Samsung has announced record second-quarter profits of 5.01tn Korean won
(£2.7bn), an 88 per cent year-on-year increase.

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(Source Yahoo UK News)

A crisp, bright screen makes this smartphone appealing – but Samsung’s new in-house operating system doesn’t

What is it? Samsung Wave GT-S8500 – the first device to run Samsung operating system Bada

Category: Hardware and software, given the newsworthy nature of operating systems these days..

You’d use it for… On the move, personal or business. It’s not going to intrude on BlackBerry’s ground as leading high-performance business mobile device, but the Wave sits happily as a phone suited to staying up to speed while on the move.

First impressions: what is it like to look at, to hold, to use? Perfectly good look and feel to the phone, a sturdy but slender shell encasing a fairly high-spec bit of mobile kit. It’s when you activate the screen things start to go downhill.

The home screen – quite separate from the screen of apps – has six iterations as you swipe your finger right-to-left, inching across a background of some picturesque eastern European town square.

Each of these five modules is for housing a quick access single widget – but the access isn’t so quick after four or five swipes of the finger. Navigating from the home screen to your downloaded apps directory takes another click. Granted, the software is snappy and quickly responsive, but these things all pile up in the “pointless” file.

And you can’t swipe up to the URL bar in the browser, forcing you instead to press an on-screen button. Seems needless.

What does it really do well? Mobile internet has a well-suited clean font, made all the more appealing by the crisp super AMOLED screen. Put the Wave side-by-side with an iPhone 4 and a 3G – you’ll see the difference. FYI: guardian.co.uk looks better on a Wave than a 3G.

Keyboard keys appear far too close together, but typing seems to work fine if not more usable than on the iPhone. When browsing the web, pinching zooms are clunky and not instantaneously responsive.

Video playback is impressive, on the eyes and the ears. Creating media is a good experience too, the 5MP camera shooting strong video and stills taking allowing nifty features like user-directed focus.

What’s the cost? Around £300 sim-free; a 24-month contract, free handset, will set you back between £25-£45 per month.

What’s it up against? A smartphone market with less wiggle room than the App Store. It’s a relatively ruthless market out there for high-end devices, software increasing in consumer importance at a rate of knots.

With Bada, Samsung is late to the party and forgot to invite its marketing muscle. For this reason alone, Wave falls short of the majority of recently-released Android devices – Samsung have plenty of work to do before the release of Bada-powered Wave 2.

Blind us with the tech specs, then: Quite a few headline tech specs come with the Wave: the 5MP video/still camera will draw the punters – 5x zoom for stills and 720p video recording make the feature more than adequate; the Super AMOLED screen is a turn on, but likely only to the techies.

As light as any iPhone, the Wave is slimmer but only at a stitch. At 3.3 inch, the Wave screen limits its viability as a comfortable-to-use mobile internet device. With 2GB internal memory as standard, most users will require a MicroSD card (up to 32GB capacity).

What’s it good for? Taking and sharing decent-quality stills. It would be good for accomplishing tasks quickly if there weren’t so many naggingly bad points of user experience making pretty much any task an exertion.

What are its failings? One word: Bada. A few more words: the cramped feeling while using SMS, the uneconomic use of the 3.3 inch screen made worse by the majority of the screen having a black (or very dark) background even when running apps.

Will I have to read the manual? Does anyone still read manuals? If new to Samsung, you may need to Google “Help! I’ve accidentally locked my Samsung Wave – what now?”

How long is the battery life? With its 3G signal sensor turned off, the battery will last you over 24 hours from full – more than can be said for any iPhone before 4.

What’s its USP? The Wave’s USP would have to be the Super AMOLED screen which, on this score alone, puts it near top of the class for smartphones. That said, I don’t know one single person who’s been sold a phone on screen specifications – and it’s not great marketing fodder either.

Rating out of 10: 6.5

Finally, is it worth it – yes or no? Not at the current price. There are countless devices (and countless yet to be released) doing a better job and with a better operating system. Don’t hold out for the Wave 2.

Rating: 3/5

Read Original Story…
(Source The Guardian)

Sales of Android phones have risen by more than 300% this year, new figures show

Sales of Android phones have risen by more than 300% from the beginning of 2010, with one in 10 contract handsets sold in the UK now running Google’s mobile operating system.

Android’s share of the UK mobile contract market grew by 10.2 percentage points from the first quarter of 2010 to the second quarter, from 3% to 13.2%, new figures from retail watcher GfK show.

