Hasta La Gadget!

The Galaxy S II has propelled Samsung to record handset shipments. Image: Jon Snyder/Wired.com

Even though Apple and Samsung continue to duke it out in international courts, it looks like Samsung’s handset shipments haven’t been affected in the slightest.

Samsung is having a banner year for handset sales, passing the 300 million mark for the first time in company history. Samsung attributes the far-reaching success of the Galaxy S II smartphone as a major reason for the record-high sales numbers.

“Samsung has a real advantage versus other handset brands due to its very strong tries with the component supply chain,” NPD’s Ross Rubin told Wired.com. Samsung phones typically feature large, bright, high-contrast displays, a very thin form factor and Flash memory. All of these handset attributes are very popular with consumers, Rubin says, and are areas that Samsung has a production advantage with.

The fact that Samsung’s handsets (in the United States) are available on all of the major wireless carriers is another factor that’s contributed to the company’s stellar sales this year. Apple, by contrast, is on three of the four major U.S. wireless carriers (AT&T, Verizon and Sprint), with only T-Mobile’s nationwide network being left out of the loop.

Among Android handset makers, this year Samsung has taken the lead. In late October, Samsung overtook Apple and Nokia in the numbers, having shipped 27.8 million smartphones compared to Apple’s 17.1 million and Nokia’s 16.8 million in the third quarter of 2011. Of that number, over 10 million were Galaxy S IIs. Apple’s sales were somewhat slower around that period, as many people waited for the launch of the company’s handset (which ended up selling 4 million units in its first three days after launch).

Despite Samsung’s success with shipment numbers, Apple is still the one reaping the lion’s share of profits in the mobile phone market. As of Q2 of this year, Apple saw over 66 percent of handset profits, while Samsung only managed 15 percent.

As far as Apple and Samsung’s legal battles go, Samsung’s had a bit of luck lately. An Australian court overturned a ban on Galaxy Tab sales down under, allowing Samsung to sell its Android tablet to customers without fear of copyright infringement reprisal. Although the troubled tablet is still banned in Germany, Samsung is appealing the decision.

Get ready, street musicians: Today Apple released its popular music-making app GarageBand for the iPhone. Now you can jam away on a set of onscreen drums, or strum a touch-based Smart Guitar, to compose musical masterpieces wherever you may be.

The slimmed-down iPhone app has all the features of the iPad app: a multi-touch interface with Smart Instruments (to piece together pre-assembled musical bits) and Touch Instruments (for those who want to play and record their own instrumental tracks). You can also record vocal tracks using the device’s built-in mic, and (with the help of an adapter) plug an electric guitar directly into your iDevice and record tunes through GarageBand’s amp and stompbox effects.

In total, GarageBand helps you knock out impromptu jam sessions, all without having to lug around a bunch of equipment.

Naturally, the iPhone version of GarageBand is shrunk down for a 3.5-inch screen.  My app experience on an iPhone 4 was smooth, without any force quits or stutters. And, not surprisingly, it was fun to tap away at the onscreen keyboard and drum set using only my thumbs. I made a complete (albeit heinous-sounding) song in a matter of minutes. So, if you’re looking for a solid music-making app to jot down song ideas or even create passable tunes while you’re wiling away time on your evening commute, GarageBand is the answer.

GarageBand was first launched as a Mac application, and later ported to the iPad with the launch of the iPad 2 in March 2011. “This is no toy,” Steve Jobs said of GarageBand on the iPad. “This is something you can use for real work.” Since then, a number of enterprising companies have released capacitive touch tools, such as guitar picks and drum sticks, that you can use with the app.

The iPhone version of Garage Band is, like the iPad counterpart, a big download. At over 501 MB, it took me at least five minutes over a Wi-Fi connection to complete the installation.

The app opens quickly, and operates only in landscape mode. Navigation is intuitive, and will be familiar to anyone who’s ever used similar music-making and recording software.

You select an instrument to play, adjust settings like reverb and echo if you’re not happy with the app’s defaults, and then tap away at a virtual instrument interface, hitting the record button if you’re ready to commit your work to, er, memory. Most of the instruments and tools look identical to their iPad counterparts, but there are a few small variations, such as in the piano, which has only eight keys instead of 15.

In the upper right-hand corner of the app, you’ll find an icon that lets you make adjustments to a single track, section or song. In the upper left-hand corner, you can click for a pop-over menu that will take you back to the songs or instruments panel, or let you swap between different forms of your current instrument (like for the piano, you can choose between options like Grand Piano, Smooth Clav, Classic Rock Organ, or Electric Piano).

Next to that there’s an icon that lets you switch from instrument view to song editing view. The editing view shows each of your recorded tracks so far, with opportunities to adjust, edit and loop sections.

Using Smart Instruments is a sure-fire way to create a song that doesn’t sound like it was hacked out by a team of rabid baboons. In this respect, GarageBand succeeds as a music-making device for people with no musical training whatsoever.

But what if you have musical experience — is GarageBand for iPhone a legitimate composition device? Not necessarily, as the app’s puny user interface is quite cramped. Still, this is an iPhone app, after all, and anyone using it to create music should be well aware that the premium music-making experience will be found on an iPad.

As with the iPad version, you can record and combine up to eight tracks, and then export to GarageBand or Logic Pro on the Mac for a bit more polishing. You can also share your iPhone-made masterpieces via iTunes or e-mail.

The app is a welcome addition to any mildly creative person’s iPhone or iPod touch. GarageBand is $5 and is now available for iPhone 3GS and up, 3rd and 4th gen iPod touches, and iPads.

Images: Ariel Zambelich/Wired

Nokia had something to prove at its annual event, and an eight-month turnaround of its smartphone arm is certainly nothing to be sniffed at. While Nokia’s first Windows Phone devices were undoubtably the stars of the two-day expo, there was plenty more to investigate — Nokia’s legion of development labs certainly didn’t let us down. Check out a veritable world of coverage neatly arranged below the break for everything Nokia World had to show us, and few more tidbits we found for ourselves.

Continue reading Nokia World 2011 wrap-up

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Nokia World 2011 wrap-up originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 29 Oct 2011 15:19:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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You probably love your phone, tablet, and other miscellaneous touchscreens—that’s why you bought them. But now that we anticipate, live, eat, and sleep with our gadgets, they’re being deified. Don’t let your fandom turn you fanatical. Relax. More »

In the immortal words of Ashford and Simpson, the Porsche-designed Blackberry is h-h-h-h-hot

What would you get if you took a Motorola RAZR (the original), a BlackBerry and a mid-1980s Bang and Olufsen stereo, tossed them in a blender and poured the results to set in a shallow cake tin? You’d get the Porsche Design P’9981 Smartphone you see above.

Specs-wise, the phone doesn’t do anything special. It simply checks the boxes required of a modern mobile telephone: 1.2GHz processor, 720p video camera, 8GB storage, 5MP stills camera and a microSD card slot for expansion. It’s relatively small 2.8-inch, 640 × 480 287dpi screen can be explained away by the backlit hardware QWERTY keyboard.

But design-wise, it’s a rather hot-looking slab of glass and stainless steel (no silvered plastic here), and even has a leather-coved back panel. It probably won’t help BlackBerry pull out of its terrible death spiral, but it will at least make e-mail addicted businessmen look a little less dorky.

Price and availability tba.

Porsche Design P’9981 Smartphone [BlackBerry]

See Also:

• The Poor Man's Pedal-Powered Porsche
• Review: Porsche Design P'9522 Phone
• Pricey New BlackBerry Has Way Too Many Caveats
• RIM Previews Suite of New BlackBerry Phones