In year 2016 it will be sold over 1.4 billion smart phones. Mobile is the new central ecosystem of tech. The smartphone is the single most important product, which will determine the development of the semiconductor market. Smart phone centre of innovation and investment in hardware, software and company creation. The smart phone market is huge. Today, there are well over 2bn smartphones in use, and there are between 3.5 and 4.5bn people with a mobile phone of some kind, out of only a little over 5bn adults on earth. With billions of people buying a device every two years, on average, the phone business dwarfs the PC business, which has an install base of 1.5-1.6bn devices replaced every 4-5 years
Smart phone market is no longer fast gowing market. Expect single-digit worldwide smartphone growth in 2016. According to a new forecast from the International Data Corporation (IDC ) Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker , 2015 will be the first full year of single-digit worldwide smartphone growth. IDC predicts worldwide smartphone shipments will grow 9.8% in 2015 to a total of 1.43 billion units. The main driver has been and will continue to be the success of low-cost smartphones in emerging markets. China has been the focal point of the smartphone market – now China has largely become a replacement market and there is economic slowdown in China.
Apple & Google both won, but it’s complicated – both Apple and Google won, in different ways. Android won the handset market outside of Apple, but it’s not quite clear what that means. Microsoft missed the shift to the new platform so Windows Mobile is on life support.
We will continue to see a globalization of the mobile landscape in 2016, as new China brands shake up the smartphone markets with new designs and business models. Expect continuing growth from China brands like Xiaomi, Lenovo and Huawei. Huawei says it sent in 2015 to more than 100 million smartphones and its now firmly among the world’s three largest suppliers. Samsung is the world’s largest smartphone manufacturer, but it looks that it’s production volumes are shrinking because of cheaper Android phones coming from China.
Last year’s CES had a conspicuous lack of killer smartphones, and O’Donnell expects this year to be very challenging for handset vendors – Apple included. It is getting really hard to differentiate from a phone perspective. In the smartphone market changes happen slowly, and for the challengers it is difficult to penetrate the market.
Apple’s position in smart phones is not currently a threat really none. The volumes of the iPhone does not come close to the Android camp in the unit sales figures, but it is clearly not Apple’s target at all – it targets to high-end phones. Apple made record sales in 2015 holiday season, but it is possible that Apple is going to have a tough year in 2016. Some Wall Street analysts predict an end of iPhone sales growth, shrinking iPad sales, and a tough year ahead for Apple. The high cost and the markets getting full are met weigh the Apple iPhone phone sales.Wall Street expects iPhone sales for the fiscal year ending in September will barely budge — and might even decline — from last year. That would be the worst year for iPhone sales since the device was introduced in 2007. If realized, the forecast significantly affect Apple’s value. Despite recent reports of cuts by iPhone suppliers, Apple remains most profitable company in S&P 500. Fortunately for Apple, most of its smartphone competitors are struggling.
Microsoft got the third mobile ecosystem market position, but it’s market share is pretty low: Microsoft’s market share was only 1.7 per cent in the third quarter of 2015. It is very possible that Microsoft will cut Lumia production significantly in 2016. Microsoft’s long-rumored Surface Phone is coming in the second half of next year, reports Windows Central. Windows 10 phones are not dead yet even from other manufacturers as Acer, Alcatel OneTouch just made some new ones. The key feature in the Jade Primo is support for Microsoft’s Continuum feature, allowing you to use the phone like a PC when connected to a larger display – though limited to apps that run on the device’s ARM processor. The idea, claims Acer, is that you can leave your laptop at home, but what’s the demand for PC phones? It is hard to get winning much traction in a market dominated by Android.
Microsoft says the Windows 10 Mobile upgrade will begin early 2016 to select existing Windows 8 and 8.1 phones. Microsoft could not update the smart phones in 2015 despite the fact that the operating system had originally been set to launch alongside the desktop version of the software in July. Microsoft has had a longstanding “chicken and egg” problem: Too few people have Windows phones for developers to care about making apps for the platform, and customers don’t want to buy Windows phones because they don’t have enough apps. Microsoft tries to help his problem With Windows 10, apps that developers write for the PC will also work on Microsoft’s phones. It could have some positive effect, but is no silver bullet. Microsoft’s biggest problem: The 10 most-used apps of the year in the U.S. were all made by three companies — Facebook, Google, and Apple.
It’s only been 15 years since the first camera phone came out. Today smartphones are giving consumers enhanced photo and video capabilities with 8-16 megapixel class. Smartphone cameras are great, or at least close enough to great that you don’t notice the difference. We’ve reached the point where you’ve got to work pretty hard to find a phone with a mediocre camera. Compared to a DSLR, smart phone cameras are lousy because they use tiny sensors, but still the camera in your pocket is crazy good considering the limitations manufacturers work under. The vast majority of top-tier smartphones use Sony sensors for their main cameras. The molded plastic lens elements in many cameras have reached the point where they’re essentially perfect.
For new smart phone camera technologies you could see array of lenses to enable Lytro-like refocusing, create 3-D depth maps, and improve image quality in low light. Some manufacturers are also exploring new areas, such as 3D cameras, massive megapixels (80MB), cameras that can take 360 degree panoramic images and video and cameras that can shoot 1,000 frames a second. 4K Ultra HD for mobile is another move to watch in 2016 as it becomes more common feature. Smartphones have decimated the point-and-shoot camera segment.
Smart phones are increasingly used to shoot videos. Smart phones are already deployed in many newsrooms for mobile journalism video shooting as it is easier (and cheaper) to learn how to film and edit on your phone than it is to use a big camera.(check for example step-by-step guide to shooting iPhone video). Live streaming video from smart phone becomes mainstream. Periscope was one of the first apps to really make live streaming events simple and easy enough that people wanted to do it. Many other apps are following the trend. Facebook begins testing live video streaming for all users.
Smart phones have already replaced many separate technical gadgets already, and this trend will continue. Smartphone have increased screen sizes and have finally become mobile TVs: Smartphones have overtaken the tablets as the most popular mobile device for viewing videos. The most watched content were targeted at teenagers videos and animation series for children.
Mobile display will be more accurate than eye in 2016 in high-end smart phones. Few enjoys a 4K-quality image even in his living room, but by the end of 2016, the same accuracy can be your smartphone. ETSI is preparing for development at ETSI CCM working group (Compound Content Management). Scalable 4K signal requires a very high dynamics (HDR, high dynamic range), as well as the WCG wider color space (Coloc Wider gamut). Such HDR / WCG techniques has only slowly been add to TV broadcasting. One can of course ask whether UltraHD- or 4K image are planting a cell phone make any sense, but they are coming (Sharp already announced that it would launch 4K-level mobile phone).
So device manufacturers need to support user expectations for downloading larger files for apps, movies, photos, videos and other materials, more frequently and more quickly. Networking speed is an area where we will see companies start to push the envelope in 2016, such as new creative strategies for caching, spectrum hopping and managing the Internet of Things.
The quality of LTE modem can make or break your smart phone product. Smartphones consist of two main components: Modems and application processors. Application processor performances of several smartphone brands are widely published, but LTE modem performance measures are much more difficult for the average purchaser to assess. Consumers have generally ignored the importance of connectivity in smartphone purchases, but device performance and positive user experiences are driven by best-in-class connectivity. There are 5 LTE smartphone modem chip makers currently shipping in mobile devices and besides U.S.-based Qualcomm, they include: HiSilicon (China), Intel (U.S.), Leadcore (China), MediaTek (Taiwan), Samsung (Korea), and Spreadtrum (China).
5G will be talked a lot enven though standardization is not ready yet. Just five years after the first 4G smartphone hit the market, the wireless industry is already preparing for 5G: cell phone carriers, smartphone chip makers and the major network equipment companies are working on developing 5G network technology for their customers.
