Review TechRadar: Phone and communications news 08-18-2013

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In Depth: The future of touchscreens revealed: bigger, cheaper, bendier Aug 18th 2013, 07:00, by Mary Branscombe At CES this year, we were writing about "monster" 20-inch touchscreens. But by this Christmas, 23-inch and 27-inch touchscreens will be available on the high street, ready to fold down and use for painting or family board games. Touch is undeniably going big, but it's still held back by the high prices of adding the touch layer to the screen. There is an answer, though - and tech companies are going for silver to find it. Touchscreens are made up of multiple layers: the top layer of glass with anti-scratch coating, a layer of clear adhesive and then two or even three layers of indium tin oxide (ITO) either side of more layers of glass comprising the touch sensor, then another clear adhesive layer to hold the touch sensor down onto the LCD underneath. ITO is the critical ingredient. It's a good conductor and it's transparent, but it's also expensive. It also requires both fragile materials and expensive multi-stage manufacturing processes, and although it can be recycled when supplies are limited, its mostly mined in China in conditions that are far from green. The PC rare metals crisis - how soon will ITO run out? The ITO powder is "sputtered" over the glass in multiple layers in a vapour deposition chamber, baked onto the glass and then etched into a sensor circuit. Sometimes the glass layer is chemically hardened first, but either way, the layers have to be carefully lined up to work. The silver solution But there is a cheaper and less environmentally harmful alternative, developed by MIT biochemist Dr Angela Belcher and inspired by the multi-layered formation of abalone shells. It uses silver nanowires scattered over a sheet of plastic. Take two layers of plastic coated with very long, very thin silver strands (or even one sheet coated on both sides) and you have a capacitive touch sensor that's thinner, lighter, more flexible and much easier to manufacture than the ITO sensors. You can't see through silver, but you don't need very much of it either. Silver is the same price as ITO, but it's a hundred times more conductive - it's even more conductive than gold (so remember that next time someone tries to upsell you on gold-coated connectors). Because the nanowires connect in a mesh, you can get a full-screen sensor and still have 99% of the screen area clear. That lets through more light than an ITO sensor, so the LCD doesn't need to be as bright. And given that powering the screen takes 60% of the battery life in most devices, what you get is a thinner, cheaper screen and longer battery life. The random structure of the nanowire also is harder to see than the regular patterns of other metal meshes, and you don't have to match it up to the pixel pattern of the LCD to avoid a distracting moiré effect. And because the sensor is thinner, you don't get as much parallax distortion - what you see on screen is closer to where the pixels are physically placed, so you can touch things more accurately. Antique technology Making silver nanowires starts with silver nitrate. Chemists (and alchemists) have been making this since the 13th century and silver has been used in photography since the 1800s. There are plenty of factories with the machinery to deposit silver onto large rolls of paper which can be re-used for depositing silver nanowires onto plastic sheets. Sri Peruvemba of silver nanowire producer Cambrios told TechRadar that, after it's been made in a cleanroom, the silver nanowire solution (called ClearOhm) ships to the factory in a bucket. It's then sprayed onto the touchscreen glass like ink. "Enough silver nanowire 'ink' to fill a water bottle is enough to make a couple of hundred thousand phone screens," say Peruvemba. There are half a dozen other touch sensor replacements being developed, using graphene, carbon nanobuds and other exotic materials. But few of them let through as much light as silver nanowire, or conduct as effectively. And silver nanowire doesn't just work for touch in the lab: it's already in several shipping products, and we couldn't spot the nanowire mesh at all with the naked eye. Cambrios' nanowires power the touchscreen in NEC's high-end Media X N-07D smartphone on the Japanese Docomo network, and the much cheaper Huawei Ascend phone on the US Sprint network. It's used in Gvision's 15-inch touchscreens that are designed to be used as paypoints on petrol pumps - which suggests it's pretty hardwearing. LG used it for the 23-inch touchscreen V325 all-in-one