Maimpok

Australian Android device buyers that haven’t purchased a new smartphone in a while will be happy to hear that there’s a new device heading to Telstra in the following days, the Samsung Galaxy S3 4G.
Okay, so maybe the handset is not so new, considering that it’s just the 4G LTE version of the Galaxy S3 launched by Samsung this summer, but the carrier is finally ready to offer this particular model to its subscribers.

In addition to true 4G LTE capabilities and the regular specs and features you’d expect from the Galaxy S3, this Australian version also happens to come with Android 4.1 Jelly Bean on board, which is one more reason to purchase it. In case you’re wondering, Telestra’s Galaxy S3 4G will pack Samsung’s quad-core Exynos processor and will offer buyers “built-in HD Voice support.”.
The handset, launching on October 9, will be available in Titanium Gray and Onyx Black. Pricing starts at $144 for the handset – “$6 handset repayment per month” – when purchased with either a monthly $60 Every Day Connect Plan of a $60 Business Performance Plan. Naturally, these are both two-year contracts, and each one offers “$600 worth of standard national calls and MMS plus unlimited text messages to standard Australian numbers and 1GB of data for use in Australia.” More expensive plans are also available.
Are you buying the Galaxy S3 4G in just over a week from now?

The Nexus-related news keep coming in these days, which is only natural considering that every Android fan and their grandmother expect Google to unveil at least one new Nexus smartphone in the coming months if not more. Of those, we keep hearing about a Samsung GT-I9260 handset, whose model number is awfully close to last year’s Galaxy Nexus (GT-I9250).

The Leaks

We’ve seen the GT-I9260 in several leaks so far, with various sources spotting it in a number of instances. Naturally, the device is not official yet and we have a plethora of names for it: the Galaxy Nexus 2, Galaxy Premier, Galaxy Nexus Premier and Galaxy Nexus Plus. Of those, the last two name versions seem more credible because we’d be surprised to see Samsung use “Nexus 2” in any name combination for its devices and because “Galaxy Premier” is not exactly a suitable name for a Nexus device.
The Galaxy Nexus Plus can be spotted right away when going to Carphone Warehouse’s site (thanks to our tipster). Once you try to trade-in your Galaxy Nexus handset – just type in Galaxy Nexus on this page here – you’ll notice how two choices appear: the Samsung Korea GT-I250 / Galaxy Nexus (the current model) and the Samsung Korea GT-I9260 / Galaxy Nexus Plus (the Galaxy Nexus 2 we keep talking about).
Sure, this is a mistake made by the staff of the UK electronics retailer. The same staff put up a trade-in page for the Galaxy Nexus Plus (see image below) but the handset can’t be ordered just yet. In fact, searching for the handset on the site will not return any results.
A few days ago, we saw a few images captured with the camera of the Galaxy Nexus 2. The images, uploaded on Picasa, revealed that they were taken with the GT-I9260 and shared some details about the camera’s characteristics.
Before that, the User Agent Profile of the GT-I9260 has popped up, basically confirming that Samsung is working on a new Galaxy Nexus version, the “Superior” version we heard of back in August.

Specs and features

Although the GT-I9260 is likely to be a Nexus-branded handset, it doesn’t mean we’re looking at a flagship device by this year’s standards. In fact, should Samsung launch it as the Galaxy Nexus Plus, then we can only expect it to feature a limited number of improvements, just like other Samsung smartphone “Plus” versions did before it.
There’s isn’t a clear set of specs and features yet for the device, but here’s what’s expected of the device:

• 4.65-inch Super AMOLED HD display
• 1.5GHz Cortex-A9 dual-core processor
• 8-megapixel camera with f/2.65 aperture and 4mm focal length
• 16GB storage
• microSD support
• Android 4.1 Jelly Bean

When it comes to design elements, common sense suggests that the handset will be rather similar to its predecessor, but we wouldn’t be surprised to see Samsung try to include some of the design lines of the Galaxy S3 / Galaxy Note 2 in this new Nexus, especially considering its ongoing legal squabble with Apple.
It’s worth noting that we’re only speculating on the design of the GT-I9260 for now, as we don’t have any leaked images of the handset.

