Hasta La Gadget!

This week there’s a letter being sent to the heads at HTC from what reports claim is an anonymous defector from the company’s R&D department, this letter claiming that “more than a thousand” engineers have been asked to work 12 hour days without overtime on a regular basis. This system has been claimed by the anonymous letter-writer to have been called a “Responsibility System” and is having workers put in “1000 hours” of overtime work without overtime pay. While the letter has not yet been entirely authenticated beyond what Taiwanese publication MyDrivers claim, such claims will likely prompt a response from HTC rather rapidly.

According to MyDrivers, they’ve got word that “more than 5,000 internal engineers” are part of the Research and Development team that may be affected by this so-called “Responsibility System”. While the letter in question does appear to have been written and presented by a single disgruntled employee, it’s been claimed that “thousands” of engineers have been included in this demand for additional hours without overtime pay.

In January of this year it would appear that HTC Chairman Cher Wang was prompted to respond to allegations of “sweatshop” conditions, saying (translated): “every place has room to improve, but HTC’s workplace is based in an appreciation of each person at all times, with that appreciation applying to everyone, the company acting in that appreciation, not just in efforts to keep themselves prepared.” Note that that’s a rather rough translation, the original to be found at Sina Technological Age.

This newest incident appears to have once again created an environment in which the chairman is having to defend the company, saying this time that HTC has “always complied with the Labor Standards Act, except weekends and statutory holidays,” continuing on with notes that HTC “also encourages employees to make good use of annual leave and a good work-life balance.” The chairman spoke specifically about overtime, saying that “employees can still apply, but [overtime] is subject to the approval of the department head.”

As Unwired View‘s Staska notes, there was a bit of a surprising gap in costs for R&D between the third and fourth quarter of 2011, with HTC cutting costs by a whopping 60%. This announcement was included in Q4 earnings reports without word of any equivalent number of layoffs. Could it be that the costs were simply cut by having workers stay longer each night without equivalent overtime pay?

Stay tuned as more information on this situation comes to light – rather quickly, we must assume.

Anonymous letter suggests HTC “Responsibility System” with unpaid overtime is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Sure, Ubuntu for smartphones is slated to appear as a downloadable image for the Galaxy Nexus late this month, but you’ll have to wait until fall to get your hands on honest-to-goodness Ubuntu phone hardware. According to the Wall Street Journal, Canonical founder Mark Shuttleworth says Ubuntu handsets will hit two “large geographic markets” in October, and that the open source OS has struck the fancy of carriers, to boot. However, Shuttleworth remained coy regarding which regions will see the devices launch in October and which manufacturers will be serving up hardware.

Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile

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Via: CNET

Source: Wall Street Journal

This week Huawei has made their Mobile World Congress 2013 presence official with an invitation to their main event. This event will quite likely continue to reveal the Ascend lineup of smartphones running Android with high definition displays and powerful processors under their respective hoods. We saw the massive Ascend Mate 6.1-inch display-toting beast as well as the lovely Ascend D2 with 5-inch 1080p display at CES 2013, and as it was tipped by Huawei CEO of Consumer Business Group’s Richard Yu, the next step may be the Huawei Ascend P2. This device has been suggested to be coming with a processor packing 8 CPU cores.

That’s one System on a Chip with 8 CPU cores, also known as more cores than any smartphone or tablet has ever brought forth before. As you should well know by now, it’s not always about the number of CPU cores you have that tells you how powerful your device can get, but with [nearly] double the amount of cores any other competing product has, we’re certainly curious about what the P-series can do. This device will also very likely be coming in at a very, very thin smartphone as its predecessor was.

With Huawei bringing on $2.5 billion in profit throughout 2012, that being a lovely 33% rise compared to the year before, we must assume the company will continue to expand through 2013. This event will once again prove Huawei to be a real contender in the world market with devices such as the Huawei Ascend G615 being revealed between CES 2013 and MWC 2013 proving the company to have more rabbits in its hat than anyone expects. Also be sure to check the Huawei 4Afrika Windows Phone handsets to see how the company is moving in on the budget-friendly market in 2013.

