Mobile Geeks

Smartphone OS Wars: Windows Phone Gradually Rising Up The Ranks!

Rahul — Fri, 17 May 2013 21:58:51 +0000

Nokia’s persistence with Windows Phone seems to be showing some visible results – a good 2 and a half years after the platform was first showcased and then subsequently launched. According to the latest figures from IDC, the Windows Phone platform has become the world’s third largest smartphone operating system in terms of market share! As I type this, there are only more iOS and Android users out there than there are Windows Phone users! (As if you didn’t know that one!)

According to IDC, more than 7 million Windows Phone devices were sold in the previous quarter giving it a not very impressive sounding 3.2 percent of the market. However, considering where Windows Phone was during the same quarter from an year ago, this one was a 1.2 percent increase. Not bad at all.

Android and iOS by far lead this race by quite some margin. BlackBerry seems to have been the worst hit and it would take some time to see how the sales of its new BlackBerry 10 devices could affect this current equation. The numbers for BlackBerry don’t look too good. In 2012, during the first quarter, the company had managed to ship 9.7 million units which gave it 6.4 percent of the smartphones market. That has been reduced to 6.3 million shipments this time with a reduced market share of just 2.9 percent.

All in all, this is good news for both Microsoft and Nokia – more specifically for the latter as the Finnish brand seems to be the only player seriously interested in making Windows Phone devices. The rest of the pack seems busy with Android.

As for the top guns, like I mentioned earlier, Android leads the OS pack with a fat 75 percent market share. iOS is a distant second with 17.3 percent of the market. It would be interesting to see how the smartphones playing field opens up later this year with the likes of Firefox OS, Ubuntu Mobile and Samsung’s Tizen – all set to debut in the next few months!

Interesting times lie ahead!

Goophone X1: A Quad Core Android 4.2 Smartphone for 82 Euros!

Rahul — Fri, 17 May 2013 21:35:56 +0000

What smartphone can probably 82 Euros buy you these days? Not something substantial if you are in Europe or the US. However if you happened to be anywhere in the Far East and more specifically, in China, you could be bogged down with options for what for many in the developed part of the globe is a paltry amount.

That reminds me why I am writing this blog post here. Say hello to the rather weirdly named Goophone X1. I am already imagining the look on your face when someone asks you; “What phone is that?” and you reply; “Thats my Goophone”.

Gross!

What is not gross however are the specification on the Goophone X1. The Goophone X1 is not a new release either – having been around for the past year. However, what it does with that year old hardware at such a low cost is compelling. For your information, this thing runs Android 4.2 and packs in a Quad Core processor deep inside! That is ridiculous for just 82 Euros, isn’t it? True, the model might have been “inspired” from a rather popular product from another mainstream company headquartered in the far east, but this thing is waay cheaper!

Mind you, the Goophone X1 is not a top of the line device and gets a 4.7-inch large display with a resolution of 854 x 480 pixels, which endows it with a not too impressive pixel density of 204 ppi. The quad core processor we talked about earlier is housed inside a Mediatek MT6589 chipset and is clocked at 1.2 GHz. Supporting the processor is a decent 1GB of RAM which coupled with the 4 GB of internal memory and an option to expand it further using micro Sd cards, makes it quite a decent purchase for the price it is expected to go for.

Moving on to the imaging bit, the 5 megapixel shooter at the rear should take decent pictures while the 1.3 megapixel front camera can help you with video calling. The battery however is just 1800 mAH and thanks to the devices’ dual SIM configuration, you might have issues keeping it powered on for an entire day.

Anyway, for just 82 Euros, this one is a steal!

No Android Update at Google I/O 2013 was the Big News

Nicole — Fri, 17 May 2013 07:32:56 +0000

Google IO 2013 was the launch pad of tons of new android services and features, but there was one thing that was most notably missing, an actual upgrade to android. Where was Android 4.3? There was enough speculation about it, heck blogs were even confirming that it was going to be launched hours before the keynote, yet the three and half hours passed and we never actually learned about the infamous 4.3 update.

Instead we learned about a new Maps experience, Google Play got 41 updates; Google Now is more conversational and offers a whole bunch more information and functionality; Google game services is upping the ante on all your Android devices and Google Play Music, All Access is going to completely change how music works on your Android device.

If we take a minute to think about it, I could have said Android 4.3 has a ton of new features and then gone through the exact same list. The absence of a new version of Android is actually note worthy and pretty exciting because this is Google’s answer to fragmentation. I’ve got a video below where I go into more detail about the non announcment at Google I/O 2013.

Larry Page 35 Minute Q&A at Google IO 2013 in its Entirety

Nicole — Wed, 15 May 2013 20:55:54 +0000

Google IO is like Christmas for Android fanboy’s, it give us reasons to lust for new devices and upgrades and this year Google CEO Larry Page took the microphone to talk about how important it is to focus on technology and getting people more people involved.

He openly expressed a disdain for Microsoft and the way that they are approaching the industry attempting to put of more barriers rather than taking them down. Also that companies are being pitted against each other rather than working together. The focus should be on making “new and important things to make people’s lives better,” he said.

