versed with the 5MP camera. As a phone, it is ideally excellent.

But slide which desk pad out and things get fun, fast. You get a D-Pad, plus a four familiar PlayStation “shape” buttons, start and select and a home symbol that mimics the unchanging a single up by a shade. There have been additionally two touch-pads, and a pair of shoulder buttons around back, behind the screen.

To drive a graphics, the Play has the own GPU, a 1GHz Adreno 205. This allows a phone to pull a polygons around as well as monitor them at 60fps. Here you can see it in movement, along with me removing my ass kicked in a pre-installed Bruce Lee diversion:

In the palm, you dont think about immediately that it is the phone. The buttons have been fine, nonetheless if you were personification the Streetfighter-style diversion, those d-pad rolling special moves would be a small wily. The shoulder-buttons have been easy to reach, even for my large hands, as well as the shade hinge is solid enough which things don’t wave around while personification.

Games will come from the Android Market Place, and there will be a separate PlayStation Store for shopping old PS1 games, which will run on a Play.

It’s considerable, though I’m disturbed that it will be as well costly to be successful. Amazon.de lists it during €650, which converts to, $880. That’s a lot of money, as well as even Sony Ericsson’s promise of 50 launch titles might not be sufficient to confuse you. The launch date has yet to be announced, though could be as early as March.

LG’s Glasses-Free 3D Phone is Pretty Impressive

admin — Mon, 14 Feb 2011 10:09:11 +0000

Barcelona – Unlike its underwhelming Optimus Pad tablet, LG’s Optimus 3D cellphone is rather than considerable. It’s 4.3-inch shade is capable of displaying 3D without the need for a pair of 3D glasses.

The Optimus runs Android 2.2 (which is user-upgradeable to 2.3), as well as the screen runs at 480 x 800 resolution. This is, according to the rather carefree chairman who wrote a spec-card which accompanies a phone, enough for 1080p video. To be satisfactory, this some-more expected refers to a HDMI-out capability, which will run 3D during 720p and regular 2D during 1080p.

3D can be prisoner around a span of cameras on the back, only similar to a Optimus Pad, though you can additionally perspective it right there on the phone. The monitor functions the lot like a Nintendo 3DS, regulating lens-based trickery to send dissimilar images to any eye. The outcome is surprisingly convincing, although oddly seems to make the shade appear not as big. While I can turn engrossed in a movie upon an tablet set the few feet in front of me, to the extent which I dont think about I’m looking during such the tiny screen, the 3D monitor is looked during, rather than than looked into. Still, a 3D-ness is credible, as well as it will surely be good for gaming.

When looking at the screen from anywhere though tighten up, it looks like one of those novelty lenticular postcards from a notable relic gift-shop. This worried me for a moment, but it only happens in 3D mode. When you return to normal phone-use, a shade looks no different from any other.

Like a Optimus Pad, the Optimus 3D is built on the gimmick. And while sharpened poor-quality 3D video competence be fun, the a games which will have or mangle this device. And my guess is “break”: Android is fragmented enough as it is. How many developers have been going to make 3D versions of their games, just for this phone?

Microsoft And Nokia Team Up to Build Windows Phones

admin — Fri, 11 Feb 2011 05:40:47 +0000

Future Nokia phones will run Windows Phone 7. Microsoft as well as Nokia have announced a partnership which will span Microsoft’s less-than-successful OS with Nokia’s flagging handset business. The move is not startling: In his now-infamous “Burning Platform” memo Nokia’s CEO Stephen Elop – an ex-Microsoft senior manager – promised to share “the new plan upon February 11″ which would “transform the company.”

So what will happen?

Windows 7 will now be Nokia’s “principal smartphone strategy”. This equates to which a Finnish company will ditch Symbian as its flagship OS as well as setup WP7 handsets instead.

Bing will be a default poke engine upon Nokia phones, but Nokia Maps will goon, as well as they’ll be folded into Bing poke.

Nokia’s application store will be swallowed total by Microsoft Marketplace.

Finally, as well as not insignificantly, WP7 can right away make use of Nokia’s conduit billing agreements. This will let people buy services as well as products as well as have a cost added to their cellphone bill. This give Microsoft entrance to many people without credit cards.