And keep in mind that Huawei has been called the 3rd place manufacturer in the world’s smartphone market at the end of 2012 by the IDC. This means that, yes, we are seeing the company expand, we are seeing Huawei continue to hit inroads to major markets like the USA, and yes, Mobile World Congress 2013 will be home to some new fabulous releases from the big H. Stay tuned in our lovely MWC 2013 tag portal for more!

Huawei MWC 2013 press event invite tips Ascend P2 and 8-core CPU is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

The BlackBerry PlayBook as it was released back in April of 2011 was a mess, but the first BlackBerry 10 tablet certainly doesn’t have to be. Have a look back at our original BlackBerry PlayBook Review and you’ll find that right out of the gate the machine was far too “rough around the edges” to be a real competitor with the likes of the iPad or even the first big Android release with the Motorola XOOM. The direction the company is going with BlackBerry 10 presents a unique opportunity to take the tablet market by storm by hitting several specific arenas at once.

1. Brand Power

Back when RIM introduced BBX, the system seemed like an exciting enterprise to BlackBerry users across the board. Fast forward to 2013 and the company formerly known as RIM is now called BlackBerry and the mobile operating system is called BlackBerry 10. The brand name BlackBerry is the most valuable asset the company has, and if they decide to create a new tablet, they need to call it the BlackBerry Tablet.

If BlackBerry decides to call a new tablet something fun and new and unique, it will fail. The name BlackBerry PlayBook implied that there was a built-in audience for the device, people who loved BlackBerry and would therefor, inside that brand awareness, purchase a tablet called PlayBook. I can say iPad and you know that Apple made it. To a lesser degree I can say Galaxy Note or Galaxy Tab and you know Samsung made it.

If I say to a random stranger “hey, do you own a PlayBook?” They’ll think I’m speaking about a book of plays. If I ask that same stranger if they have a BlackBerry tablet, they may not know what that device looks like (yet) but they’ll understand what I mean. The BlackBerry Tablet must be the direction the company goes with the name.

2. Near-impossible ease of use in connecting with PCs and Macs

Two trends exist with tablets today regarding how they connect to larger, more powerful computers. The first is that a tablet will be powerful enough in and of itself that it does not appear to need to connect to any other computer, all of its connections appearing between itself and the internet. The second is a tablet that connects to a keyboard, becoming a laptop in the process.

The BlackBerry Tablet needs to skip the keyboard dock altogether, first of all. BlackBerry creating a keyboard dock implies that they don’t feel the basic unit is awesome enough on its own, and it has to be. The BlackBerry Tablet should be able to exist with an on-screen keyboard alone at all times. If users want to use a keyboard, they’ve got hundreds of Bluetooth keyboards on the market already (most of them made for the iPad, at the moment) that’ll work just great.

With the BlackBerry tablet you need to be able to work with a PC as if it were a folder. This functionality has been lost as a secondary function with essentially every modern tablet because it’s assumed that users want to work with apps like iTunes. Business users need to be able to plug the BlackBerry Tablet in to their computer with a USB cord and have it appear as a folder where they can add or take files easily.

If I plug an Android tablet into my computer, the reaction my computer has depends solely on the version of Android I’ve got running on the tablet and the USB connection status I’ve selected in the software. This cannot be so with the BlackBerry Tablet. If I plug an iPad into my computer, iTunes pops up. This leads us into the third and most important insane step BlackBerry must take with the BlackBerry tablet:

3. A User-Developed User-Experience

Though I’m not entirely sold on the “UDUX” shortening of that term, a user experience as user-dependent as possible is what BlackBerry needs to create for the BlackBerry Tablet. They’ve hinted at this – in a way – with the BlackBerry Android toolset we’ve just posted about again today regarding apps. With this toolset you – as a developer – are able to rapidly and easily convert an APK (the file type for an Android application) into a BlackBerry-ready app for submission to BlackBerry for consideration in their official app store.

This toolset has the right feeling – it’s a good step in the right direction as far as being open to the developers of the world who have already done a lot of work for operating systems that aren’t BlackBerry 10. Now this drive needs to be pushed to the actual operating system itself. The BlackBerry Tablet needs to have BlackBerry 10 existing as an experience for the user that never stops being open to changes and open to modifications.

