Monday, January 30, 2012

Toshiba Qosmio G35 Most tricked-out multimedia laptop






Laptops toshiba was founded by merging two very popular companies namely Hakunetsusha and Shibaura Engineering Works. These both companies were established in Japan and Shibaura Engineering Works was the one that handled electronics while Japan was transforming into a hi-tech country.
Further Toshiba became the number one electronics manufacturing company not only in Japan but in the entire world and the reason to that was simple, reliability and durability. These two qualities can make any company the most wanted and trustworthy one just like Toshiba. Toshiba started expanding its product when it saw the great response from its customers and market and started manufacturing laptops as well which obviously made them more popular and showed their products are here to stay.
One of the fine laptops Toshiba has ever manufactured is the Toshiba Qosmio G35which is titled to be the best multimedia laptop. Although surprisingly Qosmio lacks a good configuration having a Centrino M740 1.73 GHz which makes it a Pentium 4 with a RAM of 512 MB only and up to 120 GB Hard Drive. The machine still managed to take the spotlight and won the title for best multimedia notebook available in the market. Due to its lacking processor speed Toshiba Qosmio G35 is cheaper than the other laptops with a Core 2 Duo processor ranging from $1000 only.

If You Need to Stay Updated, Find the Best Apps for You

If you need to receive alerts about certain aspects related to your work or your personal life, then finding the best apps that accomplish this for you is one of the most convenient benefits of having a Smartphone. This way, you're not tied to your computer. Since there can be a multitude of apps available, it's good to make your own top top 10 app list to choose from. This you can do by looking at other such lists that experts have published. Cross-referencing a few of them is a good way to narrow down what apps seem to stand out. Still, since these apps need to suit your purposes, if you don't see something that seems best for you, keep looking. I know I actually wasn't completely convinced about a very popular app, and when I looked a little further, I was so pleased to find something just right for me. Nonetheless, I find that it's always good to start with published lists to get an idea of what's out there, what's the latest, and what stands the test of time. It may take a bit of doing, but in the end, the convenience of having just the right apps on your Smartphone will be worth the research.

PTA Sets Base Prices for 3G, 4G, Cellular Licenses


Source
By M Yasir
http://propakistani.pk
Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) has issued information memorandum for the auction of three 3G and one cellular license for 1900/2100 MHz (3G/4G/LTE) band and 800 MHz Band.
Base price for 3G license would be $ 210 million for duration of 15 years, while the auction will be held in multiple rounds through open outcry method.
Base price for Mobile Cellular (defunct) License is set at $155 million for duration of around 8 years.
The authority has set at $ 23.25 million as bid earnest money for auction of Cellular Phone defunct License for frequency spectrum of 800MHz whereas it set $31.5 million bid earnest money for auction of new Cellular Phone for spectrum of 1900/2100 MHz.
New License(s) for 3G/4G/LTE
Spectrum for Mobile Cellular (3G/4G/LTE etc.) licenses has been made available in blocks of 9.8 MHz given below. The winner of auction will have choice to select any block of 9.8+9.8 MHz from the available spectrum in 1900/2100 MHz:
Block Frequency
  • Block A: 1920-1929.8/2110-2119.8 MHz (9.8+9.8MHz)
  • Block B: 1929.8-1939.6/2119.8-2129.6 MHz (9.8+9.8 MHz)
  • Block C: 1939.6-1949.4/2129.6-2139.4 MHz (9.8+9.8 MHZ)
Base Price for a block of 9.8+9.8 MHz is US $ 210 Million
Operator(s) can start their services by 2013 after completing all mandatory legal and financial requirements.

Defunct License For Technology Neutral services
PTA will award one technology-neutral nationwide license to Cellular Mobile Operators (CMOs) and including existing and new players, which was earlier held by Instaphone before termination of its services and operation.
The license awarded will be inclusive of radio frequency spectrum between 824.265 – 831.645 MHz (7.38) MHz and 869.265 – 876.645 MHz (7.38) MHz. The winning operator may launch any technology including 2.5G, 3G or 4G technology for rendering services.
The operator may start its services in 2012 after meeting all financial, network rolls out and operational requirements.

