Samsung unveils Galaxy Alpha with a new design approach

August 19th, 2014 | Edited by | hardware

Aug
19

Samsung is hoping to breathe new life into its phone lineup with a new design scheme that breaks away from the plastic, unsophisticated feel common among the company’s smartphones.
After many leaks and rumors Samsung announced the Galaxy Alpha Wednesday, calling it a “new design approach” for the company’s smartphones.
The Alpha is just below 7mm in thickness, runs Android 4.4.4, and is powered by an Exynos processor with four ARM Cortex-A15 cores running at 1.8GHz and four Cortex-A7 cores running at 1.3GHz. The screen is smaller than the current flagship Galaxy S5, measuring 4.7 inches with a resolution of 1280×720 resolution (a respectable 312 pixels per inch).
Other hardware specs include a 12-megapixel back camera and a 2.1-megapixel front-facing camera. The phone has 2GB of RAM and 32GB of internal storage, without the typical SD card slot found in many of Samsung’s other phones. The LTE modem supports download speeds up to 300 Mbps, although you’re not likely to get that kind of performance from your cellular carrier for awhile.

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Given the device’s lighter build, smaller screen size and lower-range specs it appears targeted more at potential iPhone buyers than those comparison shopping an HTC One (M8) or LG G3, as those phones feature screen sizes above five inches and sturdier construction materials.
Despite the Alpha’s new design scheme, it retains much of the the look of previous Galaxy devices, with a semi-oval home button and dimpled, removable back cover. In its release Samsung says the phone will be available in four colors, which it calls Charcoal Black, Dazzling White, Sleek Silver, and Scuba Blue. Availability will vary depending on the market.
Samsung is not done releasing phones, as it next will unveil the Galaxy Note 4 on September 3. Greenbot will be on hand for the press event in New York.
The build of that device will indicate how far Samsung is willing to take its push for a new design. Earlier in August a Samsung executive sought to console nervous investors by promising more smartphone releases that had better build quality. The company experienced its first yearly profit drop and a large stock sell off by investors.
Samsung did not reveal a specific release date or price for the Galaxy Alpha, only saying the phone would be available in early September.

Source: www.pcworld.com

‘It has to be able to fit their buttocks’: Foxconn CEO mocks curved displays on phones

July 26th, 2014 | Edited by | hardware

Jul
26

The curved displays on new smartphones coming from Korea were the target of a joke by Foxconn Technology Group’s CEO, who mocked the products as phones designed to fit the rears of consumers.
“People are talking about, wow, displays that can transform, but they forget that you have to be able to use the device,” Terry Gou said at the company’s shareholders’ meeting on Wednesday.
Both Samsung Electronics and LG have come out with smartphones built with curved screens, but Gou is less than impressed with the technology. The Taiwanese manufacturing giant assembles Apple’s iPhone and also competes in building TVs.
Gou recounted visiting the show booth of one of the Korean companies, where he asked the sales reps why the curved displays were needed.

Foxconn-ceo

“They explained that if the men want to put a large phone into their jeans, it has to be able to fit their buttocks,” he said. “This is a company ranked worldwide number 1, number 2 in displays, and their marketing is saying this.”
Gou also dismissed a sales point that the curved phones are easier to hold when making phone calls. “Do you listen to your phone, or do you look at your phone? You look at them. So if you look at them, why do you need a curved screen?” he recounted saying to the sales rep. “If it’s a curved screen, then you won’t be able to see the display clearly.”
It’s not the first time Gou has taken a job at his Korean competitors. He has reportedly vowed to beat Samsung in the display business.
Despite Gou’s complaints, some critics are liking the curved displays found on the phones. “The bend in its body actually makes it easier to hold,” wrote TechHive of LG’s G Flex phone, adding, “It makes the phone feel more ‘premium’ than it actually is.”
Foxconn plans to respond to its rivals with its own smartphone innovations. On Wednesday, Gou said the company was developing one such handset built with a 35-megapixel camera that sits flat on a device’s surface. “If you want a 35-megapixel camera on a phone now, you need to buy it as an attachment,” he said. “What we are working on will be flat.”

