Hasta La Gadget!

Say hello to the G Pro 2, LG’s new flagship smartphone — leaked aplenty up to now but officially confirmed today by the mobile maker. The Android 4.4 KitKat powered 4G quad-core device packs a Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 2.26 GHz processor, 3GB of memory and a 13MP rear camera with an optical image stabilization feature to support better snapping.

It’s (yet) another high end smartphone that’s practically all screen, with LG inflating the size of the pane vs last year’s model — bumping it up from the 5.5 inches of the Optimus G Pro to a 5.9 inch full HD pane.

That screen is clasped on two sides by an extra slim bezel of just 3.3mm, with LG touting “an industry-leading screen-to-frame ratio of 77.2 percent”, showing how marginal form factor design parameters have become if makers are shouting about squeezing more screen onto the slab.

Definitions of how large a screen a smartphone must have to qualify for ‘phablet’ status vary — and are likely themselves moving goal posts as more and more smartphones get bigger — but according to Juniper Research at least 5.6 inches are required. By that definition LG has upgraded the G Pro from big smartphone to proper phablet with today’s sequel.

(The G Pro 2 is not close to the biggest phablet on the market. Sony, for instance, outted a 6.4 inch whopper last year — with its Xperia Z Ultra – a phone so big the company also makes a Bluetooth companion accessory for, y’know, actually making/receiving calls.)

Aside from its big screen — which does not feature a bend, as LG’s recent curvacious foray, the LG G Flex, does — the G Pro 2 sports the same rear key controls the company stuck on last year’s G2.  A key placement that’s either wildcard genius or the worst idea in smartphone design history, depending on your view. Just don’t press the phone down on a table and hope it stays powered on.

The most notable other addition to LG’s new flagship is an unlocking feature called Knock Code, that lets users devise their own sequence of touchscreen taps (aka a ‘knock pattern’) to unlock the device. Which is presumably another reason for LG to beef up the screen size — so users have enough space to get a-knockin’. (Another feature that makes use of the big pane is a dual-browser mode.)

LG says anything from two to eight taps can be used to form this knock pattern, on any portion of the screen. And it reckons the tech supports 86,367 ‘knock’ combinations.

With Apple adding its biometric TouchID system to its flagship iPhone 5s home key, so users can unlock their phone with their fingerprint, rival smartphone makers are clearly stretching themselves to come up with security differentiators of their own.

Elsewhere, the LG G Pro 2 lavishes care and attention on the camera and photo smarts of the device, with anti-shake functionality and larger and more sensitive sensors front and rear.

Other image capture features include 4K ultra HD video recording; an 120fps HD video recording feature that supports slow-motion editing; a ‘magic focus’ feature to select the depth of focus after a photo is taken — a la Lytro, presumably; improved flash for more natural shots/selfies; an up to 20 continuous shots burst mode; and a gallery collage feature for uploading multiple shots.

It’s not clear which markets outside LG’s stamping ground of South Korea the LG G Pro 2 will land in as yet, with LG saying global availability has not yet been determined. It will be showing off the handset at the Mobile World Congress tradeshow in Barcelona — where TC will be on hand to get hands on.

Jolla is a very small fish trying to make headway in global smartphone waters dominated by the whale-sized Android OS. In its plucky attempt to make a splash, building its own phone hardware as well as floating a new software platform, the Sailfish OS makers have crafted a device that’s different — sometimes refreshingly so — but the Jolla phone’s difference can frequently manifest itself as difficulty. The device asks its users to row against the current, requiring they accept a lot more that’s rough than smooth.

Basics

• 4.5-inch, 960x 540, 245ppi display
• 16GB storage
• Dual-core 1.4GHz processor, 1GB RAM
• 8MP rear camera, 2MP front camera
• 4G/LTE, 802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi
• Bluetooth 4.0
• • MSRP: €399/$540 unlocked, off-contract
• Product info page

Pros

• • Can run Android apps
• Interface navigation can work well one-handed
• Impressive attention to smaller design details
• Swappable NFC backplates for extra colour & function modding

Cons

• • • Very few native apps
  • Android app compatibility/stability issues
• Interface has significant learning curve & navigation can be confusing
• Mid-range hardware; unspectacular performer

Design

In recent years, smartphone hardware design has converged to adopt mostly the same slab-shaped template — unsurprisingly so, being as the interesting stuff is what a large enough, responsive enough touchscreen acting as a canvas for the software running on it lets you do. Any alternative hardware form factors — sliders, physical Qwerty keyboards and so on — just get in the way or put a limitation on the software. The main smartphone design trend over the past few years has therefore been for screens to get bigger to allow for more prodding.

