Smart phones | Selection advice, New releases, Concepts

[baqai]

I personally think and feel that after Jobs Apple will go down hill nobody in Apple has the vision and passion Jobs had.

 

[p(-)0ENiX]

I just bought the Galaxy Note from AT&T today. The color is un-effin believable. My iphone 3gs pales to the galaxy note. This phone is beyond awesome. I am a pretty tall guy, so the size is a non-issue to me.

Congratulations on your purchase.

I personally think and feel that after Jobs Apple will go down hill nobody in Apple has the vision and passion Jobs had.

That is true to an extent. No one can replace the founder of a company, thus there will be a small period of minor turbulence as Apple adjusts to life without Steve Jobs. However, Steve Jobs has managed to build a base for Apple to improve & build on. As long as they continue to follow their design philosophies & encourage innovation, I don't think Apple will be in any immediate danger.

 

[fallstuff]

Congratulations on your purchase.



That is true to an extent. No one can replace the founder of a company, thus there will be a small period of minor turbulence as Apple adjusts to life without Steve Jobs. However, Steve Jobs has managed to build a base for Apple to improve & build on. As long as they continue to follow their design philosophies & encourage innovation, I don't think Apple will be in any immediate danger.

I hate this Steve Jobs guy, I cursed him even after he passed away. He was not a coder, not exactly a techie in the purest sense, but he understood technology, and how we interact with it.

He was indeed a visionary. There aren't many people like him, that particular pool of people is very small.

 

[p(-)0ENiX]

I hate this Steve Jobs guy, I cursed him even after he passed away. He was not a coder, not exactly a techie in the purest sense, but he understood technology, and how we interact with it.

He was indeed a visionary. There aren't many people like him, that particular pool of people is very small.

I agree with you for the most part, except that I never hated Steve Jobs. In fact I always admired how hard he worked for making Apple products as great as they are. It's going to be very difficult for Apple to find a true replacement for him.

 

[Kompromat]

@Asim. New galaxy III keeps its screen on until you keep 'looking' on it. If you are writting text to a contact and then just bring it next to your ear it will call that contact instead. It has awesome display , 'extremely' lightweight and sleek. Only downsize is that its a bit too big for pocket use.

 

[p(-)0ENiX]

@Asim. New galaxy III keeps its screen on until you keep 'looking' on it. If you are writting text to a contact and then just bring it next to your ear it will call that contact instead. It has awesome display , 'extremely' lightweight and sleek. Only downsize is that its a bit too big for pocket use.

The Galaxy S III has lots of cool features, I just don't like the fact that I have to use the TouchWiz UI. I want Android smartphone manufacturers to provide their customers with the options to use the stock Android user interface. I do like the new Sense UI on the HTC One X, even though it is a bit buggy.

Samsung Galaxy S III vs. HTC One X Dogfight Part 1 - YouTube

Samsung Galaxy S III vs. HTC One X Dogfight Part 2 - YouTube

 

[p(-)0ENiX]

This is an off topic post about the next generation BlackBerry OS called BlackBerry 10. Keep in mind that Research in Motion or RIM's future in the smartphone industry depends upon how consumers & developers alike react to this operating system.

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James Richardson​

14 Jun 2012​

Going hands-on with BlackBerry 10... My initial thoughts and lots of sexy photos​

CrackBerry's James Richardson went hands-on with BlackBerry 10 today and brought back some hot photos and initial reactions!

I had the pleasure of attending BlackBerry 10 Jam in London earlier today. The keynote sessions were not too disimilar to what we saw at BlackBerry World in Orlando, however that wasn't the main reason I was there. I was on a mission to find BlackBerry 10 running on the dev alpha device and luckily for me this had been arranged in advance.

So thanks to Vivek Bardwaj, of Research In Motion, I had a one to one session with his device. I wasn't expecting to see anything that had not already been shown off, however seeing a new OS on a big screen and getting hands on are two totally different things. To say I was excited would be an understatement.

Fortunately my high expectations of what I was allowed to play with on the device were lived up to. BlackBerry 10 is awesome!

The seamless integration of the apps all running live, coupled with the screen gestures to allow for seeing other features/apps is glorious. It's all about the flow. And that wasn't even on final hardware.

