More leaks have surfaced of the upcoming the Motorola X smartphone, this time regarding the software on the device, specifically the camera software.
As can be seen from these screenshots, Motorola has gone for a brand new UI for the camera application that is unlike their standard UI seen on their previous DROID phones, nor is it like the stock Android camera app.
The new camera software relies on gestures to bring up menus on screen. A swipe from the left side of the screen brings up a circular menu that reminds vaguely of controls in the stock Android browser (once you enable the Quick controls). You can seemingly turn the menu to reveal additional options. Swiping from the right takes you to the image gallery. To zoom you swipe up and down on the screen and tap to take a picture. Other than this, the UI is extremely clean and uncluttered.
Anyone expecting a completely stock Android experience on the Motorola X (with Google owning Motorola and all) would be disappointed by this but then this isn't such a bad thing as the standard camera application in stock Android is mediocre at best. It would be interesting to see what other changes have Motorola included in the software on the X.
We've long been gathering the hints and rumours about the LG G2, speculating on its unveiling, and now the company itself has said that the flagship device will be revealed at an event on August 7 in New York.
LG confirmed our predictions on its new dedicated LG G2 website, stating: "The LG G2, a phone inspired by you, unveils itself on August 7, 2013."
With a widget counting down to the August 7 "unveiling", it states that the event in New York will be streamed live on the website.
The site also has a couple of promo videos to check out, though they don't feature much of the actual handset - just giving us a clear shot of its back, allowing us to see the camera and the volume buttons uniquely placed below it, surrounding the flash.
The website and video also states that the handset is "learning from you". We really aren't sure what to make of that, but with the powerful Snapdragon 800 sitting inside, the possibilities have us excited.
More blips!
There's still a fortnight left, so why not check out some other TechRadar's blips in the meantime.
Shuttleworth wants to put Ubuntu into orbit (credit: NASA)
Before Mark Shuttleworth took off for space 11 years ago, he had an idea that made some seasoned folks at NASA uncomfortable.
"I was sitting down with my counterparts in Star City [Russia] and we were talking about laptops," Shuttleworth recalled during an interview with TechRadar this afternoon.
"The laptops that were certified to fly on the Space Station, they were P166s, and this was 2001. I said, 'I think we can fly the latest laptops.'"
The Canonical founder's suggestion was met with hesitation - after all, careers are on the line for decisions that send anything into orbit - but after testing Shuttleworth was permitted to bring three of the then-latest laptops to the ISS.
"For me, it was mission critical that I take these machines into space, but I was in a position to take more risk. We ended up with three great laptops that became the next certified model of laptops on the Space Station.
"There's nothing dumb about NASA, but by bringing a different perspective to risk and experimentation, it moves things forward faster."
Risk rewards
Shuttleworth offered this space travel anecdote as an analogy for the Ubuntu Edge, a "superphone" Canonical announced today along with a $32 million (about £20.8m, AU$34.5m) Indiegogo campaign.
The phone industry, he said, has a low risk appetite when it comes to products: Like sending an unfamiliar machine into space, putting a more experimental handset on the market can have shattering consequences for the people involved.
The $32 million phone
"[The Edge] is a concept car that people can drive off the lot," Shuttleworth said, turning to another analogy. "It's a test of the future, because the phone industry really can't do this. Not because it's not smart enough or doesn't have the resources, but the mechanism is such that they can't do it."
In the hours since it was announced, the vibe as been "very positive" for the the campaign and the phone that will dual boot both the Ubuntu for smartphones OS and Android.
"I think we've even beat out the royal baby on Twitter - though we'll be in labor for 30 days."
Canonical has a month to reach the multimillion dollar amount needed to get the Edge into users' hands. As of 4:10 p.m. PT Monday, the ticker was at $2,012,912.
"It's crazy and bold, but that's what it takes to bring a new device to market," Shuttleworth said of the figure. "We're really finding a new way to get phones to enthusiasts, and I'm really excited about that."
