STE unveils NovaThor L8580 chipset with quad-core A9 CPU

If you're the benchmark-obsessed geek than CES 2013 might be turning out quite exciting for you.

After Samsung unveiled its latest and greatest Exynos 5 Octa chipset, NVIDIA announced Tegra 4 and Qualcomm lifted the curtain of its newest Krait-powered Snapdragon 600 and 800 series SoCs, it's now ST-Ericsson's turn to stand in the spotlight. The company just announced its latest NovaThor chipset - the L8580.

It comes with a low-power eQuad processor with four Cortext-A9 cores, clocked at up to 2.5 GHz, the PowerVR SGS544 GPU and the ability to go low-power and run at 0.6V.

The NovaThor L8580 can deal with 1080p video and support display resolutions of up to 1920 x 1200 pixels. 20MP primary cameras and 5 MP secondary ones are allowed too and there's built-in LTE HSPA+, TD-SCDMA and EDGE radios. 3D reproduction and capture is also on board if that's your thing.

The ST-Ericsson L8580 chipset should allow the creation of affordable mid-range devices with excellent processing power and good battery life. The top shelf smartphones and tablets will move on to Cortex-A15 architecture this year, but there's plenty of ground below them for the NovaThor L8580 to cover.

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Source : http://www.gsmarena.com/stericsson_unveils_novathor_l8580_quadcore_a9_cpu-news-5331.php

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ZTE to bring a Firefox OS smartphone to Europe this year

ZTE and Mozilla are on track to reveal a collaboration effort that would be debuting in Brazil and later come to Europe. The two companies are working to bring the first Firefox OS-powered smartphone and are in talks with an unknown European carrier.

The information comes directly from Cheng Lixin, Chief Executive Officer of ZTE USA. He also shared that ZTE could unveil a Firefox OS smartphone in the US, depending on the demand and interest. “If that is ready and if consumer studies support that data, then we may launch one in U.S. also this year.”, he said.

Jay Sullivan, Vice President of products at Mozilla, shared that the software company is working with China-based manufacturer TCL (which owns the Alcatel One Touch brand), ZTE and Qualcomm on making devices with Firefox OS. Chairman of TCL, Tomson Li Dongsheng confirmed that the company is in business with Mozilla. These reports align with what we previously heard.

Firefox OS will first launch entry-level smartphones with the intent on tackling the dominance of Android in that market. We've already seen promising early shots of the OS and its app Marketplace. We even managed to do a hands-on, complete with video back at MWC 2012, but we are still curious to see how the actual Firefox OS smartphones turn out.

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Source : http://www.gsmarena.com/zte_to_premiere_firefox_os_smartphone_in_europe_this_year-news-5330.php

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Samsung stuns with 8-core Exynos 5 Octa processor, the heart of its future flagship mobile devices

Samsung has announced the Exynos 5 Octa processor at CES 2013, an eight-core chip built using ARM’s interesting big.LITTLE concept for improved power and lower energy consumption.

Samsung has shown why it’s one of the most exciting companies working in mobile tech at the moment, by announcing the Exynos 5 Octa processor during its keynote presentation at CES 2013. Just in case the name hasn’t given it away, this is an eight-core processor, and it’s destined to one day power the smartphone in your pocket.

The new chip will one day replace the Exynos 4 Quad, now powering an astonishing 53 million devices worldwide, as Samsung’s go-to chip for its flagship phones. CEO Stephen Woo said it will provide, “A level of pure processing power never seen before in a mobile device,” before using a reference device to show the processor in action, when its multi-tasking and gaming abilities were briefly demonstrated.

Although the Exynos 5 Octa is billed as an eight-core chip, not all its processor cores were born equal and a more accurate description is that it’s a dual quad-core processor. This is because it’s one of the very first system-on-a-chips to be built using ARM’s big.LITTLE concept.

