Samsung Expands Galaxy Gear Compatibility to Iconic Galaxy Smartphones
Premium Suite software package includes Android update, new functionality and KNOX support
Dallas, TX – October 28, 2013 – Samsung Telecommunications America (Samsung Mobile) announced today that the Samsung Galaxy S® 4, Galaxy Note® II and Galaxy S® III will receive the Premium Suite software update in the coming weeks that makes the devices compatible with Samsung Galaxy Gear. Premium Suite timing and features vary by carrier and product, with updates beginning today.
Galaxy Gear extends the Galaxy smartphone experience to your wrist and enhances everyday moments with real time updates for quick and convenient access. Now, owners of the latest Galaxy smartphones will be able to stay connected with discreet notifications and tap into the exceptional features of Galaxy Gear, such as hands-free calling, music control and S Voice™ access.
In addition to Galaxy Gear compatibility, Samsung's Premium Suite will bring Android 4.3 and additional features to these premiere smartphones. The update brings the flagship experiences introduced on the Galaxy S 4 to the Galaxy Note II and Galaxy S III including updated Easy Mode, Multi Window™, advanced camera options, and additional features with new functionality.
All of the smartphones receiving the update are SAFE™ (Samsung for Enterprise), giving users the confidence that their device is suitable for use in the workplace. Additionally, the devices will be ready for KNOX™, Samsung's comprehensive solution that enhances Android security from the hardware layer to the application layer and allows users to safely and efficiently separate work and personal data on a single device.
The Galaxy S® 4 mini and Galaxy Mega™ will also receive an update in the coming months to be compatible with Galaxy Gear.
Timing for Premium Suite and features in software updates will vary by wireless carrier and product. For the most up to date information on update timing and availability by product and carrier, please check with your carrier and visit www.samsungmobileuspress.com.
Thursday, 31 October 2013
Samsung: Android 4.3 Updates With Gear Support Beginning as Early as Today ... - Droid Life
HP hopes to make internet more sustainable with three new Moonshot servers - Engadget
You don't think about it while flipping through your Instagram feed, but your social escapades generate a lot of heat. "We now have to decide if we want to position data centers near the arctic circle to take advantage of cooling," joked HP's Martin Fink, CTO and Director of HP Labs during ArmTechCon's keynote Tuesday.
He's talking about the heavy footprint of the internet, and how HP's enterprise customers are complaining that they don't have the room or power to meet the needs of the future. HP's solution, of course, is Moonshot -- its low power server technology. Moonshot promises to fill the needs of the information superhighway with less power, less space and less complexity. The new infrastructure hasn't seen much play outside of HP's own labs, but that's about to change: the company has announced three new ARM-based Moonshot cartridges, available next year with hardware from Calxeda, Texas Instruments and Applied Micro.
iPad Air review: Apple's finest tablet - Telegraph.co.uk
If there are faults with the iPad Air, the only two I can find are the suggestion, in the branding, that it's a totally new product, and the fact that the smartcover now adopts the flimsier three-panel design used in the original iPad Mini. But these are tiny issues. This is the iPad that was already brilliant in an even better design. Almost entirely thanks to the 475,000 tablet apps, iPad Air is the best tablet on the market. And Kindle fans beware - the Air is now more useful for reading, its clever software knowing whether your thumb is interacting with the device or simply holding it.
There is a question, of course, over why anyone should spend £399 on a tablet when Carphone Warehouse will sell you one for £49, and Tesco will sell you the perfectly decent Hudl for £119.But neither of these devices, nor for that matter Samsung's more expensive versions, feel like the truly premium iPad. And none has that vast library of unique tablet apps. While Android phones have caught up with the iPhone, and in many aspects surpass it, the iPad remains a unique proposition and the iPad Air is the best iPad yet.
Its light weight and thin form mean it gets out of the way – you don't notice it, but you notice what you're doing on it. That, potentially, unleashes a new generation of tablet-based productivity. The fact that Apple is now giving away even more software means that perhaps the rebranding is, therefore, more than simply a marketing exercise. Air may yet be the oxygen for a new wave of uses for the iPad.