From the beginning of 2010, most of the UK’s major mobile operators have started selling a number of hotly-anticipated mobile devices running Google’s Linux-based software. The HTC Desire and HTC Legend are among other devices lauded by critics.

Just last week, Samsung launched a direct marketing challenge to the Apple iPhone with its Android-powered Galaxy S device.

Many mobile operators were unable to keep up with demand for the HTC Desire when it launched in the UK in April this year. HTC, the Taiwanese manufacturer of many devices running Android, posted a 41% global sales increase for the first six months of 2010, with figures from April, May and June reflecting record sales, according to the company.

In the same period, mobile devices running “advanced” operating systems – defined as those able to run independent compatible applications – grew in the contract market from 55% to 66.7%. Figures available from June show mobiles with advanced operating systems now representing 73.5% of the contract market.

“The figures suggest an increasing number of consumers are now asking for Android handsets by name,” said GfK analyst Megan Baldock. “Operating systems are no longer simply a by-product but a key selling point in their own right.”

Read Original Story…
(Source The Guardian)

Samsung has stepped up its marketing game against the Apple iPhone, sprinkling free Galaxy S devices across the twittersphere

Samsung is out with the stretchers, running full tilt towards the customer carnage left by antennagate. Yes, if you’re a disgruntled iPhoner, Samsung is coming for you.

Via Twitter and Facebook, Samsung is giving away (yes, literally giving away) its Galaxy S device, mostly to a “cross section” of customers reporting iPhone reception problems. And so comes the belated response to Apple chief executive Steve Jobs and his public dressing down of other devices – including the Samsung Omnia 2 – last week.

In a press statement, Samsung says: “Recently there has been a real increase in online activity from consumers dissatisfied with some of our competitors’ products.

“We decided to contact a cross section of individuals to offer them a free Samsung Galaxy S as a replacement, as we’re confident that once people have the phone in their hands, they’ll see how impressive it is for themselves.”

Samsung apparently started handing out the Android-powered devices ia Twitter on Wednesday.

Tiffany Nieuwland, Conde Nast digital marketing staffer, was among the first to be offered one after bemoaning the number of dropped calls she gets. Jose Espinosa, director of digital services at Connect Group, was next up for a Galaxy S in the post. And then DigitalNetwork, a London-based search and digital recruitment company.

You get the picture, right? Less a “cross section of customers reporting iPhone reception problems,” more of a cherry-picked bunch of digital influencers.

Will Critchlow, co-director of web marketing and development company Distilled, appears to have been the first recipient of the kindly offer. He received his no-strings Samsung phone this morning – with a handwritten courtesy note attached, no less.

“I asked my followers what phone I should get, a few people got back with various links, one of which I retweeted. It appears that’s the one Samsung picked up on,” Critchlow told us.

“We’re an office full of geeks here. It’s an effective strategy in terms of making me evangelise the phone. But will it make my followers buy one? Who knows. It ultimately comes down to how good the product is.”

Critchlow, an iPhone 3G owner, said he was relatively impressed with the Galaxy S (and you’d be forgiven for thinking they were the same phone, from the appearance), which is his first hands-on experience of Google’s Android software. (It runs the Android 2.1 software.)

Samsung kicked off its iPhone-bashing Galaxy S campaign with the below poster. But how long will it last? Bring on the side-by-side customer reviews, we say.

Read Original Story…
(Source The Guardian)

But, but, it’s free… come back!

Samsung has decided to give away electronic copies of An Introduction To Bada, hoping that a free guide will drum up some developer interest in the platform.…

Read Full Story…
(Source The Register)

The Samsung Galaxy Europa i5500 is an affordable smartphone that allows even those on a budget to experience the intuitive Android 2.1 OS. With 3G HSDPA web browsing you can access your favourite social networks and web pages at broadband like speeds. Wi-Fi, GPRS, EDGE and Bluetooth ensure a comprehensive choice of connection options and with GPS support you can be sure to find your way. The multimedia player offers entertainment on the move and supports all popular video and music file formats.

The built-in camera lets you capture the moment with a choice of either still images or video clips. The bright touchscreen acts as a viewfinder for the camera and browsing the captured images is a joy. The Samsung i5500 offers the appealing and popular Android OS in a budget smartphone that will appeal to all pockets.