Living on the Edge
As appealing as its specs are, the Edge isn't meant to be a mass market device. It's aimed at enthusiasts, early adopters and enterprises, those that are willing to take the risk in "cracking those next generations," while also fronting $830 (about £540, AU$897) for a phone that won't be ready until May 2014.
Though the specs aren't finalized, the Edge is leaning towards housing 4GB of RAM, a multi-core processor and 128GB of storage - resources it can call on when plugging into a PC.
Joined at the tether
"The point of the Edge is to break new ground - in this round we really want to stretch the RAM and storage of the device. We're trying to cross that chasm between phone and PC and be the superphone."
"This round" is a key phrase - if the Indiegogo experiment works, Shuttleworth said Ubuntu phone campaigns might become a regular occurance.
"In the second generation, we could invite companies that have interesting sensors or capabilities that they've tried in the lab but not in the field. We could have this happen on an 18 month or so clip to chip away at the leading edge of possibility," he effused.
Shuttleford said Canonical has held off selecting the Edge's silicon because "we want to have a very good read on what the next-gen will be. We want to see real world benchmarks and give our backers a say in that sort of macro decision."
The phone is a grass roots effort in the same vein as Ubuntu itself, and though it can be hard to discern the right path among thousands of voices, Shuttleford has faith in the crowdfunding and crowdsourcing process.
And while it seems like an outlier and even a rebel, from its specs to its funding, he called the Edge "non-threatening" to phone makers. Canonical might even put the device out under another brand's name, if it ends up working with a design manufacturer and "if that's what our backers want."
Ubuntu's version of the UI
Ubuntu unfolds
Edge is grabbing the headlines today, but Canonical is plotting putting Ubuntu on four other devices - two mid-range and two high-end - for release next year. The devices will be for the mass market, meaning more conservative specifications, and conversations with potential phone maker partners are already underway.
The platform is still young, but Shuttleworth said it will be "interesting to see how [Ubuntu] translates" as computing evolves to areas like augmented reality and as it becomes "a platform for framing what's possible." When asked if he could see Ubuntu powering wearable tech, he offered a hearty "sure."
The future, from the founder's perspective, is appropriately wide open. But the company has the next 30 days to worry about first.
"If it succeeds, it's fantastic, and then it will be a lot of work," Shuttleworth said of the Indiegogo campaign. "If it doesn't work, I hope that what we'll have done is raise awareness of the crowdfunding mechanism to drive innovation.
"If it's greenlighted, we'll tap into a much bigger brain trust than myself or the others at Canonical. We'll have broken the speed of sound, broken out of the atmosphere, but won't yet be in orbit."
It seems like Nokia has its work cut out for itself.
Right after tweeting there would be "something big" revealed tomorrow, notorious leak artist @evleaks struck back with their own tweets.
We already speculated that the Nokia 625 would be the prime topic of discussion and it seems @evleaks agrees.
The Twitter account posted not one, not two, but three images of brightly stacked phones, with two pictures containing phones noticeably sporting "6:25" as the time.
So bright and shiny
Coincidence? Maybe, maybe not
The suspicious time image may seem like a far stretch but leaks of the Nexus 7 2 have taken a similar route in attempting to convey Android 4.3.
Though, the incessant amount of images of the purported Lumia 625 seem to strongly suggest this may not be a coincidence.
Surprisingly, a price tag and specs have not been tweeted alongside the pictures, but TechRadar has previously reported that the Lumia 625 will likely pack a 1.2GHz dual-core processor, 512MB of RAM, 5MP rear camera and front facing VGA.
At this point, however, guessing is really just a countdown until tomorrow when Nokia lets us know what's really going on.
Apple may have finally found the solution to its Apple Maps problems, but Windows Phone users will have to keep searching when it comes to transit directions.
Following Apple's purchase of transit map service HopStop, the app has reportedly been pulled from Microsoft's Windows Phone platform.
There's been no explanation for the app's sudden absence from Microsoft's platform, but it's not hard to see exactly how they got from point A to point B.
