Hasta La Gadget!

Did Samsung’s bizarre GS4 unveiling leave you wanting a little more? Well, as it’s often the case, carriers are already preparing for the handset’s eventual launch, and two US players have now officially opened the virtual doors to those potential buyers. Both T-Mobile and AT&T’s sign-up pages for the Galaxy S 4 are now live, giving the interested folk a way to be kept in the loop as soon as the South Korean firm’s flagship becomes available in each network. Unfortunately, although not surprisingly, pricing and precise availability details are still scarce at the moment — but hey, at least we have some idea as to when we can expect it to hit shelves not just in the US of A but all over the world.

Filed under: Cellphones, Samsung, AT&T, T-Mobile

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Via: Talk Android

Source: AT&T, T-Mobile

That Galaxy S 4 isn’t going to compute tasks through sheer force of will, you know. Just a day after Samsung unveiled the smartphone as its inaugural Exynos 5 Octa device, the company has confirmed that the not-really-eight-core ARM processor should be in mass production during the second quarter of the year, or between April and June. There aren’t many more details to share beyond what the company mentioned at CES, but that doesn’t diminish what could be a best-of-all-worlds processor: the automatic switching between four Cortex-A15 and four Cortex-A7 cores should give it a performance edge over many of its peers while reducing power consumption by up to 70 percent. We also know that the Octa’s graphics performance has largely caught up to peers versus earlier Exynos 4 designs, as Imagination Technologies has confirmed that its PowerVR SGX544MP is providing enough muscle to double 3D performance over the creaky Mali-400 in the Exynos 4 Quad. About the only mystery left is whether or not many companies beyond Samsung will get a chance at some Exynos 5 Octa silicon, although there’s one or two prospects.

Filed under: Cellphones, Tablets, Mobile, Samsung

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Source: Samsung, Imagination Technologies

In a lot of things, being the best generally leads to victory. Usain Bolt is the fastest man in the London Olympics? He wins the gold. A hosting company has the best recorded uptime? It takes home an award. Google launches the fastest consumer broadband available in the US? Boom, victory.

But every so often, life throws us a curveball. For every 1972 Dolphins team, there’s a pack of believers from NC State eager to do something crazy in 1983. And in more germane terms, there’s presently no rhyme or reason why HTC has continually outgunned Samsung in terms of design prowess, yet continues to bleed cash while its Korean rival mints it. Actually, there is a reason. It’s called marketing.

Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile, Samsung

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We’d heard rumors that Swiftkey might have assisted Blackberry on its well-received (and often prescient) BB10 keyboard, but the app maker has now confirmed that its software is behind the Galaxy S 4‘s native keyboard. It’s the first time that the company’s publicly admitted to powering a handset manufacturer’s keys and will sidestep the need for S 4 users to download its standalone app. Though, there’s still plenty of reasons to download the app from Google play if you dig the customization options and themes of the original. Swiftkey’s CTO Ben Medlock said that the keyboard is “at the heart of [Samsung’s] flagship smartphone” and is hopefully just the first of many Android devices arriving with the company’s voodoo already built in. We’ve added Ben’s full statement after the break.

Update: The company reached out to us to clarify that while its prediction engine is at the heart of Samsung’s keyboard it is not Swiftkey in the purest sense. The natural comparison it reached for? Android and TouchWiz.

Filed under: Cellphones, Software, Mobile, Samsung

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First it was Apple, then LG, and now we have HTC also trolling Samsung’s Galaxy S 4 launch in New York. Before the doors opened at Radio City Music Hall, the Taiwanese company kindly gave out hot cocoa and snacks while showing off the One to folks lined up in the cold outside. This was followed by HTC’s complementary entertainment during Samsung’s event with a series of surprisingly relentless tweets — one of which even bore the hash tag “#theNextBigFlop” to mock Samsung’s “The Next Big Thing” slogan. Ouch.

To wrap up the day, HTC’s fresh CMO Ben Ho got in touch (by way of a PR agency) to say that the again-plastic Galaxy S 4 is just “more of the same,” and that his company’s “all-aluminum unibody HTC One” with “original cutting-edge technology, mouth-watering design and a premium feel” is really what people are after. Here’s his full statement:

“With a continuation of a plastic body, and a larger screen being the most obvious physical change, Samsung’s new Galaxy pales in comparison to the all-aluminum unibody HTC One.

“This is more of the same. HTC remains the best option for those people looking for the best technology wrapped in premium design. Our customers want something different from the mainstream, who appear to be the target for the Galaxy.

“Our customers want original cutting-edge technology, mouth-watering design and a premium feel from their mobiles, which is why we created the HTC One.”

Looks like “quietly brilliant” is no more for HTC then?

Update: Ben Ho got back to us with another nugget, this time taking a quick jab at the software features on Samsung’s latest flagship device. It’s short and sweet (and also spicy):

“Looking at the software features of the S4, we think Samsung spent more on marketing than innovation.”

Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile, Samsung, HTC

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