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Our focus is on mobile devices such as phones and tablets, but anything goes!
When Korean tech companies are mentioned then it's likely that you'll think of LG and Samsung right off the bat, but for those of you who really love your phones, you'll have noticed that a small company by the name of Pantech have been releasing a few interesting phones lately too! The might have dodgy names like the Pantech Vega Iron which you can see above, but that is one good looking phone!
According to a report earlier today Samsung have ponied up $48 million for a 10% stake in the company because, as Samsung say:
"The investment is aimed at solidifying our relationship with Pantech, a key component customer of Samsung. Samsung will have no involvement in Pantech’s business management in any way or form."
That's great news because it means Samsung don't interfere in the company's design language, but they still get what they want out of the deal and that's supplying components! The news agency who first reported the deal also said that, 'Samsung and Pantech have strong ties in semiconductor and display businesses,' and again this deal helps to tie everything together a little more tightly!
We're not sure what this means for Qualcomm and the Korean Development Bank, both of whom own about 11% in the company too, but probably very little and they'll probably just have another sleeping partner on the board! YonhapNews Via TheNextWeb.
Pantech are the third tech company from South Korea which are almost always in the shadow of the considerably bigger companies LG and Samsung. That doesn't mean this David can't take some of the attention away from the two Goliaths and Pantech's latest phone, the Vega Iron, definitely grabs your attention.
As you can see from the image above this is a striking phone, but we definitely think the cool images on the press pictures help! But, as you can see from the image above this is a very sleek looking device and those bezels look absolutely tiny. In fact Pantech has done a pretty good job living up to the rumours that their new phone would be "bezel-less". In actual fact those bezels aren't quite non-existent instead they are 2.4 mm in width on each side, which should make this a good challenger to the 'edge to edge' experience on Motorola's Razr I. This slim profile apparently means that the screen actually takes up 75.5% of the front of the device which is second only to Sony's Xperia ZL which has 75.8%!
Other than those remarkable bezels the screen is an in-cell LCD display which is 5" in size and has a 720p resolution. Also on board is a a 1.7 GHz quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 600 processor, which is paired with 2 GB of RAM. According to TheDroidGuy the phone comes with 32GB of built in storage which can be expanded with cards up to 2TB! (They're not common, but they do exist.) The camera is also top of the range here too with a 13MP sensor on the back. Other then that there's Android 4.1.2 Jelly Bean on board, with an update to 4.2 in the works, as well as 4G LTE, Bluetooth 4 and the only real thing holding this back is the very small 2,150mAh battery. That is absolutely tiny for this sort of device and we can only hope that Pantech has done some serious optimising! We would have thought that customers would have preferred a bigger battery for the sake of a couple of millimeters extra on the chassis, but what do we know?
What do you think? Is this something you'd like to see arrive on American or European shores? Let us know in the comments below!
Via Engadget and TheDroidGuy.
Huawei opens new R&D facility in Finland and they ink a deal with Three UK!
So what happens when you get a Chinese mobile company who's on the up and a Finnish company on a serious downer and with all their eggs in the Windows Phone basket? Well apparently you get a new research and development centre in Finland!
Huawei have announced that they are planning to launch their eleventh European research centre and they expect to add 100 more staff at this centre and this is part of their three to five year plan to double their European employees from 7,000 to 14,000! The budget from the next five years at the Finland R&D facility is 70 million Euros which is equivalent to $91 million! Finland seems like a good place to grow given there are now 3,700 ex-Nokia employees who have recently been laid off and are in need of some work!
Huawei's spokesman, Roland Sladek said, "Europe has proven to be quite an open business environment for Huawei", especially when contrasted with the U.S. congressional decision which alleged Huawei's equipment could be used for Chinese espionage. Huawei was also blocked from assisting in the Australian roll out of a $38 billion national high-speed broadband network project because of 'unspecified security concerns'.
