Category: Mobile

After Sony released a string of curious Android tablets that failed to catch on, the company had no choice but to go back to the drawing table and try something different. That something different wound up being the Xperia Tablet Z, easily one of its most conventional designs yet — a choice that may end up paying off nicely. Now that the decidedly non-kooky Xperia Tablet Z is gearing up for an appearance stateside, we tracked one down here at MWC to get a glimpse at what Sony’s tantalizingly thin tab brings to the table.

First things first — if you’re a fan of minimalist industrial design, then you’ll find a lot to like here. Sony’s bright 10.1-inch Reality Display (running at 1,920×1200 no less) is the clear focal point of the device’s face, and there’s nothing else save for a Sony logo, an IR blaster in the corner, and an easily missed 2-megapixel camera. The display is also aided by one of Sony’s Mobile Bravia engines, which means colors can easily take on a lurid cast unless you dial it down. Meanwhile, the back is a matte black slab devoid of any detail other than a small Xperia logo and an 8.1-megapixel camera in the top- right corner. One could easily call it dull, but “understated” feels like a better fit because of how nice it feels.

The Tablet Z weighs in at a scant 1.09 pounds, and its trim waistline is only 6.99mm thick — for a bit of perspective, the iPad mini is just a hair thicker at 7.22mm. In order to keep the weight as low as possible Sony resorted to an almost entirely plastic body. That sounds like the recipe for a chintzy-feeling tab, but that’s definitely not the case here. Despite being very light, the Tablet Z has a remarkably solid, premium feel to it. There’s a little bit of give to be felt if you grab the thing by the sides and give it a twist so it may suffer from some long-term issues down the road, but it’s a far cry from some of the overly creaky, plasticky tablets that still pepper the market.

Click to view slideshow.

A quad-core Snapdragon S4 Pro chipset and 2GB of RAM are tucked away inside the Tab Z’s waterproof chassis, and my time with the Tablet Z was largely lag-free. When faced with the prospect of putting out tens of devices for public consumption at Mobile World Congress, most companies typically try to do something to keep we nerds from mucking around with them too much. Not so here — I was able to download and install Quadrant from the Google Play Store to get a slightly better idea of what the Tablet Z is capable of. Over the course of three trials the Tablet Z consistently put up scores in the low to mid-7,000s and topped out at 7601 — devices like the Nexus 10 and Asus Transformer Pad Infinity TF700 usually hover around the mid-4,000s.

Granted, this is a synthetic benchmark and doesn’t provide a complete picture of performance, but it’s clear that Xperia Tablet Z is no slouch.

I only really have one gripe with Xperia Tablet Z — the custom UI that Sony has loaded on top of Android. Longtime readers may know that I’m an avid proponent of leaving Android untouched, and Sony’s implementation just doesn’t do it for me. In fairness, it’s lighter and less cumbersome than some of the other overlays currently clogging up other Android devices so you may disagree, but the occasional bit of visual stutter while rifling through menus, and the fact that background images were distorted when set, raised some flags. That said, Sony has added some neat features to help make up for it, such as a universal remote app that doubles as a programming guide, and a revamped new gallery that displays geotagged photos on a globe.

At an early morning press address yesterday, Sony Mobile CEO Kuni Suzuki pointed to a renewed focus on bringing the company’s “cutting-edge technology and resources” to Sony Mobile, and confidently called 2013 a “breakthrough year.” Naturally, it’s too early to tell if that actually pans out, but certainly not impossible. The Xperia Tablet Z is a (hopefully not so) rare return to form for Sony, and here’s hoping that the rest of 2013 is full of products as well-executed as this one.

Despite increasing efforts from vendors to appeal to business customers, a new report found that Android’s enterprise market share actually declined in the fourth quarter. In the latest Device Activation Report released by Good Technology, iOS was found to be at the top of the enterprise market with 77% of all activations, an increase from 71% in 2011, and it captured eight of the 10 spots for most popular devices. Enterprise activations for Android devices fell 6.3% year-over-year for a 22.7% share of the market, while Windows Phone came in at a distant third with 0.5% of activations.

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BlackBerry may be launching a new platform in certain markets to try to win back users, but it’s focusing on service additions in other places where the BlackBerry install base remains strong. Today it’s officially launching BBM Money in Indonesia, in partnership with PermataBank and Monitise to bring real-time mobile payments to BlackBerry’s platform-specific social network and messaging service.

The service (tipped late last year) allows BlackBerry users to create a mobile money account attached to their BBM identity, and use that to transfer money to other BBM contacts, as well as purchase airtime credit for their device, or move money to bank accounts. The mobile payments play will mean that million of Indonesian BBM customers will be able to quickly conduct business transactions right in the service where many of them already communicate on business matters, and allow merchants and others to quickly accept payments with the devices they already own without requiring the involvement of any third-party device or software.

