Carphone Warehouse, one of the largest retailers with over 1700 stores in Europe, is entering into a crucial partnership with Samsung, in which it will operate 60 new Samsung exclusive stores across Europe, as a "preferred partner". This is also an interesting development for Samsung, as this deal will massively improve the retail foot print in all the Android-loving parts of Europe. These new 60 stores will be Samsung exclusive experiences, with Carphone Warehouse contributing its part with retail experience and run Samsung's stores with what it calls "Carphone Warehouse's assisted sales tool and connectivity platform", all with Samsung tablets.
The new stores will be rolled out in the next three months across seven European markets: UK, Ireland, Germany, Spain, Portugal, Sweden and the Netherlands. The stores will have a premium look and feel and will sell Samsung mobile communications products across Samsung's full range of mobiles, tablets, laptops and wearables.
As mentioned earlier, the Samsung exclusive Carphone Warehouse stores will sell all the available Samsung devices, including wearables, as they will feature a prominent role in the future. On the new experience offered -
Shoppers can expect an exciting new customer experience which merges retail and technology innovations such as Carphone Warehouse's ...
Carphone Warehouse, one of the largest retailers with over 1700 stores in Europe, is entering into a crucial partnership with Samsung, in which it will operate 60 new Samsung exclusive stores across Europe, as a "preferred partner". This is also an interesting development for Samsung, as this deal will massively improve the retail foot print in all the Android-loving parts of Europe. These new 60 stores will be Samsung exclusive experiences, with Carphone Warehouse contributing its part with retail experience and run Samsung's stores with what it calls "Carphone Warehouse's assisted sales tool and connectivity platform", all with Samsung tablets.
The new stores will be rolled out in the next three months across seven European markets: UK, Ireland, Germany, Spain, Portugal, Sweden and the Netherlands. The stores will have a premium look and feel and will sell Samsung mobile communications products across Samsung's full range of mobiles, tablets, laptops and wearables.
As mentioned earlier, the Samsung exclusive Carphone Warehouse stores will sell all the available Samsung devices, including wearables, as they will feature a prominent role in the future. On the new experience offered -
Shoppers can expect an exciting new customer experience which merges retail and technology innovations such as Carphone Warehouse's ...
Games are usually the best examples to showcase any new platform. The iPhone got a ton of mini apps and games that showed off its accelerometer and touch screen, which were novel at that time. Similarly, Google has developed 5 mini games for its innovative "Glass" wearable product, to showcase the hardware's unique capabilities. As of now, the Glass can already let you make calls, get directions and so on, but games are something new. Having unboxed the Glass and found it to work really well, we can't wait to test these mini games which might give us a glimpse of the kind of apps that Google will let developers make for the wearable product, that just got a lot more socially acceptable with new frames for prescription lenses. Anyways, here is a video representation of the 5 mini games Google has developed -
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9naxeHGIaRY
As you noticed above, the 5 games are really basic and show case the different features of the hardware. Most pointing types are the combination of accelerometer and gyroscope doing the head tracking, and one of them uses voice commands for trigger actions. These are all designed to get you engaged when you just are bored for ...
Samsung has finally replaced Nokia as India’s Most Trusted Brand, according to a recent survey conducted by research firm Trust Research Advisory (TRA). Nokia, which continued to retain the first position in Brand Trust Report 2011, 2012 and 2013 has been pushed to 5th spot. Sony moved one spot up from 2013, to the 2nd place. LG moved 6 places up from last year to 4th spot. As you can see on the table below, Nokia is the only company in the Mobile Phone category since Samsung, Sony and LG come under consumer electronics category, even though they are popular for their smartphones.
Micromax has moved up 74 places and holds 45th rank. In the personal gadgets category Micromax holds the second spot behind Nokia, and BlackBerry holds the 3rd spot as the most trusted brand. New entrant Xolo holds 15th rank in the personal gadgets category and its overall ranking in BTR 2014 is 280. Check out the entire list of brands in the personal gadgets category here.
Coming to the Telecom sector, Airtel has moved down from last year 9th place to 64th place this year. Vodafone and Idea have moved to 20 and 21 rankings, respectively. MTS has moved ...
Samsung goes after Apple's business again. This time, Samsung follows Apple into the educational domain where the presence of Apple's iPad seems to have increased. Apple's iPads have a lot of content in the educational domain and with the ever expanding iTunes Textbooks and iTunes U Course Manager, it justifies the demand of tablets in the educational domain. Samsung has spotted a way to increase its tablet market share and has announced a tablet with a special focus on educational content.
