Wednesday, March 13, 2013
Sunday, March 3, 2013
Sony Xperia C670X Specs Leak, Suggesting A New Android Flagship To Take On The HTC One
We didn’t see a new phone from Sony at MWC this year, though it did take the opportunity to show off the Xperia Z (pictured) it demoed early this year at CES, but a new rumor suggests we’ll see a mid-year upgrade in a few months time that packs Android 4.2, a Qualcomm Snapdragon 600 chipset with 1.8GHz processor, 2GB of RAM and 32GB of onboard storage.
The leaked specs come from a tipster providing info to Xperia Blog, and also suggest the C670X will be smaller than the Xperia 7, with a 4.8-inch screen compared to the announced device’s 5-inch display. In most regards, the C670X sounds like a beefed up Xperia 7, however, with a more powerful processor, Adreno 320 graphics and double the on-board storage, while retaining a 13 megapixel rear camera and the same 1920 x 1080 resolution. The device’s pixel density will be higher, however, since those same pixels are fitting in a smaller screen, making for more crisp text and graphics rendering.
If true, this new handset would be pretty much on par with HTC’s flagship One smartphone, which has a 1.7GHz Snapdragon 600 chipset, and an Adreno 320 GPU. No word on whether the C670X would also inherit the Xperia Z’s impressive water resistance, which could be a tipping point factor for buyers looking to make a decision between the two.
These leaked specs should be treated with a healthy dollop of skepticism (it was accompanied with a render from the setup guide from the Xperia Z, which admittedly doesn’t depict the Xperia Z itself), but they’re far from extreme, and Sony fielding a phone in 2013 that takes advantage of the latest in mobile processor technology does make sense.
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A Look At Karma, A Tiny Wi-Fi Hotspot On A Mission
We wander the streets with tiny computers in our pockets and in our hands. We talk casually to these computers, just like Captains Kirk and Picard talked to the computers on their Enterprises. With the push of a button, our computers give us unprecedented access to the bulk of human knowledge. These computers sometimes talk back to us. But underneath all the noise and chatter of speech, the computers in our pockets communicate with one another in an endless stream of ones and zeroes.
Packets whiz through the air, unseen, unappreciated.
Those invisible ones and zeroes floating through the air cost real money. Proletarians like you and I enjoy a small allotment of ones and zeroes that we’re allowed to send and receive. The robber barons who mediate our access to the bulk of human knowledge grow rich even as they reduce the quantity of ones and zeroes they permit us to send. The computers in our pockets yearn for more ones and zeroes, but we, like over-protective parents at a pizza party, cautiously step in to prevent a binge.
There are some, though, that seek to make it easier — and more affordable — to send ones and zeroes through the air. Karma offers a lilliputian device with simple, easy-to-understand pricing. There are no onerous contracts. You are not required to commit to exclusivity to Karma for several years, unlike what the robber barons demand of you.
The Karma device creates a WiFi hotspot that moves around with you, and connects your WiFi connected devices to the Internet. This is just like the tethering option available on your pocket computer; but Karma sends data through Clearwire’s cellular network. Use it at airports and hotels to avoid exorbitant access fees. Use it with your WiFi-only tablet while you’re riding a bus or a train.
The nifty thing about Karma is the notion of “social bandwidth”. It seems a little extravagant to have a device dedicated to getting your little tablet onto the Internet. The same access point could easily service multiple devices. And that’s just what Karma does: it creates a public WiFi hotspot, with your name right there in the SSID: “Scott’s Karma”. Complete strangers can connect to your hotspot, and the Karma service handles all the account creation and billing nonsense. You just say to the world “Hey, here’s a WiFi hotspot you can use” and you’re done.
When someone new starts using your Karma hotspot, they get 100 MB of free bandwidth to consume; no need to pay anything at all. You also get a bonus 100MB for sharing your connection. Early adopters of Karma can probably accumulate a substantial pool of megabytes to use. After your freeloading guests consume their 100MB, they can purchase additional megabytes at reasonable prices. There’s no need to for these folks to own their own karma device: they can just keep using whatever Karma hotspots may be nearby.
Users of Karma get a dashboard display from which they can review their data consumption, see who has connected to their hotspots lately, and buy additional data as needed. It’s all very easy to use.
Karma is not a perfect solution, though. You must have a Facebook account, which for some may reduce Karma’s utility to zero. Twice while testing Karma I had a real opportunity to offer connectivity to someone who needed it, and both times the offer went unfulfilled because the other person didn’t have a Facebook account.
The other strike against Karma is one of simple security consciousness. I think most people are aware of the dangers of connecting to unknown and untrusted wireless networks. Right now, Karma is brand new — it’s not a household name — so when someone sees “Scott’s Karma” in the list of nearby wireless networks, there’s nothing to really encourage them to connect to it. If Karma devices can proliferate, maybe this situation will change.
In the high-tech metropolis of Columbus, Ohio, the Karma device worked just fine, as long as I was outside. Standing at a bus stop on my morning commute, my transfer speeds were just fine. The device reported a 4G connection, and I certainly had 4G-ish speeds.
As soon as I walked into a building, though, the connection would immediately drop to 3G, if it remained connected at all. In most buildings, the connection light blinked on and off, forlornly looking for a signal. This may be due to the quality of the Clearwire network in Columbus. Or maybe all the lead paint blocked the signal. I don’t know.
Sitting in a coffee shop, I connected all of my devices to the Karma network at the same time: Samsung Galaxy S3, Nexus 7, and laptop. Running a speedtest on all three simultaneously produced very disappointing results:
During my tests, only one other person ever connected to “Scott’s Karma”, and that’s only because I asked my wife very nicely if she’d do so. No strangers connected, so I honestly can’t say how the device will operate in its intended use case.
In all other respects, the Karma was an absolute delight to use. It’s small enough to carry in your shirt pocket. I never completely depleted the battery, even after several continuous hours of use. The signal was strong enough for all the tasks I needed to perform while out and about. A little more than a week’s worth of daily commutes consumed only a couple hundred megs of data. I checked email with wild abandon, trounced friends in Words With Friends, and destroyed an impressive number of Resistance portals while playing Ingress.
If nothing else, Karma provides an inexpensive option for getting WiFi-only devices online in the absence of freely available WiFi. Quit paying the robber barons excessive fees for the privilege of tethering devices to your pocket computer. Bypass the hotel’s rip-off WiFi. Be a nice person and help others avoid rip-off WiFi.
