Verizon LTE devices are going global, bringing US carrier interoperability with them

One of the particularly annoying pain points for travelers who want to use Verizon Wireless’ 4G LTE service is that none of the handsets offered by the carrier include global GSM and WCDMA (UMTS HSPA+) support. Even devices that manufacturers had tested with GSM and WCDMA support by the FCC (who must authorize radio equipment to be sold in the United States) wound up on the shelves without the ability to use the built-in support.

Needless to say, this made people who wanted LTE world phones rather upset. However, Verizon Wireless likely did it for a single reason: carrier lock-in. It all ties into the rules that the FCC placed on the 700MHz C block spectrum that Verizon Wireless bought to run its network on. According to the regulations, Verizon Wireless is prohibited from disabling features on devices it provides to its customers. This is explicitly extended to include enabling features and crippling them.

In the past, Verizon Wireless offered special “world phones” with GSM, WCDMA, and CDMA2000 support. However, the radio firmware always had a built-in block for the United States’ mobile country code. This ensured that the GSM and WCDMA radios would not permit the device to work on US carriers (other than Verizon). It did not have to worry about the CDMA2000 radio, since that is always custom programmed for the carrier network it is intended for, and is not likely to work well on other networks. This is absolutely not allowed for any device Verizon Wireless wishes to offer that supports its 4G LTE network.

The regulations also seem to forbid SIM subsidy locks (also known as network locks). With that in mind, Verizon Wireless would be extremely hesitant to offer global GSM and WCDMA support on its 4G LTE phones. The main reason no one takes his/her 4G LTE device to another carrier is because no other carrier has a 4G LTE network that is compatible with the device. That impediment doesn’t even require a SIM subsidy lock, but with an unlocked device that has GSM and WCDMA support, consumers would be free to purchase Verizon Wireless 4G LTE global devices and actually pick which carrier to use them on. That is a bit too much power in the hands of the consumer, which Verizon does not want. US carriers thrive on the ability to impede consumers from getting the device they want and using it on a carrier of their choosing.

Something must have happened at Verizon Wireless, because it has changed its tune about global GSM and WCDMA support on 4G LTE devices. In February, Verizon Wireless enabled full global roaming capabilities in the Motorola Xyboard 8.2 and 10.1 tablets. In a statementVerizon Wireless announced that the following devices will get full global roaming capabilities this summer:

• Motorola Droid Razr
• Motorola Droid Razr Maxx
• Motorola Droid 4
• HTC Rezound

Aside from the HTC Rezound (which only has quad band GSM and dual band WCDMA for European 3G networks), all of these devices support quad band GSM and WCDMA for global roaming all over the Americas, Europe, and Asia.

Additionally, these devices will not have the mobile country code block. That means that they will operate on AT&T’s HSPA network. And of course, T-Mobile’s HSPA+ network will support them too after it refarms its spectrum to launch PCS HSPA+ and AWS LTE. The phones will work on both carriers’ GSM networks, too.

There is one more device in Verizon’s current lineup that is also due for an update that brings full global roaming support. Back at CES, Verizon Wireless announced that the LG Spectrum would also get its GSM and WCDMA radios enabled in a future update. The timing for that update has not yet been announced. The LG Spectrum has a quad band GSM radio and a tri band WCDMA radio for full roaming in Europe and limited roaming in the Americas and Asia. This device will partially work on AT&T’s HSPA network in certain areas, but it will work with T-Mobile’s HSPA+ network after refarming. And it will work on both carriers’ GSM networks, too.

When any of these devices are used on T-Mobile’s network, they will be able to use the carrier’s new nationwide IPv6 network.

It is quite likely that someone may have investigated and reported to the FCC that Verizon Wireless violated the terms of the network spectrum license when these devices rolled out without full global roaming. This would have forced Verizon’s hand and made it enable those radios for everyone. Otherwise, we would probably have not seen 4G LTE world phones for quite some time (probably only after Europe rolls out LTE).

Source

4 reasons why the Samsung Galaxy S3 will succeed

As the unveiling of the Samsung Galaxy S3grew nearer, the internet was swirling with unfounded rumors. Next-generation specs were being thrown out, and hopes were as high as could be. When the device was finally announced, it didn’t live up to the hype. Although, there’s probably nothing that could.

There might be an urge to dismiss the Galaxy S3 as a mediocre, somewhat unattractive device, but that’s not going to stop Samsung from selling a huge number of phones — 9 million have already been pre-ordered. The Galaxy S3 has success written all over it, but not for the reasons you expect.

The Galaxy S2 legacy

The first thing you should consider before getting too down on the Galaxy S3 is that it’s the successor to a wildly successful phone. The Galaxy S2 took the Android world by storm, eventually passing the 20 million unit mark in February 2012. Samsung even overtook Apple in smartphone sales in late 2011, largely on the strength of the Galaxy S2.

This rousing success has made Samsung the premier Android OEM, and that encourages trust. There are consumers that will buy Samsung phones out of loyalty. Even those that haven’t had a Samsung Android phone before have seen them around. You’re likely to spot more Galaxy S2 variants floating around than any other brand.