Manufacturer's specifications
240 x 169.5 x 7.5mm
469g
Retina display
9.7-inch (diagonal) LED-backlit display
2048x1536 resolution at 264 pixels per inch (ppi)
A7 chip with 64-bit architecture and M7 motion coprocessor
Wi-Fi (802.11a/b/g/n); dual channel (2.4GHz and 5GHz) and MIMO
Bluetooth 4.0 technology
Front: 1.2MP photos/720p HD video
Rear: 5MP photos/1080p HD video
HTC One Max review - Wired.co.uk
HTC One Max
Nate Lanxon7/10
Wired rating
-
Wired
Sleek aluminium design, huge Full HD screen, Sense 5.5, good battery
-
Tired
Not as powerful as main rivals, fingerprint sensor isn't accurate enough
-
Price
The HTC One has rightfully been one of the most popular and acclaimed phones of the year, and with a mini version of the mobile unveiled in July, it was surely only a matter of time until HTC supersized the device to make sure it had all bases covers. Enter the HTC One max, a "phablet"-sized phone that boasts top specs and a similar sleek design as its tinier siblings.
The One Max will be available in the UK from mid-October. No pricing details are yet available, but expect it to be expensive (£500+).
Design
Like the HTC One and the HTC One mini before it, the HTC One Max has to be one of the most beautiful Android devices ever produced. It's round back is crafted almost entirely from aluminium, although it has the same plastic rim that distinguishes the HTC One mini from the One. An extremely slim bezel rings the outer edges of the screen, which stretches nearly the full width of the phone, and along the top are two silver slivers with speaker grills.
HTC One Max
Nate LanxonAll that metal means the device isn't super-light unsurprisingly, and the most obvious comparison to draw is with Samsung's recently announced Galaxy Note 3. The One Max with its 5.9-inch screen is bigger than the Note 3, which only has 5.7 inches of display, but it's also bulkier from angles and at 217g, weighs nearly 50g more than its Samsung rival.
Its full dimensions measure up to 165x83x10.3mm, so you'll need flexible fingers to keep hold of the One Max. Of course, unlike the Note 3, it also doesn't have a stylus, meaning that even if you're perfectly happy holding your phablet with one hand while using the other to navigate with a little plastic stick, you might struggle to type on the One Max.
One much longed-for addition to the HTC One by its fans is a microSD card slot, which has finally rocked up on this larger version of the phone, and can be found under the removable back panel. You can now expand the storage by up to 64GB, meaning there'll be plenty of room for you to stash your big media files.
Given the expanse of screen at your disposal -- ideal for movie-watching -- you'll be glad of this. The 5.9-inch 1080p display offers a pixel density of 349 ppi, which isn't the sharpest screen out there, but will still keep your photos and videos looking plenty crisp. Colours are more natural than on the Galaxy Note 3's Super Amoled screen, which has a tendency towards oversaturation.
Fingerprint scanner
One of the most notable features of the HTC One Max that sets it aside from other HTC phones -- and all Android phones for that matter -- is the inclusion of a fingerprint scanner, which can be used instead of a PIN number or password to unlock the phone. Up to three different fingers can be linked to the scanner and stored in the phone's memory. If the user chooses, these can each be linked to an app that can then be launched immediately from the lock screen.
The fingerprint scanner is built into the back of the phone and is activated by sliding your finger in a vertical downwards motion. In our testing, it achieved mixed results. One of the recorded fingerprints was consistently recognised more frequently than the others and even then the swipe motion had to be very carefully performed. It worked best when the phone was being held straight on in one hand.
As the sensor is located on the rear of the phone, directly below the camera lens, it was sometimes difficult to be sure you were swiping the correct element. The slight hesitation between swiping and the phone activating -- and frequently rejecting -- your fingerprint generally made the whole process of picking the device up to do something less seamless than it really should be.
Sadly for HTC, the scanner on the One Max doesn't even really compare in terms of accuracy and ease of use with the home button sensor on the iPhone 5s. It's perhaps ill-advised to take this tech on its first outing attached to the vast rear plate of such a big phone, where fingers are going to struggle to find it, never mind use it properly.
