Samsung’s Galaxy S IV hasn’t even been revealed yet and news of another top-tier Samsung smartphone is already threatening to steal some of its spotlight. The Korea Times reported earlier today that the Korean electronics giant is busy working on a Galaxy Note phablet followup with a 5.9-inch display behind closed doors. If the Korea Times’ report holds true then Samsung is taking a more measured approach to how it scales up smartphone screen sizes — as PocketNow points out this is (thankfully?) a hair smaller than what some earlier rumors suggested, since for a while there it looked like Samsung was considering pushing out a phablet with a 6.3-inch screen. The Times’ source also noted that the Note III would sport an eight-core Exynos processor, a not-so-subtle reference to Samsung’s Exynos 5 Octa chipset. Samsung isn’t the first to push up against that 6-inch barrier, and they’ll hardly be the last. Chinese OEM Huawei blew past it earlier this year when it unveiled the hefty Ascend Mate and its 6.1-inch screen at CES, and ZTE revealed its 5.7-inch Grand Memo during Mobile World Congress. For better or worse, the plus-sized phone trend doesn’t seem to be going anywhere. In the past I’ve asked how big is too big for these sorts of phablets, but looking back that’s sort of a restrictive question. The word “phablet” doesn’t have a universally accepted definition (it’s usually just used to refer to big honking phones) — perhaps the better question is at what point are devices like the Note and Grand Memo more tablet than phone? For what it’s worth, Samsung and rivals like Huawei and Asus seem keen on making that sort of distinction a meaningless one. The Korea Times report comes just days after Samsung pulled back the curtain on its Galaxy Note 8.0 tablet in Barcelona during Mobile World Congress — it’s the company’s smallest Note tablet to date and some versions of the device feature the ability to make voice calls. Asus (perhaps swept up in a fit of wordplay-induced whimsy) also showed off its 7-inch FonePad tablet at MWC, and touted its ability to place voice calls almost as much as its reasonable price tag.
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I love hardware. That’s why I want you guys to bring some of the coolest hardware projects imaginable to Disrupt NY this year. That’s why I want you guys in our Hardware Alley. Hardware Alley is a one-day celebration of hardware startups both young and old. The goal has always been to show off amazing hardware that we have written about over the past few months, as well as a few surprises. Last Disrupt we featured the guys from Thermovape, Makerbot, and Lit Motors. This year we want to fill Disrupt NY with more amazing companies. For more details on Disrupt head over here. We’re looking for new or even unlaunched products, as well as potential Kickstarter projects. Prototypes are fine as long as they’re amazing. You can see the previous Hardware Alley participants here. You can sign up here. Bootstrappers can contact me directly at john@techcrunch.com if you need a break on price. Hope to see you in the alley… the Hardware Alley. Our sponsors help make Disrupt happen. If you are interested in learning more about sponsorship opportunities, please contact our amazing sponsorship team here sponsors@techcrunch.com.
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LifeBeam is kicking off an Indiegogo campaign for a new smart cycling helmet that uses smart sensors to track your heart rate. LifeBeam is an Israel-based startup that thus far has specialized in aerospace technology that is used to track the vital signs of fighter jet pilots and astronauts. Instead of bulky chest strap monitors, Lifebeam uses their own specialized sensors that are built into the helmet to track their heart rate and vitals. The people behind LifeBeam then asked themselves, “What if we put that technology into a smart cycling helmet?” Thus this helmet was born. The aptly named SMART is just that. The helmet uses Bluetooth to relay all the information the LifeBeam sensors collect instantly onto monitoring devices, fitness watches, and smartphones. LifeBeam has little experience designing and producing bicycle helmets, of course, so it’s turned to the popular cycling gear outfit Laser Sport to handle things on that end of the business. The finished product, if LifeBeam can raise enough money, should be a pretty handsome looking cycling helmet with some very high-end sensing technology. “We are proud to present the world’s first smart cycling helmet,” LifeBeam says in their IndieGogo video. “Our unique sensing technology, partnered with Lazer Sport helmets, create high end cycling helmets that allow continuous measurement of heart rate and motion.” LifeBeam is seeking to raise at least $50,000, and a starting contribution of $149 will get you your very own SMART helmet. If you’re an avid cycler and this seems like something you need, you can check out their IndieGogo page here.
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Apple’s iPhone made up some ground in the most recent comScore smartphone OEM market share numbers, covering the three-month period ending in January 2013. Apple’s share rose from 34.3 percent curing the previous quarter to 37.8 percent, a point change of 3.5. Samsung’s share also rose, going from 19.5 percent to 21.4 percent, growth of 1.9 percentage points. HTC and Motorola shed share, maintaining their third and fourth-place spots but each losing nearly as much share Samsung gained. ComScore also measured smartphone platform share, and found that Google’s Android accounted for 52.3 percent of overall U.S. smartphone subscribers aged 13 or older, a drop of 1.3 percentage points vs. the previous quarter. Apple’s iOS gained ground, adding 3.5 percentage points to its share, going from 34.3 percent share in the quarter ending October 2012, to 37.8 percent in the one that just ended in January. In other words, according to comScore’s number, Apple was the big winner for the holiday season. Which makes a lot of sense, given that it released the iPhone 5 in September, and the device continued to see supply constraints through October and November leading into the holiday sales season. Samsung’s flagship device, the Galaxy S III, had been on the market since June 2012. In terms of platforms vying for third place, BlackBerry shed nearly 2 percentage points of its share during the quarter, but a lot of that was likely due to the imminent release of BB10. The first BB10 devices didn’t go on sale anywhere in the world until the end of the month, and they have yet to arrive officially at any U.S. carriers. Next quarter results should be a better indicator of how BlackBerry will fare alongside Microsoft in the U.S. in the war for a third modern smartphone platform. Apple’s share of the smartphone market was also up from the three-month period ending in December, when comScore pegged it at 36.3 percent, with Samsung up to 21.0 percent, representing growth of 2.0 and 2.3 percentage points respectively. These two continue to slug it out at the top, but the most recent numbers show Apple pulling ahead at a faster rate. We’ll see if the Galaxy S IV launch, likely coming sometime next week, has any influence on consumer buying choices when it comes to the U.S. smartphone market.
