Category: Mobile

We’ve been hearing rumors about Apple releasing a cheaper iPhone for a while, but J.P. Morgan analyst Mark Moskowitz this week has made a compelling case that a lower-cost iPhone will likely be a mid-range device that sells in the $350 range without subsidies and not in the $150 bargain-bin range with devices like the Nokia Lumia 521. Per Barron’s, Moskowitz writes that the success Apple has enjoyed with the iPad mini so far has shown the company that it can significantly expand its reach if it’s “willing to sacrifice near-term gross margins” in exchange for long-term dominance of the market. Although there aren’t too many well-known smartphones selling in the $350 range, Moskowitz notes that “Apple usually creates new demand when it steps into a price band” since “the $300-400 price range for tablets did not have much demand… before the launch of the iPad mini.”

It looks like BlackBerry fans really do love their physical keyboards. Barron’s points us to a new note from Jefferies analyst Peter Misek, who claims that several “store checks” of outlets in Toronto show that the “BlackBerry Q10 has been selling extremely well and has been sold out or seeing limited availability” in the city. Misek’s note on Canadian Q10 sales follows a similarly optimistic note he wrote earlier in the week about strong early Q10 sales in the U.K., so it seems that the Q10 has some solid momentum on its side during its first week of availability. The Q10, which is designed to look more like iconic pre-touchscreen BlackBerry phones, includes 3.5-inch display, a 1.5GHz dual-core processor, an 8-megapixel rear-facing camera, a 2-megapixel front-facing camera, 2GB RAM, 16GB of internal storage and a 2,100 mAh battery.

When I first learned that President Obama had nominated the former president of CTIA and the National Cable Television Association to be the next chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, my stomach turned: If there’s one thing that this country doesn’t need, it’s yet another former lobbyist appointed to a high position in the United States federal government. But after my initial gag reflex wore off, I found myself intrigued by the reaction from many activists whom I’d expected to slam the pick — Public Knowledge CEO Gigi Sohn, for instance, said that Wheeler was likely to champion “strong open Internet requirements, robust broadband competition, affordable broadband access for all Americans, diversity of voices and serious consumer protections, all backed by vigorous agency enforcement.” And Ars Technica notes that Cardozo School of Law professor Susan Crawford, who has long been a fierce critic of the cable industry, has also endorsed the nomination.

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Google is done with boring old cell phones — the future is all about “phones-plus.” The company’s $12.4 billion Motorola acquisition has yet to bear much fruit, but all that may begin to change as Google starts to phase out Motorola’s solo efforts and launch devices that it had a hand in developing. The first such handset is the highly anticipated “X Phone,” which was pictured for the first time on Thursday evening. Following that initial leak, a second set of photos has been published along with some new purported details about the X Phone, which may debut later this month.

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According to recent estimates, Apple’s share of the smartphone market took a big hit in the first quarter this year. Market research firm Strategy Analytics estimates that the 37.4 million iPhones Apple sold last quarter were good for 17.9% of the global smartphone market, down from the 22.8% of the market Apple controlled in the same quarter last year. With no savior expected until September at the earliest — CEO Tim Cook recently said Apple is working on new products that will launch beginning this fall — Apple stands to continue losing market share until the iPhone 5S, and perhaps a new low-end iPhone as well, launch later this year.

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LG is an Android smartphone OEM that, like many others, finds itself in the shadow of Samsung. But it scored an impressive hit with the Nexus 4, the $300 unlocked Google-branded Android reference phone it released last year, and according to the Korea Times, it’s already working on a follow-up with the search giant.

The new report claims that LG is working on a new Nexus-branded smartphone, and that LG also wants to add to its existing partnership with Google for TV products, and would like to be closely involved in future developments like Google Glass. LG clearly sees the value of being closely associated with Google, as it managed to pull into third place in the global smartphone race in Q1 2013 according to IDC and Juniper.

LG’s Optimus G and the Nexus 4 helped it gain some ground in the smartphone war, although it still trails far behind Samsung and Apple, who hold 32.7 percent and 17.3 percent of the global market respectively, compared to LG’s 4.8 percent. Recent estimates have put sales of both the Optimus G and the Nexus 4 at somewhere north of 1 million, which, while once again trailing devices by LG and Apple, are impressive enough. Especially in the case of the Nexus 4, LG proved that it could make a strong seller out of a line that usually has more limited consumer appeal.

In the past, we’ve seen reports that an LG Nexus 5 was in the works, with the code name “Megalodon.” This isn’t just an upgraded version based on the LG Optimus G Pro, but a truly new device with a very powerful quad-core 2.3GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 processor on board. Recent rumors indicate we might see a Nexus 4 variant at Google I/O in two weeks, with a 32GB storage option and both LTE and CDMA cellular wireless bands on board. The current Nexus 4 maxes out at HSPA+, but it does have an LTE-capable radio, early hacks revealed.

