Samsung have the luxury of making their own chips and they are quick to put out new and better versions of them. The Exynos chipset, which debuted with the Samsung Galaxy S II at a 'mere' 1.2GHz is getting a 1.5GHz version, called the Exynos 4212.
Samsung also has a pair of high-end mobile cameras headed for the production line. One is a 16MP main shooter with a back illuminated sensor for better low-light performance (expected to ship in November) and the other is a 1.2MP module with 720p@30fps capture capabilities for front-facing cameras.
We can't quite make out the Google-translated press release but it seems the front facing camera will have 1/8.2 sensor (that sounds pretty small, but we'll see) and the ISO of the main shooter goes up to 1,600.
Going back to Exynos, it's built using the 32nm process and was designed with 3D performance in mind. Gameloft is apparently showing interest and will offer several titles to put the new SoC to good work.
The Korea-bound Galaxy S II LTE and Galaxy S II HD LTE will sport Exynos chipsets with the CPU clocked at 1.5GHz, which makes them the most likely candidates for being the first phones with the new chipset.
Samsung already has a 1.4GHz version of Exynos that's powering the Galaxy Note and the Galaxy Tab 7.7, but there's no info what kind of change in performance we can expect in the 3D department (beyond the obvious gain from the faster clock speed).
Samsung has just unveiled a rather unexpected addition to its fleet of tablets, with the Galaxy Tab 7.0 Plus. Available in both 16GB and 32GB varieties, this new slate is fueled by a 1.2GHz dual-core CPU, runs Android 3.2 Honeycomb and features a seven-inch LCD with 1024 x 600 resolution. It also packs a two megapixel front-facing camera, along with a three megapixel shooter that supports 720p video, boasts 1GB of RAM and ships with Sammy's TouchWiz UI baked-in. In terms of connectivity, you'll find support for quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE, 3G with 21Mbps HSPA and the usual smattering of Bluetooth 3.0 and GPS capabilities. In addition, this little guy offers WiFi 802.11 a/b/g/n at both 2.4GHz and 5GHz, along with support for channel bonding and apt-X Codec for Bluetooth. Pricing has yet to be announced, but the 7.0 Plus is slated to hit Indonesia and Austria by the end of October, before rolling out internationally. Slide past the break for more details, in the full PR, or check out the gallery below for more images.
We just got wind of the following video that shows what seems to be an iPhone 4 with a bigger screen. The phone seems to be the same size as the iPhone 4 but the screen now stretches from edge to edge with minimum bezel as those early mockups suggested.
Is this the iPhone 5?
Here's the video so you can see it for yourselves. And honestly, it does look legit no matter how hard it is to believe a working iPhone 5 unit has escaped Apple's stringent security.
Update: All evidence leads to this video being an incredibly carefully staged fake. We noticed that when launching the two apps - Safari and the game - the guy never lifts his thumb off the icon and iOS doesn't work that way. The game level also starts without anyone touching the Touch To Start button. Then the dates on the lockscreen and on the homescreen don't match up. The guy also doesn't show the phone all around and even makes a point of hiding the home button the whole time. We bet the whole thing it's probably shot on video and then used much like that elaborate joke we did for April's Fools Day back in 2010 - pretending we've installed iOS on the HTC Hero. So what do you say?
P.S. If you are interested, that game demoed on the video is ECA Games' Rock(s) Rider. We suppose that the whole thing was created to promote it.
Picture the scene: you're checking your emails on a shiny new device (worth two months pay) and from nowhere, a greasy-fingered infant is screaming at you to play. Reluctantly, you pass it over, watching your own hands cup the air beneath any potential drop zone, wondering how best to explain the jam-smeared calamity to your insurance company. Then you wonder if there isn't a useful, hard-wearing and cheap device you could let them play on without fear of bankruptcy. That's what prompted Norwich-based bedding magnate Andrew Kerry to conceive the AndyPad, an inexpensive, 7-inch Android tablet he could fling at kids. It wasn't long before jealous adults were demanding their own version, so a tooled-up edition of the device called the AndyPad Pro was born.
