Category: Mobile

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.

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.

Samsung (005930) will unveil its next-generation flagship smartphone during a press conference next week, where BGR will be reporting live. While we already know plenty about the upcoming Android phablet, Samsung has whet fans’ appetite with quick teaser video posted to its Facebook page. Nothing is revealed in the video, however it looks like the first part of an ongoing narrative we’ll see unfold over the next 10 days, culminating with the Galaxy S IV’s official unveiling on March 14th. Samsung’s teaser video follows below.

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Now that Samsung has confirmed that the Galaxy S IV will be revealed in a grand event in New York on March 14, mobile nerds only have one mystery to mull over — what is the damn thing going to look like? Well, Samsung isn’t telling just yet, but it has seen fit to release the first in a series of strange teaser videos for its newest flagship handset.

The clip stars a young lad who, for reasons beyond comprehension, has been entrusted with a carefully packaged Galaxy S IV to tote around in broad daylight — expect the little guy to pop up at the official launch event in just over a week.

Sadly, any of you hoping against hope that Samsung would deign to give us any new info on the GSIV will be very disappointed. All the video really reveals is that the device will fit comfortably inside a 1 ft x 1 ft cube, and that it’s potentially as radiant as, well, whatever was in Marcellus Wallace’s briefcase all those years ago.

The rumored spec sheet paints a slightly more sober portrait of the device — the Galaxy S IV is expected to pack a 4.99-inch 1080p Super AMOLED display, one of Samsung’s newfangled Exynos Octa chipsets, 2GB of RAM, and a 13-megapixel camera. It’s hardly a shock, but all those components will be reportedly shoved into another largely plastic chassis (or so says storied Russian leaker Eldar Murtazin, who correctly called the March 14 unveiling date). At this point Samsung is one of the last big Android device players that hasn’t yet unveiled its 2013 flagship phone and that’s probably just the way they like it, but we’ll soon see how devices like HTC’s One, Sony’s Xperia Z, and LG’s Optimus G Pro will fare on the market after Samsung drops its bomb later this month.

When iPads were first introduced in 2010, an Apple press release promised that the “iPad’s revolutionary Multi-Touch interface makes surfing the web an entirely new experience, dramatically more interactive and intimate than on a computer.” The implication was that the web via the tablet would be unrecognizable and vastly superior: hoverboarding compared with surfing on my laptop and doggie paddling on my phone.

Yet, here it is three years on, and we’re still waiting for that “interactive and intimate” browsing experience (and hoverboards, for that matter).

A recent study conducted by Onswipe revealed that iPads account for a whopping 98.1 percent of tablet traffic on websites. Despite this, the actual experience of surfing the web on an iPad is underwhelming at best and infuriating at worst. Simply put, today’s state-of-the-art tablet browsers, especially Safari, don’t do the Internet, the user, or the iPad justice. Apple wasn’t totally wrong: The iPad has proven itself to be a revolutionary device that absolutely has the potential to offer a transformative web-browsing experience. It just hasn’t yet. Which means there’s a gap in the market for an intuitive, immersive, innovative iPad browser. Whoever develops it is going to win big.

Safari is deliberately hobbled

As more and more of the services we use on a daily basis have migrated to the cloud, the web browser has become the computer’s most essential app. And when we surf the web on a computer, we encounter few obstacles. Though we may have to scale the occasional paywall or sit through an obligatory five seconds of an ad before accessing content, the navigational experience of a computer user is fluid and frictionless — as anyone who’s gone down the rabbit hole researching alpaca breeds or underrated Val Kilmer films at 3 a.m. can attest.

Surfing the web is far less pleasurable on an iPad. Visiting a site frequently presents one with a pop-up and a dilemma: Download the app, or endure the diminished experience of a website designed for another device. Safari is essentially a limited version of its desktop sibling – and apps almost always provide a better experience. (Or, as Firefox UX Lead Alex Limi has summed it up, it’s ”kind of sucky.”)

Of course, this is sort of the point. It’s in Apple’s, or any tablet maker’s, best interest to make using (read: buying) apps preferable to visiting websites. Safari is designed to make using web-based apps on an iPad inconvenient, if not impossible. In response, most companies focus their mobile development resources on creating native apps rather than optimizing their content for tablet browsers. The result is a browsing experience full of flow-breakers. In short, on a computer the browsing experience is limitless; on a tablet, it’s filled with blind alleys and false doors.