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Like many complex 3D-printed projects, this violin isn’t entirely made on a 3D printer but it’s interesting nonetheless. It is a violin that costs about $12 to build and uses paper, 3D printed parts, and some cheap wire to make an instrument that, while not pretty to look at, is definitely capable of making some sort of music. The project, run by Alex Davies, is definitely in the extreme DIY vein. To make the violin, they 3D printed a mold for the body, laid material over it (in this case, paper) and prepared a neck out of cardboard. Here’s the bill of materials, such as it is: Some newspaper, pilfered from the bus stop. Flour and water for the wheat paste. A 3D printer, and maybe 4 dollars worth of plastic. Some picture hanging wire, pilfered from my room mate. A drill, with a few drill bits. A bottle of chai tea liquor. The team even went so far as to make their own strings using a bit of wire and a drill. They used 3D-printed ABS plastic for some of the parts and used papier-mâché for the body, which seems to work fine. It’s obviously no Stradivarius but the fact that it’s even slightly playable is a great bit of luck and, with a bit of refinement I could see this as a real, usable product. In fact, the paper “exceeded expectations” in the sound department. The trick with 3D printing is that it can be used to make many things but not everything. Ideally most 3D printing projects should require as little hands-on crafting as possible but this is obviously not always the case. However, the DIY movement has to start somewhere, even if it’s with a poor, beleaguered violinist causing a handmade instrument to yowl in pain. You can read more about the project here. via YAxis
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The Galaxy S IV leaks are coming fast, from a number of sources including the company itself, and this morning brings two in rapid succession. First, as Matt reported earlier, shots depicting the addition of new Smart screen settings from a version of Android 4.2.1 for the Galaxy S III surfaced, and now another source is claiming to have received images of the same thing from a U.S. model Galaxy S IV. The Galaxy S IV screenshots come from GSM Israel, a blog with a pretty solid track record in reporting early leak information. This time around, the blog say it’s very confident that these screenshots are legit, as they come from a “very reliable” source. Another reason to believe these are the real thing? They match up pretty closely to the earlier GS III screen leaks depicting similar changes to that device’s settings screens, as you can see in the side-by-side image below. Alongside a screen that seems to confirm Samsung will indeed be including “Smart scroll” in the new version of its Galaxy S smartphone, along with features that change screen orientation, pause media playback and disable screen timeout based on head positioning, these leaks also indicate we’ll see the rumored 1.8GHz quad-core processor powering this phone. Data from the Quick System Info Pro app also suggest rumors about the GS IV’s 1920×1080 pixel screen, with Retina-busting 440 ppi pixel density and an approximately 5-inch display, are also accurate. There’s also a screen of the device’s camera options, which indicate it’ll be able to max out at 13 megapixels, another oft-rumored spec for the still-unannounced device. Samsung likely won’t have many surprises left to deliver on stage when it unveils the Galaxy S IV next Thursday, March 14 at a presentation in New York City, but this still looks like a phone that will help Samsung continue its Android device sales dominance. And we’ll still be on hand to make sure you get the news and confirmations of these features live as they happen.
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I can’t tell you how many times I wished my virtual pottery collection in Let’s Create! Pottery, a fun game on iOS and Android that lets you sculpt and paint little pottery pieces, could be brought to real life. Now through the magic of 3D printing, I can do just that. Inside the game, you can sculpt and paint your pottery piece just as you would in previous versions of the game. Once you put the finishing touches on your pot, you’ll see that there’s a new option to “print”. This takes you to a page where you choose the size of your pot and put in an order to Sculpteo, a 3D printing firm based in France. A small pot, around 2 inches tall, can be ordered for around $8 minus shipping. Larger sizes are a little more expensive. A medium pot (4 inches) will cost $30 while a large (6 inches) will cost around $100. Let’s Create! Pottery shipped a review unit to our offices, where the 3D printed pottery piece in question arrived in a quaint wooden box. Inside the box, I found the pot nestled in a bundle of hay, which was a nice little touch. While the future of 3D printing looks towards producing entire houses and automobiles, this is a nice little reminder that it’s still immensely useful for the little stuff.
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Hungry for a blue Raspberry Pi, anyone? RS Components has just that. With a blue board, blue casing, and a certificate of authenticity, this limited Model B Revision 2 is a great way to celebrate the Pi’s 1st birthday. Too bad you can’t just buy it. These anniversary boards are not for sale. RS Components is issuing them to a variety of developer, enthusiast and non-profit channels. But since the Raspberry Pi is aimed at these markets anyway, this is a noble move. No doubt several will show up for sale on eBay and fan boards anyway, where they’ll fetch crazy prices from diehard fans. RS Components is also giving several away on twitter. DesignSpark has all the details. The Raspberry Pi had an incredible first year. More than a million boards were sold and new models are in the works. Thanks to its low price and versatility, the Raspberry Pi is introducing (and in some cases, reintroducing) legions of computer users to the magic of raw computing. “I remember when Raspberry Pis were rare enough that I had a spreadsheet that told me where they were in the world,” founder Eben Upton previously told John Biggs. “Now we’re a million Pis in.”