The tablet is currently UK-only and it retails for a lot less than the Samsung Galaxy Tab 7 (£280; $345 on Amazon) and Acer Iconia Tab A100 (£273 for the 8GB version; $328 on Amazon), and HTC Flyer(£330; $499 on Amazon). What's more, Verticool, an outfit founded by a man more famous for his Mattressman chain than any interest in technology, believes it can match the competition in a fair fight. Do the electronics giants have something to fear from the bargain-basement tablet or does it promise much and deliver little? Read on to find out.
In the box, you'll find the tablet, a micro-USB cable, wall adapter and a pair of earbuds so large that inserting dinner plates into your ear canals would seem to be an easier proposition. The 5 x 8-inch device weighs in at 0.8 pounds (180 grams), measures 0.5-inches thick and is pleasingly chunky without feeling heavy. It also happens to be thinner than most of the other devices in its class. The only significant drawback is a creaking in the thin plastic rear shell that reduces one's confidence in its durability. The white device hides fingerprints well, though it is a veritable dust magnet. Even so, a quick wipe on the back of the sleeve will prevent people from thinking you live in a cotton mill.
In portrait mode, the power button, reset pin and speakers are on the top edge of the device, the right side houses a volume rocker and the bottom contains mini-HDMI and micro-USB ports, a headphone jack and a microSD slot. Up front is a 0.3 megapixel VGA camera and round the back, a 2 megapixel camera (in the pictures you'll see what appears to be an LED-flash beneath it; it's actually a light-sensor.) Beneath the display are three touch buttons: home, back and menu. Button placement presents a challenge when using the device in landscape -- hold it on the right and the heel of your hand will invariably catch enough of the button sensor to take you out of your app or media. Hold it on the left and you will utterly obscure the speakers housed on the other side.
Steve Jobs may think that the 7-inch form factor is "DOA" but once we learned the best way to hold the device, it was very comfortable to hold for long periods of time. The screen is large enough to comfortably enjoy full-screen apps with movies and can even fit into a pants pocket, although we wouldn't recommend you use it that way. It's sufficiently compact enough that you can even comfortably use it one-handed, as long as your fingers are agile enough.
Display and sound
The tablet's 1024 x 600 capacitive display has weak backlighting, which means it won't win a fight against direct sunlight. Still, it has a wide viewing angle and the matte covering won't attract fingerprints as easily as its high-gloss cousins. It handles video pretty well, with a detailed picture, good black levels and only minor colour bleaching -- well enough, in fact, that it's a worthy replacement for a similarly endowed PMP. The display supports multitouch gestures, and in most apps they feel surprisingly fast and responsive. In the home screen, specifically, the tablet became sluggish and unresponsive, giving the impression of being far slower than it actually is.
Taking the device on a train journey with a pair of high-end Radiopaq earbuds, video refused to play stereo sound correctly even after several restarts. Afterward, testing with a pair of JVC Marshmallow earbuds and a variety of cheaper pairs, the problem seems isolated, but it's worth noting that it can throw a fit with the wrong accessories. Build quality rears its ugly head when you plug in headphones -- any pressure, like a finger tap on the rear shell causes any sound you hear to be replaced by an electrical buzzing.
Camera
On the back is a 2 megapixel camera, which provides reasonable shots and a 0.3 megapixel VGA lens for video chatting on the front. Sadly, none of the bundled apps, nor Skype can take advantage of the camera and only Fring was able to do anything useful with the snapper. Again, this is a software issue that should have been addressed before the device went on sale. At least you can get away with not putting any makeup for a video chat, it's highly unlikely anyone will notice.
The company rates battery life at six hours, and in our test (WiFi on, Bluetooth off, video looping) it actually went over that benchmark by a few minutes, which was a pleasant surprise. Six hours of battery life puts it in the same ballpark as the Galaxy Tab 7 and you feel as if this could go a full day, maybe two, without a recharge if it's only being used casually.