The BlackBerry Tablet running BlackBerry 10 must be able to work for anyone and it has to be irresistible to not just business users, but all users. If a 5 year old has a BlackBerry Tablet in their backpack, a 35 year old should be jealous, and ready to find a way to save up the three $50 bills it’ll cost them to buy one of their own.

The BlackBerry Tablet: Available This Summer

Do you think we’ll see this magical unicorn of a tablet appearing this summer? What do you think it’d take for BlackBerry to bust out a device that’s so potentially valuable to every man woman and child in the world that they have trouble producing them fast enough to keep up with demand? And perhaps most important of all – does BlackBerry have enough steam right this minute to keep itself alive long enough to create the BlackBerry Tablet?

BlackBerry 10 tablet: three insane steps for success is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Today we’ve seen quite the showing by the company formerly known as Research in Motion, starting with no less than a complete re-naming of the company to “BlackBerry”. If that gesture weren’t enough to convince the public that the group was and I all-in on their 2013 bid to necessitate the BlackBerry universe, two new devices and a fully functional reboot of the operating system were certainly meant to. We’ve got hands-on with both of the newly delivered smart devices, accessories they’ll be using, and details on the whole day ready for your perusal right this minute.

You’ll want to start your journey with a few news bits appearing before the main event in NYC this morning, with the company still known as RIM way back then (two days before today) showing movie and music deals galore for BlackBerry 10. BlackBerry 10 was also granted the ability yesterday to do 12-person video chat with ooVoo technology as detailed by the company once again. Just this morning we also saw BlackBerry World gaining loads of new apps and games prior to the official launch of BlackBerry 10.

RIM’s European Managing Director Stephen Bates was put in the hot seat twice this morning as well, getting out some answers that will help BlackBerry 10 along in its immediate future and a few answers that made the company look rather unsure of itself. Leaks of BlackBerry Z10 prices began to flow right as the main event began, with quite a few mobile carriers having added their 2-cents since (this post is continuously being updated, mind you). Verizon made their presence known as one of the first groups to reveal pricing for one of the two devices revealed today.

The actual BlackBerry 10 event began with the President and CEO of the company known as RIM, then BlackBerry, mister Thorsten Heins congratulating those that worked on BlackBerry 10 and held fast with BlackBerry over the past two years. Two years ago was when the process to create BlackBerry 10 began, and as Heins assured the world this morning, they’ll be here for some time to come: Today is not the finish line, it’s just the starting line.”

The rebranding of RIM to BlackBerry should be seen as nearly as important from an advertising and image perspective as the launch of BlackBerry 10. With BlackBerry replacing RIM, there’s now “One Brand. One promise.” BlackBerry 10 has been assured to be “re-designed, re-engineered, re-invented” and ready for action in 2013.

We saw the official announcement of the BlackBerry Z10 as well as the official reveal of the Q10. The first is a 4.2-inch touchscreen display-toting BlackBerry 10 device devoid of physical keyboard keys while the second is a more “classic” design with the widest physical keyboard interface the company has ever delivered on a smartphone.

We’ve got BlackBerry Q10 hands-on for all you lovers of the keyboard and the touchscreen. We’ve got BlackBerry Z10 hands-on for all you lovers of the full-touch interface. We’ve got BlackBerry 10-era accessories hands-on for all you lovers of holsters, speakers, and battery chargers for the future!

BlackBerry 10 has been announced to be launching with 70,000 apps right out of the box including big names like Angry Birds and Skype. Angry Birds, in fact, has been pushed as a free app for early adopters and will be coming to the market with all of its back-catalog titles as well!

Then there’s one of the oddest announcements of the day, that being Musician Alicia Keys being revealed as the new BlackBerry Global Creative Director. At the moment this appears to be a move not unlike Will.i.am joining Intel as Director of Creative Innovation or Futura 2000 representing Samsung. The celebrity / artist / entertainer cross-branding continues!

Have a peek at our ever-expanding BlackBerry 10 tag portal for more information into the future and stick around for our imminent full review of the BlackBerry Z10!

BlackBerry 10 event wrap-up: RIM sheds name for bright future is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.