Samsung Galaxy S4

The successor of the most popular smartphone from the most widely adopted platform - it doesn't get much bigger than this in the mobile industry. After months of intensive rumors and amid unprecedented hype Samsung finally unveiled its Galaxy S 4 smartphone at its Unpacked event in New York.

At first glance the Samsung Galaxy S 4 might look very similar to its Galaxy S III predecessor, but you shouldn't be fooled by that. It's a completely new phone on the inside and it seems to have all it takes to keep Samsung ahead of the Android pack.

Fitting a larger screen of higher resolution in a more compact and lighter body, the Samsung Galaxy S 4 is also the first smarphone to feature an octa-core CPU. The Exynos 5410 chipset has a set of four Cortex-A15 cores to do the heavy lifting and another quarter of power-saving Cortex-A7 cores, which takes care of less demanding tasks.

Here are the rest of the Galaxy S4 highlights to get you started.

Samsung Galaxy S4 at a glance:
•General: Optional 2G/3G/LTE connectivity
•Form factor: Touchscreen bar phone
•Dimensions: 136.6 x 69.8 x 7.9mm, 130 g
•Display: 4.99" 16M-color Super AMOLED HD capacitive touchscreen with a resolution of 1920 x 1080 pixels (441ppi)
•Chipset: Exynos 5410 Octa / Snapdragon 600
•CPU: 1.6 GHz Quad-core ARM Cortex-A15 and 1.2 GHz quad-core ARM Cortex-A7 / 1.9GHz Krait 300
•GPU: PowerVR SGX 544MP3 / Adreno 320
•RAM: 2GB
•OS: Android 4.2.2 (Jelly Bean)
•Memory: 16/32GB/64GB storage, microSD card slot
•Still camera: 13 megapixel auto-focus camera, face detection, touch focus and image stabilization, Dual Shot, Cinema Photo; 2MP front facing camera, video-calls
•Video camera: Full HD (1080p) video recording at 30fps
•Connectivity: Wi-Fi a/b/g/n, Wi-Fi hotspot, Bluetooth 4.0, standard microUSB port with MHL features (TV Out, USB host), GPS receiver with A-GPS and GLONASS, 3.5mm audio jack, NFC, Infrared port
•Battery: 2600 mAh
•Misc: TouchWiz UI, Extremely rich video/audio codec support, built-in accelerometer, Smart stay and Smart rotation eye-tracking, Smart pause, Smart school, S Health, Air Gestures

More power, better screen, a host of new exclusive software features and a larger battery to keep it going logner - the Samsung Galaxy S 4 has all the right boxes ticked to be considered a worthy successor to the most capable droid so far. It also has a key advantage over its direct rivals in running on the latest Android 4.2 platform.

The second Jelly Bean release is too huge an upgrade, but it still brings some cool new features that take the user experience up a notch. Of course, Samsung, will be more keen to direct your attention to its home-baked goodies like Eye-scroll and Auto pause, which surprisingly or not, work pretty well.

Apple Maps-Fail

Users of Apple Maps show why the app's a disaster. Reactions to Apple’s apology for its uncharacteristically disastrous Apple Maps application have been generally warm, but those towards the culpable app continue to be not. 

The tech giant’s CEO Tim Cook said last Friday that he’s “extremely sorry” the attempt to displace Google Maps within its OS has “fell short” of a standard that has come to be expected of Apple.

Still, an open apology has done nothing to improve Apple Maps’ primary function – that of providing locations and directions. Netizens – including a Tumblr dedicated to the app’s failings – continue to share how the app is leaving them disorientated.

First stop: Ohio, spooking us all with a shadow of a clock tower but… the structure itself is nowhere to be found. 

A little up north, this horror image probably discourages people from flying to Toronto. Good luck to the Canadian city’s tourism receipts. People will probably just take the train. 

New York gives us a Roland Emmerich moment by melting away its iconic Brooklyn Bridge in this disaster scenario. The only crisis I'm sure of is happening in the Apple engineering department.

