Samsung announced the Galaxy S Duos and Galaxy Y Duos Lite for India. Both smartphones have already been announced on the international market as the Galaxy S Duos S7562 and Galaxy Pocket Duos S5302.
Samsung Galaxy S Duos • Samsung Galaxy Y Duos Lite
Galaxy S Duos
The Galaxy S Duos is Samsung’s best dual-SIM droid up to date. It runs on a 1GHz ARM Cortex-A5 processor with Adreno 200 graphics, and packs a 4-inch WVGA TFT touchscreen, 5MP camera with VGA video recording, 768MB RAM, 4GB storage and the usual connectivity options.
The Galaxy S Duos supports 3G with HSPA on both SIM cards, but you can’t have two data connections simultaneously.
The handset also features Smart Dual SIM function which allows you to take calls from one of the SIM cards while the other is active as well. Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich is in charge of the Galaxy S Duos.
Unfortunately, the dual-SIM handset doesn't come with the SuperAMOLED screen of its original and has a regular LCD screen instead.
Samsung Galaxy S Duos will hit India soon at Rs. 17900 or €256. We guess the European price should be about the same. Price-wise, it's about the same price segment as the HTC Desire V, its direct competitor.
Galaxy Y Duos Lite (Galaxy Pocket Duos)
The Galaxy Y Duos Lite is the Indian version of the Galaxy Pocket Duos. It is a less capable fella with a 2.8-inch QVGA capacitive touchscreen, an 832MHz processor, a 2MP snapper, 3GB internal storage and 3G support only on the primary SIM card. The Android OS ticking inside is 2.3 Gingerbread, but it also supports the Smart Dual SIM function we mentioned above.
The iPhone 5 launch next week could mean the end of the line for the iPhone 3GS.
Sources 'close to retailers' in the UK told the Daily Telegraph that the iPhone 3GS is set to be replaced by an 8GB iPhone 4 which will become free on contracts of £20 per month.
The chatty insiders also let slip that there will be three storage editions of the iPhone 5, with the still-unconfirmed handset's release date falling in the week of September 21.
All change
The new handset is expected to require a nano-SIM that's even smaller than the micro-SIM required by the iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S.
Naturally, Apple's not saying anything and won't until the new iPhone 5 is unveiled on September 12 and, as usual, we prescribe a pinch of salt be taken with any rumours 'til then.
The carriers' internal documents have always been a good source for various leaks and so is today's case. Two interesting phones were found in the Verizon's device management system.
The first one is Nokia Lumia 822 (in Gray and White), which might be the Verizon's version of the newly announcedLumia 820. There is nothing really in the entry, just a 4G indications and the database insertion date.
It's the same case with the HTC 6435 – an LTE phone added recently into the carrier's database. HTC is holding a press conference in New York on September 19 and perhaps this would be company's new flagship. According to another leak today, it might be a 5-inch Galaxy Note II competitor.
In the face of app store bans by Facebook, Google, and Apple bans, Grooveshark has launched an HTML5 mobile browser-based application.
What do you do when you’re banned from the Facebook App Store, Apple’s App Store and Google Play? By launching an in-browser mobile player, of course! And that’s exactly what controversial music streaming service Grooveshark has done.
Long suspected of shady music practices that both music labels and musicians, Grooveshark has been in and out of lawsuits for suspected violations of copyright infringement and failure to pay royalties for years.
Grooveshark’s browser app has been built in HTML5, and leaves behind crash-prone Adobe Flash. According to the company, users can search, discover, and play more than 15 million songs from any mobile device, or listen to genre-based stations and listen to tracks shared by friends.
In one respect, the app stores bans are a blessing in disguise. Managing the app and implementing new features on the browser app doesn’t require the hard coding and different languages that would otherwise be necessary to maintain native apps for Android, iOS and, soon, Windows Phone 8 devices. Rather, the company will simply have to add additional code depending on the browsers supported.
When testing out the app ourselves, we noticed that the app sticks the user experience that we’re used to from a native app. We can sign into our profile and view our existing content, from saved playlists, to favorites, followers, and users that we’re following. All said, it functions much like it would like a Spotify app. But as a browser app, it has its limitations. Features like the ability to slide your fingers to move pages from left to right or visa-versa is lost, and there’s a slight but noticeable delay when interacting with the app.
