The original HTC One S has finally made its way to T-Mobile from overseas, replacing the paint-covered Blue edition that’s been in stores since the launch. The international coverings for this machine are the same as we’d seen in the international edition of the machine here in Matte Black with Micro Arc Oxidation. This process, for those of you that weren’t around when the HTC One series was introduced earlier this year, makes the device just about as rough-and-tumble as they come, ready to take on the world without any protection from a 3rd party case – no worries!
The HTC One S also works with a Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 dual-core processor and has a lovely 8-megapixel camera working with HTC’s own ImageSense processor under the hood. This combined with the Snapdragon S4′s dedicated architecture for image processing makes the HTC One S one of the most fabulous camera phones in the world. Once we get the device in for some hands-on time, we’ll do some comparisons to the rest of the modern-day contenders as well.
We have an HTC One S T-Mobile review up from earlier this year and you can expect similar results for this edition coming this week. Some differences here in the present are going to exist in the software department – any One S in the wild today with T-Mobile will have the upgrades present, but here with the MAO edition we’ll have them right out of the box – hot stuff.
You can also take a peek at our original HTC One S review from April of this year to see what this device is like with MAO. As Chris Davies said of the finish back then: “HTC is offering two finishes for the casing, either a graduated metallic green or, as is the case with our review unit, a so-called micro arc oxidized shell that has been heat-treated so as to be scratch resistant. Scrape up the rear panel with your fingernail and the marks just rub straight off, though our previous experience with a One S prototype suggests keys can still leave some noticeable marks if used in earnest against the phone.”
We’ll see if all of that is still true here in this new edition. We’re expecting essentially the same shell as that device back closer to the start of this year – stay tuned!
With Qualcomm’s powerful, versatile and efficient Snapdragon S4 taking the mobile world by storm, it should come as no surprise that the company’s accountants are smiling more than ever. Today, the firm posted earnings for the fourth quarter of 2012, which includes a net income of $1.27 billion with revenues of $4.87 billion. In terms of profit, these figures represent a 20 percent year-over-year increase and a five percent bump when compared to the previous quarter. A peek inside Qualcomm’s books reveal that the company is now sitting on $43 billion in assets and $9.4 billion in liabilities — if only our own pocketbooks were overflowing in similar fashion. Feel free to count some beans for yourself at the source link below.
We did it folks – we made it through another election, which means that we finally get a break from those endless political ads. It won’t be long before those ads are playing all over the place again, so savor the moment while you can. We found out today that President Obama set Twitter records with that a tweet that was shared more 600,000 times, and Apple was hit with a hefty fine in a case over patents related to FaceTime. Foxconn is saying that it’s still having issues keeping up with iPhone 5 production, and Pixar has named a new building after Steve Jobs.
Finally tonight, Don Reisinger asks if Apple actually helps its competitors, we take a closer look at Qualcomm Halo, and Chris Davis gives us his review of the Phillips hue lightbulb. That does it for tonight’s edition of the Evening Wrap-Up, enjoy the rest of your night everyone!
Qualcomm has delivered its financial report for Q4 2012, and things are looking pretty good across the board. Revenues in Q4 settled at $4.87 billion, which is up 18% year-over-year and 5% sequentially. That certainly isn’t bad, but the company’s operating income was stagnant year-over-year and actually down 11% sequentially, coming in at $1.24 billion.
The company had a net income for the quarter of $1.27 billion, which is up and impressive 20% year-over-year. Deluded earnings per share were up both year-over-year and sequentially, landing at $0.89 – an 11% increase year-over-year and a 6% sequential increase. Operating cash flow was another thing that took a hit in the quarter, dropping 23% year-over-year to $1.41 billion. During the quarter, the company shipped 141 million MSM chips, which is a 11% increase year-over-year.
Qualcomm had a pretty good quarter 4, but it had an even better fiscal 2012. The company reported record revenues of $19.12 billion, which is up a very impressive 28% over fiscal 2011. Net income for the year rose 43% to $6.11 billion, and Qualcomm was able to post a deluded earnings per share in fiscal 2012 $3.51, up once again over fiscal 2011, this time by 39%. With everything added up, Qualcomm managed to ship 590 million MSM chips, which is another record for the company.
In fiscal 2013, the company is expecting its revenues to climb even higher, projecting total revenues of “approximately $23.0 billion to $24.0 billion.” It’s also hoping to post a diluted earnings per share of $4.12 to $4.32 for fiscal 2013, which again would be an increase over this year’s results. Looking a little closer at the immediate future, to company is projecting that it will ship 168 million to 178 million MSM chipsets in Q1 2013, and it’s expecting to report quarterly revenues of $5.6 billion to $6.1 billion. Qualcomm is obviously expecting fiscal 2013 to be bigger than fiscal 2012, so we’ll be keeping an eye out to see if it all unfolds the way the company is projecting.
