Internet of Thing (IoT)

Architecture for Beginners

 

Raspberry Pi Microcomputers

Raspberry Pi -- a tiny, stripped-down $35 computer -- hit the market in 2011 with the intention of helping promote basic computer science skills in schools. As of early 2015, 4.5 million of them had been sold and a second generation, the Raspberry Pi 2, has been introduced.

It has become the DIY gadget-maker's go-to device. Tinkerers, hobbyists, educators and students and basically anyone who likes to build things have taken to the internet with project after project utilizing the Raspberry Pi.

The little computer has controlled robots, reached the upper atmosphere in a weather balloon and become the building block for almost any gadget the mind could dream up. With all of the builds out there, it can be overwhelming. You can do a lot of projects with this credit card size of Raspberry Pi.

Communication At Its Best With Free Telegram

They say a problem well defined is half solved and this aptly fits into the case of Telegram. You may be in two minds whether I’m talking a sense or not.  But “Telegram” was in use as a medium of communication back in 19^th or at the advent of 20^th Century. How can that be deemed as the best medium for communication? Right? Hang on – let us explore on the same.

What is this new age Telegram?

This new age Telegram is all about an open platform for communication that is a non-profit mission too. It is the brain child of two people Nicolai Durov and Pavel. While Pavel supports the financial and ideological parts Nicolai takes care of the technical aspects.
A telegram is essentially a SMS and more; namely a Telegram can contain document, photographs/s, and video alongside data message. It is completely secured and free of any subscription. This Telegram however came into being in August 2013 following the footsteps of these two enterprising guys Nicolai and Pavel.

USP (Unique Selling Proposition) of the new age Telegram:   

1. Free for life: As a user you stand benefited from the lifetime free services of Telegram.
2. Non-profit Venture: Telegram is a non-profit venture and will continue to do so in future as its promoters Nicolai and Pavel confirm. This is something extraordinary in today’s worth given the revolution in telecommunication and revenues therein on worldwide market.
3. Private & Secured: Telegram messages are sent through cloud-based technology and have the property of self destruction with the high degree of encryption. Due to this encryption messages remain very much private while the use of cloud based technology makes the messages secured and accessible from multiple medium.
4. Fast: Delivery of Telegram messages is really very fast. No other messages such as an e-mail and data message can deliver as fast as Telegram.  
5. Supports Tablets & Phones: Telegram messages can be delivered to iPhone and Android phones alongside iPod and tablets.
6. Open & Powerful: Telegram messages are powerful in view of no restriction on message size, media and chats while Telegram platform is open to all and sundry.

Credit: http://www.telegramdownload.com/communication-best-free-telegram

Best Of The Cloud Storage Services

This article was originally published November 12, 2012 and has been updated for relevancy. Mika Turim-Nygren contributed to this article.

Two years ago, a majority of Americans thought a lightning storm could interfere with cloud computing. Today, cloud storage services are as ubiquitous as cumulonimbus in a Kansas tornado season. There are lots of cloud storage services out there luring in new users with free accounts, extra space, and social-networking rewards.

We’re all coming around to the idea that cloud storage can be pretty darn convenient. As demand grows for faster, higher-resolution videos and games – especially on smaller and smaller devices – our dependence on cloud storage and cloud computing will only increase. Cloud services allow consumers access to a kind of network storage: hosting files remotely so that they can access them at any time from a number of computers and devices. Gone are the days of face-palming because you forgot a document on your home computer. No longer do you have to clog up your own email with photos you sent yourself for easy retrieval later. Nowadays, you can simply send it to the cloud and forget it.

Today, most people use a cloud storage service. Even so, there are still very real security issues. For this reason, we always recommend encrypting sensitive files using software such as the free program TrueCrypt before entrusting them to the cloud.

Choosing a cloud storage service

Dozens of cloud storage services are now on the market. So which option is the best? While there’s plenty of debate over which service to choose, no single choice stands head-and-shoulders above the rest. Each has certain advantages, and you’ll simply have to tinker around until you find the one that works for you.

That being said, if you regularly purchase MP3s from iTunes, you’ll probably want to choose the corresponding cloud storage service: iCloud, respectively. Why? These entertainment powerhouses don’t count music purchases you’ve made from them against your storage size limit. Essentially, you can nab free cloud storage for your tunes, which enables music streaming to all your devices. Here’s our seven favorite cloud storage services.