If someone shows you their Android phone, it’s probably a Samsung. That goes a long way to building brand image, and leading people to try the Galaxy S3 when the time comes for an upgrade. The Galaxy brand, especially after its fusion with the Nexus line, is perhaps as well known as the Droid branding from Verizon.

Software with a good first impression

There are probably reasons to dislike the new TouchWiz Nature UX skin on the Galaxy S3 when it’s compared to stock Android 4.0. However, these are aesthetic concerns and not everyone will agree. What will be clear when people pick up a Galaxy S3 is that the phone has some genuinely useful features.

People are going to be impressed with Smart Stay, the eye-tracking feature that keeps the display on while you’re looking at the phone. That will probably demo very well in a retail environment and get people interested in the phone. Likewise, Samsung’s foray into the voice-enabled future with S Voice is going to be a killer way to get noticed.

In testing the leaked S Voice app, I found it gets the job done. Samsung has built in some witty banter, though not to the same degree Apple has with Siri. Still, when people stand in the store and ask the phone questions and get real responses, that makes the phone more attractive. It doesn’t really matter if S Voice sits unused after that.

Even Apple has to deal with constant complaints from users that don’t much care for Siri after the honeymoon period. Features like Smart Stay and S Voice are just good selling points — a way to get phones out the door — and Samsung knows that.

The screen

When Android phones first started scaling up in the screen department with the 4.3-inch HTC Evo 4G and the original 4-inch Galaxy, there have been naysayers that claimed these phones were too big to succeed. Well, after a few years people are still falling all over themselves to buy these “hummer phones.” Even the Galaxy Note with its comical-sounding 5.3-inch panel has been selling very well. People like larger screens more than anyone could have guessed. That’s why the Galaxy S3 is going to appeal to the mass market.

With a 4.8-inch display, it will have the luxury of ample screen real estate. At the same time, the thin bezel keeps it from feeling outlandishly large. Reading, typing, playing games, and browsing the web will be better on this screen. The impression people have of a phone tends to be better when the screen is larger because they are just easier to use.

The display has taken a lot of heat for having aPenTile subpixel arrangement like past phones. While this is not as desirable as a true RGB panel, most consumers aren’t going to notice or care. The battle over PenTile is being waged among the tech-savvy minority. When someone looks at the Galaxy S3, most of the time they won’t be scanning it from 2-inches away to check for PenTile fringing.

Samsung is betting on the high contrast and vibrant colors of Super AMOLED to grab people’s attention — and they probably will. AMOLED screens are great looking, especially in retail environments with harsh fluorescent lighting. People might not be as happy with the screen when they get it out in the daylight, but AMOLED looks phenomenal indoors.

A phone for all carriers

Samsung has a good relationship with carriers in the US, and that’s probably going to mean a variant of the Galaxy S3 for all of them. When each carrier gets the chance to customize a Galaxy S3, they’re going to promote it like there’s no tomorrow. Commercials and in-store advertising coming from all of the big four networks will all contribute to Samsung’s total sales.

If you don’t care for the smooth lines and unusual proportions of the Galaxy S3, that’s no problem. The same multi-carrier approach will provide concerned Android fans with some options. If you look at the various takes on the Galaxy S2, there are a variety of form factors. Some have slightly bigger screens, some are a bit thinner, and some come in different colors.

The Samsung Galaxy S3 might not have the kind of specs hardware nerds were hoping for, but it hits all the checkboxes. Consumers will see a list of features that sound as good as the phone next to it. The Galaxy S3 will have the Samsung name behind it, and that means something these days. Combine that with a good first impression, and the Galaxy S3 is going to sell like hotcakes.

Nvidia aims for quad-core, Kal-El tablets at $199

At CES 2012, Nvidia and Asus demo’d a $249 Kal-El quad-core tablet dubbed the Asus ME370T. Neither company has talked about that specific product since, but Nvidia is now showing off its quad-core “Kai” reference platform — and it’s identical to the Asus device it showcased earlier this year.

What’s new about Kai is the price, down to $199 from $249. According to Nvidia VP Rob Csongor, the company is putting together a two-pronged strategy between Android ICS at the low end, with Windows RT anchoring high end products. Speaking at the company’s investor meeting, Congor said: “Our strategy on Android is simply to enable quad-core tablets running Android Ice Cream Sandwich to be developed and brought out to market at the $199 price point… So this uses a lot of the secret sauce that’s inside Tegra 3 to allow you to develop a tablet at a much lower cost, by using a lot of innovation that we’ve developed to reduce the power that’s used by the display and use lower cost components within the tablet.”

What sort of secret sauce? We suspect Nvidia’s DirectTouch will make an appearance. As we’vepreviously discussed, DirectTouch is a technology that integrates the functions of discrete chips into the Tegra processor and handles touch computation on the Companion Core.

Nvidia claims that DT offers improved power consumption as well as better fidelity, and while touch sensors aren’t known for high power usage, they require independent circuitry and typically operate in an “Always On” mode, even when the device is in standby. Improved integration and lower power consumption are two factors vitally important to pushing the cutting edge of low-cost design; DT offers advantages on both fronts.