Why web browsing still matters

There is an impulse among some to assume that the rise of apps – or, more sensationally, the death of the website – will eventually render browsers, or at least mobile ones, obsolete. While it’s true that more and more content is consumed through apps, and that personalization has shifted our approach to content from searching to getting, the average number of Google searches per day has steadily increased – by an astounding one trillion each year.

But even if we accept that the importance of mobile websites is on the wane, there’s no reason for mobile browsers to beat them to an early grave. There is plenty of room for resurrection, but only if we throw out desktop-based notions of what a browser looks and feels like. Freed of all the tasks and responsibilities that other apps accomplish, tablet browsers should offer an absorbing, engaging innovative experience. Further, they should evolve the idea of what a browser is and can be on a tablet. Take GarageBand, for example: The iPad version is infinitely more interactive and tactile than the desktop version.

I’ve mostly been picking on Safari. As the native browser for a tablet that accounts for 98.1 percent of tablet traffic, its influence is enormous. However, that’s not to say there aren’t more innovative browsers taking steps in the right direction. Dolphin, for instance, allows you to create your own gestures for various functions. And though there are any number of other browsers contending in the space, as of yet none has emerged as the standard-setter or must-have. Mozilla’s forthcoming iPad browser, Junior, which completely throws out desktop-inspired design and focuses on simplicity, could be a contender, but for now we have to wait and see.

What we’ve lost

As it currently stands, the shoehorning of hobbled desktop browsers onto tablets is forcing us to move from a browser to app-navigation experience. This is not necessarily a negative development, but we must carefully consider what we lose as our web experience becomes siloed, or, alternately, take into consideration in our app design how we can ensure and better enable the type of surfing serendipity that made web browsing valuable in the first place.

The web as we have known it was designed to facilitate the browsing experience – to be a boundlessly linked rhizomatic structure of hypertext. But we have quite willingly begun to fence it off as we have shifted our experience to the iPad and individual apps. Even worse, though, is that most of the apps and services that have attempted to fill the browsing void have only further constricted the experience of the web via the tablet.

Under the claim of “personalization” and making the browsing and discovery experience more individually valuable and meaningful, they really provide little more than constricting customization confined to picks of an editor or your social graph. Most of it is expected or retreaded.What is lost is the magic of blazing a trail from one page to the next, the anticipation of revealing the unknown that lurks behind the next link. Personalization shouldn’t be an either/or experience of web discovery, and neither should browsing on the tablet.

While we will continue to make strides in personalizing the web, and hopefully even enhancing the web experience on tablets, I’m also looking forward to a browser that lets me fall down an unexpected rabbit hole once in awhile. As long as there are alpacas and Val Kilmer movies, there will be surfers. It’s up to developers to provide the hoverboards.

Hank Nothhaft is the co-founder and chief product officer of Trapit, a personalized content discovery platform.

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A new rumor suggests that Sony (SNE) plans to release a new flagship smartphone later this year that will compete with the HTC One and Galaxy S IV. According to a report from the Xperia Blog, the company’s upcoming smartphone, codenamed Xperia C670X, will be equipped with a 4.8-inch full HD display, a 1.8GHz quad-core Snapdragon 600 processor, Adreno 320 graphics and a 13-megapixel rear camera. The device is also said to include 2GB RAM, 32GB of internal storage and Android 4.2 Jelly Bean. The Xperia C670X is reportedly scheduled to launch sometime this summer.

Short Version

Mophie caused a bit of a double-take by introducing not one but two rechargeable external battery cases for the iPhone 5 within a few days of each other. The Juice Pack Helium offers a sleeker body, but the Juice Pack Air, announced later, offers more stamina. I’ve been testing the latter for nearly a week now, and it lives up to Mophie’s good reputation, with a single trade-off that may or may not influence your buying decision.

Long Version

Info

• Battery size: 1,700 mAh
• Available colors: black, white, and red
• MSRP: $99.95
• Dimensions: 2.60 in x 5.54 in x 0.63 in
• Weight: 2.68 oz

The Juice Pack Air for iPhone 5 will look and feel familiar to owners of previous Mophie Juice Packs. It has a rubberized texture that makes the matte back extra grippy, a smooth black plastic band extending around the entire sides of the device, and a button on the back that lights up indicators showing how much battery is remaining. Some of the elements have shifted to make up for the new iPhone’s design: the battery indicator and activation switch are on the back, not the bottom, and the micro USB port is on the bottom surface where the Lightning port would be on an iPhone 5 without a case.