If you like the convenience of a button that opens up the app, you can do so by adding the site to your Home Screen on your iPhone.
Unlike Spotify and Pandora, which negotiate and pay for the rights to stream libraries of music from music labels like Universal Music, EMI, Sony and Warner Music Group, Grooveshark enables its users to upload their own music onto its platform and share that content with other Grooveshark users. The company claims that this strategy allows it to bypass the need to pay royalties to musicians and music labels. Theoretically, Grooveshark imparts the accountability of uploading infringing music to its users. Of course in practice, the accountability may ultimately lie with Grooveshark, which claims to abide by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) — a belief backed by the courts on at least one occasion so far.
There hasn’t been an official explanation for why Grooveshark has been banned from app stores, but it’s evident that the very public copyright infringement claims mounting against the service, Apple, Google, and Facebook aren’t taking any chances with supporting Grooveshark. Still, Grooveshark hasn’t been deterred as its browser app first launched in the United States on Wednesday, with an international launch due in the coming months.
Microsoft has officially announced the first details of Windows Phone 8 (which you may know better as Apollo) and confirming many of the rumours about the new operating system at the Windows Phone Summit.
However, don't get too excited - this is a 'sneak peek' rather than the full details of the new version and there's still a lot of information that we don't know.
Windows Phone 8 release date
We're still waiting to get our ears on a proper Windows Phone 8 release date – we're currently being given the boring notion of 'autumn', which could be any time from October to Christmas for all we know. However, we expect it to be sooner rather than later as Microsoft won't want to miss the traditional holiday season gadget-buying rush.
If you like the sound of all this, then the good news is you won't have to wait until your mobile network gets around to testing and pushing out updates in the future either.
Microsoft is still agreeing details with the operators and handset makers for Windows Phone 7.8, but there's going to be a way to get updates directly from Microsoft (perhaps labelled as beta releases) as long as you assume responsibility for anything that goes wrong.
In summary, Microsoft is adding the features that Windows Phone needs to succeed and that need new hardware.
It's also finally doing something to address the problem of upgrades that would work on your handset but you're frustratingly unable to get – listen up, Google.
Where Windows Phone still needs to catch up with the other smartphone systems on features it's doing that much faster. Now it just needs to sell more devices.
There aren't too many manufacturers on board just yet, but we do know a few that will be launching Windows Phone 8 handsets.
Samsung, Huawei, HTC and Nokia are the only confirmed manufacturers at this time - although ZTE told TechRadar it will be launching WP8-powered handsets in 2013.
Update: It seems we've had confirmation that Samsung's next Windows Phone will support both Internet Explorer 10 (from Windows Phone 8) and have a WVGA screen, meaning it will likely be one of the budget range for the new OS.
Huawei will be bringing out a Windows Phone 8 handset by the end of the year too, with Shao Yang, chief marketing officer for Huawei, saying: "We are poised to end the year with a big bang – with the introduction of our first smartphone running on the Windows Phone platform."
Update: Nokia has unveiled its first two handsets to run Windows Phone 8 at a special event in New York.
The flagship Nokia Lumia 920 will head up the Finnish firm's range, sporting a 4.5-inch HD display, 1.5GHz dual-core processor, 8.7MP rear 'Pureview' camera, 32GB of internal memory and 1GB of RAM, helping it to run Microsoft's latest mobile platform.
Update: The HTC 8X could be the name of the Taiwanese firm's flagship Windows Phone 8 handset, a device which is apparently known as the Accord internally at the manufacturer.
The problem for Windows Phone is less the existing users – who tend to be enthusiastic as well as demanding – and more selling the phones.
The partnership with Nokia is certainly helping, as will the announcement that the Windows Phone Marketplace is now up to 100,000 apps with more coming - from the PayPal support for Wallet to iPhone must-haves like Words with Friends and Audible, plus Zynga's newly acquired Draw Something.
All Windows Phone 7 apps will run on Windows Phone 8 handsets; but in future developers will have to choose whether to make an app that only uses Windows Phone 7 features and works on both, or one that uses Windows Phone 8.
This means supporting features like Wallet, VOIP, native code or being able to run navigation in the background (which should mean we finally see some full-featured turn-by-turn navigation apps that go beyond what Nokia Drive offers).
There are other advantages, but with the interfaces to components like graphics, audio and sensors being far more similar to those in Windows 8, it's a lot easier to write Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 apps that share features.
