Hasta La Gadget!

It’s well established that Apple and Samsung have been in a legal cat fight for a while now, and while things seemed to have settled down for a bit, both companies are at it again. Apple and Samsung will be going to court next year in the spring for what will be the second patent trial between the two companies, and the Cupertino-based company is looking to add the new Galaxy S 4 to the mix.

As a part of Apple’s statement recently filed with the US District Court in California, the company said that the Galaxy S 4 “is an infringing device and accordingly intends to move for leave to add the Galaxy S4 as an infringing product.” The Galaxy S 4 now joins a list of 22 Samsung products that Apple believes are infringing on their patents.

Both sides have over 20 products from each company that they claim infringe on each other’s patents. Samsung has included almost all of Apple’s iOS devices, while Apple has focused on Samsung’s Galaxy S lineup, as well as the Note series of phablet-style smartphones.

Judge Lucy Koh will oversee the upcoming patent trial, as she was the judge during the first patent trial that saw Apple win with a whopping $1.05 billion award. However, that was since cut down by $450 million. However, while it seemed Apple was fine with that for the most part, the company claimed the re-calculation is off by $85 million, and thus, another court case will begin in November to re-calculate the damages.

If you’re slightly confused by all that’s going on between the two companies, you’re most likely not alone. Apple and Samsung have been going at it for a couple years now, and both companies are starting to slowly end their partnerships in the industry. For instance, it’s been rumored for quite some time that Apple is completely dropping Samsung from its manufacturing partners, which would cut ties between the two companies. Of course, Apple wants to develop their own chips anyway, but the separation is probably for the best at this point.

VIA: Phone Arena

SOURCE: US District Court Filing

Apple to add Samsung Galaxy S 4 to upcoming patent trial is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
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It seems that patient subscribers over at Verizon Wireless will finally get their just desserts, as we have word from Verizon that the latest flagship smartphone from Samsung, the Galaxy S4, will finally be made available to the masses this […]

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Samsung is moving quickly to diversify its phone line, with variants of the S4 popping out of the woodwork left and right, including the Galaxy S4 Zoom, which features a rumored 10x optical zoom on its rear camera. Today the Galaxy S4 Active, a ruggedized, smaller version of the flagship S4 has hit the Bluetooth Special Interest Group for certification, which means it could be coming along shortly, too.

The S4 Active is supposedly a water- and dust-resistant phone designed for use with an active lifestyle, or in outdoor conditions where generally phones don’t fare very well. The S4 Active would compete head-to-head with Sony’s latest lineup of phones, including the Xperia ZR announced today, which is a smaller version of the Xperia Z with slightly less impressive specs. It’s submersible in water for up to 1.5 meters, however, which pits it against the Active’s rumored feature set.

Both the Active and the Zoom S4 variants remind me of how companies are diversifying in another crowded, near saturated market: point-and-shoot cameras. Manufacturers regularly highlight the long zoom and rugged versions of their devices, as these are areas where consumers feel they need more than what’s available to them on the smartphone devices they carry around every day.

Manufacturers like Sony and Samsung moving in this direction with their devices marks an attempt to broaden their lineup’s appeal vs. other similar competitors, but also encroaches on the territory of single-purpose devices like the camera. And the market is likely to get more crowded, not less, as Google has been teasing devices that can withstand harsh environmental forces coming from its Motorola acquisition, through executive statements.

I said previously that Samsung is essentially preparing a phone for every feature to compete with any unique advantage its rivals may try, and the S4 Active is definitely that. But these variant devices also have the potential to act as advance market research for tech that can be adopted back into a flagship device: if any is particularly successful, it provides a roadmap for Samsung about what will draw customers to the S5 or beyond.

The S4 Active getting its Bluetooth certification means it’s likely to get a consumer reveal before too long, so we should see exactly how far Samsung has taken the rugged phone concept soon.

Samsung has another surefire hit on its hands with its new Galaxy S4 smartphone. The device has only recently launched and IHS has laid their hands on one and ripped it apart to give us an idea of how much it costs to build. This time, this is an actual Galaxy S4 that’s been torn apart unlike the virtual teardown performed by the company in March.

Interestingly, when the company performed the virtual teardown it estimated the bill of materials for the S4 was about $244(USD). Now the company got an actual phone to rip apart, and it says that the 32 GB version costs a little bit more than $237 per unit to build. That means the virtual tear down was impressively close. Not bad.

The teardown also reveals that Samsung and its subsidiaries provide the vast majority of components used to build the phone. One component in the U.S. version that isn’t sourced from Samsung is the processor, which is a QUALCOMM Snapdragon. However, the Korean version of the S4 does use a Samsung processor. The U.S. version of the phone also has a Fujitsu image processor that the Korean version doesn’t offer. Other component suppliers include Corning, Broadcom, Maxim and Triquint Semiconductor.

[via AllthingsD]

When Facebook Home was first announced, the launcher was made available only to a select couple of handsets, older handsets in fact, like the Samsung Galaxy S3, the HTC One X, One X+ and so on. Well the good news […]

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