News

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

HTC Desire X – First look

Posted by: James

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

HTC Desire X full specification

Following HTC’s announcement of the new HTC Desire X I’m pleased to be able to share the full spec sheet with you.

Really excited by this handset, it looks beautiful and has a decent spec sheet to boot!

HTC Desire X specification:

• SIZE: 118.5 x 62.3 x 9.3 mm
• WEIGHT: 114 grams with battery
• DISPLAY: 4-inch touch screen with WVGA 480 x 800 resolution, super LCD screen
• CPU SPEED:Dual-core 1 GHz (Snapdragon S4)
• PLATFORM:Android 4.0.4 (ICS) with HTC Sense 4
• MEMORY: Total storage: 4 GBi
• RAM: 768 MB
• Dropbox: 25 GB of free online storage with Dropbox for two years
• EXPANSION SLOT: Supports micro SD memory card for additional storage (card not included)
• NETWORKING: 3G (WCDMA): Europe/Asia: 900/2100 MHz, ANZ: 850/2100 MHz
• 2G (GSM/GPRS/EDGE): 850/900/1800/1900 MHz
• HSDPA 7.2, HSUPA 5.76
• Proximity sensor
• Ambient light sensor
• G-Sensor
• 3.5 mm stereo audio jack
• Bluetooth® 4.0 aptX enabled with FTP/OPP for file transfer, A2DP for wireless stereo headsets, and PBAP for phonebook access from the car kit
• Wi-Fi®: 802.11b/g/n (2.4GHz)
• DLNA compliant for wirelessly streaming media from/to a compatible TV, computer or electronic equipment
• Micro-USB (cable included) (5-pin micro-USB 2.0)
• CAMERA: 5 megapixel camera, F2.0 aperture, wide angle 28 mm lens, Auto focus and Tap to focus, LED flash with SmartFlash
• Dedicated HTC ImageChip
• Face and smile detection
• Intelligent group shot mode
• Geo tagging
• Instant Capture with quick access from lockscreen to activate camera instantaneously
• Studio-quality sound with Beats Audio built in
• Enhanced Bluetooth stereo audio quality (APT-X CODEC for BT A2DP)
• HD voice compliant (subject to network availability)
• FM radio

Posted by: Matt

Apple trying to ban 8 Samsung handsets

Following Apple’s success in court against Samsung last week Apple have now requested a temporary injunction against 8 Samsung phones, preventing their sale in the US.

According to The Verge, in order for Apple to successfully have the devices banned it must convince the court that the company face irreparable harm if sales were allowed to continue. The court is scheduled to address the injunction in a hearing set for September 20th.

Posted by: Matt

Tim Cook memo leak

The recent court ruling on coming down on the side of Apple in the Apple vs Samsung case is a very significant landmark. It sets a huge precedence that’s going to echo through the smartphone industry as a whole.

A total of 5 of Apple’s patent claims were upheld, these included:

• Some of Samsung’s handsets, including its Galaxy S 4G model, infringed Apple’s design patents for the look of its iPhone including the system it uses to display text and icons
• All the disputed Samsung devices had copied Apple’s "bounce-back response", which makes lists jump back as if yanked by a rubber band
• Several Samsung devices incorporated Apple’s facility allowing users to zoom into text with a tap of a finger
• Pinch and pull with two fingers on the display in order to zoom in/out

Following the Apple victory, Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO, issued a memo which 9to5mac were able to get hold of a copy of:

Today was an important day for Apple and for innovators everywhere.

Many of you have been closely following the trial against Samsung in San Jose for the past few weeks. We chose legal action very reluctantly and only after repeatedly asking Samsung to stop copying our work. For us this lawsuit has always been about something much more important than patents or money. It’s about values. We value originality and innovation and pour our lives into making the best products on earth. And we do this to delight our customers, not for competitors to flagrantly copy.

We owe a debt of gratitude to the jury who invested their time in listening to our story. We were thrilled to finally have the opportunity to tell it. The mountain of evidence presented during the trial showed that Samsung’s copying went far deeper than we knew.