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FreedomPop has spent the past year trying to turn the wireless industry on its ear with its freemium mobile Internet service, but the Niklas Zennstrom-backed company is now setting its sights on replacing people’s pricey home Internet contracts. After teasing folks with pre-orders for wireless modems late last year, FreedomPop officially opened up its home service to the masses this morning. Here’s FreedomPop’s home service in a nutshell: users who pay $89 for the company’s Hub Burst wireless modem and sign up for a basic account are treated to 1GB of free wireless Internet access right out of the gate. That home cap seems a little on the low side considering just how much data people are consuming these days, but with median household data usage under 5.5GB FreedomPop figures there’s plenty of room to make a splash by targeting folks who just don’t lean on the web all that much. While FreedomPop home users are treated to a higher free data cap than their wireless counterparts, most of the service’s nuts and bolts remain the same regardless of what device people are hooking up to it. FreedomPop’s goal of bringing free Internet to the unconnected (or underconnected) masses may seem altruistic at first glance, but the company is naturally in this business to make some money. The plan? That users will participate in affiliate promotions and pay extra monthly fees in exchange for higher monthly rate caps (think $9.99/month for 10GB of access) and a slew of value-added features. Subscribers can also effectively share their monthly data ration (a feature that was only just recently fired up) with friends and family as needed. If any of this has managed to pique your interest, remember that Clearwire’s WiMAX network (which FreedomPop leans extensively on) isn’t quite as fleshed out as the 4G networks offered by other providers. That said, FreedomPop is still planning a switch to Sprint’s LTE network at some point this year, so that FreedomPop’s data offerings may soon become much more appealing.
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The Kinect is arguably Microsoft’s most important innovation of the past decade, and has done more for changing the nature of computer interaction than pretty much any other recently created input devices. Today, Microsoft Research has demoed how it’s about to get even better, with the addition of hand recognition complete with refined gesture support. Microsoft is showing off the new features at its TechFest even this week at Redmond HQ, and The Verge has a video of the new capabilities in action. As you can see from the video, you can use pinch-to-zoom, as well as hand gripping motions that allow for panning and scrolling too. The technique employs machine learning to recognize the difference between an open and closed hand, which is then integrated into Windows games and apps. document.getElementById('wpcom-iframe-form-50e04f4a0b8d6203783bddb2c0dee12c').submit(); The video shows navigating maps, as well as playing Jetpack Joyride in Windows 8, and shows how a simple close finger gesture can be recognized as a mouse click essentially, which would be a very handy tool to add to Kinect’s Windows-based powers. The upgraded features are destined for Windows soon (though no specific timeline was given), though sadly there’s nothing to announce yet for bringing the enhanced gesture detection powers to Xbox. The Kinect will soon have its own fair share of competitors when it comes to gesture-based input for desktop computing. The Leap Motion Controller ships May 13 to pre-order customers, and promises to deliver extremely fine gesture detection on both Windows and OS X, to the point where it should work for virtual painting and drawing applications, with a module much smaller and without the same physical space requirements as the Kinect. The MYO armband from Thalmic labs is also attracting a lot of early attention for its own, body sensor-based gesture control powers. Microsoft did some terrific ground breaking in this space, but now the company has keep pace with a number of hungry young startups eager to blow it wide open. These new feature additions for Kinect for Windows should help Microsoft keep the competition interesting.
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If these leaked screenshots are the real deal, the upcoming Samsung Galaxy S IV will feature a rather innovative way to scroll. Called “Smart scroll” the phone can apparently scroll based on a user’s head angle. This will work in browsers and emails. Novelty? Probably. Innovation? Absolutely. Auto-tracking is the next frontier in user interaction. Intelligent eye-tracking would result in a revolutionary paradigm shift. Contrary to earlier rumors, Samsung’s Smart scroll doesn’t seem to track eye movement, but the leaked screenshots seem to indicate a similar result. Sammobile notes that these screenshots were taken from a leaked Android 4.2.1 build intended for the Galaxy S III but insists the Galaxy S IV will have the features as well. There’s no word on how this interaction takes place. Chances are it uses the front-facing camera in some way rather than including new tracking hardware. But, if true, Samsung is again pushing forward the smartphone. Samsung is now a global leader in smartphones. It’s not following anymore. The company is charging forward ahead of other vendors and innovation is leading the way. The Galaxy S III is loaded with clever features not found in other smartphones: Direct Call, S Beam, Pop up play. Apple won the early smartphone wars thanks to similar clever functions. Apple’s innovation turned to iteration. But not at Samsung. And consumers are reacting in kind, making Samsung the largest smartphone vendor. It’s likely that the next Galaxy S will feature other novel functions along with head tracking. All secrets will be revealed on March 16th when Samsung unveils it at a massive NYC event.
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Public school systems are cheerfully decorated dictatorships: discipline, standards, and testing are the driving concepts of modern k-12 education. The very reason why districts purchase bundles of the same textbooks is so they can keep classrooms in lockstep alignment as teachers meticulous meet timely instructional goals. Amplify, NewsCorp’s new education division, finally revealed its long-awaited flagship product: a sophisticated tablet designed specifically for schools, which many finally be the perfect bureaucratic blend of classroom management, assessment, and monitoring that schools need to adopt technology en mass. But what in the sam hill is News Corp. doing messing around in education? Well, it’s true that Rupert Murdoch is one of the more well-known (and polarizing) figures in the media landscape; his reputation precedes him, and it’s not one that’s typically been associated with education reform. While the News Corp. founder’s sudden transformation into an education reform advocate may seem a head-scratcher, the motivation becomes clear when, in Murdoch’s terms, one considers that K-12 education is a $500 billion sector in the U.S. alone — and one that remains relatively untouched by corporations like News Corp. A little over two years ago, Murdoch set out leverage the News Corp. brand to help fix a public education system that, in his words, has “lower standards than American Idol,” hiring one of the more prominent figures in American education, former chancellor of New York schools, Joel Klein, to pursue opportunities in EdTech. With Klein as his new education guru, the pair quickly made their first big strategic move, acquiring New York-based software, assessment and data services startup, Wireless Generation, for a whopping $360 million. However, News Corp.’s plans for education were quickly derailed by the infamous phone-hacking scandal that forced Klein leave his position to lead the company’s internal investigation. After two years of investigations, trials and more, News Corp. rebranded its education unit last summer as “Amplify,” revealing some of the basic tenets that would shape its digital strategy, which include “assessment via mobile tools, curriculum design and the online distribution of resources via AT&T-powered tablets,” as Greg wrote at the time. Klein and company are convinced that, for public education reform to be successful, the private sector needs to get more involved — as does the role of technology in the classroom to help both teachers teach more effectively and help students learn. Amplify attempts to put those ideas into practice, by allowing the company to not only sell its curriculum on any tablet makes its way into schools, but by betting that schools will be willing to fork over a pretty penny to access blended learning tools (and an