Still there?

Sorry for the big shocker. Almost a year after reports that Amazon was testing smartphones in Asia, half a year after rumors Amazon was buying a smartphone chip processor, a year after more reports that Amazon was building its own smartphone, five months after unveiling a notifications system that would look really nice on a smartphone, and six months after probably wild speculation that Amazon was going to unveil a smartphone for the pre-Christmas shopping spree in 2012, there’s yet another report that Amazon is building a smartphone.

But this one has a 3D screen.

The Wall Street Journal says that Amazon is building at least two smartphones, including a high-end model with 3D graphics and retina-tracking technology so that users can navigate content by “using just their eyes.” Plus an audio-only “streaming content device.”

Harrumph.

Amazon is almost certainly working on a smartphone and almost certainly planning to release it in 2013. There’s just too much smoke for there not to be fire. And having made its bet on digital content being the growth engine of the company’s future success — 12 of the 15 highlights in Amazon’s recent earnings release were about digital content — a smartphone that makes use of Amazon’s recently expanded app store and burgeoning virtual shelves of ebooks, TV shows, movies, and all other forms of digital content makes way too much sense.

But a couple grains of salt.

Amazon hasn’t made its bones in the tablet market by offering the absolutely latest and greatest technology but by presenting a solid product at a rock-bottom price. So I’m a little skeptical about all the wild 3D speculation — especially because that could be a sweet datapoint plant for the company to identify leak sources. And, in reality, a company the size of Amazon, like Apple, is working on many different projects at any given time. Some of them will come to market, and some of them won’t.

One company that can’t be happy about Amazon impending smartphone plans, however, has to be Google. Amazon has essentially hijacked Android for its Kindle offerings, taking the open-source mobile operating system that Google has developed, stripping out the Google app store, Google apps, and Google branding, and replacing them with its own offerings. Amazon will doubtless adopt the exact same strategy with any smartphone play — as Samsung might as well.

And, given the fact that Kindle is probably the leading Android-based tablet, it has the potential to do well in smartphones as well.

Of course, incumbent leader in Android sales Samsung might have a thing or two to say about that.

By Matthew Lynley

Samsung finally pulled the curtains back on the Galaxy S 4, its next flagship Android smartphone, at an event in New York today.

In addition to bumping up the size of the screen from 4.8 inches to 5 inches, the guts of the device also received a significant boost — putting it ahead of the major competition in many technical aspects.

Granted, we haven’t seen the Apple‘s AAPL +0.96% next iPhone model for 2013, but for the time being the specifications of the Galaxy S 4 are a significant upgrade.

In addition, the device also sports some new software features not seen in the competition, like the ability to interact with the phone using eye movement and hand gestures without touching it.

The Galaxy S 4 will be available late April on most major U.S. carriers, and will run the most recent version of Google‘s GOOG -0.46% Android operating system, called Jelly Bean.

In the meantime, here are how the specs compare with its predecessor and the iPhone 5:

Carriers

Like the iPhone 5, the Galaxy S 4 will be sold at the major U.S. carriers, as well as at U.S. Cellular and Cricket.

Screen resolution

Galaxy S 4: 1920 x 1080 pixels

iPhone 5: 1136 x 640 pixels

Galaxy S III: 1280 x 720 pixels

Pixels Per Inch

Galaxy S 4: 441 ppi

iPhone 5: 326 ppi

Galaxy S III: 306 ppi

Processor

Galaxy S 4: Qualcomm Snap QCOM -0.28%dragon Fusion Pro, 1.9 GHz quad-core processor; or Samsung Exynos 5 Octa, 1.6 GHz quad-core + 1.2 GHz quad-core processor (chip depends on market)