Bidding Process:
PTA in its Memorandum of Information (IM) 2012 stated that the Bidding Committee will be announced prior to start of the auction and shall continue the auction until there are no further bids. The time duration between two bids shall be five minutes. Each bidder shall be granted a timeout of fifteen minutes each, on request, only twice during the entire auction process.
Each successive bid(s) shall have to be more than the already quoted bid. Therefore, the subsequent bid increment shall be in multiple of $2 million with a minimum bid limit of 2 million and maximum bid limit of $10 million.
The successful bidder shall deposit 50 percent of the auction winning price, that is, Initial License/Spectrum fee after adjustment of the bid earnest money within thirty (30) working days in PTA designated bank account.
The remaining 50 percent of the auction winning price shall be deposited in 5 equal annual installments payable in US$ or equivalent in rupees. If the successful bidder fails to make the payment of first 50 percent of auction winning price (Initial License/Spectrum fee) within the stipulated time, the next highest bidder(s) in order of their bid(s) will be offered the license on the same auction winning price.
If no bidder is found ready to match the auction winning price, the Bidding session will be closed without awarding any license, PTA stated.
PTA shall forfeit the bid earnest money and all other amounts received from the defaulting bidders.
The defunct license shall only be issued after payment of first 50 percent of the initial spectrum fee within thirty (30) working days from the auction date. Whereas the new license shall only be awarded after payment of 100 percent of the auction winning price within sixty (60) working days from the date it is offered to the bidder.
PTA reserves the right, on the recommendation of the Bidding Committee, to disqualify any bidder and forfeit its money for different reasons such as failure of payment, misrepresentation and inaccuracy of facts in applications and corrupt practice, meaning the offering, giving, receiving or soliciting of anything of value to influence a public official in relation to auction process.
You can download Information Memorandum for licenses from following links

Saturday, January 28, 2012

Nokia Announced Symbian Anna Smartphone - Nokia 500



Nokia announced its latest Symbian Anna smartphone which is Nokia 500. Nokia 500 is based on the specifications of Nokia C5-03. Like Nokia C5-03 it has 5MP rear camera built in facility which gives a sharper and clear images. Nokia 500 Pakistan has 3.2 inches TFT capacitive touchscreen with 16M colors which shows your text and images more clearly than Nokia C5-03. Its 1 GHz processor gives better and more powerful performance than Nokia C5-03. Nokia 500 has loaded with 2GB internal and up to 32GB extensible memory allows you to store your documents like music, videos, games and pictures in this single device for lifetime. Durable battery fitted in this smartphone provides talk time of up to7 h (2G) / up to 5 h (3G). Compare Nokia 500 Price in Pakistan with Nokia C5-03 which is bit higher.

Friday, January 27, 2012

Samsung Galaxy S III’s MWC debut reportedly canceled


Source
By: Dan Graziano
http://www.bgr.com

The highly anticipated follow up to Samsung’s Galaxy S II will not be unveiled at next month’s Mobile World Congress, according to The Verge. The Galaxy S III was rumored to be debuting in Barcelona next month, however it has reportedly now been delayed. The reason for delay was not disclosed, although it is still slated to be released “before summer” according to the report. The Galaxy S II was announced at last year’s Mobile Wold Congress, but Samsung is said to have been uncomfortable with the long delay between the global launch and availability in the U.S., where it is the most popular Android vendor. The company will still feature “interesting stuff” in place of the Galaxy S III, perhaps an updated Galaxy Tab or even a new Windows Phone handset.

Study: Multitasking hinders youth social skills



(CNN) -- FaceTime, the Apple video-chat application, is not a replacement for real human interaction, especially for children, according to a new study.

Tween girls who spend much of their waking hours switching frantically between YouTube, Facebook, television and text messaging are more likely to develop social problems, says a Stanford University study published in a scientific journal on Wednesday.

Young girls who spend the most time multitasking between various digital devices, communicating online or watching video are the least likely to develop normal social tendencies, according to the survey of 3,461 American girls aged 8 to 12 who volunteered responses.

The study only included girls who responded to a survey in Discovery Girls magazine, but results should apply to boys, too, Clifford Nass, a Stanford professor of communications who worked on the study, said in a phone interview. Boys' emotional development is more difficult to analyze because male social development varies widely and over a longer time period, he said.

