We're almost certainly about to see Samsung's Galaxy S5 superphone next week, the long-awaited followup to the company's Android flagship. With competition heating up from the likes of Motorola and HTC, will it be enough to stay near the top of the heap? Here's what we're expecting to see.
Design
While there wasn't a huge difference between the S3 and S4, the jump from S4 to S5 will supposedly bring a phone that "feels" more premium, according to statements to Bloomberg from a Samsung exec. That lines up with a Sammobile report that Samsung is finally ditching the cheap-feeling plastic frame, and moving onto a metal unibody design. About time!
The display that body houses will reportedly be a slightly larger 5.2 inches. Emphasis on slightly, as the S4 measures up at 5 inches, but the size bump makes sense given the general embiggening-of-phones trend.
Update: As dug up by TechCrunch, purported images of the S5 have popped up on some smaller Android rumor sites like SaudiAndroid and HardwareZone. They seem to align with what we've heard, but take them with a grain of salt:
Specs
Let's get the obvious out of the way first. The Galaxy S5 will have a sharper screen. Duh. This is almost a guarantee, because you expect that screens will keep improving. But just how much better? According to @evleaks, a smartphone rumor-tweeting account with a fairly reliable track record for actually getting things right, it will have a QHD 2K display with a resolution of 2560 x 1440 pixels. That's a pretty good upgrade next to the S4, which had a 1920x1080 Super AMOLED display, and it would give the S5 an edge over the Nexus 5's 1920x1080 IPS-LCD display, as well as over the HTC One's 1920x1080 Super LCD 3. @evleaks has also dropped some evidence that the phone will have a 3D viewer. Why you'd want that on a smartphone is unclear, but Samsung's never shied away from gimmicks before.
Next up? A significantly better battery, reportedly coming in at 4,000 mAh to the S4's 2,600 mAh power pack. Battery might not be one of the most exciting specs, but it's certainly one of the most important, and it's one area where we've really started to see Android phones excel. And with other Google operating system-running phones on the market boasting batteries that can last two days on a single charge (the Droid Maxx, the LG G Flex, to name a few), Samsung would be crazy not to drastically improve on this front. Depending on other factors like chip size, screen resolution, and usage habits, 4,000 mAh should, in theory, last even longer than two days on one charge.
While there had been some fleeting rumors about iris recognition, a more reliable report from SamMobile says that the S5 will actually have a fingerprint scanner similar to the iPhone 5S. It would be on the home button and be able to register up to eight different paw prints. Apparently, you'd also be able to assign different tasks or open apps based on what finger you're pressing with, which sounds so bat**** and unnecessary that it just might be true. Despite contradictory rumors that the phone will ditch all of is onscreen buttons, it seems likely that fingerprint recognition will play at least some part in next week's announcement.
It's also pretty much a gimme that the S5 will have a better camera. Accordingly, the rumor that's been kicking around for a while is that the fifth-gen Galaxy guy will sport a 16-megapixeler. The last Galaxy had a 13MP lens, whereas, say the iPhone 5S has 8 megapixels. But megapixels really don't matter so much as what the shutter speed is like, or how a camera deals with low light, and camera software overall.
Lastly, there are a few miscellaneous rumors kicking around. Apparently the phone will have 64-bit Exynos processor or a Snapdragon 800 chip. The S4 was powered by a Snapdragon 600 chip, so an 800 seems like a logical upgrade, especially because that's the chip that the good recent Androids (like the Xperia Z1) and even the bad ones (like the LG G2) are powered by. The S5 is also expected to have 3GB of RAM, and will run Android 4.4.2 KitKat, which again, is a fairly safe bet since it's the current Android OS. But it may lose some of the Samsung customization.
Pocketlint accidentally posted its review early, and although its been taken down, we were able to cull some details from screenshots. Among them are that the S5 definitely has a fingerprint scanner, and that the phone is getting a silver metal-looking back that's actually still plastic. Additionally, the review confirms the 16-megapixel camera, with a few new features such as one called Selective focus which lets you refocus the picture after you've snapped it.
Interface
One of the rumors we're more hopefully on is that Samsung will finally tone down its use of unnecessary proprietary apps that don't serve much purpose other than slowing things down and being a battery drain. By all means! Because the UI is one of the chief concerns with Galaxies past. Samsung has hinted that the entire interface will get a redesign, but we'll see.
Availability
According to a recent interview given to Bloomberg, Samsung says the phone will be out by April. This would be consistent with Samsung's past habits with the Galaxy line, which is generally refreshed around March or April.
However, there's a pretty strong chance the S5 will rear its head earlier than that. Next week is Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, and Samsung is hosting Unpacked, an event it'll also livestream in New York. Most tech press seem to agree this is the place Samsung will Vanna White the S5. Now, there's a chance that it's round two of Galaxy Gear, or even something else entirely. But we'll see come Monday.
Actual availability is a little less clear. The most recent reportvia Gsmarenaputs the phone on sale three weeks from now.
Price
Okay, so the purported specs of the S5 might not be much to write home about, but what if the phone was $100 on contract, half the price of its forebear? There have been rumblings via Bloomberg that it might be. But there's also a chance that this is just analyst wankery. However, you can be sure it won't be more than $200, which is where the S4 started.
After much heavy rumor, Nokia has just announced that it's launching its first Android handsets: the X, X+ and XL.
All the phones are built on the open source Android OS forked especially for Nokia. The X and X+ feature a 4-inch screen, while the XL packs a 5-inch IPS display. The X+ is differentiated from the X by extra memory and expandable storage, though it's not clear quite what that means in terms of specs.
