In a rather unexpected fashion, a mysterious Moto G device appeared alongside the Moto X on Motorola’s homepage. The link for the device was quickly removed, thus further piquing our interest.
Wednesday, 30 October 2013
Apple admits a battery issue in a small number of iPhone 5s units
Earlier this month while going through our battery test of the iPhone 5s, we noted that on some occasions, the smartphone suffered from quick battery drain. Today, in a statement to The New York Times, Apple has acknowledged that a small number of iPhone 5s devices are indeed affected by such an issue.
According to spokesperson from Apple, a manufacturing issue sits at the heart of the problem. It has affected a “very limited number” (Apple has implied to The New York Times that there are a few thousand devices affected) of iPhone 5s devices and has caused their battery to take longer to charge, or have reduced endurance.
Apple has begun reaching out to users whose phones were affected. They will be given a replacement device.
Friday, 25 October 2013
Things looking up as LG ships 12 million smartphones in Q3
After getting eclipsed by its Korean counterpart Samsung for the past few years, LG is finally becoming relevant again after it posted a 217.8 billion won ($196.34 million) operating profit in Q3 of this year. This is a 27% increase over the same period last year.
LG claims that it's able to achieve this despite slowing demand in its Home Entertainment division and unfavorable exchange rates.
The company's earnings report has LG Mobile shipping an impressive 12 million smartphones this past quarter. The company also expects a further increase in sales during the holiday season fuelled by the strong performance of its LG G2 flagship and midrange devices like the L II and F series.
It's great to see LG on the road back, and we hope it will be able to give the undisputed leader, Samsung, a run for its money soon enough. The other Korean giant's Q3 earnings report is expected any day now, but initial estimates indicate it's poised for a record-breaking $7.28 billion profit.
1080p Micromax Canvas Turbo goes official
Today Micromax announced the Canvas Turbo. The smartphone comes with a 5.0-inch 1080p IPS CGS (Continuous Grain Silicon) display made by Sharp and is powered by a quad-core processor.
The actual chipset inside the Canvas Turbo is MT6589T with four 1.5GHz Cortex-A7 cores, PowerVR SGX544 graphics and 2GB of RAM. The smartphone offers 16GB of internal storage, but sadly no microSD expansion slot.
Naturally, the Micromax Canvas Turbo comes with dual-SIM support. You get quad-band GSM plus 2100MHz HSPA support for up to 42Mbps downlink.
The rest of the Canvas Turbo specs include a 13MP rear camera with a LED flash and 1080p video recording, a 5MP front snapper, Wi-Fi, GPS, Bluetooth 4.0, and a 2,000mAh battery.
Micromax Canvas Turbo runs on Android 4.2.1 Jelly Bean and will launch in India on October 26 in Pristine White and Midnight Blue colors. The suggested retail price is INR19,990, which translates to about €235.
AT&T gets WP8 Samsung ATIV S Neo
Samsung and AT&T announced the ATIV S Neo smartphone with Windows Phone 8 on board. The LTE handset will hit the carrier’s shelves on November 8 for $99.99 with a two-year contract, or $21 per month with AT&T Next.
Samsung ATIV S Neo is powered by a 1.4GHz dual-core CPU (likely a Qualcomm Snapdragon unit). The device features a 4.77” HD display and 16GB of built-in memory, which can be further expanded via microSD card slot. An 8MP camera with LED flash, 1.9MP front-facing unit, and NFC complete the known highlights of the handset’s spec sheet.
When available, the Samsung ATIV S Neo will square off against an entire lineup of Nokia Lumia devices on AT&T's shelves, with the Lumia 925 sporting the same price tag as the newcomer.
Samsung posts record profits in its latest earnings report
Samsung released its Q3 2013 earnings report. As expected, the Korean giant posted record-shattering profits which slightly exceeded the guidance from earlier this month.
Samsung posted consolidated operating profit of 10.16 trillion won (approximately $9.56 billion) from a 59.08 trillion won (roughly $55.59 billion) of revenue. Samsung’s profits came in 7% higher than the previous quarter and an impressive 26% more than the same period last year.
Unsurprisingly, the mobile division chipped in significantly to the profits. Its growth was driven by increased sales of mass-market, lower-cost models. High-end devices’ shipments have remained at similar level with the previous quarter.
Samsung tablets have done well over the past quarter as well. Their shipments have increased sharply thanks to expanded product lineups.
Samsung’s next quarter outlook for its mobile division is upbeat. The company expects steady growth for both smartphones and tablets thanks to increased demand during the holiday season.
You can see the full breakdown of Samsung’s financial performance by hitting the source link below.
Sunday, 20 October 2013
First true octa-core smartphone unveiled
MediaTek was the first to announce a chipset with a true octa-core processor back in June and now the first phone utilizing it has gone official. The UMI X2S broke cover at the Autumn Edition of Hong Kong Electronics Fair.
All of UMI’s phones are intended for the Chinese market and that’s why you’ve probably never heard of the brand. The UMI latest X2S smartphone is powered by MT6592 chipset with an octa-core Cortex-A7 1.5GHz processor and 2GB of RAM. There is no word on the GPU, but when the MT6592 got benchmarked it was rocking a Mali-450, so that's probably it.
The rest of the UMI X2S specs include a 5” 1080p display, 32GB internal storage, a 13MP camera with Sony lens, and NFC connectivity. Since MG6592 is LTE-capable, we guess the X2S should be LTE-enabled as well.
There is no info on the pricing and availability yet, but the gadget is supposed to be very affordable, despite its fancy CPU.
MediaTek was indeed the first one to design and release a true octa-core chip and will probably remain the only one for a while as early hopes of Samsung enabling 8-core processing on its Exynos 5 Octa via a firmware update were squashed. And the revised Exynos 5 is unlikely to make it in actual hardware before the Galaxy S5 comes around next year.
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