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- Samsung conquers full HD video capture with new 32GB microSD class 10 card
- Apple’s £39 Thunderbolt cable teardown validates the high price tag
- Activision: ‘where’s the market for PlayStation Vita?’
- Samsung webOS tablet: HP confirms talks to license webOS
- T-Mobile shakes up the data game, intros ‘truly unlimited internet’ summer promotion
- Samsung Conquer 4G redefines the entry level Android smartphone, drops TouchWiz
- Angry Birds hacked, Justin Timberlake running Myspace, and Olympus outs three new cameras: Lunchtime Lowdown
- Skype for Android 2.0 app lets you video call to other platforms
- Angry Birds top scores hacked
- LG Optimus 3D review: The jury’s still out on glasses-free 3D
| Samsung conquers full HD video capture with new 32GB microSD class 10 card Posted: 30 Jun 2011 08:45 AM PDT
SD speed class ratings list class 10 at 10 MB/s. Samsung's 32GB microSD cards outpace this standard by reaching 12MB/s write speeds — double the speed of current class 4 microSD cards. So what does this mean in the real world? In the world of DSLRs, high bitrate 1080p video capture requires class 10 cards. As bitrate of smartphone video capture increases, a microSD with this level of performance will become a necessity. Though you might not need a class 10 microSD card today. There's no telling what type of video bitrate we'll see in next year's smartphones and tablets. via Samsung Related posts:
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| Apple’s £39 Thunderbolt cable teardown validates the high price tag Posted: 30 Jun 2011 08:00 AM PDT
Peeling back the unusually large connector jacket of the £39 Thunderbolt cable reveals a controller that is used to boost and condition the signal, preventing any data loss. Additionally, at each end of the cable are six chips. The controller and six chips, produced by Gennum technologies, can largely be attributed to the cable's high price. In order to handle Thunderbolt throughput, the raw components of a cable must be impecable. Any shortcomings would have a limiting effect on high-bandwidth systems. By using active components to compensate, the £39 Thunderbolt cable is actually relatively cheap. With a considerable amount of components inside, Apple has cautioned the cable may become warm to the touch. At first glance the Apple £39 Thunderbolt cable seemed far fetched. Now it seems Apple is actually in position to do us a favor — who would have thought? via Cnet Related posts:
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| Activision: ‘where’s the market for PlayStation Vita?’ Posted: 30 Jun 2011 07:58 AM PDT
To see how this will impact on what games Activision makes, as well as what he thinks of the Nintendo Wii U, and Activision's plans for games for tablets, read on.
Bobby Kotick, chief executive and president of Activision, the company behind Call of Duty and the Guitar Hero franchise, thinks very highly of both the Wii U and the PlayStation Vita, though he's not sure there's a market for the latter. In an interview with The Guardian, he said, "It is a fantastic piece of hardware. Technically, we’re super excited about what we can do on it, it’s really something incredible. The question is, where is the market?" And it's not even an issue of pricing, he says. "I think the pricing was surprisingly affordable, the product itself is really great – so the question is, is there a need in the marketplace for a very specialised portable device of that capability? Hopefully there will be because it’s a really nice product and it’s very well differentiated from what you can get in even the most capable smartphone or tablet today." He admits Activision has been slow in getting on the tablet gaming bandwagon, but hints it could be turning that way soon. He said it was never the first, it preferred to come to market with the highest quality products appealing to the broadest audience, but that "those are market opportunities that are starting to emerge. I don’t think they are going to be big opportunities for revenue growth in the short term, but over the long term, they’re going to be exciting." So what about the Wii U? Typical Nintendo, according to Kotick. "I think that the user-interface itself is very clever – there will be a lot of innovation to come from having the second screen. It’s also critically important that you can use the existing physical interfaces with the new device because those are really compelling. Nintendo has always done a very good job of thinking about the user experience and this is no exception. "We're very enthusiastic about it," he added. Do you agree that there might not be a market for the Vita? And are you excited about the prospect of Activision iPad games? Let us know in the comments. Via The Guardian Related posts:
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| Samsung webOS tablet: HP confirms talks to license webOS Posted: 30 Jun 2011 07:25 AM PDT
The official word from HP CEO Leo Apotheker is that HP is currently talking "to a number of companies", and they "are continuing conversations". One suitor in particular is Samsung, though both HP and Samsung declined to comment in Bloomberg's report. This marks the first time HP has confirmed it's in talks to license webOS. For consumers, a Samsung webOS tablet would level the playing field between Android, iOS and webOS. Application libraries aside, webOS is considered by many to have the most innovative UI and multi-tasking implementation. With a premium hardware vendor who could deliver cutting edge designs, webOS could become a major player. Imagine the Samsung Galaxy S II and Galaxy Tab 10.1 both running webOS. That's a webOS world I could get behind. via FierceWireless Related posts:
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| T-Mobile shakes up the data game, intros ‘truly unlimited internet’ summer promotion Posted: 30 Jun 2011 06:45 AM PDT
Whether you're looking to browse, stream, email or simply download, having unlimited data at your fingertips is a game changer. T-Mobile's truly unlimited internet is the perfect pairing for HTC Desire S (£25.54/m, 24 month plan), Samsung Galaxy S II (£35.75/m, 24 month plan) or iPhone 4 (£40.85/m, 24 month plan). Now to clarify: the truly unlimited internet extends through the life of your 24-month contract. The plan (or £5.10 add-on) will be available starting tomorrow and end 30 September. So long as you sign up in this time frame you'll secure an endless serving of high speed data for the next two years. via T-mobile Related posts:
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| Samsung Conquer 4G redefines the entry level Android smartphone, drops TouchWiz Posted: 30 Jun 2011 06:13 AM PDT
When you hear entry level and Android used in the same sentence, the last thing you'd expect to hear is a 1 GHz processor. Surprisingly that's exactly what's inside the Conquer 4G, along with a 3.5-inch HVGA resolution touchscreen, 3.2-megapixel camera, 1.3-megapixel front facing camera and Tri-band CDMA support. Sure, the Samsung Conquer 4G pales in comparison to the HTC EVO 3D, but in terms of the entry or even mid level market, the device raises the bar. Who would have thought that a 1 GHz smartphone with dual cameras and a 3.5-inch touchscreen display would become the smartphone baseline in 2011? No word on whether we'll see a 4G-less GSM version ship out to the rest of the world just yet. Hopefully other manufacturers take notice and ship all low and mid-range Android smartphones with vanilla builds of Android Gingerbread. Coming Soon | Samsung | TBD Related posts:
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| Posted: 30 Jun 2011 04:30 AM PDT
One of the stranger stories of the week has seen Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation selling ailing social networking site Myspace for $35m. Nothing that bizarre in that, you might think, except for the low price, but in an odd twist the pop star will take an ownership stake, playing a key role in the site's future direction. Bad news for fans of the Angry Birds, as they've been hacked. An official spokesperson from Rovio revealed to us the high scores on Game Center are false, with the real top scorer residing somewhere around 30-40th place. Bummer. Olympus has outed three new micro four thirds cameras, and they're all worthy additions to its PEN family. Look out for them in August. Finally, Skype's Android app has been given an update, allowing video calls to other Android users, iPhones, and computers. The bad news? It's only for select handsets right now. Phew, what a morning. Let's see what the afternoon brings. Bon appetit! Related posts:
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| Skype for Android 2.0 app lets you video call to other platforms Posted: 30 Jun 2011 03:52 AM PDT
Video calls are only supported on selected devices at the moment – read on for the full list.
