Microsoft's new ad pokes fun at Samsung and Apple fans. Their solution is switching to Lumia!

   Microsoft have been doing their level best to get their Windows Phone platform out there lately. Windows Phone 7 was a good start and Windows Phone 8 carried on the good work, but the one thing they really need to make their platform a success is to convince a lot more people to 'switch'. 

   With that in mind the two obvious places to target are those people who are thinking about either picking up an iPhone or one of Samsung's Galaxy range of smartphones. Both of those groups have a big set of fans and if you read the comments sections on posts then you'll quite often see their fans squabbling. That's something which Microsoft have picked up on and their latest advert, set at a wedding, captures the mood rather well.

   As the ceremony gets under way both sides pull out their phones to capture the special moment, one Samsung owner is asked rather impolitely to get his 'enormous' phone out of the way, before a war of words kicks off. The retort 'enormously awesome' is thrown out, before S-Beam, Siri and the stereotypical age of iPhone users are all brought into the fray, just like the normal 'iSheep' and 'CopyBot' remarks too!

   One of our personal favourites in this ad is where a Galaxy user says, 'Autocorrect this', before proceeding to start a brawl, during which an iPhone user is thrown into the cake and asked 'is there an app for that?' which also made us chuckle.

   When all is said and done a pair of brightly coloured Nokia Lumia 920's are held out by the catering staff with the ultimate suggestion being 'Don't fight. Switch'. Will this ad be enough to stop the slide in Lumia sales in the US lately? Possibly not, but it's a good fun advert which certainly hits the mark!

Via TheVerge.

Read More

12/11/2012: HTC and Apple sign a licensing deal, Samsung bumps Apple's processors price up 20%, Surface sales have been 'modest' and much, much more!

HTC and Apple put their differences aside with a new patent deal.

   Over the weekend the news broke that HTC and Apple have agree a ten-year licensing deal which will see both companies end their lawsuits against each other. Both companies cited their intentions to innovate instead of litigate from this point forward. The two companies put out press releases that look like this:

“HTC and Apple have reached a global settlement that includes the dismissal of all current lawsuits and a ten-year license agreement”.  

“HTC is pleased to have resolved its dispute with Apple, so HTC can focus on innovation instead of litigation,” said Peter Chou, CEO of HTC. 

“We are glad to have reached a settlement with HTC,” said Tim Cook, CEO of Apple. “We will continue to stay laser focused on product innovation.”

   Initially details were short on where money was changing hands but Sterne Agee analyst Shaw Wu went on to say that 'multiple industry sources [believe] that HTC has agreed to pay Apple $6-$8 in licensing fees for each Android phone it sells. Wu estimates that could work out to be between $180-$280 million paid to Apple annually, given that HTC is expected to ship 30 million-35 million Android smartphones in 2013'. To be totally honest this seems like a cheap easy way for HTC to stay out of trouble. They aren't a company well known for having a big arsenal of patents but this is one way to end the problems other mobile manufacturers have been seeing lately!

Via Slashgear and Mashable.

In other news:

• RIM have scheduled the Blackberry 10 launch event for January 30th! The company says the event will take place at the same time the world over and we'll be getting to see two new devices. These will probably be the N and L-series device which we've seen leaked before! Via Blackberry Blog.

• Nokia's beautiful new Lumia 920 is available to residents of the UK sim-free, in case you don't fancy EE, from Clove. You can get it for £520 here.

• Google and Acer have announced a new Chromebook which will be available straight from Google tomorrow. It's the C7 and it'll set you back either $199 or £199. The main change with this model over Samsung's offering is that this one rocks and Intel chipset instead of an ARM one and before you ask yes you get your 2 years 200GB Google Drive allowance! You can find a lot more details here!

• Reuter's had said today that Microsoft regards their initial sales of Surface tablets as 'modest' thus far. Steve Ballmer said "We've had a modest start because Surface is only available on our online retail sites and a few Microsoft stores in the United States." We'll have to wait and see if he's right in the long run, after all the Surface tablets have been received very well so far!

• Last week there was a lot of hullabaloo about whether or not T-Mobile USA's version  of the Nexus 4 would support Wifi calling. It turns out that it will NOT, sorry guys! Via CNET.