Nvidia’s decision to build a reference platform isn’t surprising; the company has done something similar for GPUs for years. The $199 price point, however, could definitely shake things up. Amazon’sKindle Fire has an estimated Bill of Materials (BOM) between $150 and $199, and Kindle Fire sales have been high enough for the company to leverage economies of scale. Tegra 3 is significantly more powerful than the dual-core OMAP 4430 that powers the Fire, and unlike Amazon, the OEMs that might build such tablets don’t have anything like Amazon’s multimedia storehouse. If Nvidia can offer a reference design that still preserves some room for an actual profit, that’s a significant feat.

Source

Samsung Galaxy S3 S Voice app tested: The first worthy Siri competitor?

It didn’t take long for Samsung to block the leaked version of S Voice from theGalaxy S3 over the weekend, but now we’ve got a new version of that Android APK file to play with. Seeing as the app is running on the Samsung Galaxy Nexus with stock Android, there are a few functions, like note taking and voice recording, that don’t work because the Samsung TouchWiz apps are missing. Everything that is not connected directly to a TouchWiz app seems to work correctly, though.

From voice dialing, to inane requests for information, to hardware control… Samsung’s S Voice software has some serious skills. There are times I can see the foibles of the Vlingo technology that backs S Voice peeking through but it seems fairly polished, even in its current pre-release state.

What we see in the video is probably a fair estimation of what S Voice will be able to do at launch. It hits most of the points, but misses the occasional word. More complicated queries are more likely to be misinterpreted as well. I quite like the ability to toggle hardware features on and off, and launching apps by voice is handy too. There are apps in Google’s Play Store that claim to do this, but I have always found them to be sub-standard.

Because I was not running this app on a Galaxy S3, S Voice can’t be called up from any screen via the voice command, “Hi Galaxy.” I believe this is what’s going to make the service useful in some situations. If you want to do a Twitter update, for instance, you don’t even have to touch the phone. You can also start and stop timers, or change hardware settings without lifting a finger — just start talking to your phone like a crazy person.

I was more impressed with S Voice than I thought I would be. Most of the queries I tried work, and it is integrated well with core Android services. I would like a little more of the witty banter that madeSiri famous, but that’s just for the immediate entertainment value. You shouldn’t be too broken up that S Voice won’t tell you where to hide a dead body — it’s good at things that matter.

Source

Windows 8 tablet PC makers: We can’t compete with the iPad’s price

If reports from Taiwan are to be believed, hardware manufacturers are struggling to create Windows 8 on ARM (Windows RT) devices that are competitively priced against Apple’s iPad and Amazon’s Kindle Fire. The reason? According to Digitimes, OEMs have to pay Microsoft $90-100 for a Windows 8 license.

While that $90-100 figure sounds a little bit on the high side (Microsoft historically charges OEMs around $50 for desktop licenses and $30 for Windows Phone 7 licenses), it doesn’t really matter: Even at $10 or $20, Microsoft (and OEMs) would be hard pushed to compete with Amazon and Apple on price. Apple effectively gives iOS away (it’s a hardware company, after all), and Amazon gets Android for free. Microsoft has to charge for Windows 8 and Windows RT because it’s a software company; if it didn’t, it wouldn’t make any money, which shareholders might see as a bit of a problem.

The other important thing to bear in mind is that it’s virtually impossible for OEMs to create a tablet that’s comparable to the iPad, for the same price. Apple’s design, supply chain, and manufacturing dominance is so stellar that the iPad is actually one of the cheapest tablets to produce. Famously, the fat, plastic-body, WiFi-only HP TouchPad cost more to manufacture ($318) than the 3G iPad 2($310). Once you factor in the additional cost of a Windows license, there simply is no way for similarly-outfitted Windows tablets to compete on price. (As an aside, this is the same reason that OEM ultrabooks are struggling to match the MacBook Air’s specs.)

Where does this leave Windows 8/RT tablets, then? Well, for a start, Apple applies a huge markup to its tablets: The original $310-to-produce 16GB 3G iPad 2 sold for $629 (this is why Apple is the second most valuable company in the world). Windows OEMs can always undercut that price, but once they factor in license fees the profit margins will drop precipitously. It will also be interesting to see if Intel can price its SoC Atom parts (Medfield and Clover Trail) to compete with ARM. It is due to the double whammy of Intel and Windows “taxes” that Dell, HP, and other desktop PC makers only have a profit margin of around 5% (while Microsoft and Chipzilla laugh all the way to the bank with margins of 20-30%).

As long as someone is willing to take a hit to their profit margins, then, it should be possible for Windows ARM tablets to compete with the iPad and Kindle Fire. Of course, all of this speculation doesn’t take into account the fact that Windows RT could be more desirable than iOS; users might actually be willing to pay a premium for Windows tablets. For that to happen, we’d need hundreds of thousands of Windows RT apps, though, and so far it doesn’t look like that will happen. We should also remember that Apple could quite easily block the entrance of Windows RT by dropping the price of its iPads, and still remain healthily profitable.

