Everyone’s found themselves in this situation at one time or another: you’re in a picture-perfect setting, but a selfie at arm’s length won’t cut it. You want to be in the picture, so you wait for a friendly looking passerby and ask them to take it. But, now it’s out of your control, and chances are the resulting snap won’t turn out exactly as you’d imagined. Samsung knows you’re too polite to hold the stranger up while you convey your vision, so it has come up with a camera feature that does the explaining for you. It’s described in a recent patent filing, and the gist is that you select the backdrop and take an initial snap that acts as a guide for the next, similar to how some panorama modes work. With a silhouette of the desired scene now showing atop the live view, the designated stranger just needs to let you get in the shot, line the overlay up with the live scene, and hit the shutter release.
The patent application also talks of editing the overlay, such as adding a circle to show the photographer where you’d like your face to be in relation to the backdrop. If you want the passerby to know how well they’re doing, the claims explain an on-screen “composition score” that would rate their lining-up skills. And, if you’d rather trust the final decision to the camera, a ball-in-the-hole scenario is described that’ll automatically engage the shutter release when the live view matches your ideal layout. This is just words and a few diagrams at this stage, mind, but if the patent gets granted, we could eventually see such a feature added to Samsung’s smartphones or Galaxy cameras. Until then, you’ll just have to put your trust in strangers and hope they have at least a basic understanding of the rule of thirds.
It’s no secret that some, if not most of the objects we buy were made under less than ideal conditions. The gadgets that we lust for may not have been made without oppressive labor conditions, irresponsible processing of natural resources and other immoral practices. One company wants to make a difference by making what they call the Fairphone, a “conflict-free” Android smartphone.
In terms of hardware and software, the Fairphone is not that impressive. It will run on Android 4.2 aka Jelly Bean and will have a 4.3″ 960×540 touchscreen, 1.2GHz quad-core CPU, 1GB RAM, 16GB storage, 8mp rear camera, 1.3mp front camera and a 2,000mAh battery. Not bad, but the company behind it wants us to support it mainly because of its transparent and fair manufacturing process. The company aims to ensure that the employees involved in making the Fairphone are treated fairly and that the resources used in making the phone are gathered and processed in responsible means.
The Fairphone itself will supposedly embody these people- and environment-friendly principles as well. For instance, its battery is user-replaceable and its operating system will be rootable out of the box. If the Fairphone takes off, the company says they will strive to create a smartphone that is completely recyclable.
You can pre-order the Fairphone for €325 (~$420 USD) at its official website. Their target is to reach 5,000 orders before going into production. As of this writing they already have 2,174 orders. Of course, the goals and dreams behind the Fairphone won’t be realized overnight, but I really do hope they succeed.
They should make a more informative website or a documentary that shows concrete examples of what they’re doing. If they’re the real deal, I’d be happy to donate money for such a cause even I get nothing in return. I’m sure I’m not alone.
Now that Verizon has its own Nokia hero smartphone working with Windows Phone 8, it’s high time the platform takes off, isn’t it? At the moment, the Nokia Lumia 928 is one of the nicer Windows Phone 8 devices on the market, and if it weren’t for the release of the Nokia Lumia 925 (having been revealed this month right on top of the 928), it’d be an easy thing to say that this is Nokia’s finest effort to date with this OS. As it stands, this device is ready instead to be the heartiest Windows Phone 8 smartphone in the USA.
Hardware
The Nokia Lumia 928 works with a body and a set of innards that make it a very close relative of the Nokia Lumia 920, a device that’s being sold by AT&T right this minute. The 928 works with a 4.5-inch AMOLED display with 1280 x 768 resolution, carrying with it Corning Gorilla Glass 2 for scratch and break protection, ClearBlack technology so your blacks are as black as can be, and PureMotion HD+.
Those buzz words do actually mean something when it comes down to it – you’ll have brights that are bright enough to see in direct sunlight, darks that blend in with the bezel, and with a pixel density of 334 PPI, you’ll have quite a bit of sharpness as well. Of course compared to the HTC One and the Samsung GALAXY S 4, you’ll have a bit less sharp of a picture, but other than that you’re up there with the top guns – thus far this year, that is.
