The invite - which could double as a clothing brand ad - simply says "Moto X," the date, the place and "RSVP here." The Motorola "M" floats above looking like the Bat signal.
The invitation features two handsets in the hands of two hip women, one in black and one in white, indicating that, like your style, you can customize the phone just the way you want.
That's it?
Black and white may seem a little on the limited side when it comes to creating a phone that matches the unique you, but from what we've heard many, many more options are due with the Moto X.
Motorola's branding for the phone has centered around a "designed by you" mantra, and so far it sounds as though a palette of colors and engravings will be possible. Users are said to be able to create a personalized default wall paper with a picture, while wood, metal, fabric and ceramic are all tipped as optional casing materials in addition to default plastic.
On the operational side of things, the invite shows a camera lens centered roundly on the back of the device, and the flash below. A jack is clearly visible on the top.
We've heard several times that the phone's sensors will be a thing to marvel, so tuned into your surroundings that the phone even knows when you're traveling in a car. The device is believed to house a 1.7GHz quad-core processor and 2GB of RAM.
A version running Android 4.2.2 was reportedly in carrier testing, but if Google reveals Android 4.3 next week, perhaps we're in for the updated OS on the Moto X?
After leaving nothing to our imagination thanks to numerousleaks, the Motorola Moto X finally got a release date scheduled. The hotly anticipated smartphone will break cover on August 1st in New York City.
The Moto X launch event invite (click to enlarge)
Rumored specs of the Motorola Moto X include a 720p display and a 1.7 GHz dual-core Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Pro chipset along with 2 GB of RAM, 10 megapixel rear camera and Android 4.3 Jelly Bean. Motorola has already announced that the smartphone will be assembled in the United States.
We will be covering the Moto X launch live from the spot on August 1. Be sure to check in for the full scoop on the smartphone.
Apple and Samsung are caught up in a game of Deal or No Deal
Apple's and Samsung's bitter patent disputes have been widely covered for the past few years, with the biggest blow in the case coming in Apple's favor last summer.
In August 2012, Samsung was ordered to pay Apple $1.05 billion (around £688M, AU$1.14B) million in damages, though that hefty price tag was dropped to a mere $450.5 million (£295M, AU$489M) earlier in 2013.
While it appeared Apple and Samsung were content to let the courts decide the fates of the various patents in question, there were some secret negotiations happening behind the scenes as well.
According to new documents released by the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC), the Cupertino and South Korean companies have been discussing potential settlements as far back as Apple's $1 billion court victory.
Close, but no cigar
In addition to the ITC documents, sources revealed to the Wall Street Journal the ongoing secret settlement discussions have been both hot and cold, though no agreement has been reached as of yet.
Based on the information available in the heavily censored ITC papers, Samsung at one point offered a broad patent cross-licensing deal to Apple, which would have ended all litigation between the two companies.
Obviously Apple didn't take the deal, but it's not very clear from the ITC's report just how seriously Apple took the offer to begin with.
Both companies spent a great deal of time talking terms between December 2012 and March 2013, with some face-to-face meetings happening in January, though by February it appears the talks had broken down.
The ITC paper mentions a March 22 proposal from Samsung to re-open talks, adding that some of its offers were still on the table, however Apple did not respond by the time the ITC ruled.
Despite the massive amount of redactions in the report, it's clear the ITC didn't believe Samsung's offers were unreasonable, though it would seem Apple disagreed with that assessment.
Love-hate relationship
The curious thing is both Apple and Samsung continue to work together in the manufacturing process, as the South Korean company still provides chips for iOS devices.
However, there are also reports Apple and Samsung have a deal for Sammy to create chips once again in 2015, so it's still unclear just how strong the partnership between these two smartphone giants really is at this point.
For what it's worth, a memorandum of understanding was supposedly drafted by the two companies in February, which the ITC saw as promising for a potential future deal.
"The fact that representatives for both parties were able to reach a memorandum of understanding indicates Samsung is negotiating in good faith and, to be colloquial, is playing in the same ballpark as Apple," the report read.
With all the redactions in the report, it's impossible to tell just why the possible settlement fell through, but if Apple and Samsung are still talking behind closed doors, there's always a chance the ongoing legal battles could finally come to an end.
Given how this past year has played out however, we won't be holding our breath waiting for Apple and Samsung to start getting along.
Nokia Lumia 1020 will go on sale in Europe this quarter and some retailers are already taking pre-orders. The German campaign started at the hefty €799 price tag, but now the price has fallen down to the slight more reasonable €699.