I may have no clue what the other words on this map mean, but I'm sure know Ukraine’s capital is Kyiv, not K-Y-L-V. 

On the same note, I may not know much about Chile, but if the folks at Punta Arenas build roads on water, I need to meet them. Now. 

In Dublin, Apple has irked an Irish minister after identifying a farm named Airfield as, well, an airport. Minister Alan Shatter is worried pilots may mistakenly land their planes on his constituency’s goats and cows. I'm worried if pilots use their iPhones at work. 

There are PR boo-boos, then there are, erm, self-inflicted bodyslams. I am quite sure there’s a store in the vicinity. 

Taking User-Generated Content to a whole new level. Wait a minute, shouldn’t the app be telling me what the place is?

The Never Ending War

A mate of mine send me this video on Samsung vs Apple thing. I guess it never end between these two. 

The Summer of Samsung?

As you'd expect, today's Apple WWDC keynote drew big crowds of Apple fans eager for hardware and software news. Yet, you might be surprised that even the most devout Android enthusiasts were watching along to see what the "competition" was doing.

After two hours crammed full of products and services, we came away with some wonderful stuff. What we didn't get, though, is a new iPhone or any promise of when one might come. And while that's surely disappointing for some, it opens the way for a sunny Android summer, dominated largely by Samsung.

Outside of Apple, there are few handset manufacturers able to garner such stratospheric buzz for the release of a new smartphone. Part of it has to do with Android's sheer volume of handsets (there's almost a new one every week), but also no other company has mastered Apple's art of building hype. Samsung, however, is on to something. While nearly every other Android device generated just a bit of Internet buzz, Samsung's Galaxy S III stands to generate iPhone levels of excitement.

Indeed, no other Android phones thus far has produced months of speculation and rumors or this level of enthusiasm. Sure, they were popular, but the Motorola Droid, the HTC Evo, and not the first Android ever, the T-Mobile G1, didn't exactly send people into a frenzy or the rumor mill into overtime.

Thanks to a unified brand and singular form factor across five major carriers, however, things look pretty rosy for the Galaxy S III. The handset, which features cutting edge smartphone technology and a sprinkling of Samsung's own innovation, will have people talking this summer just as they've been talking about it already for several months. And with the next iPhone not expected until fall, Samsung could steal away a number of iPhone 3GS and iPhone 4 owners who are off their contract and waiting to upgrade.

What's more, as one of the biggest sponsors for the London 2012 Olympic Games, Samsung will be investing millions of dollars to show off their new baby. For consumers living in the United States, the timing of the event falls within days (or weeks) of the phone hitting various carriers. If done right, Samsung will have users flocking to their respective wireless provider, asking for "the one on TV".

Consider also the silence from Samsung's competitors. Of its two main competitors in the Android wars, Motorola has been nearly silent since the Droid Razr Maxx hit, and HTC hasn't broken the bank rolling out the One X. Depending on what you believe, the One X might be the only handset worthy of knocking the crown from the Galaxy S III, but it's only available with AT&T and Samsung is playing a better marketing game.

To really see Android's response to Apple, we'll have to wait for Google's annual developer conference, Google I/O, which kicks off in two weeks. With Jelly Bean and a Nexus 7 tablet rumored for the three day event, Google is poised to build on Android's momentum. At the moment, however, nothing has as much momentum right now as the Galaxy S III. And until the next iPhone is a reality, I don't see anything coming over the horizon that looks to get in Samsung's way right now, including offerings from other Android handset makers.

Mobile World Congress 2012

Last year Nokia didn't announce a single new phone at the MWC, but this year they came ready to steal the show. As expected, they unveiled the Nokia Lumia 610 WP7 Tango phone, worldwide availability for the Lumia 900 and a three new Ashas, but what really sent the crowd into a roar was the Nokia 808 Pure View.