Compare all Samsung i5500 deals

Early experiences by various testers show growing interest in new interface experience from Microsoft – but excitement is restrained

The early previews of Windows Phone 7 – for which reference hardware has started shipping to developers – are in. What to make of them? I think the best way to describe them would be a crouching ovation: people who’ve tried it like the fact that Microsoft is trying something different with the mobile experience, but they really can’t decide if it’s going to be a success or not.

Engadget’s in-depth preview (an intriguing concept) is sort of positive: “Microsoft still has a few months before it intends to get the first volley of Windows Phone 7-based products to the marketplace, but we’ve recently been provided with reference hardware — a not-for-retail Samsung called “Taylor” that’s closely modeled on the Symbian-based i8910HD — to get a feel for where they’re at as the clock ticks down.”

Quick briefs: “We were extremely surprised and impressed by the software’s touch responsiveness and speed. In fact, this is probably the most accurate and nuanced touch response this side of iOS4. It’s kind of stunning how much work Microsoft has done on the user experience since we first saw this interface — everything now comes off as a tight, cohesive whole. It really put one of our major fears about Windows Phone 7 to rest. We haven’t seen any substantial lag while using the device, and the short transitions between applications or pages are well suited to the overall experience.”

Although: “the controversial cut-off text is still present, and while we happen to like the way it looks, it’s definitely an acquired taste, and there are times when it just doesn’t work, like in the Office hub where PowerPoint looks like it reads “PowerPoir.” And two other things: “There are two big omissions here, in our opinion. The device won’t support copy and paste, and won’t support third-party multitasking of apps. We knew this would be the case given what we heard at MIX10, but it doesn’t stink any less now. The former really doesn’t make any sense to us, especially since Microsoft did a good job of nailing text editing and selection (at least in Word, and really… you guys make Word), and it looks like it would only be a short walk to a contextual pop-over for copy and paste functions. The latter is practically inexcusable in this day and age — even Apple (which has been a complete laggard in this area) now supports basic multitasking.”

But they like the keyboard (“the keyboard in Windows Phone 7 is really, really good. We’re talking nearly as good as the iPhone keyboard, and definitely better than the stock Android option. It’s one of the best and most accurate virtual keyboards we’ve used on any platform — and that’s saying a lot”) and screen resolution (“the Windows Phone 7 standard 480 x 800″).

Then again, there are points where Engadget’s not so happy, which tallies with some of the doubts I expressed earlier (though I must point out that I’ve not held a WP7 phone, nor seen it demoed): “Windows Phone 7 doesn’t have “contacts,” per se — it has a People app, and there’s quite a difference. This is a thoroughly social platform, and it doesn’t really seek to make any sort of differentiation between people you talk to / text / email, those you just casually observe, and those with whom you’re “friends” in name only. If that kind of philosophy reeks of Motorola Blur or Palm Synergy, you’re on the right track; as soon as you add a Windows Live, Exchange, or Facebook account, it pulls in every contact associated with that account and disperses associated content throughout your entire phone — there’s nothing you can do about it. That means, for example, that your Pictures app could have a bunch of shots of your ex’s aunt’s new boyfriend’s dog in it (more on that in a bit), and there’s not a whole lot you can do to stop that behavior without completely removing your Facebook account from the phone.

“With Exchange, this strategy is probably fine in most cases — contact sync is one of the main reasons you use Exchange ActiveSync, really — but seriously, Facebook is another matter altogether. If you’ve got a lot of Facebook friends, this renders your People app all but useless as a traditional phone contact list.”

Over at ZDNet UK, there’s another preview which goes (like Engadget) into plenty of detail: “Microsoft has stripped away all unnecessary information (almost too much, actually — the status bar displaying battery life, signal strength, and so forth goes into hiding after a couple of seconds) and soft buttons, and created a Start screen that consists of ‘live tiles’, which are essentially dynamic widgets to your favorite apps, contacts and hubs, and also display alerts, such as new email and missed calls. You can rearrange the order of the tiles and remove them by doing a long press on the screen. You can also ‘pin’ new tiles, but to do so, you must first navigate to the list of apps or the People hub, find the item that you want to add and then pin it to the Start screen.”

OK, and those hubs… “The names of the hubs are pretty self-explanatory. For example, the People hub merges contact information from your various accounts and then displays them in one long list. A swipe to the right will show you Facebook status updates (unfortunately, Windows Phone 7 will not have Twitter or MySpace integration at launch) and lets you add comments, while another swipe will brings up the people you’ve contacted most recently.”

