Samsung vs HTC : Google Edition

Two of the best smart phones of the year got even better on June 26, when the Google Editions of the Samsung Galaxy 54HTC One  were launched on Google Play.

            Apart from the hardware distinction between the two handsets, the one major difference is seen in the price. While the newest version of HTC One is available for $599 (approx.Rs. 34,000), the $4 has been priced at 5649 (approx Rs.37,000). The difference in price could turn out to be a major coup for HTC  in the long run. So, the obvious question is which one to go for? Let’s try and look for a answer.

            In terms of design, there’s no doubt that the HTC One is winner. Even if you don’t have any other phone to compare it with, the One looks a stunner. In front of the Galaxy 54, the One looks like a beast thanks to the aluminium unibody design. However, in terms of practically ,  the plastic body of the $4 is slightly ahead. Thanks to the removable back, the $4’s battery can be replaced with ease. We are also certain there will  be more than a  few battery packs that can replace the one on the $4 to provide extra juice. This is not possible on the One unless you get a case with a battery pack Samsung also has managed to make the $4 smaller And more compact than the One. The $4 is 0.3 inches shorter, despite the larger display, and a good 1.4 mm thinner too.

            The Galaxy $4 has the better display of the two handsets. But when we say better, we are talking in marginal terms. The One’s 4.7-inch 1080p display has more natural colour representation, but the larger 5-inch display on the $4 produces blacks the One can only dream of thanks to the Super AMOLED panel. Critics of that  panel complain about oversaturated colours, but Samsung has an Adobe RGB mode to improve colour accuracy. However, at the time of publishing, there was no indication that this will be retained in the Google Edition $4.

            The HTC One’s screen is very much the best LCD we have seen in a while. The colours look great and the contrast is impressive, though not as great as the $4’s. There’s a contrast loss at very wide angles, but this situation comes up very rarely In daily use. The One falls short in terms of sunlight legibility, where the $4’s less reflective screen makes it a better display to read under bright sunlight. That’s despite the One having a brighter screen at maximum setting.
            The HTC One has the much-talked-about Ultra Pixel camera, which has larger pixels to absorb more light and capture greater detail in an image. However, the size of the final image taken with the One’s Ultra Pixel camera is equivalent to the size of a picture taken with a 4-megapixel camera. The Galaxy $4 sticks to the conventional bump in megapixel count with a 13 –megapixel shooter. In our tests, we found the Samsung flagship to be far better in terms of outdoor portraits, capturing colours in daylight, and detail in distant objects. The One does have the edge in low-light and night shots, where the $4 is not stellar.

            Samsung has fitted the $4 with a much larger 2600mAH battery, which should ideally last for quite a while. The HTC One has a slightly smaller 2300mAH pack, which sounds lacking in comparison. However, battery life also depends on the use and the frequency with which the phone connects to networks. It would be hard to tell how long exactly either phone will last with stock Android running.

            The HTC One has front-facing stereo speakers, while the $4 delivers sound through a speaker grille on the back. The One is just too good when it comes to phone speakers and we have rarely heard speakers of comparable quality on a phone

            While Samsung has stuck to the three navigation keys, HTC has gone for an odd two-button setup, where the Home button also gives access to Google Now and the Recent Apps menu. While we don’t know if there will be any difference in the Google Edition One, most purists will like Samsung’s implementation better.

HTC brings great hardware, but owning to slightly better counterparts, the $4 earned a very close victory. However, we would be remiss to not point out that the One does offer a more premium feel thanks to the excellent build quality. And that for $50 less. So it’s certainly a great deal. One thing is for sure: neither choice is wrong and it ultimately will boil down to personal preference.

Affordable, yet powerful

Lava’s new Iris 504Q is yet another quad-core smartphone to h9it India. Based on the Media Tek MT6589 quad-core processor, which has a clock speed of 1.2GHz , the phone will be available from July for Rs. 13,499. For that price, you get a 5-inch720 display , 1GB of RAM and stock Android 4.1.2.Jelly Bean with no customizations. The camera on the back is an 8-megapixel shooter with a single LED flash, while the front-facing VGA camera sounds like it would be a disappointment . This one is a dual-SIM smartphone and has support  for Wi-Fi N, Bluetooth 4.0 and USB OTG. The 2000m Ah battery also sounds rather limited in capacity, and we would not put our money on it lasting a full day on a single charge with some browsing. Music or video playback.