Market saturation of phones overall in Indonesia is high, and BlackBerry is the number one selling smartphone in the country, which makes it a logical place to launch a mobile money service that requires both parties to have BlackBerries to work. Monitise Group Strategy Director Richard Johnson went into more detail about just why the Indonesian market was such a perfect fit for this launch.

“BlackBerry Messenger is the dominant short message communication platform in Indonesia, the fourth most populous country in the world with 240 million people,” he said in an interview. “There is also the country’s 90 percent mobile penetration and the fact that BlackBerry is the number one selling mobile smartphone there – more than half of all smartphones sold in Indonesia are BlackBerry devices. At a global level, what is really exciting here with real-time chat evolving through real-time engagement, is that you are effectively taking a social network and turning it into a payment network.”

Users aren’t charged for sending money between BBM contacts, or topping up their airtime minutes on a prepaid SIM using the service. They do incur normal banking and mobile rates, however, depending on their specific bank’s policies regarding fund transfers, and on their mobile plan. It work with any device running BlackBerry OS 5 or higher, with BBM 6 or higher, though it isn’t available on BB10 (which is of little consequence, since it has yet to launch in Indonesia anyway).

BBM Money does two key things for BlackBerry: It helps entrench the service in markets where BlackBerry is still the smartphone platform of choice, and it offers yet another opportunity for service differentiation to continue to help evolve BBM into something more than similar offerings from Apple (iMessage) and third parties (Kik, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger). Should the pilot go well, I’d expect to see further launches in other markets where BlackBerry needs to dig in to help keep its lead, like Nigeria and South Africa.

BlackBerry’s (BBRY) struggling platform will remain a part of the Department of Defense’s mobile strategy for the time being, however it will begin to see increased competition from the iPhone and Android devices. The Pentagon plans to implement a more “platform agnostic” mobile policy starting by February 2014 when it opens its network to smartphones and tablets from Apple and Android vendors.

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Why? Seriously, Asus (2357). Why? This question bears asking, as going hands-on with Asus’ new Fonepad truly requires some big hands. Single-handed operation is a thing of the past. Remember when diminutive phones were the latest trend? When iPod grew smaller and smaller and RAZRs got thinner and thinner? Wave goodbye, dear friends. That age is long gone.

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A new Kickstarter project called the Ego! Smartmouse blends together some recent trends in computing, including hardware identity authentication and 3D motion control to come up with a unique input device that wears many hats. The Ego! is a mouse in the traditional sense, allowing you to control your desktop or laptop computer, and it also has on-board file storage, can work as an authentication device for various services, and features built-in acceleration and motion detection to work like a Wiimote for controlling games.

The Smartmouse packs its own Linux-based OS into its compact design, with a 400 MHz ARM9 processor and up to 8GB of onboard flash storage. It connects via Bluetooth, has a gyroscope, compass and optical mouse sensor in addition to its accelerometer, and also includes a built-in VGA camera, touch-sensitive surface, vibration motor and notification LEDs. It charges via micro USB, and the project creators say it’ll get a decent amount of battery life thanks to the use of low-power tech.

Created by UK-based design firm Laura Sapiens, the Ego! Smartmouse is the product of a team with strong engineering and interaction design backgrounds. CEO Matteo Modè comes from an industrial and automotive engineering background, and the founding team also includes expertise in embedded security, consumer electronics, computer vision and embedded systems.

As you can see in the demo, the Ego! looks to be equally at home on the desktop, controlling media center PCs from the couch, or working with gaming applications to provide 3D controls. It can also automate routine tasks like opening a browser and logging into an email account, and be used as a presentation tool in combination with a projector. The on-board camera makes syncing the Ego! as easy as pointing the mouse at a QR code displayed on-screen (eliminating messy discovery and pairing procedures), and in an office setting it can be used to quickly and easily transfer files between workstations.

The team is looking for £20,000 in funding, with early pre-orders starting at just £70 for a 2GB black or white version of the Ego!, including international shipping. Higher storage is available for £110 (4GB) and £120 (8GB), both of which also offer up new color options as well.

Twitter announced today that it has a new version of its Twitter app for Windows Phone. It has a new design, which the company says “brings the app in line with the other Twitter apps”. It also includes some new navigation features, new icons and live tiles support.

The app has four new tabs: Home, Connect, Discover and Me. Familiar territory to iPhone, Android and web users, but Home lets you view Tweets from those you follow, and expand the tweets, and whatnot. The Connect tab shows you your mentions and those who have followed, retweeted or favorited you. The Discover tab shows you trends, new content on Twitter, categories, and suggestions for accounts to follow. Finally, the Me tab lets you read and respond to direct messages, see your lists and your favorites, and view and update your profile.