Interestingly, HopStop is still available for Android phones - for now.
Nokia teased a big announcement earlier today, that is expected to happen tomorrow morning. As luck would have it, we didn't even have to wait the whole long day to find out as the star of the show just leaked. The WP8 Lumia 625 smartphone photos and full specs sheet appeared and the color of the smartphone perfectly matches the teaser image.
The Nokia Lumia 625 sports a 4.7-inch LCD display with a resolution of 800 x 480 pixels and a density of 201ppi. The screen is protected by a layer of Corning Gorilla Glass 2 and features super sensitive touch technology, which allows you to operate it using nails and gloves.
Nokia Lumia 625 is powered by a Snapdragon S4 chipset with a 1.2 GHz dual-core Krait CPU and 512 MB of RAM. The smartphone comes with 8 GB of internal memory, but there's also a microSD card for expanding that by up to 64 GB. The Lumia 625 measures 133.25 x 72.25 x 9.15 mm and weighs 159g and is pretty much the same size of the recently launched Lumia 1020.
At the back of Nokia Lumia 625 is a 5 megapixel camera with LED flash, which is capable of shooting 1080p videos at 30fps. The camera comes with the cool Cinemagraph, Panorama, Smart Camera lens apps preinstalled.
The connectivity options for the mid-range Lumia 625 include dual-band Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, GPS and GLONASS support as well as Bluetooth 4.0. The smartphone also supports a wide range of networks including quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE, HSPA and even LTE.
Nokia Lumia 625 will be powered by Windows Phone 8 and has a 2,000mAh battery. According to Nokia, the smartphone lasts up to 23 days on stand by and provides talk time up to 23.9 hours. The battery is said to provide enough juice for video play back up to 6.8 hours and music playback time up to 90 hours.
Lastly, the Lumia 625 comes with the usual set of pre-installed Nokia applications like Here Drive Beta, Here Maps, Here Transit and Nokia Music. The smartphone will be available in Orange, bright green, yellow, white and black color options.
We will know more about the pricing and the availability details of the Lumia 625, when the smartphone gets officially announced tomorrow.
Fresh from a press announcement in New York about the Lumia 1020, Nokia is at it again.
Just this morning, Nokia tweeted "Something BIG landing tomorrow" with instructions to "tune in" on July 23 at 9:00 am U.K. time.
The glaring red photo above plus a link to the Nokia blog were also posted with the teaser "We can't tell you what it is yet. But we can tell you when."
With its "big" 4.7-inch screen, and rumored innards boasting a 1.2GHz dual-core processor, 512MB of RAM, 5MP rear camera and front facing VGA camera, the Lumia 625 will quite possibly be the headliner tomorrow as the largest Windows Phone 8 screen to date, despite its average specs.
Samsung launched its second-generation Galaxy Note phablet last Fall and we are already waiting for its Galaxy Note III successor to come. It appears, though that the Koreans aren't done with their previous-gen phablet according to a leaked benchmark result, which points to a refreshed version of the Note II. The device was allegedly rocking the Snapdragon 600 chipset and not the Exynos 4412 it originally packs.
The upcoming Samsung Galaxy Note II variant was spotted in an AnTuTu benchmark database and its entry revealed its N7108D model number. The original Galaxy Note II was carrying the N7100 model code. The last digit suggests that the new device is headed to China and the benchmark entry itself was submitted from there, so we might not see a global release of the refreshed version.
Anyway, the scorecard gave a sneak peak at some of the specs of the updated Galaxy Note II. The phablet will be powered by a Snapdragon 600 processor clocked at 1.9 GHz (just like the one in the Galaxy S4 I9505 version) and will run on Android 4.2.2 Jelly Bean.