One of the few unfortunate changes caused by the iPhone 5′s redesign is the shift of the headphone port to the bottom, which is where the business end is on Mophie’s battery pack cases. That means that on this Juice Pack Air, there’s around a half-inch hole any headphones have to go through to get to the iPhone’s 3.5mm stereo port. Mophie includes an extension cable to make sure your headphones will work no matter their design, but it’s an extra bit to keep track of and potentially lose, and that’s never good.

Overall, the Juice Pack Air feels like a quality accessory, however, and all the pass-through switches and buttons work well. There’s even mesh on the front-facing speaker ports, which do enhance sound to my ear, and an appropriately wide opening on the back to accommodate the camera lens and flash without impeding mobile photography.

The Juice Pack Air claims to be able to provide around 8 more hours of 3G talk time and Internet use, 8 more hours of LTE browsing, 10 hours of Wi-Fi web, and up to 40 more hours of audio playback or 10 more hours of video. Mophie says that’s up to 100 percent the normal battery life of your iPhone 5. I happened to be able to test charging a dead iPhone 5 from a drained state with a fully-charged Juice Pack Air, however, and it only got the iPhone up to around 80 percent charge. Your mileage may vary, however, and 80 percent from a cold, dead battery that has lain empty for a while is still pretty impressive, and in everyday use I found it was as close to doubling my iPhone 5′s life as made no difference.

The Juice Pack Air gets warm while charging, but that’s nothing new and I mention it more to make new users aware than to cite it as an issue. New users should also note that the Air features pass-through charging via the supplied micro USB cable: You can plug it in overnight and the iPhone inside will charge first, with the case getting its fill afterwards. One thing missing in this version is pass-through syncing, however. That could be a problem for some, but I can’t remember the last time I’ve done a wired sync of an iOS device, so it doesn’t bother me.

The Juice Pack Air is a solid performer, which isn’t surprising, given its pedigree. It has the same general downsides as its predecessor (mostly that it adds bulk to the iPhone), and loses a few tricks. But most won’t miss the lack of pass-through syncing now that iPhones are much more autonomous devices than they were in the past. And the Air for iPhone 5 is slightly thinner than the version for iPhone 4/4S. If you need the extra power that a battery case provides, the Juice Pack Air remains the case to beat.

T-Mobile executives haven’t beat around the bush when expressing their distaste for smartphone subsidiaries. In December, the company’s CEO spoke to investors about alternatives paths the carrier could take to compete with Verizon (VZ) and AT&T (T). According to an internal memo obtained by TmoNews, the company could announce its “uncarrier” plans as soon as March 4th. The initiative would remove two-year contracts, early termination fees and traditional phone subsidies, allowing customers to instead purchase new devices with a monthly installment plan. The memo also revealed that T-Mobile plans to market its HSPA+ and upcoming LTE network as “dual 4G” technology in the wake of its merger with MetroPCS. T-Mobile’s rebranding efforts will reportedly kick off on March 24th.

Apple’s landmark $1 billion damages award over Samsung has been partially vacated by presiding judge Lucy Koh, FOSS Patents reports. The judge has orders just north of $450 million be struck from the $1 billion total, an amount which relates to 14 Samsung products involved in the case, pending a new trial to determine appropriate damages for those specific devices.

Koh said that a new trial has to be held to determine damages on those products, which include the AT&T Galaxy SII, the Galaxy Tab, Nexus 4G and others, based on the fact that the court isn’t able to make adjustments to the amounts owing based on infringement by those products for legal reasons. In the second trial, which will be decided by an entirely new jury, Apple could wind up being awarded more or less in damages based on their evaluation of the per-product cost of infringement for that group of Android smartphones and tablets.

Apple is still entitled to an award of $598,908,892 from the part of the damages decision that Koh has determined should stand, though FOSS Patents suggests that no actual money will change hands until the result of this new, second trial is decided. Apple will also be able to exercise its option to pursue additional damages based on post-judgement royalties, and pre-judgement interest, pending the new jury’s decision.

A new law recently went into effect that made it illegal to unlock a cell phone purchased from a carrier without prior permission. The decision was met with widespread backlash from consumers and resulted in an online petition that was singed by more than 100,000 people asking the government to reverse the law. According to TechCrunch, the Federal Communications Commission plans to investigate whether the ban is harmful to consumers and competition in the industry. Chairman Julius Genachowski said that the “ban raises competition concerns; it raises innovation concerns,” adding that “it’s something that we will look at at the FCC to see if we can and should enable consumers to use unlocked phones.” The Chairman did note, however, that the FCC may not have the authority to overturn the law.

