Hasta La Gadget!

Samsung and a number of global carriers will launch the first Tizen smartphone in 2013, with NTT DoCoMo, Vodafone, and France Telecom all expected to jump on board with the open-source alternative OS. While HTC, Panasonic, ASUS, Acer, Huawei and others have all voiced interest in developing Tizen devices, according to The Yomiuri Shimbun‘s sources it will be Samsung that pushes the first handset running the MeeGo-reborn platform out of the door.

Samsung has been working with NTT DoCoMo on developing the software, the insider claims, with the Japanese carrier particularly stinging from the absence of the iPhone in its line-up. Another alternative to Apple’s smartphone, beyond Android, and which it had a greater hand in shaping, would help retain existing subscribers and add new users, so DoCoMo’s thinking apparently goes.

It’s not the first we’ve heard of a Samsung Galaxy running Tizen; rumors of such a device broke back in September as well. Samsung is also believed to be considering merging its own, homegrown bada OS with Tizen, though no final decision has been made.

Among the lingering questions at this stage is what sort of processor the Samsung Tizen handset will run. The Tizen Technical Steering Group (TSG) is made up of Samsung and Intel, the latter having a vested interest in coaxing cellphone companies away from ARM processors and over to its Atom chips, as in the Android-based RAZR i. However, Samsung also makes its own ARM chips, the Exynos series, and it might be easier for the company to stick with an architecture it knows well for the first-generation Tizen range.

That certainly seemed to be the approach with the Tizen developer handset Samsung pieced together for a code-focused conference back in May. Inside lurks a 1.2GHz dualcore ARM chipset, along with a 720p HD display, though all involved were clear that it was a far cry from what we can expect to see released commercially.

[via TNW]

Samsung Tizen phone tipped for 2013 with DoCoMo & Vodafone is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Despite how some might feel about Apple’s iPhone, it’s still a pretty hot product and having it on your network would most certainly give customers a reason to sign up with you. Apparently that has been the case over in the Japan as Japanese carrier, NTT DoCoMo, has blamed the iPhone for the loss of some of its customers, whereby they have reportedly lost about 40,800 subscribers to its network in November to their rivals, KDDI and Softbank, both of whom currently offer Apple’s iPhone 5 in their portfolio. It seems that during the same period, both KDDI and Softbank have seen an increase in subscribers by 228,800 and 301,900 respectively. This is probably why we’re sure that T-Mobile is pretty pleased with themselves for finally having signed an agreement with Apple in which they will begin to offer Apple products come 2013. It is unclear at this point exactly what that agreement entails, but it’s safe to assume that iPhones and iPads might be involved. Perhaps sometimes down the road NTT DoCoMo will be able to hop on board the iOS bandwagon, but for now Softbank and KDDI appear to have the upperhand.

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: The TurtleJacket PentaEye is an iPhone case for the “serious iPhoneographers”, Anostyle will let you customize your iPhone 5 with different colors,

NTT DOCOMO announced last Friday that it has developed the world’s first dual-mode small-cell base station, or femtocell, supporting 3G (W-CDMA) and LTE simultaneously for improved service coverage in indoor locations such as offices, shops and homes. The dual-mode femtocell will be commercially launched from December.
DOCOMO’s new femtocell, which weighs only 0.7 kg and measures just 18.5cm by 17.5 cm by 4.5 cm (H x W x T), provides 3G/LTE service coverage in a range of up to several tens of …

Going hands-free right now means one of three things – turn your handset’s speakerphone function on while letting everyone and their dog around you listen in on your conversation, use a wired hands-free kit that will definitely end up in a tangled mess when you stash the wired hands-free kit away, being extremely frustrating to untangle when the situation calls for it, and last but not least, scare people into thinking that you are talking to yourself or an imaginary friend while you gesticulate your arms all over the place in an animated conversation over a Bluetooth headset. NTT DoCoMo might have something right up your alley with a new futuristic looking glasses-type Head Mounted Device, calling it the Hands-Free Videophone. How blase, but I guess there is plenty of time to think up of a cool name later on.

NTT DoCoMo came up with this particular future glasses-type device because they feel that there definitely is a market for such a device. How does the Hands-Free Videophone work exactly? For starters, it will be able to capture the user’s face using all three cameras which are located at the left and right sides of the frames. Video will be sent to the other person simply by combining the pictures together using a pre-rendered 3D model of the user’s face.

NTT DoCoMo described, “Each camera has 720p resolution, and a fish-eye lens, with a 180-degree field of view. This is the High Definition picture currently being captured in real time. If you look at the face, you can see it’s really distorted, because the fish-eye lens is so close. The distortion is compensated, and the picture is combined with a 3D model of the person in the computer. Currently, priority is given to the part around the eyes. As you can see when the man closes his eyes, the eyelids and the corners of the eyes appear quite realistic. Such a level of realism is hard to achieve with models like CG-based avatars, where parts are overlaid on the face.”

That sounds like some serious bandwidth is required, although as at press time, the resolution is not quite high enough to be able to handle the mouth and upper body parts of the image, so what we see are are based on computer graphics. The face’s orientation is based on six-axis sensor data, and the motion of the mouth is based on audio data from the microphone. The ultimate aim for such a project? To recreate the whole face, without the help of any computer rendering. That ought to be still some time down the road, we think. How about you?

Source
[ NTT DoCoMo comes up with hands-free videophone copyright by Coolest Gadgets ]

Japanese mega-operator NTT DoCoMo has just unveiled a interesting addition to its winter line-up: the Sharp Aquos Phone Zeta SH-02E, which is the first production smartphone we’ve seen with an IGZO display. If you hadn’t heard, the indium gallium zinc oxide technology promises higher translucency compared to regular LCDs, which reduces the demand for backlighting and hence means less battery drain — and you can learn more from our hands-on at IFA. Fortunately, in addition to its new-fangled 4.9-inch 1,280 x 720 panel, the SH-02E boasts a healthy spec sheet in other departments too, including a 16-megapixel camera, 1.5GHz S4 Pro quad-core engine with Adreno 320 graphics, NFC and compatibility with NTT’s LTE network. The only slight downer is that it comes with Android 4.0 out of the box, but that’s hardly going to be an issue by the time a model with this type of display lands stateside — assuming it ever does.

Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile

The first smartphone with a low-power IGZO display: the 4.9-inch Sharp Aquos Phone Zeta SH-02E originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 11 Oct 2012 04:57:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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