Mary McDowell had to repeat it twice, so that people could be sure they didn't mishear - the 808 Pure View packs an amazing sensor with a whopping 41 megapixels resolution. Yep, 41MP!!! Are you serious??? The camera lets you snap 3MP, 5MP and 8MP photos and because they're saved in a new image format, you can zoom in those photos with little image quality degradation at any time after taking the photo.

Or you could squeeze out almost every megapixel that the sensor has a shoot a 38MP image. That's more than most DSLRs!

See it for yourselves here at Nokia Europe and on the phone specifications, head to GSM Arena .

iPhone 4S?What the ...

Okay so everybody is disappointed with the Apple Conference when new CEO, Tim Cook announced the highly anticipated new iPhone. iPhone 4S!!! No??? What??? Say it again??? Yeah you heard it right. iPhone 4S!!! What happened to all those rumours of a new iPhone??? You can just shove it down the drain.

Personally, I thought Apple needed a boost in their business when Steve Jobs resigned as CEO recently. And all they did was released the crappy iPhone 4 upgrade. Stocks plummeted after the announcement. This is not the first impression Tim Cook needed to make his mark as the new CEO of Apple.

People were more acceptable when 3Gs was released back then. This was simply unacceptable, by Apple fans especially. I'm not an Apple fan but even I was disappointed with the news. I have a comparison for the iPhones here . You be the judge of that. Basically iPhone 4S has a dual core processor, an 8MP camera, built in assistant called SIRI and ... oh wait, that's just about it. Oh, and iPhone 4 users can upgrade to the new iOS 5 on the 12th of October. So does that make their iPhones the new iPhone 4S as well? Pfffttt...

People have been using the social medias to condemn the move by Apple. One that really caught my eye was; "iPhone 4S.. More like iPhone For Asses". Hahaha... Tell me what you think folks??? Til next time...

Will There Be 2 iPhones Due in October?

If one iPhone can take over the world, what can two iPhones do? Well, we guess we'll find out in October.

Former US Vice President Al Gore, who also happens to be an Apple board member, has kind of confirmed that the gadget giants will indeed be launching their "new iPhones" on October 4th.

According to Toby Shapshack, the editor of Stuff Magazine in South Africa, Gore reportedly told a packed crowd at the Discovery Invest Leadership Summit (DILS) earlier this week: "Not to mention the new iPhones coming out next month. That was a plug."

Gore's statement has, in more ways than one, cleared up a seven-month rumour that Apple is set to release two iPhones this year. One, Bloomberg reported back in February, will be a "budget" offering Apple plan to use to compete with inexpensive Android smartphones currently in the market.

This lower-end device, which was given the codename "iPhone 4S" or the "iPhone 4 plus" more recently, is said to look nearly identical to Apple's current model, the iPhone 4, but with a few upgraded internal components. According to reports, the device will be sold for less than US$200 without a contract.

The other device, of course, is the much-anticipated iPhone 5. The device will very likely be equipped with a larger, edge-to-edge display screen reportedly up to 4", a faster processor in the form of a dual-core A5, and an 8 megapixel rear-facing camera. And if rumours are to be believed, the iPhone 5 will also boast a wider and touch sensitive Home button.

Of course, those are just rumours, and I advise you to take it with a grain of salt. Guess we'll find out in October.



iPhone 5 News

iPhone 5 production, Foxconn producing 150k units per day!!! This news was reported on September 11th. 150K iPhone 5 units per day, 5-6 million expected this September. These figures are said to be what OEM maker Foxconn is churning out, according to industry sources.

The report also stated that Apple may be ready for a mass shipment of  the iPhone 5. The Taiwanese website, digitimes.com, reported the 150K per day figure, as well as an expected 5-6 million units produced by this September and top 22 million as we go into the fourth quarter.

According to Digitimes, “Lens maker Largan Precision, touch panel maker TPK Holding, reinforced glass supplier G-Tech Optoelectronics and battery vendors Simplo and Dynapack are all operating at full swing currently, the sources indicated.”

First test photo taken with an iPhone 5?