Carbonite (unlimited storage)

Star Wars reference aside, Carbonite is the best outlet for unlimited storage space. Yes, that means unlimited space. Who needs unlimited space? Businesses, mostly, but also anyone who has, say, thousands of high-resolution photos could do with a worry free backup as well. The cloud-based service automatically downloads photos, movies, music and documents to the cloud from a variety of devices. Automatic backups will keep your recent photos and files secure.

What’s more, Carbonite offers a referral program. You’ll get $20 off your cloud subscription with every referral that subscribes to the service. The cloud service has apps for Android and iOS. The file storage offers a several data storage plans that vary in price. The basic storage plan costs $60 and you’ll get full backup on a single computer for one year. Take note, the service works on Mac and PC. Carbonite also offers advanced services, like a localized backup, but that’ll cost more and are only available for PCs.

The Lowdown: With a decent referral program, Carbonite is the affordable option for unlimited storage space.

Dropbox

The reasons for Dropbox’s success are simple: the service is full-featured and easy to use. It also helps that the marketing is top-notch. Promotions styled like gaming quests encourage users to invite friends to the service to earn more storage space. Even though a number of services offer more initial free space – Google Drive’s 5GB, Mega’s 50GB, iCloud’s 5GB, or SkyDrive’s 7GB, versus Dropbox’s 2 GB – many customers seem to find Dropbox’s referral-rewards system irresistible (up to 18GB free space total). Upgraded pro accounts start at $9.99/month (or $99/year) for 100GB. Mobile support includes Android, iPhone, iPad, Blackberry, and Kindle Fire.

To get started, just make an account and download the desktop client. This installs a folder where you can drag-and-drop files in order to transfer them to the cloud. You’ll see a pop-up notification anytime anything new is added to your account; if this annoys you, you can disable it in preferences.

One of Dropbox’s main strengths is its constant backup of word files. If you sync your Dropbox folder to your main documents folder, Dropbox will automatically backup any changes you make to each document. To access previous versions of a document, simply right-click on a file within your Dropbox folder, select “Dropbox,” and then choose “View previous versions.” This feature can be invaluable if you accidentally overwrite a file, or if you’re working collaboratively on a project.

Speaking of collaborative projects, Dropbox boasts excellent sharing abilities. Invite someone to share a particular Dropbox folder with you and that folder will appear right on their desktop. You can also send a link to an individual document or image. Additionally, Dropbox offers the best Facebook integration of any service at the moment. Finally, folders full of images can be viewed as a gallery, making Dropbox a viable photo-sharing alternative to Picasa, Imgur, and Flickr.

The lowdown: Least amount of starting free space; best version-control backup; best Facebook integration; great sharing capabilities; good for multiple computers and devices.

Google Drive

Google Drive is the standard for cloud sharing services. The web giant thrives on integration with Google’s other services, like Gmail and Google Docs. For the convenient price of absolutely nothing, you’ll get 15GB of Google Drive space, 10GB of Gmail storage and 1GB on Picasa (photos under 2048 x 2048 don’t take up any cloud space). Upgrades cost $2/month for 100GB and $10/month for 1TB. Mobile support includes iPhone, iPad, and Android.

Signing up is as simple as logging in with a Gmail address and password. From there, Google Drive appears right in your Google toolbar, just a click away from your email inbox. You can drag-and-drop files straight into your browser, or download the desktop client to have access to Google Drive as a folder, just like with Dropbox.

Google Drive borrows from Google’s powerful search algorithm to allow searches of not only file names, but also text in scanned documents and objects in images (a neat trick for those with years of vacation photos). You can upload photos straight to Google+ or view more than 30 types of files directly in-browser, including some – like Photoshop or Adobe Illustrator – for which you may not have the actual software.

But Google Drive’s standout features are its sharing and collaboration tools. Thanks to integration with Gmail, you can share files with a click, with or without requiring a password. And when you work with partners on the same word file, spreadsheet, or presentation, either separately or right at the same time, Google Drive marks the contributions of each person with differently colored labels to make clear what’s changed.

The lowdown: Only service to integrate with Gmail and Google Docs; best sharing and collaboration capabilities; access files directly in-browser; edit documents directly in-browser; most economical file sharing service.