“This type of panoramic UI runs across all the various hubs with bold, attractive text splashed across the top to identify different subsections (a.k.a. Pivots) and in some cases, a small contextual toolbar along the bottom of the screen to help you perform app-specific tasks.”

“Some might complain that this type of navigation requires too much scrolling and can be overly complicated. Admittedly, this is true when compared to Apple’s iOS 4 and Google’s Android, and may be a turn-off for consumers. On the other hand, we appreciate the ability to do so many things from one place without having to launch several different apps, so we have to give Microsoft kudos for thinking of this kind of organisation. We also like the consistent UI, which makes it easy to work the other hubs.”

Another point which has been made elsewhere: “What’s interesting about Windows Phone 7, though, is that at times it feels as though you’re getting two completely different experiences on one phone. The Start screen/menu list and some apps — such as the phone dialer, email inbox and calendar — are completely minimalistic, while other aspects of the phone, including the aforementioned hubs and multimedia features, are more sophisticated and elegant. It doesn’t hurt the navigation, as such, but is doesn’t make the phone feel like a cohesive unit either.”

And the big question: “Will this resonate with users? Frankly, we think it’ll be a hard sell initially. Despite all the improvements made to the UI, it’s still more involved than other operating systems. That said, we’d also caution you not to dismiss it completely, simply because it’s different. Change is scary, but it can also be a good thing.”

It’s a long review, which you’re urged to read in detail.

Meanwhile the Wired Gadgetlab has put its sticky fingers all over the screen: here’s the video. Their principal comment: “Still the lack of any kind of real app store is a major hindrance. Also, Microsoft just will not give up on the Zune marketplace. It’s admirable, but maybe they should re-examine their reasoning for keeping it.” But surely the Zune Marketplace is Microsoft’s leg up to an App Store? Abandoning it would look weird.

Read Original Story…
(Source The Guardian)

Samsung was the big winner in the notebook market during the first quarter of this year,
as the world’s top three vendors gave away a combined three points in market
share.

Read Full Story…
(Source Yahoo UK News)

Samsung has officially unveiled its Q-Series range of laptops, although the
company has yet to confirm prices.

Read Full Story…
(Source Yahoo UK News)

Free on Vodafone with 9 months half price line rental via redemption cash back. Great deal on Samsung’s stunning Android phone with its 4 inch Super AMOLED display.

The Samsung Galaxy S has the Android 2.1 operating system and a high performance 1GHz processor to provide a superb user experience via the TouchWiz interface. The 4 inch super AMOLED display and resolution of 800×480 pixels place this smartphone in league of its own.

Web browsing is provided by a 3G HSDPA Internet connection and ensures the experience rivals that of a home computer or laptop. Google Talk, YouTube and a media player are but a few of the features the Galaxy S gives access to and with A-GPS support and Google Maps nothing has been forgotten in this must have package. The 5 megapixel camera utilises image stabilisation and auto-focus to capture high quality pictures and has the flexibility to be used as a HD video recorder.

Connectivity options include Bluetooth and quad-band reception for a better experience when overseas. SMS, MMS, instant messaging and email access ensure you can keep connected by your choice of format wherever you may go. Dimensions of 122×64x10mm make this smartphone pocket friendly and at only 118g it can be carried around almost unnoticed. The Galaxy S comes with 8GB internal memory, which can be upgraded with an additiona 32GB microSD card.

Compare all Samsung Galaxy S deals

The transcript of the phone call earlier this week with Google’s chief reveals the real signals he’s sending out: Android wants to be the Windows of mobile phones

Android is getting too big to ignore. Photo by mathrock on Flickr. Some rights reserved

Below is a transcript (taken with shorthand, contemporaneously) of a conference call with Eric Schmidt, chief executive of Google, on 23 June. There may be some inaccuracies. After that, there is an analysis of what Schmidt said – and where the mobile market is.

Also on the conference call were journalists from Germany, the UK and Brazil. I won’t indicate here who asked what questions; see if you can work it out.

Call begins

Eric Schmidt: Verizon is just announcing the Droid X made by Motorola, its fourth Android phone. We have seen a tremendous increase in the adoption of Android. This is one of the best phones ever made, on the very fastest network.

We’ve now got 160,000 new users per day. That’s a 60% increase per month [compared to the 100,000 figure per day that was given at the Google I/O conference in May]. If you get an increase like that going on, well, I’ve done the maths, and it looks like an incredible trajectory.