And if you don't feel like paying that much upfront, Vodafone and T-Mobile Germany will be offering the Nokia Lumia 1020 at far lower subsidized rates. Their offers are already available at some online retailers.
Vodafone will give you the Lumia 1020 only for €29.90 if you opt for a two-year contract with a €70/month tariff (calls and data).
T-Mobile's cheapest offer has the Lumia 1020 listed at €149.90 with a 2-yar contract and €80/month plan.
There are some offers from O2 as well, but they are quite steep compared to those we've already mentioned.
Nokia Lumia 1020 has already available on pre-order in the USA exclusively through AT&T and had a great start. The cameraphone is already out of stock because of the high demand and some customers might have to wait a while until they get their hands on the beast.
Lots of EU retailers have the Lumia 1020 listed available with 4 to 6 weeks shipping, which seems about right since the phone is expected to launch in September.
A selection of brightly coloured bodies won't be the only option presented to buyers of the fabled 'cheap iPhone' if and when Apple launches said device, according to reports on Friday.
Leaked documents, courtesy of Chinese social network Weibo, have sparked talk that Apple is working on two variants of the device with different specs, connectivity options and price points.
According to the reports the device codenamed iPhone Zagato will be the cheaper of the two and will pack a Samsung 'HP5' dual-core processor, 1GB of RAM, FDD 4G LTE and Bluetooth 4.0 connectivity.
The second iteration, apparently codenamed Bertone, will be more expensive due to a 'HP6' processor and TDD 4G LTE, which is an alternative standard developed for the Chinese market.
Both handsets will pack the same 4-inch screen size as the iPhone 5, the documents state, but it seems unlikely the cheaper devices would get the Retina Display treatment.
Shady goings on
Fridays reports follow a number of leaks and rumours that have focusing the devices purported colour options.
You might not remember INQ, but you will be aware of its legacy. It's a company that began in 2008, only created a handful of phones, but brought the notion of tight integration of services to the masses.
The INQ1 was a stealth hit for the brand located next to the Thames in Battersea, winning awards for the handset that brought Facebook integration into the handset in 2009 when Android was barely out of the box.
Then came the INQ Chat 3G and Mini 3G, adding in Skype and Windows Messenger to the mix as well as direct links to eBay and the like. That might sound archaic now, but this was before smartphones had really taken off, and the cost of INQ products was squarely aimed at the low end.
At this point, the future looked bright for the firm, and it announced its first Android handset, the INQ Cloud Touch, in 2011, which was dubbed "the Spotify phone", as it had a key that gave direct access to the music streaming service as well as an innovative dedicated info key that flashed up the information the users wanted when pressed.
But that's when the wheels started to come off the hardware wagon. The INQ Cloud Q, which brought a keyboard into the Android mix for the firm, never appeared, and hints of future devices dried up.
The INQ Chat 3G
Poor sales of devices were never given as the official reason for the demise of the hardware business, but there was no doubt that only being available on Three (likely because the parent brand of INQ, Hutchinson Whampoa, also owns the network) reduced the number of possible customers.
"We had a really different product with the INQ Cloud Touch, and that's how we got off the ground," CEO and co-founder Ken Johnstone told TechRadar. "It was quite cheap, but then Samsung would be able to come in at half the cost down to the sheer economy of scale that it has."
In a world now dominated by identikit handsets from Apple, Samsung and BlackBerry (well, the first two), the chunky, plastic, low-cost handsets with a focus on social networking and music seemed to make sense. They gave consumers easy access to the things they used, and for not much money.
The software shop
But with the low sales, INQ made the decision to exit the smartphone business and has instead set up shop as an app developer.
"When we were working on smartphones, it was always fundamentally software that we were doing," admitted Johnstone. "The hardware was outsourced; we did the design in-house but all the detailed hardware, PCB layouts, mechanical engineering, manufacture was by another firm.
"Our core competency was the software that we were working on. So when we pivoted the business it felt like a no-brainer, as we'd created all this value with our software. Plus we could see that the behemoth of Samsung was coming, and we didn't have the economy of scale to compete.
"So now [working on apps] it's a much more front foot feeling, as we're masters of our own destiny. When you're in the hardware business you can launch the best product in the world, but we only had the ability to do a couple of handsets a year and we knew we would be stuck with those for a year and a half, and that didn't feel comfortable."
Discover me, socially
So now the focus is on social discovery. In previous interviews, Johnstone has evangelised about the "social DNA" that runs through INQ thanks to its efforts in the phone space, and there's no doubt that's true.
The Cloud Touch used Facebook's Top Friends ability to draw in large, full-page info on the people you interact with most, and that functionality was drawn off into INQ's People app as it began to experiment with bringing its core functionality to the Android Play Store in 2011.