Huawei are keen to grow their handset business because only 22% of their current income is from mobile phones. Although, this doesn't mean that their attention will be diverted from their other offerings. Huawei announced that they won a services deal with the mobile network Three in the UK. This will see Huawei look after Three's ICT infrastructure and their network at large, they will be taking over from ST-Ericsson! Reuters and Telecoms via Twitter (1) (2).
Windows Phone 8 off to a good start?
Windows Phone 7 was a strange one; it was fluid, fast, it barely ever stuttered even on distinctly average hardware, but it didn't sell well. Perhaps it was affected by Android's spec race or maybe there wasn't enough apps for people? But, Windows Phone 8 is out now and if Facebook app log in details can tell us anything, then Windows Phone 8 might have got off to a relatively good start compared to its predecessor!
According to data from WMPowerUser this October and November alone saw 657,000 monthly active users checking their Facebook's through the dedicated Windows Phone 8 app. That compares very favourably with the numbers for 2011 which saw less than 150,000 Windows Phone 7 active users in the same months! This seems pretty conclusive even if it is just Facebook information.
If this is indeed the start of some very good news for Windows Phone 8, then we can expect to see quite a good amount of sales reported back from HTC and Nokia, despite the pair only launching their flagships, the Lumia 920 and HTC 8X, at the beginning of November.
Steve Ballmer has already said that Microsoft has seen four times the WP7 numbers with WP8 devices, and if we work on the knowledge that there were 2.8 million WP7 devices in Q4 last year, then it's not too much to expect 10 million WP8 sales by the start of 2013! If those numbers can be realised then expect a big influx of apps to the platform!
Via PhoneArena.
Android malware is still a problem despite Google's recent efforts!
We hoped Google had tightened up security in their recent versions of Android with the introduction of a native security scanner and their Bouncer system on the Play Store. It would appear they've not been entirely successful. Android 4.2 Jelly Bean with its 'app verification' only picked up 15.3% of known malware, according to a study conducted by North Carolina State University computer science professor, Xuxian Jiang.
After this random malware tests were run with the more popular Android security programs, things such as; Avast, AVG, TrendMicro, Symantec, BitDefender, ClamAV, F-Secure, Fortinet, Kaspersky, and Kingsoft. With these programs installed the rate of detection varying from 51%, all the way up to 100 percent. Android 4.2 wasn't so successful; it only caught 20% of the threats on its own.
You can see all of NC State University's findings here and if you haven't got an anti-virus on your phone we strongly urge you to reconsider!
Via IntoMobile.
In other news:
It seems that a new Pantech Vega (the IM-A860) has popped up on the popular GLBenchmark database! This device looks set to feature a 1920×1080p screen, a quad-core Snapdragon S4 Pro processor, Adreno 320 GPU, and 4G LTE support. Unfortunately the benchmark doesn't tell us more than that but, if we hear anything else we'll let you know! Via AndroidGuys.
Motorola has announced it will close 'most' of their operations in South Korea; including selling mobile phones. This is part of Motorola's new restructuring under Google's stewardship and most of the 600 jobs in Korea will go, only 10% will be offered the chance to stay on if they don't mind relocating! Via TheVerge.
Amazon has hacked a pretty good $50 off the 8.9-inch Kindle Fire HD for today only! You can get the discount on the 32GB WiFi-only and 32GB LTE editions only. Just type in the code FIREHD89 and your saving will be applied. Via Engadget.
Carphone Warehouse is currently offering spare iPhone and Android chargers for 1p if you download their app and fill in all your details! Incidentally you can also get 10% off accessories once you've got the app! You can check out the full details here! Via Twitter.
Police in Mildura, Australia, have warned against using Apple maps in the area after 'at least four documented cases' of people getting lost en their way to the town after following Apple's guidance!
The most recent example was of a man who ended up stranded for 24 hours last week in temperatures of up to 46 degrees centigrade! The Senior Police Sargeant said, "We've had at least four documented cases... The map puts it at least 70 kilometres from where it should be. We have had people bogged down in sunset country."