There are new icon buttons in the Application Bar for composing tweets and searching from anywhere in the app.

WIth live tiles, you can pin Twitter accounts, lists, and searches to your start screen.

Twitter also revealed its app for Firefox OS today. More on that here.

In a roundtable discussion with reporters today, Google’s head of Android Andy Rubin came right out and flatly denied the search giant was considering the launch of retail locations. “Google has no plans and we have nothing to announce,” Rubin was reported as saying by AllThingsD’s Ina Fried. Curiously, Rubin’s explanation for why Google doesn’t need stores was basically the exact opposite of argument from third-party observers about why it does.

Rubin said that consumers “don’t have to go in the store and feel [products] anymore,” according to ATD. That’s a pretty marked contrast to what a lot of people have been saying about why Google might want to get into the brick-and-mortar biz. Just last week, MG suggested that “average consumers are never going to buy [Google’s] projects online without having tried them first,” in fact. Apple has had success providing experience-based shopping environments, after all, which helped greatly in evangelizing and popularizing the concept of the iPad.

But Rubin believes that consumers these days are better served by online tools, including review sites and word-of-mouth recommendations from friends and social connections, to the point where a hands-on experience isn’t necessary. He added that he believes Google’s Nexus program is still relatively young, and not “far enough along to think about the necessity of having these things in a retail store.”

Looking at Google’s hardware efforts in the wake of the Chromebook Pixel announcement last week, it does seem that the company is still in a largely experimental mode when it comes to fielding its own devices. A significant retail investment might not make sense until Google decides more firmly what works and what doesn’t with its hardware lineups in terms of meeting current customer needs.

Android got a late start compared to Apple’s iOS in the worldwide smartphone battle, but it eventually grew to attain a larger worldwide market share, and it did so largely on the back of a single champion: Samsung. Samsung’s Galaxy line has become to Android what the iPhone is to iOS, despite hardware and software coming from completely distinct companies. But Google very specifically didn’t sign up to be a one horse kind of cowboy, and as such it makes sense for the search giant to be somewhat fearful of Samsung’s growing influence, as the WSJ reports.

Google’s top brass is concerned that Samsung is getting too big, according to the WSJ’s sources, giving the South Korean company much more weight behind potential negotiations to alter the terms of their licensing arrangement with Google in order to cut into the search giant’s ad business. Samsung has no near peer when it comes to Android device sales, having shipped 215.8 million smartphones during 2012. It accounted for 40.6 percent of Android smartphone sales during Q4 20112, according to IDC, and 27.9 percent of the Android tablet market, both of which are above any of their closest competitors. The next closest handset maker has less than 10 percent share, meaning that though some recent entrants like ZTE and Huawei show signs of considerable growth, Samsung’s dominance in the near future is pretty much guaranteed.

The WSJ says Google’s Android chief Andy Rubin has discussed Samsung as a potential threat at an event for executives last year, and notes that he talked about Motorola Mobility acting as a kind of “insurance policy” against its power. But Motorola hasn’t helped so far, and in fact has only been shedding market share since being picked up by Google. Motorola nabbed only 1.9 percent of Android smartphone share in Q4 2012, down from 6.2 percent year-over-year.

Google’s hardware direction could change completely when Motorola’s current pipeline runs down.

But Motorola may yet be Google’s sleeping giant: Google’s Patrick Pichette said during the company’s recent conference call in January that Motorola is still working through its existing pipeline, which had plans in place for around a year and a half of device releases before it was bought by Google. The company has been aggressively restructuring Motorola and divesting itself of parts of the organization that it doesn’t need, so we’re likely to see Google take its fresh hardware division in an entirely new direction when all the old plans put in motion previously finally get excised. The rumored X Phone could be the first fruit of Motorola’s Google-directed labors, and might present a much more competitive package, if Google’s recent Nexus launches are a good indicator of the direction it will take with its own in-house hardware.

The reason Google needs to field a strong competitor, either itself or through one of its OEM partners, boils down to advertising revenue. Samsung has received more than 10 percent of the ad revenue generated through Google services driven by its platform devices, the WSJ’s sources said, and looks to be interested in getting a bigger chunk of that pie as its install base drives more of that action.

Both Google and Samsung need each other: neither would’ve been able to achieve what they have in terms of competing with Apple’s mobile dominance without the other. But as with Apple and Samsung’s supplier relationship, as well as the maps and YouTube services arrangement between Apple and Google, success can breed contempt between massive companies working together when each is primarily interested in its own bottom line. To really win, Google has to field a legitimate competitor to Samsung that can weaken slightly, but not disarm its ally. A few strong players is better than one dominant one in terms of Google’s aims, but if it can’t elevate other OEMs to get that done, it may just have to go it alone.

Twitter is already talking up its Firefox OS app.