INQ is now pushing two apps: Material (which uses Facebook and Twitter interests to create a magazine of personalised content for users twice daily), and SoHo (a launcher that takes over your Android phone and gives a scrolling view of Facebook, Twitter or Instagram).
Look at this lovely Material
Both of these are now available in beta form, and both are free. With no indication of making them paid-for in the future, and competing in the tremendously congested social media / mobile magazine space, how can this strategy help INQ rise from the ashes of a smartphone business?
"We created Material and SoHo as it came from people's personal behaviours. We found we were visiting the same websites regularly to find information; people are in the habit of waking up and going to one or two sites, which is very narrow in scope and they're missing out on lots," said Johnstone.
"Now the shackles [of being a phone manufacturer] are off, and we can churn software out quickly. If we want a new feature it can be live in the market a couple of weeks later, whereas that's much, much harder if you're doing lower level handset software."
There's still a large question mark over how you can monetise free apps without resorting to heavy advertising, but Johnstone believes that creating an asset that can accurately track users interests will be an incredibly important asset in the future.
"The thing we've done is work quite closely with some academic research institutions, we're doing some cutting edge work and getting a steer from them into what's working and what's not to create our own engine which determines your interests.
SoHo, so what?
"In Britain and Europe there are good little hubs of research into things like semantic technology, it's a hot and interesting space right now and it really interests us as a team.
"What we're trying to do is radically change the way people discover content, almost like trying to make search obsolete in a mobile context.
"Search has its place and it's amazing, but in a mobile context we don't necessarily have the time to go and search for things.
"It's not an easy thing to do but I don't think anyone has done it well."
The idea is strong: offering up content that you'll want to read without having to want to go and find it. Or with SoHo, having your social feeds as active wallpaper that drip-feeds you the information without needing to open the apps time and again.
However, the current offering is a long way away from that right now. Material will wake you up at half five in the morning to let you know a magazine is available to read, with articles that are only 50 per cent relevant to many and with a lot of repetition from the previous "issue".
Not there yet
Similarly with SoHo, users are finding issues. A look at the comments on the Google Play Store shows that the fact it's a launcher irks some, as well as the fact you can't have multiple panels showing different feeds.
We raised these issues with Simon Davies, INQ's Head of Product, who admitted there was work to be done, but preferred it this way in a beta offering:
"We sometimes get some interesting challenges around localisation [with Material] that we didn't realise when we first started. For instance, football can draw in both soccer and American football, so we rapidly had to roll out updates that looked at where you were and did some clever stuff that figured out what you wanted.
"We've still got a few more elements that we can roll out too. Music is another interesting area for us, as it contains so many different genres. As a result, we've gone to some smart people from universities for different elements of product and added a huge swathe of changes [since the start] for which we're now figuring out patents."
Davies also dismissed the idea that launching without the full range of features was detrimental. He's excited about the beta tag, saying that it's resulted in some great feedback from users that has built engagement and raised mistakes in a constructive way.
There's no doubt that INQ's new approach is refreshing - even the office layout has changed since the days of being a hardware manufacturer, making everything more open plan to unify the teams.
But equally, it's a company taking a huge risk by moving into apps that focus on the user's interest, trying to work out you want to read before you think of it, or giving access to social networks when you're not even looking.
The current apps need a lot of work to take on the might of Flipboard or even Facebook Home - Johnstone might claim that INQ isn't creating something that rivals these names, as its apps are more about discovery, but there's no doubt in the eyes of the user there are similarities.
But it's great to see a company in the UK trying to make waves in a new area of technology - if it can truly create a twice daily magazine that gives you content that you would never have found otherwise would be awesome, and would blow the likes of HTC's BlinkFeed and Flipboard out of the water.
And Johnstone isn't ruling out a return to hardware in the future either, although probably not in the same guise as before:
"We won't do the hardware ourselves, but it's not impossible that you'll see the INQ brand out there one day, maybe as software on someone else's hardware."
INQ tried to swim against the tide and bring the cool apps to the front and centre of phones for a low cost. It would be great if that ethos didn't die because of a congested smartphone market.
Australian carrier Telstra has received a confirmation that the Samsung Galaxy Note II 4G model will skip Android 4.2.2 and will be updated straight to the 4.3 Jelly Bean. It doesn't seem to be a regional thing either - all Galaxy Note II units might be treated that way.
Here is the official quote from Telstra's support page:
Samsung have elected globally to skip the 4.2.2 update for this device and will instead go to a newer version of Android. No schedule has been provided for this update.
