Category: Mobile

BlackBerry’s first BlackBerry 10 smartphone is about to make its official U.S. consumer debut in just a few days, and the long wait has seen the size of the platform’s app selection swell considerably. According to an interview with BlackBerry CEO Thorsten Heins conducted by the Australian Financial Review, Heins expects the BlackBerry World content portal to cross the 100,000 app mark in time for the company’s big Z10 smartphone launch later this week.

It’s a notable (if not entirely significant — there’s an argument for quality over quantity) milestone, and one that BlackBerry may be trying to highlight ahead of its fiscal Q4 2013 earnings release on March 28. That’s a sizable jump from the roughly 70,000 apps that debuted along with BlackBerry 10, but the platform still needs support from big-name developers and services if it wants to pose a credible threat to Apple and Google’s mobile hegemony.

Recent reports about Instagram and Netflix for instance painted a portrait of two companies that were hesitant to devote engineering resources to an unproven platform — granted, Instagram appears to be working on an Android port of its app, but the experience of Android apps running BB10 in general leaves something to be desired. The severity of the situation isn’t lost on Heins — he noted to Financial Review’s Paul Smith that BlackBerry is working to further talks with these sorts of prominent parties, and that some companies may be warming to BlackBerry 10.

“I think we are seeing the dynamic changing over time as they want to watch and see how BlackBerry 10 is making it in the market,” Heins pointed out. “They want ROI on their development dollars as well… it is our job to convince them that BB10 is a successful platform.”

Apparently, the process of proving BlackBerry 10 to be a successful platform involves a little smack talk. In a curious display of fighting up, Heins jabbed at Apple for taking the conservative route in fleshing out iOS. As he put it, the “rate of innovation is so high in our industry that if you don’t innovate at that speed you can be replaced pretty quickly,” before pointing out that the iOS interface is five years old. It’s a valid criticism to be sure, and BlackBerry 10 definitely sports some neat new UI flourishes, but let’s not forget that the company’s stock is worth a fraction of what it was five years ago. It’ll take more than talk to fix that.

The world got its first glimpse of Samsung’s new Galaxy S 4 last week, reigniting the Apple (AAPL) vs. Samsung (005930) argument as the two companies battle for the future of mobile. Apple seemed a bit on edge as it put up its new “What iPhone?” page, and now a third player is looking to strike while Apple is on defense: BlackBerry (BBRY). The struggling smartphone vendor might not pose the same threat to Apple that Samsung does in the near term, but CEO Thorsten Heins used a recent interview as an opportunity to let the world know that Apple’s iPhone has fallen behind rival platforms, including his new BlackBerry 10 OS.

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Google’s next reference smartphone is the subject of many rumors over the past few days, but only one stands out as not too outlandish. Phonearena reports that according to a source, the next Nexus could have Nikon camera technology on board, with a “triple sensor” array. The camera is being referred to as the “selling point” of the Nexus 5, the source claims.

The tipster in this case also cites more reasonable specs for the Nexus 5, including a 5-inch display capable of 1080p output, a Snapdragon 600 processor, 2GB of RAM and 8/16GB storage options. There’s also a beefy 3140 mAh battery on board, which should outlast the current device depending on the power requirements of the display. These refute an earlier claim from AndroidandMe about a super-powered 5.2-inch LG device being next in line for the Nexus name, with a bizarre 3GB of RAM supposedly on board.

By contrast, the more recent Nexus 5 spec report makes much more sense in the context of how Google has iterated its flagship Android device in the past. And the Nikon camera tech also echoes an earlier statement from Google’s Vic Gundotra, who said on Google+ last month that Google is specifically “committed to making Nexus phones insanely great cameras,” teasing that consumers need only “wait and see” to realize the truth of that statement.

The one sour note on the otherwise impressive Nexus 4 from Google released last fall is the camera; reviewers mostly seem to rate it either adequate or sub-par compared to cameras in devices like the iPhone or Android handsets from other OEMs. Accordingly, it makes sense that Google would focus attention on improving the camera in the next Nexus, since that would provide good upgrade incentive for those following the brand, and also help Google better show off Android’s built-in camera features, which is one of the primary purposes of its line of Nexus reference hardware.

Google and Nikon have worked together in the past, including on the Nikon Coolpix S800c, which features an Android-based firmware. Google also acquired Nik software last year, makers of Snapseed, and a company Nikon had previously made a sizable investment in.

The sensor of the new camera will reportedly be a three-sensor affair, which sounds like it could resemble the tech used in HTC’s Ultrapixel or Sigma’s Foveon X3 sensors, by combining three sensor layers, each with a smaller megapixel count, to create a single higher resolution image with better color rendering and light capture. This is still very much a rumor, but it’s an interesting one and definitely seems to be in line with Google’s apparent goals for the Nexus line.

For years, the holy grail of personal tech has been convergence. Now that we essentially have a version of that in the form of smartphones – which allow fairly sophisticated computing for most daily needs, from accomplishing work to playing music – ironically many of us are discovering the need to extract some of those functions and instead carry multiple devices, such as a smartphone, a tablet, and a smartwatch all at once.

I call this trend divergence; let’s look at a few factors that are driving it.

Increasing complexity

Moore’s Law, which predicts that the number of components in integrated circuit chips doubles every 18 months, made it possible to drive more power from a small footprint of electronics. With Moore’s Law on their side and users demanding to carry more with less, entrepreneurs seized the opportunity, and began fitting more functions into a single device, thus paving the way to convergence.