Wireless charging has made headlines in recent weeks, but a new Qualcomm Halo trial kicking off in the UK is targeting the devices that live in your garage rather than in your pocket. Just as Google’s Nexus 4 and Nokia’s Lumia 920 each support wireless charging, rejuicing via simple desk pads rather than the fumble of slotting in a microUSB cable, so chip and wireless specialist Qualcomm sees the future of electric and hybrid urban mobility being wire-free. There’s a big difference, though, between a fifty buck charging plate for your phone and a way of cutting the cord for electric vehicles and potentially opening up the road as a dynamic power highway. SlashGear caught up with Qualcomm and some select partners to find out what makes Halo special, and why it’s just as much at home on a 200mph racing car as it is your city runabout.
Qualcomm’s trial scheme – in association with Renault and others – kicks off a two year project in London, UK, to see the feasibility and issues around wireless rather than traditional conductive charging. It’s based on Qualcomm’s Halo technology, which puts special inductive coils in both the road and the chassis underneath your car and, when the two line up, can fire across power with much the same efficiency as a regular cable might deliver.
Inductive systems of this sort aren’t new – in fact, industrial facilities have been using similar technology, running automated machinery around factory floors fueled by powerline tracks embedded in the concrete, for more than two decades now – but they’re yet to spread in any effective way from relatively closed systems.
London’s busy and convoluted streets are anything but a closed, controlled system, but that’s exactly why the city was selected by the Qualcomm-led project. It offers a mixture of road conditions, weather types, and usage scenarios, and a combination of sedans, taxis, vans, and other vehicles are expected to take part over the two year period.
Halo is a big step away from plugging in your EV (electric vehicle) to a mains electric point. Instead, you simply drive up to a power-embedded parking space and – being guided in, either by a dialog on the dashboard display or on your smartphone – roughly line up the coils in order for the electricity to start flowing. Early iterations only supported the sort of power you’d get from a slow, overnight charger – around the 3 KWh point, good for a full charge in around seven hours – but the technology now offers a 3hr charge with 7 KWh versions, and even a 1hr charge with the fastest 20 KWh standard.
Qualcomm Halo and Renault Fluence demo:
Renault is the big partner, or at least the one most likely to be seen on roads, with its specially crafted Fluence EV carrying Halo technology (along with a set of regular charging plugs). Citroen is also taking part, with a compact EV, while the more esoteric Delta E-4 will be a rarer sight though probably more eye-catching thanks to its gullwing doors. The Delta also has the most entertaining dashboard, a Tesla-style full touchscreen for navigating through charging programs and efficiency reports. In contrast, the Renault shifts Halo duties to a smartphone app – which we played with on a Samsung Galaxy S III – which helps position the car over the pad as well as begin, end, and monitor charging. The Citroen has a cutesy pod on the instrument binnacle that shows power status.
Unfortunately, the general public won’t be able to snap up a Halo-enabled car during the trial. Instead, they’ll be limited to select fleet users, including cab company Addison Lee, with a further cab deployment planned for sometime in 2014. In fact, the team behind the trial see cabs as being ideal customers for wireless charging, with each waiting period in a taxi rank the ideal opportunity to top up a battery. Initially, though, partner Chargemaster will be adding Halo to six of its London based privately-run “POLAR” EV charging locations, though the goal is to upgrade all 4,000+ points across the UK.
Nor will those with existing EVs be likely to see an upgrade. Qualcomm tells us that the cost of retrofitting Halo – as well as the regulatory and safety hurdles – means the relatively small userbase of current drivers isn’t really a target. Instead, the company is aiming for more widespread adoption with OEMs and upcoming models. It’ll also need to convince buyers to tick the EV box at the point of ordering; Renault says it is attempting to price its models at roughly the point of the diesel-powered equivalent, but there’s infrastructure required for the wireless charging pad if you want one for your garage at home, and you can’t simply plug Halo into a regular power socket. That’s currently along the line of roughly £2,500-3,000 ($4,000-4,800), not including the background infrastructure, though to be fair that’s roughly akin to a wired setup.
In the future, though, your Halo-equipped car may not even need to stand still in order to be recharged. Right now, fixed charging points make sense, from a cost-of-infrastructure standpoint as well as given that most cars sit unused overnight and for several hours during the day. However, Qualcomm also envisages a time when dynamic charging is used: Halo embedded in continuous strings along the roadway, with EVs constantly being powered as they drive over them.
Qualcomm Halo official video:
It’s cost not technology holding back such deployment today. In fact, the current Halo pads support dynamic charging already; right now, though, actually ripping up the road to bury them in place is unfeasible. Qualcomm and others will need to successfully position Halo as a standard, too, in order for the technology to be so broadly adopted that ubiquity makes commercial sense. There are more partners in the trial to be announced, the company told us, and other car manufacturers have been invited to take part, but it’s far from an industry standard yet.
