GSM Dome - Mobile Phone News |
- Smartphones Not Being Used for Regular Calls Anymore, According to Study
- Samsung Appeals Galaxy Nexus Injunction Decision
- Nokia Lumia 900 Review – Too Big, Too Bulky, But With Good Camera Bitrate and Display (Video)
- 5 Inch Smartphone Pantech Vega S5 is Better than Galaxy S III in Some Ways…
- Android Infringes on 11 Patents Belonging to Apple and Microsoft, Apparently
| Smartphones Not Being Used for Regular Calls Anymore, According to Study Posted: 02 Jul 2012 12:20 PM PDT
People actually spend more time using their smartphones for navigating the web, rather than calling people or receiving calls, according to a new research. Not that it’s anywhere near surprising, but social networking is also above calling, when it comes to the amount of time users spend doing that on a smartphone.
The study was done by British carrier O2 and showed that the average consumer spends over 2 hours each day using his handset. In that time frame, smartphone owners spend 25 minutes browsing the web, 17 minutes on social networking and 13 minutes playing games. Meanwhile, music gets 16 minutes and phone calls only get 12 minutes, slightly popular than emails with 11 minutes and texting, with 10 minutes. In spite of the fact that people spend just 3 minutes taking photos with a handset per day, photography is the feature that most people use on a smartphone. 74% of owners said they’ve taken photos using their smartphones. It’s clear the high end mobile have buried some other gadgets, such as watches, point and shoot cameras and even laptops. After all, you can now have a quad core powerhouse in your pocket easily and do everything you do on a laptop using it. Related posts:
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| Samsung Appeals Galaxy Nexus Injunction Decision Posted: 02 Jul 2012 11:46 AM PDT
This weekend there was a bit of bad news for Samsung in USA, as their Galaxy Nexus handset was found guilty of patent infringements related to Apple and was banned temporarily. The injunction is now being contested by Samsung, who filed an appeal on the measures taken by authorities.
Judge Lucy Koh granted Apple an injunction against the first Android 4.0 handset, that infringes two patents belonging to Apple. The problem is that Samsung Galaxy S III also uses the same patents, so it could go under fire soon. Samsung listed a bunch of arguments in the filing, such as “legally insufficient evidence that Samsung and Apple are competitors”. Sammy is trying to prove the court that they’re not Apple competitors, that sounds very funny to me. Their real purpose is showing that Apple did not lose market share in their favour. Also, the Asian company says that the court’s order is inconsistent with the directive given out by the Federal Circuit, saying that market share losses must be substantial. So basically unless Apple can prove it was harmed by Samsung’s infringing product, they have no grounds. The 604 patent is mentioned among the troublemakers, related to unified search and Siri. Samsung says that Siri is a different feature than the unified search covered by the 604 patent, so they have no business using that in court. Samsung may get a delay of the injunction at best right now… Related posts:
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| Nokia Lumia 900 Review – Too Big, Too Bulky, But With Good Camera Bitrate and Display (Video) Posted: 02 Jul 2012 04:50 AM PDT
Nokia Lumia 900 is the third Windows Phone model made by Nokia that arrived at our HQ and we had a fun time reviewing it. This model now goes for as low as $49.99 on AT&T in USA, so it’s a hot seller, but is it really worth it, considering there are quite a few appealing HD display handsets with Android out there? Let’s find out!
The handset is available in black, blue, white, magenta and other hues and it was announced in February, also being showcased during Mobile World Congress 2012, where we had some quality time with the device. It was launched in USA first and believed to be an US-only product, but now it finally reached the rest of the world. Particularly Europe had to face an unpleasant delay. Anyway, know that this model will not get an update to Windows Phone 8, but instead it will receive WP 7.8 as consolation. It also got some nifty camera apps, but only for users in the USA and China and that happened recently, so you can look them up. As you can see, the Lumia 900 keeps the trademark design of the Lumia 800 and Nokia N9 and the surprising thing is that once you put on top of the Galaxy Nexus, for example it feels bigger and bulkier. It’s too heavy and thick to be appealing, if you ask me. The device uses a polycarbonate shell and gathers all the buttons on the right side, including camera button.
