Techweez

Is 3.5inch as a standard for smartphones getting edged out?

Martin Gicheru — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 13:23:54 +0000

For a while it had been assumed that 3.5 inch is the standard screen size for the smartphone, more-so because of Apple which was there since the formative years of the smartphone. Apple defined the smartphone and since the first iPhone, other manufacturers got something to build on when developing a smartphone. And hence due to the previous numbers where Apple led in smartphone numbers, mostly in the premium markets like the US and Europe. This has since changed and bigger screen real estate phones are being developed in their droves, with devices like the Samsung Galaxy S II shaping the 4 inch niche. This has gone further and we currently have the 5.3 inch Samsung Galaxy Note.

Made me think, the numbers still lie on the 3.5 inch since Apple has persistently stuck to 3.5 inch smartphones. Another 3.5 inch phone is the budget Samsung Galaxy Ace sold by O2. This is a smartphone that lies in the mid-range and the features and pricing match well. 3.5 inch tend to strike a balance between male and female users, the latter of whom tend to prefer small screens, 3.5 and below work for them. For the bigger fingers and those who value their screen real estate for more visual juice, 4 inch is standard. The Galaxy S II and LG Optimus are some of these smartphone which sell for the screen size, among many other features.

Most of the smartphones on the lower end have lesser screen sizes of upto 2.8 inches as seen on the Huawei Ideos that has been quite a sensation for the budget constricted user mainly in Africa. But things change, I wont be suprised when we see random changes like some we see in simulation future technology videos of transparent displays. That is not in a so near future even though I wouldn’t mind being surprised positively, since there are already interactive windows and window pane displays.

What screen size best suits you?

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Blackberry Torture Tests demos by RIM [VIDEOS]

Martin Gicheru — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 12:01:06 +0000

The Hardware Support Lab of RIM, the company that manufatures Blackberry yeaterday published a series of videos demonstrating the series of stress tests they do on their devices. These inclide bending the devices past their known breaking point, dropping them on hard floor and also dropping them in water.

Device manufacturers usually do this to show users what the devices they purchase can withstand.
The videos go a notch further by doing slow motion so that a viewer can see the actual bouncing or bending the device goes through during the durability test. See the videos below:

Source:

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Nokia Sued by Digital Mapping company GlobeTech in Thailand

Martin Gicheru — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 11:21:58 +0000

Globetech, a Thailand digital mapping services provider has filed a lawsuit against Nokia and Navteq, its mapping subsidiary overcopyright violation. Globetech is seeking punitive damages of 540 million baht($17.5 million)

“This is the first legal case in which a Thai company has sued global firms [Nokia of Finland and Navteq of US],” Wichai Saenghirunwattna, general manager of Globetech told the Bangkok Post.

By suing, they seek to show how digital map content is growing with the assistance of smartphones and the digital map market in Thailand has an annual growth of 200-300% annually.And Mr Wichai said that the investigative team found out that Nokia’s Ovi Map supplied by Navteq violated the map’s content copyright.

The company had sent a warning letter last year which started negotiations that have since broken down resulting in the court case filed in the 5th of October to the Central Intellectual Property and International Trade Court.

One Nokia executive said on condition of anonymity that they are aware of the suit adding, “We are monitoring the situation and studying the details. We’ll take any necessary steps to defend ourselves.”

Source:

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Symbian Belle officially available for download

Martin Gicheru — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 09:19:20 +0000

If you own any of these devices N8, E6, E7, X7, C7 and C6-01 the wait for Symbian Belle is finally over. Well, that is if you havent flashed any of the previously available leaks that were available in the forums. The stable version of Symbian Belle is available from Nokia via Nokia suite in select countries. This usually gets a scheduled rollout in regions, so if you dont see it in your notifications you will need some patience. Upgrade is via Nokia PC suite. As always, remember to backup your data, its always advisable to do so.