Source: www.pcworld.com

AMD steers clear of low-cost tablet market

April 29th, 2014 | Edited by | hardware

Apr
29

Advanced Micro Devices doesn’t want its chips in low-priced tablets, and is eager to avoid a battle with Intel or ARM, whose chips have driven tablet prices down to under $100.
Growth in the tablet market is driven by low-end devices and Android, but AMD’s tablet strategy is driven by Windows and high-performance machines. So AMD’s avoidance of the low end of the market narrows options for people looking for name-brand chips in low-price machines.
AMD chips are in just a handful of tablet models. Those AMD chips that are available for tablets are essentially watered-down PC chips with strong graphics capabilities. But the company plans to introduce new chips, code-named Beema and Mullins, for tablets These new chips are based on a new core and designed to provide more performance and battery life.
“If we miss out on some units in the low end, so be it,” said Lisa Su, general manager of AMD’s global business units, during the first-quarter earnings call on Thursday.

amd

No subsidies for AMD

AMD executives said they didn’t want to buy their way into the tablet market like Intel, which has been subsidizing tablet makers to use its x86 chips through its “contra revenue” program. Instead, AMD wants to be selective in its product mix, and focus on high-margin and high-value products.
“This idea of contra revenue is foreign to us,” said Rory Read, CEO of AMD, during the call.
AMD could go after tablets priced at $300, but won’t go under that, said Nathan Brookwood, principal analyst at Insight 64.
“They are not chasing bad business,” Brookwood said.
AMD doesn’t have the financial resources to provide subsidies to tablet makers to use its chips, Brookwood said.
Though the tablet market is important, AMD is more concerned about generating revenue from custom chips and other areas, Brookwood said.
AMD makes custom chips for game consoles like Microsoft’s Xbox One and Sony’s PlayStation 4, which helped drive up revenue by 28 percent in the first fiscal quarter of 2014. AMD’s revenue in the PC, server and tablet chip business declined.
Addressing the wide tablet market isn’t a good idea for AMD and its bottom line, said Dean McCarron, principal analyst at Mercury Research. AMD is directing more resources out of tablets and into consoles, where there is more financial reward, McCarron said.

AMD needs big customers

But it does need one or two big customers to help their tablet business, he said.
“They are being very judicious in what part of the product stack they are playing in,” McCarron said. “They are working on home-run customers.”
A $200 million chip deal is big for AMD, but peanuts for a company like Intel, McCarron said.
Intel also has its own factories and can afford to subsidize chips. AMD gets its chips made from contract chip manufacturers like GlobalFoundries.
Intel is looking to ship 40 million tablet chips this year, and this week reported it had shipped 5 million tablet chips in the first fiscal quarter. The tablet market is currently favorable to ARM, so Intel has to provide subsidies and incentives to device makers in an effort to establish x86 chips.
And just like in PCs, AMD could simply piggyback Intel’s success and make its way into the x86-friendly tablet market.
“It isn’t the first time that’s happened,” Brookwood said. “But I don’t think they want to do that.”

Source: www.pcworld.com

Look at this: The first 4K laptop, Toshiba’s Satellite P55t, coming soon

April 26th, 2014 | Edited by | hardware

Apr
26

Open your pocketbooks, 4K fans, Toshiba’s first Ultra HD laptop is headed your way next Tuesday. The Tokyo-based electronics maker just announced that the Toshiba Satellite P55t will hit U.S. store shelves on April 22, starting at $1,500 for the base model.
For all that cash you’ll get a 15.6-inch laptop with a quad-core Intel Core i7 processor (no word on the specific model), up to 16GB RAM, an AMD Radeon R9 M265X discrete graphics card with 2GB RAM, and a 1TB hard drive. Other niceties include Windows 8.1, four USB 3.0 ports, backlit keyboard, SD card slot, 802.11ac Wi-Fi, HDMI out, and some brand name speakers from Harman Kardon.
But the big feature for the P55t is the laptop’s screen resolution, which is 3840-by-2160 with 282 pixels per inch. Astute 4K fans will note that Toshiba’s new clamshell is using the Ultra HD version of 4K and not the 4096-by-2160 resolution favored by the film industry and available on some external monitors.