If you own a Google Nexus S, HTC Desire S, Sony Ericsson Xperia Neo, or are saving up for an Xperia Pro, then you're in luck, as Skype for Android 2.0 will let you video call. The company says it's working on rolling it out to other handsets too. The updated app also lets you send SMS via Skype, at a far cheaper rate than most networks. Skype is also promising an improved user experience, fixing some known bugs, and adding a 'mood message box', like a Facebook status update. "When building the Skype 2.0 for Android we made big efforts to iron out the few quirks we had on the initial version and we made number of changes to the user experience based on you’re [sic] feedback to the initial version of Skype for Android," reads an entry on the company's blog. You'll need Android 2.1 or newer to be able to use the updated app. Related posts:
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| Posted: 30 Jun 2011 03:20 AM PDT
So if your top score is nowhere near the best, read on for some consolation.
Responding to a request for the highest score on Angry Birds, a spokesperson for Rovio said, "The task is quite impossible, as there are over 20 hacked scores in GameCenter. Our producers evaluated that the real high scorers are somewhere between 30 and 40 in the top lists." So if your score is languishing low down the table somewhere, there’s a very good reason. Game Center itself being hacked isn't anything new: back in January a hack called HackCenter broke on the Cydia store, that let you do just that. But even so, seeing the extent to which people are lying about their scores is a bit dispiriting. One of our favourites, Pinball HD on iPad, has clearly been hacked. We've spent countless hours on The Deep table, yet our score of 30 million is still way off the top score of over 2 billion. Does your favourite game have a hacked high score? And should more be done to stop these cheaters? Let us know in the comments below. Related posts:
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| LG Optimus 3D review: The jury’s still out on glasses-free 3D Posted: 30 Jun 2011 03:05 AM PDT The LG Optimus 3D feels a bit like somebody turning up at a fancy dress party just as everyone else is leaving. The Nintendo 3DS has been out for months, and so far has met with a rather lacklustre reception, so can a phone with glasses-3D 3D as a USP fare any better? Join us for our full LG Optimus 3D review and we’ll break it down for you.
We did not have high hopes for the LG Optimus 3D, or the LG Optimus 3D P920, to give it its full name. Back at Mobile World Congress in February, the twin cameras and parallax barrier covered display seemed like features for the sake of feature, especially since nobody wants to play Asphalt Bloody 6 any more, in 3D or not. But you know what? There’s something to be said for a big beefcake phone like this. Let’s take a look. See the best LG Optimus 3D deals now Big, fat and fully functional
If the Samsung Galaxy S 2 were a Milky Bar, the LG Optimus 3D would be a Kit Kat Chunky. At 11.9mm deep, it isn’t that thick, but it feels massive. The screen width is actually the same size as the HTC Sensation (4.3-inches), but the whole phone feels much bigger, largely due to the less slender screen aspect ratio, and there’s something very Motorola Droid X about it, another muscle mobile with a big lip at the back caused by the camera module’s girth. Best Android apps of all time: Top 100 And yet, we rather like it. Granted, we have the largest handspan of anyone we’ve met, but the LG Optimus 3D feels functional, easy to use, and very much present. It’s not going to snap in half like a Jacob’s Cream Cracker as you might think the Galaxy S 2 could, and it feels like it could take a big old tumble down concrete stairs, and the smooth rubber back and metal strip holding the camera sensors feel premium.
All the prerequisite ports are on hand too. There’s a 3.5mm audio port and a power/lock button on the top, while the left side houses micro USB and HDMI sockets behind closed plastic doors, and the right stores the volume rocker and a dedicated 3D button. But more on that in a second. The screen sans stereoscopyWe tackle 3D performance in another section, and you’ll be using the phone in 2D for the most part, unless there’s something deeply wrong with your priorities in life, so we’re looking at that first, if you don’t mind.