We can't be as effusive about the general performance of the device. Running the show is a Rockchip RK2918 Cortex A8 1.2GHz with 512MB RAM, and while it's a budget chip, it's no slouch. In general, apps run smoothly and video playback is fluid. Punctuating it all, though, is that lingering annoyance with the home screen, where performance slows to a crawl. Button pushes and swipes take far too long to register, and the icons have a habit of disappearing momentarily. It's worth repeating that the home screen's lagging performance makes a poor impression, even though it's otherwise an adequate performer.
Software
The AndyPad Pro runs a barely-modified version of Android 2.3 (Gingerbread), Swiftkey X replaces the standard Android keyboard as default, although the split layout in landscape mode takes some getting used to. Aside from Dropbox, Evernote and Facebook, the majority of the apps are free or demo versions of popular Android market games (Chess, Drag Racing, Checkers, Four in a line, Glow Hockey,Mouse Trap, Move it!, Reversi, Jewels, et cetera), which at times makes the device feel cluttered and bloated. You also get Android Market access to download most anything you want.
Aside from UI tweaks, Verticool has bundled the Andy App, its own software designed to hold the hand of novice users. It can handle OS updates, install apps and includes a series of short video tutorials that explain how to use the device -- something we wish came with all devices to teach impatient relatives.
The browser contains no surprises -- nearly everything renders quickly over WiFi, apart from element-intensive sites like, erm, this one. Trying to load the desktop versions of many sites means waiting for everything to load before you can commence browsing. We expected the device to collapse at the idea of a full-Flash page like GetTheGlass.com and yet it actually ran it, nearly keeping up with the constant stream of animation that the California Milk board threw at it.
Wrap-up
When reviewing an Android Tablet, the question to ask is "Why this device over another?" In this case, it's because for the price of an iPad 2, you can have two £180 ($280) AndyPad Pros with enough change left over for a meal out. It's wise to mention that UK gadget prices are substantially higher than in the US. In sterling, the 16GB AndyPad Pro is very aggressively priced: £90 cheaper than the 8GB Iconia A100 (£273; $328 on Amazon), £100 cheaper than the 16GB Samsung Galaxy Tab 7 (£280; $345 on Amazon) and nearly half the price of the 16GB HTC Flyer (£330; $499 on Amazon).
This is a device that high-end users will struggle to appreciate. Suspect build quality, fussy with accessories and the operating system all detract from the tablet's strengths. There are performance issues with the AndyPad Pro, nearly all of which can be laid at the feet of Gingerbread. The company is currently investigating porting Honeycomb onto the device. If it can achieve that and improve the build quality without inflating the price, it would be hard to justify the higher prices of tablets in the same class. Until then, this is a budget tablet that will appeal to price-watching novices only.
So far all we had regarding the Ice Cream Sandwich UI was a couple of screenshots and the word of an anonymous 4chan user. But now someone has managed to take a video of Ice Cream Sandwich running on the Nexus S.
The device was allegedly bought off eBay and much to the surprise of the buyer (and everyone else) it was found to be running Ice Cream Sandwich. Of course, the buyer then wasted no time in putting up a video of the UI for everyone's viewing pleasure.
One look at the UI and we can see it matches what we have already seen of it. The homescreen now has four icons at the bottom next to the application drawer button, the folder function seems to have had a makeover, there's a new look notification screen and an application drawer that looks straight out of Honeycomb as does the new task manager with large thumbnail images of the running apps.
What we haven't seen before is the new lock screen. You can now see that you will be able to launch the camera app right from the lock screen. Android phones from HTC and other OEMs have had this functionality before but it's only now that Android is getting it by default. Hopefully this feature is customizable so you will be able to add other functions as well other than the camera app.
The camera app itself is new as well. Other than the UI changes, you can also see the addition of a panorama mode
The changes are nice and we're sure there will be more under the hood that we are not seeing in the video. Hopefully, stuff like GPU accelerated UI and optimization for CPUs with multiple cores will be present as well.