Flowing between inbox, message and .pdf. Gotta love it!​

As you can see from the pictures in this post, the new operating system looks beautiful. I was a little unsure in advance if I would like the touch screen keyboard but after a little practice it all flows very naturally. The 'flicking' of the predicted words upwards works well as do the other keyboard gestures such as swiping left across the keyboard to delete a word, and swiping downwards to switch to the further screens that contain numbers and symbols.

I think even physical keyboard guys will love the BB10 touchscreen keyboard

Flicking up predicted words on the BlackBerry 10 keyboard​

I'm very much a hardware QWERTY keyboard guy but I can see myself using this device for sure, as soon as possible.

Prior to today I was under the impression that RIM *could* reclaim some market share lost to Android and iOS with BlackBerry 10. Now I am 100% sure that will happen. The developers present today were also super excited but CrackBerry's DJ Reyes will cover that in another post later.

I hope you find the picture gallery encouraging. I know each time a re-look at the photos I get a warm feeling somewhere inside.

The BlackBerry 10 Homescreen​

I need Q4 to arrive quickly! I'm not sure how I can handle the waiting now I have spent some time with just a few features on the device. And according to Vivek there is plenty of amazing stuff yet to be announced.

I shall dream of BlackBerry 10 tonight. And tomorrow, and the day after.........

More BlackBerry 10 OS Preview Photos on the Dev Alpha Device

CrackBerry and BlackBerry 10.... We Want it!

BlackBerry 10 Icon Tray (looking a little redundant with some icons?!)

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I am going to post more pictures soon!

 

[p(-)0ENiX]

Continuation from my previous post!

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More BlackBerry 10 OS Preview Photos on the Dev Alpha Device​

BlackBerry 10 notifications and the quick swipe into messages

BlackBerry 10 Message Accounts

The BlackBerry 10 Unified Inbox - emails, calls, bbms, all right there

Previewing notifications from within the Calendar

Music on BlackBerry 10

Gesturing between music and notifications

Checking out a picture on BlackBerry 10

And flowing out of pictures

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[Al Bhatti]

Below news reminds me of the days when Pagers ("bleeb" as it was called locally in UAE) were a craze and then motorolla leading the market and then some two decades ago alcatel leading the market then nokia took the lead.

So after nokia is buried which one is next to be buried after two decades?

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June 18, 2012

It’s sink or swim for Nokia after massive cost cuts

Nokia’s surprise announcement of massive new spending cuts and 10,000 more layoffs had observers cautioning the beleaguered mobile phone giant is at a crossroads that will determine if it sinks or swims.

Nokia, which only recently lost the world number one ranking it had held for 14 years, dramatically changed its strategy a year-and-a-half ago when the then new chief executive, Stephen Elop, warned it was “standing on a burning platform” and needed to immediately shift course.

But after the company on Thursday suddenly said new big spending cuts and another 10,000 job cuts would be needed on top of the some 12,000 layoffs already announced since the shift, some observers said the company appeared to be slowly committing suicide.

“Nokia jumped from a burning oil platform and sank like a stone,” the STT news agency said, summing up Thursday’s announcement.

The Finnish company’s new strategy involved phasing out its Symbian smartphones in favour of a partnership with Microsoft.

That alliance has produced a first line of Lumia smartphones, which Nokia is counting on to help it survive in a rapidly changing landscape marked by stiff competition from RiM’s Blackberry, Apple’s iPhone and handsets running Google’s Android platform.

“I believe it was the wrong strategy from the beginning,” Andalys Oy analyst Ari Hakkarainen told AFP, stressing though that now that Nokia had shifted course it was too late to turn the tanker around.

“They have chosen this strategy and they have invested everything that Nokia has in the new strategy. Basically, they must succeed or die,” he said.

“They are at a crossroads,” agreed Pohjola Bank analyst Hannu Rauhala, adding that it was hard to predict Nokia’s future since “the visibility of the business is very poor.”

The company, which in 2008 enjoyed more than 40 per cent of the global mobile phone market, was already struggling to maintain its leading position when it entered the Microsoft partnership.