iPhone 5: Apple A6, 1.3 GHz dual-core processor

Galaxy S III: Qualcomm S4, 1.5 GHz dual-core processor

Display size

Galaxy S 4: 5 inches

iPhone 5: 4 inches

Galaxy S III: 4.8′ inches

Weight

Galaxy S 4: 4.59 oz

iPhone 5: 3.95 oz

Galaxy S 3: 4.69 oz

Memory

Galaxy S 4: up to 64 GB. 2GB RAM

iPhone 5: up to 64 GB. 1GB RAM

Galaxy S III: up to 64 GB. 2GB RAM

Camera

Galaxy S 4: 13 megapixel rear, 2 megapixel front

iPhone 5: 8 megapixel rear, 1.2 megapixel front

Galaxy S III: 8 megapixel rear, 1.9 megapixel front

Video Capture

Galaxy S 4: 1080p

iPhone 5: 1080p

Galaxy S III: 1080p

Battery

Galaxy S 4: 2,600 mAh

iPhone 5: 1,440 mAh

Galaxy S III: 2,100 mAh

Price

The iPhone 5 and Galaxy S III start at $199 on contract. The Galaxy S 4 has not been priced yet.

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The Company gets a little help from the Galaxy Note II with SAFE technology in making Unicorn Apocalypse come to life. Play Hard. Work Safe. The Next Big Thing for Business is Here. Learn more and join the conversation at :

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Samsung has announced a fourth-quarter profit for 2012 double what it was the year before, capping a record year for the company. The Korean technology giant made 20 trillion won ($18.8 billion) in profits in 2012 and 8.8 trillion won ($8.3 billion) in the fourth quarter alone. Revenue was boosted in part by record sales for Samsung’s high-end smart phones. The company launched 37 models in 2012, and its flagship, the Galaxy S III, sold 30 million units.

Analysts from Nomura and Macquarie Securities are projecting that Samsung’s stock will rise 40%-50% in 2013, on the back of a 35% increase in smartphone sales, to a mind-boggling 290 million units. Apple, by contrast, is expected to sell 180 million.

Samsung’s move into mobile devices seems especially savvy given stagnating sales of other consumer-electronics goods, such as televisions, where it faces stiff competition from cheaper Chinese rivals. Giants in mainland China like Huawei and Hisense, which made its stateside debut at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show, are eager to take market share from Samsung, moving up from contract manufacturing to high-end branded products—which is exactly how Samsung became so successful.

However, it’s not all about mobile. Samsung is also projecting that it will becomethe biggest supplier of home appliances (like refrigerators and washing machines) by 2015.

Despite all this, Samsung is still not the most profitable technology company on Earth. Apple will retain that title through 2013, out-earning Samsung despite selling fewer phones and making none of the other products in which Samsung dominates, like chips and displays.

That difference in profitability reflects, in part, that fact that Samsung started out making parts and got into branded goods only later. The company’s diverse portfolio buffers it against the success or failure of any one product, but it also means that Samsung competes in increasingly commoditized products with manufacturers throughout mainland China and Taiwan.

They might out-compete it eventually. But for now Samsung can boast of being the largest vertically integrated technology company on the planet. It enjoys both healthy margins for its high-end products and huge volumes for its basic goods. Success across this spectrum should bolster the company’s fortunes through 2013, at least.

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Apple (AAPL, Fortune 500) discounts aren’t unheard of this time of year, but Wal-Mart’s (WMT,Fortune 500) will be tough to beat. Best Buy (BBY,Fortune 500) and Radio Shack (RSH) both have discounts on the iPhone 5 and iPhone 4S, offering as much as $50 off advertised prices, along with gift certificates to sweeten the deal. Apple’s own Black Friday sale offered up iPods and previous-geneneration iPads for $30-$40 off the regular price.

As for the iPad discount, Wal-Mart appears to be following in the footsteps of past sales. In July, Fry’s knocked $100 off the iPad 2. But by then, the iPad 3 had already been available for almost six months.

While the iPad sales just seem like an offloading of stale products, Wal-Mart’s motivations for discounting the iPhone aren’t exactly clear. Some, such as the LA Times, speculate that dragging sales are to blame. Whatever the case, it’s best not to sleep on this deal if you’re in the market for one of these devices. Wal-Mart told MacRumors that the sale is first come, first serve depending on inventory, and rain checks will not be issued.