Today Microsoft announced that it has signed a cross-licensing patent deal with Samsung, which should help protect both companies from outside attacks in court. Under the terms of the deal Samsung will be paying royalties to Microsoft for every Android smartphone it makes.
Obviously, Samsung feels that either the Google/Motorola deal won't happen fast enough or that it won't do enough to protect its interests at all, so they simply reached an agreement with their other partner.
As a part of the deal, Samsung has also agreed to help in the marketing of the Windows Phone system and collaborate with Microsoft on the development of the platform itself. Apparently, Microsoft was concerned that Samsung would neglect its three recently announced WP7 Omnia devices in favor of the Galaxy lineup.
With Samsung joining HTC as a Microsoft licensee, Android will certainly continue to bring more money to the software giant than its own Windows Phone. Time will tell if Nokia joining the game will change that.
Seeing how things panned out with HTC and Samsung, we should probably also expect Motorola to follow suit. The American manufacturer is currently being sued by Microsoft and we are starting to suspect that it will end with a similar agreement.
Nokia may have announced that the N9 will be the last of the MeeGo phones from them but just in case you were planning to buy it rest assured you won't be left out in the cold.
Nokia's Product Planning Director Janne Heikkinen said on Nokia's blog that the N9 will be getting continued software support. This means regular software updates for the OS.
The first update will be released soon after the device starts selling based on the feedback from users and operators and more updates will be released along the way.
He also mentioned that the UI innovations done in the N9 will be carried over to Nokia's other products as well.
As for third-party app support, the N9 already has popular apps like Facebook, Twitter, Gmail, Skype, Picasa, Flickr and Mail for Exchange built-in along with popular games such as Angry Birds and you can expect more apps on the Ovi Store soon.
The long-awaited Windows Phone 7.5 Mango update has started rolling out to devices. Microsoft is taking the cautious route by rolling it out to select handsets in the first week, followed by more handsets getting the update if everything goes smooth the first time.
Devices getting the update will see a notification on their phone and after that they will be required to connect the device to their PC or Mac and use the respective clients to update the software on the phone.
For those who are not aware, Windows Phone 7.5 Mango brings the much needed and highly-requested multitasking functionality. Post-update, you will be able to press and hold the back button on your device and scroll through tiles of recently used apps. Applications can now save their state when you switch, so you can for example switch from a game to email and then back to the game and continue from where you left off. Of course, for this to work, the application must support multitasking.
Other additions include Groups in which you can add a bunch of people and see their updates and send messages to everyone in the group simultaneously, Twitter integration, which shows the tweets of the people you follow in the People hub, Local Scout that uses Bing Maps and Search to show you interesting places around you based on your current location, visual voicemail (requires operator support), improved Live Tiles, persistent camera settings that don't go back to default values when you close the camera app, Wi-Fi hotspot functionality and much more. You can click here to see the full list of additions in Mango.
Microsoft's Canadian division accidentally spilled the beans on a mysterious Nokia phone, bearing the name Sabre. The leak came from a rather unexpected and, dare we say, a bit boring part of the Windows Phone developer competition announcement - the terms and conditions section to be precise.
As you can see in the picture above, the Nokia Sabre was mentioned along with its Searay counterpart, and two Samsung devices, dubbed Yukon and Wembley. Unfortunately, there is no available information on the device's specifications at this point.
As far as the Samsung devices are concerned, there is a strong probability that one of them might be the recently announced Omnia W.
The first press shot of the Sprint-bound HTC EVO Design 4G leaked today, completely revealing the mystery around the smartphone before launch. The specs of the high-end Android handset leaked a while ago and now we also know what it looks like.
In case you need a quick memory refresh, the HTC EVO Design 4G (previously known as HTC Kingdom) will come with a 1.2 GHz dual-core Scorpion CPU and 768 MB of RAM. Its 4-inch LCD will sport qHD resolution, while the camera at t
he back will be doing 720p video and 8 megapixel stills. A WiMax radio has also been confirmed.
We are hoping that in the time passed since the previous leak HTC did some changes to that list and the EVO Design 4G would actually come with a 1.5 GHz CPU, like the recently announced Sensation XE.