that launched with Windows 8, as well as two touchscreen monitors. Intel has also used it in its 13.3-inch reference design for OEMs, which should introduce Cambrios to a wider market. Wired for speed LG also discovered that silver nanowires allowed it to cut out several of the usual manufacturing stages for assembling touchscreens. John LeMoncheck, CEO of Cambrios, explains that initially LG was etching the rolls of coated film as it would with an ITO sensor. However, once it realised the the nanowire solution could be sprayed on in the right pattern to start with, it was possible to reduce costs even further. The manufacturing cost of silver nanowire touch sensor is already less than $4 per inch. With scale and shortcuts like that, LeMoncheck hopes it will drop to $3.50 or even $3 an inch next year. Saving $1 an inch on a 5-inch smartphone screen might not make much difference to the ultimate retail price, but it could take $30-50 off bigger displays. LeMoncheck is hoping giant touchscreens like Microsoft's Perceptive Pixel monster will get much more affordable - and that they'll all be made with his silver nanowires. But there other things you could do with silver nanowires. You could coat a layer of plastic or Lucite and use that as the top layer of a really cheap screen. You can't do that with ITO because the heat needed to bake it in place would melt the plastic, but the drying oven used to fix the silver nanowires in place doesn't need to be nearly as hot (a mere 120 degrees rather than 600-plus). It will work on an e-ink screen too. It needn't be limited to flat surfaces: you could coat a curved object like a car dashboard. You could even use silver nanowires on a flexible display, where brittle ITO would crack. Japanese touch sensor manufacturer Nissha will have 3D touch sensors this year and the company has been testing how well silver nanowire touch will work on a flexible screen. "The coating changes in resistance. As you stretch and bend it, it goes up - but then it goes back down and comes back to normal," explained Peruvemba. So touch wouldn't work while you're bending a flexible screen, but then you probably wouldn't be trying to tap or scroll when you're folding it back up to put in your pocket. Nissha tested a 3mm thick silver nanowire touch sensor. After bending it around a 180-degree angle 100,000 times, it was still worked every time. Add that to something like AUO's flexible e-ink screen and we're one step closer to a tablet you can roll up and put in your pocket. Bigger, slimmer and bendier: that's why the future could well be silver. When your phone will become your flexible friend? We investigate the future of fold-up screens ZTE Open Firefox OS handset hits official eBay stores in US and UK Aug 17th 2013, 17:30, by Chris Smith The ZTE Open handset, running Mozilla's new Firefox OS, is now available to buy in the US and the UK as an eBay exclusive. The low-spec handset, which debuted in Spain last month, can be snapped up only on ZTE's official eBay stores on both sides of the Atlantic. British-based smartphone fans seeking a taste of the newest operating system on the block will pay just £60 (including P&P), while their American cousins will pay $80 bones. The Open is the first phone to boast the new HTML5-based software and arrives with a 3.5-inch 480 × 320 HVGA display a 3.2-megapixel camera, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 2.1 and an FM Radio. Selling well The handset is based on an 1.0GHz Cortex-A5 chip design with Qualcomm chips and also has a built-in A-GPS sensor While, spec wise, the handset isn't even close to competing with the big guns, the expenditure is minimal for those who wish to have a nose around the browser-maker's new mobile offering. Head on over to the eBay stores where there are limited qualities available, with 556 handsets sold in the UK and 402 sold in the US at the time of writing. Can Firefox OS be the new Android? TechRadar investigates More Nexus 5 rumours place LG in the driver's seat Aug 17th 2013, 16:14, by Chris Smith The Google Nexus 5 smartphone will indeed be made by LG, if new reports this weekend are to be believed. Vietnamese site Tinthe, which earned plaudits for getting its hands on a Moto X handset a week before it was announced, now claims to have the skinny on the next Google-branded Android handset. According to the site, the Nexus 5 will boast similar innards to the recently announced LG G2 including the Snapdragon 800 quad-core processor, rather than the 600-series, as previously rumoured. In terms of the design, the report claims the phone will boast a 5.2-inch screen, thin bezels, a glass back and an overall