There’s very little downside to LG building a new Nexus device, and Google might be more inclined to let them, given the success of the last one. It’s possible we’ll hear more about this at I/O, but given that the Nexus 4 only arrived late last year, we might have to wait a little longer, too.

In Apple’s seemingly endless quest to make its products lighter and thinner, the company may have come up with a clever way to save space in future versions of the iPhone and iPad: by using curved batteries that nestle more comfortably into its devices’ contours. AppleInsider has found a pair of Apple patent filings that describe “curved battery cells for portable electronic devices” and “non-rectangular batteries for portable electronic devices” that the publication speculates could be used in future iPads and iPhones.

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Slowly but surely, Android 4.2 Jelly Bean is inching its way toward overtaking the two-and-a-half year old Gingerbread as the dominant platform version of Android. The latest numbers from the Android Developers website show that Jelly Bean now holds a 28.4% share of the Android device market, marking the first time it has had a larger share than Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich, which now has a sits at 27.5%. All that said, Jelly Bean still has a ways to go before it catches up with Android 2.3 Gingerbread, the operating system that was released all the way back in December 2010, which still clings to a 38.5% share of the Android market. In other words, it looks like Gingerbread will still be the most widely used version of Android as Google announces yet another new version of the platform, Android 5.0 Key Lime Pie, which may be coming at Google I/O later this month.

Chef Sleeve has been selling its iPad-protecting plastic sleeves since 2011 to keep kitchen gunk off the iPad you’re using while you cook. They also make a dishwasher-safe, non-porous chopping board with a built in iPad stand (below right), and a smaller stand in the same recycled paper composite finish. But Chef Sleeve’s grand plan is to create a range of connected devices for the kitchen that link up with an iPad app to let people track their nutrition in a highly granular, yet low hassle, way.

To that end it’s just kicked off a Kickstarter campaign for its next product: a smart Bluetooth scale, which it’s calling Smart Food Scales, that will enable people to weigh ingredients and snacks and then determine the exact amount of fat, salt, sugar, vitamins and so on in the ingredients they’re using in recipes or the snacks they’re eating at home.

“This is our first smart product. We now want to activate these pieces of hardware and take the iPad even further and enhance the experience in the kitchen,” says Chef Sleeve’s Michael Tankenoff. “The Bluetooth scale will sync up with our iOS app on iPad or iPhone. Say you’re weighing strawberries. We house the USDA database of food information, so you select strawberries. Not only will it tell you the weight, but it tells you all the nutritional information.

“For example, you’re preparing a salad — you put your bowl on the scale, add your lettuce, select lettuce, reset to zero, add your tomatoes, select tomatoes, reset to zero, keep going, build this recipe and when you’re done, now you know exactly the nutritional value of that salad that you have every day.”

As well as the health conscious and people watching their weight, Chef Sleeve envisages the scales being useful for individuals with conditions such as diabetes to help them track their sugar intake, or people with specific nutritional deficiencies who need to make sure they’re getting enough of certain vitamins in their diet.

The company is looking to raise $30,000 via its Kickstarter campaign, which runs until the end of the month. It’s showing the following prototype screenshots (below) of the planned iPad software. It also intends to open up its API at some point in the future, so that third-party developers can build apps for the smart scales — although it’s going to be careful about how it does this, as it wants to keep any other apps wholesome (scales can, after all, be used to weigh non-foodstuffs too).

After the scales, Chef Sleeve says it will look to launch other connected devices that tie back in to its iOS app to keep adding to a range of smart kitchen devices. A thermometer could be next, says CEO Santiago Merea. A chopping board with an integrated scale could also be on the cards “at some point” — but he says the company is being mindful about its mainstream consumer buyer. “We need to be careful about our demographic. We’re not going to throw rockets at them,” he told TechCrunch. “We want the design to be very homey, very crafty.”

If the uptake of the scales is strong, it could end up generating some fascinating data for Chef Sleeve — such as what, when and how people eat — which it said it will look to feed back into its product development.

“Our pledge is going to be to not store any personal information at all — because we don’t need to but we also don’t want the risk of being hacked,” said Merea. ”Food is personal… So we’re not storing any personal information but we don’t need to. With that data we can also even help our customers. It’s going to be really cool what we can do with this.”

Chef Sleeve already has stores interested in carrying the smart scales, according to Merea. It’s hoping to get into speciality kitchenware stores with the smart scales, a shift of its retail strategy which, to date, has been mostly focused on selling via Amazon (and its own website).