Up at the top it has the microUSB port, audio jack and the microSIM card slot, accessible with a special pin included in the package of the phone. The device has an 8 megapixel camera at the back a front VGA camera. Below the display there are the 3 classic Windows Phone buttons, while at the bottom part of the device there’s the speaker. The smartphone measures 11.5mm in thickness, weighs 160 grams and feature a 4.3 inch AMOLED ClearBlack screen with a 480 x 800 pixel resolution. It’s saturated and bright, behaves great in direct sunlight and it’s protected by Gorilla Glass. The brain of the phone is a Qualcomm Snapdragon 1.4 GHz single core CPU of the Scorpion kind and other specs include the Adreno 205 GPU, 16GB of storage, 512MB of RAM and HSDPA 42 Mbps connectivity. There’s also WiFi, Bluetooth 2.1, microUSB 2.0, an accelerometer, gyroscope, proximity sensor, compass, stereo FM radio, GPS and Glonass. The battery inside is a Li-Ion 1830 mAh unit, good enough for 7 hours of 2G talk time and about 1-2 days or normal usage.
Windows Phone 7.5 Mango is the OS of choice here, with the usual multitasking via back button kept pressed and if you keep the Home button pressed you’ll reach the voice command area. As far as media goes, the audio volume is good, music sounds great and so do the calls. On the video playback side, videos look crisp, clear, colours are saturated and viewing angles are good. Too bad you have to convert files via Zune to play them on the handset. At the back we have an 8 megapixel camera, that while not so good indoor, it’s excellent outside. It comes with Carl Zeiss technology, autofocus, dual LED flash, geotagging and does 720p video capture at 30 fps with very good bitrate. There’s also a stabilizer available and at the front we have a 1MP camera for VGA capture. You can press the camera button while the phone is in standby mode to wake it up. The device obviously comes with Nokia Maps and Nokia Drive, just like the Lumia 800 The virtual keyboard is comfortable to use and the browser loads pages fast, although you may not feel used to that lower area address bar, even after a while of using it. I know I’m not… And then there’s the People Hub, for all your social needs, there’s Xbox Live for gaming and customizing your Xbox avatar and the Marketplace for downloading games and apps.
We give the handset a 7 out of 10 for design, a 7.5 for hardware and an 8 for UI and OS. The total is 7.5 out of 10 and I hope you enjoyed our video review at GSMDome.com.                      Related posts:
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| 5 Inch Smartphone Pantech Vega S5 is Better than Galaxy S III in Some Ways… Posted: 02 Jul 2012 02:45 AM PDT
Innovation has a tendency of coming from Korea these days and the latest example of such innovation is the 5 inch smartphone Pantech Vega S5. The device is everything that the Samsung Galaxy S III should have been and then something. For starters, it has a “zero bezel” narrow form factor, that allows it to look stunning.
We’re dealing here with a 5 incher, a phablet if you want, that uses a narrower frame, merely 6.89 mm in width, compared to the Samsung Galaxy S III’s 8.6mm. It also has a camera with a resolution of 13 megapixels and its specs include a Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 processor, Android 4.0 ICS, a 5 inch 720p display, a 13 megapixel camera with zero shutter lag and continuous autofocus. There’s also a 2100 mAh battery on board, with 11 hours of talk time guaranteed. And then there’s the price… $800 to be more precise, for this model, available only in Korea. Odds are that the handset will actually stay in Korea, since Pantech has a reputation of creating products with limited distribution abroad. They created this product as an exclusive project with SK Telecom, if you really want to know. Related posts:
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| Android Infringes on 11 Patents Belonging to Apple and Microsoft, Apparently Posted: 02 Jul 2012 01:52 AM PDT
Over the past week Samsung has been found as infringing Apple patents and the Galaxy Nexus was temporarily banned in the USA. And that’s only one of the many problems that Android has with Apple and also with Microsoft. No less than 11 patents belonging to those two companies have been found as infringe by the search engine giant’s OS.
The Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 and Galaxy Nexus are two models that have to suffer because of that, but HTC also had its problems, with models like the One X and One S stuck at US border because of patents. FOSS Patents came up with a list of the 11 patents I mentioned, including one that seems pretty standard, for a “portable electronic device for photo management”, used by a Dutch Court in August 24th 2011 in order to give Apple an injunction against some Samsung handsets. The same patent was used in a court in Munich on March 1st this year, reaching a permanent injunction in favour of Apple against Motorola Mobility. Another major patent involved in the beef is the one related to a “list scrolling and document translation, scaling and rotation on a touchscreen display”. This is actually, the “bounce” movement you see on your phone at the end of a list that you scroll. The US District Court for the Northern District of California ruled in favour of Apple on this one, in December last year. Slide to unlock is also on the list, as well as design patents, autocorrect ones and even Siri/virtual assistant. Who will get Google Android out of trouble? Related posts:
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