Saturday 20 February 2010
New Mobiles at Mobile World Congress 2010
Thursday 4 February 2010
Bluetooth 3.0 to see the light of day soon
Remember Bluetooth 3.0? Its been a while and the world has changed in the mean time.
Samsung S8500 will launch next-generation Bluetooth 3.0, a protocol that will establish transfer speeds up to eight times faster than 2.0… 24mbps!
Samsung have not been officially announced yet to carry the Bluetooth 3.0 on the S8500 but the device has been leaked to carry 3.0 Bluetooth connectivity that will dwarf previous 3mbps speeds.
The listing from the Bluetooth Special Interest Group it is slim, compact, will come in several colours, and also contains quad-band GSM/EDGE radios. Other details are scarce, and it’s likely that the spec may change considerably before we get our hands on the actual handset
Broadcom is also focusing on Bluetooth 3.0, which allows Bluetooth-centric designers to use the 802.11 physical layer to provide Wi-Fi-speed data transfers in a Bluetooth environment. Bluetooth 3.0 supports bulk synchronization of music libraries between PCs and music players or phones, supports wireless transfer of photos to printers, and sends video files from cameras or phones to computers or televisions. An alternative for Wi-Fi-centric designers, says Ochikubo, is Wi-Fi Direct, which enables Wi-Fi devices to connect and share data without joining a traditional home, office, or hot-spot network. Whatever approach Broadcom’s customers choose to take, he says, he sees Broadcom’s recently announced InConcert Maestro software platform as making the operation simple and transparent for the end user.
In addition to focusing on the higher speeds that Bluetooth 3.0’s Wi-Fi physical layer affords, the Bluetooth Special Interest Group is also focusing on low-power applications with its “Bluetooth low-energy,” or Bluetooth 4.0, specification. Bluetooth low energy will address markets such as health care, sports and fitness, security, and home entertainment.
Tuesday 15 December 2009
Teliasonera reaches a milestone with first commercial LTE Networks
Read the press release here.
By the way, its a bit shameful that the operator wants to market itself and its using the term 4G for LTE as it probably sounds more sexy :) I blogged couple of years back and it still applies that LTE is 3.9G and IMT-Advanced/LTE-Advanced is 4G.
Thursday 3 September 2009
Samsung claims First commercial LTE Modem development
Wednesday 29 July 2009
Q2 Mobile sales: No surprises but lots of good news
The company also reported that sales fell about 25 percent to 9.9 billion euros in the second quarter. But sales were up 7 percent sequentially from the first quarter of 2008.
Nokia shipped 103.2 million units during the quarter, which was down about 15 percent compared with a year earlier. But shipments were up 11 percent sequentially compared with the first quarter of this year.
Nokia said that it increased its market share sequentially for global sales of mobile phones to an estimated 38 percent. And its smartphone market share grew sequentially to 41 percent.
Samsung’s Telecommunications business also went up compared to the same time frame last year, reaching 10.04 trillion won in revenue, or a 27.4 percent increase, while the operating profit was of 1.00 trillion won, with a 10 percent margin. During the three-month period, the company says, its mobile phones sales reached 52.3 million units, marking a 14 percent increase compared to the previous quarter.
LG, which trails Nokia and Samsung in mobile phones, sold a record 29.8 million handsets in the second quarter, up from 22.6 million units in January to March.
It posted an 11 per cent operating profit margin in handsets, compared with 6.7 per cent in the first quarter, a figure Choi said was "pretty remarkable."
The company's operating profit margin was 7.8 per cent in the second quarter and was at 4.3 per cent for all of 2008.
Fourth ranked Motorola is working to narrow losses through cost cuts in the face of sharp drops in sales, while world fifth maker Sony Ericsson is also braced for a tough second half of 2009 as a demand slump hits its stronghold mid-range products focused on camera and music features.
Net profits hit $1.23bn (£953m), or $1.35 a share, in the fiscal third quarter to 27 June, from $1.07bn, or $1.19 a share, a year earlier.
The US technology giant sold more than 5.2 million iPhones in the quarter, seven times more than a year earlier.
Apple chief financial officer Peter Oppenheimer said: "We are very proud of this result, particularly given the economic climate around us."