Mozilla announced at Mobile World Congress this week that its new operating system Firefox OS will make its way to a number of mobile operators around the world. More on that here.

Twitter says that its app for Firefox OS will be similar to its other mobile apps with a “rich interface, featuring the Home, Connect, Discover and Me tabs, as well as the search and compose Tweet icons, so you can easily find and send Tweets from anywhere in the app.

Yep. It looks pretty much like the other Twitter apps:

But it does have at least one difference.

“We’ve also implemented support for a feature unique to Firefox OS: Web Activities. This lets you tweet photos directly out of any app that also supports web activities such as the built-in photos app.”

ZTE’s press conference yesterday didn’t really reveal anything we didn’t already know, but it at least gave us the opportunity to play with the Chinese OEM’s first Firefox OS-powered smartphone. The cost-conscious Open is apparently meant for “young people who are adventurers and want to try something new” (according to He Shiyou, head of ZTE’s Mobile Devices Division anyway), but how is it?

The Open’s 3.5-inch display is something of a mixed blessing here — it responds nicely to swipes and touch inputs, but its small size means that actions that require precision (say, banging out a text message) can be problematic if you have anything but the daintiest fingers. Color reproduction isn’t great and viewing angles are actually quite bad, but that’s to be expected out of such a price-conscious device.

On the plus side, the Open is actually rather pretty, in a pared-down minimalist sort of way. It’s a very round little thing, and the models on display here were swathed in a nice orange or blue soft-touch plastic (a not-so-subtle nod to Firefox’s emblem, methinks). A 3.2 megapixel fixed-focus camera rides high on the Open’s back, and image quality seemed to skew towards the underwhelming end of the quality spectrum.

To be quite frank, there really isn’t much to say about the hardware — like HP’s new Slate 7, it’s cheap and it works. But honestly, what else could you expect from a phone like this? If the images alone didn’t make it clear enough, the Open is a device meant to bust into emerging markets — it’s going launch first in Europe and Latin America starting this summer thanks to some help from wireless carrier Telefonica. There’s still no official word on price, but Mozilla engineering program manager Michael Treese told me that the bill of materials for ZTE’s Open comes out to “less than $100″ so I wouldn’t worry about going broke after buying one.

Click to view slideshow.

And of course, there’s Firefox OS. I’ll preface this next little bit by mentioning that the build I played with isn’t final just yet — it hasn’t undergone the final cleaning that comes with carrier testing. Things start off charmingly enough with a cute Firefox boot screen, and it isn’t long at all before users wind up on a lockscreen that’s easily dispatched with a single tap.

We’ve seen Firefox OS in action a few times over the past few months so the interface looks very familiar — a quick swipe on the homescreen brings up a slew of HTML5 apps, while a persistent set of icons for the phone dialer, messaging app, Firefox browser, and the camera. Poking around seemed fluid enough save for the occasional hiccup (which honestly may be more hardware than Firefox OS), and apps fired up without too much delay.

Speaking of apps, FFOS users have a decent little section of them to choose from at this stage — there are optimized versions of Facebook and Twitter, as well as HTML5 apps for Pulse, AirBnB, Soundcloud, and more. Firefox Marketplace plays home to “thousands” of apps, though Mozilla is quick to note that it’s but only one place for users to find content for their devices. Since the phone is meant for folks in emerging economies, Mozilla also baked in a service that provides real-time network and data traffic monitoring to help those people better manage their usage (and, by extension, their money).

All things considered, Firefox OS definitely has some potential. Does it still need some polish? A bit, yes. Does it have what it takes to give platforms like Android a run for its money in terms of functionality? In its current state, no, and that’s something Mozilla is quite candid about.

“We know there’s a certain parity gap,” Treese said of Firefox OS’ feature set. “We’re looking to close it within about a year.” Having ZTE — a pro at cobbling together inexpensive phones — is a smart move considering the markets Mozilla is trying to impact. With any luck, final review units will be available sooner rather than later, but this little guy could make a big splash if priced and marketed correctly.

In a move that should surprise no one, Salesforce.com is bumping up the mobile capabilities of its Service Cloud offering, making it easier for users of mobile shopping and banking apps to get help and customer service right from the apps running on their smartphones or tablets.

In essence, the technology — which needs to be implemented by Service Cloud customers including merchants, banks and gaming providers — aims to keep customers interested and active in their interactions and give them real assistance, said Alex Bard, SVP and GM for Salesforce.com’s Service Cloud and Desk.com unit. The goal is to bring the sort of in-app experience folks now get from advanced web applications — co-browsing, in-application support, chat as well as easy access to knowledge bases and support forums — to their device of choice

Say you see a transaction on your bank account  that looks iffy. Service Cloud Mobile will enable you to easily enter an instant chat session with your bank’s customer support agent, who can walk you through what it is, when it happened and perhaps who in your family transacted it, if anyone. Or if you are stuck at a certain level of a popular game and you’d like some advice on how to proceed, you could hit a button to enter a community forum or FAQ site to get hints.