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Saturday, March 2, 2013
Foursquare CEO Looks Beyond Mobile Handsets: Anywhere There’s A Screen, We Want To Be On It
Google has yet to release the Mirror API that will open Google Glass as a platform, but developers of some of the more popular mobile apps today are gearing up for when wearable computing products, like Glass, will. Today, speaking at a keynote at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Dennis Crowley, CEO of social location app Foursquare, highlighted Google’s new headgear as an example of how mobile screens are evolving, and later he told TechCrunch that Foursquare is looking at how it can evolve along with that.
“Anywhere there’s a screen, we want to put our stuff on it, whether that’s on a phone, or a watch, or whatever,” he said. He also added that Foursquare hasn’t yet worked with Google Glass itself.
This week at MWC, Google did not have a formal presence at the main exhibition, but it’s been here nevertheless. Apart from the many Android device makers here — with the biggest of all, Samsung, taking stand space in multiple halls and even the train station nearby — Google had its usual Android party and there have been Google Glass sightings both at the official event and elsewhere.
Wearable computing devices like Google Glass, which make interacting with services ever more seamless, dovetail with how Foursquare is trying to make its services more automatic and easy to use, requiring less proactive input from consumers in order to function.
Crowley said that Foursquare would like to launch a new feature that builds on this concept, enhancing the “contextual awareness” (his words) introduced by like Radar. (Introduced in 2011, Radar alerts users to when they are near places that they have flagged in their app.)
“The best version of Foursquare is the one you don’t think about using,” he told TechCrunch on the sidelines of today’s keynote. “The relaunch of Radar is inevitable: it’s very important to us.”
And while for Foursquare part of reaching that goal is to be on as many platforms as possible, it’s also about integrating with other applications, furthering its own position as a platform for location services. The company already works with 40,000 developers to power location services, including Path, Instagram and Evernote. “We’re slowly starting to become the location layer for the Internet,” Crowley said.
In January, Google started to run its first hackathons, in San Francisco and New York, for developers interested in Google Glass and getting an early look at the Mirror API.
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Apple Has Sold Over 8M iPads Direct To Education Worldwide, With More Than 1B iTunes U Downloads
Apple announced a new milestone for its iTunes U online digital education outlet, which has just crossed the 1 billion download mark. Alongside the announcement, Apple has also informed us exclusively that the company has so far sold more than 8 million iPads directly into educational institution worldwide. iTunes U became a standalone app, complete with its own course marketplace and catalog in June 2012.
At the time, iTunes U had served up over 700 million downloads. The additional 300 million downloads mean that the pace of engagement for iTunes U is growing rapidly. iTunes U was introduced in May 2007, meaning that it took the educational product a full five years to rack up just a little over twice that amount. The rapid growth over the last nine months has likely been the result of a combination of factors, including the introduction of the standalone app and an increase in the adoption of iPads in educational settings.
AllThingsD reported earlier that to date, Apple has sold more than 4.5 million iPads to U.S.-based educational institutions, a figure which Apple confirmed to us as correct. Thanks to some clever calculation on the part of 9to5Mac’s Jordan Kahn based on publicly available information, it looks like the vast majority of that number was sold recently, over the past year in fact. Apple CEO Tim Cook has repeatedly stressed how important the education market is in the context of the iPad, and the fact that it’s doing so well with institutional sales both at home and abroad backs that up.
Apple also shared some details about school participation in iTunes U today, noting that more than 1,200 universities and colleges, and over 1,200 K-12 schools host over 2,500 public courses on iTunes U, along with thousands more private courses available only to enrolled students. Some big institutions are embracing iTunes U with particular vigor, Apple notes, including Standford and The Open University, both of which have racked up over 60 million content downloads alone. Some of the more popular individual courses have around 250,000 students enrolled, Apple noted.
Greg noted in a recent article that online education is fast replacing physical colleges, with startups like Coursera reaping many of the benefits. Apple has the advantage of being a very early player in this space, and the ubiquity of its iPad tablet is clearly helping the company add a lot more momentum to its efforts to help institutions embrace online learning.
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With “Millions” Of Users In 40+ Countries, European Messaging Startup Yuilop Prepares For U.S. Launch In “One To Two Weeks”
Yuilop, a European free messaging startup which launched back in 2011 and has amassed “millions” of users of its apps, will be launching in the U.S. in the next couple of weeks. Speaking to TechCrunch at the Mobile World Congress tradeshow in Barcelona today co-founder and CEO, Jochen Doppelhammer, said that although Yuilop does have some users in the U.S. already, who have managed to acquire its app on the sly by downloading it when they’re traveling or via other workarounds, it will be officially opening up to the U.S. in “one to two weeks” (with both an Android and iOS app).
So what’s so special about (yet) another free messaging service? Yuilop has taken a different approach to what Doppelhammer describes as “silos” like Whatsapp, Line and Viber — which require the person with whom you want to speak to also have the app. ”We have built the whole architecture on open standards,” he says. ”We’re combining the open standard xmpp, which allows us to connect to federated OTT services like Google Talk, and the mobile number (MSISDN), which allows us to interconnect with the mobile telecom world via SMS and phone calls.”
What this means in practice is that Yuilop users can call and message non-Yuilop users and — unlike Skype which charges users when they ‘Skype out’ — it’s still free. Yuilop does use a virtual currency model for when users are talking to non-Yuilop users (it calls this currency ‘energy‘), so there is a ‘virtual cost’ to these calls/messages. But energy can be earned without paying any hard cash — through a variety of actions such as referring a friend to Yuilop, talking with another Yuilop user, using the app, or engaging with promotions such as sponsored content/adverts.
While making Yuilop-to-non-Yuilop calls costs energy, receiving calls earns energy so if you take it in turns to call your friend your energy level will remain the same. “As long as you keep communicating it stays balanced,” says Doppelhammer.
In addition to free calls, SMS, real-time multimedia chatting, Yuilop plans to add video chatting in future, and will probably also branch out into adding some more quirky stuff that its rivals offer like stickers. That stuff is not a huge priority for Doppelhammer though. “Our main differentiator is free phone calls to anybody and all the rest: texting, real-time multimedia chatting,” he says. He would also like to add a free data component to the offering at some point — albeit data is likely to come with more strings attached than the free calls and texts.