[That equates to 58m per month, a 60% increase month-on-month would mean that by the end of the year there would be about 16m Android phones being activated every day, or 480m per month - which doesn't really sounds feasible. Obviously it is going to tail off or even slow down at some stage.]

Counting the number of apps, there are 65,000, compared to 50,000 a month ago. So the growth is accelerating. OK, questions?

Q: How large is Android in the US market and European market compared to the iPhone, because it hasn’t done too well in Europe?

ES: I prefer not to talk about the iPhone as a competitor. The growth rate is very very strong, but I don’t think it’s really appropriate to make claims about market share.

Q: What’s driving that acceleration?

ES: having multiple hardware partners – LG, Samsung, HTC, Motorola. The thing is it’s a totally open platorm, so open that the source is available too. Any application can run on Android as long as it doesn’t damage the network.

Q: Android is lagging in Europe compared to the US – why do you think that is?

ES: I don’t know that it’s lagging; I would have to look at the numbers. It was launched first in the US but we have enough European partners. The Droid phone was a big driver.

Q: Have you made any contacts with Nokia to discuss Android on Nokia?

ES: We have talked to everybody… I don’t want to talk about any specific companies. [A rather odd response which tailed off amid expectation.]

Q: What sort of revenues are you seeing from Android?

ES: We make zero from it. Because it’s free. (Q: but you get advertising revenue from it…) We don’t break out what our mobile advertising revenues are… [in general] we make money when people have powerful broadband devices so we invest in Android so that people can invest in it. But our mobile revenue growth is very very quick.

We know that there will be a great deal of money made in ads from the mobile industry.

Q: Do you think Android can become for mobile what Windows was for the PC?

ES: well, the thing about Android is that anybody can use it.. Android in many ways is better than Windows because it’s free, rather than Windows which had an ever-increasing price point. So anybody can build on Android, and it’s free.

Also Android has GPS and a full media stack [possibly misheard], so it can do things that even the ordinary PC doesn’t have and might never have.

Q: Who is your biggest competitor in this fight – Apple, Nokia, who?

ES: I try to spend time not focussing on those questions. Nokia has the largest market share, certainly. Apple, I was a proud board member there, I respect them. Nokia and Apple are both highly organised to be competitive.

Q: Isn’t a problem with Android that of fragmentation of the platform – that some handsets can’t update from earlier versions either because of the networks or the phones, so people are stuck on older versions which means you’re trying to cope with a broad range of versions?

ES: That’s a very good question. The first thing to say is that the networks are quite interoperable. Some phones shipped a year ago can’t be upgraded. But most can be, to 2.2, though it might take some months to roll out.

The argument about fragmentation has been used by competitors of open source for years. But we agree to support compatibility at the platform level. It’s important to understand this. Android apps will work on the current generation; any Android app written for one version will run on any phone with that version. That prevents fragmentation. Apps are written on a per-OS basis. But of course not every app written for any version will run on every version of Android – otherwise the platform couldn’t evolve.

Q: A team at Larva Labs estimated that while Apple has paid developers $1bn from App Store revenues, the comparable figure for the Android Marketplace is about $200m. Is enough money going to developers to make Android attractive?

ES: Well, I haven’t seen those figures, so I can’t talk to them. The thing is, developers go where the volume is. That’s the most important lesson from platform economics. It’s about scale and volume. It’s very important that developers get to a scale where they can see the ability to get to a very large audience. We believe we have done so.

Q: We’ve seen other companies talking about Android-based tablets – does Google intend to produce a tablet running Android?

ES: We’ve seen a number of announcements from other companies about tablets running Android. It’s a reasonably obvious product extension that people have announced. We haven’t announced any form of Google tablet.

[end of interview]

Analysis: the timing of this announcement – on 23 June, just as Apple’s iPhone 4 was reaching its first customers – was clearly aimed at taking some of the shine off the iPhone announcement by implying that even if Apple activates 1m iPhones in the first sales burst, Android will almost match that in a working week. (Do the maths.)

That of course leaves out all sorts of maybes, gotchas and provisionals: are the activation figures volatile? What’s the churn like – how many of the activations are new customers, and how many are renewing customers? An interesting calculation from the analysts Piper Jaffray, via Fortune suggests that (in the US, at least) 77% of iPhone 4 customers were existing iPhone users.

