According to a purportedly leaked internal document, the Android 4.4.3 updates for both Snapdragon and Exynos versions of the Galaxy S5 have been finalized and are due out before the end of this month.
In the case of the Galaxy Note 3, development has reached the final testing stage. If all goes well, the new bits should be ready to roll out to users sometime in July.
Previous such leaked documents surfaced last month, when the Galaxy S5’s update was still being worked on. Now that it’s finalized, the guessing game begins – which will be the first territory (or carrier) to get Android 4.4.3?
Further complicating things is the fact that Google has just released Android 4.4.4 to its Nexus devices, a version that seems to contain a pretty important security fix.
That leads us to wonder: will Samsung first release 4.4.3 for its devices only to then start working on what is now the latest version of the OS? Or will it choose to skip 4.4.3 altogether and simply come out with a 4.4.4 build, even if that means delaying the release for a short while?
Since the newest iteration of Android isn’t bringing new things to the table, just fixing bugs, the latter hypothesis isn’t completely implausible.
Amazon announced its first smartphone today, a bold move into a segment currently dominated by Apple and Samsung. At an event in Seattle, CEO Jeff Bezos unveiled the Fire Phone, a smartphone with a 4.7-in. 3-D display, a 2.2-GHz quadcore processor, a 13-megapixel rear-facing camera and 2 GB of RAM.
The device, which has a heavy focus on multimedia, will offer unlimited photo storage and a dedicated button to launch the camera app. It will be sold exclusively on AT&T’s network at a price of $199 for a 32-GB version with a two-year contract or $299 for a 64-GB version. Amazon is also throwing in a free year of Amazon Prime, its customer-loyalty program (existing Prime members will get a bonus year tacked onto their current subscription).
The device is currently available for preorder on Amazon’s website and will begin shipping on July 25.
The new phone is designed to be tightly integrated with Amazon’s myriad services. The company’s Instant Video service will be preinstalled on the device, as will Amazon’s newly launched music-streaming service. The phone will also come with a new program called Firefly, which allows people to scan objects, songs and TV shows (sort of like an all-purpose Shazam app) so that Amazon can identify them and offer a way to purchase them from its store. In total Firefly can recognize 100 million items, Bezos said. “Fire Phone puts everything you love about Amazon in the palm of your hand,” he said in a press release.
The phone’s 3-D capabilities are its most unique feature. Through a technology dubbed Dynamic Perspective, the Fire Phone uses four cameras placed on its front face to track a person’s head movements at all times. This allows the phone to offer a real-time 3-D-like display that presents more depth to images than a typical smartphone screen. During the event, Bezos demonstrated the phone’s map app, which showed looming skyscrapers leaping off the screen, as well as an app that allowed the user to sort through dresses as if they were in an actual 3-D space. The phone’s motion sensors allow users to scroll within certain apps by tilting the device rather than touching the screen.
Like the Kindle, the Fire Phone will run on a modified version of Android and support some apps native to Google’s operating system. Popular apps such as Instagram, Facebook, Netflix, ESPN and HBO Go should be available for the device when it launches. Amazon has also released development tools to allow companies to make apps that make use of Dynamic Perspective and Firefly.
The device demonstrates Amazon’s growing interest in creating hardware. In addition to its popular line of Kindle e-readers and tablets, the company released its first set-top box, the Amazon Fire TV, earlier this year. The company has always been reticent to disclose just how successful its hardware ventures are — Bezos said today that there are “tens of millions” of Kindle owners, and there’s no real data on Fire TV sales — but smartphone sales dwarf those other segments. More than a billion smartphones were shipped globally in 2013, with Samsung and Apple controlling nearly half the market between them.
Amazon will face an uphill battle taking on those two giants, but the company has a history of eschewing profits to smother competitors in other markets. They may be embarking on a similar strategy today — the 32-GB version of the Fire Phone, for instance, will sell for $100 less than a similar model of the iPhone 5S. – Time.com
Facebook is in negotiations to buy a drone manufacturer with the aim of using high-altitude autonomous aircraft to beam internet connections to isolated communities in Africa.