We already know that Samsung Galaxy Note II will live long enough to taste the Android 5.0 Key Lime Pie, so owners shouldn't worry about the Android updates.
Meanwhile, Samsung still manages to keep the upcoming Galaxy Note III under wraps, but a picture taken with it popped up in Picasa yesterday. It hardly gives us much info, but it does confirm the device model number - N9005. This will most probably going to be the Snapdragon 800 version of the phablet with the revamped Exynos 5 powering the N9000 version.
The Note III will be announced on September 4 ahead of IFA in Berlin. It's expected to bring 5.7" 1080p Super AMOLED display and 3GB of RAM.
We saw the Motorola DROID Ultra MAXX for the first time two weeks ago, but back then only its front panel was exposed. We now get to see the other side of the smartphone that will reportedly going to have specs identical to the Motorola DROID Ultra plus a larger battery.
The rear side of Motorola DROID Ultra MAXX has a familiar texture. Just like the DROID MAXX, the Ultra MAXX version will be made of Kevlar, but unlike its predecessor it will have a cool red accent across the middle of its back panel.
Motorola DROID MAXX front and back
The Motorola DROID Ultra MAXX is expected to go official on July 23, when Verizon is holding an event dedicated to the lineup. As the latest rumor has it the DROID Ultra MAXX might feature a 4.7-inch Super AMOLED display and a Snapdragon S4 Pro chipset with a quad-core 1.7GHz Krait CPU. You could also expect 16GB internal storage, 10+ megapixel camera and a 2500mAh battery.
Hopefully Apple won't be in the public's doghouse for long
Ah, Apple's 'maptastrophe'. The less said about it the better. However, at least we know that Cupertino is making strides to improve its mapping service situation, with news that it's has just bagged a significant new weapon.
Apple's latest acquisition, Canadian location data startup Locationary, crowdsources and collates the most up to date information to ensure that everything is recent and accurate.
Locationary not only verifies that something is still in the place its supposed to be, but also if it's temporarily inaccessible - if a shop is closed for redecorating or whatever, for example.
Watch out Google, Apple's coming to getcha
The word came from "multiple sources" speaking to AllThingsD, with Apple strongly suggesting the news was true by issuing the following statement:
"Apple buys smaller technology companies from time to time, and we generally do not discuss our purpose or plans."
There's no verification that this is for Apple's map service, but come on now, what else could it possibly be for? Apple promised that it would be making efforts to improve the service, with Tim Cook even issuing an apology back in September last year. It's alright Tim, we have faith.
The HTC One Mini revealed itself to the world this week and while it may look pretty much identical to its big brother, the HTC One, there are some key differences between the two.
Some people out there don't really see the point of these "mini" smartphones - especially as they're not exactly small in size - but the success of the Galaxy S3 Mini last year, along with a burgeoning middle market, means there's method in the mini madness.
Now instead of us telling you the differences between the two, we sent both handsets to the TechRadar laboratory where our egg-head professors were able to splice their souls into a couple of spare humans they had lying around, so they could tell their own story.
The result? Well just hit the play button on the video below and find out what happened when Mini met One.
Every day, you use one - or probably more - of the 37 billion ARM chips produced so far. They're inside your phone, inside your tablet, inside your TV, and inside numerous other devices.
But they began life as a second development processor for the rather beige mid-1980s BBC Micro at the Cambridge, UK-based Acorn Computers.
The remarkable Sophie Wilson was the designer behind the ARM (Acorn RISC Machine) instruction set, which originally began in October 1983. And so we thought TechRadar's Brit Week was a great time to speak to the recent European Inventor Award nominee about her time at Acorn, the beginnings of ARM, and the huge project she's now working on.
"When we designed the BBC machine in the 1980-1981 period, we were essentially designing our own ideal machines," explains Wilson. "We thought it was a good machine. The BBC had asked for 12,000 and they thought they were being pessimistic."
Selling the BBC Micro
The BBC had commissioned the MOS Technology 6502-based computer to go alongside the BBC Computer Literacy Project for education, but the shipments were far bigger than anybody had envisaged.
The logo of the BBC Computer Literacy project
"We'd thought about 25-50,000 units, but it was a million and a quarter in the end. They were everywhere and they were doing everything. People bent and twisted them in ways we'd never imagined.
"We'd be forever seeing something that we had no idea could be done with a machine that we'd developed - a case in point being David Braben's Elite. We could not believe that he got that into the machine."
As for the ARM microarchitecture itself, we wondered whether Wilson realised how much potential it had at the time.