You can look at that two ways: what an enormous number of renewals! Or you could look at it from the other end: wow, Apple grew its customer base for first-day iPhones by 23% – among people who had to wait in enormously long lines. What’s the last consumer product you recall people queueing through the day for? I recall how Microsoft managed the hype machine perfectly for Windows 95, with midnight store openings; rather less so for every subsequent OS release. The Xbox 360 got some dedicated queuers too.

But in truth, Schmidt really isn’t looking at iPhone sales; he’s not trying here to court buyers dithering between iPhone and Android. This was actually a piece of dog-whistle PR aimed at mobile developers.

Unfamiliar with dog-whistle PR? It’s like dog-whistle politics: aimed at a particular group, couched in terms which don’t say a lot to the average person, but which zero in on that target group and make them sit up. The people who Schmidt wanted to hear this latest bit of PR are mobile developers. He wants them to multiply 160,000 by 5 (working days – perhaps 6), and then by 4, to reach about 4m Android phones being activated per month, and to get them to think that this is a really good platform to be building for.

That’s the point of his “platform economics” answer. Google can only capitalise on mobile advertising once it gets Android to a specific market share. It seems like that it has already crossed it, since it’s by all accounts bigger than Apple in smartphone share in the US (and may even be challenging RIM, though still some way behind Nokia). What the numbers are like for Europe – well, we’ll have to wait a couple of weeks for the end of the quarter for all those numbers.

The interesting challenge though will be whether the Android platform will indeed become the Windows of mobile. That could cut both ways: sure, the handset makers don’t have to pay a levy to use Android (as PC makers do to Microsoft). But when they go to the networks (who are the equivalent, in this scenario, of PC purchasers) they may find that they’re forced to bid down, and that their margins get eroded as more rivals pile into the market.

Apple, meanwhile, can be entirely happy with not having the lion’s share of the market, yet making a colossal profit from both the hardware sales (because nobody else can make an iPhone) and the app sales. It does exactly the same in the computer market: it has about 5% market share worldwide, yet makes a stonking profit on every computer sold. PC manufacturers, by contrast, have long since reached the point where price-cutting to win share simply opens a vein in their profits.

Android could thus win – and for Nokia, the idea of using Android must look ever more enticing, since it would cut costs and let it use its heft with the networks to win back share – and yet the hardware makers would lose. That’s a great danger – not imminent, but it exists – for Schmidt, Android and Google. By creating a flourishing ecosystem of app developers, Android could make life better for the handset makers.

Oh, and the company we haven’t mentioned here at all, except in passing? Microsoft. If you look at what the Android and iPhone platforms are now doing, you have to ask how on earth Windows Phone – which will have a paid-for licence – is ever going to attract any handset makers. Schmidt’s Android dog whistle might be loud for iPhone developers annoyed at the company’s capricious treatment of their apps, but it must be loudest for developers considering whether the shrinking, forwards-incompatible pool of Windows Mobile phones is really worth bothering with.

Between the handset makers pondering the economics of paying for a Windows Phone licence, and developers wondering why they should write code for a platform, Windows Phone, that’s presently activating zero phones a day – because it hasn’t been released – versus one doing 160,000 per day, Microsoft has a real problem with Windows Phone. Apple can survive Android because it has that 77% base of loyal customers. Android has an expanding customer base.

But what on earth has Microsoft got?

* I asked the questions about fragmentation and Larva Labs.

Read Original Story…
(Source The Guardian)

Free on Orange with up to 18 months half price line rental by redemption.

With a stylish design of sweeping curves and a silver diamond shaped navigation key the latest in the Galaxy range, the Samsung Galaxy Apollo I5801, is set to turn heads. A wide range of flexibility is offered by the Android OS v2.1 that allows access to a whole host of downloadable apps to truly personalise the phone. 3G HSDPA Internet access opens up a new world of exciting web sites to visit and the included Google package (Google Search, Gmail, YouTube & Google Talk) offers a familiar browsing experience each step of the way. The 3.2 inch capacitive touchscreen is perfect for enjoying both the web and the Apollo’s feature set, with the option to use the handset in landscape or portrait views.

The Galaxy Apollo ensures you can stay in touch with friends and family easily with a range of messaging options that includes texts, MMS, email (with document viewer), push email and instant messaging. Meeting up at previously unknown locations is no chore either with Google Maps and A-GPS support.

Other features include a 3.15 megapixel camera with autofocus and video capture. Captured images can be stored onto the internal memory (a microSD card slot is also provided) or shared easily via wireless Bluetooth. The FM radio and MP3/MP4 player offers the user a truly portable entertainment centre for enjoying favourite music and video files. The Samsung Galaxy Apollo I5801 looks set to be as much of a hit as previous models in the Galaxy range.