Beauty and the beast

Lenovo launched s0069 smartphones last month, with the K900 taking up the top spot. Powered by an Intel AtomZ2580 dual-core processor clocked at 2 GHz, the K900 also gets Intel’s GMA graphics processor clocked at 533 Mhz ,besides 2GB of RAM.. The 6mm stainless steel and polycarbonate unibody has a 5.5 –inch.full HD display with great viewing angles, a 13 MP camera with a BSI sensor, a 2MP front camera with an 88-degree wide-angle lens, and a non-removable 2500m Ah battery. Lenovo’s custom UI on top of Android 4.2 Jelly Bean, brings a playful, high-animated interface.

The consumption tablet

Amazon’s 8.9-inch Kindle Fire HD tablet went on sale in India last month and is available through Amazon’s India website. The tablet comes in 16 and 32GB versions, has a full HD display with a resolution of 1900 x 1200 pixels, is powered by a 15GHz dual- coreTI- OMAP4470 processor, has a Power VR SGX544 GPU and 1GB of RAM. Its dualband Wi-Fi feature lets it switch between the 2.4 GHz and the 5GHz Wi-Fi bands.It has HDMI –out ports, Bluetooth support and a 1.3 Megapixel front-facing camera. User get free unlimited storage on Amazon Cloud. All digital content purchased through Amazon is automatically backed up in the Amazon Cloud’s Worry-Free Archive. The Kindle Fire HD is also available as a 7-inch variant

SAMSUNG ANNOUNCES GALAZY NX, A 4G-READSY ANDROID-BADEED ILC

At the Samsung Premier 2013 event, the Korean company showed off the first ever Android-based mirrorless camera with 4G and 3G connectivity. The camera  boasts a 20.3-megapixel APS-C sensor with 1/6000-second shutter speed and 8.6fps video shooting. It is capable of taking RAW photos, and you have access to millions of apps and games from Google play. In terms of specs, the camera is powered by a 1.6GHz quad-core processor and has a 4.8 –inch 921K LCD with a capacitive touchscreen protected by Gorilla Glass. The Galaxy NX runs on Android 4.2 Jelly Bean with a layer of Samsung’s Touch Wiz Nature UX on top. It has 16GB of internal memory, which can be expanded up to 64GB through a microSD card slot. 

Nvidia to license out its GPU, visual computing portfolio

In a bid to take on the likes of Qualcomm and ARM, leading graphics card maker Nvidia will be licensing its GPU and visual computing portfolio to other manufacturers.
The company has stated that the licensing process will start with its GPU cores based on the kepler architecture. This technology is currently used in GeForce PC GPUs, Quadro workstation graphics and Tesla  supercomputing GPUs . NVIDIA’s nest-generation Tegra mobile processor, codenamed Logan, also uses kepler.
The licensing of its visual computing portfolio will allow third-party developers to come up with their own graphics technology, taking advantage of  Nvidia’s vast array of patents.
The move comes as a result of a slowdown in the PC market . The increasing popularity of mobile computing devices such as smartphones and tablets has meant that the graphics manufacturer is facing problems in raising its stake in the market.
Jen-Hsun Huang, the CEO of  Nvidia stressed on the point that licensing graphics cores and visual patents would help the company take advantage of the booming market for smartphones and tablets .It would help it tap markets it could not reach by selling its own chips.
When he was asked whether Nvidia could feature on Apple and Samsung devices in the future, Huang said, “We will target customers where their capacity and desire to build their own application processors is great.”

Google launches balloons to bring Internet to remote regions

Google is launching Internet –beaming balloons into near space as part of an ambitious project to provide faster Internet to the world. Project Loon, which was so far kept under wraps, was announced in New Zealand last month, and 50 volunteer households have already been connected. The homes are enjoying 3G-like speeds thanks to the helium balloons that sail about 20 Km above Earth. At the moment, the balloon project is still in the experimental stage, but the search giant has a lofty plan of launching thousands of them to bring the Internet to the  most remote parts of the world. The technology is seen as an alternative to installing expensive fibreoptic cables in developing countries.

Google looks to tackle child pornography on the Internet

Google is devising ways to get rid of all kind of child porn from the Internet. The search giant is creating a database of pornographic images of children that will be shared with law enforcement agencies, other tech companies and charitable organization in order to wipe the Internet clean of such images. USA’s National Center for Missing and  Exploited Children’s Cybertipline  received 17.3 million images and videos of suspected child abuse. This was four times the reported cases that the Exploited Children’s Division (ECD) saw in 2007.”Behind these images are real, vulnerable kids who are sexually victimized, and victimized further through the distribution of their images. It is critical that we take action as a community-as concerned parents, guardians, teachers and companies-to help combat this problem,” a statement from Google Giving said.