"No one had ever looked at this, which really shocked us," Nass said. "Kids have to learn about emotion, and the way they do that, really, is by paying attention to other people. They have to really look them in the eye."
The antidote for this hyper-digital phenomenon is for children to spend plenty of time interacting face-to-face with people, the study found. Tweens in the study who regularly talked in person with friends and family were less likely to display social problems, according to the findings in the publication Developmental Psychology.

"If you eschew face-to-face communication, you don't learn critical things that you have to learn," Nass said. "You have to learn social skills. You have to learn about emotion."

The Stanford researchers were not able to determine a magic number of hours that children should spend conversing per week, Nass said. Social skills are typically only learned when children are engaged and making eye contact, rather than fiddling with an iPod during a conversation, he said.

FaceTime and Skype are not replacements for actual face time because other studies have found that people tend to multitask while on video calls, Nass said.

Nass is a self-described technologist of 25 years, who has worked as a consultant with many major electronics firms, including Google and Microsoft. He said the findings disturbed him.

A few years ago, Nass worked on a study about how multitasking affects adults. He found that heavy multitaskers experience cognitive issues, such as difficulty focusing and remembering things. They were actually worse at juggling various activities, a skill crucial to many people's work lives, than those who spent less time multitasking, Nass said.

Source
By Mark Milian, CNNhttp://edition.cnn.com/

Thursday, January 26, 2012

3G Telecom Technology – Pakistan Can Earn Billions of USD by Just Selling Air

Pakistan passed the 100 million subscriber milestone in Oct 2010, with five operators fighting for the market share day in & day out, but  still waiting for the introduction of 3G WCDMA technology (High Internet Speed Mobile Access with International Roaming),  to take the telecoms market to the much needed next level.
The 3G Licenses auctioned last year in our neighboring country fetched multi billion dollars, in license fee in addition to a similar amount of foreign direct investments, creating a spree of jobs for not only the highly educated, but also for the less educated  skilled hands, working on things like tower construction.
The question remains why we are shying away from this golden opportunity, to give the much needed life saving shot to our economy?
May be the reason lies in the situation, where the current operators are shying away from the investments that they would have to make, when the licenses are made available and are just keeping a few individuals at the right places “happy”, so that it is deferred, as long as they wish.
With the 3G services available in most of the countries of South Asia and even Africa, why  we are being deprived of the technological and economical benefits and playing the catch up game?
The 3G License or Spectrum auction, which is just like selling “air” is the easiest way to slightly mitigate the ever increasing unemployment rate in the country. Our peoples representatives in the both the houses should take this up seriously, to expedite the ever delayed process.

By A. Muiz Khan
http://www.snayyar.com


Tuesday, January 24, 2012

Android to overtake iOS and become the top mobile platform for developers


Google's Android will become the preeminent platform for developers over the next 12 months, edging ahead of Apple's iOS, according to a study by research firm Ovum. Nearly all developers, however, will support both platforms.
Ovum's call comes as Android continues to suck up market share, with more companies using the platform to crank out a wave of mobile devices. While iOS has seen its market share growth slow in the recent years, it has always been seen as a more lucrative location for developers to make money. As a result, most apps came to iOS first, and the other platforms second.
That, however, could all change in the coming months, Ovum said. Android's prevalence is getting hard to ignore, and developers have incorporated new business models such as advertising and in-app purchases to spur revenue.
Ovum also said there is growing developer interest in Windows Phone and BlackBerry OS. The results come as both Microsoft and Research in Motion attempt to woo developers over to their respective camps.
"The growing momentum behind Windows Phone indicates that Microsoft has managed to convince developers that its platform is worthy of investment; its challenge now is to persuade consumers," said Ovum analyst Adam Leach.
The study also said developers are abandoning mobile-centric development tools such as Java, Flash and WAP, and moving to HTML5, a Web-based standard that can run across multiple devices and platforms.