He also admitted that Apple was "currently unable to make enough iPhone 3GS to meet high demand and we are working to improve that".
Apple also hopes to make the iPhone available in more countries than the current 18, including China "within a year".
Tuesday 23 June 2009
Samsung flexes muscles in CommunicAsia 2009 with Jet S8000
Samsung, the world’s second biggest handset maker, opened its mobile applications storefront in February and has been running a developers’ forum since last year.
Apple, RIM and Android have already opened up app stores, selling directly to consumers. No carrier has launched an app storefront, although China Mobile is set to launch in September and Vodafone by year-end.
Samsung also unveiled the Omnia II (I8000), OmniaPRO series (OmniaPRO B7610, OmniaPRO B7320) as well as the OmniaLITE (B7300). Featuring cutting-edge technology, these mobile devices will strengthen Samsung’s leadership in the smartphone market.
The new Omnia smartphone line-up follows the success of the very first flagship ‘Omnia’ phone, Samsung’s milestone Open OS model which was launched at CommunicAsia last year.
With the introduction of its new Omnia smartphone series, featuring diverse functions for a wide range of user needs, Samsung truly offers a variety of smartphones for everyone - from those seeking entertainment to business users to light users.
Sunday 7 June 2009
Samsung unviels first 12 mega pixel camera phone
Samsung reinforced its leadership in the high megapixel cameraphone market by unveiling Samsung Pixon12 (M8910).Samsung will launch the Pixon12, which has a full-touch 3.1-inch AMOLED display, later this month in Europe and in other regions of the world in August.
Samsung is launching this camera phone with three keywords in mind i.e. Instant shoot, Instant see and Instant share which they think will provide incredible user experience.
Instant Shoot:
The Samsung Pixon12 enables users to take perfect pictures quickly and easily, thanks to a Dedicated Camera Power Key which gives users fast one-touch access to the camera function. Once the camera is turned on, users can aim and snap, capturing images as fast as today's advanced digital camera. Samsung Pixon12 also features fast image saving for next shot, so users can move to next shot within around 2 seconds. The phone provides the best photo quality by adopting innovative camera features. With Touch Auto-Focus (AF) tracking, users can simply select focus point with the touch of a finger, after which the AF function will automatically follow the object, keeping it in focus even as it moves across the screen. Moreover, Smart Auto feature allows users to capture the perfect images as the camera automatically changes the scene and mode based on its object, background and lighting. Images taken on the Pixon12 are worth showing off to friends and loved ones as they boast digital camera quality thanks to the phone camera's superb lens and Xenon flash. The 28mm wide angle lens also allows a better perspective and more full capture of a scene for consumers.
Instant See:
After they are done snapping, users can re-live and enjoy the pictures on the Pixon12's brilliant 3.1" AMOLED screen. The screen boasts a contrast ratio of 10,000:1 while providing power-saving features which increase battery life. Finally, the Pixon12 enables users to easily organize and manage photos with multiple ways of sorting - by tags, file names, ratings, and time. In addition, the multi-selection feature enables users to pull up images in groups rather than one by one, making viewing and editing photos much easier.
Instant Share:
With Samsung Share Pix, the Pixon12 lets users easily upload images and videos to popular social networking sites such as Facebook, Picasa, Flickr, MySpace, Photobucket, Friendster - a breeze. Add to that, the phone's high-connectivity functions including Wi-Fi and HSUPA capabilities mean that user's photos can be shared to their friends in no time. The Samsung Pixon12 will be available from end of June in European countries and it will be expanded to other regions in August.The announcement of the Pixon12 is a blow to Sony Ericsson, which has touted its Satio phone, previously named the Idou, as having a 12-megapixel camera. The Satio will be available in the fourth quarter.
Friday 8 May 2009
TD-SCDMA ready to battle other 3G standards
Days ago, it announced the list of 29 types of TD-SCDMA service-built-in netbooks. Such netbooks with six brands like Lenovo, Dell, Haier, Founder, HP will be exclusively sold by the telecom operator. Earlier, it disclosed that it would set aside CNY 650 million to finance TD-SCDMA terminal manufacturers' R&D.
In addition, China Mobile plans to set up a TD-SCDMA industrial park in the eastern Chinese province of Zhejiang before 2011, involving a total investment of CNY 1 billion, said one of its executives.
