HTC unveils Desire 816, Desire 610

 By: Unknown    Tuesday, February 25, 2014     No comments

Taiwanese device maker HTC has launched two new mid-range Android smartphones at the Mobile World Congress, the Desire 816 and Desire 610.

The Desire 816 features a 5.5-inch display with a resolution of 720 X 1280p. The phone is powered by a 1.6GHz quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 400, and 1.5GB RAM. The phone comes with 8GB internal storage expandable through a microSD card. It sports BoomSound front stereo speakers just like the HTC One.

The Desire 816 sports a 13MP, f/2.2 rear camera that can capture 1080p video and a 5MP front facing camera. The phone comes with Bluetooth 4.0, WiFi and GPS connectivity options and support for 4G LTE. It is backed by a 2,600mAh battery and comes with a nano-sim slot. The phone will be available starting April.

The HTC Desire 610 on the other hand, features a 4.7-inch qHD (540 X 960p) display. The phone is powered by a 1.2GHz quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 400, and 1GB RAM. It comes with 8GB internal storage expandable through a microSD card and sports BoomSound front stereo speakers.

The Desire 610 sports an 8MP camera that can capture 720p video and a 1.3MP front facing camera. The phone comes with Bluetooth 4.0, WiFi and GPS connectivity options and support for 4G LTE. It is backed by a 2,040mAh battery. The phone will debut across Europe in May.

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How to sort apps by name in iPad

 By: Unknown    Tuesday, February 25, 2014     No comments

You can manually rearrange the apps on the iPad's home screen pretty much any way you would like. If you just want to alphabetize all the programmes you have installed on the tablet yourself, there is a quicker way. Start by tapping the Settings icon on the home screen.
On the Settings screen, tap General on the left side. The collection of General settings appears on the right half of the screen, so scroll down to Reset at the bottom of the list. Tap Reset and then tap "Reset Home Screen Layout." You will get an alert box warning that your home screen will be set back to factory defaults. Tap the Reset button.
When you press the iPad's Home button to leave the Settings area, you will see all of Apple's default apps for the iPad in their outof-the-box arrangement on the first home screen. Flip to the next screen, however, and all of your downloaded and purchased apps are now in alphabetical order.
If you would like to fine-tune the placement and sort your apps by hand, you can do it that way instead. Just press and hold your finger on an app's icon for a few seconds until all the icons on the screen begin to gently wiggle. In this mode, you can drag apps and bookmark icons to new locations on the screen with your finger, or delete them from the tablet by tapping the "x" in the corner. When you are satisfied with the arrangement, press the Home button to stop the wiggling icons and return to normal home screen operation.
If you use iTunes to manage iPad files, you can use it to rearrange the apps on your home screen.

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Samsung launches Gear Fit wearable device

 By: Unknown    Tuesday, February 25, 2014     No comments

Samsung has launched Gear Fit, a Super AMOLED wearable fitness tracker device at the Mobile World Congress. It is different from the two Tizen operating system-based smartwatches announced by the company on Sunday.

Samsung Gear Fit offers a custom, real-time fitness coaching to provide personalized advice and workout recommendations. It features a pedometer, accelerometer, Gyro and Heart Rate sensors.

Offering a Super AMOLED display, the Gear Fit offers additional functionality such as providing instant notifications from Galaxy smartphones for incoming calls, emails, SMS, alarm, S-planner, and other third party apps. The device is rated IP67 for water and dust resistance.

The Gear Fit's straps are changeable and come in black, orange and mocha grey colours. It will be available globally starting April.

Samsung also showcased the Gear 2 at the event. Gear 2 will be available in two variants, namely the Gear 2 and Gear 2 Neo, with the latter being an economy version.

Samsung has dropped the Galaxy branding as the new smartwatch does not run on Android. Instead, it is powered by Tizen, the Linux-based operating system developed by Samsung with Intel. The Gear 2 is one of the first commercially available Tizen devices.

Just like the Galaxy Gear, the Gear 2 also sports a 1.63-inch Super AMOLED display(320 X 320p), and is powered by a 1GHz dual-core processor and 512MB RAM. It has 4GB internal storage and features Accelerometer, Gyroscope and heart rate sensors. Galaxy Gear did not have a heart rate sensor. It also features an IrLED port, allowing it to be used as a universal remote control.

Gear 2 sports a 2MP camera which is mounted on the front unlike the Galaxy Gear's camera which was placed on the strap. The Gear 2 Neo does not come with a camera. Gear 2 Neo is made of plastic while the Gear 2 has a metal face.