Wacom, the leading player when it comes to pressure-sensitive input devices aimed at photo and digital art professionals, has teased an upcoming mobile tablet product on its Facebook account. In response to what Wacom characterizes as outspoken customer feedback, the company says it’s working on a a device with “a pressure-sensitive professional pen, smooth multi-touch, an HD display, and other valuable features that you haven’t seen in other tablets.”

The tablet device is said to be something Wacom is working on “24/7,” with a target launch date of sometime this summer. Wacom provides the underlying technology behind a number of current tablets with pressure-sensitive stylus input, including the Surface Pro and Samsung’s Galaxy Note line, so it’s no stranger to doing pressure sensitivity on mobile devices. The company’s own hardware has generally been limited to peripherals, however, like its Bamboo, Intuos and Cintiq line of USB-powered drawing tablets, all of which require a host computer to operate.

Now, it looks like Wacom wants to branch out into an own-branded standalone tablet device. The tease shares nothing about what platform the device would be based around, but Android is a good bet. Penny Arcade co-creator Mike “Gabe” Krahulik also recently articulated at length his love for the Surface Pro and its built-in Wacom tech for creating digital art, so a device based on Windows 8 also isn’t outside the realm of possibility.

The only challenge for Wacom might be keeping a standalone device affordable. The Cintiq line of drawing tablets with built-in screens it currently offers start at $899 for the 12WX, which has a 12.1-inch display, but again requires a connected computer to function. Getting a self-sufficient Wacom tablet to a level where it meets the standards of the company’s demanding pros probably won’t come cheap, but the level of tech and the supply chain associated with the necessary components has also matured considerably since the 12WX was introduced in 2007. The proliferation of tablets and smartphones have helped putting more advanced technology in ever-smaller packages increasingly affordable.

I reached out to Wacom to see if they could provide more detail on this upcoming product, and will update if they respond with additional information.

Apple (AAPL) has plans to launch multiple new iPhone models this summer, according to a new report. Citing claims made by Barclays Capital analysts, Chinese-language tech blog EMSOne reported on Friday that Apple will launch its next-generation “iPhone 5S” alongside the much rumored low-end iPhone model this coming August. The report claims that both Foxconn and Pegatron will be tasked with manufacturing the new entry-level iPhone, which may include a 4.5-inch display and a polycarbonate case according to an earlier report. Apple’s iPhone 5S will supposedly feature a design similar to the current iPhone 5 but with various new color options and other tweaks.

Global enterprise software giant SAP AG (SAP) had several hosting, big data and mobile announcements from conference events around the world this week.
Savvis Delivers Subscription-based Hosting Services for SAP HANA

Savvis will be offer global, subscription-based hosting services for the SAP HANA platform. This hosting arrangement will provide enterprises a new way to tap into their big data. Using the hosted version will allow global enterprises gain instant, real-time entry into a leading transactional and analytical database platform–without the effort of owning and maintaining the infrastructure that supports it.

SAP HANA is a real-time database platform that streamlines analytics, planning, and predictive and sentiment assessment to allow business to operate in real time. As an SAP-certified provider of cloud and hosting services, Savvis will provide global enterprises with a cost-effective, on-demand hosting and cloud-based delivery model for mission-critical SAP applications.

“Our subscription-based services for SAP HANA give enterprises the ultimate flexibility and scalability they need as data sets grow and analytics capabilities evolve,” said Jeff Von Deylen, president of Savvis. “When organizations tap into SAP HANA through Savvis’ hosting services, they reduce the costs of owning and maintaining expensive server hardware without losing control over their operating systems and application layers.”

SAP to support Intel Hadoop Solution

SAP announced that it will work with Intel to bring to market a breakthrough big data solution  for enterprise customers centered on the SAP HANA platform and Intel Distribution for Apache Hadoop software. The solution will store and analyze in real-time large volumes of structured and unstructured data from across the enterprise. SAP plans to leverage the in-memory technology innovations in SAP HANA as well as Intel’s innovations in security, connectivity and management tools for Apache Hadoop to bring a unique solution to market. The planned major technology components of the solution include integral parts of the SAP Real-time Data Platform, along with Intel Hadoop software.