Yuilop is currently active in more than 40 countries, and has consciously been taking things slowly as it scales up, rather than diving straight into big markets like the U.S., China and India (where it doesn’t yet operate). Its three biggest markets are currently Germany, Italy and Spain, according to Doppelhammer, but he says the service is also popular in Latin American — especially Mexico — and has also launched in other markets such as Russia and Turkey.
Its business model is focused around advertising and other promotional components like voucher redemption, but Yuilop was also at MWC to launch a white label, out-of-the-box OTT SaaS product which carriers and developers can pay to license to add free calling into their service. Doppelhammer said it had lots of interest in the offering, including from MVNOs — a group he argues is in keen need of some new tricks, caught between carriers at the top and OTT players squeezing from below. Smaller carriers and MVNOs could take Yuilop’s white label product and add their own branding to offer their own free calling and messaging service as a differentiator, he says.
Another revenue stream for Yuilop is likely to be freemium offerings, such as letting users pay money to buy energy, and also premium services, such as letting users pay money to have more than one number. “In general we give people a number from their country but as a premium service… you can also get a number from another country [so friends from that country could call you at the local rate]. So we’re going to offer premium services like this one,” says Doppelhammer.
As well as Android and iOS apps, Yuilop has already created a Firefox OS version. Other platforms currently supported include BlackBerry 7 OS (but not BlackBerry 10) and Windows Phone (in beta). It will also be launching a browser-based version “within a few weeks”, says Doppelhammer. Of course, there is no shortage of over the top messaging startups but despite sitting in such a crowded space, Doppelhammer’s ambition is “to be Skype” — or rather, to be as big as Skype but more open.
The company has raised close to $10 million dollars in funding today. It has raised $7.12 million, according to CrunchBase, but Doppelhammer said it also recently received a loan from the Spanish government of €1.5 million ($1.96 million) so it’s not currently looking to raise a new round. Yuilop’s other investors include Nauta Capital, Shortcut Ventures GmbH and Bright Capital.
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Friday, March 1, 2013
Dropbox CEO Drew Houston Opens The Door To Samsung’s Competitors: ‘We’d Love To Work With You’
Drew Houston, the CEO of Dropbox, said that staying independent was a key part of Dropbox’s strategy; and with mobile being the most important platform for picking up new users, Dropbox was looking for more handset makers and carriers for partnerships along the lines of the one it has with Samsung, as he described his cloud storage company as being in its “Apple 2 phase.”
“We’re in the Apple 2 phase of Dropbox,” he said, referring to the time when Apple hadn’t yet made the Macintosh.
What does he mean by this? Houston said he believes that Dropbox is only “just scratching the surface” of what it can do in partnership with others.
“If we’re not already working together, we’d love to work with you,” he said to an audience of smartphone markers and operators — the same people that Houston has been taking meetings with in Barcelona this week. “All these opportunities are being left on the ground today. Do you want to see [all your] photos? Or plug in your business? There’s a ton of upside that we can share on that front.”
The evolution of mobile services — and exploding usage of smartphones and tablets — presents one of the biggest opportunities for cloud storage companies like Dropbox. People are on the move, and they often interchange their devices, and those light devices usually don’t have enough storage for the mass of data that we have accumulated in our connected lives. So it comes as no surprise that mobile has been big business already for Dropbox.
Houston said that mobile became the single most popular platform for signups to Dropbox last year — due in no small part to the company’s close relationship with Samsung.
In 2012, the two started to offer 50GB of free storage as well as close integration on Samsung devices like the flagship Galaxy S III, as well as the Galaxy Camera and Galaxy Note II, making it easier to upload your data into Dropbox from applications on those devices. In January, that deal extended even further to cover several new devices, including the Galaxy Grand and more cameras.
Those latest devices will begin to roll out in March 2013 — so it wouldn’t be a surprise to see the Galaxy SIV included in that list, too.
Samsung is the most integrated, but it is not the only device maker that works with Dropbox. There is also HTC (which offers 25GB of free storage on the HTC One), Sony, and other device makers that Dropbox tells me that it cannot yet disclose.
Indeed, Houston said that the deal with Samsung is not exclusive. “One of the main things for us is to remain independent,” he said. “You shouldn’t have to care what logo is on the back of your phone [to know your device will access your cloud of data].” Referring to companies like Google and Apple, who have both also made big efforts to develop cloud services, he believes that these are too limiting because they are proprietary. “In practice, it’s hard to stomach one of your competitors building for your platform,” he said.
Houston also hinted that partnerships don’t necessarily translate to smooth relationships, especially in these early, “Apple 2″ days of Dropbox’s life. “Our partnership with Samsung in early days was challenging,” he said. “They had built their own cloud service, because they couldn’t see how they could differentiate with Dropbox. But then they launched [our partnered service] and customers loved it because they get extra Dropbox space.”
The company last year revealed that it’s seeing 1 billion files uploaded per day, over 500 million connected devices, and 100 million subscribers.
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This Bluetooth Smart Trigger Turns Your iPhone Into A Canon DSLR Remote And Intervalometer
If you’re into DSLR photography, remotely controlling the thing is a pretty common want for new users and seasoned veterans alike. Satechi’s BT Smart Trigger, which starts shipping today, is a remote that works with a range of Canon DSLRs, connecting to the camera’s hot shoe and giving them full control over their camera’s shutter. It also doubles as an intervalometer, making it possible to get those cool time lapse and extended exposure shots that never fail to draw the appreciation of photography fans.
The Smart Trigger connects to your camera via USB, and rests in the hot shoe mount normally reserved for flashes and other accessories. It communicates with the iPhone via Bluetooth 4.0, meaning it’s a low power consumption device which can get up to 10 years of battery life, and has a range of 50 feet. The trigger app works with iPhone and iPad, and features both a basic standard shooting mode, as well as Manual Shot, which allows for long exposures (like the ones where you see people writing things in the air with sparklers), or Time Shot, which captures a series of images that are then stitched together to generate time-lapse images (like the lightstream photos you see of nighttime cityscapes with busy thoroughfares).
The Satechi Bluetooth 4.0 Smart Trigger might not be able to relay a live feed of the camera’s digital viewfinder, as Canon’s official remote app can with the Canon 6D’s built-in Wi-Fi radio, but at $44.99 it’s an excellent option for amateurs and enthusiasts looking for an easier way to take time-lapse and long exposure specialty shots, using the iPhone they already know and love. Satechi also says that Galaxy S III and Galaxy Note 2 compatibility will be coming sometime in March, so owners of two of the most popular Android smartphones will be able to join in on the fun at that time, too.
