Maimpok

The HTC One X+ is a smartphones we’ve been hearing rumors about for months. Today it finally becomes an official device. Here’s what you need to know: It’s exactly like the HTC One X, except for a few small things. One, the NVIDIA Tegra 3 chip inside is clocked faster.
In single core mode, the One X+ can hit 1.7 GHz. Two, the GPU is also faster, clocked at 520 MHz versus the 416 MHz in the original One X. Three, unlike the One X LTE variant, which was a One X with a Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 inside, the LTE variant of the One X+ uses NVIDIA’s Tegra 3 alongside Qualcomm’s MDM9215 modem. How will that impact battery life? We don’t know yet. Speaking about battery, the One X+ has a 2,100 mAh battery versus the 1,800 mAh battery in the original.
Other notable changes include the front facing camera, which has been bumped up to 1.6 megapixels versus the 1.3 megapixel sensor in the original. The audio has also been upgraded courtesy of a new amplifier that makes the rear speaker suck less. As for software, Android 4.1 Jelly Bean is on-board, along with what HTC likes to call “Sense 4+ UI”.
When will the One X+ come out? October, aka this month. Should you buy it? That’s incredibly hard to say. We’re huge fans of the Galaxy S III, we’re foaming at the mouth over the Note II, and within the next 30 days we’ll likely hear about the next Nexus device from Google. That means HTC’s One X+ struggles to get out attention. That and you can only buy it in black, which is a bit … limiting.
But hey, if you’re an HTC fan, then there’s no reason for you not to get this thing if you have the money. And if you’re already an HTC One X or One S user, you should know that you’ll get Android 4.1 Jelly Bean within the next few weeks.
Update: While we try to get our hands on this beast, have a look at these two videos from Recombu and C|Net UK to get an idea about what’s new with the One X+.

When Google announced Gmail on April 1, 2004, people thought it was a joke. What company in their right mind would offer users 1 GB of email for free? Fast forward to today and we’re not being the least bit hyperbolic when we say that Gmail has become an essential part of our lives. Not only does the threaded conversations UI make email easier to use, but the attitude that Google insists you have with email, that you should never delete a single message, completely changes your relationship with data.

Today Google is announcing that they’re making Gmail even better. Gmail users will now be able to search for text that’s inside their attachements. Here’s a hypothetical situation: Your friend forwards you a PDF of their itinerary to you so you can pick them up from the airport. You want to meet them at the gate, but you have no idea which airline they’re flying. Search for your friend’s trip, load up the PDF, and boom, there it is. Google being Google, this feature will work everywhere. In a browser, in the Gmail app, you get the idea.
Privacy nuts are probably going to go nuts and insist that Google is reading your sensitive documents, but come on now, let’s be serious. What’s a DOC file or a PDF file or a PPT file when you really think about it? Just strings of text wrapped in markup language. You, the user, input a query, that query gets converted into a string, and all Google’s servers do is match your input string to the strings that it has in their database. Simple as that.
Looking ahead, what else does Google have in store for Gmail? The company is testing a feature whereby your messages are searched whenever you do a Google search. In other words, when you go to Google.com and type in “dog”, you’ll see the top 10 websites about dogs, but in the right hand side you’ll also see all the emails you have that contain the word “dog”.
They’re just trying to make things that much faster.

AT&T is introducing a new $65 per month prepaid plan that includes unlimited minutes, unlimited texts, and 1 GB of data. To someone who wouldn’t know any better, that sounds like a steal, but in reality it’s just a scam. First of all, you can’t use this “cheaper” plan with any device you want. You have to go with a “GoPhone” from AT&T. In other words, they’ll gladly give you 1 GB of data per month, because they know no human in their right mind would transfer that much information using a low end smartphone.
Second, there’s a better solution out there, one that doesn’t get enough attention. It’s called Straight Talk.
When you pay your AT&T or Verizon bill every month, you’re paying the salaries of the people who work in their retail stores, the construction workers who build those stores, the developers who make horrible ROMs that get flashed on operator branded devices, and the list just goes on and on. Enter Straight Talk, which is what we in the industry call a mobile virtual network operator. MVNO for short. They piggy back off AT&T’s network, buying access to it at a wholesale rate, and then reselling that access to you with razor thin margins.
Straight Talk gives you a SIM card you can shove inside any phone, and they charge $45 per month for unlimited everything. So do the math: $350 for a Galaxy Nexus, $45 per month for 12 months, that’s $890. Compare to that to someone who pays $200 smartphone and then locks themselves into a plan for two years that costs $90 per month. In the first year alone that adds up to $1280. That’s two Nexus 7 tablets right there!
Are there any downsides? Sure. Customer service is abysmal, there’s no roaming, and if your phone breaks you’re shit out of luck, but hey, $45 per month is hard to pass.