May the shopping gods be with you. 

Apple iPhone 5: Everything You Need to Know

 Jesus Diaz    IPHONE 5          SEP 12, 2012

The new iPhone 5 is here. It’s thinner and faster than ever, with a new form factor that uses a gorgeous panoramic screen with more resolutions and less consumption. It also surfs the web much faster, thanks to its new LTE capabilities. And, just as we knew, it has a new smaller dock connector called Lightning.

Overall, it seems they have incrementally improved every single aspect of the iPhone. It’s not a revolutionary phone, but it is a very nice release.

Physical specifications

The iPhone 5 looks exactly as the leaked images: an unibody aluminum body with a glass screen. “It’s thinner than the previous generation: 18 percent thinner, which puts it at 0.29 inches (7.6 millimeter). They are claiming this is the world’s thinnest smartphone. It’s actually the world’s thinnest LTE smartphone.

It’s also 20 percent lighter than the current iPhone, just 3.95 ounces (112 grams). It comes in black and white models.

Their new manufacturing method seems quite extraordinary. According to Jon Ive, they “have never built a product with this extraordinary level of fit and finish.” They claim that the “variances from product to product is now measured in microns.”

The screen

Apple claims that the new 16:9 4-inch panoramic screen has 44 percent more saturation than the iPhone, which makes the display full sRGB. The display has its touchscreen sensor built-in.

How does it work? Instead of having two layers, the pixels of the display and the touch sensors, Apple affirms that here “the pixels do double duty—acting as touch-sensing electrodes while displaying the image at the same time.” Apple says that no other phone in the market has this, which Apple says is crucial to the iPhone 5’s thinness, lower weight and—more importantly—its image quality. Since there’s nothing between the glass and the pixels, the say the image is much clearer than before.

Connectivity

As expected, it uses LTE connectivity, so it will be much faster that the current iPhone 4S. It supports all the standards needed for all carriers: HSPA+, DC-HSDPA and LTE. Apple says that their single-chip solution works everywhere.

The iPhone 5 also has dual-channel 5GHz Wi-Fi—aka 802.11N. That means a 150Mbps maximum connectivity speed.

Brains

It also has a new CPU, the A6—which Apple claims is 2 times faster than the current iPhone 4S both in CPU and graphics. In real life, they claim it loads web pages 2.1 times as fast.

Battery life

If true, this is impressive: 8 hours of 3G talk time, 8 hours of LTE browsing, 10 hours of Wi-Fi browsing, 30 hours of video and 225 hours of standby.

Camera features

They have also updated the camera. On paper, it’s better than the one in iPhone 4S with a new dynamic low light mode too (I wonder how it compares to Nokia’s IOS) and a sapphire crystal. Knowing how scratched the glass on my iPhone is—making the photos not as crisp as when it was new—that’s good news. Shapphire crystal is the hardest thing you can get this side of a diamond.

Like the 4S, it has five-element optics and a 8 megapixel sensor (3264 x 2448 pixel), backside illumination, a hybrid infrared filter, and a nice f/2.4 aperture.

The new image processing chip has spatial noise reduction, with a system to analyze which parts of the image needs to be noise reduced and which should be left alone. As a result of all this, they claim low light photography is now much better than before.

Here’s an image taken with the new iPhone, which Apple claims it’s completely unretouched:

Update: You can see other unprocessed images here.

The image capture is also faster: 40 percent, they say. The iPhone 4S camera is now quite fast, so it will be interesting to see how this feels. Certainly, there’s not such a thing as fast enough when it comes to taking photos.

Panorama mode
They have also added a new capture mode called panorama. It doesn’t require you to stitch photos one by one: just pan the phone and it will automatically capture a panorama for you. Even if you can’t hold it steady, iPhone 5 is smart, using its gyroscope to correct for any variation in motion and make a perfect panorama. It also gets rid of any moving objects, they say.