Release date and pricing

We have no idea really when this device will hit stores, but considering what we know about the Galaxy Nexus’ launch, and its delayed release especially in the U.S. last year, we would expect the handset to hit stores by the end of 2012, with European markets likely to get it before North American ones. As for pricing, the Galaxy Nexus Plus could be launched for $99 on contract, considering the price of its predecessor (currently available for $349 unlocked), but also the fact that the Galaxy S3 is still a hot handset, already selling for less than its original $199 on contract price. Not to mention that the Galaxy Note 2 will also be launched in several markets in the upcoming months.
Finally, we can’t disregard the other Nexus-related rumors out there. According to those, it’s not only Samsung that’s making a Nexus smartphone. LG, Sony and HTC are also rumored to work on their own Nexus handsets. Product names like the LG Optimus Nexus, Sony Xperia Nexus and HTC Nexus 5 have already been mentioned in the wild, albeit unofficially.
Moreover, a recent rumor suggested that LG may be providing a high-end Nexus smartphone this year, largely based on the recently introduced Optimus G flagship.
We’ll be back with more news about the Galaxy Nexus 2 / Nexus Plus once we have them. Meanwhile, let us know what you want from your next Nexus handset in the comments section below.

Have you ever uploaded a video to YouTube and realized later on that you lost the original files? Well thanks to a new feature in Google Takeout, you can now download your original files exactly as they were.

Previously, users were able to download videos that they had uploaded to YouTube, but there was a catch: they were transcoded, meaning quality was generally inferior to what they had uploaded. Thanks to the YouTube support added to Google Takeout a few days ago, you can now download your files just as they were before you uploaded them.

Liberating Your Data

Google Takeout was created by the Data Liberation Front, an engineering team at Google who builds tools to help you get your data back out of Google. Their mission statement is “Users should be able to control the data they store in any of Google’s products.  Our team’s goal is to make it easier to move data in and out.”
In addition to YouTube videos, you can use Google Takeout to download your Contacts, Picasa Photos, voicemails and texts from Google Voice, various documents from Google Drive, and more. You can even download data from your old Google Buzz account, if you happen to be one of the few people who actually used Google Buzz.

How to Get Started

To download your videos, just head to the Google Takeout website and select “Create Archive.” Initially this will start creating an archive of all your data, which can take a long time depending on how many Google services you use. Simply select the “Choose Services” tab, and then “YouTube.”
If you have uploaded a lot of videos, Google Takeout might take a while to prepare them for download. Luckily, there is an option to have the service send you an email when your data is ready to be downloaded.
Have you used Google Takeout to download any of your old videos from YouTube yet? How about any of the other tools in Google Takeout?

When it comes to mobile processors, there is a certain range of specs that we consider truly awesome. Having a quad core, 1.5GHz, LTE-enabled chip is pretty much the bleeding edge of hardware architecture. Or is it? A little known company called Adapteva has something a little better than that. How much better? They’re toting around a 51GHz, 64-core processor. There is no typo there, 51-freaking-gigahertz.

There are a lot of problems getting Adapteva’s chip released. For one, it is ridiculously expensive. At last glance, the military was buying these chips for around $10,000USD a piece. That amount of money is equal to a down payment on a house. So it’s no surprise Android enthusiasts can’t really afford it. There are other considerations as well. How many seconds would it take for 64 cores to drain an average smartphone battery?
Adapteva knows this, however, and they have set out to create a more affordable chip that is a little more battery friendly. The big problem is funding. According to Giga OM, Adapteva is having a lot of problems finding funding from venture capital firms. How does Adapteva respond? By starting a Kickstarter.

Adapteva’s goal?