Both the variants of Gear 2 are IP67 certified water and dust-resistant.

While the user interface of the Gear 2 looks similar to the Galaxy Gear in the press shots, it is not known if the Galaxy Gear apps will be compatible with Gear 2. The watch has the ability to store and play music without being connected to a smartphone.

Samsung says the Gear 2 and Gear 2 Neo will be compatible with over a dozen Samsung Galaxy smartphones at the time of launch, suggesting wider compatibility compared to the Galaxy Gear which was compatible with a handful of high-end Samsung smartphones only.

Gear 2 will be available in charcoal black, gold brown and wild orange colours while the Gear 2 Neo will be available in charcoal black, mocha grey and wild orange. It will be available around the world starting April though Samsung has not revealed the pricing.

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WhatsApp's worth is more than $19 billion, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg says

 By: Unknown    Tuesday, February 25, 2014     No comments

Billionaire Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg defended his huge $19 billion takeover of free mobile messaging service WhatsApp, saying it is actually worth much more.

The 29-year-old Facebook chief announced the stock and cash purchase on Wednesday, a deal that marries his social network of 1.2 billion active users with Whatsapp's 450 million users.

Asked about the price tag during an on-stage discussion at the February 24-27 Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, Zuckerberg said WhatsApp was attractive as a company by itself, and as a strategic fit with Facebook.

"I just think that by itself it is worth more than $19 billion [14-billion-euro]," said Zuckerberg, wearing a grey t-shirt, sneakers and black trousers.

"I mean it is hard to exactly make that speech today because they have so little revenue compared to that number," he conceded.

"But the reality is that there are very few services that reach a billion people in the world. They are all incredibly valuable, much more valuable than that," he added.

"I could be wrong. This could be the one service that gets to a billion people and ends up not being that valuable. I don't think I am."

Other Android messaging applications such as KakaoTalk, Vine and WeChat were already bringing in two to three dollars a person "with pretty early efforts", he said.

"That shows that if we can do a pretty good job of helping WhatsApp to grow then this is just going to be a huge business," Zuckerberg said.

"So even just independently I think it is quite a good bet." In partnership with Facebook, WhatsApp can focus on connecting "one, two, three billion people over the next however long that is going to take," Zuckerberg said.

The Facebook boss said he and WhatsApp founder Jan Koum shared a vision of connecting everyone in the world to the Internet, delivering development benefits and in the longer term profits, too.

Zuckerberg said Facebook planned to leave the WhatsApp service unchanged.

"WhatsApp doesn't store the content," he said. "We would be pretty silly to get in the way of that."

Hours earlier, WhatsApp's Koum said the messaging service would launch free voice calls by mid-year, putting it on a par with key competitor Viber which already does so.

He, too, stressed that Facebook did not plan to change WhatsApp. "Mark really understands that for WhatsApp to be successful it really needs to stay independent," he said.

Zuckerberg has come a long way in the mobile world in a short time. When Facebook sold its shares to the public in an initial public offering in May 2012, "it literally had no mobile advertising revenues", said Eden Zoller, analyst at the research house Ovum.

"It did actually have a pretty strong mobile user base at IPO but what it had failed to do at that time was actually monetise those mobile users," she said.

At the time of the float, worries over the lack of money coming in from the mobile business sent Facebook's shares sliding.

But the social network -- boasting more than 1.2 billion members -- quickly repaired its strategy.

By the end of 2013, mobile devices accounted for 53% of Facebook's advertising revenue, bringing in $1.2 billion in the last quarter and more than $3 billion over the whole year.

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Samsung Galaxy S5's killer camera feature – speed

 By: Unknown    Tuesday, February 25, 2014     No comments

Samsung has never been a leader when it comes to smartphone cameras but with the Galaxy S5, it's taken a step forward. It has nothing to do with megapixels - instead it's all about that weird-sounding feature called 'phase-detect' autofocus, which allows the camera to focus in just 0.3 seconds. Samsung claims that's the fastest in the world, and it could seriously change how you use the camera.

We've tested basically every smartphone camera, and it's astounding how quickly their quality has been improving over the years. Low-light quality has never been better, and in recent years, the megapixel count has been soaring, without seeing any of the corresponding loss in image quality you'd expect.

One thing we haven't heard a lot of - but you can expect to now - is claims about how fast a camera is. Think about how important speed is. If your buddy slips and falls embarrassingly, you want to be able to whip out your camera and snap the picture as quickly as possible, before the shock leaves their faces and they've got time to recover. You want to get the hilarious agony of the moment.