Since that deal it has been bumped by Samsung as king on the hill and reportedly has just around 20 per cent market share.

“Nokia took a calculated risk and they knew that [the shift] would be very painful and that Nokia would lose market share in the short term, but in the long term of course, they have the reasoning that Nokia will bounce back,” Hakkarainen said.

The company’s announcement on Thursday that it would implement an additional €1.6 billion (Dh7.42 billion) in cost cuts by the end of 2013, shutting down factories in Germany, Canada and Finland and letting go 10,000 more employees was meanwhile taken as a bad sign by many.

“Perhaps they should have enacted these reforms earlier. Investors who are looking for long-term profit are not convinced that Nokia is a company that can deliver in the future,” Dividend House analyst Arje Rimon told AFP.

Nokia’s stock price plunged by as much as 16 per cent on Thursday and on Friday, ratings agency Moody’s downgraded the company’s long-term credit rating to junk status, following in the footsteps of Fitch and Standard and Poor’s.

“Today’s rating action reflects our view that Nokia’s far-reaching restructuring plan... delineates a scale of earnings pressure and cash consumption that is larger than we had previously assumed,” Moody’s said, adding though that it thought the restructuring was “positive and necessary.”

Analysts too were caught off guard by the scope of Thursday’s announcement.

“I thought it would be smaller... This shows the market situation is worse than we thought,” Rauhala said.

Many observers meanwhile applauded Nokia for its decision to slim down in a bid to improve its competitiveness.

Juhani Risku, previously in charge of Nokia innovation, told AFP he thought it was “an excellent move to make the company smaller.”

“Hopefully, it will make the company more competitive, as it will have to sell fewer phones to cover its fixed costs,” agreed Nomura Securities analyst Richard Windsor.

At the end of March, Nokia counted 122,148 employees worldwide, including the nearly 70,000 working for Nokia Siemens Network, but those numbers do not take into account the tens of thousands of layoffs announced but not yet put into effect.

As Nokia continues to trim down and in light of its share price — which since Elop announced the strategy shift has fallen from above €8 to below €2 — has meanwhile made the company a prime takeover target, observers say.

“That’s certainly possible,” Rauhala said, mentioning Samsung, Microsoft and Facebook as names circulating as potential buyers.

“Nokia has many interesting assets [and] its brand is still very good,” he said.

According to Andalys Oy analyst Hakkarainen, however, the company’s brand might be so strong that it would frighten off its direct competitors, which might not want to pay the price for another brand or want the hassle with regulators.

“But if I was an Asian, or let’s say a Chinese manufacturer, I would be very interested,” he told AFP.

gulfnews : It

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June 18, 2012

Time running out for Nokia to pull back

Nokia’s cashflow will be negative at ₤1.2 billion

Nokia this week said it would axe 10,000 staff and reshuffle jobs at the top. Losses at its mobile phone business this quarter, it admitted, would be even larger than expected.

The announcement follows months of an increasingly desperate scramble to reverse the decline at the company, until recently the world's biggest seller of mobile phones.

Since Stephen Elop took over as chief executive in 2010 he has cut 24,000 jobs, including those announced on Thursday, from a total of 66,000. Most controversially, he has pinned the company's future to an alliance with Microsoft to produce a Windows phone.

So far his efforts have yielded little. Nokia shares have shed three-quarters of their value since Mr Elop took over. And Nokia’s losses are mounting as it becomes ever clearer that it is losing the mobile phone war to Apple and phones using the Android operating system.

There is no question that Nokia’s management realises the depths of the crisis it is in. But Mr Elop’s valiant attempts to reduce costs are not sufficient. What is needed is a significant boost at the other end of the equation - to sales and the topline.

For this to happen, Nokia’s strategy - based on its new Lumia phones, and the launch of an operating system within the next year - must start to pay off. Unfortunately, with little sign of this happening, Nokia may be running out of time.
Its mobile phone division is burning through cash, and although the company's overall position is still comfortable - it had nearly ₤5 billion in net cash at the last count - it has a ₤1.25 billion bond falling due in early 2014.

More importantly, Deutsche Bank estimates that Nokia's cash flow, after operational losses and capital spending, will be negative to the tune of ₤1.2bn this year, enough to put another big dent in its cash pile and, surely, to prompt investors to demand yet more radical action.