Sometimes it’s easy to forget that a smartphone is also a telephone. Nearly half of all phone users today employ their mobile phones as their primary voice connection (a number sure to grow). That the voice features in cell phones also advance. Very early on, the standard for human voice transmission was set as the “voice band” located between 300 Hz and 3.3 kHz (to put this in perspective, the natural frequency span of human voice during speech ranges from about 50 Hz to nearly 10 kHz). These standards were carried over for cellphone audio quality. Now that there are about about as many cellphone subscriptions as there are people on earth, one would think that there really shouldn’t be any more technological excuses for poor voice quality. New standards branded as HD Voice and VoLTE promise the eventual extension of voice transmission frequency range up to 7 kHz. There are also other major challenge preventing great sounding calls – especially noise challenges facing cellphone users. To get good sound quality we need to develop algorithms that isolate the person speaking from all other sources of noise.
Financial Services needs to get over its reluctance and go mobile in 2016, but it might not happen in large scale this year. Compliance concerns have long prevented financial services businesses from adopting mobile capabilities as quickly as other industries. Yvette Jackson of Thomson Reuters argues that technology advancements have made compliance worries of the past now obsolete.
Mobile payments are finally taking the momentum in North America, Japan and some European countries in 2016. Every second consumer is expected to smartphone or wearable device purchases to pay in few years. There are now types of mobile payment technologies in use. Some of them will turn to be interim techniques.
Despite many tools available mobile application development is still hard work in 2016. Mobile developer report shows growing back-end challenge: 33.9 per cent spent more than half their development effort on back-end integration. This effort includes creating and debugging APIs, finding documentation for existing APIs, and orchestrating data from multiple sources. iOS and Android dominate as target platforms. The disappointment for Microsoft is that all its hoopla about the Universal Windows Platform (UWP) does not seem to resonate here. What about making money? Only just over 60 per cent of those surveyed are primarily out to make money from apps themselves, with others aiming for goals such as customer loyalty and brand awareness. In-app purchases are the most effective method, followed by advertising and app purchase. Application landscape is changing: Single-function applications no longer meet the everyday life needs on mobile devices.
Web standards are becoming promising for mobile use but they are still far from making mobile apps obsolete in 2016. There’s a litany of problems with apps. There is the platform lock-in and the space the apps take up on the device. Updating apps is a pain that users often ignore, leaving broken or vulnerable versions in use long after they’ve been allegedly patched. Apps are also a lot of work for developers. Use the Web and the Web browser can sometimes help in solving some of those problems while creating other different set of problems. For example updates to HTML apps happen entirely on the server, so users get them immediately. Also HTML-based platform and a well-designed program that makes good use of CSS, one site could support phones, tablets, PCs, and just about anything else with one site. Currently HTML5 standards are advancing rapidly in the area of mobile Web applications. Web standards make mobile apps obsolete? I don’t think that it will happen immediately, even though many big tech companies are throwing weight behind a browser-based world (backed strongly by Google and Mozilla). So app or web question will still very relevant for mobile developer in 2016.
Google appears to be lining up OpenJDK – an open-source implementation of the Java platform – for future Android builds. Android runs apps written in Java on its Dalvik engine, and lately, its Android Runtime virtual machine. These apps require a Java class library, as well as various Android-specific bits and pieces, to work. Now it seems the next big releases of Android will use not the heavily customized Harmony-derived library but instead OpenJDK’s core libraries.
Android, which is controlled by Google, is one of Facebook’s biggest markets. Facebook has a contingency plan in case the company falls out with Google, according to The Information: a way to deliver app updates without going through the Google Play Store — currently the only way to update apps — and has a way of handling in-app payments. Amazon, which makes Android-based tablets, has a similar system: The app acts as a new store front from which other apps can be downloaded and updated, without Google Play.
There will be fascinating conversation in tech about smartphone apps and the web – what can each do, how discovery works, how they interplay, what Google plans with Chrome, whether the web will take over as the dominant form and so on. Ask the question: Do people want to put your icon on their home screen?
Mobile Internet continues to be important also in 2016. There is place for both Internet pages and apps. The internet makes it possible to get anything you’ve ever heard of but also makes it impossible to have heard of everything. We started with browsing, and that didn’t scale to the internet, and then we moved to search, but search can only give you what you already knew you wanted. In the past, print and retail showed us what there was but also gave us a filter – now both the filter and the demand generation are gone.
There is hunt for a new runtime, and a new discovery layer. Could it be messaging, Facobook or something else? Facebook and Google try to make mobile publishing platforms faster. Facebook has Instant Articles platform that aims to make articles loading fast on mobile devices. Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) is Google’s plan to make pages appear super-fast for those using mobile devices. Fast-loading pages may also mean fast-loading ads, with advertising platform support for AMP that’s been announced. I expect that first those plaforms will make loading the articles faster than traditinal pages, but over years those systems, if they catch, will be bloated to be slow again.
Maybe in 2016 we should stop talking about ‘mobile’ internet and ‘desktop’ internet - it’s like talking about ‘colour’ TV, as opposed to black and white TV. We have a mental model, left over from feature phones, that ‘mobile’ means limited devices that are only used walking around. Get over it. For 15 years the internet was a monolith: web browser + mouse + keyboard. The smartphone broke that apart, but we haven’t settled on a new model. Mobile’ isn’t about the screen size or keyboard or location or use. Rather, the ecosystem of ARM, iOS and Android, that has bigger scale than ‘Wintel’.
Dick Tracy had it right. Wearable devices are becoming more of any every day item as they proliferate across markets. Wearable market is still immature and growing in 2016. While many new fitness bands, smartwatches, and other wearable devices have entered the market, most have under-whelmed prospects and users. It is quite clear the wearable industry is in its infancy and fraught with growing pains. You can expect the top five vendors will not only shift places, but come in and drop out on a quarterly basis. Wearables grew 197.6% in Q3 2015 when mobile companies shipped a total of 21.0 million wearables worldwide.
Whereas the smartphone is the ultimate convergence product, we are learning that wearables are inherently divergent products. It seems that super-duper smartwatches loaded with full-blown phone/email/camera/voice assistant capabilities together with all other bells and whistles are not necessarily winning recipe like it was for smart phones. Many consumers want instead simplicity, ease of use, and instant actionable feedback. As an embedded developer of wearables, not only do you have the challenge of addressing battery life issues, but also architecting and developing a system that takes full advantage of the underlying hardware. Heartbeat monitoring has become the must-have feature for fitness trackers. China has quickly emerged as the fastest-growing wearables market, attracting companies eager to compete on price and feature sets.
The newest wearable technology, smart watvches and other smart devices corresponding to the voice commands and interpret the data we produce - it learns from its users, and generate as responses in real time appropriate, “micro-moments” tied to experience.
Links to some other mobile predictions articles worth to check out:
16 mobile theses by Benedict Evans
Mobile 2016 Predictions from EE Times
2015 Appcelerator / IDC Mobile Trends Report: Leaders, Laggards and the Data Problem
702 Comments
Tomi Engdahl says:
Chris Velazco / Engadget:
BlackBerry DTEK50 review: solidly built $299 Android smartphone with a super-secure foundation is appealing to business customers, tough sell to consumers
BlackBerry DTEK50 review: Cheap, secure and better than expected
That still doesn’t mean it’s for everyone.
https://www.engadget.com/2016/08/11/blackberry-dtek50-review/
BlackBerry’s first Android phone was a curious, ambitious machine, so it’s funny that the company’s second turned out to be so … practical. The $299 DTEK50 is affordable from the get-go, lacks a physical keyboard and was basically tailor-made for corporations to buy in bulk. Seriously: BlackBerry has been pretty candid about the fact that this is a “fleet” device, a supersecure phone it hopes will attract companies trying to trick out their mobile workforce. BlackBerry is trying to pitch this to regular people too, though, and in the process, it’s hurling the DTEK into a crowded, crazy-competitive pool of midrange phones. Spoiler alert: It’s probably not for you.