Microsoft OneDrive

OneDrive is like a nice rug. The utility is identical to a $10 thrift store mat, but aesthetics go a long way here.It’s not so much that Microsoft OneDrive (formally known as Skydrive) does one thing better than other cloud storage systems (other than being one of the few services to support Windows phones and Xbox). Instead, Microsoft’s cloud service delivers a nice overall package. If you don’t have a pressing reason to choose another service, it’s hard to go wrong with OneDrive. It touts a decent amount of free space (7GB), along with inexpensive upgrades (adding 50GB will cost $25/year). Mobile support includes Windows Phone, Android, iPhone, and iPad.

You can also post photos directly from OneDrive to Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and other social-networking sites, which is a nice time-saving touch. The service also touts a built-in remote access capabilities. From the OneDrive.com website, you can get access to any PC associated with your account that has the OneDrive client installed, even files not already uploaded to OneDrive. In other words, say you forget to move a presentation to your SkyDrive folder before leaving for work, but your home computer is still on. Simply sign into OneDrive and retrieve it from afar, whether it’s on your hard drive or a connected external hard drive. We can see this remote-access feature saving users a lot of frustration and heartache.

OneDrive is also the only service to integrate with free Office Web Apps, allowing you to work collaboratively on projects much like in Google Docs. However, the Office Web Apps have the advantage of opening Word, PowerPoint, and Excel documents seamlessly, avoiding any formatting kerfuffles. OneDrive maintains the 25 most recent versions of every file, so if a partner makes a change you don’t like, you can easily revert to an easier version.

The lowdown: Only service (besides Box) to sync with Windows Phone; only service to integrate with Microsoft Office Web apps; and a generous amount of free space (7GB); inexpensive upgrades; great collaboration tools and version-control backup; built-in remote access capability. Boom.

Mega

Kim Dotcom first appeared on the scene with Megaupload, the now defunct cloud service that was shut down by the FBI for copyright infringement. Now he’s back with Mega, a loose incarnation of his old site. Mega still doesn’t offer the intuitive editing, sharing, or collaboration abilities of other services, and we’ve said before that the site’s lax attitude on security and it’s open platform raises some eyebrows. For instance, if you lose your password, you can say goodbye to all your files. The site doesn’t offer a file recovery option.

That said, it comes with 50GB of free storage. That’s right, a free 50 GB. Upgrades start at 100 Euros per year (about $140) for 500GB of storage. It does support mobile integration Android and iOS, but so do all of cloud storage services.

The lowdown: 50 free GB may be too sweet for some to pass up. That and the somewhat primitive file-sharing devices of Mega make this cloud-based service worth a visit. Just remember your password.

iCloud

Apple’s cloud storage service doesn’t make waves on paper. But it works. And there might not be a better option for those who use iTunes as their central media hub. iCloud provides 5GB of free storage. Upgrading to 10 GB will cost $20/year. 20 GB goes for $40/year. Items downloaded from iTunes won’t count against your storage limit.

iCloud also acts as a media sharing hub. Currently, Apple’s cloud-based productivity suite, iWork, is in beta testing. It’ll include a word processor, among other things that can be shared with other iCloud users, all with an interface that looks a bit cleaner and more modular than Google Docs. Still, Apple can’t compete with Google’s price point, or the universality of Google accounts.

The lowdown: Best for iTunes devotees. Google, Mega, and Dropbox don’t offer the same robust database of music and photo sharing options. But the free 5GB won’t get you very far with music and photos.

Box

Box is an all-around solid service. It offers a compelling alternative to users who are wary to place an ever-increasing amounts of information in the control of Google, Apple, or Microsoft. Mobile support for all accounts includes Android, iPhone, and iPad.

Free accounts start at 10GB, although many of Box’s rather common-place features only come bundled with a business account, which starts at $15 a month per user. Shelling out for the latter will land you a whopping 1,000GB of storage space (which is just 24GB shy of 1TB), as well as version-history backups, password-protected sharing, and search abilities.

 

Indeed, in many ways Box seems best geared toward corporate use, and it shows. Clients include Proctor & Gamble, Six Flags, and Pandora. If you’re a small-business owner or a startup, Box may be right up your alley. All accounts, even free ones, allow you to share files or folders with a link. Box also integrates the ability to add comments and assign tasks for easy collaboration and workflow management.

The lowdown: Best for businesses; integrated workflow management tools; great sharing and collaboration potential; free accounts lacking some features.

What cloud storage service do you prefer?

Credit: http://www.digitaltrends.com

How is Telegram different from WhatsApp?