This seems similar to the great move for both parties. WP7 is the good operating scheme that has unsuccessful to take off, and Nokia’s smartphone commercial operation is clearly dead (you could disagree that in a U.S it never got started). Hooking up competence just provide a boos which both need.

Not which this is an even-sided deal. For Microsoft, it’s business as common, putting the OS upon third celebration hardware. For Nokia, that has regularly taken care of the software and hardware in-house, the the little some-more slashing. Imagine Apple putting WebOS upon the iPhone and you begin to get a thought.

Nokia as well as Microsoft Hook Up [Microsoft]
Illustration: Charlie Sorrel

Sinking Nokia Prepares to Abandon Symbian for Windows Phone

admin — Thu, 10 Feb 2011 03:18:59 +0000

Microsoft and Nokia have been tighten to cementing the partnership to produce mobile phones together, according to mixed reports.

It’s similar to that luminary integrate you never expected to hook up, but someway did. Even a former Nokia employee was betting opposite a awaiting of the phone maker working with Microsoft, which would involve shipping Nokia hardware with Microsoft’s new Windows Phone 7 operating system.

But the odds of the two partnering up have been looking more as well as some-more expected. Bloomberg on Thursday published a report claiming which Microsoft as well as Nokia are expected to announce the brand new partnership upon Friday. Earlier, Wall Street Journal upon Wednesday published an internal memo that Nokia CEO Stephen Elop sent to staff, and it suggests a association is about to make the dramatic move.

“I have learned that we have been standing on the burning platform,” Elop said in a memo, referring to Nokia’s decline in market share. “”We are working on the trail brazen — a trail to reconstruct the market leadership. When we share the new strategy on February 11, it will be the huge effort to transform the company.”

All indications indicate which transformation involves Nokia scrapping a mobile handling scheme that comes upon its phones, Symbian OS, as well as ceding control of a software knowledge to Microsoft.

This change would in truth be radical, though it’s an understandable pierce. For program, Nokia has steadfastly relied on an open-source OS called Symbian. Nokia and Symbian have been the worldwide leader in a phone market for years, though a little analysts contend the OS could soon be dethroned by Google’s Android OS, that has the more modern user interface as well as multiform production partners. Wired.com late final year began documenting a slow death of Symbian in the wake of some-more modern interfaces offered by iPhones as well as Android devices.

Symbian’s decrease has continued as Nokia’s presence in market share plummets. Nokia’s share of a handset marketplace in the fourth quarter of 2010 fell to 27.1 percent, down from 36.6 percent in the year-ago entertain.

“Market share is an existential threat to Symbian, it imperils a really existence of the height,” pronounced Gartner analyst Nick Jones. “And the categorical reason Symbian is losing share is the user knowledge that isn’t competitive with Apple or Android.”

Shipping phones with Windows Phone 7 would be the discerning repair to move Nokia inclination some-more up to date. Released late last year, Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 is a program giant’s uninformed brand new start on a mobile handling system after completely scrapping its predecessor Windows Mobile.

Windows Phone 7 features a some-more modern, tile-based interface which Microsoft believes will charm clientele.

“We’re taking responsibility holistically for a product,” pronounced Joe Belfiore, Microsoft’s corporate clamp president of Windows Phone, in the prior interview with Wired.com. “It’s the really human-centric approach of meditative about it. A genuine chairman is going to collect up a phone in their palm, select a single, buy it, leave a store, configure it as well as live with it for dual years. That’s determined by the hardware, software, application as well as services. We’re perplexing to consider about all those parts such that a tellurian knowledge is great.”

Despite Microsoft’s efforts, Windows Phone 7 is off to the slow start. By the fourth entertain of 2010, Windows Phone 7 entered the market with lower share than the debuts of both Android as well as Palm’s WebOS, according to the NPD Group. Microsoft likely sees the partnership with Nokia as an opportunity to fast benefit a little participation in the phone hardware .

“The Windows Phone 7 ecosystem is still elaborating since it’s newer, and market share is of course low,” pronounced Ross Rubin, an NPD consumer technology analyst. ”The volume of handsets that Nokia delivers could certainly be the springboard for which ecosystem.”