In the US FETC 2014, Samsung has announced that it will be launching a Galaxy Tab with focus on educational sector. Samsung has also confirmed that the tablets will be available for K-12 school deployments for the 2014-2015 academic year.
The tablet will offer a easier setup process and come with easier device management. It will also have access to curated educational content, and other features such that it caters to the need of dynamic, digital teaching and learning. Among the software features that will make it useful for students, it comes integrated with Google Play for Education, Google's content store for K-12 schools. Integration with Google Play for Education will grant the teachers an access to a wide selection of teacher-approved apps, books, ...
Dell was rumoured to be working on a really unique product, an Android dongle that could run the operating system, in a compact form factor comparable to a Chromecast. As wild as the idea seemed, it has now taken the form of a real product in the Dell Wyse Cloud Connect, an Android dongle, aimed at enterprise users who want to carry their work for access everywhere, in a compact form factor. The dongle runs Android 4.1 Jellybean and can be used on any HDMI supported screen, like a HDTV, a projector, MHL compatible touch monitors(for full Android touch functionality), or can be paired up with Bluetooth mice and keyboards for the usual interaction like a PC. Out of the box, the Wyse Cloud Connect will also run Citrix, VMWare or Microsoft remote desktop clients. Dell hopes this will entice enterprise users for the portability it offers.
If the actual specifications are concerned -
Runs on Android 4.1 JellyBean
HDMI/MHL video interface
Additional functionality through OTG/MHL
1080p full HD support
Multi core ARM Cortex A9 chip, but Dell doesn't say which
Additional ports - Display port, MHL/OTG micro USB host, Mini USB, micro SD card slot
8 GB in built flash storage and 1 GB of RAM
Enterprise level ...
Facebook has taken the wraps off Paper, a new social news aggregator app that is designed to help you bring all the important stories, and even let you create your own. The app is first of the many apps that are in the works at Facebook Creative Labs, which plans to unveil a suite of mobile apps soon. Paper, which has very similar ideologies as Flipboard, shows you all the long form stories from your news feed, and lets you like and comment on them from the app, much like Facebook home, with a really cool presentation of full screen images and a card-like interface for other content. Other than that, you can also add your own categories and populate them with your own desired sources, just like you would, on a traditional news aggregator. Here is a promo video of the app in action
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IhrbT9O6kW8
Storytelling and sharing have been reimagined in Paper to show stories at their best.
Everything responds to your touch so you can pick up or thumb through stories with simple, natural movements
You can tilt your phone to explore high-resolution panoramic photos from corner to corner, and see faces and other important details up close
Fullscreen autoplay videos come ...
Facebook for BlackBerry 10 devices has been updatedto version 10.3, that brings options to tag friends in a status post or a shared post as you type, notifications when new stories arrive, option to delete or hide your posts and importantly offline viewing that lets downloads all the content prior to going offline, for offline viewing.
A minor Facebook 10.2.2 update for BlackBerry 10, back in October brought option to preview links, share or re-post news stories and photos and more features. Even though the Facebook app doesn't get new features when it rolls out to Android and iOS platforms, the BlackBerry 10 app gets updated once in few months, bringing new features.
New features in Facebook 10.3 for BlackBerry 10
Tag friends in Status Posts and Comments
Delete or hide posts on your own timeline
‘New Stories' active link in the Newsfeed informs you as new stories are posted
Enhanced caching, so you can access all content downloaded prior to going offline, when offline
Screen Reader Accessibility Support (for buttons, jewels, and newsfeed)
Download Facebook for BlackBerry 10 from the BlackBerry World for free, if you don’t have it yet.
Bing Rewards is a program that Microsoft started, to encourage use of its search engine, so that it could dole out rewards for doing so. It was a desperate, yet successful attempt, as people started using it for gaining credits that could be redeemed at Amazon, Fandango or even get you an Xbox console, just through using the rarely used search engine. Till now, the rewards program was exclusively on the desktop, where one could sign in to Bing and use it to gain rewards, but finally, it is now coming down to mobile, through the Bing mobile apps for iOS and Android. Nope, Windows Phone support is apparently "coming soon", and we might have reasons why. That aside, the Bing rewards feature will give you certains "tasks" to finish, like a game, and once you finish it, you'll be rewarded with credits of varying amounts depending on the task.
This feature is available only in few countries, and India is not a part of it, yet, but it's known for giving out reasonable amounts of credits regularly so that dedicated users could actually gain from using Bing.