“SAP is reinventing the information processing landscape with SAP HANA – from business analytics and data warehousing, to enterprise applications and SAP Business Suite, and next to big data with Intel Hadoop,” said Franz Faerber, head of Data Management, SAP. “Together, SAP and Intel have a strong vision to bring significant innovations, enterprise IT maturity and go-to market efficiencies that will enable organizations to easily adopt an enterprise-class big data solution.”

Upcoming phases of the big data solution from SAP and Intel are planned to enable integrated query processing, optimized data loading, and unified administration.

SAP expands Portugal Telecom partnership

At Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, SAP announced the expansion of a global relationship with Portugal Telecom to make solutions built on the SAP HANA Cloud platform available on SmartCloudPT. The two companies are collaborating and plan to make available a developer edition of the SAP Business One application, version for the SAP HANA platform.

“PT has changed its business model to focus on data and managing big data, which is a challenge for every enterprise,” said Miguel Moreira, Managing Director, Portugal Telecom, Sistemas de Infomacao. “We believe that with our SmartCloudPT offering for SAP HANA, small and large businesses will be able to experiment with the advantages provided by SAP solutions in a low-risk development environment. They can then later scale that environment to a virtually unlimited capacity as SAP HANA delivers more value to them.”

SAP launches Rich Communication Services 365

SAP announced the launch of the cloud-based SAP Rich Communication Services 365 (SAP RCS 365) mobile service. For mobile subscribers, RCS makes services such as instant messaging, video and file sharing as simple and intuitive as sending a text message. The new service enables a “pay-as-you-go/grow” model so that mobile operators can avoid both the complexity of deploying RCS within their networks and the capital expenditure traditionally associated with that approach. It also enables operators to quickly establish themselves in this evolving market, excite their subscribers with new IP-based messaging services and capitalize on the underlying value of their network.

“User behavior and expectations have dramatically changed with the emergence of smartphone and tablet experiences,” said John Sims, president, SAP Mobile Services. “In today’s evolving mobile environment, operators are being threatened by new competitors offering innovative IP-based services. They must respond by rethinking their business models and innovating new service offerings. SAP RCS 365 arms mobile operators to quickly and cost-effectively launch such services while the SAP IPX 365 mobile service allows them to be interconnected to our ecosystem of mobile operators around the world.”

 For more big data news, follow our Big Data Channel.

Apple’s greatest innovation in recent version of iOS was clearly enabling emoji keyboard support for all iPhone and iPad users, regardless of region. Emojis are fun for everyone, but they could potentially get better thanks to a new Kickstarter project. The TeleSound is an iPhone and Android device accessory that lets users send sound messages, by translating the emojis built into iOS into a corresponding sound and playing it back via a special speaker peripheral.

The TeleSound uses a dedicated app that lets you message your friends, using the emojis provided in iOS. You can line up a series of icons to play back a number of noises in rapid succession, which is likely exactly as irritating as it sounds. The sounds playback via a small speaker that looks like one end of an old-school rotary phone handset, which connects to the iPhone via Bluetooth 4.0 (so it’ll only work with later model devices, like the iPhone 4S and up).

The speaker automatically plays back received messages when on and within pairing range (around 30 ft) of your device, and you can simply flip it over to turn it off thanks to an included tilt sensor. Messages received while the speaker isn’t in range or is inactive will be stored for later playback, so you won’t miss a single duck noise or sparkly tinkling sound. Replaying the last received message is as simple as quickly flipping the speaker over and right-side up again in a single gesture.

Project creators Olivier Mével and Marc Chareyron are the founding team behind a Paris-based hardware startup that previously created reaDIYmates, which are roll-your own kits for building Wi-Fi objects that can provide different responses based on input from web-based applications and sources, as well as smartphones. The duo is interested in helping build the next generation of connected devices to fuel the advent of the so-called “Internet of things.”

The team sought only $25,000 for their first project, and are now looking for four times that amount — $100,000 — to fund the creation of the TeleSound. Pre-orders start at the $34 level, which is cheap, but then again this is just a peripheral that makes it possible for your friends and colleagues to yell at you by sending emoticons over the Internet. Still, it has a certain charm, especially when I think about the potential for freaking out my cat from across the world.

Windows Phone and BlackBerry 10 are currently battling for the No.3 spot in the smartphone arena, but Nokia (NOK) CEO Steven Elop believes Windows Phone will some day amount to much more. “We selected Windows Phone as our platform so that it would be a key point of differentiation,” Elop told Bloomberg during a recent interview. And while Windows Phone has a minute share of the global market right now, the executive sees that changing dramatically in the coming years.