With the press shots already made, the actual announcement of the EVO Design 4G can't be far away really.
Another day, another leaked image of a HTC Android phone. The latest handset to be leaked prior to its official launch, is to be called the HTC Explorer.
Yesterday the Taiwanese company finally unveiled the female-specific HTC Rhyme following similar leaks in the previous week. The HTC Explorer, or the Pico as it has also been called, has already been seen in rather inelegant and blurry pictures but what we have here looks very much like official renders from HTC itself.
The handset itself features a small 3.2in screen with a HVGA resolution, a 600MHz processor, a five megapixel camera, and 384MB of RAM.
It will obviously be targeted at the budget end of the market but will still come with Android Gingerbread, skinned with the latest version of Sense (3.5). It is set to arrive in both blue and black and looks like it could take over from the Wildfire S in the HTC Android handset line-up.
HTC are hosting an event here in London early next month when we expect to see a variety of handsets including the Explorer and the oddly-named HTC Runnymede.
We’ll be covering the event live so stay tuned for all the latest news from the busy Taiwanese company.
We have some good news for those in the US that plan on purchasing an HTC Sensation 4G. The manufacturer of the Android smartphone just got its request to make hardware changes to the Sensation approved by the HTC.
The request involves pushing up the CPU speed to 1.5GHz and replacing the battery with a bigger one. We already knew that the bigger battery that ships with the Beats-loving Sensation XE is compatible with the original Sensation, but we thought that the only way to get it is to purchase it as an accessory.
Anyway, HTC is obviously going to bring the US Sensation on par with the Sensation XE in terms of battery life and performance. Now, if only they would release a firmware update with the Beats audio tweaks, the difference between the two devices will boil down to the headset supplied in the retail package.
We are also hoping that HTC will bring an update for the existing Sensation 4G units (and theirSensation brothers outside the US), bringing their dual-core CPUs clock speed to 1.5GHz. There are no hardware differences between the Sensation smartphones so it is possible. So far though, there has been nothing official about it.
That's that then - the invitations have been sent and it has been officially confirmed that we are just a week away from seeing the next iPhone. The announcement will take place next Tuesday in a rather unusual place - the Apple campus in Cupertino.
Normally those things happen in other venues in San Francisco, but this time Apple will be inviting journalists to its home. There's an outside chance that this is done so they can make LTE demonstrations, without depending on the (still rather spotty) LTE coverage. Still, most rumors suggest that the iPhone 5 won't have an LTE radio so we wouldn't bet our houses on that.
However, the most exciting part about the event is the number of smartphones that will be announced. We received information from at least two reputable sources that more than one iPhone will be revealed, but if the invitation is to serve as a clue, it's only going to be one.
The first three icons describe the date, time and location of the event, so we assume that the number of missed calls on the last one indicates that we won't be getting both an iPhone 5 and an iPhone 4S.
Update: Interestingly, BGR.com has evidence that AT&T has issued a vacation blackout order to its employees for the middle of October, which naturally leads us to believe that the next iPhone will launch somewhere around that time.
Anyway, the event is now less than 7 days away so the end of this seemingly endless guessing game is near.
AT&T and Samsung somehow managed to announce a phone without actually showing it. Yep, the Samsung Focus S was made official without a single photo of it - good thing that someone managed to snap a photo of it in the wild.
The Samsung Focus S is the Windows Phone 7.5 cousin of the Galaxy S II and shares a lot of the same top-notch specs - 4.3" SuperAMOLED Plus screen, 8.5mm body, 8MP camera (but just 720p video, no FullHD) and a 1.4GHz single-core CPU.
It turns out we've seen it before - that's the exact device that Microsoft's Corporate Vice President used to demonstrate the new crop of WP7 phones. Except this one has AT&T branding.
Speaking of which, AT&T also announced the Focus Flash - looking at its specs, we'd say that's the new Omnia W. So, now the question is when Samsung will show the world-wide version of the Focus S.