The above image shows off the dashboard part of the Bing rewards feature that ...
HTC has announced the Desire 310, the company's latest smartphone in the Desire series. It has a 4.5-inch (854 x 480 pixels) capacitive touch screen display, powered by a 1.3 GHz Quad-core Mediatek MT6582M processor and runs on Android 4.2 (Jelly Bean). It has a 5-megapixel rear camera without flash and a 0.3-megapixel front-facing camera. It also comes with dual SIM support with dual standby and has HTC BlinkFeed home screen .
Rear shells of a mysterious HTC smartphone appeared online recently, which is rumored to be powered by a Octa-Core MediaTek processor, but this phone already has a quad-core chip from MediaTek for the first time. The company's current mid-range Desire segment uses Snapdragon processors. Will HTC switch to MediaTek for their future Desire phones? Only time will tell.
HTC Desire 310 Specifications
4.5-inch (854 x 480 pixels) touch screen IPS display
1.3 GHz Quad-core Mediatek MT6582M processor
Android 4.2 (Jelly Bean)
Dual SIM support
5MP rear camera with 1080p Full HD video recording
0.3MP front-facing camera
11.25 mm thick and weighs 140 grams
3.5mm audio jack
512MB RAM, 4GB internal memory, 32GB expandable memory with MicroSD
3G (HSDPA: 21 Mbps, HSUPA: 5.76 Mbps), WiFi 802.11 b/g/n, Bluetooth 4.0 with aptX, GPS, MHL
2000 mAh battery
The HTC Desire 310 comes in Black and White colors, ...
iBall already has the Andi 5h with a 5-inch qHD screen in the Andi series. Andi 5K Sparkle, a mid-range smartphone in the Andi has been listed on the official website along with three new entry-level Andi smartphones, the Andi 3.5 Classique, Andi 3.5KKe Super and the Andi 3.5KKe Glory.
The mid-range Andi 5K Sparkle has a 5-inch qHD (960 × 540 pixels) capacitive touch screen display, powered by a 1.3 GHz quad-core processor and runs on Android 4.2 (Jelly Bean). It has a 8-megapixel rear camera with LED flash and a 2-megapixel front-facing camera.
iBall Andi 5K Sparkle specifications
5-inch qHD (960 × 540 pixels) capacitive touch screen display
Dual SIM (GSM + GSM) with Dual Standby
Android 4.2 (Jelly Bean) OS
1.3 GHz quad-core processor
8MP Auto Focus Rear Camera with LED flash
2MP front-facing camera
3.5mm audio jack, FM Radio
11mm thick and weighs 168 grams
Light Sensor, Proximity Sensor, G sensor.
3G , Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, Bluetooth 4.0 with A2DP and GPS
512MB RAM, 4GB internal memory, Expandable memory up to 32GB with micro SD
1820 mAh battery
Color - White
Price - Rs. 9,699 (MOP) / Rs. 9999 (MRP)
The Andi 3.5 Classique, Super and Glory have a 3.5-inch HVGA screen, powered by dual-core processors and runs on Android 4.2 (Jelly Bean). ...
Apple published 41 patents on Thursday that includes components for covering sapphire window manufacturing for iPhone displays and camera covers, according to a new report from Apple Insider. Earlier this week documents published by the company revealed that Apple and manufacturing partner GT Advanced Technologies would open a sapphire production facility in Arizona by the end of February, according to a report from 9to5mac.
The sapphire window method can be applied to an iPhone's display, which details the sapphire-covered screen that can be grown, harvested into polished wafers, decorated (painted or masked) and cut into discrete windows, reveals the patent. It can also cover camera modules that is present on the iPhone 5 and the 5s.
Sapphire window for the iPhone screens would protect the display from scratches and also improve the quality of the screen. It could also be used in other Apple devices such as iPad if it ramps up the production.
Even though Apple CEO Tim Cook did not reveal when the factory would begin preparing sapphire glass components in a recent interview to ABC, these new documents reveal that it would start production as soon as next month. Hope we can see the next-gen iPhone or iPad with Sapphire ...
After the specificationsand the press images of the smartphone got leaked this month, the Samsung Galaxy Note 3 Neo has gone official in Poland. It exactly looks like the Galaxy Note 3 with S Pen Stylus and a faux leather back cover. It has a 5.5-inch HD Super AMOLED screen, powered by a 1.6 GHz quad-core or a Hexa-Core processor (1.7 GHz Dual Core Cortex A15+ 1.3 GHz Quad Core Cortex A7) and runs on Android 4.3 (Jelly Bean).
