Hasta La Gadget!

More information surrounding the Galaxy Note II has emerged. MK Business News reports that Samsung will bump the screen size on the Galaxy Note II to 5.5-inches, corroborating earlier reports. According to a source familiar with the matter, the device will be unveiled at IFA 2012, due to start on August 31st in Berlin, and will be running the latest version of Android, Jelly Bean.

The report goes on to say that the Note II will come with a quad-core processor and an upgraded camera, most likely in the 12- to 13-megapixel range. The screen may be seeing an increase to 5.5-inches, but the site notes that the actual size won’t be much bigger than the current Galaxy Note. That matches what GSMArena heard from a source not too long ago.

While the device will be shown off at IFA 2012, it isn’t expected to launch into retail until October. Previous reports have pointed towards an October launch, although more recently it was said that Samsung would be aiming for a September release ahead of the next iPhone. Previous rumors have also said the screen would use unbreakable plane technology, although it will supposedly be saved for another product down the road.

[via The Verge]

Samsung Galaxy Note II tipped for August reveal, 5.5″ screen is written by Ben Kersey & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Android may have been wrongly maligned for its role in a malware botnet, security researchers have admitted, with findings that devices running Google’s software could be responsible for spam potentially fooled by a fake email signature. Despite claims from Sophos and Microsoft earlier this week that email header information pinned down Android devices as the guilty carriers, each has since backtracked having conceded that Android’s involvement is in no way certain.

“It’s entirely possible that bot on a compromised PC connected to Yahoo Mail, inserted the the message-ID thus overriding Yahoo’s own Message-IDs and added the “Yahoo Mail for Android” tagline at the bottom of the message all in an elaborate deception to make it look like the spam was coming from Android devices” Microsoft  engineer Terry Zink wrote in a follow-up to his earlier comments on the botnet. However, the security researcher still isn’t willing to let Android off the hook.

“On the other hand, the other possibility is that Android malware has become much more prevalent and because of its ubiquity, there is sufficient motivation for spammers to abuse the platform. The reason these messages appear to come from Android devices is because they did come from Android devices” Zink theorized. “Before writing my previous post, I considered both options but selected the latter.”

As for Sophos, senior security adviser Chester Wisniewski has confirmed he is rechecking the company’s own findings to see if a fake signature could be responsible for mistaken identity. “We don’t know for sure that it’s coming from Android devices” Wisniewski said on Thursday, though went on to maintain that in his belief it is a botnet running on Android phones rather than something else.

“We either have a new PC botnet that is exploiting Yahoo!’s Android APIs or we have mobile phones with some sort of malware that uses the Yahoo! APIs for sending spam messages” the researcher wrote. “One of the interesting data points supporting the argument that this is new Android malware is the unusually large number of the originating IPs on cellular networks.”

Google, meanwhile, continues to protest Android’s innocence. “The evidence we’ve examined does not support the Android botnet claim” a company spokesperson said. “Our analysis so far suggests that spammers are using infected computers and a fake mobile signature to try to bypass anti-spam mechanisms in the email platform they’re using. We’re continuing to investigate the details.”

[via WSJ]

Malware Botnet may have framed Android is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Apple’s iPad Mini plans are, if the leaks are anything to go by, shaping up for a launch later in 2012, but hardware is only half the story: Apple needs a solid context with which to frame its smaller slate. One of the company’s most significant strengths is not only launching new devices, but telling us why we should want them and how they’re “perfect” for our lives. However, with Steve Jobs’ scathing comments about “tweener” tablets still ringing strong, how will Apple sell us that this is a sensible inevitability not a blushing backtrack?

Jobs’ argument was that a 7-inch tablet was simply too small for adult hands to use the UI properly. “While one could increase the resolution of the display to make up for some of the difference,” he justified, “it is meaningless unless your tablet also includes sandpaper so that the user can sand down their fingers to around one quarter of their present size.”

Now, it wouldn’t be the first time that Apple has said it insists on doing one thing, and then promptly does something else. Nonetheless, holding back from the 7-inch tablet market and then diving in with a new iPad Mini would be one of the biggest turnarounds to-date. It’ll take more than the famed “reality distortion field” to give a smaller tablet some believable justification.

Perhaps that context will be what Apple has learned from a few generations of iPad. When Steve Jobs made his sweeping dismissal of 7-inchers, it was back in October 2010; the original iPad had only been on sale since April that year, and stock was seriously constrained for several months. In some ways, Jobs was commenting blind; or, at least, based on Apple’s own opinions around tablet use rather than what the market was telling them.