Read about my $200 Windows 8 tablet — which seems more like a dream every day

Source

Tizen 1.0 hands-on: Can Samsung and Intel’s mobile OS compete with Android?

In the wake of Meego’s demise a new open source mobile operating system has emerged. Known as Tizen and backed by Samsung and Intel, the Linux-based OS recently hit the version 1.0 milestone and has even been paired with an official reference hardware platform. Unlike the alternative OSes that came before it, Tizen does not use the Qt application framework. Instead, Tizen apps are created using HTML5 and other web standards. It is intended to be used in smartphones, tablets, smart TVs, vehicle entertainment systems, and low-power notebooks.

Tizen is currently being developed by a partnership between Intel, Samsung, the Linux Foundation, and others. The latest partner is Sprint-Nextel, which has announced its intent to join the Tizen Association and to feature Tizen-powered smartphones in its future product lineups. Let’s dive straight into the features of Tizen, and then we’ll look at the applications.

Features

Tizen is still in development, but it is designed to support a number of high-end smartphone features. The OS supports HD screen resolutions, and up to three front-facing buttons that can be physical or capacitive. Further, it features support for tethering, NFC, WiFi, GPS, and 4G LTE technologies. It is designed to work around ARM or x86 processors and up to 1GB of RAM. It can also support cameras, touchscreens, and other sensors pending software support (there is no camera application yet but it is coming). While it is short on application and developer support right now, it is intended for high-end devices and to be at least as capable as Android.

Home screen

After powering up a Tizen device (in our case an emulator — there is no readily available hardware yet), users are presented with a home screen that ditches the Meego approach and appears very similar to that of Android and iOS. At the top is a status bar for notifications, time, battery life, and wireless radio signal strengths. The remaining screen space is devoted to the grid of applications installed on the device. On our system, it presented the icons in a rather spaced out grid of four icons per row, and a maximum of six rows per screen (multiple home screens will be allowed). Very basic, but practical.

Task switcher

The task switcher can be accessed by holding down the home button. It shows a list of running applications and a history of recent apps. The task switcher shows the CPU usage per application and allows you to kill individual apps, or every app all at once.

Web browser

The Tizen browser supports Flash, JavaScript, and HTML5 technologies out of the box. In terms of the interface, it is very similar to the web browser included with Samsung’s Android (TouchWiz) smartphones. The address bar is found at the top of the screen, the canvas is in the middle, and four touch buttons make up the bottom of the display. The buttons are: menu, tab switcher, bookmarks, and back. It supports zooming in and out, but can’t yet take a column of text and fit it to the screen automatically. Performance is difficult to gauge from the early build and the virtualized environment but it did manage to render Flash-heavy websites without a problem in our testing.

The tab switcher is the thing that is most different from Android as it has 3D effects and a translucent background. A left or right swiping motion moves between the open tabs, and when opening the switcher the tabs do a 3D flip animation. Normally, it would give a thumbnail preview of the site in each of the boxes — but this is obviously still being worked on.

Dialer

Tizen supports phone calls in addition to the web browser and HTML5 based applications. The dialer application is very similar to the one in Android. It also includes tabs for contacts, call logs, and favorites.

Messages

The Messages application resembles a cross between iOS and Android. It has the color scheme of an Android device but the bubble-enclosed text messages of Apple’s iOS. Users are also able to directly add contacts from within in the messaging application or transfer the number to the dialer app to place a call.

Calculator

The calculator app is a fairly standard affair that’s capable of doing simple arithmetic. What makes it interesting is that it is designed around HTML5 standards — as all Tizen applications are. The background is a leather casing while the buttons are colored varied shades of grey and orange. The calculator output shows up to two lines of results.

Gallery

The Gallery application in Tizen, while taking its cues from Samsung’s Android app, is definitely the most divergent of Tizen’s apps. The main screen shows all photos grouped by folders. The folders are lined up in a grid with a white border around each folder, over a neutral background. The 2D design does not host any fancy 3D animations like the Android app, but it does look very clean and organized. The folders themselves are comprised of icons of some of the files they contain as well as the date, folder name, and number of files in the folder. It looks rather pleasing to the eye, and the folders really pop thanks to the neutral background. Viewing photos is done in full screen, and you can zoom in and out and scroll through the album with swipe gestures. Screen/photo rotation is not yet working, however.

Can Tizen compete with Android and iOS?

The open-source operating system being developed primarily by Samsung, Intel, and The Linux Foundation delivers the alternative OS that many enthusiasts crave. Although not a direct successor to Maemo, Moblin, or Meego (Moblin’s successor), it does continue carrying the torch of open-source operating systems for fans that love to tinker with software. Tizen is a unique blend of technologies that is arriving at an interesting time.