The IPS display on the LG Optimus 3D is first class. Blacks are only bettered by AMOLED-screen smartphones (simply because they can actually turn off individual pixels), and colours are vivid, with broad viewing angles and decent visibility in direct sunlight. It’s true that its 800×480 resolution isn’t the sharpest, but you’d be pretty hard pressed to spot the pixels so we wouldn’t let this bother you. More troublesome is that LG hasn’t fixed one of our big gripes with its Optimus 2X jumbo phone: the capacitive buttons below the screen (menu, home, back and search) don’t remain lit up when the screen is active. In fact, it seems quite arbitrary as to when they elect to kick into go, which can be annoying if you’re using your phone at night or in a dark environment. Android 2.2 for far too longLG has been absurdly slow to adopt new builds of Android, so it’s no surprise to find the LG Optimus 3D shipping with Android 2.2, a version of the smartphone operating system released more than a year ago. Now, there aren’t that many new user features in Android 2.3 “Gingerbread”, but there’s more at stake here than a touchscreen keyboard that phone manufacturers strip out anyway. Eventually, you’ll see apps that only support Gingerbread and up and where does that leave the LG Optimus 3D? A company spokesperson told us that a 2.3 update is due later in the Summer, but considering we’ve never seen LG roll out an Android update in the UK before, we wouldn’t hold our breath. As we’ve said before, never buy a smartphone for what it’ll do in the future, rather than what it can do now.
That said, Android 2.2 is still a superb operating system, with all sorts of tricks up its sleeves, from Flash support to the ability to turn into a Wi-Fi hotspot for free. And many, many apps, including a couple of exclusive ones, such as LG’s easy to use DLNA streaming app, SmartShare. LG’s interpretation of 2.2 “Froyo” is a little odd however. Its keyboard, stretched across such a large display is perfectly usable, but the South Korean company has done some funny things with the menu showing all your installed apps. Open your menu, and instead of a list of apps in alphabetical order, you get these separated by folders. 3D apps come first, then LG’s pre-installed apps come second (confusingly just labelled “applications”), and only then do the ones you’ve downloaded appear. You can move these categories around and add your own, but you can’t delete them and just have one long list – and regardless, many customers won’t realise how to do this. South Korean (and Japanese) mobile manufacturers have a notorious reputation for impenetrable user interface software, and while Samsung seems to have upped its game lately, it’s touches like this that suggest LG isn’t thinking as globally as it ought to. This is a world in which video editing is not only possible on phones, but simple. If you own an iPhone anyway.
On the plus side, LG has relegated its absurd custom Facebook and Twitter “for LG” apps to a mere widget on your homescreen showing your friends’ updates, so it’s a lot less confusing than on the Optimus 2X and Optimus Black. Baby steps, but LG needs to figure this UI thing out pronto since everyone else got the memo ages ago. Also, LG, get rid of the LG World app. If you want to have people like your exclusive content, find some that matters – HTC’s Watch movie streaming service is a good start. Hell on the HTC Evo 3D, you can even rent 3D movies. Speaking of which. 3D – the main event?After handling a HTC Evo 3D prototype last week, we did not have high hopes for the LG Optimus 3D’s glassed-free 3D abilities. But LG has actually done a better job as far as we can tell, with much less crosstalk and ghosting evident – so long as you look at it in just the righty way. You see, in order to display different images to your left and right eyes simultaneously, there’s only a small viewing range in which the effect can work. Otherwise you’d need more even more images for all the angles. The sweetspot on the LG Optimus 3D is very small (Horizontally, anyway), but so long as you’re not on a bumpy train journey, you won’t break from it.
3D kicks into action with a press of the button on the side, or the app’s shortcut icon. Pop either, and you’ll fire up the 3D launcher with access to 3D content (press it in the camera app in 2D mode and you’ll switch to 3D shooting). The effect is very similar to that on the Nintendo 3DS (Though we would say that the vertical striping appears more obvious: you can see the texture of the barrier when 3D is on): games and movies look like little puppet shows. Sometimes, it’s quite nifty, especially in games, but other times it just feels pointless. We’re not convinced that 3D movies are better than 2D ones on the silver screen, never mind screens that can be measured in centimetres. LG has provided some other content though. There’s a shortcut to the 3D YouTube channel, which works splendidly in landscape mode, but of more interest are the preloaded games. They’re all from Gameloft, and some, particularly NOVA 3D and Let’s Golf 2, look ace. If you want to buy more, the’s a homescreen shortcut to Gameloft’s web portal – they’re going for 99p at the moment, which seems like a bargain.