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Meet The Entirely E-Ink 3G Smartphone That Could Cost As Little As A Dumbphone
It takes a lot to stand out at a trade show the size of Mobile World Congress. But here’s one device that caught my eye today: an e-ink smartphone. Unlike Yota Phone, the Russian startup that’s using e-ink as a second screen to augment the back of a powerful high end smartphone in a bid to stand out in the uber crowded Android space, this prototype device has just the one screen. A single e-ink screen on the front of the device — so it’s a true e-ink phone.
It’s also a true smartphone. There were two prototypes on show at Eink‘s stand, both with a 1GHz chip inside and one (the white one) with a 3G chip in it. The other had Edge connectivity. The phones run Android but, as you’d expect, the OS has been simplified with a custom UI that strips back the functionality to focus on the applications that make sense for a fully e-ink smartphone — such as a reader app, a dialer and email. The UI also includes a web browser since certain types of webpages can be viewed on an e-ink screen. It won’t support video of course but text-based sites can still be read.
The black prototype device (pictured below) also includes a backlight for reading in the dark. Both screens are capacitive, but as you’d expect with e-ink the refresh rate can be a little slow. Ghosting on the screen from past renders can be removed by shaking the device. The technology can support both portrait and landscape orientation so the e-ink smartphone could be turned on its side to switch the orientation to more of an e-reader sized width. Both devices felt incredibly lightweight.
Why do you want an only e-ink phone? Price for one thing. Battery life for another. Not to mention visibility in bright sunlight. Put all those factors together and this could be the perfect device for some emerging markets where electricity is at a premium. The prototypes are proof of concept at this point but Giovanni Mancini, director of product management for E-ink — the company which makes the screen — said the Chinese OEM which has made the prototypes, Fndroid, is talking to telcos and could launch a device this year.
So how much would this e-ink smartphone cost? Mancini said the device maker would set the price but in his view it would be comparable with a feature phone price tag. A big theme of this year’s MWC has been smaller mobile players — from open source OSes like Firefox that are seeking to drive openness and accessibility and drive down the cost of devices, to mobile veterans like Nokia focusing afresh on building smarter feature phones to target cost-conscious users in emerging markets. So it’s interesting to see companies toying with the idea of an entirely e-ink smartphone to cut device costs while preserving key smartphone functions such as access to the internet and email.
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Thursday, February 28, 2013
Google Anxiety, Samsung’s Long Shadow And The Motorola Hedge
Android got a late start compared to Apple’s iOS in the worldwide smartphone battle, but it eventually grew to attain a larger worldwide market share, and it did so largely on the back of a single champion: Samsung. Samsung’s Galaxy line has become to Android what the iPhone is to iOS, despite hardware and software coming from completely distinct companies. But Google very specifically didn’t sign up to be a one horse kind of cowboy, and as such it makes sense for the search giant to be somewhat fearful of Samsung’s growing influence, as the WSJ reports.
Google’s top brass is concerned that Samsung is getting too big, according to the WSJ’s sources, giving the South Korean company much more weight behind potential negotiations to alter the terms of their licensing arrangement with Google in order to cut into the search giant’s ad business. Samsung has no near peer when it comes to Android device sales, having shipped 215.8 million smartphones during 2012. It accounted for 40.6 percent of Android smartphone sales during Q4 20112, according to IDC, and 27.9 percent of the Android tablet market, both of which are above any of their closest competitors. The next closest handset maker has less than 10 percent share, meaning that though some recent entrants like ZTE and Huawei show signs of considerable growth, Samsung’s dominance in the near future is pretty much guaranteed.
The WSJ says Google’s Android chief Andy Rubin has discussed Samsung as a potential threat at an event for executives last year, and notes that he talked about Motorola Mobility acting as a kind of “insurance policy” against its power. But Motorola hasn’t helped so far, and in fact has only been shedding market share since being picked up by Google. Motorola nabbed only 1.9 percent of Android smartphone share in Q4 2012, down from 6.2 percent year-over-year.
Google’s hardware direction could change completely when Motorola’s current pipeline runs down.
But Motorola may yet be Google’s sleeping giant: Google’s Patrick Pichette said during the company’s recent conference call in January that Motorola is still working through its existing pipeline, which had plans in place for around a year and a half of device releases before it was bought by Google. The company has been aggressively restructuring Motorola and divesting itself of parts of the organization that it doesn’t need, so we’re likely to see Google take its fresh hardware division in an entirely new direction when all the old plans put in motion previously finally get excised. The rumored X Phone could be the first fruit of Motorola’s Google-directed labors, and might present a much more competitive package, if Google’s recent Nexus launches are a good indicator of the direction it will take with its own in-house hardware.
The reason Google needs to field a strong competitor, either itself or through one of its OEM partners, boils down to advertising revenue. Samsung has received more than 10 percent of the ad revenue generated through Google services driven by its platform devices, the WSJ’s sources said, and looks to be interested in getting a bigger chunk of that pie as its install base drives more of that action.
Both Google and Samsung need each other: neither would’ve been able to achieve what they have in terms of competing with Apple’s mobile dominance without the other. But as with Apple and Samsung’s supplier relationship, as well as the maps and YouTube services arrangement between Apple and Google, success can breed contempt between massive companies working together when each is primarily interested in its own bottom line. To really win, Google has to field a legitimate competitor to Samsung that can weaken slightly, but not disarm its ally. A few strong players is better than one dominant one in terms of Google’s aims, but if it can’t elevate other OEMs to get that done, it may just have to go it alone.
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Opera’s CEO On Innovation And Privacy, And A First Look At Its New WebKit-Based Browser For Android [TCTV]
Oslo, Norway-based Opera is in Barcelona this week and has been showing off a build of its browser to those who ask. We have a video of how it looks below — with a walk-through of new features, as presented by Opera’s head of product and SVP business development, Nuno Sitma.
We also took the opportunity to talk to Boilesen about what “new stuff” the browser would contain, and other topics like those Facebook acquisition rumors.