While Google’s Android and Apple’s iOS have the majority of smartphone market share, Microsoft has tossed its hat in the ring with Windows Phone 7 and Canonical has plans to release a mobile edition of its popular Ubuntu operating system. Tizen takes open-source technologies and combines it with a web technology-based application development system that makes the barrier to entry for those interested in developing or tinkering with applications even lower. It is easily, and without question, dwarfed by the app stores of the two giant mobile OS vendors before it is even released, but that should not preclude it from a certain amount of success if Samsung plays its cards right. Samsung could likely integrate Tizen into low- to mid-range smartphones without needing a large repository of applications, or even go so far as to supplement its high-end Android phones with a Samsung-developed Tizen-powered smartphone with a closed off ecosystem similar to Apple’s.

Currently Tizen is still in development, but the operating system’s future is just on the horizon. Stay tuned for more information on Tizen’s development. For an idea of what Tizen 1.0 currently looks like, check out the video below.

Source

US and EU antitrust regulators have their eyes on Windows RT

US and European regulators have a watchful eye on Microsoft, after it emerged last week that it would be impossible for other vendors, such as Google and Mozilla, to develop browsers that are competitive with Internet Explorer on Windows RT (Windows 8 on ARM).

Microsoft disclosed last year that development of third-party apps would be limited to Metro on ARM processors. Microsoft leaned on security concerns as its chief reasons for why it was locking down the platform, but that wasn’t enough to prevent developers from complaining.

It is surprising that it took until now for somebody to make a big stink about it, but here we are. At issue is the 2009 decision in which the EU required Microsoft to give users choice of browser when installing Windows, as well as offering a version of Windows without Internet Explorer. Mozilla claims that Microsoft’s locked-down Windows RT violates this ruling.

Microsoft’s in the clear — for now

Not so fast. The European Commission says it is aware of Mozilla’s claim, but the ruling applied to PCs only. This means that if Mozilla wants to push the issue, it will have to argue that tablets are still PCs. That said, there is the possibility that ARM-based PCs could pop up in the future — actually, that’s probably likely — so Microsoft’s going to have to figure out a defense of its position soon.

The US is taking the same “wait and see” attitude. According to TechNewsWorld, the Senate Judiciary Committee does plan to review Microsoft’s browser decision, but called it “preliminary” and said no hearing is scheduled. So while there may be some question as to whether or not Microsoft is running afoul of the law here, it appears for the time being that Redmond is in the clear.

So, is Microsoft really doing anything wrong? I don’t think so. Windows RT is not Windows, and really isn’t intended for PCs but devices, where other companies have similarly strict app requirements. Look at Apple, it does the same thing in keeping a lot of apps out of iOS. Microsoft is doing the same, and in both cases it has a lot to do with security.

It’s all about security

Browser vulnerabilities are the most common way attackers gain access. When code for these apps are more tight, there are less holes for the hacker to exploit. The browsers in these mobile platforms are more tightly linked to the OS itself. Device operating systems are very strict in who they let in to certain processes — regardless of whether its iOS, Android, Windows Phone, etc. — and that’s a good thing.

While it is disappointing that we cannot select our own browser with modern mobile operating systems, in reality we’re much better off. The attack vectors are limited and if somebody’s getting in, it’s the platform’s fault. The evidence has shown that the tighter the control on the ecosystem itself, the less of a chance of malicious attack. Just look at the difference between Android and iOS when it comes to malware.

Android’s much more lenient app rules have allowed attackers to exploit the OS much more frequently then they have on the iOS platform. But even there, Google has clamped down on some sections of the code in an attempt to protect you the user. Then above and beyond security, the device market is nothing like the PC industry.

In mobile devices, you have something called choice. Don’t like one platform and its rules? There’s plenty of others to choose from. It’s not like you’ll ever be forced to use a Windows RT device — and heck, if you really want to use a different browser, there’ll be plenty of low-power x86 Windows 8 tablets anyway.

Source

Microsoft bans third-party browsers from Windows on ARM

In a twist that’s very reminiscent of Microsoft’s naughty nineties, Mozilla has revealed that Windows RT — aka Windows 8 on ARM — will only support one web browser: Internet Explorer. While Firefox will technically be able to run in Metro mode on Windows RT, it will be so crippled as to be unusable; in “classic,” Desktop mode, third-party browsers such as Firefox won’t be allowed to run at all.

Updated @ 8:00am: The issue seems to revolve around API access in Windows RT. Third-party developers (and apps) will only have access to the WinRT (Metro) API, while Microsoft’s own software will have access to the low-level (and old school) Win32 API. This means that Mozilla can build Firefox for Windows on ARM, but without access to Win32 it will be very hard to compete with Internet Explorer.

At first blush this sounds like a classic ploy to stymy the opposition and regain market share — and for all I know, maybe it is — but there are also a few logical reasons for Microsoft’s decision. From the get-go, Microsoft has been leery of developers porting x86 code to ARM, in case these ported apps don’t have the efficiency and stability that a low-power (and battery-powered) ARM tablet requires. It’s for this reason that Microsoft didn’t offer some kind of OS- or hardware-level x86>ARM translation.

Browsers are also one of the juiciest attack vectors for malware — and also one of the most “visible” aspects of a modern operating system. If a user installs Firefox (or Opera or Chrome) on a Windows RT table, and then it gets bogged down with malware and toolbars, you are likely to walk away with a sour taste for Windows RT; “It’s just like Windows 7 damnit!” By only allowing Internet Explorer, Microsoft should be able to keep Windows RT running smoothly for longer. (This is the same reason that Apple doesn’t allow third-party operating systems on its iOS devices, incidentally.)