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In addition to its Ultra HD resolution, Toshiba’s laptop earned Technicolor Color Certification, promising more natural-looking colors and “true-to-life imagery.” Toshiba is also bundling a free copy of Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 5 to take advantage of all that ‘glorious Technicolor.’
One of the letdowns with the P55t may be Toshiba’s choice of storage. The company’s announcement didn’t once mention the possibility of upgrading that 1TB HDD for a screaming SSD option.
Perhaps if you’re doing media work, a 1TB hard drive is preferable for storing large, image-intensive files. For anyone ready to shell out high-end money for their home PC, however, the lack of an SSD option is a bit of a bummer. Then again it’s nothing that a screwdriver, patience, and a DIY mentality can’t fix.
Toshiba is the first company out of the gate with a laptop loaded with 4K, but it won’t be the last. During CES in January, Lenovo was showing off an Ultra HD option for the upcoming Y50 gaming laptop. Other companies are also sure to jump on the 4K laptop party train following a rash of 4K PC monitors announced over the past 12 months from companies including Asus, Dell, and Sharp.
But do you want 4K on your laptop? 4K may be a great idea for cinematic screens at the movie theater, and I can even get behind 4K on some of the larger televisions. But shoving more pixels into a small display that is already densely packed at 1080p? Color me skeptical.

Plastic computers taking shape, but won’t replace silicon

April 24th, 2014 | Edited by | hardware

Apr
24

Can plastic materials morph into computers? A research breakthrough published this week brings such a possibility closer to reality.

Researchers are looking at the possibility of making low-power, flexible and inexpensive computers out of plastic materials. Plastic is not normally a good conductive material. However, researchers said this week that they have solved a problem related to reading data.
The research, which involved converting electricity from magnetic film to optics so data could be read through plastic material, was conducted by researchers at the University of Iowa and New York University. A paper on the research was published in this week’s Nature Communications journal.
More research is needed before plastic computers become practical, acknowledged Michael Flatte, professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Iowa. Problems related to writing and processing data need to be solved before plastic computers can be commercially viable.
Plastic computers, however, could conceivably be used in smartphones, sensors, wearable products, small electronics or solar cells, Flatte said.

shutterstock

What would they do?

The computers would have basic processing, data gathering and transmission capabilities but won’t replace silicon used in the fastest computers today. However, the plastic material could be cheaper to produce as it wouldn’t require silicon fab plants, and possibly could supplement faster silicon components in mobile devices or sensors.
“The initial types of inexpensive computers envisioned are things like RFID, but with much more computing power and information storage, or distributed sensors,” Flatte said. One such implementation might be a large agricultural field with independent temperature sensors made from these devices, distributed at hundreds of places around the field, he said.
The research breakthrough this week is an important step in giving plastic computers the sensor-like ability to store data, locally process the information and report data back to a central computer.
Mobile phones, which demand more computing power than sensors, will require more advances because communication requires microwave emissions usually produced by higher-speed transistors than have been made with plastic.
It’s difficult for plastic to compete in the electronics area because silicon is such an effective technology, Flatte acknowledged. But there are applications where the flexibility of plastic could be advantageous, he said, raising the possibility of plastic computers being information processors in refrigerators or other common home electronics.
“This won’t be faster or smaller, but it will be cheaper and lower power, we hope,” Flatte said.

PLastic OLEDs

In the new research, Flatte and his colleagues were able to convert data encoded in a magnetic film from an electric flow into optics for an organic light-emitting diode (OLED). The LED was made out of the plastic, and connected to the magnetic film through a substrate. Plastics can’t handle electricity; the data had to be converted into optics for communication.
“The plastic devices are very important in certain areas of light emission but have tended not to be important in communication,” Flatte said.
The researchers were more concerned about making the technology happen—environmental concerns related to plastic are a completely different discussion, Flatte said.
To be sure, there are plastic devices with silicon computers in them already on the market, like a baby garment from Rest Devices, which has electronics to measure a baby’s motion, temperature, breathing patterns and pulse. And before this week, basic transistors made out of plastic had been demonstrated. Now, this latest research establishes a method for plastic devices to read data from storage.
“The writing problem would have to be solved. But I think [reading] is an important step forward,” Flatte said.

Source: www.pcworld.com

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