HTC One Max
Nate LanxonFeatures, Sense 5.5 and processor
Unlike Samsung, which replicated the design but not the specs of its Galaxy S4 in the form of the S4 Mini and Galaxy Mega, HTC has not chosen to exploit the brand of its flagship device by using its name and design but lowering the specs -- the HTC One Max is every bit as exciting on the inside as its namesake.
Under the hood you'll find an identical 1.7GHz quad-core Snapdragon 600 processor to the one inside the HTC One, which is accompanied by 2GB of RAM. It offers a decent amount of power and showed no signs of struggle in our tests, but it does pale in comparison to its rivals.
On the AnTuTu benchmark test, the One Max scored 26,314. A month or so ago and that score would have been very impressive, but we've recently reviewed a bunch of seriously powerful Android phones, led by the Samsung Galaxy Note 3 with 35,936, which have set a new precedent. With a 2.3GHz quad-core processor and 3GB of RAM, it's not surprising that the Note 3 has really raised the bar, but it's in good company, with the likes of the Xperia Z Ultra and Z1 producing similar results. As such, the One Max really is trailing in their wake.
Like the Note 3, the One Max will ship running the latest version of Android -- 4.3 Jelly Bean -- although this is likely to become imminently outdated. Unlike the Note, it doesn't offer a stylus, or any of the purpose-built stylus-optimised features, which if you're trying to decide between the two, might just sway your opinion in favour of Samsung.
However, the HTC One Max is in fact the first HTC device to run Sense 5.5, a refined version of the phone manufacturer's Android skin. Sense 5.5 sees no significant redesign, but HTC has removed some of the restrictions on its in-built features that transform them from frustrating to genuinely useful. Blinkfeed, for example, which was once an immovable element of Sense is now completely deletable if you'd rather not have it occupy one of your homescreens. If you choose to keep it though, you'll be rewarded with being able to pull in more content than ever, including Google+ and Instagram feeds.
The One Max comes in two different storage capacities -- 16GB and 32GB -- but with expandable memory and an additional 50GB of free Google Drive storage being offered with the phone, it's unlikely you'll ever struggle for room with this phone.
As you'd hope with a juice-sapping screen of this size, the One Max has a very powerful 3,3000mAh battery inside it. This is a step up from the Xperia Z Ultra and the Note 3, which only pack 3,050mAh and 3,200mAh batteries respectively. As with all smartphones these days, it's best to presume you'll have to charge the One Max everyday, but also be willing for it to take you by surprise. After well over a day of gaming, watching HD video, downloading bits and bobs and other usage, the One Max was still kicking along happily in our tests. If battery is important to you, this is about the best you can hope for from an Android phablet.
If that's still not enough, you'll get an extra few hours of power by investing in the HTC Power Flip case, which incorporates a 1,150mAh battery, as well as shielding your phones from accidental bruising.
HTC One Max test photo
Katie CollinsCamera
There's nothing on the One Max we haven't seen before from HTC in the camera department. With 4 "Ultrapixels", instead of multiple megapixels, the camera has a large F2.0 aperture and wide-angle 28mm lens to let in lots of light. As a result, pictures are crisp and detailed, with very realistic, natural colours. The camera does struggle in low light however, barely exposing the collection of mugs in our test shot (see gallery).
There are plenty of fun modes to play with, including a panorama mode, HDR and Zoe Camera -- which records a three-second video clip and allows you to choose between the 20 frames to find the best photo. You can now upload pictures taken by Zoe as normal, rather than having to use HTC's software, as you did on previous HTC phones. Also new on the One Max is Dual Shot, which allows you to take a forward-facing photo and normal photo simultaneously, placing one within another. We've seen this feature before on the Galaxy S4 and are still struggling to see the appeal of it.
The camera also shoots video at 1080p and is accompanied by a forward-facing 2.1-megapixel snapper for selfies and video calls.
