Monday, 29 April 2013

Review TechRadar: Phone and communications news 04-29-2013

TechRadar: Phone and communications news
TechRadar UK latest feeds
The future of high definition phone calls
Apr 29th 2013, 12:57

The future of high definition phone calls

The Samsung GALAXY Note II is a truly terrific smartphone, but it brings a lot to the party in terms of its most basic function – making crystal clear phone calls.

This month marks the 40th anniversary of the very first phone call made. The first mobile phone call took place on April 3 1973, by a pioneer called Martin Cooper, though it was another decade before the handset came to market.

And it wasn't exactly a social call, he phoned his rival to gloat that he had beat him to being able to produce a prototype of the first ever cell phone.

Martin Cooper (Rico Shen)

Back then it seemed that mobile phones would be expensive commodities and it would have seemed unbelievable that handsets such as the Samsung GALAXY Note II could not only exist, but could put such unbelievable power in our pockets.

Things have moved on from that crackly first call though and mobile networks have also improved exponentially – so much so that we can make calls in far-flung areas of the country and at great quality.

Here we explain how and why this is, and find out where call quality is heading in the near future.

Cell_Phone_Tower (Joe Ravi)

The GALAXY Note II has been precision engineered to provide fewer signal drop-offs halfway through important conversations or fuzzy losses of reception in low-signal areas.

Early smartphones failed to live up to their promise and didn't provide the call quality we'd come to expect even from feature phones. But the GALAXY Note II is one of the best new handsets on the market for use as a phone – and, naturally, the best smartphone, too.

Galaxy Note II

The GALAXY Note II has been designed to bring you the very best in call quality and Samsung has worked hard to make it a great experience for you using the handset.

Samsung's own TouchWiz Nature user interface has been re-worked for the Note II and makes the process of making calls easier than ever. The handset features active noise cancellation with its own dedicated microphone, reducing background noise and meaning that calls are clearer than ever, especially in noisy environments such as crowds and alongside traffic.

Galaxy Note II

The GALAXY Note II's speakers are loud and clear and don't distort, meaning you can also have a clear conversation if you decide to put your call on speaker. Say goodbye to crackled conversations when on speakerphone.

The earpiece also has a great volume to it, meaning you won't miss out on those important conversation points or instructions from your boss.

Next-gen 4G networks

Finally, in the UK, the GALAXY Note II will work great on EE's next-generation 4G network as well as on other 4G networks when they're available. That means even better call coverage, so you'll get fewer dropped calls then you've ever experienced before.

EE 4G ad

In the US, AT&T will support the technology as it begins to support voice over its LTE 4G network. T-Mobile has already launched, while Sprint is also planning to launch the technology in the future. AT&T has faced problems with call quality and dropped calls in previous years, something it believes is firmly in the past.

Plus, according to various sources, Verizon will also launch the service in 2013. Great HD voice quality is just around the corner for many of us.

    


In Depth: Guide: How to blog on your GALAXY Note II
Apr 29th 2013, 12:26

In Depth: Guide: How to blog on your GALAXY Note II

Blogging isn't just blogging any more. When it kicked off over a decade ago, you only had a handful of options for publishing your thoughts online and managing the complex worlds of the associated web hosting, while organising your images and video and more was a complex, time consuming and often expensive task.

But that's all history.

Nowadays you can smash together a blog in seconds, using one of today's modern, simpler, personal publishing tools, that supply you with all the space, templates and tools needed to express yourself to your audience, whether that audience consists of 25,000 daily readers or just your mum.

The GALAXY Note II's generous screen and S Pen also let you handle more complex design tasks, meaning you can get your personal "online brand identity" sorted and updated without even having to leave bed.

Here's what you need to get your blog on in style.

Wordpress

Wordpress

Free

If you've plumped for Wordpress as the backend for your blog, there's an excellent Android app designed specifically to update it from a mobile phone.

You can upload images, specify default sizes, edit the positions and more, plus once something's live it even lets you filter and approve comments within the app, making it easy to navigate through and bin the endless stream of spam comments that clog up most Wordpress blogs these days.

blogger

Blogger

Free

Google's old Blogger portal was how a lot of people first cut their teeth and fingers on the personal blogging circuit, and the tool has survived in the form of a very useful Android app.