Tomi Engdahl says:
DuoSkin
http://duoskin.media.mit.edu/
DuoSkin is a fabrication process that enables anyone to create customized functional devices that can be attached directly on their skin. Using gold metal leaf, a material that is cheap, skin-friendly, and robust for everyday wear, we demonstrate three types of on-skin interfaces: sensing touch input, displaying output, and wireless communication. DuoSkin draws from the aesthetics found in metallic jewelry-like temporary tattoos to create on-skin devices which resemble jewelry. DuoSkin devices enable users to control their mobile devices, display information, and store information on their skin while serving as a statement of personal style. We believe that in the future, on-skin electronics will no longer be black-boxed and mystified; instead, they will converge towards the user friendliness, extensibility, and aesthetics of body decorations, forming a DuoSkin integrated to the extent that it has seemingly disappeared.
Tomi Engdahl says:
J.M. Porup / Ars Technica:
Two-man startup Copperhead ships a hardened version of Android that fixes its security problems and currently works with Nexus devices
Copperhead OS: The startup that wants to solve Android’s woeful security
A multi-billion-dollar megacorp, Google, apparently needs help to secure its OS.
http://arstechnica.com/security/2016/08/copperhead-os-fix-android-security/
Dan Guido, CEO of Trail of Bits, has also puzzled over the vulnerability gap between the stock Android OS and Copperhead, and points out that the same could not be said for Apple’s iOS.
“If I had to imagine a world where there’s a Copperhead for iOS, I don’t even know what I’d change,” he tells Ars. “The Apple team almost always picked the more secure path to go and has found a way to overcome all these performance and user experience issues.”
A billion people around the world rely on Android to secure their digital lives. This number is only going to grow. How did we get here, and can Copperhead—or even Google—put out the garbage fire?
A deal with the devil
Google did a deal with the devil for market share, says Soghoian, who has described the current parlous state of Android security as a human rights issue. By giving Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) and wireless carriers control over the end-user experience, Google allowed handset manufacturers to find ways to differentiate their products, and wireless carriers to disable features they thought would threaten their business model.
As a result, Google’s power over OEMs—such as Samsung or Motorola, who manufacture and sell Android handsets—consists solely of the Android license and access to the Google Play Store. The AOSP code base is licensed with Apache 2.0, and the kernel uses GPL2, which means there’s nothing stopping OEMs from deploying stock Android under a different name. But doing so would also mean losing access to the Play Store. This gives Google significant leverage over OEMs, but by no means absolute control—a competitor willing to forgo the Android trademark and offer customers access to their own app store, as Amazon has done, can walk away from the negotiating table with little to no consequence.
But Soghoian thinks Google isn’t trying very hard. The company could, he points out, demand that OEMs implement default full-disk encryption as part of the Android and Play Service licence terms. The company currently requires FDE when the hardware supports it, but extending that requirement to lower-end Android manufacturers might scare off a non-trivial fraction of OEMs—and that would hurt Google’s bottom line as an advertising company.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Jena McGregor / Washington Post:
As his fifth anniversary as Apple CEO approaches, Tim Cook reflects on his tenure and Apple’s future: mistakes, progress made, AI and AR efforts, more — Apple’s CEO talks iPhones, AI, privacy, civil rights, missteps, China, taxes, Steve Jobs — and steers right past the car rumors
Tim Cook, the interview: Running Apple ‘is sort of a lonely job’
http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/business/wp/2016/08/13/2016/08/13/tim-cook-the-interview-running-apple-is-sort-of-a-lonely-job/
Tomi Engdahl says:
http://hackaday.com/2016/08/14/hackaday-links-august-14-2016/
A few years ago Motorola released the Lapdock, a CPU-less laptop with inputs for HDMI and USB. This was, and still is, a great idea – we’re all carrying powerful computers in our pocket, and carrying around a smartphone and a laptop is effort duplication. As you would expect, the best use for the Lapdock was with a Raspberry Pi, and prices of Lapdocks have gone through the roof in the last few years. The Superbook is the latest evolution of this Lapdock idea. It’s a small, thin, CPU-less laptop that connects to a phone using a special app and a USB cable. It also works with the Raspberry Pi. Very interesting, even if they didn’t swap the CTRL and Caps Lock keys as God intended.
The Superbook: Turn your smartphone into a laptop for $99
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/andromium/the-superbook-turn-your-smartphone-into-a-laptop-f
Tomi Engdahl says:
Micron Moves 3D NAND Into Mobile
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1330303&
Until recently 3D NAND has been only hitting the market within SSDs, but now Micron Technology said it’s ready for mobile devices.
Last week the company introduced its first 3D NAND memory technology optimized for mobile devices and its first products based on the Universal Flash Storage (UFS) 2.1 standard. Micron’s first foray into mobile 3D NAND is a 32GB offering aimed at the high and mid-end smartphone segments, which make up approximately 50% of worldwide smartphone volume, said Gino Skulick, VP of marketing in Micron’s mobile business unit in a telephone interview with EE Times. The company is sampling the new 3D NAND with mobile customers and partners, and it will be widely available by the end of 2016.
Micron 3D NAND for mobile is the first to be built using floating gate technology, and stacks layers of data storage cells vertically to create storage capacity that is three times that of previous generation planar NAND technologies.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Ex-Rovio CEO hired to bring Nokia phones back to market
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-nokia-corp-phones-hmd-idUSKCN10Q14U
HMD Global Oy, a new Finnish company looking to relaunch the Nokia brand for phones, said on Monday it has hired Pekka Rantala, the former CEO of Angry Birds maker Rovio, as its Chief Marketing Officer.
Nokia, once the world’s biggest maker of mobile phones, said in May it had signed an exclusive licensing deal with HMD to bring Nokia-branded devices back to the market.
HMD’s Nokia-branded phones and tablets run on the Android operating system. The devices will be manufactured and distributed by FIH Mobile, a subsidiary of Foxconn Technology.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Skin Bling: Wearable Electronics from Golden Temporary Tattoos
http://hackaday.com/2016/08/16/skin-bling-wearable-electronics-from-golden-temporary-tattoos/
MIT Media Lab and Microsoft have teamed up to take wearable devices one step further — they’ve glued the devices directly to the user’s skin. DuoSkin is a temporary tattoo created with gold leaf. Metallic “Flash” temporary fashion tattoos have become quite popular recently, so this builds on the trend. What the team has done is to use them to create user interfaces for wearable electronic devices.
Generally speaking, gold leaf is incredibly fragile. In this process to yield the cleanest looking leaf the gold is not actually cut. Instead, the temporary tattoo film and backer are cut on a standard desktop vinyl cutter. The gold leaf is then applied to the entire film surface.
DuoSkin
Cindy Hsin-Liu Kao, Asta Roseway*, Christian Holz*, Paul Johns*, Andres Calvo, Chris Schmandt.
MIT Media Lab in collaboration with Microsoft Research*
http://duoskin.media.mit.edu/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Dan Seifert / The Verge:
Samsung Galaxy Note7 review: the best big phone on the market, though it’s expensive and loaded with bloatware on some carriers — There is no greater evidence of The Future of Computing than the big-screened smartphone. Big phones have become the de facto personal computers for many people …
Samsung Galaxy Note 7 review: the best big phone
Samsung out-designs the pack with its best phone ever
http://www.theverge.com/2016/8/16/12491196/samsung-galaxy-note-7-review
Joshua Ho / AnandTech:
Galaxy Note7 has one of the brightest displays, fastest cameras on the market, but its real world performance and camera quality are a bit lacking for the price
The Samsung Galaxy Note7 (S820) Review
by Joshua Ho on August 16, 2016 9:00 AM EST
http://www.anandtech.com/show/10559/the-samsung-galaxy-note7-s820-review
Tomi Engdahl says:
Too Many New Smartphone Models Released Each Year: Survey
https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/16/08/16/137241/too-many-new-smartphone-models-released-each-year-survey
Consumers think smartphone makers are releasing too many new models each year, a survey showed on Tuesday. The survey conducted in six countries, commissioned by the environmental group Greenpeace, showed that more than half of those who responded would prefer to change their phones less frequently. Handset devices are one of the most frequently replaced electronics products. The top cellphone companies, Samsung and Apple, launch new flagship phone models at least once every year
Too many new smartphone models released each year: Survey
http://www.livemint.com/Consumer/msLjgLX8z8aNoi9c3NYozL/Too-many-new-smartphone-models-released-each-year-Survey.html
The survey conducted in six countries, commissioned by Greenpeace, showed that more than half of those who responded would prefer to change their phones less frequently
Tomi Engdahl says:
China is fiercely competitive mobile phone – one falls, the other rises like a rocket
Chinese smartphone manufacturer Xiaomi is a problem in China, where its phone shipments fell by as much as 38 per cent in the second quarter. The competitor Huawei surpassed Xiaomin and rose to the number one spot of the world’s largest market.
