| Has Apple finally found out how to fix Maps? Jul 19th 2013, 13:48, by Hugh Langley 
Ah, Apple's 'maptastrophe'. The less said about it the better. However, at least we know that Cupertino is making strides to improve its mapping service situation, with news that it's has just bagged a significant new weapon. Apple's latest acquisition, Canadian location data startup Locationary, crowdsources and collates the most up to date information to ensure that everything is recent and accurate. Locationary not only verifies that something is still in the place its supposed to be, but also if it's temporarily inaccessible - if a shop is closed for redecorating or whatever, for example. Watch out Google, Apple's coming to getchaThe word came from "multiple sources" speaking to AllThingsD, with Apple strongly suggesting the news was true by issuing the following statement: "Apple buys smaller technology companies from time to time, and we generally do not discuss our purpose or plans." There's no verification that this is for Apple's map service, but come on now, what else could it possibly be for? Apple promised that it would be making efforts to improve the service, with Tim Cook even issuing an apology back in September last year. It's alright Tim, we have faith.     |  | QuickRadar: Video: HTC One meets HTC One Mini Jul 19th 2013, 12:28, by John McCann 
The HTC One Mini revealed itself to the world this week and while it may look pretty much identical to its big brother, the HTC One, there are some key differences between the two. Some people out there don't really see the point of these "mini" smartphones - especially as they're not exactly small in size - but the success of the Galaxy S3 Mini last year, along with a burgeoning middle market, means there's method in the mini madness. Now instead of us telling you the differences between the two, we sent both handsets to the TechRadar laboratory where our egg-head professors were able to splice their souls into a couple of spare humans they had lying around, so they could tell their own story. The result? Well just hit the play button on the video below and find out what happened when Mini met One. YouTube : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8PWffldw6HAMore QuickRadarLove a bit of one-on-one action? Then why not check out some more QuickRadar videos?     | | Brit Week: From a small Acorn to 37 billion chips: ARM's ascent to tech superpower Jul 19th 2013, 12:01, by Dan Grabham 
Every day, you use one - or probably more - of the 37 billion ARM chips produced so far. They're inside your phone, inside your tablet, inside your TV, and inside numerous other devices. But they began life as a second development processor for the rather beige mid-1980s BBC Micro at the Cambridge, UK-based Acorn Computers. The remarkable Sophie Wilson was the designer behind the ARM (Acorn RISC Machine) instruction set, which originally began in October 1983. And so we thought TechRadar's Brit Week was a great time to speak to the recent European Inventor Award nominee about her time at Acorn, the beginnings of ARM, and the huge project she's now working on. "When we designed the BBC machine in the 1980-1981 period, we were essentially designing our own ideal machines," explains Wilson. "We thought it was a good machine. The BBC had asked for 12,000 and they thought they were being pessimistic." Selling the BBC MicroThe BBC had commissioned the MOS Technology 6502-based computer to go alongside the BBC Computer Literacy Project for education, but the shipments were far bigger than anybody had envisaged. 