Tuesday, January 17, 2012

Technology

Technology is the making, usage, and knowledge of tools, machines, techniques, crafts, systems or methods of organization in order to solve a problem or perform a specific function. It can also refer to the collection of such tools, machinery, and procedures. The word technology comes from Greek τεχνολογία (technología); from τέχνη (téchnē), meaning "art, skill, craft", and -λογία (-logía), meaning "study of-".[1] The term can either be applied generally or to specific areas: examples include construction technology, medical technology, and information technology.
Technologies significantly affect human as well as other animal species' ability to control and adapt to their natural environments. The human species' use of technology began with the conversion of natural resources into simple tools. The prehistorical discovery of the ability to control fire increased the available sources of food and the invention of the wheel helped humans in travelling in and controlling their environment. Recent technological developments, including the printing press, the telephone, and the Internet, have lessened physical barriers to communication and allowed humans to interact freely on a global scale. However, not all technology has been used for peaceful purposes; the development of weapons of ever-increasing destructive power has progressed throughout history, from clubs to nuclear weapons.
Technology has affected society and its surroundings in a number of ways. In many societies, technology has helped develop more advanced economies (including today's global economy) and has allowed the rise of a leisure class. Many technological processes produce unwanted by-products, known as pollution, and deplete natural resources, to the detriment of the Earth and its environment. Various implementations of technology influence the values of a society and new technology often raises new ethical questions. Examples include the rise of the notion of efficiency in terms of human productivity, a term originally applied only to machines, and the challenge of traditional norms.
Philosophical debates have arisen over the present and future use of technology in society, with disagreements over whether technology improves the human condition or worsens it. Neo-Luddism, anarcho-primitivism, and similar movements criticise the pervasiveness of technology in the modern world, opining that it harms the environment and alienates people; proponents of ideologies such as transhumanism and techno-progressivism view continued technological progress as beneficial to society and the human condition. Indeed, until recently, it was believed that the development of technology was restricted only to human beings, but recent scientific studies indicate that other primates and certain dolphin communities have developed simple tools and learned to pass their knowledge to other generations.

Saturday, January 14, 2012

Google+ Users Estimated at 62 Million



An enthusiastic Paul Allen (not the Paul Allen of Microsoft fame, but founder of Ancestry.com) predicts continued adoption of Google+, the social network which launched earlier this year, saying that it is on track to reach 100 million users by the end of February 2012. Allen penned this forecast as part of a post on Google+, where he also released an independent estimate that the site now has 62 million users worldwide.
Allen, whose verified name on Google+ lists him as founder of Ancestry.com and "unofficial Google+ statistician," has reportedly been tracking the number of new users who sign up for Google+ and adjusting how he and his team count when Google releases official statements on the number of members. On October 1, Allen says his estimates pointed to about 38 million users; not two weeks later on October 13, Google pronounced the figure at more than 40 million.
Google+, which first appeared as a beta social network in late June of this year and finally opened up to the public in September, garnered a lot of early attention for its potential to become an alternative to Facebook. However, despite the numbers, activity on the social network hasn't lived up to expectations. While a small number of users seem to be use the site fervently, Google+ doesn't have as much social activity or connectivity as its primary rival—so far.
Another one of Allen's predictions for Google+ in the year ahead is that the Network Effect will take hold, meaning the more people use Google+, the more valuable the site will become for everyone on it. However, there's a big difference between using the site and joining, which has been the primary reason for lackluster response to date.
source : www.pcmag.com
By Jill Duffy

Thursday, January 12, 2012

Laptop

A laptop, also called a notebook,[1][2] is a personal computer for mobile use.[3][4] A laptop integrates most of the typical components of a desktop computer, including a display, a keyboard, a pointing device (a touchpad, also known as a trackpad, and/or a pointing stick) and speakers into a single unit. A laptop is powered by mains electricity via an AC adapter, and can be used away from an outlet using a rechargeable battery.
Portable computers, originally monochrome CRT-based and developed into the modern laptops, and were originally considered to be a small niche market, mostly for specialized field applications such as the military, accountants and sales representatives. As portable computers became smaller, lighter, cheaper, more powerful and as screens became larger and of better quality, laptops became very widely used for all sorts of purposes.