look that could be compared with the new 2013 Google Nexus 7, made by ASUS. LG or Moto? The conjecture over who will manufacture the Google Nexus 5 has become more interesting of late, following speculation that Google will bestow the handset on its own Motorola company. The company had pledged not to favour Moto and would certainly run the risk annoying its Android partners if the Nexus 5 showed up in Motorola packaging. As recently as May LG flat-out denied it was working on the handset, but reports in the last couple of weeks seem to have placed the Korean manufacturer in pole position to follow up on its popular Nexus 4. The Nexus 5 is also likely to be the first smartphone to run Android 5.0 Key Lime Pie, but that, as with Tinhte's most recent report, remains pure speculation at the moment. Related Stories Blip: Samsung's Android flip phone gets us partying like it's 1999 Updated: iPhone 5S release date, news and rumours iPhone 5S leaves more fingerprint evidence iPhone 5 and 5C together in perfect harmony? Updated: 10 best iPhone football apps for 2013/14 Apple details guidelines for new Kids section in iOS 7 App Store Aug 17th 2013, 15:01, by Chris Smith Back in June at WWDC, Apple announced it'd be adding a dedicated Kids section to the App Store in iOS 7 and now the company is informing developers how the child-friendly category will work. The Kids section will allow parents to select age appropriate games, entertainment and educational tools for children aimed 11 and under. According to emails sent to the developer community, those apps can be separated into specific age ranges; 5 and under, 6-8 and 9-11. Apps will continue to appear in the main listings, but the Kids section will be ring-fenced off in the App Store. Meanwhile, the Kids sub-category in the Games section will disappear. Think of the children The company is also introducing new guidelines for children aged 13 and under. Advertisers will not be able to target young app users based on their behaviour within the app, while the ads that are served must be appropriate for kids. The new guidelines also mandate that, for apps aimed at pre-teens, a "parental gate" be put in place to prevent unsupervised in-app purchases or links outside of the app. Apple has come under scrutiny in recent months following reports of children racking up massive bills on their parents' iTunes accounts which have usually resulted in Apple refunding the amount. The company is also under investigation from the UK Office of Fair Trading. The regulator is worried that parents are coming under pressure from kids to purchase add on's for 'free' games. Best 4G network among AT&T, Verizon, and Sprint Aug 16th 2013, 16:15, by Matt Swider Not all 4G networks are created equal. AT&T, Verizon and Sprint use terms like 4G, 4G LTE and HSPA+ to market smartphones to customers. However, these buzzwords offer little in the way of explanation as to how reliable the three major U.S. networks perform when it comes to high-speed data downloads. That's why we decided to test out 4G LTE phones of all three major U.S. carriers in Los Angeles, Santa Monica, Hermosa Beach, and on everyone in LA's second home, the highway. Armed with a trio of smartphones that consumers are likely to buy today, we examined the coverage, speed, and price using an iPhone on AT&T's network and a pair of Samsung Galaxy S4 phones on Verizon and Sprint's network. Three will enter. one will win. What is 4G LTE exactly? 4G LTE is a high-speed wireless standard built into newer smartphones that is 10 times faster than 3G connections. That's a significant speed bump amounting to a theoretical 300 MB/s. But LTE, or "long-term evolution," is just a bridge to the 1GB/s that was originally outlined for 4G. LTE-Advanced is supposed to offer that in the future. Until then, carriers are marketing to (and confusing) consumers with terms like "super fast 4G LTE" and "true 4G" - as opposed to fake counterfeit 4G LTE. Who says they have the best 4G network coverage? Verizon claims to have "America's largest 4G LTE network" that covers 95 percent of the U.S. population. It boasts that "Verizon is America's most reliable network. Period." That's three periods in a row, so you know the company is super serious. AT&T uses similar marketing claims, though far less punctuation, touting "the nation's largest 4G network" and "the nation's fastest and most reliable 4G LTE network." Sprint doesn't participate in any of the silly one-upmanship. Instead it by promising to continue to roll out "more reliable coverage, stronger signals and increased data speeds." Verizon and AT&T can't both be right. Right? Who actually has the best 