Dual quad-core processing power

Rather than a single eight-core chip, it has two quad-cores inside – one being a quad-core ARM Cortex A15 and the other a quad-core Cortex A7. The Cortex A15 deals with the tough stuff but passes off the easy tasks to the Cortex A7, or they can both be fired up to really show off. This means it’s strong enough to provide all the power you may need, while at the same time being smart enough to conserve energy when it can. If you’re wondering just how much difference the Exynos 5 Octa and other big.LITTLE chips will make when used in a device, ARM’s CEO Warren East said he expects “twice the performance and half the power consumption” compared to today’s best offerings.

If this approach sounds familiar, it’s similar to the companion core found in Nvidia’s Tegra 3, which avoids waking the quad-core beast and deals with the easy tasks on its own. The difference is, the Exynos 5 Octa’s cores can all work together when the need arises. Samsung has built its new processor using a 28nm manufacturing process, which it promises will help keep power consumption to a minimum.

Now we’ve got you all excited about the Exynos 5 Octa, you’ll want to know when it’s going to be available, right? Sadly, Samsung glossed over this point as it moved on to other things during its presentation, but there have been rumors it’ll be powering the Galaxy S4 when it’s released later this year.

Source : http://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/samsung-outs-the-eight-core-exynos-5-octa-processor/

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Nokia beats expectations, sells 4.4 million Lumias in Q4

Nokia released a preliminary report on its performance in Q4 2012 and things are starting to look up. Nokia beat expectations with the non-IFRS operating margin expected to be between breakeven and 2%, while expectations were for negative 2-10%.

Nokia's Devices & Services department is reporting €2.5 billion in net sales, nearly half of which (€1.2 billion) coming from Smart devices (note that Nokia is counting its Asha full touch phones as smarthpones). It helps that operating expenses were lower than expected too.

The company sold 79.6 million phones, including 9.3 million Ashas and 6.6 million proper smartphones. The breakdown is this - 4.4 million Lumia phones and 2.2 million Symbians.

Nokia is also getting a €50 million sum from non-recurring IPR income (coincidentally, RIM recently had to pay Nokia €50 million after a patent settlement).

Anyway, the Nokia Siemens networks also exceeded expectations and posted a profit for a third quarter in a row. The non-IFRS operating margin for this division in Q4 2012 is expected to be 13-15%.

While Nokia is ending 2012 on a positive note, the start of 2013 will be less rosy - the seasonally weak quarter will lead to a non-IFRS operating margin of negative 2% (+/- 4%).

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Source : http://www.gsmarena.com/nokia_beats_expectations_shows_a_profit_in_the_final_quarter_last_year-news-5329.php

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Nokia confirms it’s working on new PureView camera innovations

Nokia’s head of imaging technologies has said his team is hard at work on creating new PureView camera innovations, saying “Very cool” things will be coming in the future.

This time last year, the world was still a month away from being introduced to Nokia’s PureView camera technology. Since then it has given its name to two devices, the often jaw-dropping Nokia 808 PureView and the equally impressive (but initially controversial) Lumia 920.

It’s clear then that although exciting, PureView is still in its infancy, and when Damian Dinning – one of the driving forces behind PureView – announced his departure from Nokia late last year, many questioned whether its continued development would remain a priority for the Finnish brand.

Speaking to the company’s official blog while at CES, Nokia’s Head of Imaging Technologies, Juha Alakarhu has now put those fears to rest. When pushed to talk about where PureView was headed in the near future, he said, “We’re really driving innovation in key areas to deepen and enrich the imaging experience. I can’t tell you about the specific things we’re working on. Safe to say it’s very cool.”

So, it’s good to know we’ll being seeing a PureView camera on another phone in the future, however Alakarhu did reiterate an important point. He reminded us PureView doesn’t relate to any specific piece of technology and refers instead to the camera being, “The latest and greatest in imaging.” He continued, “When you buy a Nokia phone with PureView, you are getting our highest quality imaging innovation.”