It imports all your old Blogger accounts, then offers a full and straightforward way to update your blog from phone. It integrates with Android's sharing menu too, so simply opening a photo in the Gallery and sharing it via the Blogger app is enough to automatically embed it in a new post that's ready for uploading.

Photoshop touch

Photoshop Touch for phone

£2.99

If you want to actually work on designing the look your blog yourself, you should get a professional image-editing tool on your Note II. Adobe's Photoshop series has long been the favoured picture manipulation option of the professional photography and design crowd, and yes, there's an Android version.

Called Photoshop Touch, this lets you work on layered documents on your mobile, supporting Adobe's cloud service for syncing mobile and desktop versions of files -- letting you seamlessly switch from working on your PC to fiddling about with graphics on your phone.

Little Photo

Little Photo

Free

For an easier way to edit your Note II's images prior to chucking them up on a blog, try Little Photo. It's a simple, free app that adds a variety of filters to your shots.

Unlike rivals like Instagram, it doesn't try to get you to upload photos to its own service -- you just save them to your phone's memory and are free to share them in any of Android's usual ways. Effects can be layered and multiplied, too, creating some wildly odd results.

Justin.tv

Justin.tv Broadcaster

Free

If you are ready to take it to the NEXT LEVEL, there's this. Justin.tv is a personal video broadcaster, letting you use your smartphone as a miniature recording studio so you can video blog, live, from your phone.

All you need is a bit of Blu-tak to hold your phone up, then the world's your potential audience. Videos are streamed via the web, so anyone with a PC or Mac can enjoy whatever you're rambling into your phone's camera, leaving comments beside it in a continually updating stream. It is one for the brave.

Tumblr

Tumblr

Free

One of the more recent blogging portals is Tumblr, which makes collating words, text, pictures and videos amazingly simple. The Android app lets users share anything from their phone's memory to their personal Tumblr page, complete with an easily accessible Home screen widget for the ultimate in impulsive, one-press blogging action.

You don't even need to add your own words, making it an ideal way to clip images, videos and short pieces of text for your own personal amusement.

Writer

Writer

Free

If you need to get into some sort of magical quiet space in order to churn out your best SEO ready content, try Writer.

It's a simple mobile word processor that ditches most of the options that usually clutter up the more professional old word processing tools, for a clean, crisp layout that emphasises only the very, very important and meaningful things you want to say on the internet. It's a minimalist thing for people who consider writing an art, rather than a painful chore to be endured.

SwiftKey

SwiftKey Keyboard

£2.99

If your idea of blogging is simply to churn out as much content in as little time as possible, SwiftKey will help meet today's word count target.

It analyses your writing style by reading through your existing SMS messages, social network posts and even any RSS feeds you may have populated with older content, creating a database that can be used to predict the next word you're about to type. It also uses gesture input, letting bloggers write without lifting a finger by simply drawing on the screen. It'll boost productivity by at least 17.4 percent.

Pocket

Pocket

Free

Pocket's a great app for saving and managing little snippets and articles you want to blog about at some point in the future.

The clever thing here is the way it syncs your content between phone and desktop, so anything you've saved to the app during your working day will automatically be there on your phone ready for blogging up and linking to later. It's also a gorgeous app that's a great little mobile reading choice on its own, too.

Google Analytics

Google Analytics

Free

Of course, there's not much fun in blogging if you don't know if anyone's actually reading your words or not. Which is why you might want to get Google's ultra-nerdy Analytics working on your phone, and instantly open up an enormous world of technical analysis for any site you've added to its database.

The Android app is as fully featured as the desktop site, giving you visitor counts, page referral stats, pretty little charts and more, all helping boost morale and make it all seem... worthwhile.

----------

Also check out on Your Mobile Life:

Working on the go made easy

VIDEO: A Beginner's Guide to the Samsung GALAXY Note II

Living with the Samsung Galaxy Note II

Writers, designers and gamers: how the Note II brings innovation to the smartphone space

Streamline your office with S Note and S Planner

    


Beginning of the end for SMS as Whatsapp and co take over
Apr 29th 2013, 11:04

Beginning of the end for SMS as Whatsapp and co take over

The trusty old text message has been eclipsed by instant-messaging through chat apps like Whatsapp for the first time.