Telegram Messenger is a proprietary, cross-platform free instant messaging subscription service for smartphones. In addition to text messaging, Telegram users can send each other images, video, and audio media messages as well as their location using integrated mapping features.

 Video Review

 

Unlike WhatsApp, Telegram is cloud-based and heavily encrypted. As a result, you can access your messages from several devices at once, including tablets and computers, and share an unlimited number of photos, videos and files (doc, zip, mp3, etc) of any size. Thanks to our multi-data center infrastructure and encryption, Telegram is also faster and way more secure. On top of that, Telegram is free and will stay free — no ads, no subscription fees, forever.

Do you prefer Telegram App? Download Telegram here

 

Chinese Scientists Create LiFi (Light Powered Internet)

Move over WiFi; successful experiments by a group of Xinhua, Shanghai based scientists have implied the possibilities of improving China’s online means by using the signals sent by light bulbs. This technology is called LiFi, a wireless communication using light as a carrier in place of the usual radio frequencies. This has the advantage of being able to use internet even near electromagnetic sensitive locations such as nuclear power plants and aircrafts, without causing any interference.

Earlier this month we reported about an experiment conducted by Chi Nan, a professor in Fudan University, Shanghai. Four computers in a one-wattage LED light were connected to the internet. Chi disclosed that a light bulb with inserted microchips was able to generate data rates with a speed of 150 mbps, faster than typical broadband in China. Chi under the information technology department of his university, is leading the research team for LiFi. This team includes researchers from the Shanghai Institute of Technical Physics. Professor Harald Haas from the University of Edinburgh was the first to demonstrate how a light bulb fitted with signal processing technology could stream high definition video to a computer. But his company released a statement suggesting they were just as surprised as everyone else about Chi’s claims of the connection speed.

LiFi offers a practical and resourceful solution for the local Chinese broadband. Chi reveals that the present wireless signal transmission is costly and inefficient. A big percentage of energy is also wasted on cell phone base stations, which consumes a lot of electricity on their cooling systems. Compared to these stations, there can be limitless number of light bulbs which can produce better broadband signals without consuming a lot of energy.

However, the team of scientists knew that this innovation still has a long way to go to be successful commercially.

“Wherever there is an LED light bulb, there is an Internet signal,” Chi says. However, turning off the light cuts the signal. Light, unlike radio frequencies, cannot go through walls. “If the light is blocked,” Chi continues, “The signal will be cut off”

Netizens are already anticipating the 10 sample kits which will be on display at the China International Industry Fair which will be launched on November 5 in Shanghai. LiFi is still under an experimental period.

[Image via Crewfone]

27 Oct 2013

Battery Basic: Rechargeable Battery Knowledge Base

Tell me a bit more about rechargeable batteries, how are they different from primary or throwaway batteries?
 
Rechargeable batteries are of the same sizes (AA, AAA, C, D, Sc and 9V) and are intended for everyday use are the throwaway or primary batteries people use. The advantage of rechargeable batteries is that they can be recharged and reused up to a thousand times and generally they greatly outperform standard everyday throwaway leading brand batteries. 

The fact that rechargeable batteries can be used again and again represents a massive saving over their useful life. Rechargeable NiMH batteries are also very popular simply due to the fact that they are extremely environmentally friendly. Once charged, these rechargeable batteries can be used in the same way as you would with your previously throwaway batteries of the same size.
  
Why should I buy NiMH rechargeable batteries?
 
Better performance in driving electronics and huge money saving are the two major reasons to buy NiMH (Nickel metal Hydride) rechargeable batteries. They can be charged up to 500-1000 times and last longer than alkaline or NiCd batteries. 

NiMH batteries are ideally compatible with most consumer devices such as digital cameras, game boys, CD players, RC vehicles, PDA’s, portable two-way radios, flash units and many more high drain devices. One set of relatively inexpensive NiMH rechargeable batteries can save you from buying thousands if throwaway alkaline batteries. 

What are the primary advantages of NiMH batteries over Alkaline or other rechargeable batteries?

NiMH Batteries Have the Following Advantages :

• Drive better performance with high-drain electronic devices
• Large capacity for longer device operation. NiMH rechargeable batteries can last 2-4 times longer than alkaline throwaway batteries or NiCd rechargeable batteries
• Long battery life, can be charged/discharged up to 500-1,000 cycles.
• Extremely low battery cost per unit of device operation (such as every photo taken or every hour CD is played), providing very low cost of consumables for your electronics.
• Stable performance due to flat discharge curve. NiMH battery will remain in high voltage during 80% of the usage cycle.
• No memory effect for easy charging and usage.
• Friendly to the Environment – no toxic chemical

 

What does battery “mAh” capacity mean?

mAh is a unit for measuring electric power over time. mAh is commonly used to describe the total amount of energy a battery can store at one time.