"We'd thought about 25-50,000 units, but it was a million and a quarter in the end. They were everywhere and they were doing everything. People bent and twisted them in ways we'd never imagined. "We'd be forever seeing something that we had no idea could be done with a machine that we'd developed - a case in point being David Braben's Elite. We could not believe that he got that into the machine." YouTube : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2y8IkcUGV9wAs for the ARM microarchitecture itself, we wondered whether Wilson realised how much potential it had at the time. "When we set the project up we had a slogan internally to remind us what we thought we were doing, and that was 'MIPS for the masses', i.e. lots of processing power for everybody. We were aiming at the mass market." (MIPS means Microprocessor without Interlocked Pipeline Stage, a RISC – or Reduced Instruction Set computer microarchitecture.) Wilson is at pains to stress that ARM's rise to success has taken place gradually over a 30 year period. "We had our first working chips back in April 1985, and we put them into Acorn machines and they were very good, and we got our market and people liked it a lot," she says, rather matter-of-factly. ![The original ARM chip [Image credit: Broadcom]](http://mos.futurenet.com/techradar/art/features/wilson/arm1-320-100.JPG)
Moving ARM forwardAcorn started being approached by other people to use the ARM design. "We set up a division in Acorn for third parties and eventually we spun out ARM in 1990 because there seemed to be a market. By then we'd been approached by Apple, for example, and throughout 90s they kept making little bits of process. Nokia came on board in 96 or 97, then TI." "At every stage there was just another customer, a little bit extra. And it just kept adding up, and when we did the sums in 2008 we'd shipped 10 billion ARMs. Now we can be remarkably blasé about shipping 36 or 37 billion of them. It's a gradual success over 30 years. " "It's extremely well grounded - that's why there's so much depth to the architecture. It's been there for so long, and it's only been about in the last five years that the public has even vaguely started knowing about it. "It's also to do with the decisions taken by our management over many years to have all that depth. So it's not merely the high profile apps processors that everybody talks about competing with Intel and taking sockets in mobile phones and tablets, it's all the Cortex-R, Cortex-M series and before them in particular the ARM7 TDMI that have just got absolutely everywhere. "And that's the secret. It's an enormous ecosystem. ARM succeeds through being in partnership with everybody, essentially. Even Intel has an ARM license. Even Intel still sell single chips for phones with ARMs in them." 
More Acorn machines and RISC OSOne of the more surprising aspects of Wilson's chat about the early days at Acorn was how certain the team was that they would succeed. "We were supremely confident," she says, without a hint of irony or doubt. "The team of people that created ARM, particular Steve Furber and myself, had been working together for long enough to have a good rapport and working relationship, and we'd never failed at doing anything. Everything that we tackled we'd succeeded. "Designing a microprocessor as Steve has remarked is just another complicated piece of digital logic and he was good at designing digital logic! And designing the instruction set, I'd actually designed fantasy instruction sets before so even that was another logical step forward. It all felt extremely possible. YouTube : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WV_2H3SwL2k"Furthermore we had a conviction that we knew what people were doing wrong. We had chips in our hands from Intel, Motorola and National Semiconductor, and we could see why they weren't performing well. We set out to remedy that in making ARM, and we were quite right." After the BBC Micro, Acorn launched the fully ARM-based Archimedes in 1987. But RISC OS - Acorn's advanced and rather Windows 95-like operating system - wasn't ready. "There was a year which we had to go with an operating system that was essentially a clone of the BBC operating system, and that was painful because it wasn't good enough," says Wilson regretfully. YouTube : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gw0g1yiQA5M"But yes, in 1988 RISC OS came out and that was dramatic because it was then a fully-featured system that could do things that few machines could at the time. "It was a machine with a high-resolution machine with anti-aliased graphics with WIMP (Windows, Icons, Mouse, Pointers). The Macintosh had been around for a time but it didn't have anti-aliased graphics, so the on-screen experience was very poor. RISC OS gave you WYSIWYG like nobody have ever seen." RISC OS lives on, and you can download it for the Raspberry Pi - check it out as part of our feature Raspberry Pi operating systems: 5 reviewed and rated. But while Acorn's microprocessor was strong, its advanced hardware had a surprisingly short lifespan due to the success of the IBM PC, and even by the time it was releasing the early 1990s RISC OS-based machines such as the Acorn A4000, A5000 and RISC PC, it was clear that time was running out for the company as a British computer manufacturer. 
