Mobile
Mobile Technology – Cell phones, ultramobile computing, and more
Browser Shootout: Windows Phone 7 vs. iPhone, Android
Aug 25th
A new video from Pocketnow compares browsing speed on a Windows Phone 7 prototype from LG, the iPhone 4, and Google’s Nexus One on Android. Even though the software’s not finalized yet, Internet Explorer on Windows Phone 7 is surprisingly competitive with the WebKit-based browsers on the iPhone and Android, beating or matching them in most tests. No Flash, Silverlight, or HTML5 A/V support yet, but the browsing experience is at least on par with the competition and at least won’t be a hindrance to the platform’s success.
While the rendering engine is a mix of IE 7 and 8, Microsoft has clearly put a lot of effort into the user experience, with silky-smooth scrolling, multi-touch zoom, and tab management. It’s a completely different animal from IE Mobile 6 on Windows Mobile 6.x (though most WinMo owners use Opera Mobile or other browsers in any case).
Video after the break.
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Microsoft reveals Windows Phone 7 games: Xbox Live in your pocket
Aug 17th
Microsoft has finally launched a portable Xbox. It’s neither a dedicated gaming device like Sony’s PSP or Nintendo’s DS nor just a casual gaming platform like the iPhone/iPod Touch. The software maker has fully integrated its Xbox Live experience into its upcoming Windows Phone 7 operating system– every WP7 phone will be able to play Xbox Live Arcade-style games with graphics reportedly exceeding anything seen in mobile gaming so far. The platform includes avatars, achievements, and more, though head-to-head multiplayer is not on the cards for the initial version.
Microsoft revealed over 60 launch titles, including Assassin’s Creed, Crackdown 2, Castlevania, Earthworm Jim, Guitar Hero, Halo: Waypoint, Splinter Cell, Star Wars, and more. Let’s just say it’s a pretty solid lineup.
Head over to Engadget for a full preview of what Windows Phone 7 gaming will have to offer.
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HTC Schubert: Windows Phone 7, aluminum unibody
Aug 13th
247WindowsPhone has obtained a prototype of a Windows Phone 7 handset built by HTC. The HTC Schubert will be a Windows Phone 7 launch device, and while we have no confirmed details, it is an aluminum unibody design and appears to have around a 3.7″ screen, likely with WVGA (800×480) resolution.
Photo and video after the break.
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Apple’s mystery 1.2″ touchscreen device
Jul 10th
Taiwanese site Apple.pro has unearthed a tiny touchscreen with Apple markings. The panel measures a minuscule 3 cm (1.18″) diagonally- the fact that it’s touch sensitive is interesting given how tiny any touchable items would be on screen. This could be anything, but if we had to guess, it might be the next-generation iPod Nano, with touch gestures to switch songs and the like. Or maybe it’s a new device altogether.
One more photo after the break.
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Microsoft Kills Kin
Jul 2nd
Microsoft has killed its Kin social phone line just a few weeks after it launched. Gizmodo reports that the company has merged the whole Kin team into the Windows Phone 7 team. Rumors suggest that a mere 500 Kins have been sold to date, and while the figure’s probably higher than that, it might explain such a large project being folded so suddenly.
Kin was accompanied by some strange advertising, but the biggest problem was that Verizon only offered Kin phones with its $30 monthly smartphone data plan. Kin was supposed to be a cheaper, social-oriented alternative to a smartphone, but without a cheaper data plan, it became almost pointless. Even drastic price cuts to just $20/$50 for the Kin One/Two (from $50/100) didn’t help, and Microsoft’s ads promoting Kin as a Windows Phone just caused further confusion.
Read on for the full story behind Kin’s demise.
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iPhone 4 screen smashed in first drop test
Jun 12th
Apple’s new iPhone 4 isn’t even on sale yet, but it’s already been put through a series of drop tests. iPhone repair site iFixyouri managed to get an iPhone 4 (minus the motherboard inside) and dropped it from pocket height (3.5 feet). The good news? It survived two drops. The bad news? On the third fall, a loud popping sound was heard, and the phone’s glass front was smashed to bits.
iFixyouri comments that the new phone’s construction – essentially two pieces of glass with aluminum sandwiched in between – made it particularly vulnerable compared to earlier iPhones, which had a slightly recessed glass screen surrounded by a chrome bezel.