However, as newer functions get bundled into a single device, the interface often (but certainly not always) becomes more complex. Therefore a need arises to extract certain functions in a separate device in a form factor that makes more sense for that function.

As an example, Google Glass is arguably a better form factor to capture a video while taking a roller coaster ride than trying to hold onto your phablet. And a Pebble Watch provides a simpler and easier interface to view and control music while on the go. Ironically, Moore’s Law is also playing a big role in divergence of devices: The ability to fit more power in limited space is crucial for these new form factors to work.

Horizontal solutions

Clayton Christensen explains in the Innovator’s Solution that when interfaces between components aren’t well-defined, vertically integrated products tend to do very well. For instance, the Mac did very well in the early years of personal computing in part because of the tight integration between its hardware and operating system.

Similarly, when Apple introduced the iPhone six years ago, the smartphone industry was still in a relatively early phase. Apple was able to take advantage of a lack of well-defined interfaces by joining together computing, telephony, and music in a vertically integrated device. It would have been extremely hard for a small startup to come up with a converged device like an iPhone at that time: Apple not only had expertise in both software and hardware, it also benefited strongly from its partnerships (music labels, movie studios, app developers large and small) all along the value chain.

Yet, coming on six years from when the first iPhone launched, I believe that the industry has now entered a stage where the tight coupling of mobile hardware and software, while beneficial, is not the only winning strategy. APIs and interfaces such as WiFi, Bluetooth and location platforms are well established, consistent and understood. Therefore smaller independent players such as Fitbit (disclosure: see below) and its many competitors, along with the many smart watches, credit card readers, security beacons coming out every day, can succeed by leveraging these popular interfaces and platforms to deliver new applications that function better on their own.

There’s no doubt that vertically integrated players like Apple will still have some advantages – Apple’s rumored iWatch for one would presumably provide native iOS support to do many things that something like the Pebble Watch cannot do (for example, selectively turn on app notifications; similarly it can only preview emails from Gmail on an Android device).

But thanks to these well-established platforms, we will have no shortage of newer companies venturing into the digital devices arena.

Master of one

Now that smartphones and tablets offer several functions quite satisfactorily, there is an emerging trend to solve very specific problems very well. As Nokia’s Marko Ahtisaari said in an interview with Slashgear, “there’ll be room for more and more dedicated devices that do a few things really well again.” Already Amazon’s Kindle Paperwhite remains  the device of choice for those who are hardcore e-book readers, especially those who read in sunlight. Users could easily opt to read the same Kindle book on their smartphone or tablet but choose the device that does this one task best.

And I will not be shocked if specialized music players that only stream music from popular services, such as Spotify, Pandora, Rdio and the like start appearing in the market. Of course, feasibility of such devices will also require newer business models that can enable affordable data plans.

While convergence will continue to move forward in certain areas – such as in the home entertainment space, where a single TV will compress several functions offered by separate set-top boxes into one device – newer form factors, horizontal solutions, specialization, and above all human ingenuity will ensure that we never run out of the need to carry multiple devices. At least not until advancements in materials science and technology enable a single device to take multiple forms.

Disclosure: Fitbit is backed by True, a venture capital firm that is an investor in the parent company of this blog, Giga Omni Media. Om Malik, founder of Giga Omni Media, is also a venture partner at True.

Saad Fazil writes about emerging trends in the high-tech industry, especially in the areas of social, location and mobile. He writes at itval.e. Follow him on Twitter @ sfrocks.

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Interest in Samsung’s (005930) latest flagship smartphone is said to be considerably higher than earlier models. According to U.K. retailer Phones 4U, the Galaxy S 4 has generated 40% more pre-registrations than the Galaxy S III did after it was announced last year. Earlier reports estimated that the highly anticipated smartphone could see sales of more than 10 million units in the first month. Scott Hooton, Phone 4U’s chief commercial officer, believes the Galaxy S 4 has a “strong chance of becoming the biggest selling smartphone of 2013.” The executive added that the handset “exceeded our expectations in terms of technological innovation and form factor.” The Galaxy S 4 is scheduled to launch on select carriers starting in late April. Phone 4U’s press release follows below.

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Owners of older Samsung (005930) smartphones may be feeling envious of the newly announced Galaxy S 4, which is chock-full of new features. They shouldn’t be too worried, however, because the company has promised to bring some of Galaxy S 4’s top features to both the Galaxy S III and Galaxy Note II. Samsung’s vice president of portfolio planning, Nick DiCarlo, revealed in an interview with PCMag that any feature that doesn’t rely on hardware will be brought to “all the flagship devices.” The executive hinted that features such as the new camera interface and new filters may arrive on earlier models later this year. It is also speculated that Smart Scroll, Smart Pause, S Translator and S Health will also be made available.

Samsung’s (005930) new Galaxy S 4 smartphone is an incredible device — on paper. It features a beautiful 5-inch full HD display, a blazing fast processor, an incredible 13-megapixel rear camera and more bells and whistles than you will know what to do with. I wish I could say all this impressive hardware and software came together in a premium package, however this is not the case.