AnTuTu
Lower is better
Sony Xperia Z Ultra 34758
Galaxy S4 LTE-A 31491
Galaxy Note II (S600) 26901
Samsung Galaxy S4 (Octa) 26275
Samsung Galaxy S4 (S600) 24716
HTC One 22678
Sony Xperia Z 20794
LG Optimus G Pro 20056
HTC Butterfly 19513
Huawei Ascend Mate 15714
Samsung Galaxy S III 15547
Oppo Find 5 15167
Samsung Galaxy Note II 13562
Impressively enough, the supposedly upcoming Galaxy Note II variant has managed to score 26,901 points. That is a significant upgrade over the currently available international version that managed just 13,562 points on the same test.
Unfortunately, there is no official word from Samsung yet and there is no confirmation on the authenticity of the benchmark result, so take it all with a pinch of salt.
Apple will be reporting its second-quarters results on Tuesday and the Cupertino giants are predicted to have sold 26 million units, according to Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster.
The analyst also estimates the iPhone sales to be just 24 million for the third-quarter, which is less than the 26.9 million sold over the Q3, 2013. Surprisingly, that number also includes the sales of the upcoming iPhone 5S, which will probably hit the shelves before the next quarter runs out.
However, the Apple iPhone sales are expected to get a huge boost by the much-anticipated budget iPhone, during the holiday season. According to the analyst, Apple might sell 62 million iPhones during the fourth quarter with the budget iPhone accounting for no less than 12 million units.
Wall Street also expects Apple to reach the 50 million mark in the last quarter, but the general consensus is significantly lower than Gene Munster's predicitions.
Leading products like the Galaxy S4 use Gorilla Glass for their screens
In theory, at least, using glass for the screens of mobile devices seems like a very bad idea. It's heavy, and regular wear and tear means whatever you're looking at will quickly become obscured by a mass of criss-crossing scratches and chips.
Then it will inevitably break, requiring an expensive replacement, before the whole process starts all over again.
None of this is exactly a recipe for technical success, and so it's hardly surprising that many computing hardware manufacturers initially opted for lighter, more flexible plastic screens, instead.
There are some interesting alternatives, though, and perhaps the most successful is Gorilla Glass. Produced by American manufacturer Corning Incorporated, it's a chemically strengthened glass which can be as thin as 0.4mm - less than four times the thickness of the human hair - while remaining scratch and impact-resistant.
And it's a mix which has seen the product used to protect more than 1.5 billion devices worldwide, including Samsung's Galaxy phones and tablets, Sony Bravia TVs, laptops from big names like Acer, Dell, HP and Lenovo, and even the iPhone at one point (although with neither Corning nor Apple talking, whether this is still the case isn't entirely clear).
How has one company achieved such success? It takes a little work, starting with the way the glass is formed in the first place.
Fusion draw
Gorilla Glass starts its life through Corning's fusion draw, a proprietary process which helps ensure the product is both thin and exceptionally pure.
The glass material itself is a high quality, but relatively conventional aluminium, silicon and oxygen mix - a regular alkali aluminosilicate blend - which is heated until it's molten. In the past this might then have gone through a float glass process, where it's poured onto a bed of molten metal (often tin), flattening under its own weight, then cooled until it becomes a sheet.
Fusion draw, though, sees the material poured into a long v-shaped trough called a refractory isopipe. This overflows, running down either side of the trough, rejoining at the bottom to form a single sheet of glass. This simple process helps to keep the product very pure (regular float glass has a layer of tin oxide on one side).
Fusion draw is key to producing ultra-pure, defect-free glass
There's also no need for polishing, something which can itself introduce and exacerbate flaws in the glass. And the end result is a product so pristine that Corning says "a rejectable particle is comparable to a single mustard seed on a football field".
This is a great start, resulting in very thin and exceptionally clear glass. The lack of defects and unwanted particles also helps to ensure it's as strong as normal glass can be. But it is still just normal glass, unfortunately - transforming it into Gorilla Glass requires another important step.
Ion exchange
With fusion draw complete, the material produced so far is cut down to size and then placed into a 400 degree C bath of molten salt. This is all part of a process called ion exchange, a standard purification technique in many industries, but here the extreme heat is used to draw out sodium atoms from the surface of the glass, replacing them with larger potassium atoms.