infrastructure to store learning data) all through a custom tablet. Of course, Ammplify isn’t the first to offer these types of learning tools on mobile devices, as many startups (and even bigs like Pearson) already have similar cross-platform, web-based tools on the market. However, no particular device or platform has emerged as the clear leader, and by offering classroom management tools and features that one would expect from News Corp, like a kill switch that allows teachers to limit students’ access to apps on the tablet, Amplify hopes to get a leg up. document.getElementById('wpcom-iframe-form-304e00329a3845a9c4457ebe42eb7bfe').submit(); As to those features: Amplify’s Android-based 10″ tablet comes preloaded with all the basic learning software that teachers need to dole out information on any given subject: textbooks, multimedia lessons, Encyclopedia Britannica, and a graphing calculator. It even includes the widely popular Khan Academy suite of YouTube-based lectures, which were recently converted to an off-line textbook-style format. More importantly, Amplify’s tablet suite is a managerial dream: teachers can carefully monitor students behavior, administrators can deploy content across an entire grade-level, and districts can evaluate schools with custom standardized tests. Amplify gives teachers, as both disciplinarian and educator, impressive control. They can selectively enable or disable apps to direct student learning; distracted students get an “eyes on teacher” alert if their usage behavior indicates an inattentive mind. Impromptu polls and tests individually evaluates each student and gives them customized refreshers. The very cost-structure of the tablet system is designed for administration. Even with a two-year subscription at $99 per year, the wifi-enabled tablet is still a pricey $299 (a 4G version is $349 with a $179/year contract). But, it’s meant to be purchased by whole schools, districts or states, and comes with 24-hour live technical support to ensure students are meeting goals in a timely fashion. If schools could replace some of their textbooks and IT overhead, the cost appears less daunting. But, it’s still high. Just as important, Amplify has been built around the Common Core, a new national curriculum guideline emphasizing career and college readiness. Yet, since the federal government can’t set national standards, schools have been left to fend for themselves and develop their own tests. Amplify’s evaluation wing aims to ease the confusion and develop a reliable set of measures that can easily be distributed school-wide with the click of a button. During Greg’s interview with Amplify CEO Joel Klein at Techcrunch’s Disrupt San Francisco, he made it clear that all of the wonderful hardware in the world won’t make a difference unless it’s built for the schools and teachers. There’s already a crowded market of education technology, from classroom management software ClassDojo, to tablet software from textbook giants McGraw-Hill and Pearson. Successful players in the education space knew that schools need scale, structure, and support. When Google entered the market, they got buy-in from state-level officials and now have over 20 million users. Klein, knows that education is a game of Monopoly: provide a school everything and ye shall receive everything. The result, in this case, may be the push that the education system needs to enter the 21st century.
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The Raspberry Pi mini computer won’t be blind for much longer: a video camera unit shown off last month that will allow Pi owners to build video applications is expected to go on sale in April, according to the Pi Foundation’s Liz Upton. “We’ve sent the first camera boards to production, and we’re expecting to be able to start selling them some time in April,” she writes on the Foundation blog. In the meanwhile, in a Google Glass style contest (but without the extortionate $1,500 price-tag — an entirely free giveaway in fact), the Foundation has 10 camera boards to gift to testers who will put the Pi’s Eye through its paces. The boards will go to folk who “have a magnificent, imaginative, computationally interesting thing you’d like to do with a Raspberry Pi camera board”, as Upton puts it, to help the Foundation do “extra-hard testing”. She writes: The reason we’re giving these cameras away is that we want you to help us to do extra-hard testing. We want the people we send these boards to to do something computationally difficult and imaginative with them, so that the cameras are pushed hard in the sort of bonkers scheme that we’ve seen so many of you come up with here before with your Pis, and so that we can learn how they perform (and make adjustments if necessary)… We want you to try to get the camera doing something imaginative. Think about playing around with facial recognition; or hooking two of them up together and modging the images together to create some 3d output; or getting the camera to recognise when something enters the frame that shouldn’t be there and doing something to the image as a result. We are not looking for entries from people who just want to take pictures, however pretty they are. (Dave Akerman: we’ve got one bagged up for you anyway, because the stuff you’re taking pictures of is cool enough to earn an exemption here. Everybody else, see Dave’s latest Pi in Space here. He’s put it in a tiny TARDIS.) Pi owners hankering to have an eye to play with should email iwantacamera@raspberrypi.org and explain exactly what they want to do with the board, backing up their application with example of prior project work (with or without cameras) and GitHub code or the like, says Upton. The Foundation also needs your postal address should you win. The competition is open worldwide until March 12.
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I had a little bit of time to play with the Chromebook Pixel today and I’m a regular user of the Acer C7, a $199 machine that is wildly underpowered but good enough on a bad day. I really like the concept and I really like ChromeOS – it’s a solid way to get a little browsing done, say, in a cyber cafe or hotel bar. It isn’t, however, an OS. As Linus Torvalds notes, the Pixel is an amazing piece of hardware and it makes you wonder just what other laptop manufacturers are thinking. It’s pricey, sure, but the touchscreen works well, the display is striking, and the styling is on par with the MacBook. Even MG (the G stands for Grumpy) liked it, and he doesn’t like anything. But then there’s the problem of apps. Torvalds writes: I’m still running ChromeOS on this thing, which is good enough for testing out some of my normal work habits (ie reading and writing email), but I expect to install a real distro on this soon enough. For a laptop to be useful to me, I need to not just read and write email, I need to be able to do compiles, have my own git repositories etc.. The creator of Linux, the paragon of pure computing, wants to install a “real distro.” Ouch. What the Chomebooks can’t yet do is run real applications. I’m currently dual-booting my C7 so I can install Skype on Ubuntu and you get this sense, once you’re in a real environment, that ChromeOS is like one of those “pre-OSes” that they used to stick on laptops so you could browse the web and watch movies without booting into Windows. It’s not all there. That’s fairly easy to fix: allow vendors to create real apps for the platform. After all, Google is the “open” company, right? There should be a way for me to jackhammer Skype and Audacity into the ChromeOS environment. After all, a beautiful big screen is useless when all you open on it is Gmail. Apps matter. As much as everyone clamors that Windows Phone and BB10 will thrive, they can’t do it without lots and lots and lots of apps. They can’t win without a dedicated developer base and groups of users who go out of their way to learn programming just to program for their favorite platform. While web-based apps are fun, in theory, we’re just not there yet in terms of real value. In the uncanny valley of application programming, HTML5 and attendant technologies are too stiff and jerky, like the humans in the first Toy Story movie. We need a few more years to bake them into real usability. Until then, we’re stuck turning silk purses into sow’s ears (or, depending on your opinion of Linux, silk purses into penguins). I can’t, for example, recommend that my Mom pick up a Chromebook because she’ll immediately hit a brick wall when she wants to, say, Skype my in-laws. We can regress the argument down to “Well, they can use Google Hangouts” but that doesn’t solve the problem. In human-computer interaction, there should be more than one way to do something. That way, I’m sad to say, is through the introduction of a full SDK.