Finally, moving away from the logical and more towards legal and ideological wrangling, Windows RT isn’t Windows 8. We always wondered why Windows 8 on ARM was suddenly renamed to Windows RT, and this is probably the reason. With one fell swoop, Microsoft may have escaped the the antitrust ruling that forced European versions of Windows to offer alternative browsers, and done an end-run around the DOJ-Microsoft antitrust settlement in 2001.

Irrespective of the reasoning behind the restriction, we should discuss the heinous implications forusers. First up, this means there won’t be any browser add-ons on Windows ARM tablets. There also won’t be any HTML5 web apps (either from the Chrome Web Store, or Mozilla Marketplace, or fancy WebGL-powered websites. If tablet computing turns out to be as big as Microsoft and Apple are anticipating, then this restriction will seriously hamper competition, and thus the continued, rapid advances being made to web browsers and underlying technologies, such as HTML5, JavaScript, and HTTP.

I think it’s unlikely, but if ARM tablets beat out x86 tablets, this could mean a return to the mid-’90s digital dark age, where more than 90% of web surfers used Internet Explorer — a fate worse than death itself.

Read more at Mozilla, or for more technical details hit up Asa Dotzler’s blog

Updated @ 6:30am: It seems Google shares the same concerns as Mozilla.

Updated @ 8:00am: Here’s some more technical details behind the ‘ban’ (it’s more of a massive roadblock than a ban, though)

Source

How to reclaim your Android UI from OEM skins like TouchWiz, Sense, and Blur

There are a scant few Android devices on the market that ship with the stock user interface Google designed. In the distant past, that was a good thing. Android really needed that help back in 2009, and even into the early part of 2010. However, OEMs have continued to skin the OS long past the point it was warranted, but don’t count on it stopping anytime soon. Instead, why not take your phone back to the stock Gingerbread or Ice Cream Sandwich experience with a few easy-to-install apps? Without so much as rooting your phone, you can sweep most of the OEM chrome under the rug with some great third-party apps.

Home screen

The most heavy-handed OEM modification of Android tends to come on the home screen. Android 4.0 in particular has made the home screen much cleaner and easier to use, but OEMs often add features and tweak icons until we’re right back in mid-2010 as far as usability and attractiveness go. If you want to really skip the skin, it’s time for a home screen replacement.

Anyone on an Android 4.0 device would do well to take a look at Apex Launcher. The real value with this app is that is looks and works almost exactly like the stock Android 4.0 home screen, which is fabulous. Folders, the app drawer, and widgets work like they are supposed to, but there are some handy extras that fit in extremely well.

With Apex Launcher, you can customize the scrolling animation, keep more apps in the dock, and customize apps icons and folders. That last one is great if your device uses obnoxious redesigned app icons. A paid version of Apex comes with multitouch gestures, widgets in the dock, better folder management, and more. The only drawback is that you have to be rooted to have widgets in the app drawer like the stock home screen.

Those not on Android 4.0 or later should take a look at ADW Launcher EX. This home screen moves a little bit further from the Android 4.0 aesthetic, but has a lot of excellent features. You can tweak the way the home screen scrolls, how widgets are sized, and how many home screens you have. ADW EX has a solid tablet UI in addition to the phone layout as well. It also saves presets so you can change the look of the home screen instantly.

The paid version of Apex is $3.99, and ADW EX is $3 in the Play Store. Both are worlds better than what you get with TouchWiz, Sense, or Blur, but your taste and affinity for customization will dictate which one you prefer.

Browser

So the stock Android browser is probably not long for this world. Google is testing the Chrome Beta right now, and that will almost certainly end up being the default browser in the future. But for now, OEMs are free to tweak and skin the browser as they like — sometimes with more or less success. If you don’t like the dark gradient in Sense, or that bright blue in the new TouchWiz on the Galaxy S3, there are a few options.

If you have an Android 4.0 device, you should definitely get the aforementioned Chrome Beta for Android. This browser has a ton in common with the desktop version of Chrome. Being a beta, there are still some stability issues, but I’ve found most problems to be cropping up on tablets. Chrome on phones seems to be extremely stable. Chrome has excellent search, incognito mode, tab sync, bookmark sync, and it’s very fast.

If your phone is not compatible with Chrome, or you just don’t care for it, Dolphin Browser HD is your friend. Dolphin isn’t quite as refined as Chrome for Android is, but it has more features than you’ll know what to do with. There are true tabs, voice control, on-screen gestures, add-ons, and bookmark sync.

Both Chrome and Dolphin HD have better interfaces than some of the OEM options, and I’ve always found them to be very snappy. Both browsers are also entirely free.

Camera

Most phone manufacturers are going the route of stuffing as many features as possible into their camera interfaces. If you want a faster, easier to use camera app, you can replace your device’s default one withCamera ICS+. This app is very much what the name makes it sound like — the stock camera for Android 4.0 with a little extra.