A battery rated for more mAh will power a phone for a longer amount of time, given the same usage pattern. The trade-off is that batteries with more mAh are generally also physically larger.

More technically, a higher mAh rating means the (fully-charged) battery can power a device that consumes more power and/or for a longer amount of time before becoming depleted and needing to be re-charged. For example, a battery rated at 1500 mAh can power a device drawing 100 milliamps for 15 hours, or a device drawing 150 milliamps for 10 hours.

The mAh capacity rating refers to the storage capacity available for a particular battery. A battery with a capacity rating of 1800 mAh could deliver a current of 1800mA for one hour. 

Higher mAh ratings for the same battery type will generally mean longer run times. This does not apply when comparing different types of batteries. This means that you may not be able to predict how long your electronic device will run just by looking at the capacity rating of a battery. When powering high drain electronic devices like digital cameras, computer peripherals, or portable music players, an alkaline battery will only deliver a small fraction of its rated capacity. 

For example AA alkaline batteries typically have a capacity rating of over 2,500 mAh and AA NiMH batteries have rated capacities of only 1,200 to 2,000 mAh. But when it comes to actually powering an electronic device like a digital camera, the NiMH batteries will often run the device for three or four times a long. Even comparing the capacity ratings of similar types of batteries won’t often work since different manufacturers can measure battery capacity in slightly different ways. 

A NiMH or NiCd battery is likely to deliver much closer to its rated capacity when it’s powering high drain devices. Alkaline batteries have a high rated capacity, but they can only deliver their full capacity if the power is used slowly. This means that a NiMH battery with a rated capacity of 1200 mAh can take many more photos than an alkaline battery with a rated capacity of 2,800.

How environmentally friendly are NiMH rechargeable batteries?

Rechargeable batteries have the greenest environmental credentials. Using rechargeable batteries reduces household waste massively. Globally, 15 billion ordinary batteries are thrown away every year, all of which end up in landfill sites. Rechargeable batteries can be reused again and again which significantly reduces the impact disposable batteries have on the environment.

How long can a rechargeable battery last over its life?

Let's say you are currently using ordinary throwaway batteries for your portable CD player and you replace the batteries once a week. For simplicity, let’s say there are 52 weeks in a year. You can recharge your NiMH rechargeable batteries 500 times.So the NiMH rechargeable battery can last 500 recharges / 50 weeks = 10 years. That means you could still be using the same batteries you buy today in 10 years time! Chances are that once you get into rechargeable batteries you will never use a throwaway again.

 

Resource:
http://www.all-battery.com/batterybasics.aspx

http://www.phonescoop.com/glossary/term.php?gid=194

Gajet ICT Terkini

Zaman IT serba canggih sekarang ini, semua orang hanya mahukan yang terkini, terbaik dan semua yang hebat-hebat belaka. Kalau nak diikutkan, memang tak terdaya untuk mengikuti arus permodenan ini. Namun masyarakat Malaysia amat gemar mencari gajet terkini dan seolah-olah sudah menjadi suatu trend masa kini! Berikut dipaparkan entri terkini mengenai gajet-gajet tersebut.

Smartphone

HTC DLX incoming to challenge Samsung Galaxy Note 2

Games

Nintendo tears down Wii U to show off single-chip IBM/AMD CPU + GPU

One of the most interesting aspects to new console design is only indirectly related to the device’s game performance. Internal design — how components are laid out, integrated, and cooled — is vital to building a reliable machine. Until quite recently, this aspect of design only attracted consumer interest if something went wrong. Each generation of consoles has had issues, but the Xbox 360′s famous Red Ring of Death catapulted design problems into mainstream discussion. The surging popularity of websites like iFixit, meanwhile, has shone a spotlight on design decisions that were previously hidden under plastic shells. 