"I think by the time Acorn was capable of tapping business with RISC-based technology, the IBM PC already had a strong foothold", says Wilson. "You can't really blame one thing, but there was VisiCalc on the Apple II and Lotus 123 on the IBM PC - you had to have one of those two programs to run a business. If we'd written an equivalent program for BBC machines, it would never be the same program." Wilson's recent workWilson now works at semiconductor giant Broadcom, working on a processor line she also created - FirePath, a DSL chip that has also had a major impact. "If you have a DSL line going into your house, the kit at the other end that sends you the data is run by a FirePath processor. Hundreds of millions of them have been shipped," says Wilson. ![Wilson today [Image credit: Broadcom]](http://mos.futurenet.com/techradar/art/features/wilson/sophie%20wilson-320-100.jpg "Wilson today [Image credit: Broadcom]")
She takes up the story: "In 1990 I started playing with new ideas for a processor inside Acorn. And obviously lots of other things were going on. I wrote the RISC OS multimedia subsystem Acorn Replay, so what with that and launching Acorn's Online Media division and designing the SA1500/1501 digital media processor, there wasn't a lot of time for my little experiments. "Anyway sometime in late 1996, John Redford [now head of UK engineering for Broadcom] found out what I was doing." The pair founded a new company - Element 14. If Element 14 sounds familiar to you, it isn't the company of the same name behind the Raspberry Pi. Wilson's Element 14 was spun out of Acorn in 1999 and clearly Broadcom knew the potential - Element 14 was sold just under two years after founding for a huge £366 million (US$356 million, AU$607 million). Wilson on tablets - and Windows 8Finishing up our chat, we ask Wilson what devices she uses on a day-to-day basis - but the result was some surprisingly forthright opinions on Microsoft's operating system woes. "I use whatever does the job. I have an iPad, an Android powered Sony Xperia phone with Ice Cream Sandwich. I also have machines running Windows XP and Windows 7." Has she tried Windows 8 yet? "I have tried Windows 8. I have machines running Windows 7…" "For machines without a touchscreen [Windows 8 is] a disaster. But they [Microsoft] have a history of violating usability guidelines. There's a whole subsection of the computer community for the usability of computer interfaces and they know precisely what makes things good, and Microsoft just ignore them. "The [Microsoft Office] ribbon in particular is crazy from a usability viewpoint. One nice thing that's happened with the ribbon is that Microsoft have gradually been reliant on the right-click pop-up menus that we had in RISC OS, and that is straight out of the usability manuals. "You don't have to do a great deal of research to develop that stuff, you just have to read a usability manual. It says you [need to travel] the shortest possible distance to [do something]. Acorn RISC OS machines had a three button mouse with a middle "menu" button, so we asked Wilson if usability was the key driver behind this. "Yes, so we said right, we'll dedicate a button to it. Press the button and you get a context-sensitive context menu. The more control and non-modality of your interfaces, that meant more input buttons. "Xerox had used a three button mouse before us, so we developed RISC OS around a three button mouse. It gives you more actions. There was a massive amount of acceleration from that, and the fact the system was so fast. One button [as Apple used] introduces a lot of modality into your interface." 
As one of the key figures behind the chips inside them, we ask Wilson whether she feels tablets can replace PCs as devices for content creation as well as content consumption. Again, she puts forward some strong views and, interestingly, highlights Microsoft's key problem with trying to break into the tablet market: "It's the person who's creating, not the device." "You may wish that a tablet was better at some things but there are many excellent [apps] for them. They're so cheap compared with a computer, so light, so easy to use. "I don't think that popularity is going to go away no matter what the Windows team does - their prime problem is to produce hardware and software that persuades business to move away from Windows XP and Windows 7. Windows 8 has a long way to go." Now check out 30 years on, the Spectrum's DNA is everywhere in tech     | | Fighting Talk: Smartphone fans are the new religious zealots Jul 19th 2013, 11:46, by Phil Lavelle 