The interface has that slick blue/gray Holo theme from Ice Cream Sandwich and it can do stills, video, and panorama shots just like the stock ICS app. It comes with plenty of features like volume key shutter button, filters, and higher video bitrates. Camera ICS+ is a great camera app to make your phone feel more stock. If you don’t mind losing a few features, the free version of Camera ICS is nice too.

An alternative you might consider is Camera Zoom FX. This app has a super-minimalist UI with simple gray controls laid out around the perimeter of the viewfinder. All you have to do to take a picture is tap on the screen. There is no touch-to-focus, but you can long press to change the focus mode on the fly. It takes full resolution shots in burst mode, and can apply various filters to your photos, if you’re into that kind of thing.

Camera ICS+ runs you $0.99 in the Play Store, but Camera Zoom FX is priced a little higher at $2.99. Either one can act as a cleaner stand in for your OEM-supplied camera.

Gallery

Some phones come with the stock Android Gallery app, and some don’t. Those that don’t are usually unattractive or sluggish. You might also be using a phone with an older version of the stock Gallery, which needed some work of its own. A good solution for all these eventualities is to go with QuickPic instead as your default image management app.

QuickPic really lives up to its name by being blazingly fast. The first time it’s opened, it might not seem so fast, but that’s because it is caching thumbnails of your images. After that, it is almost instantaneous unless you’ve added a large number of new images.

The QuickPic interface is really well designed, with big thumbnails arranged in tight grids, ample sharing options, and a correctly-implemented action bar. It fits in perfectly on an Ice Cream Sandwich device, and the understated look will make it one of the most attractive apps on any phone. To top it off, QuickPic is totally free.

Music

All the OEMs want to customize the music listening experience. HTC pushes its own app with Beats integration, for example. There are two ways to go with swapping out your OEM music app — Google or not Google.

If you live in a country that has access to Google Play Music, you should probably consider picking up the official Music app in the Play Store. This ties in with Google’s cloud service so you can stream all your tunes, and sync them to the device for local playback. Google has improved the music app’s interface dramatically in recent months, and it has great integration with the lock screen and notification pane for playback controls on Android 4.0 and higher. Google Music is free.

If you want to get off the beaten path, take a look at PowerAMP. This app has a gorgeous interface and an impressive set of features. There are numerous skins, a full 10-band equalizer, gapless playback, multiple widgets, a tag editor, and quite a lot more. Its widgets are among the best of any music app, and you can listen to songs in almost any format, even FLAC. My only concern is that PowerAMP doesn’t integrate well with the Android 4.0 playback controls. PowerAMP has a 15 day trial, but after that it’s $4.99 for the full version.

Doesn’t that feel better?

It might cost you a few bucks, but most of the annoying elements of any OEM skin can be covered up with these apps. Everything here can be undone by removing the apps from your device, so don’t worry about making a change you might not like. It’s your device, and you should be able to give it the look you want.

If you’re still not content, though, may I recommend installing a custom ROM such as CyanogenMod 9?

Source

Galaxy S3: Did Samsung just out-iPhone Apple?

Last night, stuffed full of posh canapes and surrounded by pretty Samsung girls, I played with the Samsung Galaxy S3. Organic, watery nature sounds were piped into the exhibition hall, and to accentuate the Pebble Blue and Marble White models on display, the huge room was bathed in a mixture of muted blue and vivid white spotlight. Flicking through the home screen, notifications tray, and various TouchWizesque apps, and of course poking those cartoony icons, I couldn’t help but feel that this is a very odd release for Samsung. For the first time that I can recall, this is a flagship smartphone release where awesome, bleeding-edge hardware isn’t the focus; instead, Samsung is at pains to point out that the Galaxy S3 is a device “designed for humans.”

From the moment that The Gadget Show’s Suzi Perry took the stage and begun spouting platitudes about the rampant, unabated progress of technology, and how faster CPU speeds and bigger screens aren’t inherently a good thing, it was clear that the Samsung Galaxy S3 represents a significant, humanist shift for the gargantuan South Korean conglomerate. For more than an hour, in the massive Earls Court exhibition hall, we sat through slide after slide and video after video that demonstrated, beyond all doubt, that Samsung has finally realized how to compete with Apple.

The Samsung Galaxy S3 is all about software; the apps, the interface, the widgets, the user experience — the Galaxy S3′s software has been written from the ground up to produce “human-centric mobile experiences.” From Buddy Photo Share, which uses face detection to automatically share pictures of your friends with your friends, to AllShare Play, an AirPlay clone that lets you share your screen with any other S3 users or DLNA-enabled devices on local WiFi, Samsung’s new phone is all about bringing people together to share experiences.

Samsung also makes extensive use of the word “intelligence,” mostly with regards to the Galaxy S3′s “natural” interactions. Smart Stay, for example, uses the Galaxy S3′s forward-facing camera to keep the screen on while you’re looking at it. If you are texting someone, a phone call to them is automatically initiated if you lift the S3 to your ear — a feature called Direct Call. If you have any missed messages or calls, Smart Alert will vibrate your handset when you pick it up off the table. And then there’s S Voice, a Siri clone that uses natural language recognition to look up the weather, flip through music tracks, setting alarms, and so on.

