Author Archive: Gareth

Fighting fire with fire Samsung Vs Apple

According to a late breaking story from last night, Samsung isn’t messing around with their counter-attack on Apple. Insider sources are claiming, Samsung will sue Apple for violating its LTE patents with the iPhone 5 just as the phone is announced tomorrow. Here’s the quote,

Quote:

"It’s true that Samsung Electronics has decided to take immediate legal action against the Cupertino-based Apple. Countries in Europe and even the United States ? Apple’s home-turf ? are our primary targets,” said an industry source.

Apple and Google behind the scenes

According to industry sources, Google and Apple are supposedly conducting "secret talks" behind the scenes in order to come up with a patent settlement agreement. Reuters reported that Larry Page, CEO of Google, and Tim Cook, CEO of Apple have recently had a private phone conversation in which they discussed "a range of intellectual property matters, including the on-going mobile patent disputes between the companies." Additionally, according to Reuter’s unnamed source, the two CEOs will likely talk again soon to continue negotiations for some kind of cease fire. Here’s a quote from the Reuters article with some final details,

Quote:

The two companies are keeping the lines of communication open at a high level against the backdrop of Apple’s decisive legal victory in a patent infringement case against Samsung, which uses Google’s Android software.
A jury awarded Apple $1.05 billion in damages last Friday and set the stage for a possible ban on sales of some Samsung products in a case that has been widely viewed as a "proxy war" between Apple and Google.
One possible scenario under consideration could be a truce involving disputes over basic features and functions in Google’s Android mobile software, one source said. But it’s unclear whether Page and Cook are discussing a broad settlement of the various disputes between the two companies – most of which involve the burgeoning mobile computing area – or are focused on a more limited set of issues.

Hopefully a more businessly gentleman’s agreement can be reached.

Posted by: Gareth

Amazon AppStore arrives in the UK

From today Europe now has access to the to the Amazon AppStore. The AppStore has been running successfully in the States for a long time now and Europe has been awaiting it with great anticipation. Bringing with it the free games/apps of the day, the promotional deals and so on. While not all countries will get access right away, a few of will including the U.K., France, Germany, Italy and Spain. This also means that when a game is exclusively released onto Android through the Amazon AppStore for a limited time, you will also be able to access those finally.

It’s nice to see Amazon making the effort to include Europe. You can expect more countries to gain access down the road a bit. As a perk, it looks like Angry Birds (ads-free version) is today’s free game.

Posted by: Gareth

Acer A110 might be a Nexus 7 killer

The guys over at Coolsmartphone.com picked up on a little story from Stuff about a tablet Acer have mentioned in the past. Acer’s A110 tablet has  a 7? screen, Tegra 3 CPU and Jelly Bean confirmed to be on the way. We had prices from the US however with 8GB this is merely priced at £179 at launch. The one big spec that propels the Acer is that the tablet will have a microSD slot. That’s one of the two major options covered that many will have been holding back on buying the Google Nexus 7 tablet for. The Nexus 7 lacks both expandable storage and a 3G modem option. However, this does have a problem in that there is no guarantee of future updates to the Android operating system.

It looks like the budget tablet market has really been shaken by the Amzazon Kindle Fire and, more recently, the Nexus 7 and its open ground for the manufactures to get creative in. The Nexus 7 has set the benchmark very high and it will be fun watching to see just what company will surpass it.

Posted by: Gareth