Mobile Phones
The HTC Vivid is a bulky phone, which is the first impression when it plops into your hands out of the box. It is no feather-weight at 176 grams (6.24 ounces). The thickness is similar to some of the newest notebooks, at 11.2mm (0.44 inches). There is no good reason for the bulk, either. Try to figure it out as you may, you will end up without excuse.
Compare this bulk to the promise made by Ralph de la Vega at CTIA this year. He swore AT&T LTE phones would be both thinner and longer lasting. Of course, he could only have been referring to the Galaxy S II.
The performance of the HTC is similarly disappointing. When compared against the Galaxy SII Skyrocket and the Droid RAZR, Vivid took last place in everything. You might be asking yourself how that can be, with the dual-core Qualcomm Snapdragon APQ8060 powering the phone. Perhaps the blame can be laid on the qHD pixels and Sense. +Continue Reading
Prior to Steve Jobs unfortunate and untimely death, Steve took up a massive lawsuit against Google. In the lawsuit Jobs claimed that Google basically stole the iPhone from Apple and was presenting it to customers under the Android name. The lawsuit has been going on for a while now and still no signs of it ending even with Steve Jobs’ death. Steve Jobs addressed this touchy issue with Walter Isaacson in an interview – Walter Isaacson published the recent Steve Jobs biography. In the interview with Walter, Jobs bluntly stated:
“Our lawsuit is saying, ‘Google you f***ing ripped off the iPhone, wholesale ripped us off. I will spend my last dying breath if I need to, and I will spend every penny of Apple’s $40 billion in the bank, to right this wrong. I’m going to destroy Android, because it’s a stolen product.” +Continue Reading
It has been a tough road for Adobe lately. Not only were they struggling to optimize Flash’s less than optimal performance on mobile devices but they were also constantly battling HTML5 which was steadily gaining the upper hand. However Adobe has finally conceded; they will no longer be optimizing Flash for mobile devices and will concentrate all of their efforts on apps and desktop. Adobe will also be pushing hard to contribute to HTML5.
For those of you wondering what exactly Adobe said then here is the official announcement made by Adobe regarding this new course for their company:
“Our future work with Flash on mobile devices will be focused on enabling Flash developers to package native apps with Adobe AIR for all the major app stores. We will no longer adapt Flash Player for mobile devices to new browser, OS version or device configurations.”
So why exactly did Adobe stop pushing for Flash optimization on mobile phones? Well there were multiple reasons but here are the main points that you should be aware of: +Continue Reading
ARM is strong-arming the server market with the smallest server. Calxeda released the EnergyCore ARM server-on-chip, or SoC, eating up a mere 1.5 watts. When idling, the SoC only requires 0.5 watts. HP is committing itself to manufacturing servers based on the technology. This is great news for Calxeda, since HP is the world’s largest manufacturer of servers. The SoC creams its closest competitor, Intel, who makes a 20-watt x86 server chip.
Calexda is counting on the successes of ARM in mobile devices to somehow magically apply to their attempts to challenge Intel in the commodity server market. They boast that their chip is ideal for scalable analytics, web serving, mid-tier infrastructure (in-memory databases and caching), big-data apps, and media streaming.
Calexda appears to be going after the leftovers in the server market, though, due to the 32-bit address of their chip. It is based on the ARM Cortex processor, but Intel will challenge them on exactly this point about addressing. Still, the form factor is small and the energy consumption puts Intel to shame. There is definitely a niche for this midget 32-bit chip. +Continue Reading
Nokia has finally come up strong, but it still has many catch up to do. The Finnish mobile manufacturer made a strong statement October 26 by unveiling two spanky-new Smartphones. One of the mobile devices is for customers transiting from featured phones to Smartphones (especially in the developing world) and the other is a high-end phone for folks who are willing to spend that money with wild abandon.
Both Nokia Lumia 800 and Lumia 710 run on Windows Phone 7.5 ‘Mango’. Little wonder Microsoft wants Nokia to succeed. To put short, the phones are design to give the iPhone 4s and galaxy SII a good fight.
Peering through what makes the two Nokia Smartphones rock are some familiar specs similar to what Apple and Samsung have to offer.
+Continue Reading
So much hoopla, followed by so much disappointment – this mars Apple’s debut of the iPhone 4S. Appearances can be deceptive, though. What has changed inside may not be visible from without. So let us have a look at the guts of the iPhone 4S and see what has changed in Apple’s partnerships by what has been swapped out in its components.
Apple has recovered from the drop in shares by more than $20 on October 4th, but that was simply the evidence of ignorant consumer confidence based on appearances. Apple has been conducting revisions of its partnerships behind the scene. With estimates of 81 million iPhone 4S’ to be sold next year, this is not a trifling issue.
Intel has been nearly wiped out of the Apple picture and replaced by Qualcomm. It tried to buy its way in by purchasing Infineon, which made wireless chips that were contracted by Apple. Before Intel bought the chip manufacturer, Apple used a $10 per phone chip. After the buyout, Apple dropped to a $0.50 per phone chip. Qualcomm is top dog now at $14-15 per phone. +Continue Reading
Back in Q3 2004, Motorola released their popular phone coined the “Motorola Razr V3.” Fast forward 7 years and you get the Motorola Droid Razr.
Though the Razr stopped its production in 2009, and “died off” in 2008 from the release of the iPhone 3G, it is said that this new Razr will bring back old memories. Like the phone name suggests, it will be preloaded with the Android Operating System and the fun doesn’t stop there. It will be upgradable to the upcoming Android Ice Cream Sandwich early next year.
If you are interested in being one of the first people to test out the upcoming Android Operating System, the Motorola Droid Razr may be for you. Do you still have doubts that the next version of Android won’t be released in a matter of weeks? Well, today, ASUS chairman Jonney Shih confirmed that the Padfone will commence shipping in Q1 2012, so Android Ice Cream Sandwich should be releasing relatively soon. He also confirmed that Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich would be one of the key additions to the device as well. +Continue Reading
The HTC Vivid is a bulky phone, which is the first impression when it plops into your hands out of the box. It is no feather-weight at 176 grams (6.24 ounces). The thickness is similar to some of the newest notebooks, at 11.2mm (0.44 inches). There is no good reason for the bulk, either. Try to figure it out as you may, you will end up without excuse.