Amazon Kindle Fire HD now available in India

Amazon’s Kindle Fire HD tablets went on sale in India last month. Both the 8.9-inch and 7-inch versions of the tablet are available on Amazon. In. While the Kindly Fire HD 8.9 will sport a price tag of  Rs.21,999, the 7-incbher will come in at Rs.15,999.With HD displays(the 8.9 inch tablet comes with a full HD resolution display), laminated touch sensors and powerful dual-core processors, Kindly is looking seriously at the Indian-book reader market. And with the one-free-appa-day policy, the Indian customer might just take up to the Amazon Appstore.

Apple’s ios 7 gets first showing at WWDC

Everything has changed in Apple’s redesigned mobile OS

Apple showed up at the Worldwide Developers Conference with a host of new offerings, bu the one that could make or break the company’s vast mobile fortunes, iOS 7, stood out the most. As expected, Apple has torn itself away from skeuomorphic iconography and design.
In fact , almost all corners of  iOS have received spit and polish. Besides changing the look of the core apps to a more minimalistic interface-even the slide-to-unlock lockscreen has been dumped for a pull-the-screen-up style lockscreen-Apple has added a Control Center that mimics Android’s quick toggles drawer, has a music and brightness controller, and app shortcuts. The Camera app has received effects filters, while multi-tasking has been spruced up with a card-based view of all open apps.
Apple also launched iTunes Radio, a music stgreaming service like Pandora, besides showing a new version of Siri, which can now do both male and female voices. The OS is currently in beta and is available for registered Apple developers. There’s still a lot that could change between now and the final version, and it will be interesting to see how Apple reacts to some of the initial criticism.
In addition, Apple also showed off the new OS X Mavericks operating system for its desktop products. The new OS brings deeper integration with iOS as well as the desktop versions of Apple Maps and iBooks. There was also an announcement for iWork for iCloud, which brings Google Docs- ;like productivity apps for word processing, spreadsheets and presentation through Safari..

Google and Spice Global to launch Android Nation stores in India

Google has finalized India as the location for its thirdever Android Nation store. In association with Singapore based Spice Global, the store will open in Delhi’s Select Citywalk Mall later this year. The first Android Nation store opened in Jakarta last year and was soon followed by another. Android devices made by the likes of Samsung, HTC and LG, as well as manufacturers that have yet to open shop in India, such as Coolpad –the third-largest smartphone brand in China. Spice will be selling phones under the Spice coolpad brand when the store poens,50 more Android Natio0n stores are expected to be operational in India soon after the first, as spice will convert some of its existing retail outlets into the Android stores.

BlackBerry Ql0 launched in India

Almost half a year after announcing it, BlackBerry has finally officially launched its other BB10 smart phone, the Q10. The phone has a hefty price tag of Rs.44,990, which makes it more expensive than BlackBerry”s flagship smart phone, the Z10. The Q10 is a blend of BlackBerry”s traditional keyboard and the touchscreen interface of the Z10. It brings an HD display, a dual-core processor and an 8-megapixel camera in a well-designed body that feels good to hold.

AMD launches A-Series APUs with Radeon HD 8000 graphics
To compete with Intel”snew-Haswell lineup, AMD has unveiled its new set of chips, the 2013 Elite A-Series Accelerated Processing Unit(APU). The new APUs, dubbed Richland, deli vder much better performance than the previous Trinity serires of chips. The A-Series APUs combine AMD’s Piledriver CPU architecture with AMD Radeon HD 8000 series graphics on an FM2 motherboard infrastructure. T he company showcased four APU models in the new line-up, dubbed the 6500,the 6600K,the 6700 and the 6700K .

USA”s secret surveillance programme exposed

Reports by the Guardian and Washington Post  last month revealed a massive US government secret surveillance programme that monitored the internet activity and user data of non-Americans around the world to fight terrorism. Called PRISM, the programme began in 2007, but only came to light after National Security Agency (NSA) technical contractor Edward Snowden came forward and blew the whistle on the operation.
The US government allegedly ran a highly classified surveillance programme with the blessings of the Congress on non-US citizens using the services of a host of major tech companies. The likes of Google, Microsoft, Facebook and Apple have been named in investigative report around the world, and the crux of the issue has come down to the fact that the companies seemingly provided the government direct access to huge amounts of user data. The companies named in the reports have denied claims of allowing direct access to data or setting up sub-portals for the NSA ,US authorities are currently involved in a manhunt for Snowden who was last known to have taken asylum in Hong Kong. He has sworn to fight any extradition attempts by the US.
The PRISM expose came on the back of revelations that the NSA and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) also ran taps on American citizens” telephonic conversations. In both cases, the government said that several terror plots had been averted because of the monitoring, including a planned 2009 attack on the New York subway system.