The company would like to make about $750,000 to start. To do this, Adapteva has launched the Parallella project. In essence, if you pay $99USD, you’ll get a 16-core processor on a stripped down board. The best part? The software that’s needed to program these bad boys would be released to the open source community. Many developers have had issues with processors being closed source. It hampers development and makes development harder. Imagine a chipset with full open source software. With 16 to 64 cores. Is anyone else salivating?
That isn’t all, though. If the project manages to raise $3,000,000USD, then the company will start offering the full 64-core chip for $199. It’s a little steep, but we’re not talking about any ordinary Snapdragon S4 here. This has 64-cores and over 50GHz of processing power. That doesn’t just beat every chip for mobile phones. It beats any consumer-grade product out there.
Of course, this whole movement is a long shot. It is a very long process between creating a processor and getting it placed in the next generation of smart phones. It’s likely that if this technology does manage to make into some Android smartphones, it won’t be any time soon. However, opening the CPU software to developers and offering up 16-core processors for $99USD is definitely a start.
I guess the question wouldn’t be if people would be a phone with this in it. The question is who wouldn’t?

Since Apple Maps, one of the main advertised features of Apple’s recently released iOS 6, is not the great out-of-the-box product the iPhone maker believed it would be, we keep finding various comparisons between Apple’s mapping and navigation solution and Google’s own Google Maps, in addition to ads and funny memes. In fact, today we’re going to look at an Apple Maps vs Google Maps report coming straight from Consumer Reports.

The publication compared the two products in day-to-day navigation operations just a week after finding the Apple Maps to be disappointing. This time around, Consumer Reports took Apple Maps for a real test drive out in the wild – in the greater New York area – right alongside Google Maps.
The chosen devices were the iPhone 5 running iOS 6 and the Samsung Galaxy S3 running Android 4.0.4 Ice Cream Sandwich:

Our evaluations were performed in the greater New York City area using two phones per platform, each on a different carrier. We found that both Apple Maps and Google Maps route effectively, providing clear guidance and great points-of-interest integration.

This time around, Consumer Reports found Apple Maps to be satisfying in actual tests, although it still trails behind Google Maps.
Some of the highlights of Apple Maps in navigation with turn-by-turn directions tests include “the graphic presentation for the interface, results, signage and point of interest info.” Apple offers “less customization” than Google, which is seen as a “mixed blessing” when it comes to driving, but Google “comes across as more business like and less fun:”

Apple Maps is relatively streamlined, providing basic navigation guidance and limited travel information. The large display for next-turn information (which looks like a familiar green-and-white highway-sign) is easy to read at a glance, and it compensates for a map design that is harder to interpret than that on Android. We like the estimated time of arrival, remaining distance, and travel time countdown, although the text is so small, it is a greater aid for a passenger than the driver.

When it comes to traffic, reporting, Google “gets the nod,” as Google Maps is better design to show traffic flow, “although in reality it may often be a presentation choice rather than a data difference.”
Voice-recognition is another element that was tested during this comparison and Consumer Reports found that the overall experience “seemed comparable between the platforms with each occasionally tripping over spoken commands.”
As for the actual navigation, the publication traveled to various destinations in Apple Maps vs Google Maps testing and found both apps to offer a similar experience. “Almost all” destinations were found and successfully routed, and the same goes for POI (points of interest) along the road. While Apple works with Yelp to offer more details about some of the restaurants found en route, Google gets its results from Zagat.
While 3D mapping is definitely an interesting addition to any navigation program, Consumer Reports was apparently not bothered by any inconsistency in Apple Maps 3D representations:

There has been much online grumbling about the iPhone app focused on weird 3D images, misplaced points of interest, and an absence of a Google-type “street view.” As shown on our previous post, we certainly have found instances of melting images in 3D mode, but more often than not, we found rather intriguing 3D representations that bring a map to life. The reality is, this is a novelty feature, not a component of navigation.