Talking about swapping "smaller" and "larger" atoms may sound rather irrelevant, but it does make a very real difference. The end result is a surface coating which is far more compressed at the atomic level, making it significantly more resistant to scratches.
Ion exchange strengthens Gorilla Glass at the atomic level
What's more, while regular glass has a major problem with crack propagation - the way defects will spread and grow - Gorilla Glass's state of permanent compression means the material is always pushing together, which means it's far less likely to experience any cracks in the first place.
This doesn't make the product invulnerable, of course. Hit your screen hard enough, perhaps with another hard material, and you'll still be in trouble (it's damage "resistant", not "proof").
Gorilla Glass will already perform far better than regular glass, though, and many other materials - and this is just the start. Corning has plenty of other interesting developments planned for the future.
Gorilla Glass everywhere
Strengthening glass is a good first step, but it's not the only area of the material which needs a little "help".
David Velasquez, Corning Director of marketing and commercial operations told us: "Consumers increasingly want solutions to other cover-glass related problems like outdoor reading, smudges, and germs. We are working on all of these and are very excited about progress we are making."
It seems like that progress is significant, too, with Corning Vice President Jeffrey Evenson claiming at the recent MIT Mobile Technology Summit that an upcoming anti-microbial treatment can greatly resist bacterial build-up, while a new anti-reflection technology should ensure Gorilla Glass is tens of times more transparent than purified water.
Why stop with touch and mobile devices, though? Evenson also revealed plans to branch out, in particular by replacing some of the glass used in car windows.
Thinner, stronger and more scratch resistant glass doesn't just bring safety benefits, he pointed out: it also reduces vehicle weight and lowers its centre of mass, so helping to improve fuel economy. Apparently the first cars with at least some Gorilla Glass will be available within the next year.
Strong is good. Bendy is better
For all its success so far, Gorilla Glass may have some formidable competition on the way. For instance, companies such as Samsung and LG are working on plastic screens, due imminently, which can be bent, folded and twisted without breaking, and are lighter than Corning's products.
Whoever wins, the future for mobile device screens is looking brighter - and clearer, stronger and less reflective - than ever.
German cryptographer Karsten Nohl claims to have broken the encryption standard on certain types of SIM cards. The exploit could allow a virus to be uploaded and then carry out payment system fraud, redirect and record calls, and more.
Nohl says that cards which are affected vary by country and carrier - since encryption standards vary between countries. According to his estimates about an eighth of the world's SIM cards could be affected, or about half a billion devices.
This marks the first time SIM cards have been compromised, as until now it was thought that SIM cards were unhackable. The Data Encryption Standards (DES) security encryption developed back in the 70's has finally been cracked, though.
The four major German carriers, as well Verizon and AT&T in the US have since commented that their SIM cards are not vulnerable. AT&T has even said that it had moved on to triple DES (3DES) almost 10 years ago.
Nohl claims that the dated security standard and badly implemented Java Card code could allow him to compromise the encryption keys of certain SIM cards in less than a minute. He has since shared his findings to various carriers and the GSMA in an effort to help close the exploit before it becomes widespread amongst cybercriminals.
Nohl is expected to share his findings at the Black Hat security convention in Las Vegas on July 31.
Nokia has a big, BIG announcement for tomorrow and is giving us pretty short notice. Whatever it is, it will be unveiled tomorrow morning in London (9am UK time, 8am UTC). There's still plenty of time to guess, except all we have to go on is an orange ("sunset orange", according to an online color chart) back with the Nokia logo engraved.
Nokia can be pretty sneaky with these things, like the solid yellow background with black oval that turned out to be the loudspeaker of the Asha 501.
So, is this an Asha? Maybe, but not if "big" refers to physical size – Asha phones are generally small.
Stephen Elop, Nokia CEO, did talk about phablets in early May, and the defining characteristic of phablets is "big".
This would, however, require the device to run the elusive GDR3 update, which will finally enable 1080p resolution as WXGA (1280 x 768) can only be stretched so far. The update will also add quad-core support and other features, except the latest info is that it's slated for next year.