So just in case you're driving around the land down under any time soon, perhaps a couple of maps might be a better guide than your iPhone! Via TheGuardian.
Google is reportedly working on integrating Google Now with their Chrome browser! We think this would be a great replacement for iGoogle, if you're still rocking that! Via PocketNow.
LG has announced that their L-series of devices has reached 10 million sales! They said their success, although modest, was down to them offering numerous devices at different price points and in a variety of sizes! Hopefully this will press LG into pushing out some more software updates! Via Engadget.
Asus has announced that their Padfone 2 will be getting an update to Android 4.1 in the near future! It'll land OTA on your device soon, if it hasn't already! Via Engadget.
Have you heard of the tale of the sliding Lumia's? Neither had we until we stumbled across this video today! We believe in the paranormal, but in this case there's something going on inside that Lumia 920 that won't stay on your desk! In this case WPCentral put it down to the low-friction screen on the Lumia and the angle of the computer when it's shut, most computers don't actually close flat! Via WPCentral
And finally, this is the first official teaser from RIM of their upcoming BB10 devices! We're not sure about the textured back as that implies plastic, but we're more than happy to give it a chance!
Matias Duarte answers some of the nagging questions the community had!
There was a couple of key complaints which Google has faced in the recent versions of Android and today Matias Duarte has stepped forward on Google+ to help explain Google's thinking!
The issues Matias tackled were SD card slots, or rather the lack of them on Google's Nexus devices and secondly the decision to drop the split navigation and notification bar which tablets with ICS or Honeycomb were blessed with.
Firstly, with regard to SD card slots and reluctantly we can actually see where he's coming from especially as Google is trying their best to work on usability for the average consumer, he said:
"Everybody likes the idea of having an SD card, but in reality it's just confusing for users. If you’re saving photos, videos or music, where does it go? Is it on your phone? Or on your card? Should there be a setting? Prompt everytime? What happens to the experience when you swap out the card? It’s just too complicated."
The second thing he brought up was the new navigation buttons which will grace the bottom of every tablet running Android 4.2, like Google and Samsung's new Nexus 10. The new navigation bar won't be split between notifications and navigation like the Motorola Xoom's was, instead the bar will be very much like the Nexus 7's and the status bar will be added to the top of the screen, so you'll have to pull down to see notifications!
"This new configuration is based on usability research we did on all of the different form factors and screen sizes that Android runs on. What mattered most of all was muscle memory - keeping the buttons where you expect them, no matter how you hold the device."
And just for your extra information, there's a good overview from The Verge which gives you a good amount of information about the creation of the new range of Nexus devices!
Google's Android has caught up with Apple's iOffering in terms of apps; there's now 700,000 apps on the Play Store!
Microsoft have faced criticism on the performance of Office 2013 on their new Surface RT tablets. The company went on to say that the “issue is known,” and “an update is forthcoming.” Apparently, the best way to 'fix the problem' is to update to the latest versions of all software which you have! Other users have said that has made everything better! So stay up to date!
The 4th generation iPad has been benchmarked and this one is a lot more powerful and it's packing a 1.4 GHz A6X chipset with 1GB of RAM!
The mobile phone makers Pantech have announced that they have partnered with Mocana to secure their next-gen Android smartphones and tablets! The company plans to use Mocana's VeloDAR solution which offers FIPS 140-2 certified encryption!
EE has today launched their 4G network and their new Fibre Optic home and business broadband service!
BBC iPlayer is now officially available for Sky+ viewers straight from your Sky Box!
ZTE has now officially overtaken HTC to become the world's 4th biggest smartphone manufacturer!
And finally, Rovio has offered their first video teaser of their upcoming Angry Birds Star Wars game! There's some game play in there too and it's looking pretty good! The full teaser is just below!
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