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We’re just over a week away from the Galaxy S IV’s official unveiling in New York City, and the pieces are starting to fall into place. Sure, we still don’t know what the thing is going to look like, but persistent rumors have pegged the device as sporting the same sort of plastic body that Samsung has been (in?)famous for. While she wouldn’t weigh in on the Galaxy S IV specifically, Y.H. Lee, executive VP of Samsung’s mobile unit, told CNET’s Roger Cheng that the love-it-or-hate-it plastic chassis endemic to the company’s gadgets aren’t going anywhere just yet. According to Lee, it’s just as much about practicality as it is about style: In order to churn out (and sell) as many devices as Samsung does, the company has to pay plenty of attention to how efficiently they can be made. Naturally, Samsung can’t just pump out loads of shoddy devices and call it a day, so durability weighs heavily on the company’s mind when it comes time to picking out materials for a final design. Meanwhile, would-be rivals like HTC have embraced metal with open arms in its latest flagship device designs. The benefits are as plentiful as they are subjective — the adjective that seems to be bandied about most often is “premium,” since these metal-clad devices tend to feel more weighty and substantial when compared to the sorts of flimsy plastic bodies that many Android-friendly OEMs still cling to. I’ll be the first to admit that I prefer handsets that feel like they could withstand some abuse, though in fairness I’ve found that devices like the Galaxy S III and the Galaxy Note II can handle their fair share of turmoil despite having light, plastic bodies. Granted, I can see how the choice of materials could prove to be occasionally problematic for the companies involved here. Crafting a device like the HTC One or an iPhone 5 out of aluminum can be more exacting (and therefore more time-consuming), not to mention more expensive than sticking with a less ornate body. But here’s the thing — Samsung doesn’t need to play by those same rules. It’s an undeniable juggernaut in the smartphone space, and has proven ably over the past months and years that yes, people will often buy their smartphones even when faced with alternatives that arguably feel more premium. That’s not to say that Samsung will never rethink its position on the materials it uses. Lee concedes that the company “listen[s] to the market” and tries to accommodate it, so that sentiment could soon change if the masses demand it.
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China’s technology Ministry is worried about the dominance of Google’s Android platform, according to Reuters. The news agency links to a whitepaper authored by the research arm of China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology which contains the above graph — so it’s not difficult to see what the Ministry’s issue is: Android has grown from a standing start in 2008 to saturate the local market, taking 72.4 per cent in Q3 2012 (Gartner sourced data). According to Reuters, the Ministry’s whitepaper is critical of China’s dependency on a platform it argues is ultimately controlled by Mountain View. “Our country’s mobile operating system research and development is too dependent on Android. While the Android system is open source, the core technology and technology roadmap is strictly controlled by Google,” the whitepaper states. It also claims that Google has deliberately impeded the progress of some Chinese companies seeking to develop their own operating systems (presumably by forking Android) by delaying code sharing, and accuses Google of using commercial agreements to restrain the business development of mobile devices of these companies. The paper goes on to pile praise on homegrown companies such as Alibaba, Baidu and Huawei for creating their own systems. Google declined to comment on the allegations in the whitepaper when contacted by TechCrunch. Alibaba’s Aliyun OS was going to be used by Acer to power a Chinese smartphone planned for launch last year — but cancelled, at least in part, after Google intervened. (Google argued that Acer was building what it described as a “non-compatible” Android device, having previously committed to building compatible devices.) Presumably this is the sort of commercial pressure the whitepaper is critical of. Alibaba also declined to comment on the Chinese whitepaper when contacted by Techcrunch. Another graph in the whitepaper pegs the Aliyun OS’s share of the 2012 Chinese market at around one per cent — versus 86.4 per cent for Android:  Reuters speculates that the Chinese government could be planning to impose regulations on Android to try to rein it in and give Chinese companies a chance to take some a greater share. That could also be good news for smaller foreign players such as Finnish startup Jolla, which is using the MeeGo open source OS as the foundation of its new Sailfish platform. Jolla is targeting its debut smartphone at China first, as well as setting up a base in Hong Kong to build an alliance around Sailfish. It has also attracted investment from China. The smartphone market in China is undoubtedly huge — Jolla’s CEO describes it as a “300 million device market”.  China also passed the U.S. as the world’s top country for active Android and iOS smartphones and tablets last month so it’s also a growing market. But while Android undoubtedly dominates the OS landscape not all Chinese Android-powered device are equal since a large proportion of homegrown mobile makers heavily customise Android and do not carry any of the standard Google services such as its Play store. Analyst Enders Analysis created the below chart last year depicting Android page view data, sourced from Baidu, which illustrates how smaller Chinese device makers are increasingly dominating China’s device landscape — accounting for 39 per cent of the page views on Baidu properties in September 2012 vs just 22 per cent for the otherwise globally dominant Android OEM Samsung: “Almost none” of the ‘other’ category of devices in this chart have Google services on them, according to Enders analyst Benedict Evans — so you could say that while Google’s platform is huge in China, Google itself may have far less influence than Android’s spread suggests because such a large swathe of locally made Androids are cut off from its services and thus can’t generate advertising sales for Mountain View. In a recent blog post discussing Google’s failure to deliver any Android activation data since September 2012, Evans also notes that: “The great majority of Android devices sold in China, which are probably a third of total Android sales, come with no Google services installed, including no Google Play, and hence are not even included in Google’s activation numbers, since signing into Google Play is what counts as ‘activation’.”