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You may have noticed that Samsung (005930) rarely said the word “Android” on Thursday while unveiling its new Android-based Galaxy S 4 flagship phone. And according to ABI Research analyst Aapo Markkanen, there’s a very good reason for that: Samsung is trying to distance itself from Android as much as possible in preparation for a “Great OS Escape” that will reduce its dependence on the platform over the next two years. Markkanen’s thesis is that Samsung wants more control over its own destiny going forward and doesn’t want to be solely tied down to another company’s mobile operating system. So its goal with the Galaxy S 4 is to build as many of its own features as possible onto the device to begin weaning its customers away from Google (GOOG) services.

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Now that Sony, LG, HTC, and Samsung have all pulled back the curtains on their flagship Android smartphones, the rumor mill can churn with renewed focus on yet another nebulous device — Motorola’s secretive X Phone.

Or rather, X Phones. According to Android And Me’s Taylor Wimberly, X Phone isn’t going to be a product name so much as it is a banner that multiple phones will fly under, and his sources assert that we’ve already seen the first of those devices in wild.

(I think it goes without saying that you should take all this information with a hefty grain of salt.)

The supposed culprit was captured on film earlier this week by the noted team at Tinhte, the Vietnamese site that thrives on getting their hands on unreleased gadgets well before the rest of us do. It was a fairly unassuming device — it bears a mild resemblance to the Galaxy Nexus when viewed dead-on, and sports a cleaner, rounded design that doesn’t quite jibe with many of Motorola’s recent angular design efforts.

What’s more, its modest spec sheet prompted many (myself included) to dismiss its odds of being the fabled X Phone. To wit: it sports one of Qualcomm’s Snapdragon S4 Pro systems-on-a-chip, 2GB of RAM, a 4.65-inch display, and a 2,200 mAh battery. In fairness, that’s not a shabby device at all. That’s essentially what the Nexus 4 is working with, but it just didn’t seem flashy enough to be what Motorola and Google have been working on all this time.

But if this new report holds true, that lack of next-gen horsepower could be because Google intends to sell this particular X Phone dirt cheap sans contract — $199 or so.

Curiously, the original video of the device was yanked from YouTube, and the original post on Tinhte seems to have disappeared as well. That’s far from a confirmation that Tinhte has ruffled some major feathers, but it’s something to consider.

Now to call this whole thing a little kooky would be putting it very mildly, but such an approach wouldn’t exactly come out of left field. One could look at the Nexus 4′s launch as a grand experiment of sorts, meant to see if the consuming public would be open to purchasing unsubsidized hardware directly from the people making it. The answer, clearly, is yes. The Nexus 4 isn’t exactly a mass-market success but demand for the device and its reasonably low price tag led to some notable woes for people trying to purchase the thing early on.

Moreover, the more limited launch of a high-end device like the Nexus 4 could help Google gauge their ability to fulfill device demand in markets across the globe. Now that Google has more or less figured out what needs to happen to keep a global device rollout from going immediately south, it’s arguably better prepared to push out a solid phone at a crazy low price point. Only time will tell whether or not Google and Motorola truly plan to inundate the world with a horde of cheap X Phones, but with I/O on the horizon I imagine it won’t be long before the next chapter of the X Phone saga begins to unfold.

Samsung (005930) pulled out all the stops at its Galaxy S 4 press conference last night at Radio City Music Hall in New York City. The company revealed a handful of new features in a Broadway-style presentation, however it failed to announce specific launch dates. Samsung only said that the Galaxy S 4 would launch on 327 carriers, six in the U.S., in 155 countries sometime next month. U.K. carrier Everything Everywhere announced on Friday that it will offer the smartphone beginning April 26th with preorders set to start on March 28th. AT&T (T) and T-Mobile both acknowledged that they will carry the Galaxy S 4 in the U.S. and have created pages that allow customers to sign-up to be notified with additional details. Verizon (VZ), Sprint (S), Cricket and U.S. Cellular also plan to offer the device later this year. Reports suggest that the Galaxy S 4 will cost $199 in the U.S. with a new two-year agreement.

Amazing but true: Samsung (005930) can show off all the Galaxy S 4’s new features in under five minutes, and without elaborate dance numbers. In a video released Thursday, Samsung succinctly demonstrated several new features on its flagship smartphone, including its 5-inch full HD Super AMOLED display, its Air View feature that lets you interact with your phone just by hovering your finger over it, its Smart Pause eye-tracking technology that automatically pauses videos whenever you look away from your device, its Group Play feature that lets you zap music via NFC from one phone to another, and its dual shot video camera that can sync up and embed video taken with the front-facing camera into video filmed with the rear-facing camera. While some of these features might seem gimmicky, Samsung is certainly playing them up as key differentiators from competing devices. The full video is posted below.

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Much about the Galaxy S 4, Samsung’s new flagship smartphone, is the company remixing its Galaxy S III formula — with no big changes to the design or UI look and feel, and new software features such as face tracking additions like Smart Scroll and Smart Pause that add to and build on what came before. On the hardware side Samsung is also following its prior pattern, putting different chipsets in the U.S. and international versions of the phone as it did with the S III. So while the U.S. S 4 has a 1.9GHz quad-core chip, the international version gets a 1.6GHz octa-core chip.

Samsung did not confirm exactly what the U.S. chipset is at yesterday’s launch, but the word on the street is it’s Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 600. The international S 4 chipset, however, is apparently Samsung’s own Exynos 5 chip, which is built on ARM’s big.LITTLE architecture — so what you’re really getting is a quad-core phone with two clusters of four chips that it switches between, depending on how taxing whatever you’re asking it to do is.