"When we set the project up we had a slogan internally to remind us what we thought we were doing, and that was 'MIPS for the masses', i.e. lots of processing power for everybody. We were aiming at the mass market." (MIPS means Microprocessor without Interlocked Pipeline Stage, a RISC – or Reduced Instruction Set computer microarchitecture.)
Wilson is at pains to stress that ARM's rise to success has taken place gradually over a 30 year period. "We had our first working chips back in April 1985, and we put them into Acorn machines and they were very good, and we got our market and people liked it a lot," she says, rather matter-of-factly.
Moving ARM forward
Acorn started being approached by other people to use the ARM design. "We set up a division in Acorn for third parties and eventually we spun out ARM in 1990 because there seemed to be a market. By then we'd been approached by Apple, for example, and throughout 90s they kept making little bits of process. Nokia came on board in 96 or 97, then TI."
"At every stage there was just another customer, a little bit extra. And it just kept adding up, and when we did the sums in 2008 we'd shipped 10 billion ARMs. Now we can be remarkably blasé about shipping 36 or 37 billion of them. It's a gradual success over 30 years. "
"It's extremely well grounded - that's why there's so much depth to the architecture. It's been there for so long, and it's only been about in the last five years that the public has even vaguely started knowing about it.
"It's also to do with the decisions taken by our management over many years to have all that depth. So it's not merely the high profile apps processors that everybody talks about competing with Intel and taking sockets in mobile phones and tablets, it's all the Cortex-R, Cortex-M series and before them in particular the ARM7 TDMI that have just got absolutely everywhere.
"And that's the secret. It's an enormous ecosystem. ARM succeeds through being in partnership with everybody, essentially. Even Intel has an ARM license. Even Intel still sell single chips for phones with ARMs in them."
More thabn 37 billion ARM processors have now shipped
More Acorn machines and RISC OS
One of the more surprising aspects of Wilson's chat about the early days at Acorn was how certain the team was that they would succeed. "We were supremely confident," she says, without a hint of irony or doubt.
"The team of people that created ARM, particular Steve Furber and myself, had been working together for long enough to have a good rapport and working relationship, and we'd never failed at doing anything. Everything that we tackled we'd succeeded.
"Designing a microprocessor as Steve has remarked is just another complicated piece of digital logic and he was good at designing digital logic! And designing the instruction set, I'd actually designed fantasy instruction sets before so even that was another logical step forward. It all felt extremely possible.
"Furthermore we had a conviction that we knew what people were doing wrong. We had chips in our hands from Intel, Motorola and National Semiconductor, and we could see why they weren't performing well. We set out to remedy that in making ARM, and we were quite right."
After the BBC Micro, Acorn launched the fully ARM-based Archimedes in 1987. But RISC OS - Acorn's advanced and rather Windows 95-like operating system - wasn't ready. "There was a year which we had to go with an operating system that was essentially a clone of the BBC operating system, and that was painful because it wasn't good enough," says Wilson regretfully.
"But yes, in 1988 RISC OS came out and that was dramatic because it was then a fully-featured system that could do things that few machines could at the time.
"It was a machine with a high-resolution machine with anti-aliased graphics with WIMP (Windows, Icons, Mouse, Pointers). The Macintosh had been around for a time but it didn't have anti-aliased graphics, so the on-screen experience was very poor. RISC OS gave you WYSIWYG like nobody have ever seen."
But while Acorn's microprocessor was strong, its advanced hardware had a surprisingly short lifespan due to the success of the IBM PC, and even by the time it was releasing the early 1990s RISC OS-based machines such as the Acorn A4000, A5000 and RISC PC, it was clear that time was running out for the company as a British computer manufacturer.
1991's A5000 was ahead of its time, but Acorn was already losing to Windows PCs
"I think by the time Acorn was capable of tapping business with RISC-based technology, the IBM PC already had a strong foothold", says Wilson. "You can't really blame one thing, but there was VisiCalc on the Apple II and Lotus 123 on the IBM PC - you had to have one of those two programs to run a business. If we'd written an equivalent program for BBC machines, it would never be the same program."
Wilson's recent work
Wilson now works at semiconductor giant Broadcom, working on a processor line she also created - FirePath, a DSL chip that has also had a major impact. "If you have a DSL line going into your house, the kit at the other end that sends you the data is run by a FirePath processor. Hundreds of millions of them have been shipped," says Wilson.
She takes up the story: "In 1990 I started playing with new ideas for a processor inside Acorn. And obviously lots of other things were going on. I wrote the RISC OS multimedia subsystem Acorn Replay, so what with that and launching Acorn's Online Media division and designing the SA1500/1501 digital media processor, there wasn't a lot of time for my little experiments.