Google and Motorola are working on a top-secret “X Phone” that hasn’t really been top-secret for quite some time. While we’ve heard rumblings and rumors here and there, we have yet to see any leaked photos of the mysterious smartphone. Until now — perhaps. Evleaks, who often leaks photos and accurate specs of unreleased smartphones, published four photos of an unknown Motorola handset wrapped in a protective black box to keep its design a secret. While evleaks has not been able to confirm if this is indeed the unbreakable X Phone, a model number on the back reads “XFON ATT,” which certainly suggests that it may be AT&T’s version of the upcoming handset that may revitalize Motorola. There are conflicting reports regarding when Google might unveil the new handset, but there will be plenty of time at the three-hour keynote at this year’s Google I/O conference if it’s ready in time. The leaked photos of the phone follow below.

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A new report suggests that LG and Google will be teaming up to produce several new products including another smartphone and an OLED TV set. According to the Korea Times, Google CEO Larry Page met with LG’s chief executive Koo Bon-joon on a recent visit to South Korea. The two executives reportedly spoke for more than an hour and discussed ways to improve their business partnership, including more deals between the two companies. LG is now said to be working on a second Nexus-branded smartphone and is reportedly in talks to launch “an LG-Google OLED TV,” in addition to its current lineup of Google TV products. LG previously partnered with Google to release the popular Nexus 4 smartphone last fall.

Google Now was probably the best thing to happen to mobile devices in 2012. Google’s brilliant virtual assistant uses location, search history and other data to automatically present users with information like the weather, driving directions to meetings and travel times, sports scores and more without any interaction required on the user’s part. After a long wait, iOS device users finally gained access to Google Now earlier this week when Google updated its iOS search app with Google Now functionality, but its arrival was marred by two problems: first, platform limitations on iOS and Google’s decision to forego push notifications make Now far less useful on Apple devices than it is on Android. Beyond that, an apparent bug in Google’s app is seemingly causing location services to stay on and drain users’ batteries.

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Meet Lumu: a digital light meter for photographers that plugs into the iPhone’s headphone jack as a smaller and smarter replacement for traditional analogue light meters. It’s used in conjunction with Lumu’s app — being demoed in prototype here at hardware alley at Disrupt NY – to help photographers figure out the best camera settings for their current location.

Lumu is not going to help you take better photos on your iPhone — it’s a tool for standalone cameras that have ISO, aperture and shutter speed parameters that can be manually set. The startup, which hails from Slovenia in Europe, plans to kick off a Kickstarter funding campaign in about a month. The Lumu device will cost $99.

“It’s the world’s smartest light meter,” says co-founder Benjamin Polovic. “The existing light meters are large, bulky and very expensive. With Lumu, the main processing is done on the iPhone, so we use the iPhone’s power. It also doesn’t use any batteries, it’s powered from the iPhone.

“You take your iPhone or your iPod and plug it in and it’s going to recognise it, and it sets all of the parameters for your unique environment. So you put in your ISO that you use in your film or your digital camera, the aperture you want to use and then it calculates the time.”

The photographer then needs to manually input the suggested settings into their camera but Polovic says the group is thinking about making a Bluetooth dongle so settings can be wirelessly sent to a digital camera. “We’re excited to get some ideas from Kickstarter when the campaign launches,” he added.

As well as showing the light level and exposure value for the current lighting conditions, the app lets users store pre-sets for individual geotagged locations so they can easily revisit them later. It will also include an auto mode, and a filter-style feature that will tell users how to achieve effects such as bokeh (background blur). 

Polovic said Lumu’s hope is to inspire more people to start digging down into their camera settings. ”We love photography, we want to make it better, we want to introduce it to people who don’t necessarily know how to use cameras because they are quite complex. We want to make it simple,” he says.

The startup has been developing Lumu for about four to five months, according to Polovic. Down the line, it plans to launch an SDK so developers can create other apps using the light sensor — giving the example of an app that wakes the iPhone’s owner when it starts getting light, for instance.

Mozilla was keen to talk up the 3.0 version of its Firefox OS simulator back in March, but didn’t have much to share about when eager developers could start fiddling with it. Thankfully for HTML5 buffs, that six-week quiet period is over — the team just announced on the official Mozilla Hacks blog that the newly updated simulator is now available to download.

All of the features that appeared in the preview release are accounted for — think support for rotating displays and a mock geolocation API for testing location-aware apps — but the simulator suite has been polished a bit since we last saw it. Most of those tweaks are housekeeping changes: the size of the download has been reduced, which has led to snappier boot times, and the simulator now supports common OS shortcuts like Cmd + Q to shut down, but the simulator has also been updated to run newer versions of Firefox OS and the Gaia user interface layer.