Mobile phone

A mobile phone (also known as a cellular phone, cell phone and a hand phone) is a device that can make and receive telephone calls over a radio link whilst moving around a wide geographic area. It does so by connecting to a cellular network provided by a mobile phone operator, allowing access to the public telephone network. By contrast, a cordless telephone is used only within the short range of a single, private base station.
In addition to telephony, modern mobile phones also support a wide variety of other services such as text messaging, MMS, email, Internet access, short-range wireless communications (infrared, Bluetooth), business applications, gaming and photography. Mobile phones that offer these and more general computing capabilities are referred to as smartphones.
The first hand-held mobile phone was demonstrated by Dr Martin Cooper of Motorola in 1973, using a handset weighing around 1 kg.[1] In 1983, the DynaTAC 8000x was the first to be commercially available. In the twenty years from 1990 to 2010, worldwide mobile phone subscriptions grew from 12.4 million to over 4.6 billion, penetrating the developing economies and reaching the bottom of the economic pyramid.[2][3][4][5]

Wednesday, January 11, 2012

Nicolas Steno Google Logo Honors Geologist's 374th Birthday


Google's homepage logo on January 11 was transformed to celebrate the 374th birthday of Nicolas Steno (1638 - 1686), a pioneer in the fields of geology and botany.
This Google doodle features a stylized animation of the earth's layers, with green plant life and animals sitting atop sediment embedded with fossils.
The Washington Post explains how the logo reflects Steno‘s most famous contributions to science:
The strata illustrate Steno's "principle of original horizonality," which essentially says that rock layers form horizontally -- and only appear differently if later disturbances cause the deviation. And the fossils in the lower stratified rock help illustrate Steno's "law of superposition," which -- simply put -- says that the oldest rock layers are sequentially deposited on the bottom unless otherwise disturbed.
Born in Denmark, Steno began his professional career studying human anatomy. But it was his examination of shark teeth that led him to question science as the world knew it. He noticed that the teeth resembled shapes he had seen in rocks, and he concluded that those shapes were the remains of ancient animals. According to the University of Vermont's profile of Steno, his discovery marks the birth of modern geology.
"His observations contributed to the fundamental observations that bind together the study of geology, which over time provided the framework that would allow fellow scientists to use fossil evidence to examine how life evolved on Earth," writes UVM.
In 1667, Steno converted to Catholicism and moved on from scientific pursuits to religious study. "He was ordained as a priest in 1675," according to the University of California's Museum of Palentology. "In 1677, he became a titular bishop, and spent the rest of his life ministering to the minority Roman Catholic populations in northern Germany, Denmark, and Norway."
Take a look at the doodle (below) and click through the slideshow to see our favorite doodles ever.

The Art of 3-D Printing


As part of our special report on manufacturing, we asked Neri Oxman, a professor at the MIT Media Lab and an internationally recognized artist whose work is part of the permanent collection at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, to create a sculpture that would illustrate the future of manufacturing. (See a gallery of images).
What she produced, in collaboration with MIT materials science professor Craig Carter, is a powerful demonstration of the possibilities of 3-D printing, using techniques that take advantage of the capabilities of 3-D printers in ways that conventional manufacturing techniques cannot.  
3-D printing encompasses a range of technologies—from inkjet heads mounted on gantries that can deposit plastics layer by layer to form intricate models, to more recent laser-based systems that sinter metal powders to make durable parts for airplanes. 3-D printers have mainly been used for prototyping, but they are becoming an option for manufacturing as well, and may eventually even be used to print buildings, Oxman says. But designers and architects haven't yet learned to take advantage of their capabilities.
Oxman, who trained as an architect, says buildings are designed today with an eye toward the components they can be made of—sheets of plywood, panes of glass, steel beams, and concrete columns. As a result, those designs are limited, in much the way Lego bricks constrain the shapes that children can build. There are similar limitations in conventional manufacturing; there are some shapes that simply can't be built with existing molds and machining tools, and designers have had to design with these limits in mind.
Oxman is exploring ways to break with conventional design thinking by looking to patterns and processes found in nature, and using equations that define these processes to generate new designs. The results are often surprising shapes and structures that can be made only with 3-D printers.
To help develop the algorithms needed, Oxman has teamed up with Carter and others. In some cases, the algorithms provide new aesthetics, but they can also have practical applications—such as varying the structure to help bear loads. For one sculpture—a model of a chaise longue reclined chair—Oxman combined algorithms taken from nature with a map of the pressure a body exerts on a chair. The result depends on where the algorithms determine the chair needs to be soft to provide comfort and where it needs to be stiff to provide support.