But by far the best part of the entire keynote was the 35 minute question and answer at the end of the keynote. We’ve got the whole thing below, it’s worth checking out, he tackles a lot of questions about the future of hardware, the internet and the importance of women in tech.

Nokia Unveils Aluminium Clad Lumia 925 At London!

Rahul — Tue, 14 May 2013 21:19:15 +0000

It was just yesterday that we talked about the then “soon to be announced” Nokia Lumia 925 which was leaked in the form of a teaser video and images. A day later, we have full details about this handset which has now seen the official light of the day. Let’s now take a quick look at the phone.

After looking at yesterdays leaked images, we had hoped that the Nokia Lumia 925 would be lighter than the Nokia Lumia 920 , which as you already know happens to be a little clunky at 185 grams. The Lumia 925 cuts the flab and tips the scales at just 139 grams making it nearly 50 grams lighter than the Lumia 920. Good job!

Lets now take a look at what the phone has on offer when it comes to the overall specifications. The Lumia 925 features a 4.5-inch AMOLED display which is as large as its predecessors. The display resolution remains unchanged at 1,280 x 768 pixels, which corresponds to a pixel density of 334 ppi. It comes with a Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 processor with its two cores clocked at 1.5 GHz each. The CPU is supported by the Adreno 225 GPU for graphics. We are dealing with 1 GB of RAM, the internal memory of the device is 16 GB in size (Vodafone will exclusively offer a black version with 32 GB). The non-replaceable battery is 2000 mAh and the dimensions of the device are 129 mm x 70.6 mm x 8.5 mm.

The phone gets a micro SIM slot and also supports LTE networks. The camera is basically the same unit as the on on the Lumia 920 and as expected, gets the 8.7 megapixel sensor and adds in an optical image stabilizer with a Carl Zeiss lens as well. You can capture videos in full HD at 30 fps. There is a 1.3 MP front camera using which you can record 720p videos too.

On the design front, there has been a massive change with the Lumia 925 dropping its predecessors’ polycarbonate shell construction in favour of an all metal frame. The aluminium finish of the phone lends it a premium air. There us still judicious usage of Polycarbonate though which is still used on the back.

The phone is set to roll out in global markets starting July at an approximate price of 469 Euros (before taxes).

Guess What? 5G Is Here! All Thanks To Samsung!

Rahul — Tue, 14 May 2013 06:11:57 +0000

Well, apologies for that misleading headline! 5G is not “here”. In fact it’s not anywhere near us at this juncture. BUT, Samsung earlier today made it onto the front pages of most technology portals when they announced that they have in their labs tested core technologies that would by 2020 allow for Wireless data transfer speeds that would be several times faster than todays 4G LTE Networks.

Samsung has decided to call this technology “5G” already – although there have been reservations by many on Samsung’s decision to use the same without consultation. As Samsung puts it, “5G mobile communications technology is the next generation of the existing 4G Long Term Evolution (LTE) network technology. 5G will be capable of providing a ubiquitous Gbps experience to subscribers anywhere and offers data transmission speeds of up to several tens of Gbps per base station.” Yes , you heard that right. 10 Gbps indeed. Go pinch yourself once again. With these kinds of download speeds, you could download an entire movie within a few seconds. (As if you didn’t figure that out already!)

Anyway, with even 4G LTE networks still to see widespread deployment, rest assured we have a long long time to go before we get this kinds of speeds on our mobile phones.

You might want to delve more about this by going to this link here

Is This The New Nokia Lumia 925?

Rahul — Mon, 13 May 2013 19:29:13 +0000

Nokia, which is all set to debut its brand new Lumia branded Windows Phone powered smartphone at an event at London on May 14, 2013 (tomorrow!) seems to be having a hard time keeping its upcoming handset from appearing in leaked images and videos. It was just over the weekend that first images purported to be of this brand new smartphone were out on the Internet for everyone to see. This was followed by a leaked teaser video of the phone.

The latest to the addition of leaked stuff happens to be more detailed images of the handset that has been leaked once again by the usual suspect Evleaks

Before we talk about the latest leaked images, here is that all important leaked teaser video of the phone.

This was first seen on an UK TV Commercial. The video looked quite authentic and also included a tagline that said “More than your eyes can see.” This sort of pointed towards the probability of the device would come loaded with a large resolution image sensor – a very obvious successor to the Lumia 920.

The latest leaked image shows a hitherto unseen side of this new device and the overall consensus on the design of this device is that this one looks quite “sober” compared to the overtly bright and flashy Lumia. There was also talk about this handset possibly sporting a metal body – a huge change from the polycarbonate shells we have been seeng from Nokia over the past few years. The 920 was lauded globally for its imaging capabilities – however there were people who were not quite happy with the chunkiness of the same.

There is still no word on the kind of image sensor that this rumored Lumia 925 will sport. There was speculation earlier about Nokia developing a camera centric device codenamed EOS with a huge PureView like sensor aboard. There is no evidence to prove that this leaked handset will turn out to be that phone.