Nintendo has chosen to one-up such popular sites by releasing its own data on how the Wii U’s components were designed. The new information, released through an “Iwata Asks” explainer, sheds light on the difficulties of designing a system as compact as the Wii U, which isn’t much larger than the Wii, while substantially increasing its overall performance. Nintendo remains tight-lipped on many details, but we know that the CPU inside the system is a multi-core, POWER-based IBM design. Nintendo went with IBM for the combined module, as shown below:  

Without any sort of scale, the only thing we can conclude from the image is that the second on-die package is much smaller than the first. Nintendo offers a few additional hints with the following: 

This is rather odd. Rumors around the Wii U’s GPU initially pointed to an RV770-derived (HD 4000-series) chip with DX10.1 support, while later statements claimed the AMD component as actually a Radeon 6770. The Radeon 6770 was itself a re-badged Radeon 5770, and at 170mm² on TSMC’s 40nm process, it wasn’t all that small. Toss in the 32MB of eDRAM we know the Wii U has on-package, and that’d be an awfully large piece of silicon. If the smaller die is actually the CPU, it means that Nintendo, for all its praise of AMD and IBM’s knowledge of CPU+GPU integration, chose to keep the two packages separate. There’s no APU to be seen here, alas.

It also implies that the Wii U is a fundamentally a GPU with a CPU hanging off the side.

Here’s the Wii’s heatsink in comparison to the Wii U’s. Iwata says the new console generates 3x more heat than the old one did, which necessitated a larger fan and more fins. The heatsink design is still technically passive; the system uses a single fan to intake and exhaust air over the heatsink. Again, while we don’t have absolute scales, Iwata’s demonstrations put some hard thermal limits on what sort of GPU could be inside the system. Under load, the Wii drew ~16W as measured at the wall; Iwata’s comments imply that the Wii U will draw between 40-60W.

A 5770 dissipated 108W and measured 63.5mm tall, 165mm wide, and 267mm long. It’s true that this referred to total board power and that AMD doubtlessly refined its base GPU to Nintendo’s specifications, but a 50% reduction in active power seems unlikely.

Nintendo offers a few additional hints when it writes that “An MCM [multi-chip module] is where the aforementioned Multi-core CPU chip and the GPU chip are built into a single component. The GPU itself also contains quite a large on-chip memory.” There are, in short, plenty of reasons to think that an integrated CPU+GPU with on-package cache would serve Nintendo better than a GPU with on-die eDRAM + on-package CPU. The company’s phrasing points towards the former, but image labeling states the latter.
What can we tell from this new data? The “Juniper” GPU at the heart of the 5770 was almost certainly too large and too hot for Nintendo’s targets. Redwood, the GPU inside the Radeon 5670, is a much better bet. Not only is it smaller, at 104mm² on 40nm, it also shipped in a 39W flavor. Additional optimizations and tweaks could easily squeeze a GPU of that caliber into the 40W-60W dissipation window we previously mentioned.

Nintendo’s reveal also supports developer statements that while the Wii U’s GPU is significantly more advanced than anything the Xbox 360 or PS3 can offer, the CPU is on-par or slightly less powerful than the Xbox 360 or PS3′s. Nintendo may have gone for a POWER-derived architecture this time around, but the smaller package in the image above implies three lean cores without much muscle.

The Wii U’s unusual controller and secondary screen means that a great deal may be riding on how many CPU cycles are dedicated to controller synchronization and processing. In theory, it might be possible to offload certain tasks to the system’s GPU, but that depends on which core Nintendo used. Both the RV770 and the Evergreen (HD 5000) GPUs supported OpenCL, but RV770 was limited to OpenCL 1.0, whereas the HD 5000 family supported OpenCL 1.1.

It goes without saying that Nintendo has dedicated a great deal of effort to building a small system that would retain the quiet operation and comparatively low power draw that made the Wii stand out in the 2005-2006 product cycle. Will lightning strike twice? That’s a good deal murkier. Nintendo is moving first this time around, but Sony and Microsoft are both planning their own next-gen consoles at much lower price points than the Xbox 360 and PS3 debuted at.

HTC DLX incoming to challenge Samsung Galaxy Note 2

HTC is readying a phablet for release, as the phone-maker bets on a half-tablet, half-smartphone hybrid to help turn around its freefalling profits.

According to HTC modding maven Football, the device will be dubbed the HTC DLX and will pack a five-inch screen and an impressive sounding 12 megapixel camera.

And adding to what’s shaping up to be one of HTC’s most lavishly specc’d devices ever is a 1.5GHz quad-core Snapdragon S4 Pro processor, 16GB of internal storage and a 2,500mAH battery, claims the mono-monikered source.