Compare all Samsung Galaxy Apollo i5801 deals

Nokia takes cues from HTC, Samsung to wind up Apple

Nokia has already unveiled its first smartphone running the upcoming Symbian^3 operating system, the N8, but will not ship it until later in the summer. It is keeping interest high, though, by making its most aggressive ever move against the iPhone, pricing the N8 well below the Apple icon and touting all the added value that will be included, especially free turn-by-turn navigation.…

Read Full Story…
(Source The Register)

The HTC Wildfire has been released across multiple networks, while the
Samsung Galaxy S 16GB and Vodafone 845 have gone on sale exclusively through
Vodafone.

Read Full Story…
(Source Yahoo UK News)

Samsung has been detailing how it hopes to extend the popularity of its Bada
mobile operating system in an attempt to rival Apple’s ecosystem and “change the
smartphone market”.

Read Full Story…
(Source Yahoo UK News)

Samsung has tabbed Orange as the exclusive UK carrier for its new Galaxy
Apollo smartphone.

Read Full Story…
(Source Yahoo UK News)

Initial sales optimistically overstated

US operator Sprint has admitted inaccurately claiming that its HTC EVO 4G handset had outsold the Palm Pre and Samsung Instinct combined, by three times in a third of the time.…

Read Full Story…
(Source The Register)

Sales of the new HTC Evo handset have beaten Sprint’s previous record by a
factor of three over the weekend, which were previously held by the Samsung
Instinct and the Palm Pre.

Read Full Story…
(Source Yahoo UK News)

Apple’s ’4G’ device is out this month. Will Steve Jobs also cut the price of the current model and challenge Nokia head-on?

Steve Jobs will appear before the Apple faithful tomorrow to reveal the latest version of the Californian technology group’s mobile phone. Nicknamed the iPhone “4G” – on the basis that the last one was the 3GS, with the “S” standing for speed – it will be the summer’s must-have gadget, hitting the UK this month. But it is also seen as being in the vanguard of an all-out assault on the mobile market.

In the three years since it launched its first handset, Apple has grabbed the headlines and, more importantly, snatched a lucrative share of the more mature mobile phone markets of the US and Europe, where consumers are willing to pay upwards of £30 a month to get an iPhone. Now, speculation is rising that the company is approaching a so-called “iPod moment” in mobiles: the point at which it will decide that it can capture a much larger slice of the market by producing more than one device.

The success of the App Store, which has seen iPhone users download billions of applications, coupled with the pressure to have a wide market to attract advertisers to its embryonic iAd platform, is pushing Apple towards diversifying, just as it did with the iPod six years ago when it introduced the iPod mini. There is also increasing competition from Google’s Android platform. After two and a half years, handset manufacturers are finally producing compelling Android phones – such as the HTC Desire – and more are slated for release this year, including the mass-market HTC Wildfire.

But rather than unveil a new, cheaper version of the iPhone, Apple is expected to position the iPhone 4G at the top of the smartphone market and reorganise the existing range. The company is likely to halt production of the iPhone 3G – which cannot cope with Apple’s new multi-tasking software – and scrap both existing versions of the iPhone 3GS, which have 16GB and 32GB of memory. It will replace them with a new 8GB version of the 3GS, which is expected to be aimed at the wider market.

The iPhone 4G – according to mobile industry insiders who have seen one and confirmed widespread web leaks – will be available in two versions: 32GB and 64GB. These will put “clear blue water” between it and the mass-market 3GS, as one industry executive puts it. The 4G is slightly smaller and slimmer than the current 3GS. It has an improved 5-megapixel camera with flash and uses micro-sim cards, as seen in the iPad. It also has a glass back, which greatly assists phone reception. In the UK, it is expected to be sold by the same mobile phone networks that have the current iPhone: O2, Orange and Vodafone. It is unclear whether Tesco Mobile will have the 4G when it is launched in the last week of this month.

The parallels between Apple’s current position in the mobile phone market and the place it held in the digital music market when it introduced the iPod mini are revealing. The first iPod appeared in late 2001, but it was not until 2003 that Apple launched the iTunes store. One million tracks were sold in the first five days and 70m in the first year. That showed Apple there was a real mass market for digital music and was a spur for the creation of the first variant of the iPod line, the iPod mini, the following year.