He’s clarifying that PureView has completely morphed into a marketing term, something like Sony’s old CyberShot branding on its best camera phones, to be used when Nokia adds a particularly innovative feature to a new model. For the 808 PureView it was the amazing ability to zoom in on a photo and retain sharpness and detail, while for the Lumia 920 it’s the wide F2.0 aperture, image stability and low-light performance. Whether this was the intention for the PureView name all along isn’t known, but it’s certainly what it has become.

Nokia’s two PureView phones have been excellent performers, and it’s going to be fascinating to see what the team comes up with next. Perhaps Nokia will celebrate the 808‘s one year anniversary with a new PureView innovation at Mobile World Congress?

Source : http://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/nokia-confirms-its-working-on-new-pureview-camera-innovations/

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Sony Xperia Z to hit all major Australian carriers

Sony is definitely determined to bring the Xperia Z flagship as in many countries as possible and, of course, as soon as possible.

Australia is the next major market the Sony Xperia Z is going to hit this March. Telstra has already opened forms where you can register your interest of buying the device.

According to the Head of Sony Mobile Oceania, the Australian Optus and Vodafone should also be offering the Xperia Z as well. This means that all major carriers in Oz will be offering the latest Sony flagship.

There is no info on the pricing and the exact launch date, but we guess the price tag on contract won't be that different from its competitors.

The Xperia Z was announced at CES in Las Vegas a few days ago and we already had our first meeting with it. You can check out our hands-on right here.

Source 1 |Source 2

Source : http://www.gsmarena.com/sony_xperia_z_to_hit_all_major_australian_carriers-news-5328.php

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Samsung reinvigorates a classic, announces the Galaxy S2 Plus

Samsung has given the aging Galaxy S2 a new lease of life by releasing the Galaxy S2 Plus, which takes the classic phone and subtly updates its style and operating system, ready for it to find new fans today.

No, you didn’t read the title wrong, Samsung really has announced an updated version of its flagship Android smartphone from 2011, this time called the Galaxy S2 Plus. So what has it done to deserve the Plus suffix? Let’s find out, starting with how it looks. The design itself hasn’t changed and the chassis is still just 8.5mm thick, but Samsung has brought it inline with the S3 by replacing the old textured casing with a smooth polycarbonate shell.

As you may have guessed by looking at the pictures, the Galaxy S2 Plus uses Android 4.1 Jelly Bean with Samsung’s Nature UX over the top. This coincides with a recent leak indicating the S2’s Jelly Bean update was almost ready for release, and sure enough features like Smart Stay, S Voice and Pop-Up Play are all present on the S2 Plus. The screen on which Android is displayed hasn’t changed, and is the same 4.3-inch, 480 x 800 pixel Super AMOLED Plus panel which won the phone so many fans the first time around.

The S2 Plus’s guts are also almost identical to the now classic S2, with a 1.2GHz dual-core processor and 1GB of RAM working hard to keep everything running smoothly, plus an 8-megapixel camera and LED flash can be found on the back of the device. Where the original had 16GB of storage space, the S2 Plus has to make do with 8GB, however it does have a microSD card slot to up this figure by a whopping 64GB.

Fleshing out the spec list are features such as dual-band Wi-Fi, a 2-megapixel video call camera, 1080p video recording, Bluetooth 3.0, GPS and a 1650mAh battery. Samsung will make two versions of the S2 Plus, one with NFC and one without, and they’ll both be available in white or dark blue color schemes, just like the Galaxy S3.

While we have all the technical details on the Galaxy S2 Plus, Samsung has neglected to provide any information on where and when the phone will go on sale. As the specification still holds up today, if it’s priced sensibly the aging phone could find itself with plenty of new fans, helping Samsung maintain its position at the top of the Android tree.

Source : http://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/samsung-refreshes-the-galaxy-s2-announces-galaxy-s2-plus/

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