Octa-Cores vs Eight Cores

“It isn’t an eight-core chip in the traditional sense of eight cores — it’s not like the same jump from dual-core to quad-core,” says Nick Dillon, analyst at Ovum. “The lower powered cores run when it’s just idling in the background and then when you need the full power it kind of clicks over to the other one.”

So this is not a case of the U.S. getting shortchanged on S 4 cores, rather it’s just two different approaches to achieving similar power-plus-efficiency ends — all the more important for a phone with such a big screen (pushed up to a full ‘phablet’ 5 inches from the S III’s slightly more modest 4.8-inch pane).

“I guess somebody like Qualcomm would probably argue they don’t need to have that complexity [of octa-cores] because what they’re able to is dial down the power of their main chip to a lower power when it just needs to idle,” Dillon adds. “They can adjust the clockspeed and the power that goes into them on the fly so they really don’t need this compromise of having four extra chips.”

Speaking to TechCrunch at the Mobile World Congress tradeshow in Barcelona last month, Qualcomm’s Raj Talluri, SVP of product management, did argue just that — saying the chipmaker is focused on “heterogeneous compute” for the next generation of chipset innovation, or getting the various components to work together better, rather than just sticking in more cores.

“Clearly we will do the right number of cores to get the right performance but that’s not all we focus on,” Talluri told TechCrunch, pointing to video, audio, camera, LTE, touch input, gestures, different forms of user interface, noise cancelling tech, gaming and more as all areas the chipmaker now has to consider. “If all we had to do was multicore my job would be very easy.”

So which approach is best? Four big cores that can act like they’re little or a pair of big and small quad-cores? At this early point it’s hard to say, until the comprehensive benchmarks and real-world tests start rolling in.

“Whether [Samsung’s octa-core chip is] actually going to bring any real world benefit in terms of top end speed or in fact battery life… we’ll have to see,” says Dillon, adding: “This is the  first device with the chip in it — the first phone at least.”

Of course, from a spec sheet point of view, Samsung’s octa-core boast might garner a little more attention than the quad-core label. ”From a marketing point of view, it obviously sounds impressive,” adds Dillon. “It’s still a specs race at the top end. You’ve got to have the fastest process so if you’re able, through your own technology, to include what looks like an even better processor — on paper at least — then you’ve got to.”

But marketing vanity metrics won’t win you long term customer loyalty if the overall experience is poor. And while mobile apps that truly tax multicore chips remain thin on the ground, every mobile user knows what it’s like to run out of juice — hence both Samsung and Qualcomm are focusing on making less wasteful use of all that power sitting in our pockets.

LTE

Why can’t Samsung just stick its own Exynos chip across the board in the S 4? The answer is likely to be LTE/4G — underlining once again how Qualcomm’s decision to wrong-foot the competition by moving quickly on LTE continues to pay off for mobile’s No. 1 chipset maker.

“Samsung is not as advanced in terms of their LTE modem development as Qualcomm are, who are by far the leaders in that space,” notes Dillon.

IHS Screen Digest analyst Ian Fogg also explains the chip variation between geographies as “almost certainly” down to “LTE maturity in terms of bands available” — since the processor is integrated with the LTE hardware (and different LTE bands are in use in different parts of the world).

While Samsung have now got LTE connectivity in their own modem, it’s likely they don’t have support for commonly used bands in the U.S. such as 700Mhz, says Dillon.

“Maybe they’ve had to fall back on Qualcomm to provide that variant, that connectivity in that market,” he adds. “You imagine that if that capability was there they’d stick their chip in everything.”

Quad-Core Apps

What about apps? Is there much making use of quad-cores at this point? ”It’s hard to tell whether Samsung are making the most of all this extra power,” concedes Dillon. Many of the Samsung software additions to the S 4 are focused on the camera, with apps like dual record and dual shoot, but such apps are likely to be able to lean on dedicated image processing hardware to do the grunt work, rather than requiring massively multicore processors.

“We’ve kind of got to the point where most dual-core chips and definitely quad-cores, there’s nothing really that pushes the limits of them,” adds Dillon. “There are a few very specific applications — some augmented reality stuff for example is pushing the boundary but the majority of what you’re doing on most phones, switching between apps, general usage, you’re not going to see any difference.

“So I think the focus has shifted somewhat to power efficiency and battery life — which is where the whole big.LITTLE thing comes in. Having the high power but also using less power meaning you can actually make it through the day on a charge — which is a real issue.”

The multicore race for mobiles may not quite be over — at least not on the marketing front — but it looks like a war of diminishing returns at this point. “I think it will be of reducing interest for consumers,” concludes Dillon. “I don’t think consumers will see a direct benefit from it. Never mind looking on paper but in terms of reality — having a quad-core over an eight core, whether you’ll actually see any difference between those is debatable.”

It’s pretty much the same point Qualcomm’s Talluri made last month, when asked whether phones actually need eight cores: “We definitely haven’t said eight cores, we said we have four good ones,” he told TechCrunch.

But Talluri did point to some apps — such as video games and a video editing application Qualcomm was demoing at MWC — as examples of software that is beginning to tax quad-core hardware.

He also suggested video is are an area where quad-core chips have the potential to support new types of (disruptive) experiences and applications. “Slowly applications are catching up to using multicore,” he said. “We have very nice video editor application – the first real quad core application I think that’s not a gaming or a browser. And you can see as you plug in more cores the performance is better.”