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Don’t worry, the Samsung Galaxy S IV won’t look like an iPad mini with the camera relocated after all. Famed Android device leaker Evleaks tweeted out a render he suggested was the upcoming Galaxy S IV, but it turns out there was less to the image than meets the eye: it was in fact the work of an Expansys web designer, creating a placeholder image based on exactly no insider information, for illustration purposes only. Now normally, a bad leak isn’t a story so much as it is an expected outcome of obsessively watching the ‘nets for the slightest hint of the next big thing. But in this case, the source was Evleaks, the masked and anonymous leaker of some of the most reliable unverified pre-release information on the web. Seeing that kind of track record marred with a gaffe this big is enough to shake your faith in the whole dirty business. The original Evleaks tweet where he shared the image to begin with is long gone, but it survives in retweets and images saved by other publications. For its part, Expansys says it has been engaged in a massive effort via its social media channels to spread the word about the true source of the pics – even going so far as to claim that Evleaks “stole them and added his own logo.” We’ve heard separately that the image wasn’t stolen by Evleaks directly, but came in through their usual channels. Over the course of this morning, the Expansys social media accounts have been actively responding to RTs of the original Evleaks post in order to direct people to the correct source. Really, this is a good thing, because I didn’t want that phone depicted in the render anyways. But is it the end of an era for the normally solid Evleaks? Or just a one time slip up? Whatever the case, a little more transparency than deleting the tweet and pretending it never happened probably isn’t the best course of action.
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Apple received a patent from the USPTO today (via AppleInsider) that describes a technology that would allow device casings to employ a combination of pressure and capacitive sensitivity to detect input. At the very least, the tech could be used to map functions like those Apple currently assigns to the home, power and volume buttons to areas of an iPhone or iPad’s bezel. Other uses for the patent, which was originally filed in 2009, are described by Apple as a backup or alternate input method for when standard capacitive-based touch interaction either won’t work or is impractical. Capacitive input, the kind used in the iPhone’s touchscreen currently, is much more accurate and responsive than resistive input, but it doesn’t work when wearing gloves, or when there’s sufficient grime on a screen, or when unwanted input signals are coming from a wrist resting on the display and confusing the sensors. Apple’s system is proposed as an alternative input mechanism for those kinds of situations. And since it’s not exactly a traditional resistive (pressure-only) resistive input method, it could also use capacitive clues to make it more refined as well as being much more sensitive to changes in pressure than capacitive systems. The combination of both types could guard against accidental input when a device is in a pocket, for example. As the system could live right in the housing of a device (the iPhone 5′s metal casing would be pretty perfect for it, in fact), it could greatly alter the way people interact with Apple devices. You could put scroll bars on either side of a smartphone, for instance, so that moving a finger or thumb up or down with differing pressure pages through content faster or slower. The company could build context-dependent controls into the back or side housing of all-metal devices with this tech, or even use it to add input to an iWatch housing. The benefits are mainly that it could provide a way to keep the screen clear, which becomes more important as we move to devices with smaller bezels, or smaller displays in the case of an iWatch. As with any Apple patent, however, this isn’t a roadmap. But it could be a neat way of adding another dimension of interaction to compete with recent changes from other OEMs, including touch input through gloves and eye movement tracking.
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The Galaxy S IV, Samsung’s next big flagship smartphone, is only around a week from its public introduction, and it’s getting mighty leaky. Today, the NYT reported that Samsung will be including an eye scrolling feature in the GS IV’s software, and now a set of benchmarks have emerged that supposedly lay bare the smartphone’s complete hardware profile. Italian site HDBlog.it received word of a record of an Antutu benchmark from the device, which was later also found by SamMobile, and which details the specs associated with the Galaxy S IV supposedly tested. The test results reveal that the smartphone has an Exynos 5410 1.8GHz processor, with an ARM PowerVR SGX 544MP GPU. It was running Android 4.2, had a screen just under 5-inches with a resolution of 1920×1080, and featured a 13-megapixel rear camera, along with Bluetooth 4.0 and capacity of either 16 or 32GB. The display stats line up with what we’ve heard earlier about the Galaxy S IV’s screen, as do the processor details, the amount of on-board memory and camera information. The chipset supports GSM/WCDMA/LTE networks, which means that unlike previous Galaxy smartphones, this one will be a true worldphone, if these specs prove to be the real deal. The performance results on the GS IV should reassure any users who might have been expecting a less-than-impressive hardware release, following the NYT’s report earlier that the launch event March 14 will focus mostly on software: it easily beats current category leading devices like the Optimus G and Nexus 4, as well as the Galaxy Note II and Galaxy S III.