The approaching partnership in between Microsoft as well as Nokia has already drawn smack-talk from Vic Gundotra,clamp boss of engineering for Google. Gundotra on Wednesday published the twitter tagged “Feb. 11″ — a day that a Microsoft-Nokia partnership is ostensible to be voiced.

“Two turkeys do not have an Eagle,” Gundotra pronounced.

Kyocera Pimps Dual-Screen Android Smartphone

admin — Tue, 08 Feb 2011 17:09:21 +0000

Sprint wants you to believe which dual screens have been improved than a single. Its brand new Android-powered smartphone, the Echo, will underline dual touchscreen surfaces in a hinged pattern.

Made by Japanese electronics manufacturer Kyocera, a phone’s dual 3.5-inch WVGA screens can be operated independent of one another or combine in “tablet mode” to add up to the single 4.7-inch integrated display (albeit a single with a hinge in a middle).

The Echo’s highlights can be seen in a phone’s viewable multitasking intensity. The phone can be operated similar to many alternative touchscreen smartphones in its single-screen mode, but in “Simul-task mode” users can run apart apps on each shade — like, say, open the text upon a top shade whilst reading an email on the reduce one. “Tablet mode,” says Sprint, functions good for observation videos and lists across a incomparable aspect area. However, early reports from other blogs indicate which there are poignant limitations to a Echo’s multitasking capabilities.

The phone will run on Sprint’s 3G network as well as comes with Wi-Fi hotspot capability, with await for up to 5 apart devices. Under the hood, the Echo is using on the 1GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor with 1GB of IMPEL, as well as the 5-megapixel camera is capable of 720p HD video capture. It will run on version 2.2 (Froyo) of Google’s Android operating system.

There have been some shortcomings. The Echo doesn’t run on the company’s 4G WiMax spectrum, that Sprint been compelling the 2011 4G smartphone offerings, commencement with HTC’s Evo Shift as well as a Evo 4G in January. The association not long ago announced the $10 premium-data devise add-on fee for all brand new 3G as well as 4G phones activated after January 30.

It also lacks the dual-core processor. Whether the 1GHz Snapdragon is brawny sufficient to handle the dual-screen multitasking of the phone remains to be seen.

Also still unknown is a phone’s battery life, nonetheless here’s a hint: Sprint is bundling it with a spare 1,370 mAh battery and a “low-profile” charging cradle which can additionally act as an outmost battery pack. In alternative difference, you’re probably starting to need which extra extract.

The Echo will cost $200 with a two-year Sprint assistance agreement (after the $100 mail-in remission, thoughts you), and will be released in the open.

Photo: Kyocera Echo/Sprint

Shot Note Paper Pads Designed to Be Scanned by iPhone

admin — Tue, 08 Feb 2011 04:29:50 +0000

Shot Note brings the real-world paper cover inside your iiPhone. The free app, that additionally functions with a latest-gen iPod Touch, works in combination with a Shot Note stationery from Japanese association King Jim, as well as lets you import your hand-written as well as drawn scrawlings into the app.

The paper is noted up to facilitate accurate scanning with a iPhone’s camera. In a corners are markers which a app detects, stretching and rescaling a page to fit full-screen. And if you fill out the date and number fields on the page, these sections will be review by OCR as well as turn searchable. You can additionally manually supplement the title and tags to each note.

You might have some difficulty finding King Jim’s paper products outward of Japan, but it unequivocally shouldn’t be as well hard to have your own with the little studying of a layout. I’m meditative of sketch a little corner-blobs onto a white-board in my Spanish classes to make duplicating a teachers records a small easier.

And I know you’re all asking a single subject right now: “Does it work with Evernote?” The answer is “Yes.” You can send you’re notes true to Evernote and have them OCRed for you.

Shot Note is free, and available in you local App Store.

Shot Note product page [iTunes]

SHOT NOTE – Next-generation Notepad for Smartphones [Diginfo via Oh Gizmo]

Verizon iPhone Shows You Can’t Win: Carriers Hold a Cards

admin — Mon, 07 Feb 2011 17:11:46 +0000

The launch of a iPhone upon Verizon adds to the towering of evidence which you only can’t trust wireless carriers.