The social networking company is one of the main backers of the internet.org project, which aims to connect the large parts of the world that remain offline.
Only 2.7billion people – just over one-third of the world’s population – have access to the internet, according to Facebook. Other project backers include Ericsson, MediaTek, Nokia, Opera, Qualcomm and Samsung.
TechCrunch reports that Facebook intends to buy the maker of advanced solar-powered drones that can remain in the air for up to five years at a time.
Titan Aerospace’s drones fly at up to 20000m, effectively operating as satellites, with far lower operating costs, which the company calls “atmospheric parking”. The Solara models can carry up to 100kg of equipment.
TechCrunch says Facebook plans 11000 drones for blanket internet coverage to places with patchy or nonexistent connections.
Neither Facebook nor Titan Aerospace would comment.
The project would be in direct competition with Google’s Project Loon, which envisages 30 balloons in the stratosphere using varying wind currents at different altitudes to remain in a geostationary position.
A jury has added $290 million more to the damages Samsung Electronics owes Apple for copying vital iPhone and iPad features, bringing the total amount the South Korean technology titan is on the hook for to $930 million.
The verdict Thursday covers 13 older Samsung devices that a previous jury found were among 26 Samsung products that infringed Apple patents.
The previous jury awarded Apple $1.05 billion. But U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh ordered the new trial and tossed out $450 million of the damages after concluding that jury miscalculated the amount Samsung owed.
Apple had asked for $380 million, arguing Samsung’s copying cost it a significant amount of sales. Samsung countered that it owed only $52 million because the features at issue weren’t the reasons most consumers chose to buy Samsung’s devices instead of Apple’s.
Samsung said it would appeal both verdicts.
“For Apple, this case has always been about more than patents and money,” Apple spokeswoman Kristin Huguet said. “While it’s impossible to put a price tag on those values, we are grateful to the jury for showing Samsung that copying has a cost.”
A third trial is scheduled for March to consider Apple’s claims that Samsung’s newest devices such as the popular Galaxy S III on the market also copied Apple’s technology.
Apple and Samsung are the world’s two biggest smartphone makers. The bitter rivals have been waging a global battle for supremacy of the $300 billion worldwide market. The size of the award didn’t faze Wall Street or harm or help either company’s financial fortunes in any significant way.
Samsung reported it had $47 billion in cash at the end of September and racked up $247.5 billion in revenue last year. Apple has $147 billion of cash on hand and took in $170.9 billion in revenue last year.
“We understood that the money wasn’t really an issue,” said juror Barry Goldman-Hall. “This was about the integrity of the patent process.”
Goldman-Hall, 60, of San Jose was one of two men and six women on the jury, which was tasked only with determining damages.
Apple has argued in courts, government tribunals and regulatory agencies around the world that Samsung’s Android-based phones copy vital iPhone features. Samsung is fighting back with its own complaints that some key Apple patents are invalid and Apple has copied Samsung’s technology.
Samsung lawyer William Price argued Apple is misconstruing the breadth of its patents to include such things as basic rectangle shape of most smartphones.
“Apple doesn’t own beautiful and sexy,” Price told the San Jose jury.
Apple attorney William Lee told the jury that Samsung used Apple’s technology to lift it from an also-ran in the smartphone market three years ago to the world’s biggest seller of them today.
“Apple can never get back to where it should have been in 2010,” Lee told the jury Tuesday at the conclusion of the weeklong trial.
The fight in San Jose is particularly contentious. The courtroom is a 15-minute drive from Apple’s headquarters, and several prospective jurors were dismissed because of their ties to the company.
The three jurors who discussed the verdict outside court said Apple’s proximity made no difference in their deliberations.