Jolla’s first phone, for all the startup’s talk of doing things differently, does not buck this trend — presenting the user with a rectangle slab of touchscreen glass to act as their playground, albeit one that’s relatively modest in size by current palm-stretching standards. It’s still a little larger than the current crop of iPhone screens, though.

The main hardware design flare here is the sandwich form factor of the slab, created when the backplate is pushed onto the body of the phone. The edge where the two pieces meet leaves a continuous seam which give a little extra grip as you hold the phone. The test device I was using came with a white backplate, contrasting with the black front for an attractive two-tone look.

If brightly coloured phones are your thing there are options to select a more boldly coloured Other Half (as the backplate is known). The first batch of Jolla handsets, launched by Finnish carrier DNA, had a bright pink rear. Jolla has also now started selling an aloe green Other Half via its website, along with a black option for those that want a less stand-out look.

The backplates aren’t just about adding a splash of colour; they include NFC to support a link with the software, allowing a particular colour backplate to also change the theme colours of the OS (for instance). And potentially support other implementations, such as being preloaded with digital content such as a music album. Or those are the sort of use-cases Jolla is hoping to encourage.

It has also released the 3D files for The Other Half as an SDK to encourage developers to get modding the backplates. And with a power (and bus) connector incorporated into the back of the phone where the backplate snaps on, it would be possible for an Other Half to include sophisticated additional hardware functionality, such as a Qwerty keyboard or e-ink screen. (Not that either of those possible Other Halves have been built yet — but the hooks for extending the platform in such ways are ready and waiting).

The handset casing is plastic front and back — so does not feel as premium as metal/glass clad devices like the iPhone or HTC’s One device. But Jolla’s attention to detail in aspects of the hardware design, such as its mixture of rounded edges with smooth blunt ones, and a gloss logo invisibly inked on the matt backplate that jumps into reflective view when you tilt the device, give the design a confident, sure-footed air, and help to elevate the overall look and feel beyond the plebian plastic Android hoards it’s attempting to disrupt.

Similarly aesthetic touches are evident in aspects of the software too, whether it’s Jolla’s calendar app with its subtle flip animation that turns Sunday to Monday as you scroll, or the dual-dial interface in the Jolla clock app for setting a timer by positioning two glowing beads within two concentric circles, or the understated double tap gesture that can be used to wake the phone from sleep. A distinct design flare is evident.

Size-wise (and weight-wise), Jolla’s phone is a good middle ground, with enough screen to showcase whatever content you’re playing around with, without being so big the actual device becomes unwieldy. That said, if you’ve already pushed past the 5-inch phablet mark for your personal mobile device you’ll probably miss the extra space. So the one-way-street of mobile phone screen inflation goes.

OS

What’s really new here is of course the Sailfish OS — which carries on the MeeGo heritage that Jolla took from Nokia when the startup’s core team left to carry on developing the platform Nokia was abandoning in favour of making the leap to Microsoft’s Windows Phone.

As a platform MeeGo had plenty of promise but its timing was terrible. Even when Nokia outted the N9 (way back in 2011) Android was pushing ahead of the rest of the field. Now, for Jolla, it’s not so much a gap between Android and everyone else as a gulf. Even the industry’s third placed OS, Windows Phone, (which has been kept afloat by Redmond’s deep pockets), remains a bit-player in an Android-saturated universe.

Realistically Sailfish stands no chance of achieving mass market penetration — but then it’s not really being positioned for that. Jolla’s appeal has mostly been about serving the non-mainstream margins; aka the fringe folk who are dissatisfied with vanilla and are looking for a less orthodox flavour. People who are bored by the functional similarity of Android and iOS, and don’t see a Microsoft-branded alternative as an non-mainstream alternative.