The jury has now spoken. We applaud them for finding Samsung’s behavior willful and for sending a loud and clear message that stealing isn’t right.

I am very proud of the work that each of you do.

Today, values have won and I hope the whole world listens.

Tim

Apple had wanted $2.5bn in damages. Samsung had sought $519m.

It may also seek to use this ruling to block other devices powered by Google’s Android software that it believes replicate elements of its user-interface, including current models by Samsung as well as other firms.

Samsung said that they will appeal.

Posted by: Matt

Neil Armstrong dies

First man on the moon, Neil Armstrong dies aged 82.

Often described as the ‘reluctant hero’, to say that Neil Armstrong was a legend ins an exercise in stating the bleedin’ obvious but the quiet man from Ohio was an inspiration to millions. He set foot on the Moon on 20 July 1969, famously describing the event as "one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind". The phrase is the oft-repeated and one of the best know in the English language.

Apollo 11 was Armstrong’s last space mission. In 1971, he left the US space agency NASA to teach aerospace engineering.

Born in 1930 and raised in Ohio, Armstrong took his first flight aged six with his father and formed a lifelong passion for flying.

Mr Armstrong died following complications arising from surgery to relieve 4 blocker coronary arteries on the 7th August.

I sincerely hope that parents and teachers will continue to teach history of space flight to the current young generation so that kids don’t grow up thinking that Buzz Lightyear was the first man on the moon!

Posted by: Matt

Amazon offering 5GB free Cloud storage

Amazon have been offering cloud storage solutions for a while but recently they’ve started a free entry-level 5GB available to all.

I guess this has been introduced in order to compete with Apple’s 5GB cloud offering too. There are a number of other companies offering this service, our personal favourite is Dropbox, but Amazon have great pricing for anyone wanting more than the free 5GB.

20 GB – £6.00 / year

50 GB – £16.00 / year

100 GB – £32.00 / year

200 GB – £64.00 / year

500 GB – £160.00 / year

1000 GB – £320.00 / year

Details can be found here.

Posted by: Matt

4G in the UK – Three are to be in the game

We told you yesterday that Everything Everywhere had got the go-ahead from Ofcom to roll out 4G LTE in the UK this year, but it now seems there has been a development in the favour of Three. Everything Everywhere have today announced that they now have an agreement with Three to dispose of 2X15MHz of its 1800MHz. The disposal is in line with the European Commission’s competitive assessment of the merger of Orange and T-Mobile in the UK in March 2010, and follows the news that Ofcom has approved Everything Everywhere’s request to liberalise its 1800MHz spectrum for 4G LTE services.

Dave Dyson, CEO of Three UK said: “Acquiring this spectrum will more than double the capacity available to customers on our network.  We have seen a huge growth in data consumption with average mobile handset customer usage now more than 1.1GB per month. 

Three has led the market in the significant growth of mobile data consumption and the shift to consumer use of smartphones to access the internet.  New spectrum, supported by further committed technology spend, is a clear signal that we are committed to maintain our lead as the network built for the mobile internet.”

From a consumers point of view this is great news as it will not just be Orange and T-Mobile that initially dominate the UK 4G market. Let’s see what else develops.

Posted by: James

Everything Everywhere get the go-ahead for 4G

We posted back in May this year that Everything Everywhere thought they would get the go-ahead from Ofcom to roll out 4G in the UK this year and it looks like they were right. Permission has been granted to free up the 1800MHz spectrum for use by Orange and T-Mobile and this could well give them a sales advantage over the other UK networks.

“Ofcom’s decision to make 4G available this year is great news for the UK. Consumers will soon be able to benefit from the much greater mobile speeds that 4G will deliver. 4G will drive investment, employment, and innovation, including Private Jet Jobs, which will create new opportunities for highly skilled professionals in the aviation sector. We look forward to making it available later this year, delivering superfast mobile broadband to the UK.”

Everything Everywhere already started upgrading their cell sites some months ago in preparation for LTE so I presume that as soon as dates are confirmed it will be all systems go. Will we now see manufactures launching LTE devices here soon?

Posted by: James