• Sammobile have got wind that Samsung will be able to use full HD AMOLED panels in their smartphones from next year. The previous suggestions were that HD LCD screens were more likely given how much easier they are to produce at the moment. The new AMOLED screens are reported to use 'FMM technology' and have a maximum pixel destiny of a staggering 440ppi, which would give a whole new meaning to Retina! Hopefully we'll see this in next years Galaxy S and Note! Via Sammobile.

• Samsung has reportedly started charging Apple 20% more for their A-series processors which power their iPad's and iPhones. The Verge said this is 'a major change in that relationship... [and] the Korean daily notes that this is the first time Samsung has sought to increase pricing on the processors that go inside Apple's mobile devices, and that Apple, faced with a lack of alternatives, has accepted Samsung's demands'. Given Apple's choice to take so much of their business else where in recent times perhaps this is Samsung's way of 'getting their own back, we're not so sure it was a smart move, especially given how sour the relationship is already between the two giants!

• There's been a few rumours flying around today that Apple may be preparing an iPhone 5 and yet another new iPad for the first half of 2013! We're going to take this one with a huge pinch of salt because Apple is well known for it's yearly release cycle and we can't see them breaking it. After all the iPad was only updated because of the new charging port which the iPhone 5 brought with it. We'll let you know if this one develops! Via PhoneArena.

• @EVLeaks has been at it again. This time they've got a snap of Verizon and Samsung's upcoming ATIV Odyssey! From what we can see it looks like another variant of Samsung's normal ATIV S. But, we'll have to wait and see!

Samsung ATIV Odyssey (SCH-I930) for Verizon twitter.com/evleaks/status…
— @evleaks (@evleaks) November 12, 2012

And finally, Nokia's new Lumia 920 got drop tested today. What are your predictions? We didn't have high hopes. Spoiler alert! We'd love to have seen what would have happened had it been dropped on the screen! Via GadJade.

Read More

Nokia takes a stab at the iPhone 5: Calls it boring!

   Sometimes the underdog needs something to make their products sell well. Apple used to be the underdog, they used the uniqueness of their iPhone and the lure of exclusivity from the premium price tags to convince millions of users to join their iOS army.

Read More

So what if EE's announcement included this?

   

There was a huge amount of discontent from everyone, except Orange and T-Mobile, the other week when OFCOM officially gave the pair permission to roll out LTE on their existing spare spectrum. A move which gave the duo a monopoly on LTE services for the best part of a year.

   If these rumours are correct then the threats of legal action are going to be very real and there will be very heated debates after the press conference tomorrow!

   The rumours run that tomorrow Everything Everywhere will officially open up their 4G LTE service to consumers. There will be a rollout from tomorrow until Christmas, by which time 98% of the population will have access to these services! 98% in 3months, now that is impressive! It's worth considering that this will be a phased turn on, much like the recent digital switch over so you won't necessarily have the service from day 1!

   On top of this the upcoming iPhone will have LTE, it's pretty much a banker. So if we have EE with the only LTE network in the country then we can put two and two together and we have an EE exclusive on an LTE iPhone in the UK!!!!

   Ohh, you remember the Nokia Lumia 920 and 820, well they will come with LTE too and there's been a lot of rumours of that EE is looking to get exclusives on these too. It seems most people are expecting to see this too!

   And finally, the word is that Everything Everywhere will officially be shortened to EE. Short and effective. But, we'll have to see what tomorrow holds for official confirmation of all of this!




Via DigitalSpy, The Daily Telegraph, The Independent.

Read More

05/09/2012

Nokia's Lumia 820 and 920 become official!

   After a tonne of leaks of these two phone this week today we officially know! The first of which is the Lumia 920, the new high end offering.

  That body is a new glossy finish, instead of the beautiful matte of the Lumia 800 and 900 predecessors. On the plus side Nokia is offering more colors out of the gate in this round, with the yellow getting particular love at the press conference. Thankfully knows the importance of a good screen and this one has a resolution running at 1,280 x 768, just slightly better than 720p on a 4.5" screen. This screen makes colours pop and still manages to have inky blacks. Under the hood there's a 1.5Ghz Snapdragon S4!

   The new Windows Phone 8 homescreen tiles stand out sharply and the whole minimalism of the UI looks great on the advanced LCD. The Lumia 920 will be offered in yellow, red, grey, white, and black, but we don't know anything about pricing just yet!