The first evidence of that is likely to be in FIA Formula E, the freshly-announced EV racing cousin to F1. Set to begin in May 2014, it will see new EV racetracks in ten cities across the world, with ten teams pitting their all-electric cars against each other. Right now, the plan is for a relay race setup of sorts – each team would have two cars, driving one for roughly 20 minutes, before leaving it in a pit-stop to recharge while a second car was driven for a further 20 minutes, and then finally returning to the first, “refueled” car for the final 20 minute dash – but the closed environment of a racetrack makes it ideal for dynamic installation.
And don’t doubt that EVs can deliver when it comes to high-speed performance. Drayson Racing Technologies showed us its B12/69 EV, a 200mph+ Le Mans style race car equipped with Halo charging and good for a 3.0 second 0-62mph sprint. The racing team used the B12/69 EV as a Halo testbed during the last Goodwood Festival of Speed, setting a new hill climb record back in July and relying solely on the Qualcomm system for recharging during the entire weekend. In fact, the EV version of the car out-performs its predecessor, which hid a 5.5-litre biofuel engine at the rear instead.
In the end, Halo is a play for a growing market: one where EVs are looked upon more favorably by governments and regulators than traditional gas-guzzlers; where the infrastructure and driver-awareness exists to support them; and where consideration for the environment matches enthusiasm for the independence of having a car. Qualcomm and its partners make a pretty convincing argument for the Halo system specifically, however.
Rather than rely on the sluggish improvement in battery efficiency, or trying to squeeze more batteries into a vehicle to increase range, Halo targets ease of use and ubiquity. By topping up your EV multiple times during the day – without having to fiddle with a power cable or in fact do anything more than park on a certain spot – you can extend your range while also trimming the number of heavy batteries you’re carrying. We’ll have to wait to see how the data crunches at the end of the trial to know if the reality matches the Halo hyperbole, but just as smartphone users are being told they should simply drop down their handsets to recharge, so one day might we just park-up to top-up our zero emissions car.
The Samsung Galaxy Note II is coming to a carrier near you soon, and one fact that seems to have slipped under the radar for many is that it comes with not just a massive display, but a gaming-ready quad-core Exynos processor as well. Samsung’s own Exynos quad-core architecture inside this phablet unit makes for a fluid experience only otherwise available on Android with the LG Optimus G or the LG Nexus 4, both of which use Qualcomm’s quad-core processor Snapdragon S4 Pro. Let’s have a peek at what Samsung’s double-punch of both the chassis and the chipset made by them for you.
Of course there’s always the international flavor of the HTC One X with the NVIDIA Tegra 3 quad-core processor under the hood, but that device trades its motor in for a dual-core Snapdragon when it comes over the sea to AT&T. So here it is: the Galaxy Note II, with what may very well be the most powerful set of innards in a smartphone in the USA. This is the Galaxy Note II working with the game Asphalt 7: Heat.
You’ll see not just relatively swift loading times here, but undeniably fluid and lag-free transitions as well as gameplay throughout the race. This game is a racing game primarily, but also has many quick transitions between live-action gaming and cut-scenes as you crash into walls or crush your opponents into those walls to advance. The Samsung Galaxy Note II makes sure there’s no waiting to matter what you’re getting into.
We’ve got a full review of the Samsung Galaxy Note II as it appears here in the USA as well as a review of the Samsung Galaxy Note II international edition. They’re both essentially the same, as it were, with different apps and some different features included on each different iteration. The benchmark results we’ve been seeing with this device, again regardless of carrier, have been suitably impressive as well: it’s only competition has been the LG Optimus G (see our full review here) – but of course that device has a smaller display, too.
Judge for yourself with a bonus video of the LG Optimus G playing Asphalt 7: Heat as well! It’s a fight! Notice that all of the swiftness remains just as hot here with only slight variations in how each processor and machine run by said processor handles the load. You’ll have both options available to you very, very soon at AT&T, as it were – can’t wait!
It’s time for some more international flavor over at Verizon with the Optimus LTE2 hitting their 4G LTE airwaves re-named LG Spectrum 2 with a remix on the apps and features. Inside this device you’ll find a dual-core Snapdragon S4 processor from Qualcomm and a lovely 4.7-inch HD display up front with 1GB of RAM inside and a $99.99 price tag after $50 mail-in rebate. It’s also got 16GB internal storage, a microSD card slot for 32GB more, and of course 4G LTE connectivity.
This device also works with wireless charging with a replaceable battery cover that comes in the box. We’re in contact with Verizon now to get more information on this aspect of the device, so stay tuned. You’ve also got NFC to use with LG Tag+ stickers we’ve seen on the LG Intuition and LG Optimus G in the past, and DLNA to project your videos and photos wirelessly to your HDTV.