"Anyway sometime in late 1996, John Redford [now head of UK engineering for Broadcom] found out what I was doing." The pair founded a new company - Element 14.
If Element 14 sounds familiar to you, it isn't the company of the same name behind the Raspberry Pi.
Wilson's Element 14 was spun out of Acorn in 1999 and clearly Broadcom knew the potential - Element 14 was sold just under two years after founding for a huge £366 million (US$356 million, AU$607 million).
Wilson on tablets - and Windows 8
Finishing up our chat, we ask Wilson what devices she uses on a day-to-day basis - but the result was some surprisingly forthright opinions on Microsoft's operating system woes.
"I use whatever does the job. I have an iPad, an Android powered Sony Xperia phone with Ice Cream Sandwich. I also have machines running Windows XP and Windows 7." Has she tried Windows 8 yet? "I have tried Windows 8. I have machines running Windows 7…"
"For machines without a touchscreen [Windows 8 is] a disaster. But they [Microsoft] have a history of violating usability guidelines. There's a whole subsection of the computer community for the usability of computer interfaces and they know precisely what makes things good, and Microsoft just ignore them.
"The [Microsoft Office] ribbon in particular is crazy from a usability viewpoint. One nice thing that's happened with the ribbon is that Microsoft have gradually been reliant on the right-click pop-up menus that we had in RISC OS, and that is straight out of the usability manuals.
"You don't have to do a great deal of research to develop that stuff, you just have to read a usability manual. It says you [need to travel] the shortest possible distance to [do something].
Acorn RISC OS machines had a three button mouse with a middle "menu" button, so we asked Wilson if usability was the key driver behind this. "Yes, so we said right, we'll dedicate a button to it. Press the button and you get a context-sensitive context menu. The more control and non-modality of your interfaces, that meant more input buttons.
"Xerox had used a three button mouse before us, so we developed RISC OS around a three button mouse. It gives you more actions. There was a massive amount of acceleration from that, and the fact the system was so fast. One button [as Apple used] introduces a lot of modality into your interface."
Sophie Wilson giving a presentation in 2009 [Image credit Jussi Mononen from Flickr]
As one of the key figures behind the chips inside them, we ask Wilson whether she feels tablets can replace PCs as devices for content creation as well as content consumption. Again, she puts forward some strong views and, interestingly, highlights Microsoft's key problem with trying to break into the tablet market: "It's the person who's creating, not the device."
"You may wish that a tablet was better at some things but there are many excellent [apps] for them. They're so cheap compared with a computer, so light, so easy to use.
"I don't think that popularity is going to go away no matter what the Windows team does - their prime problem is to produce hardware and software that persuades business to move away from Windows XP and Windows 7. Windows 8 has a long way to go."
Judging from my postbag since I started these columns, smartphones have somehow morphed from a 'thing in your pocket' to 'an entire belief system' - and there are people who seem to be willing to go to any length for their chosen brand.
In the last few weeks, I've bemoaned Nokia's strategy and told BlackBerry it's on a hiding to nothing. And I've noticed something. Both in the comments section and on Twitter, I've had some pretty strong messages from those who've tied their OS's flag to the telephone mast.
These comments go beyond debate and into total incredulity that I've dared to criticise a mobile manufacturer. The terms "Android", "BlackBerry" and "Apple" are the new deities for some, it appears.
Playing God
OK, so we at TechRadar are fans of tech. If you're on this site, chances are that you're really into your tech too. The thing is, like most of you, we all know what we're talking about.
We're able to make informed choices about devices, and know which ones to get excited about and which ones to ignore. We love it when friends and family ask us which phone they should get. It's like playing all-powerful leader over their 24 month term.
They may laugh at us behind our back and call us saddos for being able to recite spec comparisons by heart - but that bit we can tolerate, because we know they need us.
Branded for life
In the old days, customers could opt for one of a handful of devices, choosing from Nokia (mostly), Motorola or Sony Ericsson. The likes of Samsung, Alcatel and Sendo sat on the periphery.
People had preferences, but few of us tied our identity to our make of mobile beyond 'I don't really know how to use the Motorola text entry system'. But something's changed with the smartphone revolution. It's inspired a feeling that marketers are paid millions to create: brand loyalty.
While Samsung may take the mickey out of the "Apple sheep", the truth is that the South Koreans wish they could generate such fervour. I was at the launch of the S4 on the morning it came out and the queue had fewer than 60 people in it.