Anyway, the event at London is just a few hours away from now and we shall soon find out what Nokia has been up to after they developed the Lumia 920.

Leaks Of The Weird Kind! Mythical Nokia Lumia 928 Appears On Huge Billboard

Rahul — Sat, 04 May 2013 23:06:46 +0000

There are rumors, leaked images or videos and then there is THIS! It is not uncommon for soon-to-be launched devices to appear in the form of leaked, blurry images on obscure forums or blogs. But to see an unlaunched product on a huge billboard out in the open, for the world to see? THAT just defies logic! But then if we are to believe an image posted on the famous MyNokiaBlog, blog (ahem) sent across to them by one of their readers, this does look quite legit.

The billboard proudly advertises the Lumia 928 and its low light imaging abilities and also claims to possess the “best low light smartphone camera”. Also seen are the customary Windows Phone and Microsoft logos along with “Verizon” written on the bottom right. Looks quite alright an advertisement for a phone. But its just that this particular phone has not been announced by Nokia yet!

From what we can make out from the billboard, the handset seems quite similar to Nokia’s existing flagship – the Lumia 920. From what we can decipher of the advertisement tagline, the already excellent low light imaging capabilities of the Lumia 920 would be enhanced on the Lumia 928. What exactly would be the difference between the two is something we would need to wait and watch to figure out.

Anyway, we seriously anticipate Nokia to take covers off this one soon. Also, we are perplexed as to how this billboard made it out in the open before the handset has even been announced! Someone’s gonna get fired I believe! Or maybe this was just intentional on part of Nokia to you know, generate some buzz?

Acer Aspire R7 Windows 8 Touchscreen Notebook: Hands on

Rahul — Sat, 04 May 2013 06:45:36 +0000

At the Acer launch event at NewYork many interesting products were announced. These included the Aspire P3 Ultrabook Convertible as well as the Acer Iconia A1 affordable tablet. The weirdest of the lot perhaps might be the Aspire R7 Windows 8 powered touchscreen Notebook. Now, the R7 is not just another run of the mill Windows 8 powered device. It’s USP is the fact that it comes with a with a “floating” screen. That’s right. This floating screen is nothing but a hinged touchscreen display that will let users prop up the display of the Notebook and keep it at an angle to imitate the look of either a desktop monitor or an All In One PC. It doesn’t stop there. You can also easily flip the screen around so that you can turn the display around to a person sitting opposite to you.

Not quite getting it? Well we hope our hands on video of the Aspire R7 would help simplify things:

If you are wondering about the specifications of the Aspire R7, here we go

From what we observed, the hinge on the R7 is quite sturdy and it lets the device to be easily kept in the position you want. Another thing we noticed is the rather weird positioning of the trackpad which lied “behind” the keyboard. It remains to be seen how fast people can get used to such an arrangement. Under the hood of the device powering it is a smallish 3650mAh battery, which Acer says, would last you around three hours.

The Acer Aspire R7 will be on sale starting June with teh cheapest version of the device being priced at 999 euros. Will you get one for yourself?

Fight! Acer Iconia A1 vs Apple iPad Mini vs Samsung Galaxy Note 8.0

Rahul — Fri, 03 May 2013 22:46:41 +0000

At the recently concluded Acer event at New York, our man Sascha Pallenberg managed to compare its latest entry level model, the just announced Acer Iconia A1 to two other similarly sized tablets – the Apple iPad and the Samsung Galaxy Note 8.0

It is interesting to note that the Apple iPad Mini and the Iconia A1 apart from sharing a similarly sized 7.9 inch display also have similar 4:3 aspect ratios. They also share the same display resolution of 1024*768. The Galaxy Note 8.0 however is a totally different creature. This one sports an 8 inch display – albeit in a 16:9 widescreen format, The display resolution too differs – with the Note 8.0 boasting of 1280*800 pixel resolution. Both, the Android devices run the latest version of the OS – Android 4.3 JellyBean. The iPad Mini runs the latest version of iOS 6 – as expected.

Here’s what Sascha had to say about each of these devices when he did a quick comparison video:

Moving on to the processors, the iPad Mini is powered by Apple’s own A5 chips. The Samsung on the other hand uses its own Exynos 4412 quad core processor on the Note 8. Acer on the other hand sports a quad core processor housed inside a MediaTek Soc.

While the iPad Mini and the Iconia A1 have lots of similarities when it comes to the overall form factor, it is clear that the build quality on the Apple is a lot better. However, the Iconia A1 is a lot more affordable than the iPad Mini – thereby sort of justifying its OKish build quality.

All the devices get 5 megapixel main cameras as well as a front camera for video calling. Anyway, for more dope on these devices, watch our video above. Also, you might want to let us know which of these three tablets you would choose as your next tablet if you had the money!

By the way, you might also want to take a look at our (in)famous comparison table for a quick look at the specs of each of these devices so that you will quickly get to know the similarities and the differences between them!