Conclusion
If you've been waiting for HTC to supersize its superb flagship device, you won't be disappointed with the One Max. It doesn't quite match its rivals in terms of raw processing power, but a decent camera, some pleasing software tweaks, great screen and a stunning physical design might just make up for it.
First byte: Faster, lighter, sexier - why Apple's new iPad Air is a breath of ... - The Independent
This is the first substantial change to the hardware's design since March 2011 when the iPad 2 arrived. Subsequent models (there have been two) have followed the same pleasing shape – sloping edges on the back, wide black or white bezel on the front. The third and fourth-generation iPads have been heavier than the iPad 2 because they featured a gorgeous, high-resolution Retina display and needed a bigger, heavier battery to push all those extra pixels around.
So the first thing you notice about the iPad Air is the gadget's new design. It's been updated to match the iPad mini, released a year ago. This means boxier corners and a back cover coloured to match the front bezel. It's an altogether snazzier look, with a chrome Apple logo in the middle of the lighter coloured iPad, previously called white, now silver, while a black logo sits in the middle of the darker one, called Space Grey.
The biggest design change is on the front of the iPad Air, with its much narrower bezel. Most tablets have wide frames round the screen, for good reason. On a touchscreen it's important to ensure that the user's thumb doesn't accidentally rest on the screen as it's being held – an accidental thumb press is registered by the touchscreen and gets in the way. Unless you're Apple.
One of the most underrated features on the iPad mini was thumb rejection – software clever enough to know to ignore an errant thumb and focus on the other touches. It's a brilliant solution which allows for thinner side bezels and therefore narrower tablets. The feature is included in all iPads, large and small, with recent software.
And now it's been used to slim down the iPad Air. This has made the new slimmer bezels possible, though it does mean that last year's covers and cases won't fit the new model, but that's the only downside. The new tablet's size is one of its triumphs. It makes it feel more comfortable in the hand.
That's also because the iPad Air is much slimmer from front to back than the last iPad, or even the iPad 2. This is the thinnest full-size iPad yet. And even that's not the real reason the design is improved. It's now much lighter. It weighs 478g instead of last-season's 662g.
This is the real killer improvement.
A tablet needs to be portable, to be light enough for you to want to take it everywhere. Just as the MacBook Air was the most lightweight, thin-profiled laptop on the market when it launched, so the new iPad justifies borrowing the Air moniker for this super-light piece of kit.
Of course, that's not the only upgrade on the new iPad. It now has the same processor as the iPhone 5s. This seemed ludicrously over-powered for a phone (though who's complaining?) and is certainly more than fast enough here.
It means that the things you're used to doing on an iPad happen more quickly now. The whole thing just feels faster. And it means that as more complex and demanding apps are devised (and you can bet they are in development now), the iPad Air and its smaller sibling the iPad mini with Retina display will be able to handle them with ease.
Apple's key advantage is that it makes the hardware and software, so they can work together flawlessly. So the new iOS 7 operating system dovetails with the iPad in every way, down to the matching of iPad case colours to the system palette.
It's a finely detailed OS – look no further than Messages which enables iDevice users to share unlimited messages. When you've pressed send, the text plonks itself into a speech balloon. When your interlocutor is replying, the screen shows they're crafting their words with the distinctive bubbles of a thought balloon. Or FaceTime Audio, which enables voice calls between iPhone, iPod and iPad using a data connection. Effectively it means you can have free phone calls if you're not busting your data limit. Not only is this a beautifully executed feature, it's a real bonus if you find yourself in a network blackspot but there's wi-fi around.
Like the iPhone 5s, the iPad Air has a motion co-processor which reports on movement. Fitness apps will take advantage of this soon, but for now it means that the iPad knows if you're driving or walking. If you're using the iPad to give you directions, it knows to re-route you to walking instructions when you get out of the car.
What's missing? Rumour had it that the iPad might have the delectably enjoyable Touch ID fingerprint sensor of the iPhone 5s, which would have been nice.
The five-megapixel rear camera is unchanged, though as noted elsewhere, do you really want a big, flat slab of glass and aluminium as your main snapper? An uprated camera may not be a pressing priority.