Xiaomi submitted to the IDC research company, according to the second quarter of 10.5 million phones, while the previous year it supplied 17.1 million phones.
The Chinese market has been dominated by the recent local companies. The world’s largest Apple and Samsung have been in trouble.
Source: http://www.tivi.fi/Kaikki_uutiset/kiinassa-kaydaan-kovaa-kannykkakilpailua-yksi-putoaa-toinen-nousee-kuin-raketti-6574353
Tomi Engdahl says:
Korea’s LG plans to make its own mobile chips — in Intel’s factories
The move could be a blow to Qualcomm.
http://www.recode.net/2016/8/16/12507216/lg-chip-manufacture-korea-intel
Korean phone maker LG, which has largely relied on processors from Qualcomm, plans to start making a new generation of homegrown mobile chips using Intel factories.
The news, delivered in a single slide at a technical session at Intel’s developer forum in San Francisco, ended months of speculation that such a move was in the works.
LG, which often takes its cue from Samsung, is following its larger rival further into the chip business.
Apple and China’s Huawei also have their own chip designs, while the rest of the phone industry generally uses processors from Qualcomm or Chinese rivals.
LG will take advantage of Intel’s next-generation 10-nanometer manufacturing technology
chips will be made in Intel plants
Tomi Engdahl says:
Paul Thurrott / Thurrott.com:
Microsoft consolidates its separate two-factor authentication apps into one new app, Microsoft Authenticator, for Android and iOS
Microsoft Authenticator Now Available on Android and iOS
https://www.thurrott.com/mobile/76205/microsoft-authenticator-now-available-android-ios
As promised, Microsoft has updated and renamed its previous account verification app for Android and iOS, Azure Authenticator, to Microsoft Authenticator. This app lets you use multi-factor authentication (MFA) with your online accounts. And do so more easily than before.
The newly updated Microsoft Authenticator apps for Android and iOS replace the previous Azure Authenticator apps, and will replace a weird smattering of other apps (like Microsoft Account on Android) as well.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Peter Elstrom / Bloomberg:
IDC: Xiaomi quarterly shipments fell in China 38% YoY to 10.5M as Huawei, OPPO, Vivo surge to top spots — Apple in fifth place as local vendors fill top 4 positions — Vivo shipments surge by 75 percent, OPPO more than doubles — Xiaomi Corp., the once-hot Chinese smartphone maker …
Xiaomi China Phone Shipments Fall 38% as Huawei Takes Lead
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-08-16/xiaomi-phone-shipments-fall-38-in-china-as-huawei-takes-lead
Xiaomi Corp., the once-hot Chinese smartphone maker, saw shipments tumble 38 percent in China in the second quarter as Huawei Technologies Co. took over the top spot in the world’s largest market, according to research from International Data Corp.
Xiaomi shipped 10.5 million smartphones in the quarter, down from 17.1 million in the same period a year earlier. That made the company the fourth-largest competitor in the market behind Huawei, OPPO and Vivo, according to IDC.
The Chinese market, the world’s biggest, has grown increasingly competitive as domestic manufacturers have improved their quality, design and marketing, putting pressure on global leaders Apple Inc. and Samsung Electronics Co.
“The iPhones lack features such as waterproofing and wireless charging. Apple needs to catch up with the competition if it wants to compete,”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Verizon fingered in Android bloatware-for-cash cram scandal
Report says carrier offered to pre-install apps for moolah
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/08/17/verizon_named_in_android_bloatware_scheme/
Verizon has reportedly approached app developers about pre-installing their software on customer handsets in exchange for cash.
A report from Ad Age cites marketing industry execs who say that, since late last year, they have been approached by the nation’s largest carrier with offers to install their mobile apps on millions of handsets for a per-install fee.
The report claims that Verizon would charge the developers $1-2 per install and that the apps would appear on the home screen of Android devices on the Verizon network.
Customers would be able to remove the apps from their handsets if they so choose. The report alleges this has been a sticking point for advertisers and developers, who worry they could be charged for users who never activate their apps.
Verizon said it has no comment on the report.
Tomi Engdahl says:
New Nokia Smartphones and Tablets Are Coming in Late 2016: Company Executive
https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/16/08/17/1935259/new-nokia-smartphones-and-tablets-are-coming-in-late-2016-company-executive
The resurrection of the Nokia brand may happen in the fourth quarter of this year, which could make for some really nostalgic holiday gifts. According to Chinese site ThePaper (in Chinese), Nokia executive Mike Wang confirmed that three or four Nokia-branded Android devices are on the way for the fourth quarter of 2016. The comeback effort would include both phones and tablets. There is a chance, however, that the timeline could get pushed back depending upon how things progress.
Report: New Nokia smartphones and tablets are coming in late 2016
http://www.pcworld.com/article/3109048/android/report-new-nokia-smartphones-and-tablets-are-coming-in-late-2016.html
The reboot comes from HMD, a Finnish company composed of ex-Nokia and Microsoft employees.
The resurrection of the Nokia brand may happen in the fourth quarter of this year, which could make for some really nostalgic holiday gifts.
According to Chinese site ThePaper, Nokia executive Mike Wang confirmed that three or four Nokia-branded Android devices are on the way for the fourth quarter of 2016. The comeback effort would include both phones and tablets.
It wouldn’t be a terrible shocker considering we’re talking about a new company, HMD. It’s composed of former employees from Microsoft, the old Nokia, and others who are banding together to resurrect the once-iconic brand.
Tomi Engdahl says:
iOS and Android Combined For Record 99% of Smartphone Sales Last Quarter
https://news.slashdot.org/story/16/08/18/2042248/ios-and-android-combined-for-record-99-of-smartphone-sales-last-quarter
The research firm Gartner has crunched some numbers and found that Android and iOS accounted for a record 99.1% worldwide market share in the second calendar quarter of 2016, which is compared to 96.8% in the year-ago period. What some may view as even more shocking is that Android accounted for 86.2% of the market share in the second quarter, up from 82.2% a year ago. Meanwhile, iOS lost some ground as it dropped to 12.9% market share from 14.6% in the year-ago period.
http://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/3415117
Tomi Engdahl says:
Bloomberg:
Sources: Apple planned to add cellular data to Watch this year but is delaying the feature due to battery life concerns; new models launching this year have GPS — Battery concerns delay versions with integrated cellular data — Models coming this fall improve health tracking with GPS chip
Apple Hits Roadblocks in Cutting Watch Ties to iPhone
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-08-18/apple-said-to-hit-roadblocks-in-cutting-watch-ties-to-iphone
Apple Inc. has hit roadblocks in making major changes that would connect its Watch to cellular networks and make it less dependent on the iPhone, according to people with knowledge of the matter. The company still plans to announce new watch models this fall boasting improvements to health tracking.
Apple shipped its first watch in April 2015, hoping for a new blockbuster product amid slowing iPhone sales, which contribute almost 60 percent of revenue. While the company shipped 1.6 million watches from April to June, that was less than half as many as during the same period in 2015, according to IDC.
Apple had been in talks this year with mobile phone carriers in the U.S. and Europe to add cellular connectivity to the watch, according to people familiar with the talks. A cellular chip would have theoretically allowed the product to download sports score alerts, e-mail and mapping information while out of an iPhone’s reach.