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We didn’t see a new phone from Sony at MWC this year, though it did take the opportunity to show off the Xperia Z (pictured) it demoed early this year at CES, but a new rumor suggests we’ll see a mid-year upgrade in a few months time that packs Android 4.2, a Qualcomm Snapdragon 600 chipset with 1.8GHz processor, 2GB of RAM and 32GB of onboard storage.

The leaked specs come from a tipster providing info to Xperia Blog, and also suggest the C670X will be smaller than the Xperia 7, with a 4.8-inch screen compared to the announced device’s 5-inch display. In most regards, the C670X sounds like a beefed up Xperia 7, however, with a more powerful processor, Adreno 320 graphics and double the on-board storage, while retaining a 13 megapixel rear camera and the same 1920 x 1080 resolution. The device’s pixel density will be higher, however, since those same pixels are fitting in a smaller screen, making for more crisp text and graphics rendering.

If true, this new handset would be pretty much on par with HTC’s flagship One smartphone, which has a 1.7GHz Snapdragon 600 chipset, and an Adreno 320 GPU. No word on whether the C670X would also inherit the Xperia Z’s impressive water resistance, which could be a tipping point factor for buyers looking to make a decision between the two.

These leaked specs should be treated with a healthy dollop of skepticism (it was accompanied with a render from the setup guide from the Xperia Z, which admittedly doesn’t depict the Xperia Z itself), but they’re far from extreme, and Sony fielding a phone in 2013 that takes advantage of the latest in mobile processor technology does make sense.

If you’re reading this from a home office and you work at Yahoo, stop and hurry into the office before you get busted! In this week’s podcast we break down Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer’s decision to ban working from home. Then we shift gears to talk about what we learned at our recent internet of things meetup in San Francisco. Finally we wonder if the absence of news from Mobile World Congress is news.

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Guests: Mathew Ingram, Nicole Solis, Stacey Higginbotham, Kevin Tofel

00:00 – 17:17 – Is Yahoo’s work-from-home ban a good thing?

17:18 – 32:19 – Here’s the Internet of things

32:20 – 44:30 – No news is no news from Mobile World Congress

SELECT PREVIOUS EPISODES:
Call-in show: Chromebook Pixel’s pinch secrets

Internet of things: Almond’s nutty idea

PlayStation snore? Google Pixel and Tesla earnings

Podcast: Why the internet of things is cool and how Mobiplug is helping make it happen

Podcast: Ballmer’s in the Dell, do tweets ruin TV? And how ISPs are not like gas pumps

Podcast Q&A: MotoACTV smartwatch now or wait? Lumia 822 in India? Best running apps?

Podcast: Kabam founder on scaling globally and designing for different platforms

Podcast: RoadMap Re-Run: Kickstarter’s Perry Chen on creativity and crowdsourcing

Podcast: The Sporkful’s Dan Pashman on web and food culture (and how bacon is over)

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• Facebook’s IPO filing: ideas and implications
• Connected world: the consumer technology revolution
• The state of cross-platform media measurement

There are obvious drawbacks to a smartphone that utilizes a display based on E Ink technology, but there are also some clear advantages. While the phone’s user interface and video playback both take a hit, the panels in eReaders like the Kindle and Nook are visible in any light and they required just a fraction of the power needed to fuel modern LCD and AMOLED displays. E Ink, the company behind the paper-like display technology, debuted a prototype of an Android-powered smartphone at the Mobile World Congress trade show this week, and Laptop reports that the unit can run for a week on a single charge. Another image of the prototype E Ink phone follows below, and Laptop’s full impressions can be found through the source link.

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HTC (2498) announced its new flagship One smartphone at a press conference earlier this month. Along with an impressive list of high-end specs, the device includes the newest version of the company’s Sense user interface. Sense 5 is less intrusive than earlier versions and contains a number of unique features such as Blinkfeed, the company’s Flipboard-style widget for news stories, photos and social updates. The one question on everyone’s mind — at least, everyone who owns an HTC smartphone — was whether or not their device would ever be updated to Sense 5.

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HTC (2498) confirmed earlier this week that it plans to release new Windows Phone 8 smartphones later this year, and a recent report suggests the vendor’s first new device will feature modest specs. According to Evleaks at Unwired View, the company has cancelled earlier plans to bring a high-end Windows Phone product, originally codenamed Zenith, to market. HTC will instead offer a mid-range handset running Microsoft’s (MSFT) latest mobile operating system in the coming months.

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