He says that the company was laser-focused on launching new features in the WebKit-based browser, which is due out in a matter of weeks. “When you switch code you have to come out with products really quickly,” he said. He even made a deal with his engineers — they played the wager — that he would run 40 kilometers if they could ship all the features they wanted to include in the new build by the time they announced their news earlier this month. He’s now training for a marathon.
Boilesen says that Opera’s move to WebKit and away from Presto was because Opera’s own core platform has ceased to be as essential in the industry. “Opera ported to different platforms. Opera was the engine that could run where no one else could,” he said. Times have changed, though. Together, Android and iOS accounted for 90% of the smartphones shipped in Q4 2012, according to Gartner. Fragmentation has ceased to be an issue for Opera. “There is no fragmentation in the market,” he told me, flatly. But the change has not been fast for them. He says that it was as early as 2009 that Opera could see the logic of moving away from Presto, when “everyone switched to Android.”
Indeed, there is a sense that while switching to WebKit may have made sense from an operational point of view, there was also a cultural nostalgia behind it. Boilsen was employed as employee number “sixteen or seventeen” in 1999. “Back then we were still in the startup phase,” he said. “Now we have nearly 1,000 people and are public, but we still want to feel empowered.” He says he uses Google as a model: “a good example of how you can remain innovative even when growing big.”
The new browser, as you will see below, runs smoothly and with good response, as a “native UI” experience in Boilesen’s words. (this was a live test using crappy network in the over-congested show floor of MWC).
One of the key features is two modes of network browsing. Effectively, Opera has embedded the Opera Mini browser as a proxy browser into its smartphone browser, which it calls “server mode,” designed to be used when you are on slower networks to bring down the time it takes to render pages. (This is in a popup menu that you can see in the video below.)
(Interestingly, he notes that for now the actual Opera Mini browser will remain on Presto — although eventually it and the company’s desktop browser will also be migrated.)
Opera has also overhauled discovery on its app, taking some cues from the use of its Smart Page social features — offering social recommendations by integrating with Facebook, and letting you share links that you like with others — that it launched last year. “We have 30 million users of those Smart Pages every week, and we found that people do want things recommended in the browser.”
But perhaps another lesson learned is that not everyone actually wants to be social in their discovery. “We now think Smart Page is not [quite] the right thing. It should be lean back surfing,” he says. “Things come to you.”
This part of the site — which looks a little like a simplified version of Flipboard in the video below — is not based on your browsing history. “We don’t want to know about your browsing history. We don’t want to spy on your history,” he says. “We base this on an algorithm and our database.”
Here’s how it works: while Opera does not track your browsing history, what it does do is read all the words on the pages that you view. These it feeds into an algorithm, which then searches the web for more content that fits the same profile. On top of that, it uses your location to further customize searches.
Given the move away from social signals, and the talk of maintaining privacy while still offering recommendations got me thinking about Facebook, and all those reports that Opera was in acquisition talks with the social networking giant — triggered by the latter company’s clear interest in mobile, and clear lack of mobile browser, and Opera’s large base of mobile users particularly in emerging markets.
Unsurprisingly, Boilesen gave no comment, just a laugh and an uncomfortable look away. Too hard to read into this. And this: “We have 240 million mobile users, 32% of them (85 million) on smartphones. That means we are playing in the big league.” Similarly, he was unable to explain why co-founder Jon Stephenson von Tetzchner was suddenly selling off shares — he owned 10% and could have blocked a sale. (One other theory: he liked Presto and didn’t agree with the decision.)
But if there ever was a sale on the cards, it’s off the cards now. “It’s true that in Norway if you have more than 10% you can block an acquisition, but at Opera we are not thinking about selling,” he said. “I think things are going well. We’re profitable and continue reinvesting and things have never gone better. And, we just acquired Skyfire. You don’t do that if you are selling the company.”
Skyfire, which Opera bought earlier this month for a price of up to $155 million, specializes in video optimization and monetization technologies. Boilesen says it will be a “two to three year” project to integrate it into Opera. It points to more focus for the company, which also recently consolidated all of its advertising operations into a single Mediaworks brand.
The new Opera for Android will be out “very soon,” with and iOS app to follow “right after,” and then “all tablets,” says Boilesen. After that it will turn to the desktop but not before the summer. Opera Mini, as we said above, will remain on Presto for now.
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The Super-Slim Xperia Tablet Z Feels Like Sony’s Finest Tablet Yet
After Sony released a string of curious Android tablets that failed to catch on, the company had no choice but to go back to the drawing table and try something different. That something different wound up being the Xperia Tablet Z, easily one of its most conventional designs yet — a choice that may end up paying off nicely. Now that the decidedly non-kooky Xperia Tablet Z is gearing up for an appearance stateside, we tracked one down here at MWC to get a glimpse at what Sony’s tantalizingly thin tab brings to the table.
First things first — if you’re a fan of minimalist industrial design, then you’ll find a lot to like here. Sony’s bright 10.1-inch Reality Display (running at 1,920×1200 no less) is the clear focal point of the device’s face, and there’s nothing else save for a Sony logo, an IR blaster in the corner, and an easily missed 2-megapixel camera. The display is also aided by one of Sony’s Mobile Bravia engines, which means colors can easily take on a lurid cast unless you dial it down. Meanwhile, the back is a matte black slab devoid of any detail other than a small Xperia logo and an 8.1-megapixel camera in the top- right corner. One could easily call it dull, but “understated” feels like a better fit because of how nice it feels.
The Tablet Z weighs in at a scant 1.09 pounds, and its trim waistline is only 6.99mm thick — for a bit of perspective, the iPad mini is just a hair thicker at 7.22mm. In order to keep the weight as low as possible Sony resorted to an almost entirely plastic body. That sounds like the recipe for a chintzy-feeling tab, but that’s definitely not the case here. Despite being very light, the Tablet Z has a remarkably solid, premium feel to it. There’s a little bit of give to be felt if you grab the thing by the sides and give it a twist so it may suffer from some long-term issues down the road, but it’s a far cry from some of the overly creaky, plasticky tablets that still pepper the market.
A quad-core Snapdragon S4 Pro chipset and 2GB of RAM are tucked away inside the Tab Z’s waterproof chassis, and my time with the Tablet Z was largely lag-free. When faced with the prospect of putting out tens of devices for public consumption at Mobile World Congress, most companies typically try to do something to keep we nerds from mucking around with them too much. Not so here — I was able to download and install Quadrant from the Google Play Store to get a slightly better idea of what the Tablet Z is capable of. Over the course of three trials the Tablet Z consistently put up scores in the low to mid-7,000s and topped out at 7601 — devices like the Nexus 10 and Asus Transformer Pad Infinity TF700 usually hover around the mid-4,000s.