The statisticians over at Informa say that app-based IM-ing saw over 19 billion messages sent per day in 2012, while we managed only 17.6 billion texts per day between us.

This isn't exactly stellar news for the phone networks who are losing out on all that juicy text messaging revenue - chat apps use up tiny amounts of your data allowance, while SMSes are a proven income stream of yore.

Vibez

Informa's research was a little selective when it came to messaging clients - Whatsapp, BBM, Viber, Nimbuzz, iMessage and KakaoTalk made the cut, but others didn't - so the volume is likely to be higher. Facebook Messenger, for example, seems a glaring omission.

The research house reckons that data-based messaging is set only to grow, predicting that nearly 50 billion messages will be sent daily via app by 2014, while it sees only 21 billion SMSs going out per day in the same year.

So is it the end for the text message? Informa says not - "There is a lot of life still in SMS," Informa's Pamela Clark-Dickson said, citing the fact that billions of people are still on app-less feature phones rather than smartphones, particularly in developing countries.

    


O2 joins forces with BT in preparation for its 4G rollout
Apr 29th 2013, 10:35

O2 joins forces with BT in preparation for its 4G rollout

BT has put its weight behind O2's 4G rollout as the two firms put pen to paper and sign a ten year deal.

O2 came out poorly from the 4G spectrum auction at the beginning of the year, gaining the least amount of the valuable frequencies so its new partnership with BT will come as welcome relief.

The deal will see BT build a new high capacity transmission network to ensure O2 has the capacity it needs to support the increased data demand - thought to be up to 400 per cent - on the 4G network.

'Mind-blowingly aggressive'

We've already heard from O2 that its 4G rollout will be 'mind-blowingly aggressive' in comparison with its 3G rollout, and the additional infrastructure support is now has from BT will help make that claim a reality.

O2 reckons it will be able to offer "unrivalled mobile phone and internet browsing experiences" - something we're pretty sure EE, Vodafone and Three probably won't be in agreement with.

While EE has had a decent head start in the 4G arena take-up hasn't exactly exploded, leaving the door open for the other networks to claim a decent chunk of the LTE market when they come online later this year.

    


Blip: Fantasy fiction project brings new worlds to your smartphone
Apr 29th 2013, 10:07

Blip: Fantasy fiction project brings new worlds to your smartphone

Piggybacking on weirdly named and unsecured wireless networks is one of the joys of city living. But if you try to siphon off some Wi-Fi while walking around Bristol in the next few days, you might find yourself accessing not your own email, but a whole alternative universe.

The city is currently home to an experiment in digital storytelling called These Pages Fall Like Ash.

Participants download portions of narrative to their smartphones from Raspberry Pi terminals concealed in various locations. Of course, you'll need a guide to find and understand these, and that comes in the form of a beautiful wood-bound notebook that you receive when you purchase your ticket.

The story is based on a collaboration between academic Tom Abba and art collective Circumstance, with input from fantasy authors Neil Gaiman and Nick Harkaway. Does it work? Well, when we tried it out, we found a few glitches with the terminals - and our iPhone battery choked before we could get the whole story. But the idea of a secret city layered over familiar streets is seductive and beautifully executed.

These Pages Fall Like Ash continues until May 8 but has sold out. However, the creators have plans for similar events in other cities - we recommend joining in if you get the chance.

More blips!

To get even more blip for your buck, just click here.

    

Key Lime Pie may be on the back burner as Android 4.3 surfaces
Apr 29th 2013, 09:33

Key Lime Pie may be on the back burner as Android 4.3 surfaces

Google may not be prepping Android 5.0 Key Lime Pie for its annual IO conference next month with fresh reports suggesting Android 4.3 may be on the way instead.

The folks over at Android Police have apparently spotted some server logs which point towards Nexus 4 and Nexus 7 devices running an updated version of Jelly Bean - Android 4.3.

According to the report the IP addresses of the devices have been traced back to Google's offices and two separate employees, although we remain sceptical on that particular fact for the time being.

Delayed?

Last week we heard reports that Key Lime Pie wasn't going to appear at Google IO, as the search giant could be delaying its launch to allow manufacturers time to roll out Jelly Bean to their current crop of handsets.