This iPad is the biggest upgrade since the arrival of the Retina display on the third-generation iPad in spring 2012 – though it remains the same price, from £399 for the 16GB wi-fi only version.
Its spiffy new styling may be enough to persuade you to upgrade. The faster processor is cool and will become more useful as more apps arrive.
But above all, this is the super-light iPad, the most portable iPad, the most powerful iPad. Tablets are expected from rivals like Google in the next months, but for now Apple is in the lead again.
Fantastical 2 for iPhone wants to be your all-in-one calendar and reminder app - Engadget
From its humble beginnings on OS X, Fantastical's contextual input changed the way plenty of people set appointments and reminders. When it arrived on the iPhone last November, the app became the first calendar software to reach number one on the App Store. Almost a year later, and Flexbits is looking to build on that success with Fantastical 2, a $2.99 upgrade that offers a new design and plenty of iOS 7 specific features.
When you first load Fantastical 2, you'll notice that the app retains the the familiar DayTicker and event list layouts. Flexbits has dropped the skeuomorphic elements of old, opting instead for a brighter and more vibrant UI that fits with Apple's minimalist aesthetic. Fantastical 2 remains as speedy and lightweight as its predecessor with most of the app's improvements found below the surface.
To make it easier to upgrade, Flexbits figured out a way to read the settings from the original Fantastical app so you don't have to set it up all over again. The technique utilizes data stored in the iOS 7 keychain, a detail that many other developers appear to have overlooked.
When the app launched last year, it didn't use its own alerts. There was a good reason for that: Apple restricted iOS 6 background processes to its own titles. Relying on those own services wasn't the most desirable option but it allowed Flexbits to guarantee alerts were received and appointments were synchronized no matter what device they were created on. Released as an iOS 7-only app, Fantastical 2 eliminates that headache by taking advantage of Apple's new background app refresh APIs to automatically sync events, reminders, alerts and tasks, whether it is open or not. You can toggle between Apple's and Fantastical 2's own alerts in the settings.
Among the new features in Fantastical 2 are reminders, an improved parser, new themes, the addition of a week view in landscape mode, TextExpander support and birthday reminders. "We tried to focus on an doing an upgrade that had a ton of new features," Flexbits' Michael Simmons says, "truly making it a Fantastical 2."
The refined parser lets you create reminders by starting sentences with "reminder", "todo", "task", or "remind me to." Like the default app, you can set time and location-based reminders with a minimum of fuss. Fantastical 2 also has improved support for repeating events, letting you set reminders for the first or last weekday of the month and other contextual commands. Flexbits really has spared no expense bringing in all of your favorite features from other reminder and to-do apps.
Although Fantastical 2 supports any iPhone running iOS 7, it provides extra feature for owners of an iPhone 5 or one of Apple's newer models. Utilizing the bigger 4-inch display, Flexbits created a custom keyboard (displayed above) that positions a row of numbers at the top, so you don't have to keep switching between letter and number settings when you input dates and times. Birthday reminders get some love, allowing you to either text or call your friend or loved one on their big day. If you're feeling particularly generous or you've forgotten to buy a present, Flexbits happily allows you to "Give the gift of Fantastical" to make sure the person you forgot about can celebrate with you when you get another year older.
Simmons believes that the company's success helped show developers "that calendar apps can be awesome," inspiring them "to do a better job." While other app makers might be able to achieve better ways of fixing different problems, Simmons says that Fantastical's mission was always to be "the best, fastest, friendliest and easiest calendar app for the iPhone." He believes Fantastical 2 stays true to that mission but feels that adding social, assistant or lookup features would deviate away from the calendar and towards trying to do everything. "You can't do everything good, and it leads you down a path of over promising and under delivering," Simmons tells us.
Fantastical 2 really excels when you type like you talk. Tell it that you want to "Meet Daniel Cooper at 8pm tomorrow at Liverpool Street Station" and the app will automatically detect and create a calendar appointment with all of the necessary information filled in for you. Now that it has Reminder support, bringing in location notifications, it replaces Apple's own apps and gives you little reason to ever use them again. The design is simple and very easy on the eyes, allowing you to see at-a-glance what you need to to be aware of the coming days or weeks.