See the video below the juice that SYmbian Belle gives, including NFC functionality for NFC enabled devices, pull to see notifications, 6 home-screens et-al

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Nokia 801, a Symbian Belle Phone on the rumour mill

Martin Gicheru — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 17:33:42 +0000

I wouldnt be surprised to have most off Nokia phones bearing the same physical design and also sharing hardware specs. Here is one off the rumour mill bakery. A Nokia 801 according to Smartphone Geeks. According to their “reliable sources”, it features a 4 inch AMOLED Clear Black screen, 640 by 360 pix resolution, 1.4GHz processor and 512 RAM, a 12megapixel Autofocus camera with dual-LED flash, 1080p video recording and the Lumia like polycarbonate cover. But if am not wrong there was a rumour sometime earlier that Nokia N8′s predecessor will be a 16mp camera phone, but ofcourse these things can change, so we will just have to wait and see if this rumour will have some better backing. Eldar Murtazin’s confirming of Nokia devices has come to face critiszm of them actually turning out to be true, I would believe it if it were a Samsung Device he were confirming. But either way, if it were true and it were also true its the last Symbian^3 phone then it would only be easy to expect it to launch on Nokia Carla, which has already leaked snapshots.

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White Lumia 800 is official, Gallery

Martin Gicheru — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 13:06:16 +0000

Just a few minutes ago I wrote about some teaser Nokia has updated on their Facebook page about availability of a white Lumia 800. I then proceeded to the Nokia products page and was positively surprised to find that its available for sale later this month. And Nokia have already announced it. The 3.7-inch AMOLED ClearBlack curved display phone with a 1.4 GHz processor, hardware acceleration and a graphics processor will be start shipping on February 13th, a white Valentine’s treat. See Below the Gallery of photos.

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A white Lumia 800, not a bad thing

Martin Gicheru — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 12:18:03 +0000

Nokia has just showed a teaser on their Facebook page that is a clear teaser of a white Lumia 800 coming. Well, it looks like they listened to critics about the previous teaser about a pink Lumia 800. A white one aint bad after-all, I would use it, though I prefer dark colours on phones. The sequence of the shots show existing phone colours, cyan, magenta and black with their matching nail polish colours, so its beyond anyone’s guess that they have plans to release a white one.

Hold up! They have also updated the colour availability list to include white on the product page, so yes! Its official!

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Galaxy Note Superbowl Ad, still stinging Apple

Martin Gicheru — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 07:57:56 +0000

Samsung had teased early last week about an upcoming Galaxy Note Superbowl Ad, and its finally out on youtube. So if you havent seen it yet, see the kind of creativity juices they have popped over the weekend. In the video they try to show that freedom from queues has been achieved since the next big thing is here Again! They did something similar with the Galaxy S II.

Another feature that is apparently the selling point of the Galaxy Note is the Stylus that would make creatives feel like its a soft option for mobile creativity, and the 5.3 inch screen that gives the much more than a phone-small tablet feel. The ad tagged Thing Called Love clearly aims at bringing the fun out of the advertisement rather than the usual technical aspect.

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66% of LTE phones in South Korea are Samsung, thanx to Galaxy Note

Martin Gicheru — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 08:05:05 +0000

Samsung has already shipped 0ne million Galaxy Note phones globally and in the local market of South Korea they have sold 700,000 Galaxy Note Devices. This is the phone that reviews and analysts havent yet fixed a category to since its larger than all smartphones and smaller than usual tablets at 5.3 inches. Apparently the device is winning because of the Stylus Pen selling point that gives it the notes taking edge. See a recent survey of readiness of mobile phone users to write on a smartphone. Study was carried on 5000 smartphone users in 10 countries and was conducted online by Snap Surveys, a member of the UK Market Research Society (MRS), theAmerican Marketing Association (AMA), and the Marketing Research Association (MRA), in partnership with panel providers in international markets.

The Galaxy Note is expected to Launch in the US very soon and in Kenya its launching this month. The US launch is excpected to trigger the rise of numbers of unit sales.