Every two weeks, Google publishes a pretty pie chart that shows the version numbers of devices that are accessing the Google Play Store. Today that chart has been updated. How many Android devices are running 4.1 Jelly Bean? Just 1.8%. And what about 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich? An impressive 23.7%.
Combine those two figures and you get 25.5%. Translation: One out of every four Android devices in use today runs a version of the OS that’s less than a year old. More than half (55.8%) of all Android devices are still on Gingerbread, which, for those of you who don’t remember this, launched in December 2010.
What meaningful conclusions can we draw from this data? Most people probably don’t care about what version of Android is on their device since they’re just fine and dandy with a two year old version of the operating system. The newest version of Android, Jelly Bean is less than three months old after all, is considered a niche platform that developers are probably not targeting as heavily for obvious reasons.
When will ICS penetration break the 50% mark? It’s easily going to take another year or so. ICS launched on the Galaxy Nexus in November 2011, but handset makers didn’t start shipping ICS devices until the end of the first half of the 2012. Remember how pissed off we were at CES and Mobile World Congress because all the new phones being announced were running Gingerbread?
And as for software updates, we commend Samsung for putting Ice Cream Sandwich on what’s arguably the most popular Android device to hit the market, the Galaxy S II. That being said, we’re still waiting to find out more information about when the GS2 will get get Jelly Bean. Meanwhile everyone else has a mixed track record when it comes to providing timely software upgrades, if ever.

Smartphones have become a prevalent part of our lives, that we carry them anywhere — to work, to parties, to the bedroom, and even to the bathroom. This is why smartphones are also one of the things that can be used to spy upon us. You may have already heard about apps that eavesdrop on conversations even when the phone is idle.

But a new technology by the U.S. military goes beyond just eavesdropping. The PlaceRaider technology will actually reconstruct a 3D virtual model of your home, workplace, or just about any location, using the phone’s camera and orientation sensors.
If you remember how Lucuis Fox reconstructed a 3D image of a Hong Kong building’s interior in The Dark Knight using echo-imaging, this is similar. However, PlaceRaider uses the phone’s camera instead of sonar.
The technology is developed by the U.S. Naval Surface Warfare Center, and the malware or spyware aims to gather intelligence (a.k.a. steal information) from visual sources, which may include computer screens, documents and the like. The aim is to gather financial data, identity information, and just about any details that can be “seen” from the target’s location.
The app can run in the background of any Android device from 2.3 Gingerbread up. Blurry images and recordings from a pocket or in dark conditions are filtered out. Good images are then sent back to the developers’ servers, where a 3D representation is reconstructed based on location- and position-based inputs from the phone sensors. This includes GPS location direction and orientation.

According to Robert Templeman, who leads development of the app, a 3D representation makes it easier to gather intelligence than simple, raw photographs.
The developers recommend that smartphone manufacturers — and even users — secure themselves from this kind of attack by making sure the phone’s camera shutter sound cannot be muted. Another recommendation is the use of anti-malware and antivirus apps that alert the user of any infiltration.
Are you worried that Big Brother might be spying on you through your mobile device? Are you concerned about the moral implications of using smartphones to spy on everyone (just as Lucius Fox was)?

A new rumor claims that Google is acquiring a new facial recognition start-up company called Viewdle. According to Forbes, Google will likely pay around $30 million for the company. Keep in mind that this is all speculation and rumor, at least for now. Not surprisingly, Google and Viewdle both are responding with the same “no comment” routine.

So what is Viewdle all about? The company was founded in Ukraine in 2006 and is currently based out of Silicon Valley. The start-up has several Android apps such as SocialCamera and games like Third Eye, in addition to several facial recognition patents that Google is likely to be interested in. Probably its biggest feature, though, is its unique automatic tagging system for photos of friends and family.
Will this prove to be more than just a rumor? More than likely. Facial recognition is a hot technology. Google isn’t the only one buying up these types of start-ups, either. One of the biggest facial recognition start-up purchases came from Facebook earlier this year when the social network rival acquired “Face.com” for a little under $60 million. Considering Facebook is the biggest competitor for Google+, this purchase isn’t all that surprising.
Google+ has quickly sprung up to be one of the most important social networks on the Internet. Acquisition of new technology and start-ups help Google expand the services they can offer through their growing social networking service. What do you think of the talks of the Viewdle acquisition?

Earlier today, Sharp officially announced that they have begun the full-scale production of a new 5-inch 1080p display, featuring an impressive pixel density of 443ppi. Sharp’s latest screen is about 1.3 times denser than their existing 4.3-inch 720p display and is a major record-breaking achievement for the company.  Previously, 340PPI was the highest resolution achieved on a smartphone, as seen on devices like the HTC Rezound and Sony Xperia V.

The big question is whether or not the 5-inch Sharp 1080p display will be the ticket to Sharp’s recovery from its current fiscal troubles. Although the company continues to innovate, it has also been forced to make tough decisions and cut thousands of jobs thanks to low profit margins and internal struggles.
While the quad-core Oppo Find 5 is the only official device to make use of the display so far, rumors claim that HTC is working on a new phone that will also use Sharp’s screen technology . The same rumors suggest that the phone might be part of Google’s official Nexus line. If a Nexus phone does end up using this display, it certainly prove to be a very lucrative move for Sharp. Enough to bring them back to a more stable state? That’s hard to say for sure.
The screen will be featured at the CEATEC trade show this week in Japan, where Sharp hopes to attract even more attention to its new high-res smartphone display. Does the idea of an 1080p 5-inch smartphone appeal to you or do you prefer a smaller screen size?