  The Nokia Lumia 820, on the other hand, will come in red, yellow, grey, cyan, purple, white, and black. Interestingly it's not really that much of a downgrade from the Lumia 920 apart from in terms of screen and size! 

   There is a 4.3-inch 480 x 800 screen which is solid but not amazing for these day, the same 1.5 GHz dual-core Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 processor in it's bigger sibling, 1GB of RAM, and 8 megapixel camera only this one doesn’t feature their PureView technology. And yes there is wireless charging!!! Nokia will offer removable back covers for those wanting to cut the cord.

   The Lumia 820 comes with an exchangeable shell design. Exchangeable shells not only make it possible to select from a range of colors, but also to add wireless charging. Finally Windows Phone 8 now supports micro-SD for expanded storage. The only downside seems to be that 480 x 800 resolution display and this is a great mid-range device.

In other news:

• Nokia has now shifted 7 million Lumia devices! 4 Million of those were moved in the last quarter!

• Apple's next iPhone is reportedly getting a notably bigger battery to power the LTE!

• EC approves UK mobile wallet scheme from EE, Vodafone and O2, despite Google complaints!

• Samsung Galaxy Note II put up for pre-order for mid-September here in the UK.

Read More

31/08/2012

Are these two of Nokia's new Windows Phone 8 devices?

   Given last weeks Apple vs Samsung ruling, quite a lot of people have been turning to Microsoft to see what their upcoming Windows Phone 8 will be running on. Yesterday we saw what Samsung had planned, that was the ATIV S and it was stunnning! Not to be out done it seems someone has been digging around at Nokia and the results of that are two new phones.

   The first is reportedly called the Lumia 920 and will feature a 4.5" screen and some of Nokia's much heralded Pureview camera tech, but it's safe to assume that it won't be a 41MP sensor this time! This one is the device pictured above.

   The second phone is the Lumia 820 and as we expected isn't quite as premium as the 920. But, you won't get the PureView branding, but an LED flash is a banker if the the leaked photo is accurate. The tipster also notes that there's a 4.3-inch display but we don't know if the resolution will be HD yet!

Huawei Ascend G600 released!

   That phone in the picture above is Huawei's latest foray into the smartphone market, the G600. Yes it looks like both the Samsung Galaxy S2 and the LG Optimus 4X HD and the specs sheet puts it near enough on par with the former.

   The phone touts, as two of it's key features, Android 4.0 and an eight-megapixel auto focusing rear camera. On top of that there's a pair of speakers with DTS surround sound, a solid 4.5-inch IPS LCD screen with a resolution of 960 x 540. The phone has a 1.2 GHz dual-core processor from Qualcomm, that'll happily power most things you throw at. Don't worry about this chipset draining the battery though as the large 1930 mAh lithium polymer battery will get you through most of the day and it'll charge from nothing to full in around four hours. The phone promises to start quickly with power on in only 5 second!

   The phone has a number of other features including; Wi-Fi Direct, Bluetooth, NFC and DLNA compatibility. Storage is ok too because there is 768 MB of RAM and 4 GB of ROM storage. But, don't worry you can put up to 32GB's of extra storage in with the MicroSD card slot!

   And just for the record there's white and black varieties coming and the phone will be available this autumn!

In other news:

• Apple's upcoming iPhone might be facing a slight delay because one of the three screen producers, Sharp, is having issues pumping out enough of the custom screens to meet Apple's huge demand. This might not be true but brace yourself for limited availability when the phone launches!

• Google's efforts to create a driveless car have been acknowledged in California as the State has now said it is legal to drive(?) the cars on the road!

• Since Facebook's stock market floatation things haven't exactly gone swimmingly, quite the opposite. Today things got a little worse too as their predicted revenue for 2012 got chopped down by $1billion!!!

• Huawei's MediaPad 10 FHD will ship globally in September complete with it's 1920x1200 screen and it's keyboard dock!

• Apple vs Samsung rumbles on with Samsung promising to sue Apple if they have any sort of implementation of LTE on their upcoming iPhone (Sammy owns about 10% of the world's LTE patents) but this might be FRAND technology. Also, Japan is struggling to find any patent infringement which is good news for Samsung!

• Also, it seems Apple and Google have sat down together for patent talks, but there's nothing more to say about it than that there is more meetings to come!

Read More