That is necessarily a smaller and more modest market. Indeed, it may be more of a niche than a market but that remains to be seen. Outside Jolla’s native stamping ground of Finland, where national pride and Nokia-fuelled nostalgia may help to buoy up Jolla’s little boat, Sailfish’s greatest chance for building scale is likely to be out East in China — a region that was an early focus for the startup.

However, Jolla has concentrated the launch of this its first handset on Europe (and indeed, on Finland thus far), and appears to have rowed back from talk of a strong early push into China — with no follow up to its 2012 announcement of a distribution deal with Chinese retailer D.Phone. So momentum in the East is not a story it can currently tell, beyond the implied potential of the previously announced Hong Kong-based Sailfish alliance. Ergo, Sailfish’s Eastern promise also remains to be seen.

Features

What exactly is different about the Sailfish OS? The Jolla phone interface is built around a series of gestures — pulling down on the screen typically brings a contextual menu into view, and simultaneously incorporates a selector bar so the same fluid movement is used to both point to and select the action from the menu — depending on when/where you release your finger. So, for instance, in the email app, the ‘compose new email’ or ‘update’ actions reside just off-screen, in the pull-down menu.

The advantage of this type of drag interface is you can perform actions with the same (single) finger movement, without having to lift off and tap. So there are potentially some time/efficiency savings, plus the ability to control more of the OS with a single digit, rather than being forced to use two hands to navigate. For certain groups of users with dexterity issues or a disability affecting their hands/arms Sailfish navigation could therefore be a bit less challenging than the tap-happy mainstream mobile options.

Another aspect of the Sailfish navigation is built around swipes. A swipe up from the bottom of the screen brings up an events/notification screen. Swiping in from the left or right is used to close the app you’re currently in — or partially close it (if you pause the gesture mid way through), by allowing you to peek back at the home screen. You can then either reverse the gesture to go back into the app, or follow through to minimize it and land back on the homescreen.

Why would you want to peek at the homescreen? Because it contains a series of minimised apps that are displayed like a deck of cards, each containing glimpses of active content allowing you to see if there’s a new email in your inbox, for instance, or a glimpse of the latest content on a website.

For native Sailfish apps, such as the built in Jolla browser, there is support for functional interaction right from the homescreen card itself — so you can refresh webpages or trigger a call to open up a new webpage just by dragging your finger left or right on the browser card itself. Similarly you can pause/play music from the media homescreen card, and so on.

At this granular point, the Sailfish interface can resemble a Russian doll of nested gestures. For a user who takes the time to get to know all these short cuts, the interface certainly has the potential to feel fluid and productive. But, on the flip side, all these gestural layers and incremental short-cuts can end up piling a confusing amount of possible navigation options atop the OS, resulting in a steep learning curve for the Sailfish newcomer.

Beyond the user-education challenge, Sailfish’s reliance on gestures is not without other problems too. The main problem with the side-swipe gesture is that it can mis-register as one of the back/forth swipes also used to move between multiple menu screens in apps. And vice versa. So you can end up closing an app, when you were just trying to get to the next screen. Or doing the reverse.

Misregistered actions like that serve to confuse a navigation system that is already at a disadvantage because it’s different to mobile’s mainstream, and therefore involves the aforementioned disadvantageous learning curve.

Knowing when you can swipe or pull down to reach other menus also isn’t always obvious, so the user has to know to be on the look-out for Sailfish’s visual cues — either a glowing bar at the top of the screen, or small glowing dots that indicate the number of additional screens available for swiping to.

Add to that, at times, when — intuitively — you feel you should be able to simply reverse the swipe action you just did to reverse your path and return to the screen you were just on, you find you can’t — and instead have to pull down to retrace your original steps via the contextual top menu.

There is a logic there, but it’s not exactly taking the path of least resistance from the user’s point of view. So the interface can sometimes feel as if you’re being made to do something not because it’s better/easier, but just because it’s different. Which can be irritating.

The navigation also doesn’t do away with taps entirely — which does mean that when you need to tap on something to confirm an action, rather than pulling down to bring up the contextual menu, it’s not always clear that’s what you need to do to proceed. Ergo, more confusion.