This could take a number of forms. Mr Elop could do a U-turn on his U-turn and opt for the Android operating system instead of building one from scratch. This seems unlikely given how much he has riding on the Microsoft deal and, in any case, might not suffice to turn round Nokia's fortunes.

Nokia could, instead, be taken over, or broken up. Microsoft could convert its partnership into a fuller embrace. Samsung, keen to get its hands on Nokia’s valuable patents, is also a contender.

Although many of the patents are tied into cross-licensing agreements with other industry players, estimates of their standalone value suggest they could be a prize worth fighting for.

In the early 1990s, Jorma Ollila pulled Nokia back from the brink by focusing on the company's small mobile handset division. By 1996, it was the biggest handset maker in the world. Twelve years later, not only has Nokia lost that crown but investors should be questioning whether another resurrection is possible.

gulfnews : Time running out for Nokia to pull back

 

[p(-)0ENiX]

Nokia's future is now tied with Microsoft's Windows Phone 7. The problem is that the new Windows Phone series is still undergoing massive development & it will be a while before the OS is capable of being a true threat to iOS & Android. I think Nokia should introduce a couple of Android phones using the stock ICS interface, & with guaranteed updates. Combine that with Nokia's own expertise & personal touches to the Android OS & Nokia can easily wage a war against Samsung. Nokia should also try & further diversify their product offerings in other areas.

 

[p(-)0ENiX]

Off topic post - Introducing Windows Phone 8​

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Microsoft officially unveils Windows Phone 8​

Microsoft held a press event today to give us a "sneak peek of the future of Windows Phone". Terry Myerson, VP of Windows Phone, took the stage and bragged that seven of the top nine phones in Amazon's marketplace are Windows Phone handsets.

But that's the past - Joe Belfiore took over to preview Windows Phone 8. One huge change in WP8 is the shared core. This means that Windows Phone 8 shares the kernel, drivers, security, graphics and more with Windows 8. With it, devs for either OS can easily port their work to the other platform.

Windows Phone 8 finally brings support for multi-core processors thanks to the shared kernel. For this fall, Microsoft will focus on dual-cores, but up to 64-core CPUs are a go in the future.

Next up, higher resolutions will be supported - WVGA is joined by 720p (1280 x 720) and WXGA (1280 x 768). All existing Windows Phone 7.5 apps will work without modification on the new OS regardless of the resolution.

Removable storage is another highly requested feature that will be debut on WP8.

Belfiore also showcased a game, Marble Maze, on a Windows 8 tablet that runs with minimal modifications on a Windows Phone 8 handset.

Windows Phone 8 will launch with Internet Explorer 10 preinstalled, which borrows a lot of pieces from its desktop counterpart. JavaScript performance is improved 4 times and sites that work on the desktop browser are said to work on the phone too.

IE10 on the phone will share in some security features of the desktop browser - like warning users of potentially malicious sites. The HTML5 support is improved both in terms of features and speed.

Windows Phone 8 also makes the jump to native code apps written in C and C++ - which allows both improved performance and easier porting of stuff like games from Windows 8 RT to Windows Phone 8.

The new Microsoft mobile OS will also offer full native support for NFC and it will even allow 3rd party apps to make use of it. A cool use for NFC is Tap-Send, which can be found in the share menu. It allows you to just tap two WP8 or Windows 8 devices to transfer a file between them.

The NFC support will also allow your phone to eventually replace a lot of things that you now need to keep in your wallet (all WP8 phones will have the NFC hub).

Microsoft bragged that its NFC wallet is better than Google's because the security is handled by the SIM card instead of the phone itself. The Wallet will debut on Orange France.

Wallet features Deals (digital discount coupon codes), which have Local Scout integration, so you can look for deals nearby. Deals can be found through web searches, handed out or acquired by third party apps and they can easily be shared with your contacts.

Wallet also handles buying apps and in-app purchases (which are new too). Wallet stores your credit cards and will ask you which one you want to use for each payment. You can set it up to ask for a PIN code, which will prevent other people from buying stuff from your phone.