Current Service Cloud customers include KLM Airlines, Comcast, Activision, and Spotify — Salesforce.com claims 34,000 customers in all.

The offering wraps in co-browsing technology Salesforce.com acquired last year with its buyout of GoInstant last year.

Co-browsing should be available in the second half of the year. Access to Mobile Service Cloud Communities and Service Cloud mobile chat is available now. Chat costs $50 per user per month for customers of Service Cloud Enterprise and Unlimited Edition.

All of this is pretty important stuff for bankers, merchants, and game impresarios eager to keep existing customers happy and supported — and draw in new customers from less-enlightened competitors.

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Nvidia only recently introduced its Tegra 4i processor, which pairs Tegra 4 power with integrated LTE — an Nvidia first for mobile chips — into a single system-on-a-chip. The company is now showing off the processor in action on in-house developed reference smartphone hardware called the Phoenix, which is actually present as a working model at MWC in Spain, as you can see in the video above.

The Tegra 4i is Nvidia’s attempt to bring the power of its new platform to mainstream devices, and the Phoenix, with its 5-inch, 1080p display, 13-megapixel camera and integrated LTE radio is a look at what OEM partners will be able to achieve building with the Nvidia processor as its powerhouse. The phone is also only 8mm thin thanks to the SoC’s tiny design, but it has a 60-core GPU that bests the Tegra 3 by a factor of two, while also improving battery life and web browsing compared to Nvidia’s previous generation architecture.

Android game developers and startups looking to make use of enhancements in mobile camera and video tech will probably get the biggest kick out of the Tegra 4i demo, which shows off some of its graphics processing prowess. The camera is now capable of providing instant still HDR that doesn’t have to be turned on and off, as well as HDR video and HDR panorama photos. The demo video shows off photo and video rendering, which really gives a good sense of just how good devs will be able to make media look on devices based on Nvidia’s new mobile platform.

A new survey from software security company AVG announced today reveals that a full 25 percent of mobile users keep “intimate photos or videos” on their smartphones or tablet devices, a surprisingly high number given that only 36 percent said they would be comfortable checking their bank balances from a smartphone screen. AVG surveyed 5,107 smartphone users in the U.K., U.S., France, Germany and Brazil to get a broad look at how pervy we all are.

The number stands in contrast to other results indicating people are generally reluctant to perform sensitive tasks on mobile devices. Only 35 percent use their gadgets for online shopping, for example, and only 38 percent will chance any kind of online banking task, according to the survey results. But take a quick nude selfie in the bathroom to Snapchat to a significant other over lunch hour? No problem, says one in four.

Though actually, transmitting the pics and video may not be quite as common. The relatively high comfort level with taking and storing smutty pics might be precisely because users aren’t actually doing much transferring of those photos to begin with. A 2012 Pew Internet report found that only 15 percent of adults polled admitted to having received a sexually suggestive “nude or nearly nude” pic on their devices, a number which has remained static since May 2010. That could mean that even if people are taking boudoir pics, they’re still mostly for local, personal use rather than sharing far and wide. If something is just living on your local device, rather than being transmitted over the air, it probably feels a lot more secure to most users, hence the still fairly high hesitation around online banking.

Despite a quarter of mobile users carrying around potential blackmail boxes loaded with sensitive pics, around 70 percent of users weren’t aware of tech like the mobile data-wiping feature built into every iPhone via iCloud, or the various Android remote data-deletion features and services available.

Let’s face it: Smartphones are convenient, constantly around and take great pics and high-quality videos. If people weren’t using them for “intimate” portraiture I’d be more shocked. Still, look around at the closest four people and try to figure out which one is the one with dirty pics on their phone right now. Who are we kidding? If you’re here, reading this, it’s you.

Intel officially launched its new dual-core “CloverTrail+” Atom system-on-a-chip today at MWC in Barcelona. The CloverTrail+ is a direct successor to Intel’s first smartphone SoC, Medfield, but gets its name from the company’s tablet-focused CloverTrail platform. The Atom Z2580 dual-core processor is the top-of-the-line SKU in the new lineup, which you can see powering a mobile graphics rendering demo featuring Epic Citadel in the video above.

Intel’s new CloverTrail+ line still uses the same 32nm architecture of its predecessor, which means it likely won’t get significantly better power performance requirements (though Intel is claiming its software approach will actually help it beat ARM designs), but the chip should power significantly improved phone designs. Intel’s reference designs for the chip include its new Intel XMM 6360 modem, which can theoretically take advantage of full HSPA+ 42Mbps network speeds. It also has an improved GPU (hence the demo above), packs in 2GB of RAM, up to 256GB of NAND flash storage, a 16MP camera with a 2MP front-facing shooter, and Android 4.2.