The source of the delay is that current cellular chips consume too much battery life, reducing the product’s effectiveness and limiting user appeal, according to three of the people. Apple has begun studying lower-power cellular data chips for future smartwatch generations.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Frederic Lardinois / TechCrunch:
Android Nougat is out of beta, now available for select Nexus devices, Pixel C tablet, more; Google says the roll-out to all supported phones may take weeks — Google surprised everyone when it launched a public beta of the Android Nougat back in March. Annual updates are nothing new for Android …
Android Nougat comes out of beta
https://techcrunch.com/2016/08/22/android-nougat-comes-out-of-beta/
Google surprised everyone when it launched a public beta of the Android Nougat back in March. Annual updates are nothing new for Android, but not only did this announcement come very early, it also offered users the option to easily install the beta with an over-the-air update. Now, half a year later, Nougat is out of beta and available for Google’s own Nexus devices (the Nexus 6, Nexus 5X, Nexus 6P, Nexus 9, Nexus Player), the Pixel C tablet and the General Mobile 4G.
If you own one of those devices (no matter whether you were enrolled in the beta or not), you should see an update prompt fairly soon. The first new phone that will come with Android Nougat pre-installed is the LG V20, which should arrive in early September.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Ron Amadeo / Ars Technica:
Android Nougat review: split screen support with app resizing will be great for large screen devices, and the design of new notification panel is very efficient — Big smartphones are everywhere, and Nougat’s new features make them more useful. — After a lengthy Developer Preview program starting …
Android 7.0 Nougat review—Do more on your gigantic smartphone
Big smartphones are everywhere, and Nougat’s new features make them more useful.
http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/08/android-7-0-nougat-review-do-more-on-your-gigantic-smartphone/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Samsung plans refurbished smartphone program: source
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-samsung-elec-phones-refurbishment-idUSKCN10X0FT
Samsung Electronics Co Ltd plans to launch a program to sell refurbished used versions of its premium smartphones as early as next year, a person with direct knowledge of the matter told Reuters.
The South Korean technology firm is looking for ways to sustain earnings momentum after reviving its mobile profits by restructuring its product line-up. As growth in the global smartphone market hits a plateau, Samsung wants to maximize its cost efficiency and keep operating margins above 10 percent.
The world’s top smartphone maker will refurbish high-end phones returned to the company by users who signed up for one-year upgrade programs in markets such as South Korea and the United States.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Samsung launches first Tizen-powered 4G smartphone for $68
http://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2016/8/23/12602468/samsung-tizen-z2-4g-smartphone
Samsung’s latest mobile — the Z2 — launches in India today, and it’s a straightforward play to appeal to the country’s growing number of smartphone users. The Z2 costs INR 4,590, or around $68 (just two dollars less than the average price of a mobile phone in India) and is powered by Tizen, Samsung’s home-grown mobile OS. It’s also the first Tizen device to support 4G.
The Z2 certainly isn’t a powerhouse (there’s a 1.5GHz processor, 1GB of RAM, and 8GB of internal memory), but it does provide a cheap way for consumers to get more out of their mobile. As well as its 4G connection, the Z2 comes with a 90-day free trial for various entertainment apps from Indian mobile operator Jio.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Samsung Reminds Us That You Can’t Make People Use an App They Don’t Want
https://entertainment.slashdot.org/story/16/08/22/1713248/samsung-reminds-us-that-you-cant-make-people-use-an-app-they-dont-want
Samsung has announced that it will be discontinuing Milk Music on September 22. The announcement comes a year after the South Korean technology conglomerate shuttered Milk Video, another service that didn’t receive the traction Samsung was hoping.
Samsung reminds us — again! — that you can’t make people use an app they don’t want
More reminders to come from Verizon, Comcast and AT&T.
http://www.recode.net/2016/8/22/12585034/samsung-milk-music-video-verizon-comcast
Tomi Engdahl says:
Developer shows off Android 6.0 Marshmallow running on the Lumia 525
http://www.neowin.net/news/developer-shows-off-android-60-marshmallow-running-on-the-lumia-525
One of the many Nokia Lumia devices that were released for the masses was the Lumia 525. The handset was touted as an upgrade to the Lumia 520, packing double the RAM than its predecessor. Being a Lumia, the phone ran Microsoft’s Windows Phone operating system. However today, a developer has actually managed to run Android 6.0 Marshmallow on the Nokia handset.
XDA Senior Developer who goes by the username ‘banmeifyouwant’ was recently able to sideload Google’s operating system on the three-year old Lumia 525. To be able to achieve this, he completely removed the Windows Phone and UEFI elements from the handset. Next, he flashed Qualcomm’s Little Kernel Boot Loader, TWRP or TeamWin Recovery Project, a custom recovery method for Android devices, and lastly, a port of CyanogenMod 13.
This method successfully sideloaded Android 6.0 Marshmallow on the Lumia 525. While there are some areas that are malfunctioning, like Wi-Fi and the modem, the display works like expected (despite a need for slight calibrations).
Microsoft Lumia 525 Hacked to Run Android 6.0.1 with CyanogenMod 13
http://www.xda-developers.com/microsoft-lumia-525-hacked-to-run-android-6-0-1-with-cyanogenmod-13/
XDA Senior Member banmeifyouwant worked out how to run Android on the Lumia 525. And not just any Android, it still is the “latest” officially available Android version for the public, Android 6.0 Marshmallow (unless Google decides to release Android 7.0 Nougat tomorrow). The phone that Microsoft abandoned now runs a software that several Android phones do not!
Tomi Engdahl says:
Microsoft, Lenovo cross-licensing love-in: Android mobes knocked up with… Office apps
Locked and loaded baby
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/08/23/microsft_locks_lenovo_in_patent_deal/
Lenovo’s signed a second patent licensing agreement with Microsoft, loading Redmond’s productivity software on its Android devices.
Microsoft Office, OneDrive and Skype will come pre-installed on unspecified Lenovo devices packing Google’s Android.
Lenovo expects to ship “millions” of Android devices over “the next several years” the pair said.
The deal follows a patent cross-licensing deal covering Lenovo and Motorola devices.
The wording of this deal is careful and there’s no reference to patent infringement, however, Microsoft has been on a march among OEMs over the years, knocking on doors and signing up vendors in to cross-license its technology.
The crux of such deals has invariably been the various hardware firms’ use of either Linux, Android or Chrome with Microsoft dangling in front of them the prospect of unspecified patent infringements of Redmond’s patents.
Microsoft has been calculated to make $5 on each device shipped running Android.
There are a reported 74 makers of Android devices who’ve signed deals with Microsoft to preload the firm’s apps and services on their machines.
Tomi Engdahl says:
‘Neural network’ spotted deep inside Samsung’s Galaxy S7 silicon brain
Secrets of Exynos M1 cores spilled
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/08/22/samsung_m1_core/
Samsung has revealed the blueprints to its mystery M1 processor cores at the heart of its S7 and S7 Edge smartphones.
International versions of the top-end Android mobiles, which went on sale in March, sport a 14nm FinFET Exynos 8890 system-on-chip that has four standard 1.6GHz ARM Cortex-A53 cores and four M1 cores running at 2.3 to 2.6GHz. Only two M1 cores are allowed to kick it up to the maximum frequency at any one time to avoid draining batteries and overheating pockets. Each M1 typically consumes less than three watts.
The M1, codenamed Mongoose, was designed from scratch in three years by a team in the US, and it runs 32-bit and 64-bit ARMv8-A code. In benchmarks, the Exynos 8890 SoC is behind Apple’s iPhone 6S A9 chip in terms of single-core performance, but pushes ahead in multi-core tests.
One thing that caught our eye was a mention that the branch predictor uses a neural network to take a good guess at the twists and turns the software will take through its code. If your CPU can predict accurately which instructions an app is going to execute next, you can continue priming the processing pipeline with instructions rather than dumping the pipeline every time you hit a jump.
