Samsung's rumoured Jelly Bean upgrade schedule.
Courtesy of SamMobile!
'Good things come to those who wait', well that's at least what you have to tell yourself unless you own a Nexus phone or tablet! Samsung though are usually pretty good at updating their phones, especially their flagship S series of devices.
With the history in mind it seems the guys over at Sam Mobile have some good news for us from their insiders. They've reported today that the Jelly Bean
firmware for the Galaxy S III has progressed passed the the testing stage and Samsung are reportedly already look to get a public version finished and approved for a late Q3/early Q4 roll-out.
For other phones there looks to be good news too. The Galaxy S II is 'still being tested for compatibility
with Jelly Bean' but at the moment everything is “looking fine”. Given the amount of this phone
Samsung has shifted and that the sales are continuing to go strong it's very likely you guys will see some 4.1 too! BUT, Sam
Mobile added that if Samsung decides not to update the device to Jelly
Bean, owners will receive a “Value Pack” in a similar fashion to what the OG Galaxy S got instead of Ice Cream Sandwich. The same goes for the Galaxy Note.
Assuming everything goes to play the S II and Note will get updated during the fourth
quarter. Interestingly the upcoming Galaxy Note II is expected to land with Ice Cream Sandwich because it has been developed wiht that in mind. But, it’s
unclear if Samsung will be able to get Jelly Bean on it for launch day. If it does
land with just Android 4.0, then a 4.1 update will be ready for Q4!
HTC rumoured to be planning a 5" Full HD smartphone!
Lately it seems that Apple and Samsung have been having the smartphone market go everyway the pair turns. Apple stick solidly to yearly release cycle in a bid to maintain their exclusivity. Samsung on the other hand have bombarded the market with every shape and size of phone imaginable. Both strategies seem to have been hugely successful.
The latter, however, have almost created their own market segment with the 'phablet' form factor. The Galaxy Note was such a successful device that Samsung's South Korean rivals, LG, were forced to offer up their own alternative, the Optimus Vu.
Not one to leave a good thing behind, Digitimes has reported that HTC's heads have been turned the same way. The rumour goes that HTC is planning to combat the upcoming Galaxy Note 2 and the new iPhone with a 5" 1080p beast!
If the rumours are to be believed then the device will have a screen with a resolution of 1794x1080 pixels (but we expect it to be 1920x1080p but the Android menu buttons occupying the spare 126 pixels). Aside from that not very much is known at all, but so far we've had benchmarks leaked in July which suggest there is indeed a phone with a 1080p screen and a Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Pro chip. The device, when tested, doubled the score of the HTC One X and also beat out the Samsung Galaxy S III by a good distance. If that wasn't enough earlier in the year BGR reported that a HTC device with a 5-inch 1080p display would land on Verizon sometime in the Fall! It's looking likely!
In other news:
- Nokia have been tipped to show off their Windows Phone 8 devices in early September. With dual-core processors and HD displays, the phones will launch just ahead of Apple's iPhone which is rumoured for a mid to late September launch.
- Samsung's long awaited Galaxy Note 10.1 productivity tablet is finally expected to hit shelves later this month with a 1.4Ghz quadcore processor and of course that
stylus, sorry S Pen. You can catch a video teaser just below!
- ARM has been busy at work on new graphics improvements for it's Mali GPU's. It's latest attempt is the Mail-T600 which promises chips with up to 8 cores and a whole new level of graphics prowess!
And finally, below is a little picture of what is widely expected to be the next iPhone 'nano-Sim tray' and my goodness it's a whole lot smaller than the, already tiny, MicroSims!