The functions supported by the homescreen cards also take some getting used to, especially as non-native Sailfish apps (such as the Android apps that are compatible with the device) don’t include support for gestures. And those native apps that don’t have any additional gestures sometimes resort to signposting that lack — with a written instruction on the card to ‘tap to continue’ — to avoid further user confusion about whether they support gestural interaction or not. But having to do that is rather sub-optimal (and potentially introduces further procedural confusion where apps don’t include such signpost text).

The card-based homescreen is a potentially richer alternative to the icons of iOS and Android. However the size of the cards can limit their functionality as portals into what’s going on elsewhere in your apps. The Jolla phone supports a deck of up to nine cards displayed on screen at once. When there are more than four cards their size shrinks so the text/content displayed on them can be tricky to make out. The cards are far more useable when larger — so when there’s between one and four on screen (as pictured left) — allowing for content to be displayed more comfortably, and gestural interaction to be less fiddly.

As a ‘glanceable’ interface, the Jolla phone homescreen shares something with BlackBerry 10 — with its panel of ‘Active Frames’ — or Palm’s WebOS. Or, to a lesser extent, with Windows Phone’s info-displaying Live Tiles. Sailfish’s support for gestural interaction with its own take on homescreen cards does take things a little further than Live Tiles. Whether that ability adds significantly to the interface, or is better described as more of an incremental benefit, depends on which apps you use, and the sort of actions you regularly perform.

If, for instance, you’re often checking in on a particular webpage or regularly refreshing your inbox for new content, then being able to perform such actions right from the homescreen without having to dive into the app itself may be a boon. But it’s a little hard to shake the feeling that the usability benefit here is relatively incremental. If you have a new email, you’re going to have to fire up the inbox to read it anyway — and even iOS, with its static icon-based homescreen, sticks a little red digit on your email icon telling you when its time to go check in.

One area where Jolla has delivered a really usable slice of software is the native Sailfish keyboard. The touchscreen keyboard incorporates a scrollable next-word suggestion bar above the Qwerty layout which offers an evolving rack of words to choose from as you’re typing.

The typing time-savings can be considerable here as multiple word suggestions can fit on the screen so the chances of the right one cropping up before you’ve finished spelling it out are good. Plus, even more words lurk just off screen where you can pull them in with a quick swipe on the bar.

It’s a great use of available (and implied, i.e. off-screen) screen real-estate to support a smarter kind of touchscreen keyboard. Better than the static old iPhone keyboard? Absolutely!

Apps

Jolla has built a series of what it terms “essential apps” for the phone that you can download during the set up process, or snag direct from the Jolla Store later on. These include basics such as a media player, email, maps (powered by Nokia’s HERE), calendar, clock, notes, calculator, documents viewer etc.

This is Jolla filling in the Sailfish platform gap itself, as — being the new kid on the mobile block — it’s unable to rely on a substantial third party developer ecosystem to do that for it.

Essential here is a synonym for ‘basics’. These Jolla-made Sailfish apps really are the bare-bones that any mobile user would expect to get as standard on a smartphone. If you want more ambitions apps — and really, which modern mobile user doesn’t? — from ephemeral messaging to insanely frustrating gaming, well, Sailfish isn’t going to be able to deliver. Not yet, and perhaps not ever on its own.

There are a handful of native Sailfish apps made by developers other than Jolla available for download on the Jolla store. But, including Jolla’s essentials, there are less than 200 apps in total on the Jolla Store in total right now — and that includes plenty of very simple stuff like an age calculator app, and kitchen timer and torch apps, plus some apps that have evidently been ported from Android. The Sailfish app ecosystem clearly remains very nascent.

Jolla’s solution for this app gap — or more accurately this ‘app gulf’ vs Android and iOS — is to add a pipeline into the Android ecosystem to allow for a sub-set of apps to be siphoned off via platform compatibility with Android. The preloaded hub for Android apps on the Jolla device is Yandex’s app store – which holds some 85,000 Android apps for downloading and extend the device’s functionality.

Jolla users can also download other Android app stores (i.e. in addition to the Yandex store) to get access to additional Android apps, although Google’s Play ecosystem is obviously off limits.