Intel isn’t matching up to the competition on paper, but it’s pushing dual-core mobile chips to their max speeds, whereas most quad-core designs have to be clocked down to maintain optimal operating temperature and power consumption. CloverTrail+ phones are expected to ship in late 2013, and we’ll likely see many more actual OEM hardware based on the tech, as compared to last time around with Medfield. Intel is still hurting by using the 32nm construction vs. the 28nm format employed by its biggest competitors Qualcomm and Nvidia, both of which also now offer integrated LTE modes with their latest gen SoC designs.

But Intel’s real splash will come when Bay Trail debuts, which is a 22nm full redesign of Atom, with native quad-core processing. That should give it the edge over its competitors when it comes to power consumption, as they’ll likely still be using 28nm designs. If Intel is going to take a serious run at mobile relevance, it’ll be with Bay Trail, not CloverTrail+, despite admirable improvements made with this generation.

We need to face facts: WebOS is dead. Barring the unwavering support of the enthusiast community, the former mobile OS will never become a commercial product and, LG investment or no, the possibility of WebOS surviving a sale is nil.

WebOS is no more, has ceased to be, is bereft of life, and it rests in peace. It is an ex-OS.

HP is going through the same doldrums all PC makers are facing. Had they put a modicum of energy into updating the TouchPad and the WebOS mobile line, they probably could have made it out of the horse latitudes of the downturn, but as it stands they jettisoned an amazing amount of valuable cargo, including support for the WebOS team. What LG is supposedly buying is a readymade stack for their smart TV offerings and not a real OS. What HP is selling is dead weight.

TV operating systems are about as low as you can go in the graphical environment game. TVs face a snails-pace upgrade cycle, are orphaned by their makers, and are nearly invisible to the consumer. Slapping WebOS into a TV is tantamount to sticking it onto a medical device – you’re assured a slow and steady obsolesce.

The last big news out of WebOS came over a year ago, with the release of 3.0.5. The Community Edition wiki was last updated in August. If there is such a thing as a zombie OS, this is it.

It’s over. Even if the rumors are true, that LG would even consider picking this thing up over, say, using a ready-made Android stack is a testament to the fire-sale price HP would consider and, more important, LG’s efforts to grab some of that enthusiast cool. After all, LG is fighting Samsung for mind and market share and a little WebOS magic could (but won’t) pull them partially out of a deep hole. But don’t bet on it.

Asus introduced the new Padfone Infinity today at MWC in Barcelona. The successor to the company’s hybrid tablet/smartphone has a redesign with an aluminum back and edge-to-edge glass display, a 5-inch display with 1920 x 1080 resolution and 441 PPI. The LTE phone can plug into a 10-inch tablet dock, which itself offers 1920 x 1200 resolution.

The PadFone Infinity boasts a 13-megapixel camera with an f/2.0 aperture camera, with a dedicated image sensor to boost low-light capture. It can also grab 1080p HD video, and there’s a 2-megapixel shooter on the front. Asus is also very proud of the PadFone’s redesigned rear speaker, and onboard digital audio equalizer software, which allows users to optimize sound depending on their environment.

The PadFone logo on the back is also an NFC antenna, and the phone is powered by a 1.7GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 600 quad-core processor to help it handle the magic of switching from phone to tablet mode. The PadFone Infinity also has 2GB of RAM on board, 64GB of Flash storage, and ships with 50GB of Asus’ cloud storage. It has voice input, and offers hands-free operation via Asus Echo for use in-car, as an alarm clock, and more. The company seems to be offering it up as somewhat of a Siri competitor.

Battery life on the device is advertised at 19 hours talk time, 6.5 hours browsing, 9 hours of video playback and 410 hours standby time. The PadFone Station tablet compoent also acts as a battery pack, with 57 hours talk time, 19.5 hours browsing, 27 hours video playback and 1230 hours standby time.

Asus’ latest single-sim tablet/smartphone combo is coming to European markets in Apri 2013, and will cost €999 euro, or around $1325 U.S. The PadFone has traditionally been much more successful internationally than in the U.S., so it’s very likely we’ll see it in overseas market before (if) it makes its way stateside.

When it comes to attracting top engineering talent, Facebook, Google and Twitter have name recognition on their side. But Damon Sicore, the new VP of engineering at ed tech company Edmodo, believes his new employer brings another kind of advantage to the table: a mission.

Sicore, who spent six years at Mozilla, most recently as VP of engineering, joined the San Mateo, Calif. startup earlier this month and said his big charge is turning Edmodo — which gives teachers and students a secure social network for sharing content and collaborating — into an “engineering brand.”