Now this isn’t to say that the hardware in the Galaxy S3 is in any way lackluster — other than the HTC One X or Galaxy Nexus, there isn’t a phone on the market with a comparable screen, processor, or weight. The chassis is plastic — but so what? I know that we naturally assume that denser objects are more valuable or desirable, but really, we’re talking about a smartphone here, not a nugget of platinum. For what it’s worth, the S3 feels solid — it doesn’t flex — and, at least in my opinion, not-cheap. Anyway, we’re getting sidetracked: thanks to some disgustingly clumsy sleight of hand from Samsung, PLEASE LOOK AT THE SOFTWARE, IT’S ALL NATURAL AND STUFF, the hardware definitely plays second fiddle to the software.

Which leads us neatly onto Apple. If you were to ask a hundred iPhone users why they love theirDesigned by Apple in California devices, you would get a lot of different answers, but they generally cluster around two main themes: The design (and desirability), and “it just works.” In numerous user satisfaction surveys, Apple’s iPhone always comes out ahead — sometimes beating out the Android, RIM, and WP7 competition by as much as 40%. In absolute terms, you might be able to do more with an Android phone than an iPhone, but there’s no getting around the fact that almost every facet and feature of iOS is simple and intuitive. It isn’t a coincidence that Samsung’s S Voice and AllShare Cast are clones of Apple’s Siri and AirPlay. Despite being an odd shape, the hardware Home button on the Galaxy S3 is blatantly a homage to the iPhone. In some cases, as with Smart Stay, Direct Call, and Buddy Photo Share, the Galaxy S3 is actually more user-friendly than the iPhone, which must be a first for an Android phone.

The only thing that’s at odds with Samsung’s new, human-centric design ideology is the Galaxy S3′s huge screen and equally massive chassis. Samsung basically wants us to treat the S3 like an extension of your body, or a trusted personal assistant. During the presentation, Samsung went as far as saying that the S3, with all of its Smart features, is like “a good friend who listens intently” to your every need. When the phone is too large to comfortably grasp and manipulate, even with huge hands like my own, I just don’t see how the Galaxy S3 can be as universally popular as the iPhone. Hauling that beast out of my pocket and precariously poking around with my thumb seems foolhardy at the best of times; I don’t think I would dare to do it while moving — which kind of defeats the point of a mobile phone.

Having said that, though, as we covered yesterday, Samsung’s smartphone market share has grown 140% in the past year, from 10 to 24% — mainly on the back of the Samsung Galaxy S2, which actually has very similar dimensions (and weight) to the S3. Seemingly, despite my misgivings, there are tens or hundreds of millions of people who would love the Galaxy S3 — and now, with its Apple-like software flourishes, Galaxy S3 user satisfaction might begin to approach that of the iPhone.

Most importantly, though, after five years of living in Apple’s shadow, the Galaxy S3 is ultimately designed with just one goal in mind: To propel Samsung into the lead. Time will tell if the Samsung Galaxy S3′s “intelligent,” active, always-on features are actually life-changing (and iPhone-beating), or merely battery-draining gimmicks — but I remain positive. Samsung knows that the iPhone is the only device standing in the way of its smartphone supremacy; it knows that to topple Apple, users must perceive the S3 as “it just works.”

For the first time, as I tested the Galaxy S3, I found myself wishing my iPhone had features like S Beam or Smart Stay. One feature, Pop Up Play, which sticks an always-on-top, draggable media player on your screen, really showcases Samsung’s deliberate, human-centric design; after all, it’s not like messaging really takes advantage of that huge 1280×720 screen, so why not throw in some picture-in-picture action? The new camera app boots up in under a second, and there’s no shutter latency, even when taking a solid stream of 20 photos. In my brief testing, Smart Stay and Direct Call really did seem to work — and who knows, with so many intelligent, “hands free” features, perhaps the phone’s poor graspability won’t be an issue.

I should probably temper my hopes of an Android renaissance, though. Samsung isn’t a software company, after all; I would be very surprised if, come release, there aren’t a few nasty bugs that bite users in the ass. Who knows how users will react to Samsung’s “natural,” feng shui stuff, too — most tech writers will hate it, but I thought it was rather cute; most average consumers will love all of that watery, pebbly guff, I expect.

What it really comes down to is Apple’s response with the iPhone 5. With the iPhone 5 apparently scheduled for September, just two or three months after the S3 hits the USA, I wonder if Samsung intentionally delayed the release of the Galaxy S3 so that it’s too late for Apple to make any major revisions. Apple may have designed the iPhone 5 (and iOS 6) thinking that Siri and AirPlay would still be unique features. If the iPhone 5 comes to market and it merely looks like a Galaxy S3 clone, then we could be in for a very wild ride indeed — and, perhaps, a new galactic king.

Read our hands-on review of the Samsung Galaxy S3, or our comparison of the Galaxy S3 vs. the Galaxy Nexus

Source