Judging from my postbag since I started these columns, smartphones have somehow morphed from a 'thing in your pocket' to 'an entire belief system' - and there are people who seem to be willing to go to any length for their chosen brand. In the last few weeks, I've bemoaned Nokia's strategy and told BlackBerry it's on a hiding to nothing. And I've noticed something. Both in the comments section and on Twitter, I've had some pretty strong messages from those who've tied their OS's flag to the telephone mast. These comments go beyond debate and into total incredulity that I've dared to criticise a mobile manufacturer. The terms "Android", "BlackBerry" and "Apple" are the new deities for some, it appears. Playing GodOK, so we at TechRadar are fans of tech. If you're on this site, chances are that you're really into your tech too. The thing is, like most of you, we all know what we're talking about. We're able to make informed choices about devices, and know which ones to get excited about and which ones to ignore. We love it when friends and family ask us which phone they should get. It's like playing all-powerful leader over their 24 month term. They may laugh at us behind our back and call us saddos for being able to recite spec comparisons by heart - but that bit we can tolerate, because we know they need us. Branded for lifeIn the old days, customers could opt for one of a handful of devices, choosing from Nokia (mostly), Motorola or Sony Ericsson. The likes of Samsung, Alcatel and Sendo sat on the periphery. People had preferences, but few of us tied our identity to our make of mobile beyond 'I don't really know how to use the Motorola text entry system'. But something's changed with the smartphone revolution. It's inspired a feeling that marketers are paid millions to create: brand loyalty. While Samsung may take the mickey out of the "Apple sheep", the truth is that the South Koreans wish they could generate such fervour. I was at the launch of the S4 on the morning it came out and the queue had fewer than 60 people in it. Compare that to the hundreds or thousands you'll see outside an Apple shop and it may seem paltry. But those in line had one thing in common: they were diehards. When I got out my iPad mini, I feared that an overzealous follower of the Way of the Galaxy might turn on me for soiling their collective purity. Fear of the unknownSome would say that this loyalty is a sign of love for the brand - but there's also a negative side to it, an underlying fear. When I've spoken to Apple fans who want to jump to Android but are fearful of doing it, the same line comes up over and over again. Despite being bored with a device that has barely changed in years, they always say something along the lines of: "I've spent so much money on my apps. Will I have to buy them all again?". They are trapped by their OS, prisoners of an ecosystem, in the same way that Mac and Windows users are locked out of each others' worlds. User unfriendlyJust a couple of years ago, you had very clear markets. iPhones were for either the aesthetes or less tech-savvy types, Android devices headed to the hands of the tinkerers who liked to think they were a little more clued up, and BlackBerries went to the corporates and the kids. But now it's all change. Samsung and HTC have made Android more user friendly and desirable, and Windows has excited with its elegance. And as the lines have blurred, the talons have sharpened. Ultimately, it's a tribal mentality. And while it's fun to watch (and be insulted) by people who get wholeheartedly offended, nobody will say on their deathbed: "I really wish I'd tried an Android phone after all." There'll be no newspaper obituaries that read: "He loved Windows Phone." So, put your phone in your pocket, take a deep breath, and repeat this like a prayer: "It's only a phone." I've reviewed dozens of phones and tablets for TechRadar over the years - each time putting them through their paces in the most unbiased, rigorous way possible. But as well as being a professional, I have a love/hate relationship with tech, and that's what these columns are all about: the passionate howlings of a true fanboy. Tell me why I'm right, wrong or a hopeless idiot in the comments below or by tweeting @techradar or @phillavelle.     | | Huawei says 5G will arrive in 2020 Jul 19th 2013, 11:34, by John McCann 
In some countries 4G is yet to properly come into effect (we're looking at you, Britain), but that hasn't stopped Huawei developing its replacement. Tony Wen, Huawei's lead in 5G technology development, spoke to the Wall Street Journal to explain that the fifth generation of mobile network will deliver a similar experience to that of a fibre broadband connection at home - presumably closer to the 100Mbps speeds we're all supposed to be looking to soon. However before you get too excited by the thought of even faster browsing speeds on your mobile, Wen warned that the technology won't be ready for another seven years - which means we'll be kept waiting until 2020. Not aloneIt's not just Huawei who is working on 5G though, with the likes of Nokia, Ericsson and Alcatel all joining in as part of an EU funded project to develop the fifth-generation network. Of course it's not just the networks and back-end systems which need to be developed for 5G, but the handsets themselves - which puts pressure on manufacturers and chip makers to keep up with the rest of the industry. The CAT4 LTE network is already supported but currently the only handset which can take advantage of the increased speeds it offers is the Huawei Ascend P2 - so things are unlikely to develop all that quickly.     | | SAP places more on mobile analytics app Jul 19th 2013, 10:49, by Mark Say 