The company behind the original “Goophone,” a Chinese iPhone 5 knockoff powered by Android, has beaten Apple (AAPL) to the punch by launching an updated “i5S” version of its smartphone. The handset uses a design that is nearly identical to Apple’s iPhone 5 and it runs a highly customized version of Android 4.1.2 Jelly Bean that has been modified to look and act like iOS. The handset features a 4-inch “oneglass” screen with 854 x 480-pixel resolution, a 1GHz dual-core MediaTek processor, 512MB of RAM and a 5-megapixel camera, and it costs just $150 in China. A hands-on video of the Goophone i5S follows below.

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The low-cost iPhone of fable got a little more material with some reports from KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo. Before you balk at reports from an “analyst,” note that Kuo has been spot on a number of times in the past, including when he predicted the iPhone 4S release timeline and changes, the launch of the original white iPhone 4, and the iPad 2, among others. Kuo has discussed Apple’s 2013 roadmap in the past, and now he’s telling AppleInsider that a low-cost iPhone will have a 4-inch screen like the iPhone 5.

Other details about the new device shared by Kuo include a “super-thin plastic casing mixed with glass fiber.” The hybrid material is designed to increase the case’s overall durability, while also saving weight and making for a thinner overall design. Kuo also adds that there will be multiple color options for the low-cost iPhone, along the lines of the recent iPod touch update from last fall.

The new report from Kuo is designed to counter information from notoriously hit-or-miss source Digitimes released earlier in the week, which claimed a larger 5-inch display on the budget iPhone, with manufacturing shifting to suppliers other than Foxconn. Neither claim is true, according to Kuo’s information.

Apple has been cautious about entering the low-cost market in the past, repeatedly saying that it won’t compromise device experience in order to hit a certain price target. But recently, the value of a low-cost iPhone in the Apple stable (which can be made available cheaply to pre-paid customers in markets like India where subsidies aren’t an option) has become apparent. Apple could add $11 billion to its annual revenue with a low-cost device, one analyst estimated this week, and it would help considerably with acquiring additional market share in markets where Android is currently having lots of success.

Offering last year’s model as a cheaper option has been Apple’s strategy of choice in the past, but if it introduces a dedicated low-cost line, the advantages could be considerable. Based on these reports from Kuo and others, the company is looking to dramatically decrease physical material costs, which are relatively stable compared to the cost of processor and flash memory components, and tooling/factory setup, which decrease as a production process matures. That could result in big changes to the way Apple sells in prepaid and emerging markets, which is exactly what it needs to kickstart more explosive growth.

Samsung did something fairly surprising given that it included the most recent version of Android, 4.2.2, on its brand new Galaxy S 4 smartphone: it didn’t talk about that much at all last night at the special launch event. Maybe the company was too busy trying to cram as many song and dance numbers into the show as possible, but maybe that’s because Samsung will soon take what it needs from Android and go its own way.

Which isn’t to say it would get rid of Android altogether – just that it might choose to follow Amazon’s example and build a version of Android that’s virtually unrecognizable on the surface from the Google mobile OS that will be running on the vast majority of other OEM handsets. The more control Samsung has over the OS running on its devices, the greater its take of revenue resulting from software and media use, and the better it can solidify its position at the top of the global smartphone market.

More than any other Android device manufacturer, Samsung made a point with its latest generation of flagship device to outline software features that help it stand apart: Dual-Shot, Sound Shot, Drama Shot, Air Gesture, Air View, S-Travel, S-Health, S-Voice, S-Translator, S-Voice Drive Knox, Smart Scroll, Smart Pause, Group Play, etc. The list of features that were Samsung-specific was long, and many of those actually included services that can be considered alternatives to Google’s own offerings: S-Voice and S-Translator can do a lot of what Google’s own software offerings can provide, for example, and use Nuance tech, not Google’s, to get it done.

Even leaving the major software service announcements aside, small things like the new Bluetooth controller and ability for S-Health to plug into third-party devices signal a desire to start attracting more content to Samsung’s own OEM-specific ecosystem.

Samsung also offers its own Samsung Apps for delivering software specific to its devices, and has signed on Swiftkey to provide its software keyboard, another way to differentiate itself from those using stock or skinned Android input mechanisms. Samsung Apps itself isn’t new, but a key effort from the Korean company to attract more developers to that platform is aiming to make it more of a destination for developers and consumers. Samsung announced a campaign in February to sign on indie developers to Samsung Apps, offering 100 percent of all revenue from software sold there to developers.

That’s a big incentive over the standard revenue split of 70/30 in the Google Play marketplace, and one made even more attractive by the fact that even if developers target only Samsung devices, at this point they’re still reaching the vast majority of Android smartphone users worldwide. Likewise, Samsung should be able to use its market advantage to add even more content to its own dedicated media marketplaces (including the music store powered by 7digital), which could get a boost in terms of consumer interest from the new Group Play collaborative media sharing feature introduced for the Galaxy S 4.

Amazon had it backwards: it started off trying to stake out its own territory apart from Google’s own Android encampment. Samsung instead is taking what it needs from Android and slowly building up reserves to strike out on its own. It still has a ways to go before it gets there (Play is still just a far better ecosystem than Samsung’s own media and software stores), but eventually the chance to strike off on its own and own a more direct relationship with customers by forking Android development could be just too tempting the next time a new flagship update rolls around.