In the intervening period, we’ve seen tablets overshadow ereaders in many ways, while smartphones have grown in scale to the 5.3-inch monsters from Samsung and others. Apple has launched iBooks Textbooks, too, pushing the iPad further into eduction settings. We’ve also seen Retina Display technology arrive, refining the resolution of the interface. As we speculated yesterday, Apple might see Retina as an essential addition to the iPad Mini if it’s to fit into the overall strategy of the firm.

So, could Tim Cook take the stage and push ebook and digital textbook consumption as a primary goal of the iPad Mini? “Since we launched the iPad, we’ve seen it enter markets we hardly dreamed of back in 2010″ the Apple CEO might say. “Readers, both at home and at school, have seized on the iPad as a magical way of exploring new literary worlds and expanding their horizons; now, we’re lowering the cost of entry to all that, and we’re making it even easier to take knowledge with you.”

Apple is stubborn when it feels it needs to be – it waited out the Flash argument until Adobe conceded defeat and adopted HTML5, for instance – but it’s also not afraid to do an about-turn if it smells a new market it can cash in on. The time may be right for a “tweener”; the big question is how Apple might convince us that time is now.

[Image credit: Ciccaresedesign]

iPad Mini still missing the killer context is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

We knew that there would be another Kindle Fire at some point, but we didn’t know when it would arrive, or exactly what it’d look like. If the latest report from the China Times is true, however, we can expect Amazon’s new slate to ship around August 7th. Like the first Fire, this new version will be built by Quanta, with a metal chassis and displays provided by LG and Panasonic. Other details, like its size or the contents within said metallic frame, are still nowhere to be found. What we can tell you is that the new tablet can’t get here fast enough for Amazon given the Fire’s declining sales numbers and its fresh competition from Mountain View.

Update: Looks like something was lost in translation — it turns out the China Times report actually states that the new Kindle Fire is set to make its appearance in July or August, not specifically on August 7th.

Amazon’s new Kindle Fire set to debut in early August? (update: maybe July) originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 04 Jul 2012 18:06:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Apple’s iPad Mini is the rumor that refuses to die, with several high-profile sites lending their support to speculation that a “tweener” iOS tablet is indeed in the pipeline. Such a slate would presumably instantly help Apple better compete with the Kindle Fire juggernaut, as well as the freshly announced Nexus 7, but that’s assuming it can keep up its end of the bargain. Namely, does Apple – and its suppliers – have the technical capabilities to deliver a screen good enough to bear the Retina Display branding?

According to the rumors, Apple has turned to Sharp for its display panels in the iPad Mini. On the face of it that makes sense; long-standing Apple production partner Foxconn already holds a significant number of shares in Sharp, a fact which has seen links drawn between the companies and the possibility of an Apple television set.

For the iPad mini, though, it would be Sharp’s smaller panels that are of interest: namely, the IGZO technology screens that went into production back in April. That tech produces thinner, better-quality displays than we’ve seen before, which would allow Apple to create a small, thin tablet without sacrificing all-important usability.

Question is, can Sharp’s screen deliver on what is gradually becoming a selling point across Apple’s range? Retina Display may be a marketing term rather than a specific standard, but Apple has taken the idea of pixels too small to differentiate between at average user-distance and run with it in the iPhone, iPod touch, iPad and, most recently, the top-tier version of the 2012 MacBook Pro. True, there are iOS devices still on sale without Retina support, but they’re the older iPhone 3GS and iPad 2, legacies of yesterday’s tech kept on to keep the entry-level price points catered for.

Could Apple launch a non-Retina iPad Mini? And what would such a tablet entail? With the iPhone 4S having a pixel density of 326ppi and the new iPad coming in at 264ppi, the iPad mini would presumably have to slot in somewhere around the latter end of those numbers; that, and keeping roughly the same aspect ratio as both existing devices, would call for at least a 1600 x 12800 UXGA panel, which would deliver 261ppi for the speculated 7.85-inch screen.

Ah, but does Sharp have such a panel, remains the question. According to the April announcement, the company has three IGZO screens: a 32-inch panel running at 3840 x 2160, a 10-inch at 2560 x 1600, and finally a 7-inch at 1280 x 800 for a 217ppi count.

Not quite Retina then, and not 7.85-inches, though of course Sharp could well be playing some Apple-specific cards close to its chest. Given the emphasis Apple has placed on Retina Display branding and technology as the future of its pixel-rich devices, the iPad Mini will need to shape up, resolution-wise, if it wants to join the iOS club.

[Update: John Gruber suggests Apple may well stick with iPhone 3GS technology, cutting the displays into 1024 x 768 7.85-inch chunks]

[Image credit: Ciccaresedesign]

Does an iPad Mini add up, Retina style? is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.