You’ve got the near-newest processor inside from Qualcomm – that’s the dual-core S4, less powerful than the newer S4 Pro quad-core, but still perfectly awesome. You’ll find this same processor on the recently released Motorola DROID RAZR HD, the Samsung Galaxy S III, and the DROID Incredible 4G LTE as well. You’ve also got an 8 megapixel camera on the back and LG’s own unique set of apps inside.
You’ll be working with LG’s advanced image editor and Video Wiz as well as viewdini and Verizon’s full collection of video apps too. Take care of your data with Verizon’s set of helpful carrier-specific apps and bring it all home with LG’s own QuickMemo: take a screenshot and leave a note on it with your finger instantly. This device is also Global Ready for international travel, has Bluetooth 4.0, and is available in stores starting today!
So here it is at last, the Nexus 4. After countless leaks we finally got a chance to put our dirty little paws on Google and LG’s lovechild. The verdict? It’s simply phenomenal. By combining the nicest elements of the Optimus G with the latest iteration of Jelly Bean (Android 4.2) the two companies have created something that’s better than the sum of its parts. Like its cousin, the Nexus 4 is built around Qualcomm’s speedy 1.5GHz quad-core Snapdradon S4 Pro SoC with Adreno 320 graphics and 2GB of RAM. Storage comes in 8GB and 16GB flavors with no microSD expansion. It features the same lovely 4.7-inch 1280×768-pixel non-PenTile IPS display but sheds LTE support for an unlocked pentaband DC-HSPA+ (42Mbps) radio and wireless charging. On the camera front the Nexus 4 inherits the Optimus G’s optional eight-megapixel BSI sensor and f/2.4 autofocus lens, instead of the fancier 13 MP shooter. WiFi b/g/n, Bluetooth 4.0, A-GPS, NFC and Miracast round up the spec sheet, and a sealed 2100mAh Li-polymer battery completes the package.
Aesthetically, the Nexus 4 blends aspects of the Optimus G and Galaxy Nexus designs, with a glass-covered back and rounded-off top and bottom edges. This phone looks and feels great — materials and build quality are much improved over last year’s handset. At 9.1mm (0.36 inches) thin and 131g (0.31 pounds), it’s also very comfortable in hand. Most of the controls are unchanged from its cousin — you’ll find a standard 3.5mm headphone jack and secondary mic on top, a volume rocker and micro-SIM tray on the left, a micro-USB port and primary mic on the bottom, and a power / lock button on the right side. The Optimus G’s capacitive keys give way to on-screen buttons and the RGB notification light moves below the screen (from its former position near the 1.3-megapixel front-facing camera). Overall we’re really impressed with the Nexus 4, and that’s just from playing with the hardware. Sadly, we spent very little time exploring the software, which includes a plethora of improvements, so keep an eye out for the details in our full review.
You’ll be able to purchase the Nexus 4 unlocked in the Play Store starting November 13th for $299 (8GB), $349 (16GB) or $199 with a two-year contract on T-Moble (16GB). Until then, check out the gallery below, then hit the break for our hands-on video.
It feels like forever since Microsoft announced Windows Phone 8 back in June, but the mobile OS is finally here and with it comes the inaugural volley of compatible handsets. The first one to cross our desks is the global, unlocked version of HTC’s Windows Phone 8X, a device we first saw in September. Unlike other current flagships, this phone breaks the bigger-is-better trend by providing a full set of high-end specs in a relatively compact package — combining a 4.3-inch 720p Super LCD 2 display, Qualcomm dual-core Snapdragon S4 processor and NFC in a sleek and colorful package. Does the 8X have what it takes to carry the Windows Phone 8 torch? Is this a bona fide flagship despite its reduced footprint? Has HTC designed a better handset than its existing Android superphone, the One X? Find out in our review after the break.
Pantech is known for producing budget Android smartphones that punch above their weight, and the Flex is no exception. Available now on AT&T for $50 with a two-year contract, it delivers a dual-core Snapdragon S4 — the same chip that lurks within mightier phones such as the Galaxy S III and One X — along with a qHD display and LTE connectivity. The phone certainly hits a number of the check boxes for value seekers, but there’s something that makes the Flex very different from other smartphones on the market: it has a dual personality.
Folks, prepare for memories of At Ease, Microsoft Bob and Packard Bell Navigator to come rushing back. The Pantech Flex features a unique launcher known as Easy Experience, which caters to those who might find Ice Cream Sandwich overwhelming. Fortunately, there’s also a standard launcher for experts. In that regard, the Flex is deserving of its name. Unlike most handsets on the market, it’s targeting both broke college students and technophobes just the same. Of course, we’re here to answer a greater question: is the Pantech Flex worthy of being your next smartphone? Join us after the break for the answer.
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