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Samsung could have just got in trouble with Iranians

Martin Gicheru — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 17:22:21 +0000

A Samsung ad that was airing on Israeli cable TV station Hot TV to promote the Galaxy Tab 10.1 has triggered a tough reaction from the Iranian Government. The advert meant for the Israeli audience but with part detail shot in Iran rubbed Iranian officials the wrong way. Here is the post from Iranian Presstv detailing the events that happened.

Head of Majlis Energy Committee Arsalan Fat’hipour said the double-urgency plan, aimed at imposing a complete ban on buying all Samsung products, would make the company regret making the insulting teaser.

South Korea’s giant manufacturer of electronic devices and home appliances produced a teaser shortly after the assassination of the Iranian scientist Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan by Mossad agents in Tehran, in which Iran had been depicted as a primitive society.

The clip also implies that Israel is powerful enough to easily destroy Iran’s nuclear facilities or assassinate the country’s nuclear scientists.

The Iranian lawmaker added that forgetting the high volume of its trade with Iran, the company has produced the teaser to curry favor with Israel.

Fat’hipour said Samsung’s apology to the Iranian nation, though necessary, would not be enough and that the company must be held accountable for producing the teaser.

Meanwhile, Samsung’s Dubai office has issued a statement condemning the production of the teaser by the company’s Israel office.

Samsung’s public relations official in Tehran, Elaheh Taheri, told reporters on Thursday the clip had nothing to do with the South Korean company and that it had been produced by an Israeli cable TV station, Hot.

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Study says two thirds of tweets are boring

Martin Gicheru — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 16:20:24 +0000

According to The Telegraph, two thirds of the tweets on twitter are boring thats two thirds of the 200 million tweets churned out daily. That’s roughly 130 million tweets. This is a study done with 1500 twitter users(usually called tweeps) and the analysis was on 43.738 tweets from 21,000 twitter accounts. The study was done jointly by researchers at Carnegie Mellon, the Georgia Institute of Technology and MIT found that most people are only interested in about a third of the tweets they read — the rest are either instantly ignored or disliked.

The main cause of negative feel is hash tags, updates on day to day routines and general negative tweets. Well, according to the research, the most hated tweets are the private conversations between two individuals discuss private issues piblicly, a situation that users feel wouldnt really concern them and fill their timeline.

Foursquare checkins also account for the tweets generating the negative feel among users. Twitter users get bored with the everyday routines of celebrities. The I-am-eating-pizza-that-has-21-inch-aluminium-rims tweets are generally unwanted. Beyond that, it was noted that twitter users like self promoting tweets, so go ahead and feel good about yourself in the timeline.

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Apple banned from selling iphone in Germany

Martin Gicheru — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 15:08:31 +0000

Apple started this! In the same country against Samsung. Motorola has been on Apple’s case for some time now and this is their victory. A court in Mannheim, Germany ruled that iPhone 3G, iPhone 3GS and iPhone 4 cannot be sold in online stores in Germany and must be pulled of from the online stores. The ruling also applies to any other 3G capable devices like iPads Apple sells. But fortunately for the Cupertino Giants, iPhone 4S isnt touched by the ruling, but iPhone 5 and iPad 3 might not be safe.

So the cause of the trouble is Apple’s push email service, see here is part of the rulingfrom the Foss patents blog:

This morning, Judge Andreas Voss of the Mannheim Regional Court pronounced a decision on a German Motorola Mobility lawsuit against Apple Sales International, Apple’s Ireland-based European sales organization. Motorola won a permanent injunction against the push email service of Apple’s iCloud (and its predecessor, MobileMe) and any devices that can access it. Note that even though today’s decision enjoins Apple’s European distribution arm, the scope of the injunction is not Europe-wide: the Irish entity has to respect it as far as the German market is concerned (for example, it’s the contractual partner of customers buying Apple products from Apple’s German online store).

Apple has already gone ahead and removed all the said devices on sale from their on-line stores. As of now Apple is still able to sell in their offline stores, but Motorola is still on their neck and might get another ruling off the Mannheim judge for the same to apply to any selling of the Apple products that touch on Patents that Moto owns.

Here is where we say what goes around….

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