Friday, January 6, 2012

Apple iPad 3 to arrive in March, followed by iPad 4 in October to fend off the Windows 8 slates



Those talkative "component supplier" sources that are always feeding ideas to Digitimes, are rearing their heads again with the grand scoop that Apple will be outing iPad 3 in March, followed by an iPad 4 in October, which, if true, will shorten the upgrade cycle to half a year.

Not that we didn't hear rumors last year that there will be an iPad 3 with higher display resolution in the fall, which never materialized, but the sources say iPad 4 is necessitated by the fact that the first Windows 8 slates will be arriving then, which is much more believable.

The iPad 3 is said to come with QXGA (1,536x2,048 pixels) resolution, which we've heard numerous times, and longer battery life. We've also heard rumors that the high resolution required two LED light bars to be installed instead of one, which had made the slate slightly thicker than the iPad 2, but on the other hand it seems more room for a battery has been made, if the claim for a longer-lasting juicer is to be believed. The main goal here is to introduce the iPad 3 at the current iPad 2 price, which will be allegedly lowered to $399, to battle the influx of affordable Android and other tablets.

The iPad 4, on the other hand, is said to receive not only a more impressive hardware upgrade than the iPad 3 (quad-core A6 anyone?), but also to bank heavily on groundbreaking software side of things with some "integrated applications", whatever that means.

This one will have the first Windows 8 tablets to battle, both the ARM-based, and the ones with the new Clover Trail platform of Intel, which promises much better battery life than previous Intel mobile offerings, plus all the Windows programs you throw at it, of course, which is a major advantage. Both Acer and Lenovo are already said to out Clover Trail Windows 8 slates in Q3, so competition will be heating up in the tablet space this year, much to our delight.

Galaxy Nexus coming to Telus, Rogers in Canada, Sprint in US

The Galaxy Nexus has been available on Canadian networks Bell and Virgin Mobile but now it is arriving on Telus and Rogers networks as well on January 13. Unfortunately, there is no information available regarding pricing and tariffs at the moment.

If you're reading this in the US and feeling a bit jealous that you only have one carrier offering the Galaxy Nexus then don't worry because soon Sprint will be offering the Galaxy Nexus as well. This information actually comes from an Internet ad found on the web page of CNET and noticed by the eagles eyes of The Verge.



The ad has since been pulled as clearly it went online well before it was intended to but it did offer some valuable information while it was available. For starters, the phone will be running on Sprint's upcoming 4G LTE network and in fact will be the first LTE phone on Sprint's network. Secondly, the Sprint's Galaxy Nexus will actually have a 1.5GHz processor, as compared to the 1.2GHz processor on the GSM and Verizon CDMA version. Rest of the specifications seem to be identical.
Hopefully we'll hear more from Sprint regarding this soon.



Thursday, January 5, 2012

Now playing: Faster movie search on Android and iPhone

With the December movie season in full swing, we’ve just made it even faster and easier to discover movies, showtimes and theaters, all from your smartphone. Now when you search for [movies] or your favorite theater like [century san francisco] on Google.com from your phone, you’ll see interactive results for movies in a new swipeable ribbon, with the most relevant information displayed at the top of the page.

For each movie, you’ll see the movie poster, a short summary, ratings and the nearest theaters and showtimes. Designed to help you quickly browse what’s playing in theaters now, this information instantly updates as you slide through the movie posters -- no need to wait for a page to load or to use the back button.



To learn more about a movie, tap the movie title to find details like the cast and a full summary. And if you see a play button on the movie poster, you can tap to view the official trailer. You can even buy tickets directly from your smartphone by tapping on underlined showtimes -- and skip past those long holiday box office lines!


So the next time you head out to see sagas of vampires, the world’s biggest Muppets fan, dancing penguins or nearly impossible heists, try the new interactive results for movies by visiting Google.com on your iOS or Android phone’s browser and searching for [movies], [theaters] or a movie title. This feature is available in English, in the US.