“The neural net gives us very good prediction rates,” said Brad Burgess, who is Samsung’s chief CPU architect and is based at the South Korean giant’s R&D center in Austin, Texas.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Rich McCormick / The Verge:
Lenovo will preload Microsoft Office, Skype, and OneDrive on its Android devices as part of a new patent cross-licensing agreement — Microsoft has announced that its software will be soon be preloaded onto some of Lenovo Android devices. Productivity apps including Microsoft Office …
Lenovo will preload Microsoft Office, Skype, and OneDrive on its Android devices
http://www.theverge.com/2016/8/23/12599132/lenovo-microsoft-office-skype-onedrive-android-devices
Tomi Engdahl says:
Frederic Lardinois / TechCrunch:
Android Nougat is out of beta, now available for select Nexus devices, Pixel C tablet, more; Google says the roll-out to all supported phones may take weeks
Android Nougat comes out of beta
https://techcrunch.com/2016/08/22/android-nougat-comes-out-of-beta/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Apple’s market share will fall at a rapid pace.
For nearly ten years, Apple has been the brand that defines the cabinet position of the phone and tablet in the world. This is still, despite Apple’s position will be reduced all the time. Downhill has been going on for almost a year.
For example, the analysis firm Gartner calculates that Apple’s market share in the world in the second quarter by 12.9 per cent. Last year, it accounted for 14.6 per cent.
Apple was still the world’s second largest smart phone brand.
However, Apple has one trump card, or in this case, already perhaps even more straw, its operating system iOS devices with a standard no other company has been unable to develop, similar to Business Insider (BI).
Apple does not disclose the operating system for any other company.
So far, Android has been operating at the level of some kind of underdog, but still life is constantly changing in a manner unfavorable to Apple. Many commentators think Apple’s competitors will hit already in the formulation and properties of the devices.
Still, Apple has in his pocket a few more trump card, and the smallest of them is the operating system support. When you buy an Apple device, there may be certain that the aid will remain in force for many years, usually at least four years.
Another Apple’s plate polishing thing is security: Apple can create a software update for the entire ecosystem at one time.
Android side, such is not usually possible.
Source: http://www.kauppalehti.fi/uutiset/yksi-ainoa-oljenkorsi-pitaa-applen-paan-pinnalla/vST3yTyV?ref=iltalehti:f9d4&_ga=1.126105736.483596618.1402989016
Tomi Engdahl says:
Five Years of Tim Cook’s Apple in Charts
https://medium.com/beyond-devices/five-years-of-tim-cooks-apple-in-charts-9e5488f48fce#.e9qdzmrzf
This week marks the fifth anniversary of Tim Cook’s appointment as permanent CEO at Apple — he was appointed CEO on August 24th, 2011. As a result, we’ll no doubt see quite a few retrospectives this week looking back over his time at Apple, and evaluating his tenure. As context for that analysis, I wanted to share some numbers about Apple in the quarter and year before he took over, and compare it with numbers for the quarter and year ending in June of this year.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Steve Wozniak says Apple must fix iPhone 7 Bluetooth or revive its headphone jack
Read more: http://www.afr.com/technology/mobiles-and-tablets/apple/steve-wozniak-says-apple-must-fix-iphone-7-bluetooth-or-revive-its-headphone-jack-20160821-gqxwsg#ixzz4IL14zy3n
Tomi Engdahl says:
An infrared camera is ideal for mobile phone
Panasonic has developed a suitable thermal imaging camera image sensor to mobile phones. It also test cards and smart phones Bluetooth application is available.
Panasonic has developed a Grid-EYE camera modules for many years. In addition to the latest version of the module is becoming a trial card with the image sensor in addition to a low-power Bluetooth Low Energy Module PAN1740. The card will also Atmel’s ARM Cortex-M0 based microcontroller ATSAMD21.
Panasonic Grid-EYE-image sensor is 64 pixels arranged in 8 × 8 matrix. Each pixel has a thermoelectric sensor
Image resolution has been compared to commercial thermal cameras modest, but price is class of its own.
Panasonic has also implemented a smart phone application that allows using a Bluetooth connection to transfer the thermal image trial card to your phone. This phone’s screen can be viewed on the thermal image and the phone’s own camera image on top (app available for iPhone now and Android later)
Source: http://www.uusiteknologia.fi/2016/08/25/lampokamera-sopii-kannykkaan/
More:
https://industrial.panasonic.com/ww/products/sensors/built-in-sensors/grid-eye
http://www.digikey.com/en/product-highlight/p/panasonic-electric-works/grid-eye-infrared-array-sensors
Tomi Engdahl says:
Matthew Braga / Bloomberg:
As major tech firms focus on voice assistants, microphone makers face pressure to improve product that hasn’t seen much change since 2012
The Sad State of Mics Is Holding Back Siri and Alexa
The billion-dollar digital mic industry hasn’t seen much improvement since the launch of the iPhone 5.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-08-25/the-sad-state-of-microphones-is-holding-back-siri-and-alexa
Apple, Amazon.com, Google, and Microsoft are among the companies trying to get you talking—to your phone, to your TV remote, to the funny-looking speaker on your desk. Amazon’s Alexa can order a cookbook and Apple’s Siri can set an oven timer for the cake, while Google’s Home silences the smoke alarm and Microsoft’s Cortana texts party guests to bring a dessert, all via voice commands. It’s impressive right up until the virtual assistants start responding with a familiar chorus along the lines of: “I’m sorry, I didn’t get that.”
These kinds of features test the limits of the microphones they require. The mics in most consumer technology haven’t kept pace with the advances in, say, cameras. They still aren’t great at focusing on faraway voices or filtering out background noise, and they often require too much power to be listening at all times. So the race into voice control by device makers is putting fresh pressure on the handful of obscure companies leading the $1 billion global market for microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) microphones. The message: We need better hardware, software, or both.
Apple and its rivals have challenging, albeit straightforward, demands. They want a higher signal-to-noise ratio
and a higher acoustic overload point
Those factors are becoming more important as device makers add more mics. There’s one in the first iPhone, three in 2014’s iPhone 6, and four in last year’s 6S. Motorola’s Droid Turbo smartphone has five mics, and Amazon’s smart speaker, Echo, has seven.
Market leader Knowles, which shipped about 1.4 billion MEMS mics last year, has turned to software. The company is building audio-processing algorithms into the mic chips themselves, which can recognize when to activate a device’s other audio processors.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Mobile TV to Generate $17 Billion by 2024
http://www.btreport.net/articles/2016/08/mobile-tv-to-generate-17-billion-by-2024.html?cmpid=enlmobile08302016&eid=289644432&bid=1513438
According to Transparency Market Research, the global mobile TV market is exceedingly fragmented, and the top 10 players accounted for only 23.3% in 2015. Those companies – Comcast (NASDAQ:CMCSA), AT&T (NYSE:T), MobiTV, Sky, Bell Canada, Verizon (NYSE:VZ), Bharti Airtel, Consolidated Communications, Orange S.A., and Charter Communications (NASDAQ:CHTR) – do, however, enjoy a strong foothold in several regional markets and have set entry-level barriers rather high.
The opportunity in the global mobile TV market stood at $7.69 billion in 2015 and is expected to be worth $17.02 billion by 2024. The market is projected to exhibit a CAGR of 9.5% during the forecast period. The research house says mobile TV subscriptions will increase at a 40.3% CAGR from 2016 to 2024.
Based on type of service, pay TV services led the overall market in 2015, accounting for a share of 52% that year. Also registering a strong CAGR of 9.7% from 2016 to 2024, the segment is forecast to continue leading the mobile TV market through 2024.
Asia Pacific has been the leading revenue generator in the global mobile TV market and is anticipated to hold a share of more than 42% by the end of 2024.
The growing use of smartphones and tablets globally has helped boost the mobile TV market. Most smartphones and tablets today are TV-enabled
Tomi Engdahl says:
The European Commission’s decision yesterday to impose the apple from the additional taxes of EUR 13 billion to Ireland has caused almost a trade war between Europe and the United States..