The next major change introduced by Windows Phone 8 is Nokia's mapping services, which will replace Bing. The map data can be stored on the phone, so you can use it offline. All third party apps can use Nokia's services, even when you don't have a working data connection.

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This article is to be continued in my next post.​

 

[Hyde]

Foxconn CEO says iPhone 5 will put Galaxy S III to shame

The CEO of Foxconn, Apple’s main iOS device manufacturer, is making headlines today for some interesting remarks regarding the iPhone 5. While at Hon Hai Precision’s annual meeting of shareholders, CEO Terry Gou went on record saying that customers should abstain from buying Samsung’s Galaxy S III and instead wait for Apple’s next-gen iPhone. According to an article out of the Focus Taiwan News Channel, Gou is claiming the iPhone 5 will put Samsung’s latest device “to shame.” He even went as far as saying the the iPhone 5 will help defeat Foxconn’s “arch-rival,” Samsung.

He didn’t stop there, though. In an apparent attempt to touch upon the biggest Apple rumors he could, Gou also made some very exciting claims regarding the production of an Apple TV set. He mentioned that Hon Hai’s (Foxconn’s parent company) recent partnership with Sharp’s Sakai plant will result in “the only facility in the world capable of mass producing 60-inch to 80-inch panels.” What’s more, the Sakai plant has signed an exclusive deal with Corning, Inc., which will supply large-format glass panels that will be impossible for any manufacturer to gets hands on.

More details/source: Foxconn CEO says iPhone 5 will put Galaxy S III to shame - TodaysiPhone.com

 

[p(-)0ENiX]

Off topic post - Introducing Windows Phone 8 (Continuation from my previous post)​

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Microsoft officially unveils Windows Phone 8​

Windows Phone 8 hope to appeal to corporate users as well with secure boot and BitLocker encryption. It will allow administrators to manage devices remotely and push apps to them, which will really make supporting company phones a whole lot easier.

The other business-oriented feature that was showcased today is the Company Hub. It will allow a company to highlight apps specific to the company itself and make them easily accessible to its employees.

The next new platform feature is the updated start screen. It features new Live tile sizes - both smaller and bigger tiles are now available. And better still, the user gets to change the size of each live tile. WP7.5 tiles are compatible with the new Windows Phone release without requiring any modification and so are the WP7.5 apps.

Changing the size of a tile will change the functionality it offers. There will be more colors to choose from for the live tiles too.

Under the cover Windows Phone 8 comes with improved multitasking, which should lead to better performance of IM apps. For starters, Skype is much better integrated - e.g. the Skype call looks just like a regular phone call. Other VoIP services can make use of the new APIs, too, achieving similar integration.

The multitasking-related improvements go on - location-based apps (like SatNav and so on) can now work in the background even if you leave them to check a message, for example. And yes, it was about time they fixed that.

Windows Phone 8 will bring more competition to Apple's Siri. Not only does it come with improved system-wide virtual assistant, but third party developers will also be able to hitch a ride on Microsoft's speech platform and add voice commands to their apps. In its own words, Microsoft wants you to have a dialogue with each app.

Upcoming Windows Phone 8 devices will be built by Nokia, Samsung, HTC and Huawei on Qualcomm chipsets. The big name missing from this list is LG as the Koreans probably chose to focus on Android.

Unlike WP7, WP8 updates will be distributed over the air. Microsoft promises support for every WP8 device for at least 18 months.

Microsoft concluded the presentation by bragging about the extremely wide reach of Windows Phone 8. The platform's Marketplace will be available in 180 countries and the whole interface will be translated to 50 different languages. Right-to-left writing support is also enabled.

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This article is to be continued in my next post.​

 

[p(-)0ENiX]

Off topic post - Introducing Windows Phone 8 (Continuation from my previous post)​

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Microsoft officially unveils Windows Phone 8​

The official launch of Windows Phone 8 is scheduled for this fall, but that's as specific info as we got. Things should become a little clearer in the following weeks.

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[Hyde]

Since this thread has not been limited to one topic only... and we discussed Android, other manufacturers and now posting news about Windows phone as well.. do you want me to change the title to something else?

If yes then please suggest the appropriate title