SAP has pulled a bunch of business intelligence (BI) and analytic applications together a single mobile app for iOS devices. Named SAP BusinessObjects Mobile 5.0, it has been built on the SAP Mobile Platform and enables users to collaborate using the SAP Jam social software platform, insert annotations through voice commands, and get answers to questions with the Exploration Views function. Updates include access to multiple sources of analytic content, including SAP's Web Intelligence, Explorer, Design Studio, Crystal Reports and Dashboards software. There is also a new home screen and toolbar, new navigation, and the ability to integrate with third party security. SAP has also announced a new software development kit with BusinessObjects Mobile 5.0 that allows businesses to customise their mobile analytic applications.     | | BBM for Android arriving before September ends Jul 19th 2013, 09:49, by Hugh Langley 
BlackBerry has been quite open about its long-running messaging service, BBM, coming to Android and iOS this summer, although it has held back on giving us an exact date. But in an interview with IBN Live, BlackBerry India's managing director, Sunil Lalvani, might have given us a date for the diary. Or a slightly less vague one than we already had, at least. "The service is coming to Android this summer. But summer as per North America, where it remains till September," he said. When he was then prodded further to clarify whether this means it will be out before the end of September, his responsive was allegedly "in the affirmative". Wake us up etc etcIf we're honest, we expected "summer" to be more of a July/August affair but we're sure we can manage to wait an extra month if need be. No word on iOS, but we'd take a guess and say it will land pretty close, if not exactly on the Android release. A previous tweet from T-Mobile had claimed that BBM would hit both platforms on June 27, before BlackBerry said it was nonsense. And would you look at that - it's July 19. Nonsense indeed.     | | Updated: Samsung Exynos 5 Octa tipped for Galaxy Note 3, but will it go global? Jul 19th 2013, 08:37, by Chris Smith 
Like its Galaxy S4 cousin, the forthcoming Samsung Galaxy Note 3 will arrive in eight-core and quad-core flavours, according to leaked documents which appeared online on today. Pages that have reportedly come direct from the device's user manual, courtesy of SIM Only Radar, showcase sketches of the device along with a list of top-line specs, including the two processor breeds. However, let's remember that this is a site that doesn't have a long history of such leaks, is publishing a manual with a spelling mistake in the specs (unless Andriod is now a thing) and it's hardly a shocker to think the Note 3 will deviate from the Galaxy S4 path. It also promises a xenon flash, which seems highly unlikely given the phone's super slim dimensions - although thinner units have been developed to allow for 'proper' photography on phones. There's also nothing in the sketches beyond familiar design language, but the Enynos 5 Octa (ARM A15, ARM A7) SoC is listed alongside the quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 800, clocked at 2.3GHz. While that potentially great news for those keeping tabs on the handset, it's unlikely that would-be Note 3 buyers will have any control over which version of the device they're able to pick up. After announcing the Galaxy S4 with the eight-core chip back in April, the Koreans pulled the rug out from under Americans, Brits and Aussies, by only launching a quad-core variant in those territories. Exynos new or old?Today's official announcement that a brand new Exynos Octa 5 will be revealed next week also thickens the plot somewhat. Will Samsung pack this new 'enhanced' and 'more powerful' version of the processor into the Note 3? And does it have enough of them available to ship globally? Other specs outed within today's supposedly leaked document backs up much of what we've already learned about the S4. It lists a 5.7-inch Super AMOLED display, 13-megapixel camera and Android Jelly Bean. The device itself is thought to be making its official bow on the eve of the annual IFA tech show in Berlin on September 4.     | | Nokia reveals why it picked Windows Phone over Android Jul 19th 2013, 00:41, by Matt Swider 