Granted, this is a synthetic benchmark and doesn’t provide a complete picture of performance, but it’s clear that Xperia Tablet Z is no slouch.
I only really have one gripe with Xperia Tablet Z — the custom UI that Sony has loaded on top of Android. Longtime readers may know that I’m an avid proponent of leaving Android untouched, and Sony’s implementation just doesn’t do it for me. In fairness, it’s lighter and less cumbersome than some of the other overlays currently clogging up other Android devices so you may disagree, but the occasional bit of visual stutter while rifling through menus, and the fact that background images were distorted when set, raised some flags. That said, Sony has added some neat features to help make up for it, such as a universal remote app that doubles as a programming guide, and a revamped new gallery that displays geotagged photos on a globe.
At an early morning press address yesterday, Sony Mobile CEO Kuni Suzuki pointed to a renewed focus on bringing the company’s “cutting-edge technology and resources” to Sony Mobile, and confidently called 2013 a “breakthrough year.” Naturally, it’s too early to tell if that actually pans out, but certainly not impossible. The Xperia Tablet Z is a (hopefully not so) rare return to form for Sony, and here’s hoping that the rest of 2013 is full of products as well-executed as this one.
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Wednesday, February 27, 2013
Adobe Debuts Photoshop Touch For Phones, Bringing The Full Power Of The Tablet Version To Your Pocket
Adobe’s mobile Photoshop strategy has so far kept more heavyweight editing capabilities to tablets with Photoshop Touch, and left the iPhone with Photoshop Express. But today the company has officially released Photoshop Touch for iPhone and Android smartphones, which inherits virtually all of the functionality of the more powerful tablet app, with an interface tailored to the smaller screens.
Photoshop Touch for phones brings layers (which decrease to three if you’re editing at max resolution), the popular Scribble Selection feature, which lets you use imprecise finger selection to pick out precise parts of a picture, and also carries over all the filters, paint-strokes sharing and other components that make up Photoshop Touch. There’s also the unique Camera fill feature that allows a user to fill in a layer in their creations using their device’s camera. Projects from the phone version can be synced and edited using Photoshop on either tablets or the desktop, too, thanks to Adobe’s Creative Cloud service.
Clearly a lot of attention was paid to making sure that the functionality of Photoshop Touch was not lost in translation as the app was redesigned for smaller-screen devices, but I asked Photoshop Product Manager Stephen Nelson if we might see more differences introduced into the phone and tablet versions (which sell as standalone apps rather than as a single universal piece of software) down the road.
“One advantage of having them as separate apps is we do have the flexibility for the two products to diverge slightly,” he said. “And diverge in a way that’s appropriate for the context and the device. You’ll notice a few things that are different already about the phone version, just to fit a smaller screen, but I could see it continuing to evolve slightly differently on the phone compared to the tablet.”
Photoshop Touch is priced at $4.99 on the App Store and Google Play, and is available for iPhone 4S or later, 5th gen iPod touch or Android phones running Ice Cream Sandwich (4.0) or later. If you’re a photographer, mobile or otherwise, and want some powerful editing tools in your pocket, this is definitely a worthwhile upgrade from Photoshop Express.
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Facebook, 18 Carriers Partner To Use Discounted Messages To Lure New Users, Data Customers
Facebook is deepening its relationships with carriers in emerging markets today with a deal that would bring free or discounted data access for people who use Facebook Messages.
The company has done these types of win-win deals in the past. Carriers get to give their customers access to what is probably the most widely-used app in the world, gaining an edge over competitors in the same market. They also potentially lure new customers to sign up for lucrative data plans. At the same time, Facebook gains further reach into many developing countries that have mobile-only consumers, who don’t have access to the desktop web.
The operators in the deal include TMN in Portugal, Three in Ireland, Airtel and Reliance in India, Vivacom in Bulgaria, Backcell in Azerbaijan, Indosat, Smartfren, AXIS and XL Axiata in Indonesia, SMART in Philippines, DiGi in Malaysia, DTAC in Thailand, Viva in Bahrain, STC in Saudi Arabia, Oi in Brazil, Etisalat in Egypt, and Tre in Italy.
Facebook has done similar deals in the past. After it acquired Israeli-startup Snaptu to build mobile versions of Facebook for the long tail of feature phones, it partnered with more than 20 carriers to give their customers more than 90 days of free access to the new Facebook for Every Phone app.
While most of the carriers in the deal are in emerging markets, not all of them are. A few carriers in Ireland, Italy and Portugal are also involved.
Keep in mind that Facebook Messenger’s rival WhatsApp rules in Europe, as many cellphone users turn to it instead of classic SMS messaging to save on their monthly bills. WhatsApp beats Facebook Messenger in market share in many European countries. This could be a small way to get a leg up on their competitor, which is based in Silicon Valley and is backed by Sequoia Capital.
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Tuesday, February 26, 2013
The Nokia Lumia 720 Is A Stylish Windows Phone 8 Cameraphone For Self-Conscious Fashionistas
The 3G Nokia Lumia 720 slots into Nokia’s Windows Phone 8 portfolio behind its two 4G flagships, the 920 and 820 — with the aim of pushing some of their fancier features down to a more affordable mid range price point. Rather than beefy tech specs, Nokia has focused on polishing two populist areas. Firstly design: the 720 has been gifted with sleek looks — it’s the thinnest Lumia to date (at 9mm), sharing the rounded style and curved screen of the 820 but much more pleasing to hold, being lighter and thinner. The bright Lumia colours come in a matte finish, with the exception of a high gloss white option.
And secondly: the camera. Nokia has not gone as far as adding the PureView branding to the 720′s 6.7 megapixel lens but it’s put in Carl Zeiss optics (and branding), a new f1.9 aperture to boost performance of low light photography, and — to amp up the social networking street cred of the device — it’s added a new digital lens that lets people take enhanced self portraits using the 1.3 megapixel front facing lens.