In the first quarter of 2009, the company achieved operating revenue and net profit of CNY 101.269 billion and CNY 25.201 billion, up 9.2% and 5.2% year on year, citing its financial report.
By the end of March, the number of its subscribers had reached 477.16 million, representing a slowed growth of 19.91 million, due to a demand drop caused by the decelerating macroeconomic, squeezed space for mobile telecoms popularity increase, and intensified competition after a far-reaching asset reshuffle among the country's telecoms operators.
Nokia Siemens Networks and Ericsson Inc each took a 5% share of it.
China Mobile earlier said it plans to build TD-SCDMA networks in 200 Chinese cities by the end of this year.
Such a scenario clearly requires one or more biddable handset partners, and Dell could well step in, alongside various Chinese suppliers, since it would gain such a major springboard for the mobile market via Mobile's huge user base. It would not only have to support the China-specific operating system, though, but would also have to incorporate the TD-SCDMA 3G standard, as well as GSM. Dell will also offer a TD-SCDMA netbook with the launch of its Inspiron Mini 10 in China this week.
According to Zhang, other vendors working on TD-SCDMA/OMS phones include Huawei, ZTE, HTC and Lenovo. The last of these should get to market first with the so-called OPhone.
Thursday 4 September 2008
Lights, 8 Megapixel Camera, Action!
Its a 3.5G Symbian smartphone with an 8 megapixel camera, WiFi and GPS, plus an advanced multimedia player and a whole host of other features that compete head on with the Nokia N96 and N95 8GB. The "8" in "Innov8" refers to the i8510's advanced 8 megapixel camera. This has autofocus and a dual LED flash, plus an image stabiliser, panoramic stitching, face detection and a number of other clever features lifted straight out of Samsung's dedicated digital camera range. Sometimes we have seen disappointing video capture quality with some rival phones, but not so with the Innov8 which is capable of recording VGA resolution video at 30 frames per second, or QVGA resolution at 120 frames per second. The Innov8 also has built-in video editing and an FM radio with RDS, plus stereo Bluetooth and a 3.5mm audio output socket.
More features, pictures, etc in Mobile Gazette website.
Note that Samsung has previously already released 10 Megapixel camera with 3x Optical zoom. The SCH-B600 was shown off in CeBit in 2006. Dont know if it was launched in Europe anywhere.
Reiter's Camera Phone report has some interesting statistics on Camera phones. One of the interesting bit of information was summary of Ofcom communication Market report 2007. Based on that 84% of the phones sold in UK now have camera and 38% of people surveyed said that they use their mobile camera regularly. Another article mentions that 40% of Japanese print camera phone photos. More Interesting bits on Reiter's camera phone report.
There is another set of statistics from wirefly.com (via Click Chic) for US:
- 63.8 percent of users ages 18-30 say they use their cell phone’s camera at least once a week, while 26.3 percent reported using it daily
- “Family events” and “scenery/sightseeing” remain the top reasons cited for using a camera phone, but social uses separated the younger adults from the over-30 crowd - 58.3 percent of cell phone users ages 18-30 report using a cell phone regularly “to document nightlife,” while just 29.9 percent of those over 30 made a similar claim.
- individuals ages 18-30 use their camera phones to publish photos to online social media four times as much as respondents over 30 years of age.
- 96.3 percent of adult cell phone owners report that they have a cell phone with a camera. (No surprise here, since most cell phones now come with a camera.)
- 19 percent of adults prefer to use their cell phone as their primary camera for all photography.
- 77.2 percent of photos taken remain stored in the phone, 45.4 percent are used as wall-paper and 38.6 percent are sent to friends via MMS.
- 20.2 percent of respondents say they have snapped a photo of an attractive man/woman, and 7.5 percent have photographed an unsuspecting stranger.
- 46.4 percent of all adults and two-thirds of adults age 18-30 say they use their cell phone to snap self-portraits.
- 19.8 percent say they have snuck a picture while pretending to do something else.
Things have changed since Nokia became the biggest Camera manufacturer. Over the last couple of years the resolution of phone cameras have improved and at the same time the quality has improved as well. The are now coming with much better equipped cameras with professional quality lens.
Phone Cameras is one area that is being seriously thought about in search for Killer applications.