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Samsung is about to show off a new flagship phone at an event on March 14, and details continue to leak out about the new smartphone. The New York Times’ Brian X. Chen reports today that eye movement-based content scrolling will be among the Galaxy S IV’s features. Chen’s source, a Samsung employee, also says that the emphasis will be on software, not hardware at the upcoming press event. Samsung’s next smartphone will be able to track a user’s eyes and scroll articles and other types of content based on where they’re focused, the source said, so that if a user was reading a web page and hit the bottom, the device could automatically scroll more content up into view. There’s no guarantee it will be demoed on stage, according to the article, but the Korean company should be showing off more new software features, instead of demoing hardware advancements. A software-centric approach to an Android flagship device launch is nothing new. HTC showed off its own new flagship device, the One, at an event in NYC last month and the bulk of the presentation focused on Sense 5.0. Android OEMs seem keen to highlight what it is that makes the experience of using their devices fundamentally different from using the Android phones of other makers, a good strategy when each successive generation of devices seem to share more in common than not when it comes to specs and internal components. The NYT points out that Samsung already has trademarks on “Eye Scroll” technology, as it could be applied to smartphones as well as tablets, cameras and other devices. A trademark in this case might actually be more indicative of product plans than a patent, since it demonstrates at least some intent to actually bring the named product to market. Eye movement-based scrolling could work well, but only if perfectly executed. If the tech registers too many false positives or disappoints in other regards, it’ll end up being more of an annoyance than a feature, and users will simply turn it off. But if executed properly, it could definitely be a decent differentiating factor. And if Samsung opens up access to scrolling features to third-party apps, that could really help its platform stand apart from others in the Android space. But again, if it’s even a bit touchy in terms of implementation, the eye-tracking tech will likely be more of a forgettable edition than anything with real value, at least for this generation.
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As the race toward mainstream wearable computing heats up, watches are hot and smart watches are hotter. In fact, word on the street is that Apple is working on a new smart watch that would integrate with its iCloud and iOS devices. But as it stands now, the majority of great “smart watches” available are coming from smaller companies. We took a look at the Pebble, the Metawatch, and the Basis smart watches for an episode of Fly Or Die, to help you get a handle on which is best for you, if any at all. To start, John and I both believe that the whole idea of a smart watch isn’t everything it’s cracked up to be. Sure, it’s nice to have a second channel for incoming information like texts and calls, but unfortunately the watch isn’t all that conducive to action (replies, answering calls, etc.). Plus, watches are meant to be every day devices, and with the battery requirements of a smart watch (even a whole week, which is promised from the Pebble), remembering to plug in your wrist watch on a regular basis can grow tiring. However, it’s hard to argue with the cool factor brought along with a smart watch. If, to you, that outweighs being not-quite-satisfied with the end-product, then we should move on to the compare and contrast section of this smart watch PSA. The Pebble was a Kickstarter phenomena, thanks to its E-Paper display which gives the watch face a crisp, readable look at all times, even in direct sunlight. The Pebble also hooks into iOS and Android for email, text, and call notifications, and has customizable watch faces. If you find yourself focusing on the design aspect of a smart watch, you’re probably looking for the $150 Pebble. The Metawatch comes out of Fossil, so it looks much more like a standard watch than either of the other options. It’s got a leather band and a metal/glass face. It feels heavier than the Pebble, but doesn’t have as crisp of a display. However, the Metawatch has an API that will let you send almost anything to the watch. This one’s for someone ready to get into the smart watch world but not ready to let go of the solid, classic build of a watch. The Basis can’t really compete with the Pebble or the Metawatch, as it’s more of a quantified self device with a built-in clock. It measures motion, skin temperature, heart rate, calories burned, sleep patterns, and other physiological indicators, and connects to your phone via Bluetooth and dedicated apps. All in all, it’s a fine looking $200 device that’s much more suited to the fitness guru than the timepiece snob or the tech geek. As for smart watches in general, John and I both believe they will have their time. We’re just not sure that time is today.
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Apple’s iWatch will run full-flavored iOS, according to a new report, and the company is indeed targeting an end-of-year launch, but will first have to tackle battery life issues. According to sources speaking to The Verge, Apple’s prototype watch hardware is currently getting only a couple of days out of its battery, and the company is targeting at least four to five (around what the Pebble gets) before ramping up for a public release. The news that Apple is opting to go with a reworked version of iOS on the iWatch instead of an alternative system is very interesting, if true. In the sixth generation iPod nano, which was released in 2010, Apple used a separate mobile OS that resembled iOS but was actually a lighter-weight and much more limited platform. Using iOS instead of the nano’s operating system has some advantages for Apple (a single code base across its mobile line, more potential for third-party developers, and a familiar system for new users), it also comes with big challenges, and potentially adds one more degree of fragmentation to Apple’s mobile OS. It’s worth noting that Apple originally launched the iPhone’s operating system as being the same as OS X, a somewhat confusing move that they eventually went back on when they began referring to it as iPhone OS, and later iOS. The company could be taking a similar approach to the iWatch at launch, with an OS for the wrist-top computer that ends up diverging considerably from the version on the company’s phones and tablets, once modifications are built-in to account for its different features. If the reports are accurate, Apple is making the right move in pushing for better battery life. The value of a watch-based computer depends largely on its ability to operate inconspicuously: the reason wearable computing is attractive to begin with is that it promises to be less conspicuous, and easier to integrate into your everyday life than smartphones or tablets. An iWatch that needs to hit the charger every day loses a lot of that value. The Verge also says that Apple has work to do in terms of building in the proper pathways for transmitting information and notifications between an iPhone and an iWatch. That could prove the single-biggest source of information regarding the device and its development going forward; you can bet devs and Apple watchers will be going through iOS developer builds with a fine-toothed comb for evidence of any changes on that front.