Or, of course, they can make two versions, one for 7 and one for 8; how often that happens is going to depend both on how easy Microsoft makes it to share code between versions of apps in its developer tools and on sales of Windows Phone 8 handsets.
Windows Phone 8 interface
There is one feature of Windows Phone you will be able to get on current handsets (with an update that has the strikingly appropriate name of Windows Phone 7.8) and that's the new Start screen. This now uses the whole width of the screen, without the arrow to tell you to swipe sideways for more apps.
With the extra space you can fit in a lot more tiles, which can now be three different sizes. There's a new small size that you can pick for any app, so if you don't need the Office hub or the dialler to have a full size button because there's not that much useful information on them, you can shrink them down.
New start screen: With the extra space you can fit in a lot more tiles, which can now be three different sizes.
And as well as the current standard tile size, any app will be able to have an extra-large tile to fit more details onto the live tile. Along with some new colour schemes, that makes the Start screen look much more personal.
But the overall look of the platform hasn't changed dramatically – you're still offered a list of apps adjacent to the Start screen, and the panorama method of seeing more information by moving horizontally remains – after all, why change one of the best things about the old OS?
Windows Phone 8 – under the hood
Windows Phone 8 is a major new version, running the kernel from Windows rather than from Windows CE.
It isn't the same as Windows 8, or even Windows RT – even though that also runs on ARM processors – and it doesn't have the same look to the Start screen and Metro-style WinRT apps won't run on Windows Phone 8.
But under the hood it's a lot more similar to develop for and Windows Phone gets several key components from 'big' Windows as well as some significant new features and new hardware, which is good news for what developers can make apps do with the increased access they get to the phone system.
Don't expect the same do-anything, break-anything ethos of Android though; battery life and user experience are still priorities for Windows Phone and even native applications run in a sandbox.
Windows Phone 8 browser and security
Key features that Windows Phone 8 gets from Windows include Internet Explorer 10, complete with the phishing filter and SmartScreen application reputation service to make it harder for malicious websites to trick you into giving away personal information like credit card details or downloading malware.
Malware hasn't been a problem for Windows Phone so far, but any platform that becomes successful is going to get attacked.
Windows Phone gets other Windows security features like disk encryption and secure boot, so businesses will be happier to use it (especially as they can now manage devices and sideload their own business applications).
Windows Phone 8 media and gaming
Audio, graphics and media playback all work more like their Windows equivalents, which should make for more powerful games and entertainment apps.
However, this means that current games will need to be re-tooled to take advantage of the new platform – the likes of Rovio can leave their games as Windows Phone 7 versions, but they'll likely want to re-release a more powerful version of the game too.
But given the increased GPU support and power on offer, we'll at least start seeing some more 3D-rich gaming environments that start taxing the Windows Phone 8 handsets compared to their previous counterparts.
Video calling
There's one place where Windows Phone is jumping ahead of Windows; VOIP calls will look just like regular phone calls with all the same features and notifications. Obviously that's good for Skype but other VOIP apps like Tango will get the same support.
We're still waiting to see how deep Skype integration gets into the Windows Phone 8 OS, as given it's already available as an app on the Windows Phone Marketplace it should be shoved pretty deeply into the platform.
Will it lead to a surge in video calling? Probably not, but as there are strong rumours the Xbox platform will be getting a taste of video calling too it seems only fair that Windows Phone 8 devices, complete with their improved front-facing cameras, should be given priority.
Windows Phone 8 CPU
To make all this work well Windows Phone 8 will run on new hardware; still ARM processors, still the Snapdragon platform from Qualcomm but now with multicore processors, with a new generation of GPUs, and with NFC support.
Battery life is still priority for the platform, so we doubt Microsoft is going to allow any CPUs that get too amorous with the power pack – but more power is a big selling point in today's smartphone market, so this makes enormous sense.
Microsoft Wallet
The new Microsoft Wallet app will allow you to make payments by tapping your phone on a credit card reader the way Google Wallet does, and store credit card and membership details securely and tap your phone to send them the way iOS 6 will.
And you're not tied to using a Microsoft payment service; applications will be able to tap into the Wallet system to set up new payment services – which will include Paypal.
The app is a hub for digital coupons and debit or credit cards - plus you can add in loyalty cards and third party apps that will notify you when they become relevant.