“Although Apple is down the street, it’s a global company just like Samsung,” jury forewoman Colleen Allen said. “I have a Samsung television and refrigerator and an Apple computer. I like both companies.”
Allen, 36, of Aromas, is an emergency room nurse who served nearly eight years in the Navy, including a posting in Afghanistan.
“If we didn’t award Apple much, we’re saying it’s OK to infringe patents,” Allen said.
The South Korea-based Samsung has twice sought to stop the trial, accusing Apple on Tuesday of unfairly trying to inflame patriotic passions by urging jurors to help protect American companies from overseas competitors. The judge denied Samsung’s request for a mistrial, but did reread an instruction ordering jurors to put aside their dislikes and biases in deciding the case.
On Wednesday, Samsung again demanded a halt to the trial after the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office told Apple it was planning to invalidate a patent protecting the “pinch-to-zoom” feature at issue in the jury’s deliberation. The judge ordered more briefing while declining to stop the trial. – AP
A paramedic saw a man cutting his own throat after he failed a KwaZulu-Natal Road Traffic Inspectorate (RTI) fitness test, an inquiry heard on Monday.
“He told me he was a failure and he deserved to die,” Emergency Medical Rescue Services supervisor Agrinette Shoba said.
“He was lying on his right side… holding a broken beer bottle in his right hand, and he had grabbed his throat with his left hand, and he was continuing to cut himself; at that stage, he was bleeding profusely,” Shoba said.
Shoba was testifying before a commission of inquiry in Pietermaritzburg about the death of Sanele Ngcobo, who was found with a 13cm wound across his neck after taking part in the fitness test.
The commission is probing the deaths of eight people who took part in a four kilometre run at the Harry Gwala Stadium in Pietermaritzburg.
The race formed part of a fitness test for RTI job applicants. More than 34 000 people qualified to apply for 90 advertised RTI trainee posts. Of these, 15 600 attended a fitness test on December 27, and a similar number on December 28.
Shoba said she was called by a young man, who told her there was someone outside the stadium who was screaming and bleeding. She went to investigate and found Ngcobo.
“There were no signs indicating that there was a struggle. He had the bottle neck on his neck, half of the bottle was behind him,” Shoba said.
“I commented on how he was smartly dressed and how he did not seem to come from a poor family. I said I see no reason for him to do something so painful.”
At the time of his death, Ngcobo was in his final year of study for a Bachelor of Arts degree at the University of Zululand. He was also the father of a three-month-old boy.
Shoba said when she spoke to Ngcobo he was cutting himself and he could understand what was going on.
His eyes were open, he could respond to instructions and he was verbally responsive.
“I could see how deep his wound was as he was talking, I could see bubbles coming out of his wound, his trachea was cut,” she said.
In July, Ngcobo’s aunt ,Thembi, told the commission that her nephew was desperate to find a job because he wanted to take over raising his son.
Shoba described the participants treated at the stadium as being dehydrated, hysterical and disorientated.
“They were seeing things that no other people could see. Others claimed to see their men coming to fetch them,” she said. – Sapa
(Reuters) – HTC Corp on Wednesday unveiled two smartphones running Microsoft Corp’s Windows Phone 8 software and said the devices would be available in November with several operators around the world.
The two brightly colored devices — the Windows Phone 8X and the Windows Phone 8S — will pitch HTC directly against Microsoft’s main partner Nokia, which also unveiled two phones based on the Windows software earlier this month.
However, while Nokia did not name any customers for its devices, HTC said theirs would go on sale at three of the top four U.S. mobile operators – Verizon Wireless, AT&T Inc and T-Mobile USA. It also said that several operators in Europe and Asia agreed to sell the devices.
HTC is under a lot of pressure to generate strong sales from its next round of smartphones as it has been losing ground to Samsung Electronics and Apple Inc.
Until now, HTC has been betting on its One series of phones but so far this year sales of those phones have failed to keep pace with the Apple’s iPhone and Samsung’s Galaxy range.