It’s a fun experience (for a burst of a few minutes at a time anyway), akin to a 21st century version of those reflective rulers with holograms in that you used to have at school. It’s one you can even have on the big screen. The LG Optimus 3D can output 3D imagery to a TV through HDMI, but it needs to be a 3D TV, naturally: try it on an ordinary telly and you just get squished, side by side images like so:
Having slagged off 3D movies, we still feel LG needs to provide some as HTC plans to. And not just trailers. The company tells us it’s in talks, but well, HTC’s executed already. LG should take a leaf out of their book and just buy a movie streaming start up. Killer cameras
We have to admit, the LG Optimus 3D has one of the best five megapixel cameras we’ve tested in a good long while. Stills are really crisp and detailed, and macro performance was top notch, though we’d say colour accuracy is a bit off, and unusually for a smarpthone under-saturated, rather than over-saturated. See for yourself in the shots below (click to enlarge), taken on a bright Summer day in South-East London.
Sterling stuff though, and the 1080p 2D video looks just as good: Of course, it actually has two cameras. 3D images depict a vivid sense of depth, though naturally quite a dim one (since you only get half the light you normally would, split between the two images for each eye) and while most people will probably only be able to view these on the handset themselves, you can take the .jps files and do as you will with them. Naturally, they’re a lot better than the low resolution stills a Nintendo 3Ds can grab, but there’s honestly not much use for them. One thing we noticed the LG Optimus 3D doesn’t offer is the ability to adjust 3D images after the fact, as the HTC Evo 3D does. But since it’s better at minimising ghosting anyway, it’s not such a big deal. 3D video meanwhile is nabbed at a maximum 720p resolution, and it looks swell. You can upload it on YouTube, as we have below, but be warned that there doesn’t seem to be any obvious way to do this directly from the phone. (You may have to click through to YouTube to view in 3D) Performance, battery and call qualityThe LG Optimus 3D is a monster of a performer, and in practice, we found its dual-core 1GHz TI OMAP 4 processor proved much swifter than the LG Optimus 2X’s Nvidia Tegra 2 chipset. Add to that the dual-channel 512MB of RAM and 8GB of internal storage (Faster than a microSD card, though you can insert one of these as well), and you have a stellar smartphone for speed, only bested by the Samsung Galaxy S 2. We regularly topped 2,600 on the Quadrant Standard benchmark, where the Optimus 2X barely scraped 2,000. Replace the Optimus 3D’s launcher with the free LauncherPro app, and things get even faster. This does come at the cost of battery life alas: in practice, we found the LG Optimus 3D didn’t quite scrape through a day of use with all connections on and brightness cranked to the max. The 1500mAh cell still makes it better at lasting away from the mains than an HTC Desire HD, but then that’s true of every phone ever made (and plenty of laptops as well). We had no trouble making calls meanwhile, though we wouldn’t say that audio quality was outstanding – the same is true of the slightly fuzzy loudspeaker. Verdict
If you’ve ever picked up a smartphone, even an oversized one like the HTC Incredible S, and thought, “You know what? This is still too small”, the LG Optimus 3D might just be for you. Sure it’s bloated, but it’s also bloody fast, and it’s one meaty mobile. You can’t really go wrong with Android these days (Unless you’re Acer, in which case God help you) and a decent camera thrown in the mix is something few would balk at. However, while it doesn’t exactly fail at 3D, the LG Optimus 3D doesn’t convince us that it’s a necessity. We’re glad LG is pushing to get 3D games rolling out on Android (HTC’s Evo 3D won’t ship with any, we’ve confirmed) and we’re intrigued to see where it goes, but right now, we’re simply not seized by the urge to watch a 3D YouTube clip rather than peruse Facebook in an idle moment. What could change that? Games of Nintendo calibre perhaps, but even then, it’s a big ask. Thanks to Carphone Warehouse for providing the LG Optimus 3D review unit. Related posts:
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