This news was reported on September 9th. A photo of a plate of sushi. Doesn’t seem all that important, right? Wrong.

It is, if the photo was taken using an iPhone 5.

Pocketnow.com has recently stumbled upon a photo of a plate of sushi, supposedly taken using an iPhone 5.

Although the EXIF data points to an iPhone 4, there were some, “inaccuracies”… Pocketnow tells it better:

“This (very attractive) photo claims to have been taken by an iPhone 4 but the rest of its EXIF data tells a different story: although the image has been cropped to 2235×2291 (5.12 megapixels), the original picture was a much larger 3264×2448 — or just shy of eight megapixels. What’s more, the lens was recorded as a 4.3mm f/2.4, which is closer to that of a point-and-shoot than the iPhone 4′s actual 3.85mm f/2.8. (Remember that the upcoming HTC Runnymede is said to have an aperture of f/2.2.)”

Even though rumors and leaks involving EXIF data should be taken with a pinch of salt, (because EXIF data can be easily manipulated and faked) the fact that this photo was taken by an Apple engineer gives a lot more credence to this story.

Anton D’Auria, the Apple engineer who took the photo, uploaded it to his Flickr account (which was recently been made private) and entitled it, “lunch”.

There are also some other aspects of this photo that seem to give further evidence of it being taken using an iPhone 5, like the fact that it was taken at Cupertino, CA, which is Apple’s HQ.

So… 8MP camera on the next iPhone, check?

This news was reported on September 9th. Japanese website macotacara.jp has recently reported that assembly for the iPhone 5 has begun, according to a “Chinese” source.

The source told Macotacara that tech manufacturing companies Foxconn Technology and Pegatron Technology are to begin making iPhone 5′s, with both companies responsible for 85% an 15% of production respectively.

They also mentioned that the “assembled” iPhone 5′s are not yet packaged, due to the  iOS 5 not being finalized yet.

As reported here recently, an October release is mentioned. They also added that a late October release for Asian markets is to expected.

The Apple iPhone 5 is rumored to have a bigger screen, some speculate up to 4 inches with an edge to edge design. Processing power is said to be done with an A5 dual-core processor. Also, there are strong suggestions of an elongated, gesture based home button. Many have also speculated that an 8MP camera will be equipped on the iPhone 5.

New iPhone to be released in September 2011

The Wall Street Journal independently reports that the new iPhone generation will be launched in the 3rd quarter of this year. According to close sources of the supply line, the next iPhone is expected to trim down the famously svelte iPhone 4, making it both lighter and slimmer than the current model.

While we still don' know the name of the new iPhone, the phone will have an 8 megapixel camera and will also sport the same powerful A5 processor as the iPad, which boosts the speed of the device. Let's hope it is a new model entirely and not like an upgrade of the 3Gs model. I know i'm looking forward to its release.

Great Tips!!!

Hi folks. It's been awhile yeah??? Been so busy lately with work and more work til I'm unable to write or add anything new to this blog. Do not worry, hope everything goes well and I can soon upload some photos of the football jerseys that I'm gonna sell. Just waiting to finalized the pricing which I need to consult my brother. Haha..

Oh well, I found this great article in Yahoo! somewhere around last week about device issues. Thought of highlighting it to all of you.

Touchscreen phones that won't work when you have gloves on

The capacitive touch displays on the latest and greatest Android and iOS handsets are tops when it comes to tapping out messages with a light touch. Winter gloves, however, will block the electrical charge from your fingertips that capacitive screens use to register a tap — bad news if you're trying to answer a call in a blizzard.

Solution: Cut a tiny slit in your wool gloves (assuming you don't mind slicing up your winter wear) to allow a finger to pop out whenever you need to start tapping. Okay, this is applicable to countries that has 4 seasons. Unless you think Malaysia has those 4 seasons too and would love to wear some gloves too. Hehe..

Wet Gadgets 

Gadgets and water rarely mix. Or rather don't mix at all. I bet most of us have experienced it before. I can honestly say, it wasn't a good experience. Heh..

