Review TechRadar: Phone and communications news 08-25-2014

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HTC Desire 820 teased in the race to become first real 64-bit Android phone Aug 25th 2014, 13:20, by Chris Smith HTC has outed the HTC Desire 820 early, publishing an image that tells us it'll be the first HTC Android phone to use a 64-bit processor. Having come from the HTC Weibo account and written in Chinese, we weren't able to translate the leaked advert for the HTC Desire 820 ourselves, but we're told it says the 820 is the "world's first octa-core 64-bit phone," by GSMarena. The teaser also says we'll know more about the phone on 4 September, which lands just as IFA 2014 kicks off. You don't need to be a tech super sleuth to conclude this means we'll see the phone officially announced during or just before the tech show. This leak does not tell us exactly what processor the HTC Desire 820 will use, but a little bit of deduction suggests it's the Qualcomm Snapdragon 615. Snapdragon goes 64-bit The Snapdragon 615 is an eight-core 64-bit processor intended for mid-range phones, sitting below the Snapdragon 808/810 and above the Snapdragon 410. It fits the bill perfectly, and given all of HTC's recent mid-range Desire phones use Snapdragon CPUs rather than – for example – Mediatek ones, it's the only likely candidate. 64-bit phones are likely to be one of IFA 2014's big themes, as Android L will soon bring native 64-bit support to the system. There have been Android devices that use 64-bit compatible processors to date, using Intel Atom CPUs. But these use a special kernel that lets them work, rather than really unlocking all that 64-bit goodness. This is one Apple got there first on – the iPhone 5S and iOS 7 are already 64-bit. But 64-bit Android will let phones make use of even more RAM, for more serious data crunching. We'll have to wait to see whether it'll just be used to shame us into upgrading, or whether there'll be some truly worthwhile applications for ordinary folk. China out to get Android and Windows with its own OS, due October Aug 25th 2014, 10:00, by Andrew Williams The Chinese government is working with the Chinese Academy of Engineering on its own operating system, intended as an eventual replacement for things like Windows and Android. The China OS platform may be available for desktop machines as soon as October, and plans are already afoot to bring the system to mobile devices later down the line. You may not have heard of this bizarre-sounding project yet, but it was first announced all the way back in January 2014. Why does China want to replace systems that have been in development for years, or in Windows's case, decades? It's all about security. China is extremely concerned, with a side order of paranoia, about US surveillance. The country has already banned the use of Windows 8 on its government computers, although the official line on this decision is that Microsoft's ending of support for Windows XP is the cause, rather than security concerns. Who needs Android anyway? It is believed, or at least predicted, that China OS desktops will start replacing Windows ones within a couple of years, and mobile ones in 3-5 years. At present, China has a very Android-centric mobile market. We're also starting to see Chinese phone makers start to make their way closer to western markets like ours too, with companies like OnePlus, Oppo and Xiaomi raising eyebrows with phones like the OnePlus One and Xiaomi Mi 3. Would an adoption of the China OS block this kind of progress? Probably. With no suggestion that the system would support Android apps, and China having a whole different roster of social networks and search engines most of us have never heard of, you probably don't need to think about trading-in your Galaxy S5. Also, as China tends to have a pretty prescriptive approach to the internet, there's a chance it might have root-level blocking of certain parts of the internet. And who wants that? via Reuters

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