Samsung talked up the Galaxy S 4′s features with a bit of Broadway flair here at Radio City Music Hall, but there still are some neat additions to the device that didn’t get a moment in the spotlight. The Korean electronics giant, for instance, tapped a San Francisco company called Mobeam to bring its novel approach to displaying barcodes to the Galaxy S 4.

Rather than sticking to the tried and not-so-true approach of trying to display a barcode on a phone’s screen, Mobeam coaxes the device’s infrared proximity sensor to pulse a pattern at a barcode scanner. Essentially, it’s trying to trick the scanner into thinking that the light flashing at it is a “reflection” of a valid barcode — it sounds a little out there, but it definitely seems to work. The problem may sound trivial to some, but that’s certainly not the case for companies and advertisers that want a more direct way to interact with consumers.

We’ve seen more than a few startups attempt to tackle this issue — there’s Disrupt Battlefield alumnus SnipSnap for one, while devices like the ambitious iCache Geode tried to solve the issue with a secondary display — but Mobeam’s solution strikes me as one of the smarter ways to do it. After all, why deal with paper coupons and gift cards that come in the mail (that often expire and get thrown out anyway) when a company like, say, Coca-Cola can cut out the middleman and send you retail-friendly deals directly. You get a price break, retailers don’t need to revamp their point of sales systems, and Coca Cola makes a sale.

According to Mobeam CEO Chris Sellers, the company has been working out the particulars of this partnership with Samsung for around 18 months. It’s the first time that the Mobeam has locked up a partnership with handset manufacturer, but they’re no stranger to attention from major companies — in late 2011 Procter and Gamble teamed with Mobeam in a bid to better distribute digital coupons. With any luck, the Galaxy S 4 won’t be the last device to benefit from Mobeam’s tech, as Sellers told TechCrunch that Mobeam has been in talks with a number of major handset OEMs.

At this stage, there don’t seem to be any applications on the Galaxy S 4 that take advantage of Mobeam’s tech. It’s there for curious developers and companies to muck around with, but one has to wonder if Samsung has something specific planned. Back at Mobile World Congress, Samsung officially pulled back the curtain on Samsung Wallet, a Passbook clone of sorts that lets users digitally store “coupons, membership cards, tickets, and boarding passes” — all things that a device like that S 4 could pass it self off as thanks to Mobeam. Sellers wouldn’t confirm that Samsung planned to tap into Mobeam’s API for Wallet, but if Samsung is really looking for a way to beat Apple and Passbook, this may well be it.

Samsung didn’t just unveil a new flagship smartphone today: it also introduced a cover accessory for that device with unique features. The S View cover has an integrated pass-through window for the main display, which can provide at-a-glance access to basic info like call display, SMS, current battery status and the time. It’s actually reminiscent of an old feature phone throwback, like the small displays built into flip phones once upon a time.

The idea is to keep the phone’s screen protected while also giving access to vital information, and it’s a rather nice execution. Maybe not as nice as the YotaPhone, which offers an e-ink display on the back that takes much less power than the main screen when activated  which has a battery-saving feature, too.

As if it could be any other way, the just-announced Samsung Galaxy S 4 is Samsung’s, and perhaps even Android’s, best phone yet. In fact, it very well may be the best smartphone on the market, period.

We’ve been through months of speculation, hype, rumors, and leaks, but the truth is out, and the Galaxy S 4 still has much more up its sleeve than the leaks suggested. More than any other Galaxy before it, the Galaxy S 4 is proof that the company can build a central brand the way Apple has with the iPhone. Both the Galaxy Note and Galaxy S series have been selling in the millions, and the Galaxy S 4 looks like it will hold up that trend.

Even with loads of new software, like an enhanced camera application, hover-style gesture features, and a slew of baked-in apps and services from Samsung, the Galaxy S 4 still brings the heat in the hardware/spec department. Here are the specifics:

The Galaxy S 4 clearly has a small ring of competition in the spec department. The only phones that are on this level are the Xperia Z (1080p 5-inch display, 13mp camera, quad-core Snapdragon S4 Pro CPU) and the HTC One (4.7-inch 1080p display, 1.7GHz Snapdragon 600 quad-core CPU, and an “Ultrapixel” camera) and LG’s Optimus G Pro (1080p 5.5-inch display, quad-core Snapdragon 600, 13-megapixel camera).

Of course, they each have their own pros and cons, but the Galaxy S 4 seems to be the most compact, lightest, and fastest among them. Samsung hasn’t been clear about the exact brand of the processor for the U.S. version, but it did say that it was a quad-core Snapdragon CPU clocked at 1.9GHz, which we believe may be the Snapdragon 600.

However, “processors vary by region,” says Samsung, and the Asian and European version will sport the long-awaited Samsung Exynos 5 Octa eight-core processor.

The Galaxy S 4 design manages to both fit in with the Galaxy S family and stand on its own as a unique breed. For one, Samsung packed a bigger display (5-inches diagonal) into a package that’s actually smaller than before. The GS4 is the same width, slightly shorter, and .7mm thinner than its predecessor.