The figures are massive. During the one minute to sell 394 Apple iPhone, iPad, 79, 20 Pro for iPad, as well as 31 Maccia. Wearable going to sell 23 copies a minute.
Apple’s cash flows are still even more impressive. During the minute the company makes a $ 89 000 in net sales and the dollar slightly over 80 000 net profit. Euro, this means about € 72 000 per minute. Pure profit.
Source: http://etn.fi/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=4940:applelta-vie-4-kuukautta-kerata-eu-n-verorastit-kasaan&catid=13&Itemid=101
More: http://www.everysecond.io/apple
Tomi Engdahl says:
Nathan Olivarez-Giles / Wall Street Journal:
An early look at using Siri to control third-party app functions, like paying with Square Cash or sending messages with LinkedIn
Siri Takes Charge of Your Apps in iOS 10
We used Apple’s voice-controlled assistant to send messages with LinkedIn and make mobile payments with Square Cash
http://www.wsj.com/article_email/siri-takes-charge-of-your-apps-in-ios-10-1472590842-lMyQjAxMTE2OTM2MDYzMjAyWj
You’re going to have a lot more to talk about with Siri this fall. In iOS 10, Apple Inc.’s upcoming iPhone and iPad operating system, you’ll be able to control third-party app functions using the company’s voice-activated assistant for the first time.
Among the first apps to yield to Siri are big names like WhatsApp, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Square Cash and Slack, along with lesser-known ones including Looklive and The Roll.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 821 is its fastest processor yet
It boosts the speed of the popular Snapdragon 820 chip by 10 percent.
https://www.engadget.com/2016/07/11/qualcomm-s-snapdragon-821-is-its-fastest-processor-yet/
Qualcomm has revealed the Snapdragon 821, a mobile processor that’s around 10 percent faster than its current performance champ, the Snapdragon 820. However, it’s not a replacement for that chip, which is used in high-end phones like the Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge, HTC 10 and Sony Xperia X Performance. Rather, “the 821 is designed to complement and extend the competitive strengths” of its current tech, Qualcomm says. In other words, it’ll function as an interim chip for high-end devices until the next-gen processor comes along.
To achieve the higher speeds, Qualcomm says it bumped the clock rates of the 14-nanometer chip from 2.1 to 2.4 GHz. Otherwise, it’s borrowing the Snapdragon 820′s tech, including the 600 Mbps X12 LTE modem, Ultra HD Voice tech for improved call quality, and Upload+ for faster downloads.
So which devices can we expect to use the Snapdragon 821? Qualcomm isn’t saying
Tomi Engdahl says:
Danny Sullivan / Search Engine Land:
Google launches In Apps, a way to search within apps on Android phones, works with Gmail, Spotify, and YouTube; support for more apps coming soon — Google has announced a new way to locate content within apps on Android phones. “In Apps” is a search tab that allows this, a new addition to the Google app for Android.
Google launches ‘In Apps,’ a way to find content within apps on Android phones
http://searchengineland.com/google-in-apps-search-257884
Somewhat similar to Apple’s Spotlight, the new feature allows you to search your Android phone for content, as opposed to the web.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The world is different from the teen’s eyes: the constant phone in hand, but are not interested in talking on the phone
Young people are using smart phones in a slightly different way than adults, occurs in a new poll done in Finland.
Telecom operator DNA in the annual school survey investigated this year for the first time the use of the smartphone 13-16-year-olds. Respondents were parents of young people.
The most popular smartphone app teenagers is based on a survey messaging service WhatsApp, which is used daily by as much as 94 per cent of teenagers. YouTube videos considers a smartphone app on a daily basis, more than four out of five. Instagram used daily by half of the 13-16-year-olds, and is also popular in recent Snapchat, which is used based on a daily basis for nearly half of teens over.
The entire top favorite of the population, Facebook has teenage behind behind these (39 per cent of daily users).
Source: http://www.tivi.fi/Kaikki_uutiset/maailma-on-erilainen-teinin-silmin-jatkuvasti-puhelin-kourassa-mutta-puhelimeen-puhuminen-ei-kiinnosta-6578487
Tomi Engdahl says:
Se Young Lee / Reuters:
Samsung shareholders anxious as company confirms Galaxy Note 7 shipments have been halted to South Korea’s mobile carriers amid quality control issues
Samsung mobile recovery suffers blow as Galaxy Notes ‘catch fire’
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-samsung-elec-smartphones-idUSKCN1161BL
The recovery in Samsung Electronics Co Ltd’s (005930.KS) mobile business suffered a blow on Thursday as reports of exploding batteries forced the firm to delay shipments of Galaxy Note 7 smartphones, and knocked $7 billion off its market value.
Investors drove the stock to two-week lows after the global smartphone leader told Reuters late on Wednesday the shipments had been delayed for quality control testing, and that shipments to South Korea’s top three mobile carriers had been halted.
Faults with the new premium flagship device could deal a major blow to the South Korean giant, which was counting on the Galaxy Note 7 to maintain its strong mobile earnings momentum against Apple Inc’s (AAPL.O) new iPhones expected to be unveiled next week.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Ken Yeung / VentureBeat:
Samsung unveils Gear S3 Classic and Gear S3 Frontier smartwatches; Frontier model includes LTE as well as WiFi, Bluetooth, and GPS; price and availability TBA
Samsung unveils Gear S3 Classic and Gear S3 Frontier smartwatches
http://venturebeat.com/2016/08/31/samsung-gear-s3-classic-frontier-smartwatches/
I’ve not been a fan of the smartwatch, partially because it lacked the design flair of traditional analog watches. Samsung knows about that issue. In fact, the electronics manufacturer believes that’s why consumers new to this category have shied away. That’s why the company on Wednesday unveiled the byproduct of its research: the Samsung Gear S3.
Available in Classic and Frontier models, the Gear S3 offers a premium look that’s not only for casual experiences
since these two models are more on the luxury end, you might expect this to run a bit more than what you’d normally pay for previous editions
Samsung has pulled out all the stops to make its newest smartwatch shine. It has a 1.3-inch super AMOLED full circular display with a 360×360 resolution (278 dpi) that supports a variety of watch faces, something the company said was the most downloaded category. The device also supports 16 million colors through its Always On display, compared to just 8 colors on its predecessor, the Gear S2.
There’s also a built-in speaker that lets you talk directly into your watch so if you get a phone call, you can answer it like you’re Dick Tracy or Michael Knight from Knight Rider. Through its partnership with Spotify, Samsung supports streaming music through the Gear S3 using Wi-Fi or LTE.
For those who exercise or do physical activities and find carrying around a phone unwelcoming, the Gear S3 Frontier comes with LTE support, making it one of the first to offer this capability. Previous Samsung smartwatches featured 3G service.
Both versions of the Gear S3 carry with it the protections that have become synonymous with Samsung’s Galaxy phone lineup, including having a IP68 rating so it’s dust and water resistant (up to 10 feet for 30 minutes), and is scratch resistant thanks to the Corning Gorilla Glass SR+ technology
Both Gear S3 Classic and Frontier come with a 380 mAh battery, which is estimated to last up to four days.
Samsung Pay also comes installed on the Gear S3
Samsung said that the information is stored as tokens on the devices and protected using Samsung Knox. It has not only NFC support but also MST technology, so it should work on 90 percent of terminals in the U.S., according to the company.
Like previous Gear smartwatches, the S3 comes with the Tizen operating system installed. While there are hardware and software improvements to the latest model, all apps are compatible with the S3, but Samsung added that it’s going to release an updated SDK in the future.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Sony To Boost Smartphone Batteries Because People Aren’t Replacing Phones
https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/16/09/01/166245/sony-to-boost-smartphone-batteries-because-people-arent-replacing-phones
Not too long ago, people would replace their phone every 18 months. But that isn’t the case with most people now. According to new estimates, more people are now changing their phones after at least three years. The problem with this is that by the end of two-three years, the battery on the phone reaches a stage where it gets really annoying. Sony has a solution, or so it says.