Then again, the Nokia Lumia 625 is pretty big - 4.7" screen - with only WVGA resolution.
Join us tomorrow and find out what this BIG thing really is.
Can HTC build on the success of the One with a new team of executives?
Troubled smartphone maker, HTC, is looking to take the initiative back by introducing a new department.
The new department, called 'Emerging Devices', will reportedly focus on developing new products that can catapult it back into the lead of the smartphone war, as well as ""global distribution strategies".
The man heading up the new department is the current President of HTC North America, Mike Woodward, according to the Wall Street Journal, which claims to have seen an internal email.
HTC: The New Class
There's no indication of what new products are being worked on, but other changes are happening over at HTC towers. Jason Mackenzie, current head of Global Sales, will be heading up the entire US operation, alongside his current role.
HTC is looking to rebuild its backroom operation after a number of very public high-profile walkouts earlier this year, including; Lennard Hoornik, CEO of HTC Asia, Jason Gordon, Vice President of Global Communications, Chief Product Officer Kouji Kodera, Rebecca Rowland, Global Retail Marketing Manager, John Starkweather, Director of Digital Marketing and Eric Lin, Product Strategy Manager.
The new executives will have a good platform to build from after decent sales and rave reviews of the HTC One, which TechRadar gave 5 stars.
Gaming luminary and former Xbox man Peter Molyneux has challenged Apple to show off games and not spreadsheets when it announces products.
Molyneux - who is now focused on app gaming after leaving Lionhead, the company he founded and then sold to Microsoft - believes that the touchscreen is still lacking a defining gaming moment, and he believes there is more to come from Apple and its flagship devices.
"When Steve Jobs got on stage and showed me that device that was a moment of near orgasmic excitement," Molyneux told Pocket-Lint in an interview.
"It should be the games that Apple show off on stage, not a spreadsheet. We should be able to give people a little window into a world, which they have created. I would love that."
Interesting things
"The interesting thing about the iPad is that it has done incredible things for music...but there hasn't really been a computer game that really represents gaming on the go," he added.
Molyneux is currently working on Godus, a god game that owes plenty to, perhaps, his most famous hit in Populous, but brings a healthy slice of Black and White.
"My plan for what it is worth, is to take everything that I've done in the past 20 years and remove all the rubbish...and create an absolutely amazing delightful world that people will be able to interact with in a relaxing and playful way for many, many months."
The HTC One mini availability and pricing info for Europe is trickling in – first the UK, now Germany and Austria. The phone will cost €450 off-contract when it starts shipping in August.
Phone House lists the Stealth Black color version as available on August 12, while the Glacial Silver version will have to wait until September. Cyberport will deliver both on September 19 at the same price, €449.
On contract with O2, the One mini starts at €90 with €15 a month monthly fee for two years or €30 for one year. Vodafone will have it in early August and charge €30 a month on contract. T-Mobile is expected to carry the phone too, but there's nothing on the site just yet.
In Austria, A1 will offer the HTC One mini for free on contract, €28 a month, in 4-6 weeks.
The SIM-free price is the same as it Germany - €455 in September for the both color version from Cyberport and Fonmarkt. If you want it earlier, Alternate will it for €480 in August.
According to leaked information from Samsung R&D in India, Samsung is simultaneously developing Jelly Bean 4.2.2 and 4.3.0 updates, and the former could be dropped altogether if Jelly Bean 4.3 is officially announced this week by Google.
These rumors from last week garnered a whole lot more credibility thanks to the provided leaked image which allegedly shows a Galaxy S III running on a 4.3.0 Jelly Bean test build.
Word is that development of the 4.3.0 update is also underway for the Galaxy S4 flagship, as well as another yet unannounced device, possibly the Galaxy Note 3.
It's still unknown what kind of features the 4.3 Jelly Bean update will to bring - or when, for that matter - but if the above leak is any indication, the announcement is imminent!