With that said, prospective Firefox OS developers will probably use one simulator feature more than any other: the ability to push work-in-progress applications to connected test devices. Mozilla and its hardware partners Huawei, LG, and ZTE (who showed off its first FFOS device at Mobile World Congress) have been pointing to device launches in Brazil, Colombia, Hungary, Mexico, Poland, Serbia, Spain and Venezuela later this year, but the quality of the experiences found on those phones will ultimately determine whether or not Firefox OS flops.

Even so, strong early sales of Firefox OS developer devices may point to a promising official launch for the first set of consumer-facing phones later this year. Just look at Spanish hardware OEM startup Geeksphone — it began selling its Keon and Peak reference devices for $119 and $194, respectively, late last month, and the company was forced to limit the number of handsets sold that on launch day so the 20-person team could keep up with shipping.

That’s a promising start especially for a company as young as Geeksphones, but there’s no question that Firefox OS is going to face some serious competition in its launch markets. Android powers a staggering number of cheap smartphones, and Nokia has refocused its efforts to build low-cost devices based both on Windows Phone and the aging Series 40 OS. Meanwhile, persistent rumors of a low-cost iPhone continue to make the rounds — Firefox OS seemed like a novel option for new and adventurous smartphone owners when I first played with it, but we’ll have to see how the rest of the industry responds.

LG has continued to make inroads in the lucrative mobile market that in recent years has become dominated by its South Korean rival Samsung. The company has taken an aggressive approach against Samsung and even attempted to steal the thunder away from its Galaxy S4 event earlier this year. LG’s original Optimus G smartphone was well received by critics and LG hopes its sequel will find even more success. But can the Optimus G Pro hold its own in a Galaxy controlled by Samsung?

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Apple on Thursday released a minor software update for the iPhone 5 only. The change log for iOS 6.1.4 includes just one entry — “updated audio profile for speakerphone” — and it is unclear if the new iOS build includes any additional bug fixes or enhancements. IOS 6.1.4 is available from Apple immediately as an over the air (OTA) update, and it should also be available for download through iTunes shortly.

Apple’s iOS 7 operating system update is expected to be shown off for the first time during the keynote at WWDC 2013, but a recent report suggested the platform’s launch may be delayed. Apple engineers are reportedly working on a major overhaul of iOS’s user interface, and it is seemingly taking longer than expected to refine and “flatten” the interface. According to multiple reports from reporters with nearly impeccable track records, however, Apple has pulled engineers away from OS X to help work on iOS 7 and the new mobile OS update will launch on time.

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The biggest question for the HTC One hasn’t been whether it’s good enough to go toe-to-toe with Samsung’s Galaxy S4, but whether it can survive under fire from Samsung’s marketing Death Star that spent a whopping $402 million in the United States alone last year. Barron’s points us to a new research note from CLSA Asia-Pacific Markets analyst CK Cheng, who has upped his sales estimates for the HTC’s new flagship phone to 3.5 million units in the second quarter of 2013, up from an earlier estimate of between 2.5 million to 3 million. For the full year, Cheng says that HTC will probably sell between 9 million and 10 million HTC Ones, which is an improvement from sales of the HTC One X that topped out at between 7 million and 8 million units. Cheng also says that the glowing reviews the HTC One has received will keep its sales strong throughout the year even as Samsung is shipping upward of 60 million Galaxy S4 models to markets around the world.

Rumors were getting pretty ridiculous leading up to this year’s Google I/O conference. Among the products and software that have been rumored to be announced at Google I/O this year are Android 5.0 Key Lime Pie, Google’s new Babble messaging service, the Nexus 7.7 tablet, the Nexus 5 smartphone, the Motorola “X Phone,” an upgraded Nexus 4 in lieu of the Nexus 5 and X Phone, new Google Glass details and more. While some of the aforementioned rumors have since changed, it turns out we really are in store for an action-packed show at this year’s I/O conference. Google on Tuesday evening posted the session schedule for I/O and among the sessions listed is the company’s customary opening keynote — only this year, it’s three hours long. The Google I/O 2013 keynote kicks off at 9:00 a.m. EDT on May 15th, so be ready for tons of announcements to be stuffed into the three hours that follow.

According to a new leak, HTC is about to change the smartphone that changes everything. We’ve already seen several details leak regarding an upcoming HTC smartphone codenamed “M4,” and now the device has been pictured for the first time. Evleaks, who has a nearly spotless record when publishing early images and details surrounding unreleased handsets, posted the images on mobile blog PhoneArena on Wednesday. He also rehashed some specs reported earlier, including a 4.3-inch 720p display, 2GB of RAM, 16GB of storage, a 4-megapixel UltraPixel camera and Android 4.2. BGR reviewed the HTC One last month and called it the most impressive Android smartphone ever built. One of our only minor complaints was that the handset is on the larger side, so the M4 could be ideal for those who don’t mind taking a few steps back in terms of specs. The leaked image of the HTC M4 follows below.

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