As such, the bezels on the Galaxy S 4 are slightly thinner on all four sides, which means it’s all screen, all the time. And what a screen it is. The Galaxy S 4 display is 5 inches of unadulterated Super AMOLED 1080p brilliance. Surrounding it, the Galaxy S 4 takes a hybrid shape, something between the straight lines of the Galaxy Note and Galaxy S II with the curved tops, bottoms, and corners of the Galaxy S III. The elongated home button is unmistakably GSIII-style.

The Galaxy S 4 also sticks with familiar materials, and unfortunately that still means a whole lot of plastic. Both the front panel and back panel (which is removable) are made of brushed plastic, but with a textured pattern of tiny circles laid over it. It gives the phone an industrial, textured look, but in reality all you feel is smooth plastic.

Around the edge, you’ll notice a new embellishment to the S series: a metallic bar that runs along the edge of the device. Though it looks a lot like metal, it’s actually polycarbonate and meant to protect the sensitive corners of the device.

It would be nice to see some more premium materials in this generation of the Galaxy S, but the plastic and polycarbonate construction let Samsung fit many components into a very compact, light package, according to Director of Product Planning Drew Blackard.

The Galaxy S 4 uses a new 13-megapixel rear-facing camera, bumped up from the 8-megapixel shooter on the Galaxy S III. It’s still centrally placed on the upper back half of the device, complete with LED flash, autofocus, and 1080p video recording. On the front, the Galaxy S 4 sports a 2-megapixel camera.

The higher megapixel sensor is nice, and will surely make a slight difference, but where the Galaxy S 4 camera really evolves from past generations is in the software.

For one thing, the camera app now uses the same UI as the Galaxy Camera, with a brushed silver finish to the buttons and much simpler navigation. Clicking the mode button along the bottom will bring up a simple scroll wheel full of various modes. When one is highlighted, the menu gives the name as well as a description. More sophisticated users can also see these mode options in a grid view for quick changes.

Along with some of the same modes we’ve seen on both the Galaxy Camera and newer Galaxy smartphones like Beauty Shot, Samsung has added way more modes into the mix. One is called Eraser, and it lets you remove unwanted people from a shot. Samsung says it comes in handy for shots that have been photo-bombed, or tourist shots at busy places. The camera senses any motion that goes through the frame and lets you choose to remove it, as if that person had never walked through your shot of the Eiffel Tower.

The Galaxy S 4 also has a dual-shot mode, which is just a button press away from the main camera interface. This lets you use both the front-facing camera and the rear-facing camera at the same time, for both recording and still captures. There are various filters, such as Oval Blur, Postage Stamp, Cubism, and Split, which give you different options for the theme of your dual-shot creation. You can resize the pop-up picture, and move it around the screen using simple drag and drop tools. It’s pretty amazing.

Some other modes include Drama Shot, which lets you take a succession of photos of some action (like someone skiing down a mountain) and turn them into a composite of the entire sequence, and Sound and Shot, which lets you record up to 9 seconds of audio to pair along with a picture.

Samsung even jumped on the GIF train with the likes of Cinemagraph and Vine to create a gif-making mode, called Cinema Shot. It lets you take a short recording, and then determine which parts of the shot stay still and which parts remain animated. In fact, it’s almost exactly like Cinemagraph.

But Samsung took one step past capture and even built an app called Story Album which lets you create photo albums of special events or trips through templates, and use TripAdvisor to add extra location data to your story. You can even print your album through a partnership with Blurb’s print distribution network.

There’s a lot going on here, so try to keep up. We had recently heard that the GS4′s “wow” factor would be all in the software, and that’s exactly right. Most of TouchWiz is the same, though it seems to get lighter and lighter as the phones get faster. The one very noticeable edition was a set of extra toggle buttons available in the pull-down notifications menu.

Other than those particulars, let’s start with the gesture-based head-tracking stuff.

The most useful new feature of the Galaxy S 4 is Air View. It lets you hover over something on the screen to get an extended pop-up view of what’s inside. For example, if you hover over an email in your inbox, Air View will bring up the first few sentences of that email’s contents. If you hover over an album within the photo gallery, you’ll see nine thumbnails of the contents of that gallery. In fact, if you hover over an image while inside the folder, that particular thumbnail will expand to give you a better view of the particular picture. It’s all very reminiscent of what can be done with recent entries in the Galaxy Note line, except without requiring users to keep track of an S-Pen.

Air View is embedded in the email client, photo gallery, calendar, and a Galaxy S 4-edition of Flipboard, which lets you view and select headlines by hovering over a single tile.

Samsung also added an Air Gesture feature, which lets you control the phone without having to hold it — I could see this being used while driving. You can swipe left and right to switch between web pages, songs, photos in the gallery, etc. and swipe up and down to scroll. You can even accept calls by waving at the phone.

Rumors suggested that Samsung had developed some sort of magic-scroll eye-tracking technology, when in reality the Galaxy S 4 can actually only track your head, very much like the Galaxy S III’s Smart stay feature. The front-facing camera can detect that your head is facing the phone directly, which stops the display from dimming.

In the Galaxy S 4, that technology evolves to automatically pause videos when you turn away from the phone with Smart Pause. As far as scrolling is concerned, if you’re on a page that requires reading or scrolling, the Galaxy S 4 will let you tip the phone forward or backward to scroll (as long as the ff-camera senses that you’re paying attention).

Samsung said that using tilt-gestures as well as “head-tracking” technology to streamline browsing a page was “the most intuitive and natural to the end-consumer.”