Nokia is finally offering insight into why it chose to exclusively support Microsoft's unproven Windows Phone platform instead of the more popular Android operating system. It boils down to one word: Samsung. "What we were worried about a couple of years ago was the very high risk that one hardware manufacturer could come to dominate Android," Nokia CEO Stephen Elop told The Guardian. "We had a suspicion of who it might be, because of the resources available, the vertical integration, and we were respectful of the fact that we were quite late in making that decision." Samsung has indeed become the go-to manufacturer of Android devices and has even replaced Nokia, now No. 2, as the top phone maker in the world. Could have been another HTCElop noted that there are a lot of quality Android devices on the market right now, which could allude to the HTC One, but Samsung continues to overshadow its Android competitors. "Examine the Android ecosystem, and there's a lot of good devices from many different companies, but one company has essentially now become the dominant player." Instead of being another HTC with poor financials, Nokia predicted that it was better off being part of a "third alternative." "As an operator [AT&T] wants to negotiate with different people and keep pressure on everybody and have the best range of options, [and] wants that third alternative. "So strategically we have an opening with AT&T and every other operator in the world - because we've taken that path as the third ecosystem." The road aheadElop admitted that it's been difficult, as Nokia's use of the Windows Phone platform makes it a credibility-seeking challenger with phones like the new 41-megapixel Nokia Lumia 1020 running Windows Phone 8. Still he contends that the Finnish company's agreement with Microsoft was the right move. "It was the right decision," he said. "You look at a number of other Android providers right now and they're in a tough spot."     | | Moto is sucking it dry, but Google stays X-cited for coming phone Jul 18th 2013, 20:43, by Michelle Fitzsimmons 
Earnings season is in full swing, with Nokia posting not-so-awful results earlier today. Google took the mic with investors later on, and while we'll get to its second quarter 2013 numbers in a minute, there's one device the collected Mountain View crew mentioned more than once. "I know you're eagerly anticipating what Motorola is launching soon, and having been a tester for awhile, I'm very excited," CEO Larry Page said as he opened the company's earnings call. He's referring of course to the Moto X phone, a device we've heard much about yet are still waiting to see (out of Eric Schmidt's hand, that is). The wait is likely over soon as Motorola itself tweeted a photo today showing production is underway at the Texas factory where the handset is being built. Mo-mo-movin' onThis is the second earnings call in a row where Page touted what hardware Motorola has on tap. The last time around, he discussed better battery life and anti-splat durability in wishful terms. He was light on specifics today, perhaps a sign that there's actually more to share on the device, info that is being kept close to the chest. CFO Patrick Pichette took a broader view of Motorola as he ran through figures, saying Google is "very excited" about the subsidiary's "upcoming product line." Motorola CEO Dennis Woodside dished in May that a "handful" of devices are due by October. Things were less rosy on the earnings side, however, with Motorola hitting $998 million (about £655m, AU$10.8m) in revenue. It's a nice number, but the company took a huge loss of $342 million (about £224m, AU$373m). The same quarter last year, Moto losses sat at $199 million (about £130m, AU$217m). Google posted $14.11 billion (about £9.27b, AU$15.3b) in Q2 consolidated revenue, up 19 percent year-on-year. However, net income was $3.23 billion (about £2.12b, AU$3.52b), down from $3.35 billion (about £2.2b, AU$3.65b) last quarter. Net revenue was $11.1 billion (about £7.2b, AU$12.1b), missing expectations of $11.4 billion (about £7.49b, AU$12.4b). Not a huge miss, but a rare one. - While we're waiting for the Moto X, we're also anticipating the Nexus 7 2
    | | Android 4.3 Jelly Bean leaks onto Nexus 4 Jul 18th 2013, 14:33, by Hugh Langley 
If there's one thing we can be pretty confident of in this world of claims and rumours it's that Android 4.3 isn't far away. The new Jelly Bean version can't help but teasing its face, and now it seems to be fully out in the open, having leaked on a Nexus 4 sold by a member of Google's staff. A screenshot showing the new update was posted by Jeff Williams, purchaser of the handset, on Google+. After a fair amount of scrutinisation, the Android community agreed that this was the real deal, and helped Jeff to create a system dump of the OS. Ready for this jellyThe code has now been extracted and released from the phone, with users reporting to have got it up  and running. New features include an updated 4.2.3 version of the Play Store. If you're a Nexus 4 owner you can go and download 4.3 right now, although the current build is currently missing the radio. Other than that, it looks like this is the full deal. Google has a press event scheduled for July 24, and we wouldn't be surprised if this will be where 4.3 goes official. We've also been hearing rumblings that the Samsung Galaxy S3 and Note 2 will be skipping over Android 4.2.2 and straight to 4.3.     | | Brit Week: BlackBerry: UK is lighthouse for technology in Europe and beyond Jul 18th 2013, 11:28, by John McCann 