Jolla’s line in to the Android app ecosystem is an inelegant fix for a platform that wanted to provide an entirely alternative mobile reality. But when your platform lags the mobile category leader by circa one million+ apps then it’s a necessary compromise. And that pragmatism means Jolla’s device gets a much needed leg up in the app stakes vs other smaller players also trying to crack the Android/iOS duopoly (such as Mozilla and its HTML5 Web apps approach with the Firefox OS).

It is not a trouble free compromise though. The main problem with this approach — ignoring the core philosophical one of having to incorporate the very thing you dislike (including having to tolerate Android navigation keys cropping up within Android apps to sprinkle additional confusion over your alternative navigation system) — is that Android apps don’t always run smoothly in the Sailfish OS environment.

This was true when I did a hands-on with the Jolla phone back in November. And it’s still true now, although the big bug evident then, of the Android runtime sometimes spontaneously taking over the interface, appears to have been sorted now. App compatibility issues are an ongoing problem, though.

Many Android apps — including the Yandex app store — run sluggishly, with noticeable lag. Some Android apps are also unstable after installation — Skype for instance stopped responding after a moment’s use (although, to be fair, the Skype app is pretty universally terrible, regardless of the mobile platform you’re accessing it from). Plus, certain actions within Android apps aren’t supported within Sailfish — which triggers a dialogue box when you try to do something you can’t, informing you that such and such an action isn’t possible. Such is the price of compromise.

But, when the Android apps do work, their line in to a dominant ecosystem does help to expand the Jolla experience for its users, providing access to a lot more app ‘essentials’ — whether that’s Facebook or Twitter or Cut The Rope. Whatever your particular app poison. Just so long as you don’t expect the next Flappy Bird viral hit to be natively spawned on the Sailfish platform.

Performance

Some performance issues on the Jolla phone are clearly directly associated with its Android emulator feature, such as the laggy apps discussed above.

More general handset performance issues that affect the Jolla phone likely relate to what is effectively (on paper) a chunk of pretty mid-range smartphone hardware.

The handset is not a powerhouse in the processor stakes — certainly not by today’s flagship phone standards (which is one of the problems with having a long development time to get your debut device to market, as Jolla has). This relative lack of horsepower translates to overall performance that has a tendency to feel a bit plodding.

There are times when the interface has noticeable lag — such as when taking a photo and watching the shot you’ve just snapped slide off screen and onto the (off-screen) camera roll. The delay isn’t huge but it’s noticeable.

Likewise, the browser can feel a little underpowered when tackling certain websites. And seem a little slow to scroll and respond to taps. Transitions from one type of content to loading another also require a spot of micro-patience from the user.

The response time lag is more pronounced when running (some) Android apps, as noted above.

Native Sailfish apps fair better, as you’d expect, but there it’s not so much overall performance that’s the issue but the aforementioned paucity and scarcity of app quantity and quality.

Elsewhere on the performance front, the handset’s rear camera is distinctly mid-range. Photos lack crisp clarity, and the lens struggles with variable light levels. Likewise, the handset’s qHD screen is far from pin-sharp. Again, these aspects of the Jolla phone are distinctly mid-range.

Battery life at least does seem pretty good, both on standby and for active use. The phone should easily manage a day’s normal use without needing a recharge. 

Bottom Line

The Jolla phone’s gesture-based interface has a steep learning curve for newbies, and considering how embedded most mobile users are with Android/iOS navigation paradigms that’s inevitably pushing water up hill. Floating a whole new platform so long after Android and iOS set sail also means Sailfish can’t hope to compete on quantity of native apps — or indeed on attracting hoards of developers, so it’s a tough ask for it to deliver high quality third party native apps either.

That huge app gap means Jolla has been forced to tether its dingy to the very Android leviathan it’s trying to circumvent — to extend the reach of its dinky Sailfish ecosystem in the hopes of building sustainable momentum. It’s a practical and pragmatic strategy but it’s also an ongoing compromise that muddies this new platform’s clear blue waters.