Solution: Before you give up hope, try dropping your soaked gear into a Tupperware container full of rice to draw out the moisture. Or, as a general preventative measure to keep moisture away, save some silica gel packs (you know, the ones you'll find in boxes of new shoes or beef-jerky packages) and stuff them in your cell phone or camera case.

Scratch DVDs and CDs

There's nothing quite as annoying as a skipping music CD or a DVD that randomly jumps seconds or minutes ahead, without warning. In some cases, you might be dealing with a dirty laser in your CD or DVD deck; more often, however, the culprit is a scratched disc.

The good news is that it is possible to repair scratches in the polycarbonate plastic coating that protects the underlying layer of data on a DVD or CD, as long as the scratch isn't too deep.

Solution: Polish the scratches with a little furniture cleaner, perhaps with a follow-up dose of car polish. Just be sure to start from the center of the disc and rub outward, in a straight line; whatever you do, don't rub in circles.

For further info, visit www.popularmechanics.com. It has videos too!!!

Indonesia Welcomes Blackberry Pledge

Hi folks. It's been awhile right? Yeah, I wasn't feeling well lately. Still haven't recover by the way. How was your weekend? Mine was just more towards resting and chilling at home. Hopefully I can recover real soon.

I read an article in the papers and the net regarding Indonesia planning to revoke Research In Motion (RIM) aka Blackberry provider's license unless they comply to the government ruling on filtering pornography in their country. I gotta say, in Indonesia, BB is everywhere!!! Whether it be kids or adults, they're so into BB's. Sorry iPhone users. You're not in the league of BB in Indonesia at all. It'll be weird if there's an iPhone user there. On Tuesday, RIM agreed to filter its web services for pornography. A move which is good for the country as it is one of Asia's fastest growing telecommunication markets in the world.

Speaking of which, I can't wait to go to Bandung on 28th January!!! It's just.. err.. 16 more days to go!!! Woohoo!!!

iPhone Alarm Glitch

iPhone users were dealt with a huge blow a few days back as their alarms didn't sound off, causes many to oversleep. Apparently it was the second time in in just a few months that the alarm function fail to activate correctly. What more excuses can the CEO offer to consumers? First it was with the signal issue. Than he started comparing to other phones which I think just made a fool out of himself. I know that my opinion is more towards Blackberry as I'm currently using one.

The fact that there's plenty of uncovered grounds by Apple just makes people lose belief in the product. Let's be real. Do you want to buy a product that has a lot of issues? Their trying to be different but they left a whole lot of holes uncovered. To me, bad idea folks.

The war between iPhone & Blackberry rages on. Hahaha..

Review Of The Day: Blackberry Bold 9780

*Picture courtesy of Crackberry*

Hi folks. It's time for my very first review in this brand new blog. It's about the new Blackberry Bold 9780. I've played aorund with the device a few times and I found that it has its own flaws comparing from the previous Bold devices. Have a quick look on the review below. Personally, I'd prefer Torch 9800. Hehehe..

Blackberry Bold 9780 Summary
 

Pros
* Black look is really a nice touch.
* Doesn't mess with the 9700 keyboard success (mainly trackpad)
* Blackberry OS 6
* More memory and megapixels than its predecessor 9700

Cons
* Need a way to disable the homescreen views on BlackBerry 6 (a lot of accidental scrolling going on).
* BlackBerry 6 really makes you wish there was a touchscreen and a bit more screen size to work with.
* Doesn't mess with the success of the 9700 enough - hard to get excited about minor improvements.

Bottom Line
The BlackBerry Bold 9780 improves upon the already-awesome BlackBerry Bold 9700 by adding more memory, a better camera, and the new BlackBerry 6 operating system right out of the box. BlackBerry 6 brings with it a lot of improvements and new features, including a faster web browsing experience, but also makes you wish the 9780 featured a touchscreen - BB6 wants to be touched!