“My specialty is building engineering teams and producing great products and an engineering process,” he said. “I want to turn Edmodo into a nexus of engineering and attract the best talent.”

Sicore acknowledged that competition for engineering talent in the Valley is running high but said Edmodo’s social mission distinguishes from its peers.

“When I joined Mozilla, that was the thing that attracted me to it,” he said. “When I looked at the mission and the type of people who were there and the type of dedication they had to that mission, it’s the same thing I see here.”

Changing the culture from heads down to head up

Since launching in 2008, Edmodo has added users and attracted funding at an impressive clip, even as companies like Schoology offer competing social learning platforms for teachers and students. It started the school year with 10 million teachers and students and now says it reaches 17 million. The company has also raised $40 million from top investors like Union Square Ventures and New Enterprise Associates. But while Edmodo’s engineering team has worked to support that growth, it hasn’t focused on talking up its feats outside the company or working out processes to optimize their work.

“Right now, the engineering culture is very much heads down, building all the products,” Sicore said. “To create that engineering brand, I want them to look up a little and build their own brands and talk about [their] great work.”

Internally, Sicore said, he plans to create new processes to better prioritize projects and empower individual engineers, as well as promote hackathons and recruit more interns. He also said that he wants to boost Edmodo’s profile outside the company by reviving the its engineering blogs, encouraging closer relationships with developers building on Edmodo’s platform and working with the broader community in other ways (a particular skill he picked up at open source software project Mozilla).

Supporting the lowest common denominator can limit expansion

As Edmodo pushes deeper into classrooms, Sicore said the company will tackle challenges unique to K-12 ed tech companies, like accommodating schools’ older and more outdated technology. Flash, for example, is often broken on older hardware as newer versions have shipped, leaving students with deprecated or totally disabled versions, he explained. “We need to support the lowest common denominator of features in our site and applications,” he said, adding that he’s eyeing an expansion into HTML5 but the reality of school technology could limit that.

Another education-specific complication specific is figuring out how to create log-in systems and long-lasting online identities for users (students) who may not have email addresses. In the general consumer web world, the email address provides a reliable way of identifying and keeping track of a user over time. But as students graduate to the next grade or change schools, Edmodo needs other mechanisms that let them travel with their information, Sicore said.

The seasonal nature of education creates another interesting layer of complexity. Students may join Edmodo one year and then disappear the next, or they might use it differently depending on how their teachers use the site. Sicore said he believe there are interesting ways to connect students’ learning experiences year to year, but that Edmodo needs to work harder to boost engagement.

Privacy and safety is also a big concern. As the recent breaches on Facebook and Apple have shown, big tech companies are often targets for hacker. Given its focus on students, Sicore said it has a unique set of concerns and has extra checkpoints and safeguards to ensure privacy.

Simplify, simplify, simplify

Considering that 30 percent of Edmodo’s users are on smartphones and tablets (with iOS getting double the usage of Android), Sicore said, mobile will continue to get a good deal of the company’s attention.  And, in addition to exploring HTML5, he said there could be interesting applications in new technologies that enable audio- and video-based instant communication online.

The new engineering chief, who is barely two weeks into the new job, emphasized that he’s still taking it all in and setting priorities, but he said one of the most interesting challenges, so far, is looking at all the data and and content shared on Edmodo to optimize for teachers’ and students’ biggest needs.

“We’re in the process of simplifying,” he said. “To me, you do the most important things and just those most important things.”

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The 3G Nokia Lumia 720 slots into Nokia’s Windows Phone 8 portfolio behind its two 4G flagships, the 920 and 820 — with the aim of pushing some of their fancier features down to a more affordable mid range price point. Rather than beefy tech specs, Nokia has focused on polishing two populist areas. Firstly design: the 720 has been gifted with sleek looks — it’s the thinnest Lumia to date (at 9mm), sharing the rounded style and curved screen of the 820 but much more pleasing to hold, being lighter and thinner. The bright Lumia colours come in a matte finish, with the exception of a high gloss white option.

And secondly: the camera. Nokia has not gone as far as adding the PureView branding to the 720′s 6.7 megapixel lens but it’s put in Carl Zeiss optics (and branding), a new f1.9 aperture to boost performance of low light photography, and — to amp up the social networking street cred of the device — it’s added a new digital lens that lets people take enhanced self portraits using the 1.3 megapixel front facing lens.

This vanity filter processes self-portraits to ‘beautify’ the results — using a little digital airbrushing trickery to whiten teeth, smooth out skin tone and so on. Results seemed a bit hit and miss during my brief hands on but it did add a more cartoonish look to self portraits. Nokia said the feature had played well with its target consumers — young, fashion-conscious social networking users — during testing. As for the main lens, it wasn’t possible to scrutinise the low light performance claims during my brief hands on but Nokia is planning on making a big song and dance about its powers, creating a dedicated retail display unit to show off the low light prowess. The sales pitch is that this device puts a ‘proper camera’ in the consumer’s pocket so they don’t need to rely on a having a separate point and shoot.