Until the second half of 2011, when it suffered a sharp decline in its fortunes, former contract smartphone maker HTC had build a strong brand around the world with phones based on Android software.
Apple Inc’s share of China’s booming smartphone market slipped for a second straight quarter in October-December, as it lost ground to cheaper local brands and as some shoppers held off until after the iPhone 4S launch last month.
China, the world’s largest mobile phone market, has not been easy for Apple, which is grappling with a lawsuit from a local firm over the iPad name and issues at its suppliers’ factories over wages and working conditions.
With the number of mobile subscribers set to top 1 billion in China this year, there is cut-throat competition among South Korea’s Samsung Electronics Co Ltd, Nokia, Apple and local firms Huawei Technologies Co Ltd and ZTE Corp.
While Apple regained its top spot as the world’s largest smartphone vendor in the fourth quarter and for last year as a whole, it slipped to 5th place in China, overtaken by ZTE. Apple’s China smartphone market share slid to 7.5 percent from 10.4 percent in July-September.
In the last quarter, Samsung knocked Nokia off the top slot, taking 24.3 percent of the market, more than three times Apple’s share, data from research firm Gartner showed. Nokia’s market share more than halved last year, from above 40 percent in the first quarter to below one fifth by the fourth quarter.
“Chinese handset makers have been actively promoting their smartphones with China’s three telecoms operators, so we saw ZTE and Huawei gain significant market share,” said Taipei-based Gartner analyst CK Lu.
Gartner said this week it expected Apple’s iPhone market share to slip for a couple of quarters as the novelty of its latest 4S model wears off.
In the first quarter of last year, ZTE had a market share of just 3 percent, but ended 2011 ranked 4th with more than 11 percent market share.
Chinese firms are gradually shifting up towards the higher end of the market, unveiling more feature-packed smartphones.
“If you want to sell handsets to the mass market, a simple rule of thumb in China is that the handset price has to be close to 70 percent of the monthly salary,” said Jayesh Easwaramony, an analyst with Frost & Sullivan in Singapore.
“Today, an iPhone is more than two months salary.”
This, said Easwaramony, gives the likes of Huawei and ZTE the opportunity to cater to a mass market that is captivated by the iPhone, but doesn’t have the purchasing power for it.
VALUE FOR MONEY
“The quality of Huawei’s phones is quite high and it’s good value for money compared to the iPhone,” said Dale Dai, a 28-year-old sales executive from Beijing.
Dai, who uses his Huawei phone to write weibo, or Chinese microblogs, surf the Internet and make calls, recently bought a new Honor smartphone for 1,800 yuan ($290), almost a third of the price of a new iPhone 4S at 4,988 yuan.
But given the sheer size of the Chinese market, just targeting the highest end users should be enough for Apple, though it’s not always been a smooth ride.
Last month, shoppers in Beijing threw eggs at the Apple store and fought with police when they were told the iPhone 4S would not be on sale as scheduled.
In Shenzhen, some genuine iPhones and iPads are smuggled in from Hong Kong, while sellers also take advantage of Apple’s popularity by packaging fake iPhones in iPhone 5 boxes – even before the 4S was launched.
In Hong Kong, Apple resorted to an online lottery reservation system for the 4S model after crowd control issues disrupted initial sales.
Analysts expect Apple to stem its slide in market share in China by signing up another carrier.
China Unicom, the country’s No.2 telecoms operator, is currently the only carrier to officially carry the iPhone. It has not officially given its iPhone sales, but analysts estimate it has sold around 3 million iPhones since signing a contract with Apple in 2009.
China Telecom Corp Ltd, the third and smallest operator, is expected to be next to clinch a similar deal with Apple later this year, and analysts predict it would sell about 1.4 million iPhones this year if it can reach a deal with Apple by May, rising to 2-4 million new iPhone users in 2013.
($1 = 6.3016 Chinese yuan)
– Reuters
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