ABOVE: Just about as direct as the sunlight gets, straight on and up. BELOW: In a bit more shade.
This machine works with NFC, Qi-standard Wireless Charging, and a Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 dual-core processor. This is the same processor found in the Nokia Lumia 920 and will be more than enough to power the highest-requirement Windows Phone 8 apps on the market today.
Also inside you’ll have 1GB of RAM, 32GB of internal storage, and SkyDrive cloud storage of 7GB – given to you right out of the box. The back-facing camera is similar to that of the 920, bringing an 8.7 megapixel PureView sensor with a Carl Zeiss Tessar lens. This all means you’re going to be able to take photos in rather low lighting situations and will have some nice looking pics no matter what you’re photographing.
Software
You’ll be getting Nokia’s friendly collection of apps like HERE City Lens, HERE Maps, and Nokia Music along with Microsoft-added apps like Office and OneNote. One thing Windows Phone 8 can still hold over Apple’s head is Office as a native app, and here Nokia makes it clear that they’re willing to stick with that party. This device also has several photo “lenses” that add on to the abilities of the camera.
Each of these lenses is an app that can be downloaded for Windows Phone 8 devices, some of them specifically tuned for Nokia Lumia models. The Lumia 928 comes with Cinemagraph, Smart Shoot, Panorama, and Bing vision. With Bing vision, the user will be able to take photos of objects and receive information about them – this app also works with text translation on-the-spot.
The biggest difference between this device and its competitors is its exclusive access to Nokia apps and hardware – particularly its camera technology. Nokia makes several high-powered location-based apps for allowing you to get around your city – or a city you’ve never been to before. The camera technology you’ll be able to experience in the section immediately following this one.
Camera
Below you’ll find a collection of photo examples captured with the Nokia Lumia 928. Some of these photos were captured in optimal cloudless-day sunlight situations while others were photographed in the dark. This machine does, without a doubt, still reign in the darkest conditions without a flash. Have a peek at our Nokia Lumia 920 vs iPhone 5 camera battle to see how they fare in similar conditions.
Battery
The battery life on this device is well balanced enough to provide at least 8 hours of uptime for an average user. If you’re a power-user, you’ll want to consider the positive and negative elements in a battle between this and a smartphone with a replaceable battery: Verizon also carries the Nokia Lumia 822. The 822 doesn’t quite have the camera power of the 928, but the ability to carry more than one battery replacement in your pocket can be a big matter for some users.
Wrap-up
The Verizon Nokia Lumia 928 will cost you $99 USD with a 2-year contract after a $50 mail-in rebate – that’s less than half the cost of some of the higher-end competitors on the carrier today (like the Samsung GALAXY S 4 and the Galaxy Note II), and essentially equal to that of the Samsung Galaxy S III. It’s also equal to the price of the Windows Phone 8X from HTC, a device that was released several months ago that we reviewed as well. If you’re going for tactile feeling alone, you might want the HTC device – otherwise I’d stick by the Nokia hardware for basically everything else.
The Nokia Lumia 928 is easily Verizon’s finest Windows Phone 8 device, and with its advanced camera abilities, it may well be the nicest Windows Phone 8 device in the USA as well. Until another Windows Phone 8 device comes along with a metal body, on the other hand, the Nokia Lumia 925 will continue to roll with that title worldwide.
Huawei’s upcoming Ascend P6 must be as slim as we’ve heard, because it just keepsslipping out — this time, in an official rendering obtained by @evleaks. The imagery appears to validate what we’ve previously seen in photos, including the wafer-like 6.2mm thick body, a metal chassis and an iteration of the Emotion UI layer that we just saw on the Ascend Mate. And in case there’s any lingering doubts, we’ve even received a possible launch window from the company itself. In a quickly deleted Sina Weibo post referring to the previous leak, Huawei Device Chairman Richard Yu told his followers that this device is indeed part of the P series, and should be revealed at the company’s June 18th event in London. At this rate, all that’s left for the company is to walk on stage and make its skinniest Ascend official.