Source: iFixyouri
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T-Mobile HSPA+ beats Sprint 4G WiMax in speed test
Jun 12th
T-Mobile’s taken some flak recently (particularly from AT&T) after it claimed that its newly upgraded 3G service (HSPA+) offers “fourth generation speeds.” The carrier’s now been vindicated by a series of tests conducted by Phone Scoop, which surprisingly found that T-Mobile souped-up 3G matched and sometimes noticeably outpaced Sprint/Clearwire’s WiMax-based 4G service.
T-Mobile delivered particularly strong upload speeds and low latencies, and more importantly, T-Mobile’s service already works on nine different phones, including the HTC HD2, Touch Pro 2, myTouch series, G1, and others, while Sprint’s only works on the HTC EVO 4G. See Phone Scoop’s full report for more details. T-Mobile says it hopes to have its upgraded HSPA+ service up and running in 100 major metro markets by the end of 2010.
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Apple’s new iPhone 4: A4 CPU, HD video, high-res screen, video chat, 3-axis gyro for $199/299, June 24
Jun 8th
Apple CEO Steve Jobs announced the iPhone 4 at the company’s Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) yesterday. The phone sports a high-resolution screen, thin new (though repeatedly leaked) design, front-facing camera for video chat, the iPad’s A4 processor, HD video capture and playback, a three-axis gyroscope, and the newly-renamed iOS 4.
The iPhone 4 will be available starting June 24 for $199 (16GB) / $299 (32GB) in either black or white, on a 2-year contract– and yes, it’s still tied to AT&T in the U.S.
Read on for our full coverage of Apple’s fourth-generation iPhone.
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HTC EVO 4G hit with possible data corruption bug
Jun 3rd
HTC might have a big mess coming its way in just a day or two. The company’s all set to launch its new Android superphone, the EVO 4G, on Sprint tomorrow, but initial reports from users who were given EVO 4Gs at Google’s I/O conference suggest the phone might have a serious data corruption bug.
The phone’s included 8GB SanDisk MicroSD card reportedly stops working until the phone is rebooted. Normally that might just be a minor annoyance, but it turns out the problem keeps popping up in different forms, corrupting data (like photos, videos, and program files), causing programs relying on SD storage to go haywire, giving file permission errors, and more. A thread at AndroidForums has over 200 posts, with no working solution in sight.
The problem doesn’t seem to be limited to the included MicroSD card. Some suspect the issue could be related to the EVO 4G’s unusual seating mechanism for the MicroSD card (pictured after the break), which might cause the card to at times lose contact with the phone’s main board. Given that it does seem to be fixed (at least temporarily) by a reset, we’re inclined to think it might be a software glitch, in which case HTC, Google, or Sprint will hopefully be able to push out an update soon enough.
Update: Whew, that was fast- looks like HTC’s already pushed out an over-the-air update to fix the issue.
Source: AndroidPolice
Photo of the EVO 4G’s unusual MicroSD slot after the break. More >
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Qualcomm ships dual-core 1.2 GHz Snapdragon CPU for smartphones
Jun 3rd
Qualcomm just shipped the first dual-core smartphone processor, a 1.2 GHz Snapdragon chip. The new third-generation QSD8260 and 8660 chips are based on a die-shrunk 45nm version of the 1 GHz QSD8250 chip found in phones like the HTC HD2, EVO 4G, and Google’s Nexus One and should use less power while packing a lot more computing horsepower.
The third-generation Snapdragon CPUs offer a next-generation Adreno (ATI Imageon) GPU with support for Open GL ES 2.0 and Open VG 1.1, hardware acceleration for 1080p HD video encode/decode, and video output resolution up to WXGA (1280×800) with 24-bit color. They also pack a dedicated low power audio engine (to allow the rest of the CPU to go to sleep when you’re just playing music) and low power GPS electronics (to reduce power consumption in navigation apps).
The 8260 model packs an HSPA+ radio (GSM), while the 8660 supports both HSPA+ (GSM) and EV-DO Rev. B (CDMA). Qualcomm will also offer the QSD 8672, a 1.5 GHz version for tablets and larger devices that began sampling several months ago.
The CPUs are based on the same Scorpion core design as current Snapdragon chips, implementing the ARMv7 instruction set but offering slightly better performance clock-for-clock than ARM’s reference design, Cortex A8. For more information, check out our Smartphone Processor Guide.
No info on when the new chips will hit production smartphones, but we’re probably looking at early 2011 at the earliest.
Full press release after the break.
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