This latest news jives pretty well with suggestions of a delayed Android 5.0 arrival and Google may be releasing a little Jelly Bean update in May to keep everyone sweet in the meantime.

Additional weight has been added to the Android 4.3 argument after a Reddit user did some snooping of their own, claiming to have found various pieces of evidence relating to the existence of Android 4.3.

These sort of details can be forged and while Android Police claims it's traced some of the information back to Google itself, we still can't be sure what we're going to see at Google IO in May.

    

Smartphone revolution is complete! Sales top feature phones for first time
Apr 28th 2013, 19:29

Smartphone revolution is complete! Sales top feature phones for first time

In our tech-focused minds it's sometimes easy to forget that not everyone has a cutting-edge, top-of-the-range smartphone in their jeans pocket.

So when IDC announced on Friday that sales of smartphones had overtaken feature phones for the first time ever, our initial reaction was: "Wait, is that just happening now?"

Apparently so. According to the research company 51.6 per cent of the 418.6 million handsets shipped during the first three months of 2013 were smartphones.

The figures state that smartphone shipments went up a whopping 42 per cent compared with the same period of 2012, bringing the figure to more than 216 million in total.

Samsung way on top

"Phone users want computers in their pockets. The days where phones are used primarily to make phone calls and send text messages are quickly fading away," wrote said Kevin Restivo, senior research analyst with IDC.

Naturally, it's Samsung which has driven the lion's share of the increase, with an incredible 32.7 per cent of all smartphone shipments during the quarter.

That's nearly double Apple's tally of 17.3 per cent during the same period, while LG was way back in third place, according to IDC's figures.

So now smartphones have finally taken the lead over their call-and-text happy low-spec rivals we can finally stop talking about the smartphone revolution. Which brings us to the next question.... What's next?

    


LG Optimus F5 to begin European roll out in France on April 29
Apr 28th 2013, 19:13

LG Optimus F5 to begin European roll out in France on April 29

LG's Optimus F5 handset has been sitting tight since its unveiling at Mobile World Congress in February, but the company is finally ready to unleash it on the world, or at least parts of it.

The mid-range, LTE-enabled handset will arrive in France on April 29, before heading around other unspecified parts of the continent, the company announced in a press release this weekend.

The Android 4.1 device has a 4.3-inch IPS display, 1.2GHz dual-core processor, 5-megapixel camera, 8GB of internal storage, 1GB of RAM and a hefty 2150mAh battery.

The handset is primarily aimed at new 4G LTE markets to enable those on smaller budgets to reap the benefits of faster speeds, without spending the earth on the device itself.

US or UK on the launch list?

Following the French launch, LG says roll outs in Central America, Asia and South America will follow.

Whether a UK and US launch will also be on the agenda remains to be seen, but the Korean giant recently said it was hoping to re-enter the UK market with 4G-enabled phones in the near future.

    


Weird Obama bug is the latest issue to plague Apple's iMessage app
Apr 28th 2013, 18:38

Weird Obama bug is the latest issue to plague Apple's iMessage app

The Apple iMessage client for iPhone and Mac OS X is apparently experiencing a strange bug which omits the last word of a sentence when specific phrases are used.

Oddly, any message involving President Barack Obama or the phrase 'the best prize is a surprise' will leave out the last word of the message for both the sender and recipient.

Instead of the word there'll be a series of spaces. However if users copy and paste the message rather than type it, the message appears as it should.

Strangely enough, it seems the issue is not affecting the iMessage client for iPad users.

Series of issues

This isn't the first issue to plague the Apple-to-Apple messaging service in recent months. There have been a number of iCloud outages which have rendered the service useless for hours at a time.

Also, just last month we reported on an issue that saw certain iOS developers targetted by DDoS attacks that forced the iMessage app to crash.

Another security loophole allowed the entire iMessage archive to be accessed simply by placing the sim card in a different iPhone.

And finally, earlier this month, on the other hand, one expert stated that iMessage was so secure that not even the authorities could decrypt messages.

This latest instance is certainly the least serious of those listed, but we can imagine leaving the last word off any message may alter the meaning of a few texts. Especially those involving the president!

    


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