When Huawei revealed the Ascend Mate at CES this year, it felt like smartphones had reached an end point — they surely couldn’t get any larger. We’ve since been proven wrong by Samsung’s Galaxy Mega 6.3, but the 6.1-inch Ascend Mate has gone on sale first, and it’s every bit as intimidating as it was in January. The question is whether or not Huawei has more than just size on its side. Is this nearly tablet-sized device worth putting in our pockets, and can it fend off the suddenly tiny-looking Galaxy Note II and Optimus G Pro? Read on past the break, and you’ll find out.
Looks like there are more smartphone-loving vampires than we first thought. Following Samsung’s plans to offer the Galaxy S 4 in multiple new colors, AT&T has scored a US exclusive for the smartphone in a very distinctive Aurora Red. The crimson-hued Life Companion will be available for pre-order on May 24th, with retail stores getting their supply on June 14th. The lone disappointment is the capacity: AT&T is only offering red for the 16GB, $200 model. Still, we’re happy that we won’t have to wait for the Galaxy S 4 Active just to get a Samsung flagship in a livelier color.
Plans to launch the HTC First “Facebook phone” in the UK have been axed, with Facebook now focusing on finessing Home instead. A poor reception to the Android handset in the US, where carrier AT&T unexpectedly slashed the cost from $99.99 to $0.99 on contract after just a few weeks of sales, has been blamed for the decision, which is said to have come from Facebook rather than either HTC or the network. Update: EE has confirmed the First won’t be launching in the UK; more details after the cut.
EE had been named the Facebook phone’s initial exclusive partner in the UK, with sales expected to start within a few months of the First arriving on US shelves. In the intervening period, however, Facebook released the Home launcher – which the First comes preloaded with – as a free download (for select devices) in the Google Play store.
It’s that software availability – along with middling first-impressions of Home – which is said to have doused expectations around HTC’s device. As we discovered in our review, the hardware isn’t bad, but users will need to be significantly – and pretty much solely – invested in Facebook for their social lives in order to get the best out of Home.
Unofficially, insiders have claimed that HTC was surprised by Facebook’s release decision for the Home launcher, the original plan having been to stagger the availability. That would have left the First with a period of market exclusivity, as the only way for Facebook fans to get their hands – officially, anyway – on the system.
We’re waiting to hear back from HTC and EE as to what’s happening in the UK, but the assumption is that the cost of launching a region-specific First variant with EE LTE support was deemed too much given the predicted demand. Whether HTC recycles the design (which was met more positively than the software) for a Home-free version remains to be seen.
The news is the latest in a spate of generally pessimistic chatter around HTC, which has seen several high-profile executives – including the CEO of HTC Asia – leave the company in recent weeks. One high point has been HTC One sales, which according to an unnamed executive at the company have now reached 5m units.
Update: An EE spokesperson gave us the following statement:
“Following customer feedback, Facebook has decided to focus on adding new customisation features to Facebook Home over the coming months. While they are working to make a better Facebook Home experience, they have recommended holding off launching the HTC First in the UK, and so we will shortly be contacting those who registered their interest with us to let them know of this decision.
Rest assured, we remain committed to bringing our customers the latest mobile experiences, and we will continue to build on our strong relationship with Facebook so as to offer customers new opportunities in the future.”
HTC has sold approximately five million of its HTC One flagship smartphones, an executive at the company has confirmed, with demand for the phone still apparently outstripping supply. The sales statistics – which HTC is yet to officially endorse – come amid concerns that the company is losing key executives and struggling to raise the profile of the One against the Samsung Galaxy S 4. Despite the fears, an unnamed HTC executive tells the WSJ, sales have in fact been strong.
As HTC has complained about before, it’s getting sufficient stock that is primarily holding the One back, the executive continues. “Orders are pretty good so far and are still more than what we can supply” the source suggests. “This is partly due to the shortage of components. When the issue is resolved next month, we will have a better idea if it’s doing really well or not.”