It has all the S Pen features under Air Command: Action Memo, Scrapbook, Write Screen, Finder, Pen Window and a range of Samsung-specific software features such as Easy Clip, Multi Window, S Note, My Magazine, S Voice, S Health, Group Play, Smart Scroll, Smart Pause and more.
It has a sensitive screen that is responsive even with gloves. The LTE variant would be called Samsung Galaxy Note 3 Neo LTE +.
Samsung Galaxy Note 3 Neo specifications
5.5-inch (1280 x 720 pixels) HD Super AMOLED display
1.6 GHz quad-core processor (3G) / 1.7 GHz Dual Core + 1.3 GHz Quad Core Exynos processor (LTE)
Android 4.3 (Jelly Bean)
8MP camera with BSI sensor, LED flash, 1080p video recording
2MP front-facing camera with BSI sensor
3.5mm audio jack, FM Radio with ...
Lava Iris 401e is an entry range smartphone from Lava and it is aimed to be one of the most affordable Android devices out there. It was released back in June and it has bare minimum specifications for an Android smartphone.
Is it worth buying for its price? Lets check out.
Design, Build Quality and Handling
Lava Iris 401e comes with a 4inch WVGA display which is on the smaller side in the modern day display sizing chart. It has an all plastic build, but feels quite good and looks premium. However, the downside to its all plastic build is the glossy nature of the phone that makes it slippery and tough to handle.
On the front, we have the display above which we have the earpiece. Being a budget device, there are no orientation and proximity sensors.
Below the display, we have three capacitive touch keys. There is a metal ring that surrounds the front panel and is more visible on the bottom. There is a microphone on the metal ring.
On the right side of the phone, we have the volume rocker.
There is nothing on the bottom and the left side. The top is a little crowded with the microUSB port, 3.5mm audio jack and ...
Lenovo has bought Motorola, but that doesn't mean the company has even paused for anything. Two Lenovo tablets - Lenovo A3500 and Lenovo A3300 have been spotted at the Bluetooth approval yesterday. There is no official word on their launch yet, but they will be announced very soon.
According to the Chinese website Mobile-dad, the specifications of the Lenovo A3500 are as follows
7inch IPS display 800x1280pixels
3G connectivity
1.3GHz quad-core processor
1GB RAM
5MP rear camera and 2MP front facing camera
As for the other tablet - Lenovo A3300, the specifications are as follows -
7inch display with 600x1024 resolution
1.3GHz dual-core processor
1GB RAM
2MP rear camera and VGA front camera
These tablets will be running Android Jellybean out of the box. There is no information on what version it will run. These tablets could join the Lenovo series of affordable tablets and will compete with the budget tablets from Indian manufacturers. We will bring you more information as soon as we have them.
Motorola may have been sold to a Chinese manufacturer - Lenovo, but Moto G is on its way to India. A few days back, Motorola teased about release details of Moto G on their Facebook page and now we have more. But this time it comes from India's leading eCommerce portal - Flipkart. Motorola Moto G is coming soon to Flipkart and they have a separate dedicated Moto G page to keep track of the device.
Motorola Moto G was probably designed keeping in India the huge mid-range dual SIM Android smartphone market, but it hasn't come to India yet. The phone was announced way back in November and it was expected to be available in the Indian market by now. But that is not the case and the company plans to start the sales probably in February. Flipkart will probably get the device first as it has a dedicated page and special offers for people buying the device on launch date.
For those of you who don't know about the Motorola Moto G, you can check out the specifications right below
4.5-inch (1280 x 720 pixels) edge-to-edge display at 329 ppi with Corning Gorilla Glass protection
1.2 GHz quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 processor ...
Samsung Galaxy S4 was announced last year and it is all set to be replaced by the Samsung Galaxy S5 which is rumored to arrive on February 23rd. Samsung unveiled various editions of the Samsung Galaxy S4 - Gold Edition, Crystal Edition and now, we have the black edition. What the black edition does is that it comes with a faux leather back that featured in Samsung Galaxy Note 3.
Apart from the black color and the faux leather back, there is nothing else to differentiate the Samsung Galaxy S4 from the LTE version(Snapdragon 600 variant) which comes with a glossy plastic back. It is not just Samsung Galaxy S4 that has been given a better back, but its Mini version - Galaxy S4 Mini also gets the black variant with a faux leather back.
The pricing is also little higher for the black edition with faux leather back.