Wednesday, January 4, 2012

Two official ICS ROMs from Samsung leak for the Galaxy S II

Samsung may not update the Galaxy S to Ice Cream Sandwich, but they've been hard at work on mixing the new Android 4.0 with their TouchWiz UI for the i9100 Galaxy S II.
A proof for this are two official Samsung ROMs that have leaked for the company's Droid flagship. The two versions in question are I9100XXKP4/OXAKP4 and I9100XXKP8 / OXAKP8 based on Android 4.0.1 and Android 4.0.3, respectively.

SamMobile.com is reporting that while both are early alpha versions of the final update supposed to hit all Galaxy S II devices early this year, the more stable one is the latter. Here are some screenshots of how the Ice Cream Sandwich update looks on the S II.

Samsung Galaxy S II running Ice Cream Sandwich with TouchWiz

As you can see Samsung have done a great job of coating their TouchWiz UI onto the Ice Cream Sandwich. Finally, take a look at the alpha ROMs in action.





Tuesday, January 3, 2012

Samsung Galaxy Nexus review: Opening new doors



Introduction

Once again, it is the Nexus time of the year. This time, Google has left the Gingerbread cookies and, together with Samsung, has brought to us the Galaxy Nexus to deliver the Ice Cream Sandwich. And while a cold dessert is totally out of place this holiday season, the latest release of Android is more relevant than ever.
The Galaxy Nexus packs an impressive spec sheet, but it is (yet again) the OS which is the device’s main highlight. After all, Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich is widely expected to put an end to the fragmentation, which currently plagues Google’s mobile platform.

Samsung Galaxy Nexus official photos
Unlike its Nexus S predecessor, which was essentially a rebranded Samsung Galaxy S, the Samsung Galaxy Nexus is a completely different device from the current flagship of the company, the I9100 Galaxy S II. The latest Google phone sports a different GPU and chipset, which are, well, not as powerful as those found inside the Galaxy S II.
Here is a quick look at what the Samsung Galaxy Nexus has to offer, along with its main disadvantages.

Key features

  • Quad-band GSM; penta-band 3G support
  • HSDPA 21Mbps; HSUPA 5.76Mbps
  • Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich OS with stock UI
  • 4.65” Super AMOLED capacitive touchscreen with HD (720 x 1280 pixels) resolution; 16M colors; oleophobic surface
  • Slim profile at 8.9mm
  • Dual-core 1.2GHz Cortex-A9 CPU; PowerVR SGX540 GPU; TI OMAP 4460 chipset
  • 16/32GB built-in storage; 1GB RAM
  • 5 MP camera (2592x1936 pixels) with autofocus, LED flash; 1.3MP front-facing unit
  • 1080p video recording @30fps; touch-to-zoom while recording
  • Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n
  • DLNA; Wi-Fi hotspot
  • Bluetooth 3.0 with ADP
  • Charging MHL microUSB port with TV-out (1080p) support
  • GPS receiver with A-GPS support
  • NFC connectivity
  • Accelerometer, gyro and proximity sensors; compass; barometer
  • Back cover made of Hyper Skin material for increased grip
  • Excellent audio quality

Main disadvantages

  • Camera resolution is not on par with the rest of the high-end dual-core competition
  • Below average battery life
  • Lacks a dedicated camera key
  • No microSD card slot
  • No mass-storage mode (some files don't show up in MTP mode)
  • Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich is yet to be fully compatible with all apps from the Android Market
  • No FM radio
A quick look at the key features of the Samsung Galaxy Nexus will show you that the smartphone’s hottest hardware feature is its Super AMOLED screen with HD resolution – a first for a Samsung smartphone. The display combines amazing contrast ratio and superb viewing angles, with eye-popping size and resolution – a perfect match for the spanking new OS on board.
As far as the rest of the hardware is concerned, we heavily suspect that Samsung has intentionally omitted a couple of Galaxy S II features such as the microSD card slot and a superior 8MP camera unit. The superior screen of the Galaxy Nexus, while giving it a touch of exclusivity hardware-wise, will not be enough to cannibalize the strong sales, which the I9100 still enjoys.
The latest Google phone will be aimed at the Android purists – the crowd, which doesn’t like launchers or UI tweaks. And also the crowd that likes to get the latest OS updates from Google first. In this aspect, the smartphone is entirely in a league of its own.