Elsewhere, the phone’s specs are much the same as the two entry level Lumias — underlining that Nokia is not aiming this phone at the tech spec crowd, but rather going for a mainstream social networking audience. The 720 does have a slightly larger 4.3 inch display than its cheaper siblings, albeit it has the same resolution of 800 x 480. Nokia has added its Clear Black display technology to the 720, though, to improve viewing outdoors in sunlight. Indoors, in the glare of conference center fluorescent lighting, the screen looked clear and crisp, without being especially high res.

Under the hood, the 720 has a 1GHz dual-core Snapdragon chip — the same sized processor as the entry level Lumia 520, along with the same 512MB of RAM. During a brief hands on the device felt no less responsive than its lower priced siblings. As with other devices in the Lumia line Nokia has included its range of software add-ons, including its HERE mapping and navigation software, and its free streaming music service.

The 720 does include NFC but wireless charging is an optional extra — the handset has three metal connectors on the rear which are compatible with a wireless charging cover. Nokia has also made room in the unibody design for an SD card slot – supporting user expanded memory of up to 64GB. On board memory is 8GB. The integrated battery is 2,000mAh.

Nokia is targeting the 720 at the Asia Pacific market initially, with China Mobile signed up to range it. There’s no confirmation as yet of whether the 720 will make it to the U.S. market.

The last time I bought an LG smartphone — the unabashedly brown G2x — I had to return it after a few weeks because it would randomly reboot if I so much as looked at it funny. From then on, I convinced myself that I just couldn’t buy another LG phone. They just weren’t worth the headache.

After playing with LG’s Optimus G Pro here at MWC, I’m starting to rethink that decision.

Fine, it may not be as new as the L II series, but I still think it’s a far more compelling device to spend time with. But first, a quick note. As confusing as it is, there are technically two versions of the Optimus G Pro — a variant meant for Japan with a 5-inch display, and a Korean-spec G Pro with a larger 5.5 panel that will hit the United States some time this spring. That latter version is the one on display here, and despite some minor shortcomings, it easily seems like one of the best smartphones LG has ever made.

As usual, LG has crafted a very light, very slim plastic chassis for the G Pro. It’s more than a little reminiscent of Samsung’s Galaxy design language, though LG does what it can to set the G Pro apart from its big rival with little flourishes — think the “pixelated” back and the IR blaster located along the device’s top edge. Under that back plate lives a removable 3,140 mAh battery — not bad at all, though it’s right in line with the battery seen in the Galaxy Note 2.

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A 13-megapixel camera features prominently on the G Pro’s rear end, and while I really doubt that you’d be able to tell from some the photos I snapped, image quality seemed impressive. Slightly less impressive was the G Pro’s Panorama feature — in theory it’s similar to the Photo Sphere feature baked into Android 4.2, but the implementation here is more confusing and the results not as polished. Some other camera tweaks (like the ability to record video from both the front and rear cameras at the same time) are just as neat, and actually work great.

Tucked inside that body is a Snapdragon 600 processor (like the one seen in HTC’s fancy new One flagship) clocked at 1.7GHz along with 2GB of RAM, so the whole affair is very snappy — there’s zero lag to be seen while swiping around and poking in and out of apps, even with LG’s busy custom UI in place. Visual clutter aside, that UI seems to be a fairly flimsy veneer over stock Android 4.1.2, so purists may not bristle quite as much as usual if they took a chance and bought one of these things.

While I’m pontificating about visuals, I should mention that the G Pro’s 5-inch, 1080p IPS display is plenty bright and sharp (think 400 PPI) to boot. Color reproduction still isn’t quite as vivid as its competitors (a side effect of the screen technology at play here), but as I’ve noted before, my eyes may have just grown accustomed to the often lurid colors seen on AMOLED panels like those featured in Samsung’s high-end smartphones.

On a related note, I’m surprised at how quickly I’ve grown accustomed to these sorts of hefty handsets. It used to be that anything with a screen larger than four inches felt awfully unwieldy, but the Optimus G Pro and big ol’ screen just felt natural in my hand. Your mileage will almost certainly vary on that front, but overall the G Pro is a much more comfortable device than its screen size lets on.

Naturally, I’m waiting until I get my hands on a final review unit before passing judgment, but the G Pro shows plenty of promise. Whether or not LG will actually be able to convince jaded consumers to buy it is another story entirely. I will say this, though — if the rumors are true and Google really is working on a new Nexus phone based on the Optimus G Pro, it’ll be one of those devices that you just can’t buy fast enough.