In terms of specs, all three will have a 1GHz dual-core Qualcomm Snapdragon processor, dual SIM, microSD support and 1500mAh battery. The X has: a 4-inch IPS LCD display (800 x 480), 512MB RAM, 3MP camera and will be available in green, black, white, yellow, cyan and red. The X+ is similar but offers 768MB RAM and a 4GB MicroSD card. Finally, the Nokia XL has a larger 5-inch display (800 x 480), 768MB RAM, 5MP rear-facing camera and front-facing 2MP camera.
During the Mobile World Congress presentation, Steve Elop explained that users will "benefit from the Android apps and ecosystem, but we have differentiated." Essentially that means that there will plenty of Microsoft and Nokia apps included from the get go. Skype, for instance, will be preinstalled, and offer users 1 month of free calls to landlines and mobiles, and Nokia's navigation apps will feature, too.
More importantly, the phones take people to Microsoft's cloud, not Google's. Indeed, it seems Nokia is distancing itself from Google as much as possible with these Android devices, and Elop went as far as saying that the "Nokia X together with Lumia represents a deliberate strategy to leverage Microsoft services." There will, though, be plenty"hundreds of thousands at launch," apparentlyof conventional Android apps available through a Nokia-specific app store. SwiftKey, the swypey keyboard, will be available on the X range for free.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the UI of the X range looks like a blend of Windows Phone and Android: there's a glance screen just like the company's Windows Phone models, and colorful tile-like home screen where apps sit in brightly colored bars. But there's the same familiar Android notification bar across the top, and some subtly tweaked folders and widgets that mirror Google's OS, too.
Interestingly, despite the Microsoft focus, you will be able to sideload appsincluding those made by Google, in fact, any APKthough some may, apparently, need recompiling to run properly on Nokia's forked version of the OS.
Price, you ask? Well, Steve Elop was keen to point out that the X range is designed to be more affordable than the Lumia range, both now and in the the future. The phone will be "broadly available globally", starting in growth markets, and they'll cost $125 for the X, $135 for the X+, and $150 for the XL.
They're certainly cheap, then, but it's hard to say whether that represents good value or not. Let's wait and see when we get our hands on one.
t:
For centuries, humans have been using technology to make up for their shortcomings. People missing limbs got prosthetics. People with weak hearts got pacemakers. But, at a certain point, becoming a cyborg is less like fixing something broken than it is like gaining new powers.
Such is the case with the brand-spanking new ReSound LiNX hearing aid. The futuristic device is equipped with a 2.4 GHz wireless technology and Bluetooth so you can connect to your iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch. This lets the wearer stream soundsmusic, phone calls, etc.straight to a hearing aid without wires or extra attachments. It also gives the hearing aid itself a whole new set of features thanks to a mobile app.
Most impressive: the app uses geotagging settings to remember the wearer's optimal settings in frequently visited places like offices or restaurants. The hearing aid actually responds to what's going on around you, and it remembers how you like things to sound in specific locations.
On top of all that, the ReSound LiNX also promises to be one of the best hearing aids on the market, as far as sound quality is concerned. It's hard to know if that's true without actually taking the thing out for a spin, but it's also obvious that this is not the be-all and end-all of hearing aids. With all those features, the device is pretty bulky, and all that Bluetooth connectivity can't be great for battery life.
Nevertheless, the idea of an automatic built-in equalizer for life sounds great even for people who aren't hearing impaired. That's one point for the cyborgs.
In addition to the two new Samsung Gear smartwatches we got saw a few days ago, Samsung is actually showing us something new in its wearable line: The Gear Fit, a combination smartwatch and fitness tracker. It's svelte and slickand potentially the gorgeous functional wearable we've been waiting for.
The new Samsung wearable has a curved Super AMOLED touchscreen display measuring 1.84 inches. Its dimensions are 23.4 x 57.4 x 11.95 mm, and it weighs just 27 gramshalf the weight of Samsung's lightest smartwatch to date, the Gear Neo.
The Gear Fit replicated many of the functions of the Gear we've already seen, including the capability to receive incoming calls, emails, SMS messages, alarms, as well as notifications from S-planner.
Besides the form factor change, it's not immediately apparent what sets the Gear Fit apart from its brethren. It's got built in Gyrocope, accelerometer, and heart rate monitor. The Gear Fit can measure a host of fitness metrics, including pedometer, exercise level, heart rate, sleep time, as well as a stopwatch and timer.
The Gear Fit has a 210 mAh battery which Samsung says will get it 3-4 days of battery life.
All in all, it looks like a very interesting device that's sleeker than the clunk Galaxy Gear/ Gear 2 that came before. Sadly, it appears it only works with Galaxy devices.
Here's the skinny. Most fitness trackers don't have heart rate monitors yet, which makes them much less of a compelling buy. So it's exciting that the Gear Fit has one. Provided that it works. We got to spend a few minutes with it at the New York press event, and it took it a couple tries to actually give a reading. We had to make sure it was on very tightly before it worked.
The Gear Fit is pretty much a pared down version of Galaxy Gear. It's smaller and lighter and much more comfortable. But that't not to say that it doesn't have any heft. For it to have an LCD screen it has to have some.
The interface is pretty basic and easy to use. There's a stop watch, a timer, a section where you can track your activity, a watch, and a music player. It's straightforward and easy to use. But it's not the most stylish piece of wristwear, although that's not at all surprising considering the existence of Galaxy Gear in the first place.
Netflix To Pay Comcast to Not Ruin Your Evenings
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304834704579401071892041790
This does not bode well for net neutrality in my eyes but only time will tell