NFC support
NFC is there for Microsoft's Wallet payment system, but has other options as well. The OS supports secure SIM, which means users' can swap from handset to handset and take their payment method with them physically.
There are other applications that Nokia is keen to utilise as well, such as being able to pair with its Bluetooth accessories with a simple tap of the phone – it's a trick we've seen on the old Symbian phones and one we expect to feature heavily here too.
Speech recognition
Microsoft has teamed up with Audible to bring speech recognition to Windows Phone 8, allowing users to shout a variety of commands at their handsets.
During the keynote presentation, we saw a demo of the speech platform – which allowed a user to play movies, browse audiobooks and perform searches.
It's also available for Mango devices, so pop over to the Marketplace today and search Audible if you fancy a go.
Windows Phone 8 upgrades
That's the reason that you won't be able to upgrade any existing Windows Phone handsets to 8, because they don't have the hardware to support the new features or deliver the multitasking performance that the Windows kernel and the improved VOIP support needs.
Only two of the rumoured new resolutions are being announced, both widescreen formats: 1280 by 768 and 1280 by 720 as well as the current 800 by 480, which should give phone makers more flexibility when it comes to choosing parts they can use in multiple devices.
And Windows Phone finally sorts out its SD card support; you'll be able to store media files on a micro SD card or install applications onto it.
Take a moment to check out our Windows Phone 8 round up video below.
Samsung's Galaxy S3 is still flying off the shelves, with 20 million units sold in its first 100 days.
The Galaxy S3 continues to sell at great speed, with Samsung announcing Thursday that 20 million devices have now been sold since it made its debut 100 days ago. The phone is the Korean tech company’s fastest-selling handset to date.
Samsung was confident from the start that the high-end S3 would do magical things for the electronics giant, with its head of mobile communications, JK Shin, claiming on launch day back in May that it would sell 10 million units before the end of July. It managed the feat with more than a week to spare.
This week it was reported that in August the S3 outsold Apple’s iPhone 4S for the first time since the 4S hit the market in October 2011 – though of course, this could be down to some Apple fans holding off buying a new iPhone until later this month, when the so-called iPhone 5 is widely expected to make its debut.
Sales of the S3 may be impressive, but if the expected iPhone 5 sells like the 4S did earlier this year – 35.1 million units in the first quarter – then it’ll soon slip back behind Apple as the smartphone of choice for the majority of users. Some analysts predict sales of the new iPhone could top 10 million within a week of going on sale.
Also, there’s a chance that sales of the S3 could drop to zero overnight – at least in the US – if Apple succeeds in its attempt to have the device banned from sale over the matter of patent infringement.
For the time being though, the Korean company will be more than happy with the way its Android-powered S3 is moving off the shelves. Consumers have been attracted by its sleek design, large 4.8-inch screen and array of features, including face-, gesture- and voice recognition functionality. A powerful 8-megapixel camera which, among other things, allows you to take photos while recording video, has also helped it to stand out from the crowd. Now, how long before it notches up its 30 millionth sale?
If it was not bad enough that Nokia faked the video stabilization portion of the Lumia 920 video (and later had to apologize for it), it seems they faked the part where they show still images as well.
If you get past the initial portion of video that focuses on video stabilization, you'll eventually get to some low light images shot on a street. It's here blogger Youssef Sarhan, resident of Helsinki, noticed that the lighting was off and nowhere on those streets would you actually find such strong lighting such as the one seen in the video.
The second thing he noticed was the diffraction pattern of the street lamps in the background. Sarhan mentions that in order to achieve such high number of spikes for the lamps, the lens aperture has to be really low, around f/22, which is not possible for the wide f/2.0 lens on the Lumia 920.
In other words, Nokia used a professional camera once again to shoot these images and tried to pass them off as Lumia 920 samples.
Sarhan concentrated on the video but while perusing Nokia's website we came across the following two images that caught out eye. Once again you can see how the Lumia 920 image (the second one) is not just brighter but the camera seemingly conjures up additional light sources from behind the tree, as can be seen from the strong shadow where the girl is facing.
Once again, we are not doubting the ability of the Lumia 920's camera. It probably takes fantastic pictures. We are just baffled by Nokia's insistence on using doctored images shot with professional equipment and lighting conditions, even though they seem to have a pretty good camera on their phone.