From The Guardian:
“Sony is trying to fix that, but not by fixing the battery. That’s because the lithium ion cells within smartphones don’t exactly need fixing — they will continue to work for years — but their ability to hold their original amount of charge rapidly diminishes with repeated recharging cycles.”
“a battery that’s usually kept at a charge between 20% and 80% of its capacity is much healthier — it’s going to the extremes that wears it out at a faster rate.”
Sony to boost smartphone batteries because people aren’t replacing phones
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/sep/01/sony-boost-smartphone-batteries-people-are-not-replacing-phones
User frustration over battery life has steadily increased as people keep devices for longer, but the company has a solution
As the rate of technical improvements slows and new models offer little beyond a shiny new exterior, the urge to spend £600 each year has become easier to ignore. Polling by Fluent and eMarketer in the US suggests that nearly half of smartphone users now wait at least three years between upgrades, while data from Gallup suggests more than half wait until their phone stops working or becomes “totally obsolete”.
“We’ve started learning your charging cycles so that our new Xperia X smartphones only complete charging to 100% when they estimate you’re about to start using them, so that the damage caused by maintaining a battery at 100% is negated.”
This is important, a battery that’s usually kept at a charge between 20% and 80% of its capacity is much healthier – it’s going to the extremes that wears it out at a faster rate.
The company has struggled over the past few years, with declining sales and smartphones that while technically very good, have failed to capture buyers’ interest in the face of stiff competition from market-leader Samsung, Apple and rising Chinese smartphone brands such as Huawei.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Julia Love / Reuters:
Sources: Google scraps Project Ara phone but may still bring the technology to market via partners, potentially through licensing — Alphabet Inc’s Google has suspended Project Ara, its ambitious effort to build what is known as a modular smartphone with interchangeable components …
Exclusive: Google shelves plan for phone with interchangeable parts – sources
http://uk.reuters.com/article/us-google-smartphone-idUKKCN11806C
Alphabet Inc’s Google has suspended Project Ara, its ambitious effort to build what is known as a modular smartphone with interchangeable components, as part of a broader push to streamline the company’s hardware efforts, two people with knowledge of the matter said.
The move marks an about-face for the tech company, which announced a host of partners for Project Ara at its developer conference in May and said it would ship a developer edition of the product this autumn.
David Ruddock / Android Police:
Source: Google will reveal its new Pixel-branded smartphones Pixel and Pixel XL, 4K Chromecast, Daydream VR viewer, and fully detail Google Home on October 4th — According to a reliable source, Google plans to hold a major event focusing on hardware October 4th.
http://www.androidpolice.com/2016/09/01/google-will-announce-pixel-phones-4k-chromecast-google-home-daydream-vr-viewer-on-october-4th/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Lucas Matney / TechCrunch:
Qualcomm unveils Snapdragon VR820, a reference design for an all-in-one, eye-tracking VR headset
Qualcomm unveils a wireless eye-tracking VR headset
https://techcrunch.com/2016/09/01/qualcomm-unveils-standalone-eye-tracking-vr-headset-reference-design/
Another day, another VR headset that you will never be able to buy.
Today at the IFA conference in Berlin, Qualcomm unveiled a reference design for an all-in-one headset built on the company’s new Snapdragon VR820 architecture.
The company’s Snapdragon 820 is already one of the most popular smartphone SoC’s on the market, but Qualcomm believes that mobile VR’s full potential isn’t being reached on the 820 because the headsets aren’t single-minded enough.
This headset design, built in partnership with Shenzhen-based Goertek, isn’t something that consumers are going to be able to try out, Qualcomm unveiled this as a reference design to entice OEMs to build all-in-one HMDs on the new VR820.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Ken Yeung / VentureBeat:
Samsung unveils Gear S3 Classic and Gear S3 Frontier smartwatches; Frontier model includes LTE as well as WiFi, Bluetooth, and GPS; price and availability TBA
Samsung unveils Gear S3 Classic and Gear S3 Frontier smartwatches
http://venturebeat.com/2016/08/31/samsung-gear-s3-classic-frontier-smartwatches/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Until now, it has not been possible, but in the future you will get an Android smartphone messages and view messages in the Linux computer screen. This requires KDE Connect application.
Source: http://etn.fi/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=4960:linux-nayttaa-nyt-android-ilmoitukset&catid=13&Itemid=101
Tomi Engdahl says:
Everything is an application, said the famous Apple slogan a few years ago. Perhaps the applications is not required. Google’s wireless router through OnHub can now be controlled by a Philips Hue lamps directly from the browser, whether it is a laptop or mobile device.
It is possible, because the Internet of Things will all get their own internet address. Maybe Google Wireless LAN router looks like a model of where we are going.
At that time, the mobile phone applications were only envisages, many thought that the future belongs to the browser, HTML5 and other web technologies. This pattern has not been realized. Its realization is also not likely, at least in a tight schedule, as mobile applications has grown a huge business. For example, Apple makes the applications more money than Mac computers.
Source: http://etn.fi/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=4966:eroon-sovelluksista-google-nayttaa-tieta-tulevaan&catid=13&Itemid=101
Tomi Engdahl says:
CNNMoney:
Samsung is recalling the Galaxy Note7 worldwide and halting sales due to a faulty battery, will replace all devices regardless of when they were purchased — Samsung says it’s recalling its new Galaxy Note 7 smartphone worldwide after reports of the device catching fire while charging.
Samsung is recalling the Galaxy Note 7 worldwide over battery problem
http://money.cnn.com/2016/09/02/technology/samsung-galaxy-note-7-recall/
Samsung is recalling millions of new Galaxy Note 7 smartphones worldwide after reports of the devices catching fire while charging.
The massive recall of one of Samsung’s flagship devices is an embarrassing setback for the world’s biggest selling smartphone maker. The Note 7 was unveiled just a month ago, and big rival Apple (AAPL, Tech30) is expected to show off its new smartphone next week.
Samsung, a giant South Korean company, said it had been alerted to 35 claims of faulty phones worldwide. It said it had so far found 24 devices with problems for every million sold.
The preparations to recall the phones are expected to take about two weeks.
“It is a big amount that is heartbreaking,”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Romain Dillet / TechCrunch:
Apple will remove abandoned apps from the App Store and curb descriptive, search-optimized app names by limiting them to 50 characters — It’s cleaning time in the App Store. Apple sent an email to its developer community indicating that there will be some upcoming changes in the App Store.
Apple is going to remove abandoned apps from the App Store
https://techcrunch.com/2016/09/01/apple-is-going-to-remove-abandoned-apps-from-the-app-store/
It’s cleaning time in the App Store. Apple sent an email to its developer community indicating that there will be some upcoming changes in the App Store. If an app no longer works or is outdated, it’s going to get removed from the App Store. And it’s about time.
“We are implementing an ongoing process of evaluating apps, removing apps that no longer function as intended, don’t follow current review guidelines, or are outdated,” Apple wrote.
So it’s time to improve App Store discovery. It’s going to be interesting to see whether the number of apps in the App Store is going to drastically go down.
And Apple is not going to stop at abandoned apps. The company will also fight spammy app names.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Mark Gurman / Bloomberg:
What to expect from Apple’s Sept. 7 event: new iPhones with pressure-sensitive home buttons, 5.5-inch model with dual-camera system, new Watch with GPS, more — Apple seeks to set foundation for holiday quarter with iPhone camera upgrades, improved Apple Watch fitness tracking, and refreshed software
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-09-02/what-to-expect-from-apple-s-see-you-on-the-7th-event
Benjamin Mayo / 9to5Mac:
KGI: iPhone 7 to feature 2.4GHz A10 chip, IPX7 water resistance, new 12 megapixel cameras, 2 black color options, Lightning EarPods, 3GB RAM in Plus model, more
http://9to5mac.com/2016/09/03/kgi-iphone-7-to-feature-2-4ghz-a10-chip-ipx7-waterproofing-new-12-megapixel-cameras-piano-black-color-more/