At the time, Apple was lodged firmly in the high end of the market for digital music players. The iPod was the benchmark by which all others were measured and Apple had a share of about 30%. The iPod mini – replaced at the end of 2005 by the Nano – was designed to grab a large part of the next third down. In similar fashion, the iPhone has become the handset by which other mobiles are measured, and in markets including the UK it has made Apple the third-largest mobile phone manufacturer after Nokia and Samsung. It is now a question of how much of the rest of the market – chock full of me-too touchscreen devices from the likes of Nokia, LG and Samsung – Apple wants.

“I would argue that they may already have reached the tipping point,” Ben Wood at CCS Insight – a long-time follower of the mobile market – says. “The iPhone has become a ubiquitous product in the markets where its pricing is acceptable.”

He believes that a real driver behind Apple’s growth will be the iAd platform, which Jobs announced this year alongside the new version of the iPhone software – which is also in the iPad. The new mobile advertising platform is designed to allow iPhone app developers to create in-app advertising. Currently, anyone who clicks on an advert in a downloadable app is bounced out of it and on to the advertiser’s webpage. As a result, many users are put off clicking on adverts. In contrast, iAd will allow full-screen video and interactive advertising content to be served within an application. Crucially, Apple will sell and serve the adverts, and developers will receive 60% of their iAd revenue.

“With iAd, which could be as significant to Apple as the iPod franchise itself, Apple has a tremendous opportunity. It will provide a further chance to lock in their leading position in application development,” Wood says. “If iAd becomes the kind of phenomenon that Apple appears to be able to create, and becomes as big as it could, then potentially Apple could really disrupt the market by subsidising the iPhone from their iAd revenues.”

But whether iAd means that Apple needs to go all the way into the low end of the market is doubtful.

“IPhone users are a segment of the population that has affinity with technology and disposable income, and that is a marketeer’s dream already,” Wood says.

And Carolina Milanesi, research vice-president at rival analysts Gartner, is not convinced that this is the right time for Apple to go mass market, citing price constraints on the iPhone’s most important feature – its large touchscreen.

“On the iPod touch and the iPhone, the screen is very important,” she says. “Music is easier [to do in a mass-market device] because it is just [data] storage, and with the price of storage coming down you can experiment with design. But when you have applications running on the device, how much dumber can your device become before it is useless? And that is where they are going to struggle. What else do you cut?”

Apple could cut its own profits, but it has shown little desire to do that in the past: the switch from the 3G to the 3GS actually reduced the manufacturing cost of the phone, analysts reckon.

“Yes, of course, they can expand their addressable market so much quicker, but do they want that?” says Milanesi. “Just as Jobs says Apple does not want to be the Dell of the PC market, [so] Apple does not want to be the Nokia of the mobile market.” How true that is will be revealed tomorrow.

Focus on Apple’s factory

While Apple fans will drool over the new iPhone this week, tragic events in China have thrown a spotlight on the human cost of the west’s obsession with shiny toys. A spate of suicides at the massive Chinese plant run by Taiwanese contract electronics manufacturer Foxconn has called into question working conditions at one of Apple’s largest suppliers.

The Californian company has dispatched a team of investigators to discover why 10 people have killed themselves so far this year. Management at the Shenzhen facility, which stretches across three square kilometers and employs more than 250,000 people, are trying to solve the problem by hiring counsellors, playing soothing music on production lines, increasing wages and asking new recruits to sign a ‘”no-suicide” contract. They are also taking more direct action, installing netting around outdoor stairwells of the dormitory buildings, where workers sleep eight to a room.

Speaking last week, Steve Jobs said Apple was “diligent” when it came to understanding the working conditions in the supply chain, auditing its direct suppliers as well as tertiary suppliers.

“We are over there trying to understand what is happening and more importantly trying to understand how we can help because it is a difficult situation,” he told the D8 conference organised by All Things Digital. He said many young workers came from poor rural areas and were away from home for the first time.

“They are probably less prepared to leave home than your typical High School student going to college in this country. I think there are some real issues there,” he said.

But he stressed: “Foxconn is not a sweatshop. They have got restaurants and movie theatres and hospitals and swimming pools. For a factory, it is a pretty nice factory.”

Some of Foxconn’s workers disagree, complaining the monotonous workload causes depression. “I do the same thing every day,” Xiao Qi, a college graduate who works at Foxconn in product development told Bloomberg Businessweek. “I have no future.”

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(Source The Guardian)

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