As far as NFC is concerned, the GS4 includes S Beam and TecTile integration, but Samsung also lets you pair with up to eight other NFC-devices to run a feature called GroupPlay, which lets you play the same song across eight different devices… to create a party on the go.

Samsung also included an IR blaster on the Galaxy S 4 so that you can use it as a remote for just about any modern television. Called WatchON, it also includes rich information proved by an electronic programming guide.

Along with an updated camera and Story Album, the Galaxy S 4 brings a handful of brand new applications to the Galaxy S family. The first, and possibly most important, is S Translator. S Translator is available in nine languages at launch, including Chinese, English U.S., English British, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean and Portuguese.

It is a standalone app that automatically translates information that is typed or copy/pasted into it. S Translator is also embedded in ChatOn, Messaging, and email.

The Galaxy S 4 also has an optical reader which turns analog information into digital, by reading business cards and turning them into address book contacts. S Translator is also embedded into the optical reader, which scans QR codes as well.

ChatOn, Samsung’s own-branded VoIP application, has been updated to include three-way video calls, screen share, and annotations. You can even use the new dual-camera mode to enjoy ChatOn calls.

Samsung has been making a big push in the health department with the new Galaxy S 4, and has thus preloaded the S Health app on the device. The app originally made its debut last July and seemed to focus mainly on linking up with existing health gadgets like fancy scales and blood glucose monitors. This time around, using the Galaxy S 4′s built-in pedometer, S Health tracks your activity throughout the day and knows when you’re running, walking or climbing stairs. The S Health app also lets you input your consumption activities to track caloric intake and get suggestions.

Speaking of S Health, Samsung is selling a few health-related accessories to tackle the ever-growing quantified self products like the Jawbone Up, Nike Fuelband, and FitBit. That said, Samsung has introduced the wrist-worn S Band that tracks activity, temperature and humidity.

Samsung is even going so far as to sell a heart-rate monitor which you can strap on for your daily workouts, and a body scale. All of the accessories come with Bluetooth so they can pair back to your device and be recorded by the S Health app.

And since Samsung loves making special cases for its big-name phones, the Galaxy S 4 had to go big even with its case. It’s called the S View cover, and it has a little screen on the front that reads information from the phone. That way, even though the phone is locked, you can still see the time, SMS notifications, battery status, and choose to accept or ignore incoming calls.

Samsung didn’t specify which technology they used for the cover’s display, or whether or not it needs a charge or takes battery from the S 4, but it wouldn’t surprise me to hear they took a page out of the YotaPhone playbook and are using low-power e-ink here.

Samsung didn’t clarify exact pricing, but said it would go for the same price as a “Samsung premium smartphone”. The Galaxy S III launched in the US at $199 with a 2 year contact.

In terms of availability, they didn’t give a specific release date but did say it would be on store shelves in 2013Q2, at AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile, Sprint, Cricket and U.S. Cellular.

Samsung is riding high on the success of the Galaxy S III and from what I’ve seen, the Galaxy S 4 is a worthy successor with innovative features packed into a familiar housing. It’s a bit of a shame that Samsung announced the phone without giving a price or release date, but at this point, with Samsung the global sales and innovation leader in smartphones, it can do pretty much whatever it wants.

Sure, some last minute leaks may have ruined Samsung’s big surprise, but that doesn’t mean that there still won’t be plenty to talk about when the Korean electronics titan shows off its flagship Galaxy S IV later tonight.

As usual, Samsung will be streaming the event (both online and in the heart of the city), but Jordan Crook, Michael Seo, and I will be liveblogging the event too in case you aren’t set up for video or would prefer to digest the night’s events with a heaping dose of personality.

In case you’ve somehow missed the deluge of Galaxy S IV information that has inundated the geekier districts of the web, here’s a quick rundown of what we expect to see tonight. If a slew of recently leaked photos are any indication then the Galaxy S IV won’t stray very far from the design language Samsung has grown fond of with devices like the Galaxy S III and Note II, and the love-them-or-hate-them plastic bodies don’t seem to be going anywhere. Meanwhile, people’s eyes will likely gravitate toward a 5-inch Super AMOLED screen and one of Samsung’s Exynos 5 Octa chipsets (though it could be swapped for a Qualcomm Snapdragon 600 when the device makes its way Stateside).

And of course, new hardware is only going to be part of the equation — Samsung appears to have baked nifty software features like Floating Touch and Smart Pause into its highly customized Android build. It won’t be long until we finally see how the device matches up to the rumors, so stay tuned.

The wait is almost over. Samsung (005930) is set to finally unveil its next-generation Galaxy S IV smartphone on Thursday evening and BGR will be on hand reporting live from the event. The company rented out Radio City Music Hall in New York City to debut its new flagship smartphone, so we’re likely in store for a spectacle of unimaginable proportions. Samsung’s next-generation Galaxy S IV is expected to feature a 5-inch HD display, an eight-core processor (or a quad-core chipset in the U.S.), a 13-megapixel camera, up to 64GB of storage plus microSDXC support, 2GB of RAM and Android 4.2 Jelly Bean. While it’s shaping up to be an absolute beast on paper, will the Galaxy S IV live up to its sky-high expectations once it’s finally announced?

Bookmark this link, which will go live shortly before the event begins tonight, and make sure to head there for our live coverage of Samsung’s press conference! Coverage will begin just before 7:00 p.m. EDT / 4:00 p.m. PDT.