4G network coverage? Testing out all three smartphones with the best speed test apps available for iOS and Android, we found that Verizon had a slightly more consistent signal save for a few areas that received little to no data. Verizon was more reliable than AT&T and Sprint in the city, especially indoors, and only faltered in the outskirts. That's still a serious problem for data-deprived people who live in the suburbs. AT&T would sputter indoors during a few tests, but its data speeds would jump right back up at other times, offering strong but overall inconsistent coverage. Its main weakness was indoor venues in the skyscraper-filled downtown area. Sprint had more in common with Verizon than AT&T. Coverage was okay in the city, but less reliable further from the center of Los Angeles and on highways. It's all about the coverage map Verizon had the more consistent network city-by-city, but there's another piece of information you should always check before buying into a new 4G LTE network: the coverage map. The Verizon, AT&T and Sprint 4G LTE coverage maps from CellReception pinpoint the location of each network's tower locations. In a way, they back up exactly what our speed tests found. Verizon did pitiful in Hermosa Beach and Manhattan Beach, for example. That's because the carrier has fewer cell towers in this stretch of the California coastline. Sure enough, our tests reflected that. The No. 1 thing you can do before signing up for a new network is to check the 4G LTE coverage maps before making the switch. The best 4G network speed While it was a region-dependent split decision between Verizon and AT&T when it came to reliable coverage, AT&T stayed true to its claim of offering the "nation's fastest 4G LTE network." AT&T 4G LTE speeds topped 33 Mb/s in some tests and averaged 22.3 Mb/s. When testing the Verizon 4G LTE speeds, we were lucky to get 5 or 10 Mb/s. AT&T and Verizon upload speed were surprisingly strong for both networks at 10 Mb/s. Sprint download speeds were meager in comparison to both of its rival carriers, averaging between 1 and 5 Mb/s overall in our tests, sometimes giving us a network error to boot. Surprisingly, its upload speeds, when there wasn't an error message, were stronger than a lot of its download speeds, consistently at 3 and 4 Mb/s. 4G LTE price plan comparison Here's where Sprint beats both AT&T and Verizon quite handily. Sprint charges just $30 a month for its 4G LTE unlimited data per line, or $20 a month for 1GB. Verizon and AT&T don't provide unlimited plans anymore, except to long-time AT&T iPhone owners who still cling to their grandfathered-in data plans for dear life. But the same $20 that gets you 1GB of data on Sprint would leave AT&T customers with less than a third of that - 300MB - for an entire month. AT&T's 3GB option is $30, and the 5GB tier is $50 a month. Verizon lumps its 4G LTE data into the "unlimited talk and text" price, making it difficult for a direct comparison. The end result is $90 a month for a lousy 1GB of data, which is $20 more every month than what Sprint offers its customers. Sprint's 4G LTE network hasn't rolled out everywhere, but if it's in your area, saving $240 a year isn't such a bad deal. Final 4G LTE speed tips AT&T was the fastest of the three carriers in our 4G LTE data tests, but that's only half of the story. Consistent coverage throughout the U.S. is the biggest hurdle every network needs to address. Therefore, rule No. 1 of buying a new smartphone with a different carrier than you're used to is check the AT&T, Verizon, and Sprint coverage maps with your zip code plugged in. You don't want to get stuck in a two-year contract with a carrier that has a lack of cell towers in your neck of the woods. Rule No. 2 is to talk to friends. Everyone seems to incessantly complain or, rarely, biasly rave about their cell phone reception - this is usually due to a lack of knowledge when there are problems that exist. But poll enough people and you may be surprised. As carriers prep 4G LTE-Advanced and new smartphone supporting the upgraded speed, we could see theoretical speeds of 1GB/s. Until that rolls out, however, we'll keep testing the 4G LTE networks to see which is the best in all sorts of environments. Read how to test your internet speed with these 5 must-have utilities Related Stories Photos show Apple may just give iPhone 5S the Midas touch Updated: HTC One Verizon release date, news and features Updated: Where can I get the Moto X? Verizon HTC One coming Aug. 22, arrives more than fashionably late to the party 128GB iPhone may continue the 'every two years' rule

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