But the iPhone underperformed when it comes to searching for nearby train stations, as the app would not identify locations by “train,” but by their actual name, which appears to be a search algorithm issue “rather than a map inaccuracy. “
Finally, here’s the conclusion of Consumer Reports:

Bottom line:
Both the free Apple and Google navigation apps provide clear routing directions. Apple feels like a less-mature product. But as seen with the initial competing applications for the iPhone, we would expect updates to this new app over time–and Apple has promised as much. When getting down to the nitty gritty, Google provides a better overall package, but we feel that both provide a good solution for standard software. We expect the competition between the companies will benefit customers with ongoing improvements.

This is probably not the last Apple Maps vs Google Maps battle that we’re going to see, especially since Apple is reportedly hiring more and more people to work on its navigation application. Tim Cook, the company’s CEO has already apologized for the app’s issues, recommending in the process various apps from the competition, Google Maps included, to iOS 6 users that aren’t happy with the current state of the Apple Maps app.

Packing cellular antennas into increasingly thin devices is no trivial task. Just ask Apple. The brouhaha that erupted when iPhone 4 users reported signal drops when holding the phone in a certain way caused Steve Jobs to speak out and offer free bumpers to every iPhone 4 buyer. The media storm eventually subsided, and, the next iPhone came with dual antennas, that could kick in alternatively, thus solving the “death grip” problem once and for all.

Now it’s Motorola’s turn to face a death grip situation, but luckily, they found out about the problem before actually releasing the device. According to a user on the Howard Forum site, the launch of the Verizon-bound Droid Razr HD and Droid Razr Maxx HD has been delayed, due to problems with the placement of the phone’s antennas.
Note that Motorola did not offer a precise launch date for its new flagships, only promising that they will be available by holidays. Now a source quoted by Phone Arena says that the device might be out by the end of the year, but potentially not in time for Black Friday, the busiest shopping day of the year.
Xabernaut, the forum user that first reported the issue, says that the problem is caused by the size and shape of the antennas, but also by their contact to the external case of the devices. This causes signal drops when the phone is handled in a certain way, an issue that was reported by hardware testers.
The silver lining of the story is the Droid Razr M was not delayed by the build issues. In fact the Razr M (like its European cousin, the Razr i) is already available in stores. Also, it is likely that the delay will not extend to the Razr HD and Maxx HD that Motorola is selling in other regions. At least in Germany, the Razr Maxx HD could arrive as soon as October.
Are you looking forward to the Droid Razr Maxx HD?

 
We’re back with one more iPhone 5 vs Galaxy S3 comparison, after performing our own drop test, comparing them on video, checking out benchmarking results, display quality but also various ads. This time around we’re looking at a report that shares more details about the corresponding electricity cost for each device.

According to Opower, the iPhone 5 will cost you $0.41 to charge every year, while the Galaxy S3 is slightly more expensive, at $0.53 per year. Why is the Galaxy S3 more expensive to charge? The answer to that question is obvious, the Samsung flagship handset has a bigger battery, which means it takes longer to charge.
What’s important to notice is that today’s smartphones are very efficient when it comes to power consumption. Comparatively, laptops, desktops, gaming consoles and TVs are a lot more expensive to charge each year (see the graph below).
Curious how they measured the power consumption of the iPhone 5 and Galaxy S3? They used a Watts Up Pro Electricity Consumption Meter and assumed that “the average smartphone user will charge their device once per day, in the off position, from 0% to 100%.”
Here’s what they found out:

Galaxy SIII: consumed 12.3 watt-hours to charge, taking 2 hours and 26 minutes. Maximum wattage was 6.6 watts, with an average of approximately 5.0 W. Multiplying 0.123 kWh/day by 365 days = 4.49 kWh per year. At the average US residential rate of $0.118/kWh, the annual charging cost is projected to be $0.53/year.
iPhone 5: consumed 9.5 watt-hours to charge, taking 1 hour and 50 minutes. Maximum wattage was 6.3 watts, with an average of approximately 5.0 W. Multiplying 0.0095 kWh/day by 365 days = 3.47 kWh per year. Annual charging cost is projected to be $0.41/year.

Is power consumption something you think about when buying a new mobile device?