The Samsung Galaxy S5 has a higher resolution camera 16MP camera, but what's really important is that as far as we can tell (tell us if we're wrong!), it's the first camera on a smartphone to use phase-detect autofocus. Traditionally, digital cameras that don't have a mirrorbox - ie, point-and-shoots and mirrorless cameras use contrast detection autofocus. In this method, the contrast between nearby pixels is measured, and the camera's lens is adjusted until this contrast is maximized. This system has a lot of drawbacks: it's coarse, it's slow, and - more importantly - in situations where there's not a lot of contrast (or light) in a scene to begin with, it doesn't work very well.

Phase detection autofocus was commonly used on SLR cameras with mirrors, but it's only started trickling into mirroless cameras over the last couple of years, as part of the "hybrid" systems that enable shooters like the Sony A6000 to focus crazy fast. The contrast detect autofocus gets you close, but the fine adjustment is performed by phase detection which compares the actual light received by the sensors, rather than just the contrast.

In the real world, you can't underestimate the important of shooting with a fast AF system. It's one of the most important features we test when we're reviewing cameras. You're probably familiar with the experience of a camera that "hunts" for focus-moving in and out of clarity until it settles on the best spot. You've also probably noticed the frustration that occurs when you've got an autofocus hunts and then settles on a spot that's totally wrong, as if it just gave up. The new phase detection will help remedy some of this frustration.

Or rather it should help, assuming it works properly. We'll have to wait and see how well this new phase detection works on the camera when we've had the chance to test it out in real life.

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#MWC2014: Samsung unveils water-resistant Galaxy S5, to launch in April

 By: Unknown    Tuesday, February 25, 2014     No comments

Samsung on Tuesday announced the Galaxy S5, its new flagship Android smartphone with an Apple iPhone 5S-like biometric sensor button. The phone is dust and water-resistant, sports a faster camera and offers fitness-related features.

The Galaxy S5, which was unveiled at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, will be available in 150 countries, including India, on April 11. However, the company did not announce the price of the new smartphone.

It sports a slightly larger 5.1-inch Super AMOLED (1080 X 1920p) display which looks similar to that of the Galaxy S4.

Powered by a 2.5GHz quad-core processor and 2GB RAM, the Galaxy S5 will come in 16GB and 32GB internal storage variants, which will be expandable up to 64GB through microSD card."With the Galaxy S5, Samsung is going back to basics to focus on delivering the capabilities that matter most to our consumers," said JK Shin, president and head of IT & mobile communications division at Samsung. "Galaxy S5 represents an iconic design with essential and useful features to focus on delivering the ultimate smartphone in the market today through people inspired innovation."

While acknowledging the market murmur about lesser-than-expected sales of Galaxy S4, Shin revealed that Samsung had so far sold over 200 million units of Galaxy S series phones. Galaxy S4 was launched in the summer of 2013. It has faced tough competition from the likes of Apple iPhone 5 and 5S, LG G2, HTC One and Sony Xperia Z1.

Usually, Samsung launches flagship Galaxy phone every year after World Mobile Congress (MWC). But, this year, the company announced Galaxy S5 at the MWC because it wants to replace Galaxy S4 as soon as possible.

In Galaxy S5, Samsung has introduced several unique features aimed at fitness conscious users in a bid to steal Apple's thunder. It is widely rumoured that the iPhone maker will launch the successor of iPhone 5S with a clutch of health and fitness-related features."With the enhanced S Health 3.0, the Galaxy S5 offers more tools to help people stay fit and well. It provides a comprehensive personal fitness tracker to help users monitor and manage their behaviour, along with additional tools, including a pedometer, diet and exercise records, and a new, built-in heart rate monitor," said a Samsung spokesperson.

"Galaxy S5 users can further customize their experience with an enriched third party app ecosystem and the ability to pair with next-generation Gear products for real-time fitness coaching,"

Another highlight of the phone is a new iPhone-like fingerprint sensor integrated with the phone's home button. The finger scanner will offer a biometric screen-locking feature and mobile payment experience to consumers.

The Galaxy S5 sports a 16MP rear camera and a 2.1MP front-facing camera. The rear camera is capable of capturing 4K video at 30 frames per second. Samsung claimed the Galaxy S5 offers the world's fastest auto-focus speed up to 0.3 seconds.

The smartphone runs on Android 4.4.2 KitKat, the latest version of Google's mobile operating system. It is IP67 certified dust and water-resistant. The back panel of the phone sports a dimpled soft-touch cover, similar to the Nexus 7(2012) tablet.

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