Production is set to double this month HTC has already claimed, and April sales figures showed a reassuring upward turn, believed to be primarily down to One performance. The phone was originally intended to release in eighty countries by the end of Q1 2013, but issues sourcing components for the “UltraPixel” camera, among other things, saw that limited to just a handful of locations.
That hasn’t stopped HTC from making bold predictions for Q2. Revenue for the current quarter is expected to reach around NT$70bn ($2.4bn), the company has said, an increase of almost a billion US dollars.
Still, the 5m figure pales somewhat compared to Samsung’s sales figures for its Galaxy S 4. Earlier today, Samsung confirmed that 10m of the latest Galaxy flagships had been sold – though it’s worth noting that Samsung’s numbers count sales to operators and retailers, not to end-users – in the first month of the device’s availability.
Meanwhile, the other phone HTC had high hopes for, the HTC First, has not seen the success expected. Sales are said to have underwhelmed, and sources have even claimed that the First – which runs Facebook Home, a replacement Android launcher focused on information from the social network – was scuppered by Facebook itself, after a last-minute change in strategy that saw the launcher released free in the Google Play market in the same week that the smartphone arrived on AT&T.
HTC has revealed its latest Android smartphone, the HTC Desire 600, a midrange dual-SIM handset with a quadcore processor set to go on sale in June. Packing Qualcomm’s 1.2GHz Snapdragon 200 quadcore with 1GB of RAM, the Desire 600 has a 4.5-inch Super LCD2 qHD display and runs BlinkFeed – launched on the HTC One – on top of Android and HTC Sense. That means custom news stories, interspersed with Facebook and Twitter updates, right on the homescreen.
Elsewhere, there’s an 8-megapixel camera on the back, with an LED flash and HTC’s ImageChip for improved processing; HTC uses an f/2.0 aperture, 28mm lens. The Desire 600 tops out at 720p HD video recording, however, not the 1080p we’re used to seeing. A front 1.6-megapixel camera is there for video calls.
The Desire 600 doesn’t get HTC Zoe, however, the combination stills and video burst system it made a headline feature on the One. Instead, it gets a pared-back Video Highlights system, which cuts together impromptu thirty second video compilations from your content, which can be edited, set to music and themes, and then shared online.
Inside, there’s HTC BoomSound speakers, positioned facing the front for the same sort of impressive audio performance as on the One, and Beats Audio processing too. Connectivity includes dualband HSPA and triband GSM/EDGE – no LTE – along with WiFi b/g/n and Bluetooth 4.0 with aptX.
There’s also NFC, GPS, and AGPS, while Russia and the EU will get GLONASS too. Internal storage is 8GB, with a microSD card slot for adding to that, and there are two SIM slots. HTC says both cards can be active at the same time, unlike some other dual-SIM handsets, so you can have calls come in on either account even when you’re using one of them.
The 1,860 mAh battery is good for up to 11.1hrs of 3G talktime, HTC claims, or up to 577hrs of 3G standby. Unlike with the One, it can be removed and swapped out for another, too, something HTC customers have been vocal in requesting.
The HTC Desire 600 will go on sale in Russia, the Ukreaine, and select markets in the Middle East and Asia from early in June. No word on pricing or the possibility of a European or North American version at this stage.
HTC’s Desire line of mid-range Android smartphones have typically used the alphabet to denote different models, but the company is now switching to numerals. At least according to a Taiwanese certification page, we can expect a Desire 200. Some leaked benchmark results also indicate that a Desire 600 will head to market.
We don’t know much about the Desire 200 apart from its name. It’s listed as the HTC 102e on the certification page, and there’s plenty of speculation that this handset is the G2 we heard about earlier this year. It’s a different story for the Desire 600: the benchmark results indicate this device sports a 960 x 540 (qHD) display with an unspecified 1.2GHz chip. The benchmark sheet also reveals this is a dual-SIM model destined for Europe. That’s it for now, but more details are sure to follow shortly.
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