On a day which iPhone preorders began final week, Verizon sensitively revised the process upon data government: Any smartphone client who uses an “extraordinary volume of data” will see a slack in their data-transfer speeds for the residue of a month and the subsequent billing cycle.

It’s the bit of the bait-and-switch. One of Verizon’s selling points for its version of a iPhone is that it would come with an total interpretation devise — a marked contrariety to AT&T, which eliminated its total data intentions final year.

Verizon in reality announced the plan for “data optimization” for all clientele, that may degrade a appearance of videos streamed on smartphones, for e.g..

Verizon didn’t send out press releases to alert the public of this nationwide change regarding data throttling and so-called “optimization.” The only reason this headlines strike the wire was because a blogger beheld the PDF explaining the process on Verizon’s website, which Verizon after reliable was official. Obviously it’s bad news, so Verizon wanted to keep the lid upon it.

And here we suspicion Verizon’s network technology was better-prepared than AT&T to handle the big crowd of iPhone clientele. While our primary tests showed which Verizon was better during making and holding phone calls, the interpretation speeds are slower than AT&T’s. The association must be worried about the effects of an influx of iPhone clientele — otherwise, why would it stifle bandwidth similar to this?

“We’ve been operative on this for a very long time,” John Stratton, Verizon’s CEO, said during a Verizon iPhone press discussion final month. “We design rare demand, bigger than anything we’ve ever seen prior to. We feel great about being able to hoop it.”

Working upon what for the very prolonged time? A plan to hoop the inundate of new data-heavy clientele by slowing everyone down? Brilliant.

This policy change will stroke usually the tiny number of users: Verizon claims usually the top 5 percent of data hogs will be throttled. (AT&T also previously claimed which the small number of users were hogging the massive amount of network bandwidth before it forsaken total interpretation

But yet, that’s an abuse of a word “unlimited.” Sadly, this Orwellian use of denunciation is apropos a common practice in a broadband arena. Comcast used to foster unlimited data as good, but clientele reported their service was cut off after exceeding an invisible limit; the broadband provider later switched to monthly data caps.

Actions such as interpretation throttling have been symptomatic of an ugly truth about the broadband attention. Internet providers would much rather delayed everybody down than deposit in more hardware to await some-more clientele.

“ISPs have a vested seductiveness in trying to extract as most income as they can and changing a net’s design to bring them some-more profits,” Wired.com’s net neutrality consultant Ryan Singel not long ago wrote. “They would rather do which than add some-more infrastructure to handle a flourishing traffic.”

Meanwhile, Verizon is advertising an unlimited data plan for the iPhone — which appears to give it a leg up opposite AT&T, that discontinued total interpretation in 2010 and transitioned to a tiered pricing makeup.

But just similar to AT&T, Verizon plans to switch to tiered pricing in the future, according to Stratton. Verizon’s total interpretation plan, accessible for a limited time, is just an additional e.g. of bait-and-switch.

AT&T gets many of a feverishness because independent tests have shown which its network is reduction reliable than Verizon’s with doing phone calls. But at a finish of the day, we’re dealing with a same immorality.

AT&T increasing the early-termination fee last June from $175 to $325. Guess what? Verizon, too, doubled its termination price, to $350.

Verizon used to have a popular “new phone every dual years module,” in that customers would receive juicy discounts on new phones every two years as the prerogative for staying constant. Days after a Verizon iPhone was announced, Verizon dropped the discount program. Tough beans.

But above all, Verizon’s data throttling is untrustworthy in areas where even AT&T can’t compete. Even when AT&T had total data, a company did not use throttling, and an eccentric exam showed the total data was truly unlimited.

Transparency is going to be the pass issue with data-throttling. How much data is too most? How will Verizon notify customers when they’ve surpassed the extent? How much will they be slowed down?

If Verizon isn’t transparent on each of these issues, a company could quietly delayed down anybody’s transfer rates only to cram as many iPhone and Android customers on the network as possible, to showoff distinction but doing what it should do: invest heavily in network expansion to yield the fast, arguable network it promised to everybody.

Given the actions, Verizon might be improved at holding phone calls, though as the broadband association it sucks at keeping promises.