If you're looking for Foursquare support or weather notifications, Fantastical 2 won't be able to help you. But if you're after a slick app that'll keep you on top of all of your appointments, to-do lists and reminders, today's update will deliver all of that in a way that no other calendar apps can match. While today's update is iPhone-only, Flexbits is working on a separate iPad app, which is expected to launch next year.
Samsung S3 Touchscreens Are More Accurate Than iPhone, But Only If You're A ... - Forbes
Finnish test and measurement automation company OptoFidelity has gotten a lot of attention for their new one finger robot with a study headlined as "OptoFidelity TPPT tester proved significant fails in Apple iPhone touch accuracy." Specifically, the company tested the accuracy of the responses to very precise touches across the entire screen array of Apple's Apple's flagship iPhone 5S ("the world's most advanced smartphone"), the iPhone 5C and last year's Samsung Galaxy S3.
The results, shown in image above, seem damning of the new iPhones to the uncritical eye, and certainly the tabloid press has gone to town in that direction. A more considered reaction, for instance from Nick Arnott on his Neglected Potential blog, reveals another story:
But something sticks out about the iPhone results.
The green area for the iPhone results, where it registered taps within 1mm of the actual tap location, fall into an area that would be easily tappable with your thumb when holding your phone with your right hand.
Yes, that is striking, isn't it? This pattern, nearly identical in the two iPhones tested, would suggest that this is an engineered difference, a compensation—not a bug, but a feature! No one outside of Apple knows for sure that this is so, Arnott admits, but it makes too much sense not to be true.
Interestingly, John Gruber of Daring Fireball writes that, "A little birdie tells me they 'don't think there's a right-thumb bias' in iOS." This "little birdie" is clearly an Apple insider, and while Gruber interprets this as attributable to an error in OptoFidelity's testing procedure, I think that it is likely that your iPhone quickly figures out your handedness and adjusts accordingly. By that line of thinking, either the units that OptoFidelity tested had already been used by a right handed person (not unlikely) or iOS does have a right hand preference right out of the box that is easily overridden by initial use. I don't happen to have a brand new iPhone to try this out on, but I'm sure someone will try this out and report on it.
What can we learn from this supposed iPhone "fail"? First, as Arnott points out, it is important to align your tests with actual use patterns. Other than certain kinds of games, most smartphone applications do not make use of the entire touchscreen equally. There are "sweet spots" which in fact coincide with the sensitive areas shown in the iPhone tests. Second, as Greylock partner (and former Mozilla CEO) John Lilly points out in a post on Medium, Apple is not a hardware company or a software company but a "personal computing systems company." So where Samsung (truly a hardware company) would approach the touchscreen as OptoFidelity has, as a collection of technical attributes like touch sensitivity, pixel density, brightness, etc., Apple sees it as an experience delivery medium.
This distinction is at the heart of what makes Apple Apple. Optimization requires differentiation. Certain areas of the screen are more important than others and the user's ability to accurately access different areas of the screen is also differentiated. So far from being an inaccuracy, I would see the difference between the Apple and Samsung approaches as a disagreement about the importance of human factors engineering. There is an awful lot of subtle engineering involved in making things "feel right," and that is what Apple is after, not just raw specs.
I would further argue that although Apple's optimizations do not always work as intended (and sometimes fail), the company's ongoing attempt to work on that level is behind the real value of its products. OptoFidelity has succeeded in garnering some publicity, but its testing may have proven the opposite of what they intended. In doing so, the Finnish company has also pointed to the engineering required to make their own testing apparatus align with actual user experience (see the impressive video below.)
As with digital cameras, it's not just about the number of pixels, or even the raw accuracy of the sensor, but the way all of that data works together to make beautiful pictures. The almost complete lack of human inflection revealed by Samsung's uniform accuracy could give us a clue to why that company's products can feel impressive but soulless. The "ghost in the machine" is actually the human!
Dangling Question: Why didn't they test the S4?
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