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After taking so long to transition to its next-gen OS platform, the company formerly known as RIM has an awful lot riding on its first BlackBerry 10 handset, the Z10. The handset launched at the end of January in the U.K. and early February in Canada (and is due to make its official U.S. debut this month). Not a great sign, then, that some U.K. phone retailers appear to be cutting the price of Z10 tariffs, a mere month after launch — suggesting demand isn’t as strong as hoped, and that the device isn’t as competitive against the high end of Android and iOS as BlackBerry needs it to be. Both Carphone Warehouse and Vodafone have slashed tariffs, according to the Telegraph. It also appears that Phones 4u is offering cheaper deals too now. BB10 is BlackBerry’s attempt to turn around its sliding smartphone fortunes by offering a device to compete with the likes of the iPhone and Samsung’s Galaxy SIII. BlackBerry’s global smartphone marketshare fell to just 3.5 per cent in Q4 2012, according to analyst Gartner, down from 8.8 per cent in Q4 2011, while Samsung and iOS took 52 per cent of all smarphones sales in Q4 2012. Carphone Warehouse initially priced the BlackBerry Z10 from £36 per month on pay monthly contract, bundling the cost of the handset into that tariff. It is now offering the phone from as little as £29 per month, although that tariff includes a £29 up front free for the handset.  The Telegraph also says Vodafone has introduced a new web-only deal for the Z10, costing £33 per month (this tariff also requires an up front fee of £129). Phones 4u is also offering the Z10 on a £29 per month contract (again with a £29 charge for the handset), having initially launched the phone on contracts starting at £36 per month. It is also offering even cheaper tariffs, of around £20 per month, but with a much higher up front fee for the device. The Telegraph quotes James Faucette, an analyst at Pacific Crest, who said the tariff cuts move the Z10 away from the highest margin segment of the smartphone business. “We believe that meaningful price cuts so soon after launch, while probably at the initial discretion of the carriers, is likely to relegate the Z10 to being a mid-tier device with very low gross margins,” he said. BlackBerry has been making a lot of noise about Z10 sales but hasn’t backed up its hype with any hard numbers, saying only that demand had exceeded expectation and that the Z10 is selling in “large numbers“. We’ve reached out to BlackBerry, Carphone Warehouse and Phones 4u for comment on the tariff reductions and will update this story with any response. Asked how sales were going in the Z10′s launch market, the U.K., at the Mobile World Congress tradeshow in Barcelona last week, BlackBerry’s U.K. & Ireland MD Rob Orr also shied away from sharing any numbers, saying he was unable to provide much detail ahead of BlackBerry’s quarterly results. Early sales in the U.K. have been “very positive”, he told TechCrunch, adding: “I’m in a quiet period so I’ll caveat my statement with the fact that our fiscal year ends on [March 1st] and we publish results on the 28th. Regulated from a quiet period perspective I can’t share too much detail but I’m very pleased with the results, the partners are very pleased with the results. Take a look at some of the feedback on Phones 4u’s site or Vodafone’s site are very positive. “The feedback from our enterprise customers has been brilliant. Really really good. They love what we’ve done with BES 10, they’re aligned with the approach that we’re taking, they’re cracking on with all their internal trials and their user testing and all the stuff that enterprises do before they do mass rollouts. So I’m really pleased. Couldn’t really have asked more from the support I’ve had in the market.” Expect to get more concrete details on exactly how positive (or not) the BB10 launch has been when the company announces its fiscal Q4 and fiscal full year results at the end of this month. While the introduction of cheaper monthly tariffs may not help BlackBerry’s bottom line in the long run, it may help to drive a few more Z10 sales in the short term to to help buoy up its results. In the mean time, all the vague, non-quantifiable statements aren’t helping dispel the sense that RIM isn’t yet doing enough to dig itself out of the smartphone doldrums.
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Apple’s iWatch is the new primary focus of speculation for the company’s unannounced products, and a new article at Bloomberg today detailing its market potential also let slip that the wrist-mounted computer could arrive by the end of this year. Bloomberg’s source, which is one of the same that leaked details about the team within Apple working on the iWatch, said Apple hopes to have the device out to market “as soon as this year.” Bloomberg’s report today adds a bit more color about what we might expect to see from an Apple iWatch, too. The still-unconfirmed device would be able to make calls, check caller ID, relay map coordinates and carry a built-in pedometer and health monitoring sensors, according to the news publication’s source. That might mean another partnership with Nike for built-in fitness tracking, as we’ve seen in iPods and iPhones from the company to date. The news comes after reports from Apple supply partners and Gorilla Glass manufacturer Corning said that products based on its flexible Willow Glass product wouldn’t come to market for another three years, prompting many to assume that meant an iWatch was also at least three years out. Apple had patented a wrist-mounted computer based on flexible display tech, but that’s far from the company’s only option for producing an iWatch – it could easily take a more traditional form, like the Pebble smart watch. Bloomberg also notes that Apple’s chief product designer Jony Ive has also long had an interest in watches, and previously paid a visit with his Apple design team to Nike’s own watchmaking operations. Previously, Bloomberg reported that Apple has an internal team of as many as 100 individuals working on the iWatch project. Of course, despite the growing number of reports around the iWatch, Apple keeps its release timelines purposefully close to the chest for a reason: even if it was targeting a 2013 launch for the iWatch, missing that date wouldn’t actually constitute a delay since nothing has been officially announced. Accordingly, it’s always a good idea to treat rumors at this stage in the game with a healthy dose of skepticism, even when sourced from reputable publications. Still, Google wants to launch its own wearable computing product by year’s end, so there’s at least one reason for Apple to target the same time frame.
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Canon today announced the successful creation of a new full-frame CMOS sensor, designed exclusively for shooting video. The new sensor can capture full-HD video with extremely low noise in settings where it has been hard for traditional cameras to even operate at all in the past. The sensor will have immediate benefits for astrophotography and for use in security systems, but the developments here could eventually help improve the quality of professional and consumer cameras, too. The new sensor from Canon features large pixels, each of which measure around 7.5x those found on the sensor Canon uses in its EOS-1DX DSLR. The larger pixels are paired with new noise reduction technologies that counteract the added noise effect of using larger pixels, which allows for full HD video shooting in environments as dark as an outdoor setting with just a crescent moon providing illumination. That means it can capture video with fully visible objects even in situations where the human eye would be hard-pressed to make out any definite shapes. Canon has already built a prototype device to test out the new sensor, and captured things like footage from a room where only lit incense sticks provided any light, the Geminid meteor shower and other night sky scenes. The prototype would be most useful in the immediate future for astronomical and nature photography, medial research and security implementations, but through “further development,” Canon imagines similar CMOS sensor tech will also be able to greatly improve other more creative pursuits. Low light video is already an impressive feature of full-frame DSLR cameras, but a sensor like this that takes things to the extreme could take nighttime video capture to a whole new level. Imagine greatly reducing the cost of filming at night, for instance, or, depending on how things progress, bringing similar improvements to mobile and smartphone shooters. We’re still a long way off from that, but this is a very impressive first step, as you can see from the sample video available on Canon’s own site.
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