When people think about technology their thoughts tend to congregate in North America and Asia, but the rest of the world still has a lot to offer and Britain is seen as a shining light. While many of the major tech brands such as Apple, Samsung and Google may be based elsewhere in the world the UK provides the perfect platform for entry to Europe, as BlackBerry's UK MD, Rob Orr, explained to TechRadar. "The home market is obviously important for BlackBerry, but the UK market is a lighthouse for Euorpe, Africa and the Middle East," he said. "For BlackBerry a significant proportion of our enterprise business is based in the UK and we have very good relationships with O2, Vodafone and EE." BlackBerry big in BritainThese relationships allowed BlackBerry to actually launch its latest flagship handsets, the Z10 and Q10, in the UK first - which just goes to show the influence this country has. "Our devices and platform are used in 95 per cent of the FTSE 100 firms, all the government departments use it, half the police force uses it and we have a significant base of active users. "We're in a good spot in the UK. We're number three in the market from a share perspective. "It was the market where we launched the Z10 and Q10 first and that shows the UK is important to us. It's a hugely advanced and you've got a significant penetration of smartphones in the market, so it's very important." Slow 4G rollout no issueBlackBerry doesn't believe the slow rollout of 4G in Britain is much of a problem, even though all three of its BlackBerry 10-toting handsets come LTE enabled - including the slightly cheaper Q5. "I think what EE has done has been transformational. They really moved the agenda forward in terms of 4G for the British economy," Orr said. "4G technology is critical and we've got to be the digital leader in the world market place. What EE did was spot an opportunity to get a jump on the rest of the market with the spectrum they already had in this portfolio. "I'm looking forward to seeing what O2, Vodafone and BT do in the space, so 4G is extremely important. 4G is one of those absolutely critical enablers for our mobile computing platform." BlackBerry is having a tough time at the moment, but one of the countries where the Canadian firm still has a decent grip on - in the enterprise market at least - is the UK, and perhaps Britain could be the one to save the struggling firm.   | | Brit Week: Sky Go for Android will finally land on tablets as Sky apologises for failings Jul 18th 2013, 09:15, by Patrick Goss 
Sky has admitted that its Sky Go app for Android has been far from great, but promised that it will no longer be treated like the poor cousin to the Apple version of the popular media player, and that also means Android tablet versions are on the way. Sky Go has been a huge hit for Sky, giving customers access to channels they've subscribed to on devices and computers. The criticism of Sky's app for Android has been manifold, but the principle complaints include delays in support of Android Ice Cream Sandwich and Jelly Bean, spotty device support (particularly Android tablets) and the length of time between rollouts for iOS and the Android versions. In a candid post on a forum, Sky's MD for product design and development Alun Webber has admitted to the faults of the process and insisted that the company will do better. "I acknowledge that Sky Go on Android has fallen short of the expectations of some of our customers," he wrote. Taking the tabletAs well as promising that rollouts of the Sky Go app would now be synchronised for iOS and Android devices, Webber promised that support for Android tablets was "the highest priority remaining issue to address". Explaining the issues that have delayed the rollout, including prioritising the (money-making) download service, the need for higher bandwidth to generate a decent picture and the oft-blamed differing screen sizes offered by Android, Webber insisted that solutions were on the way. "[We will be] confirming within 2 weeks our timetable for enabling access to Sky Go on the highest volume Android tablets," he wrote. "As part of this work, we are also identifying how can we make our device support strategy more transparent to customers, so that we set a clear and realistic expectation about when future devices will be supported "[We will also be] ensuring we are well prepared for the next major Android OS release later this year and thereby ensuring customers do not suffer from the same delays as previous releases in terms of having Sky Go supported on the new OS. "With regard to our communications through both the help forum and our customer service teams, I apologise for any frustration you have experienced as a result of not having clear guidance and information available." So, Android users will no longer be the poor cousins to Apple's fanbase - and it's always nice to see a company owning up to its mistakes and trying hard to rectify them.   | |
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