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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