Samsung Galaxy S4 - RUB 22,000(Rs. 39,000 approx) | Samsung Galaxy S4 Black variant - RUB 23,000(Rs. 40,700 approx)
Samsung Galaxy S4 Mini - RUB 15,000(Rs. 26,800 approx) | Samsung Galaxy S4 Mini Black variant - RUB 16,000(Rs. 28,600 approx)
If Samsung has given the Galaxy S4, a Galaxy Note 3 treatment in terms of build ...
Inq Mobile, UK-based smartphone and software development company has shut down after six years of business. It was the first company to launch Facebook phone, the INQ Cloud Touch with built-in Facebook app back in 2011. Later it launched apps from the INQ Cloud Touch and other INQ smartphones for other Android smartphones. The company was backed by Hutchison Whampoa based in Hong Kong.
Last year it released SO.HO social app for Android smartphones that offered social feeds from Facebook, Twitter, Instagram etc into one homescreen. It already shut down its old apps, now the company has removed even its new SO.HO app from the Play Store.
On the website, Inq, said
We’ll be closing our doors on 31st January 2014. Material will serve its final editions on the 28th January and, whilst SO.HO will continue to function after our closure, it will not be updated after this point.
It did not reveal any reason for the shutdown. We guess it's due to huge competition in the mobile application space. Twitter regularly updates its official apps with new features and asks developers not to create any more new apps. Facebook would release Paper, a social news aggregatornext week. It also plans to release ...
It's the numbers season, with various analysis groups releasing their take on the smartphone market for the whole year of 2013. We saw the IDC report recently that the Smartphone market has crossed the 1 billion threshold. In that lineup, we have Canalys reporting that Android dominated 2013 with almost 80% of that whole Smartphone market in 2013, and amongst them, Windows Phone posted the fastest growth, with a 69% rise YoY between the three major platforms. Both Android's meteoric rise to the top and Windows Phone's slow rise from the bottom are pretty much known quantities now, but some of the numbers are interesting. The second biggest platform, Apple's iOS, has almost stagnated with only 7% growth by losing marketshare, whereas Android is steadily growing at 54%, a good 10% above the market growth percentage. This technically means that Android will reach its maximum in about 2 or 3 years if it and the market retains the growth pattern. Yes, it can happen only at the expense of gobbling up other platform's shares but it begs this question. Will we we start to see saturation in the Smartphone market soon?
Canalys reports that OS-wise shipments are a whopping 785 million ...
When Android KitKat rolled out we got our first glimpse of what could be the new runtime heading to Android. Dubbed ART, it was introduced as a preview for enthusiast users and came with a fare share of warnings. Code changes spotted in a recent commit to the AOSP ie Android Open Source Project suggest that the switchover from Dalvik to ART may be coming sooner rather than later. Owing to the rapid adoption in the community, numerous bug reports, it is quite possible that the Android team has managed to get the runtime ready for primetime sooner than expected.
So what exactly is ART? ART stands for Android Runtime and aims to replace Dalvik as the default runtime on Android devices while drastically improving performance. The current runtime relies on JIT ie Just In Time compiling which results in a fairly significant overhead on the handset. ART on the other hand relies on Ahead Of Time compilation which compiles applications while they're being installed. This increases app installation size a bit but results in much improved app performance. Will ART make its way to the next release remains uncertain but for now it has been made the default runtime in the ...
Lava launched Iris Pro 30, the company's latest flagship last month after a long delay. We already brought you the Hands-on, photo gallery, unboxing, benchmarks and camera samples of the device. The Iris Pro 30, the first phone in the Iris Pro series is quite different from previous Lava smartphones in terms of design and hardware. Can it compete with other phones in the similar range? Let's find out in the complete review.
Unboxing
We brought the unboxing of Lava Iris Pro 30 last week, check out the unboxing video below.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TWk6pWfkfxk
Box Contents
Lava Iris Pro 30 in black
2 pin 0.3A USB charger
Micro USB cable
In-ear earphones with mic
User manual and information booklet
Hardware and Design
The first thing you notice about the smartphone is its stunning 4.7-inch HD display with 312 ppi pixel density. The IPS screen is sharp, bright, offers vibrant color output and has great viewing angles. It is a bit glossy and is prone to finger prints, but the sunlight legibility is good. Lava has sourced the display from Sharp, which is based on (OGS) technology that reduces the phone’s thickness by reducing the air gap between the touch sensor, display and the cover glass. The display also has Corning Gorilla Glass protection. ...