This vanity filter processes self-portraits to ‘beautify’ the results — using a little digital airbrushing trickery to whiten teeth, smooth out skin tone and so on. Results seemed a bit hit and miss during my brief hands on but it did add a more cartoonish look to self portraits. Nokia said the feature had played well with its target consumers — young, fashion-conscious social networking users — during testing. As for the main lens, it wasn’t possible to scrutinise the low light performance claims during my brief hands on but Nokia is planning on making a big song and dance about its powers, creating a dedicated retail display unit to show off the low light prowess. The sales pitch is that this device puts a ‘proper camera’ in the consumer’s pocket so they don’t need to rely on a having a separate point and shoot.
Elsewhere, the phone’s specs are much the same as the two entry level Lumias — underlining that Nokia is not aiming this phone at the tech spec crowd, but rather going for a mainstream social networking audience. The 720 does have a slightly larger 4.3 inch display than its cheaper siblings, albeit it has the same resolution of 800 x 480. Nokia has added its Clear Black display technology to the 720, though, to improve viewing outdoors in sunlight. Indoors, in the glare of conference center fluorescent lighting, the screen looked clear and crisp, without being especially high res.
Under the hood, the 720 has a 1GHz dual-core Snapdragon chip — the same sized processor as the entry level Lumia 520, along with the same 512MB of RAM. During a brief hands on the device felt no less responsive than its lower priced siblings. As with other devices in the Lumia line Nokia has included its range of software add-ons, including its HERE mapping and navigation software, and its free streaming music service.
The 720 does include NFC but wireless charging is an optional extra — the handset has three metal connectors on the rear which are compatible with a wireless charging cover. Nokia has also made room in the unibody design for an SD card slot – supporting user expanded memory of up to 64GB. On board memory is 8GB. The integrated battery is 2,000mAh.
Nokia is targeting the 720 at the Asia Pacific market initially, with China Mobile signed up to range it. There’s no confirmation as yet of whether the 720 will make it to the U.S. market.
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Skype Competitor Viber Hits 175 Million Users, Up From 140 Million+ In December
Messaging startup Viber, which lets users of most smartphone platforms send free texts, calls and messages via its app, is continuing to ramp up its user-base. Speaking at the Mobile World Congress trade show in Barcelona today, CEO Talmon Marco announced the startup now has 175 million users.
Viber has been around since early 2011 but been growing rapidly in the past 12 months. In December it passed 140 million users, saying it was adding new users at a rate of 400,000 per day. Back in September, it hit 100 million users, after hitting 70 million users in May and 50 million in February.
Viber’s app supports iOS, Android, S40, Symbian, Windows Phone and BlackBerry.
The messaging space is very fragmented globally, but for some context, Line — a messaging app popular in Japan — passed the 100 million user mark last month. Whatsapp, popular in Europe, is estimated to have around 250 million users. And Skype — the grand-daddy of the space — is thought to have around 800 million users, with some 280 million monthly users as of November last year.
“Sometimes services take off because of pure luck… sometimes it’s timing. It’s the soul that you put into this. The proof is in the pudding,” said Marco.
Also today, Marco said Viber has signed a partnership with Indonesian carrier Axis to offer reduced price packages for consumers in that market using Viber’s free messaging services.
Carriers have an uneasy relationship with so called OTT (over-the-top) players like Viber — accusing them of stealing the value by luring customers away from carrier services but Marco said carriers and OTT players can work together to the benefit of both, arguing that the consumer who signs up for the lower cost Viber package with Axis will end up upgrading to more expensive data services.
Billing services could be another area where OTT players could partner with carriers, Marco added.
Discussing Viber’s user-base he said the app is now being used by 90 per cent of the population of Monaco — a wealthy city state and tax haven — which he argued shows that it’s not the reduced price that lures consumers to OTT players, it’s the novelty of the services.
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LG Plans To Sell 40M Smartphones This Year As It Prepares Optimus G Pro Launch
LG Electronics, which lost market share to Huawei and ZTE last year, aims to sell 40 million smartphones this year as part of its strategy to move away from basic handsets, said Park Jong Seok, the head of its mobile-communications division, before the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. If the South Korean company hits its goal, this means LG’s shipments will rise 52 percent this year. LG sold 26.3 million smartphones last year and 20.2 million in 2011.
LG will rollout the Optimus G Pro in over 50 new countries in the next few months as part of its effort to compete with the iPhone and Samsung’s Galaxy line. The Optimus line’s importance in LG’s efforts to reshape its image as a maker of premium devices is underscored by how quickly it has been introducing new models. That Optimus G Pro’s predecessor, the Optimus G, has sold over a million units since launching in the U.S., Canada, Korea, and Japan back in November.
Kim Ki Young, an analyst at Seoul-based LIG Investment & Securities Co., told Bloomberg that LG’s strategy is similar to that of HTC, which unveiled its One model last week after its market share plummeted by more than half in 18 months, but looks more likely to succeed. “LG’s brand image in the premium league has improved. The company also seems to have higher growth potential than HTC and BlackBerry,” Kim said.
LG’s total phone sales halved in two years after its basic handset models faltered in competition with devices from Chinese manufacturers like Huawei, the Chinese company that overtook LG as a Top 5 vendor in the overall mobile phone market in Q4 2012, according to International Data Corp.
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Monday, February 25, 2013
Samsung To Debut Its New Galaxy S In New York On March 14 As Rivalry With Apple Heats Up
It appears that Samsung has once again joined a growing list of companies that have decided not to release their flagship devices at Mobile World Congress. Reuters reports that the South Korean electronics giant said it will launch its new Galaxy S smartphone on March 14 in New York after requests from U.S. carriers. We’ve emailed Samsung for confirmation.
One likely reason why Samsung chose New York for its launch is because, as Reuters notes, it is “Apple’s turf” and rivalry between the two is becoming increasingly intense. Launching in New York instead of at this week’s Mobile World Congress also has the added benefit of ensuring that the latest Galaxy S debut will not be lost amid a sea of noise from competitors.
The Galaxy S series has been a cash cow for Samsung, so it’s no surprise that they would want to save it for special events instead of tagging it onto MWC. Last year, Samsung released the Galaxy S III in London. While the Galaxy S II made its debut at the 2011 MWC, the first Galaxy S launched at the CTIA mobile trade show in the U.S. in 2010.
Samsung may have chosen New York for this year’s launch to give it a boost of good publicity in the U.S. after the lose of a $1 billion patent infringement lawsuit to Apple last summer. Furthermore, Samsung has yet to dominate the U.S. market even though it was top in both worldwide smartphone sales and overall mobile phone sales in 2012. In the U.S., Samsung smartphones continue to lag behind the Apple iPhone in terms of sales.