Perhaps surprisingly, the handset purportedly won’t run the latest 4.2 version of Android out of the box, but will instead pack the still-pretty-up-to-the-minute Jelly Bean iteration, AKA Android 4.1.

News of HTC’s product pipeline comes as it recently announced a 79 per cent slide in third-quarter profits, amid slow sales for its One range of phones and an increasingly strong showing from its Android rival Samsung.

Samsung Galaxy S4 landing at Mobile World Congress in Feb 2013?

Samsung Electronics plans to unveil the latest in its Galaxy line, the S4, at a European technology exhibition in February 2013, according to company officials and local parts suppliers for the technology giant.

The timetable was released just three days after rival Apple introduced the iPhone 5, which has received a mixed response from industry experts and consumers as it is seemingly lacking in innovative features.

``Samsung is ready to unveil the next Galaxy smartphone _ the Galaxy S4 _ at early next year’s mobile world congress (MWC) in the Spanish city of Barcelona,’’ said an official from the firm asking not to be identified, Sunday. The new device is expected to hit shelves globally in March at the latest.

MWC is the biggest exhibition in the world for telecom companies and Samsung, will exhibit the new Galaxy at its booth.

The new Galaxy, expected to be the firm’s most powerful handset yet in terms of hardware specifications and software advancement, will help the Suwon-based outfit further cement its leadership in the global smartphone market.

The official said that the smartphone, due out nine months after the May debut of the Galaxy S3, will be more than enough to curb Apple’s latest iPhone, compatible with long-term evolution (LTE) networks.

In Europe, Samsung is gaining a bigger share of the smartphone market. The Korean company was involved in patent disputes with Apple in Germany, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. A recent ruling in the U.K. said Samsung didn’t infringe on Apple’s design patents.

Executives from Samsung’s local parts suppliers said the company’s new flagship smartphone will ``definitely use’’ LTE networks. It will also sport its in-house Exynos-branded application processors and quad-core chips. The S3 is using both Samsung’s Exynos and Qualcomm’s Snapdragon processors depending on the country.

``Samsung is asking Apple to pay more to use its mobile application processors produced at its plant in Austin, Texas. The release of the S4 means more market share for Samsung as it is the only firm that can guarantee on-time delivery, output commitment and better pricing for mobile application processors,’’ said one executive.

The screen size of the S4 is expected to reach 5-inch from the the current 4.8 screen size of the S3, while it will use Google’s Android software and sport an OLED display, said the officials.

But Samsung has yet to decide whether it will use flexible display technology for the upcoming Galaxy due to production problems encountered by Samsung Display.

 

Samsung Display officials declined to comment on the new Samsung smartphone project.

``Samsung wants to keep its one-year product schedule and the Galaxy S4 will be the first to match that strategy. The S4 will see some external changes but retain its popular rectangular shape with rounded corner concept,’’ said an official from one of Samsung’s local partners.

Samsung is currently in talks with major American carriers to apply modified phone designs.

Market analysts and experts view the S4 as a ``clear message’’ to Apple. ``Samsung’s edges in manufacturing will further shine after the patent disputes go further on. In markets, Samsung is confident to widen its lead over Apple, though the legal fight is a totally separate issue,’’ said an industry executive who is familiar with the matter.

Samsung expects sales of the S3 to pass 30 million by the end of the year. It has already sold 20 million in just over three months.

The S4 will help Samsung take on Apple in the United States, according to officials. Market research firm IDC shows Samsung has a 30 percent share, globally, while Apple has 16 percent. But NPD’s recent data shows Apple controls 31 percent of the U.S. smartphone market, followed by Samsung on 24 percent.

The S4 plans come amid escalating patent disputes between the two technology giants in 50 different cases on four continents. Apple won a victory last month after a United States jury found the Korean firm copied key features of the iPhone and awarded Apple $1.05 billion in damages.

Logitech 985-000227 Ultimate Ears 200 Noise Isolating Earphones

These noise-isolating earphones fit comfortably-even if you've got small ears.

Ultimate sound
Tuned by the same engineers who make the custom earphones preferred by world's top touring musicians-for professional sound.

Perfect fit
With five pairs of soft silicone ear cushions from XXS to L, you won't have to worry about getting the right fit-even if you've got small ears.

Tough stuff
A durable, sweat-resistant design means your earphones stay looking and sounding good.