Compare that to the hundreds or thousands you'll see outside an Apple shop and it may seem paltry. But those in line had one thing in common: they were diehards. When I got out my iPad mini, I feared that an overzealous follower of the Way of the Galaxy might turn on me for soiling their collective purity.
Fear of the unknown
Some would say that this loyalty is a sign of love for the brand - but there's also a negative side to it, an underlying fear.
When I've spoken to Apple fans who want to jump to Android but are fearful of doing it, the same line comes up over and over again.
Despite being bored with a device that has barely changed in years, they always say something along the lines of: "I've spent so much money on my apps. Will I have to buy them all again?".
They are trapped by their OS, prisoners of an ecosystem, in the same way that Mac and Windows users are locked out of each others' worlds.
User unfriendly
Just a couple of years ago, you had very clear markets. iPhones were for either the aesthetes or less tech-savvy types, Android devices headed to the hands of the tinkerers who liked to think they were a little more clued up, and BlackBerries went to the corporates and the kids.
But now it's all change. Samsung and HTC have made Android more user friendly and desirable, and Windows has excited with its elegance. And as the lines have blurred, the talons have sharpened.
Ultimately, it's a tribal mentality. And while it's fun to watch (and be insulted) by people who get wholeheartedly offended, nobody will say on their deathbed: "I really wish I'd tried an Android phone after all." There'll be no newspaper obituaries that read: "He loved Windows Phone."
So, put your phone in your pocket, take a deep breath, and repeat this like a prayer: "It's only a phone."
I've reviewed dozens of phones and tablets for TechRadar over the years - each time putting them through their paces in the most unbiased, rigorous way possible.
But as well as being a professional, I have a love/hate relationship with tech, and that's what these columns are all about: the passionate howlings of a true fanboy. Tell me why I'm right, wrong or a hopeless idiot in the comments below or by tweeting @techradar or @phillavelle.
The Samsung Galaxy S4 mini in its dual-SIM incarnation (I9192) is already on sale from multiple online stores in multiple countries.
Amazon US carries the Galaxy S4 mini dual-SIM at $483, but there are only 20 units available at that price and only of the Black Mist color version. If those run out or you prefer White Frost, there are 10 units at $489.
Cells4U undercuts price to $470 for the Black Mist version, cheaper than the single-SIM version.
In India, Flipkart offers both color versions at INR27,990 ($470). In Egypt, Raya Shop carries it for EGP4,000 ($570).
It seems that Movistar in Spain will offer the Galaxy S4 mini dual-SIM on contract at €35 a month, but it's not available yet. The Mexican site Celulares.com lists it as "Coming soon".
SAP has pulled a bunch of business intelligence (BI) and analytic applications together a single mobile app for iOS devices.
Named SAP BusinessObjects Mobile 5.0, it has been built on the SAP Mobile Platform and enables users to collaborate using the SAP Jam social software platform, insert annotations through voice commands, and get answers to questions with the Exploration Views function.
Updates include access to multiple sources of analytic content, including SAP's Web Intelligence, Explorer, Design Studio, Crystal Reports and Dashboards software.
There is also a new home screen and toolbar, new navigation, and the ability to integrate with third party security.
SAP has also announced a new software development kit with BusinessObjects Mobile 5.0 that allows businesses to customise their mobile analytic applications.
What's less than One but nothing like a zero? It's the HTC One Mini!
The HTC One is a cracking bit of kit, but even a five-star phone can't be perfect for everyone. It's too bulky, some say; it's too pricey, say others.
If you're inclined to agree, then we've got good news: from next month you'll be able to get all the fun of the One in a smaller, more affordable package. It's called the HTC One Mini, and it's a little cracker.
Let's ask resident phone guru Gareth Beavis some questions. Is it better than a Galaxy S4 Mini? It is! Does it feel as premium as its big sister? It does!
Has HTC taken some bits out? It has! Specifically, "there's no NFC chip, the CPU is a Snapdragon 400 dual core option clocked at 1.4GHz, and the screen has been shrunk to 4.3 inches and a 720p resolution." The battery's more modest too. Nevertheless, the Mini has "all the bits it needs to be a winner."
Here come the Brits
The word Mini doesn't just make us think of phones, of course. It makes us think of the miniskirt and the Mini car, and they make us think about Britain, and that makes us think about BATMAN!
Batman is British! Oh all right, just the car. But what a cool car
Batman? Yes! It's Brit Week on TechRadar and we've been celebrating the best bits of British tech - and that includes the Tumbler, the Dark Knight's version of the iconic Batmobile. As Gareth Beavis explains, while the Tumbler may have lived in Gotham City, "it was actually designed, built and mostly used in Britain".