Though Samsung may plan to release its flagship smartphone elsewhere, it did launch its Galaxy Note 8.0 at MWC, which it is planning to rollout globally in Q2 2013. Samsung did not say how much the tablet would cost, but representatives have said that the price would be “affordable.” Indeed, many mobile makers have made their low-end device launches at MWC, saving premium lines for their own separate events later on. For example, Nokia is expected to unveil its lower-priced Lumia smartphone at the event, while Chinese company ZTE will debut the Grand Memo, one of the world’s first Firefox OS phones (Firefox OS is being heavily targeted at emerging markets).
On the other hand, LG (and Samsung’s main domestic rival) will likely show off its top-of-the-line Optimus G Pro at MWC this week.
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Hands On With Nokia’s New Entry Level Windows Phone 8 Handset, The Lumia 520 (Heading Stateside In Q2)
The Lumia 520 is Nokia’s new entry level Windows Phone device — costing around $180 before taxes, a far cry from the flagship Lumia 920 and 820 currently up for grabs in the US. The 520 is confirmed for the U.S. market with T-Mobile due to range it in Q2. So what do you get for not-too-many dollars? Besides the latest version of Windows Phone (WP8), Nokia has included a few perks for budget buyers, including its HERE mapping and navigation software, its Mix Radio free streaming music service and its digital lenses camera filters and Cinemagraph animated GIF creator.
Also on board: Nokia’s glove-friendly sensitive touchscreen tech — so the 520 can be poked with a fingernail or prodded with a glove. But of course, this is still a budget device — so it’s more compact in size than the higher end Lumias, with a 4 inch display. It also lacks 4G, NFC and wireless charging. There’s no compass on board either so the 520 doesn’t get to tap into Nokia’s augmented reality City Lens app.
Design wise, as you’d expect, the 520 is certainly the least premium looking of the range — lacking any fancy touches, such as the layered colour-on-colour casing flourish Nokia added to its previous entry level Lumia (the 620). That’s not to say it’s unattractive. To my eye ‘cheap and cheerful’ is a fair description, while its fairly steeply curving sides give it a more angular look than the rest of the range.
The 520 shares the Lumia’s plastic unibody design but unlike the flagship Lumia 920 and 820 it’s a less premium feeling material, with a matte finish. The advantage of this cheaper plastic and smaller size is it feels much lighter of course. Thickness is just under 1cm. The brighter Lumia colours — red, yellow and white — are available as swappable shells sold separately, with cyan and the less stand out black option being the standard retail options.
The screen has a resolution of 800 x 480 — aka the old Windows Phone 7 resolution. It looked bright and clear during a brief hands on but less contrasty than the Lumia 720 (which includes Nokia’s Clear Black display tech). Under the hood the 520 has a 1GHz dual-core Snapdragon chip — giving it the same amount of power as the former entry level Lumia 620. It handled the Windows Phone UI well, feeling fast and responsive during my encounter with it.
On the back there’s a five megapixel lens, which supports 720p HD video recording. While more expensive Lumias have had lots of tender loving care lavished on their camera kit, the 520 sits in Nokia’s unbranded camera category, so set your expectations accordingly. Nokia has included some of the features offered at higher Lumia price-points, including its Smart Shoot feature and the ability to capture wide angle shots but there’s no front facing lens.
Windows Phone 8 is an increasingly attractive OS at these budget price points — where Android hardware can be woefully underpowered. The easy to use Live Tiles interface, embedded Facebook et al social networking and value-add extras (such as 7GB of free SkyDrive cloud storage from Microsoft — and free streaming music from Nokia) compare well against a swathe of budget Androids. While WinPho is still certainly constrained when it comes to choice of apps, here at the low end smartphone price point that’s not such a huge minus. What the OS lacks in apps it makes up for with its polished look and feel — and, in the 520′s case, enough power under the hood to keep the basics feeling slick.
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Tablets Take Off In 2012 According To Millennial, With Kindle Fire And iPad Mini Seeing Rapid Growth
In a new report from mobile ad platform Millennial Media, the company compiles its data on mobile device share across its network for all of 2012, revealing that tablets in particular accounted for a rising percentage of impressions, with Android devices stepping up their game considerably. The Kindle Fire and Samsung tablets were the big share winners, helping Android slates grab a considerable 41 percent of the tablet mix, compared to 58 percent for Apple.
Millennial didn’t actually break out the overall values of tablet traffic in its 2011 report, but you can see from its February 2011 snapshot that the tablet/e-reader and other category had iOS at 80 percent share, with Android at just 17 percent and other at 3 percent. Android has clearly gained a lot of ground, then, and the main OEMs reaping the benefits of that growth are Samsung, which has 45 percent of the Android tablet share, and Amazon, which managed to acquire 26 percent thanks to the release of the second-generation Kindle Fire line, representing over 500 percent growth from its share in 2011.
Smartphone share also grew during the year, up from 68 percent to 75 percent, with non-phone connected devices (including tablets) also growing considerably as well, from 15 to 25 percent. The feature phone category gave up tons of ground, going from 17 percent to 5 percent share. Overall OS mix, despite Android’s tablet gains, actually didn’t shift all that much, with Android gaining one percentage point overall in 2012 versus 2011, and iOS losing one. BlackBerry remained steady in third, and Windows Phone gained a single percentage point.
Millennial notes that Android continues to take up more places in the top 20 mobile phones list on its platform, while Apple continues to be the market leader with its devices in each respective category, generating an outsized helping of traffic share from just a few core devices. The iPhone ranks number one among mobile phones, growing its share from 14.67 percent in 2011 to 15.59 percent in 2012. Samsung took over the number two spot from BlackBerry with its Galaxy S line, with 4.24 percent of impressions for 2012, growing 182 percent year-over-year.
The iPad mini was among Apple’s strongest performers, growing its share of impressions at an average daily rate of 28 percent within just weeks of its initial launch. Millennial says that’s a new best for the 7-inch tablet category, eclipsing the rapid 19 percent daily average established by the original Kindle Fire during its launch back in 2011. Overall, the picture that’s shaping up looks like it will see smartphone share start to even out as they eclipse feature phones entirely, with tablets making up an increasingly important piece of the pie, if the trends Millennial is seeing continue.
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