The other day we reported that Apple would be launching a Red Friday sale for the Asian region, and it looks like the sales have kicked off and it looks like Apple’s deals for 2014 seem to be pretty decent. For those who missed the news, you best hurry because Red Friday for Apple is basically their take of Black Friday in the US, except that it is catered towards the Asian region due to the upcoming Lunar New Year which is expected to take place towards the end of January. In the past Apple sales haven’t been particularly impressive and have mostly yielded extremely minor discounts or the giveaway of gift cards. Granted those gift cards are useful, we’re guessing many would prefer actual discounts of products.

The good news is that Apple’s Red Friday sale is offering discounts on Apple’s range of products, such as iPhones, iPads, Mac computers, and Apple’s lineup of iPod nano media players. As you can see in the screenshot above, Apple is offering discounts on products like the latest iPhone 5s and iPhone 5c by knocking off S$70 (this is the Singapore store) from its original asking price of S$988. Granted this isn’t exactly a huge discount, heck it’s barely even 10% off, but we guess it’s still better than nothing, right? The Red Friday sale is expected to last only for one day, the 10th of January, and will be taking place in China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Korea, Thailand, Singapore, and Malaysia.

So if any of our readers hail from those regions, perhaps some of these deals might appeal to you.

Apple’s Red Friday Sale Kicks Off In Asia original content from Ubergizmo.

For those of Chinese descent (such as myself), the Lunar New Year is a pretty big deal and for 2014, it is taking place towards the end of the month. As with Christmas and other festive holidays celebrated around the world, shopping sprees typically predate the events themselves as most of us would rush out to get new clothes, new shoes, and gifts for friends and families that we might visit or who might be coming over. We’re not sure if giving away iPods or iPhones is considered to be tradition, but either way Apple is looking to celebrate the Lunar New Year with the rest of the world as they have recently announced their Red Friday sale which is taking place on the 10th of January, weeks before the actual festivities begin.

We guess in a way this Red Friday sale is somewhat similar to Black Friday, except that “red” is considered to be an auspicious color amongst the Chinese. Apple will be offering discounts both in-store and on their online store as well, but unfortunately these Red Friday sales will be limited to select markets where the Lunar New Year might be considered to be a pretty big deal. This includes markets such as China, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, and Thailand. It is unclear as to how big of a discount Apple might be offering, but considering that the number “8” is also an auspicious figure, perhaps Apple might take advantage of that!

Apple Red Friday Sale Announced For Various Countries In Asia original content from Ubergizmo.

The rise of mobile has given me so much: 24/7 connections with friends around the world, information exactly when I need it, the ability to track my fitness and health goals. Unfortunately, it’s also given me a complex about my giant sausage fingers and their constant inability to navigate the tiny keys on my smartphone’s slippery touchscreen. Sometimes I think I should have just bought a BlackBerry.

When I read about Haloband on their Kickstarter page, I felt like the Shanghai-based startup was speaking directly to me: “Everyone has trouble in locking and unlocking smartphones. The frequency usually hurts phones’ screen and keys, as well as our hearts. So we decided it’s time to do something.”

Haloband is a silicone wristband embedded with an NFC chip and lets you operate your choice of functions by tapping your Android smartphone on your wrist. It’s also linked to a cloud account, which means you can save your ID as well as information to share with other mobile devices. After setting up your wristband with the Haloband app, you can use it to unlock your phone, take photos or send emergency alerts, among other options. To get an idea of what Haloband can do, watch their hilarious Kickstarter video embedded above (“I’m from the future. If you scan my wrist, you can get my business card information. This is my information, from my wrist, on your phone. Because I’m from the future.”)

For those of you who think Haloband is pointless (and I’ve seen a few comments saying that), the wristband can be helpful for people with repetitive stress injuries and other issues with their hands. I have RSI that affects my wrists and thumbs, and I can see some of Haloband’s functions making my smartphone use a little easier when I have a flare-up of pain. It looks like there are plenty of people who agree with me about its usefulness–the project has already raised almost double its $10,000 goal on Kickstarter and its early bird specials are closed, but you can still select from several options, starting from just $25 for a black or white Haloband. Funding closes on Jan. 16 and the bands are scheduled to ship in February.

Haloband was developed by a Shanghai-based team that includes a former Intel engineer and focuses on NFC technology. They plan to release an open API so other developers can create their own Haloband apps and help smartphone users wrist easy (rimshot).