It's real, too: it isn't just a bodykit with a normal car hidden underneath. As senior special effects technician John Holmes told us, "It is a Batmobile." The whole story's fascinating, and the photos are great too.
If you're looking for a real-life equivalent of Batman's tech guru Lucius Fox, you'll probably find him in Britain too: as Patrick Goss explains, Britain has more than its share of "inspirational thought leaders and companies making a difference".
Imagine the possibilities
One such company is Imagination Technologies, which designs the architecture for graphics chips. The company is like "some sort of gadget funhouse," Hugh Langley reports. "The walls are covered in phones, tablets and TVs, while radios scatter the benchtops.
"Everything with a screen is powering some sort of graphics demo, it's hypnotising. Of course, these are all products in which Imagination's handiwork can be found, and suddenly it's difficult to ignore the extent of Britain's technology reach."
Imagination Technologies might be little known, but you can see it's every inch the tech powerhouse
Imagination isn't resting on its laurels, though. It's looking to the future, and that future may involve ray tracing graphics.
"Not only does it produce stunningly lifelike graphics, it does so at astonishing speeds. This increases the efficiency of graphics rendering by a significant magnitude, cutting costs as well as time. "Tasks that once took 15 minutes due to the requirement for manual input can now take 15 seconds."
The tech is still three to five years away, but it'll be "used in everything from games to Hollywood movies" and even Augmented Reality.
A Pi full of potential
We couldn't have a Brit Week without mentioning the Raspberry Pi, the little computer that's doing very big things. As Hugh Langley explains, "Right now Pi is enjoying gradual world domination, spreading its message to the masses and showing a new generation of kids why coding is a lot easier and more interesting than they probably think."
We spoke to Eben Upton, the pioneer of the Pi
The Raspberry Pi is doing great things, but it's swimming against a tide of cynicism: as Patrick Goss says, when we speak to luminaries of the British tech and gaming scenes, "there is one particular thing that a surprisingly number of those questions brings up, often completely unprompted, and that is the British attitude towards success."
We're awfully good at taking people "down a peg or two", but when there's something to sing about we're strangely silent - possibly because we're scared of seeming arrogant.
That needs to change, says Goss. "If we start supporting those on the pedestals and giving the 'swots' the credit they deserve, there is absolutely nothing to stop Britain becoming a regular at the top table in both technology and gaming."
Google, the golden child of the Internet, got some disappointing grades on its report card. The revenues for Q2 of this year are up 19% year on year to $14.1 billion, but come short of analysts' expectations of $14.4 billion.
Income was $3.123 billion overall (down from Q1 this year and Q2 last year) with an operating margin of 22% (also down). Google's income for the quarter was just about the same as last year (but with a lower operating margin) and it's Motorola that weighs it down with a loss of $342 million.
As for Google's platforms, Larry Page, CEO and co-founder, calls Android and Chrome "no-brainers". There are 900 million Androids with 1.5 million joining them each day. They have downloaded 50+ billion apps and counting.
Chrome (the browser, not the OS) is doing great too – 750 million users. Chrome OS and Chromebooks are on the rise, despite the declining PC market, but Page didn’t provide any specific numbers here. No numbers on Google+ either.
Page once again teased that Motorola has something great in store (he's been testing the products, like Eric Schmidt), but once again said nothing of what we can expect. Hopefully, we'll learn more next week.
Google's core money maker – ads – is getting a revamp called Enhanced Campaigns, aimed at fixing the mobile ads market, which is ailing (ad prices were already cheap, but they've fallen further). The effect of Enhanced Campaigns should be felt next quarter.
You can read Larry Page's speech from the conference call here and listen to the call itself below:
BlackBerry has been quite open about its long-running messaging service, BBM, coming to Android and iOS this summer, although it has held back on giving us an exact date.
But in an interview with IBN Live, BlackBerry India's managing director, Sunil Lalvani, might have given us a date for the diary. Or a slightly less vague one than we already had, at least.
"The service is coming to Android this summer. But summer as per North America, where it remains till September," he said.
When he was then prodded further to clarify whether this means it will be out before the end of September, his responsive was allegedly "in the affirmative".
Wake us up etc etc
If we're honest, we expected "summer" to be more of a July/August affair but we're sure we can manage to wait an extra month if need be.
No word on iOS, but we'd take a guess and say it will land pretty close, if not exactly on the Android release.
A previous tweet from T-Mobile had claimed that BBM would hit both platforms on June 27, before BlackBerry said it was nonsense. And would you look at that - it's July 19. Nonsense indeed.
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