The final result covers 240 degrees.

Video face detection
Like the previous iPhone, this one has 1080p FullHD capture. They claim they have improved the image stabilization in this version, added face detection (so it will be able to tag people automatically in videos) and, this is good, it will allow you to take full still photos while recording video.

Front FaceTime camera

They have also make the 720p front camera better with a new backside illuminated sensor. It also has face detection and—at last—the operating system will enable FaceTime over cellular.

Audio

Apple has also upgraded all the audio: the microphones, the built-in speakers and the earbuds, now called EarPods.

It now has three microphones—on the front, back and bottom. These will improve the quality of your voice calls—whoever calls anymore—and sound recordings. More importantly, they have include noise canceling without the need for external specialized headphones. Apple says that their technology cancels the noise from the place in which you are in, so you hear “the voice on the other end” more clearly.

The speakers have much better quality now, going from three to five magnet transducers, which will result in a clearer, richer sound. Any improvement over the cricket boxes of previous versions is welcome.

They have also improved the quality of voice calls. According to Phil Schiller, the new iPhone 5 can use something called wideband audio. If supported by the carrier, the phone will use more of the spectrum bandwidth to send much better and high-fidelity version of your voice over the network.

New Dock connector: Lightning

As predicted, the dock connector has changed. It’s now much smaller. Apple calls it Lightning (a name play of their other connector technology: Thunderbolt). It’s all digital and has 8 connectors. It also has an adaptive interface, which I guess means that the connector will send different signals according to the kind of features you need in your connection.

They best thing about the new connector, however, is that it is reversible. This may seem stupid, but being able to connect your cable no matter of the orientation will protect humanity against the 529th Article of Murphy’s Law: “Thou will always try to connect your iPhone cable on the wrong side.”

Does that mean that you would have to trash your old dock accessory? No, they are giving us an adapter that will turn the old connector into the new Lightning. Phil Schiller says that they are working with peripheral manufacturers to include Lightning in their next batch of products, which will arrive this Holiday Season.

Price and availability

They are keeping exactly the same prices as the previous generation. The iPhone 5 16GB is $199, the 32GB is $299 and the 64GB is $399, all with a two-year contract.

In the United States, Canada, UK, France, Germany, Australia, Japan, Hong Kong and Singapore you will be able to pre-order it this Friday and get it the next, September 21 The other countries will have it on September 28.

Oh, and if that’s still too expensive for you: the iPhone 4S is now $99 with a two-year contract. The iPhone 4 will be free with the same contract.

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In an e-mail interview, Abrams called Action Movie FX the first of a “slew” of “cool projects” that his Bad Robot is working on in the interactive space.

“I think it should be noted that this is the first time I have used the word slew,’” the filmmaker noted, adding that the endeavors include “movies, some TV shows or books, some short-form filmed and animated projects, some music and some apps.”

The app was financed by Bad Robot and overseen by Andrew Kramer, the visual effects wizard whom Abrams plucked from his website, Video Copilot, to work on the opening credit sequences of the Fox series “Fringe” and the 2009 feature film “Star Trek.”  He and Bad Robot executive David Baronoff worked on the app with a small team of outside programmers for about two months.

“I just loved the idea that people could add high-quality visual effects to their footage, all with a phone they already carry with them,” Abrams said of the app.

Kramer said the biggest challenge was getting the app to track moving images while also making the interface as foolproof as possible. “We went through so many different versions while wondering, ‘How are people going to use this app? Should we have director’s notes? What about on-screen tips?’”

“Action Movie FX” debuted Dec. 22, and surged to No. 1 on the list of most downloaded free entertainment apps and since then it ranked consistently among the top 25 free apps of all kinds.

Los Angeles Times    –   www.netkaup.is

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• MARCH 28, 2011

Google Sets Role in Mobile Payment