HTC Mini introduces concept of a remote control for your smartphone

HTC has introduced a new piece of hardware to their ecosystem. The HTC Mini is a remote control aimed at the Chinese market for the HTC Butterfly, the Chinese market variant of the HTC DROID DNA. The device works by pairing it with an HTC Butterfly initially via NFC. Once paired, the devices can communicate wirelessly with the HTC Mini providing several remote functions.
The HTC Mini has a pseudo-candybar form factor, with a small monochrome screen on the top half of the device and a numeric keyboard with a couple navigation keys below that. The screen is used to display a variety of notifications and messages that it pulls from the phone. This might be useful if one was in a position to not be able to access their phone but had the HTC Mini available.
Perhaps more useful is the ability of the HTC Mini to function as a remote control. Imagine you have downloaded a movie or are streaming a movie to your HTC smartphone. You hook it up to your big screen TV via an HDMI cable and have settled in to your favorite chair across the room to enjoy the movie. If someone comes knocking at the door at that point, instead of having to get up, trudge across the room to pause playback, then answer the door, with the HTC Mini you could just use it as a typical remote control to pause things.
It is not clear, but the HTC Mini may be able to function as a remote trigger for the camera on the device, which would be helpful for photographers. The device also has a “find my phone” type feature that will let you trigger a ring from the phone in case you cannot find your HTC Butterfly but you are sure it is close by.
There is no word on a release date or what the cost for the HTC Mini will be. We also don’t know whether HTC will make the device available for other markets or capable of pairing with other devices in their fleet.

Apple Drops Samsung Chips From Devices – Report

Apple is reportedly migrating away from using the chips of arch rival Samsung for its iPads and iPhones

The relationship breakdown between Apple and Samsung is reportedly even spreading to the sourcing of components that Apple uses in its devices. Apple and Samsung have of course been fighting each other for months over patent-infringement claims. But during the courtroom tussle, Apple continued to build its iPhones and iPads using Samsung ARM-based chips.

Apple Samsung Divorce

However that is apparently changing, and occurs on the heels of some long-time rumours that the move was in the works, according to a report from Forbes.
“There’s a story coming out of Taiwan that Apple has already started to make the switch, commissioning TSMC to make the next round of the A6 chip and then on into production of the A7,” Forbes reported 2 January. “Apple has already requested Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company [TSMC] to produce its next-generation A6X processors, reports the Taiwanese financial newspaper Commercial Times.”

The ongoing legal fight between Apple and Samsung has been knuckle-busting for both. In August 2012, Apple won a $1.05 billion (£646m) verdict against Samsung from a California court over allegations that Samsung infringed on Apple patents in the designs of mobile devices.
With the legal battles in the background in recent months, Apple has reportedly been looking to reduce its dependency on Samsung for chips, turning to TSMC for production of its 20-nanometre chips.
Apple uses Samsung chips only in its iPhones and iPads, not in its desktop and laptop products.

Chip Specialists

In the meantime, chips haven’t been the only place where Apple has been moving to make some pointed statements to Samsung.
In October 2012, Apple hired chip engineer Jim Mergard away from Samsung, where he worked after some 16 years with chip rival Advanced Micro Devices. The move illustrates the demand for chip engineers – not only in PCs and servers, but also in mobile devices like smartphones and tablets – and sheds more light on the growing competition between x86-based chip makers like Intel and AMD and ARM Holdings and ARM’s list of partners, such as Samsung, Nvidia, Qualcomm and Texas Instruments.
While Intel and AMD chips dominate the PC and server markets, ARM-designed chips are found in the bulk of smartphones and tablets. And as both Intel and AMD push to gain inroads into the mobile market, ARM and some of its partners are looking to move their low-power chips into PCs and servers, widening the competitive field.
Mergard was a key PC chip engineer during his time at AMD and helped lead the development of the company’s Brazos accelerated processing unit (APU) aimed at entry-level PCs and notebooks. He came to Samsung as part of a wave of AMD engineers and officials leaving the company.
He also came at a time when Samsung reportedly began gearing up to challenge Intel and AMD in the server chip business. Samsung over the past couple of years has been aggressive in pursuing chip engineers from rival companies.

Courtroom Tussles

Also in October, Samsung won a legal round with Apple when a three-judge federal appeals court panel overturned a preliminary injunction awarded to Apple in August that blocked Samsung’s sales of its Galaxy Nexus smartphones in the United States. The injunction was awarded while both sides are tussling over patent-infringement claims involving the smartphones.
The decision means that Samsung will be able to continue to sell Galaxy Nexus phones while the legal fight continues. In their decision to toss the injunction, the judges wrote that the judge in the original case in August, US District Court Judge Lucy Koh, abused her discretion in issuing the injunction against Apple in the first place.
To have correctly earned such an injunction, the appeals court wrote, Apple would have had to have proven that consumers purchased Galaxy Nexus handsets because they specifically included the features that Apple claimed are infringing on its patents.
“In this light, the causal link between the alleged infringement and consumer demand for the Galaxy Nexus is too tenuous to support a finding of irreparable harm,” the appeals court wrote.

Pakistan Lifts YouTube Ban For Just Three Minutes

Government firewall fails to block unsavoury YouTube content

Pakistan, which had banned YouTube over a controversial video, allowed access to the Google-owned site again over the weekend, but it lasted for just three minutes.
The ban was imposed after a video known as “Innocence of Muslims”, which ridiculed the Prophet Muhammad, appeared on YouTube. It was the subject of anti-US protests in Egypt, Libya and Yemen, one of which led to the death of the US ambassador to Libya.

I predict a YouTube riot

YouTube made the video inaccessible in Egypt and Libya, but did not remove the video from the site or prevent access in other parts of the world.
Pakistan thought it had successfully censored blasphemous material from the website, but after lifting the ban, it found enough offensive content to shut down access again after a few minutes. Rehman Malik, Pakistan’s interior minister, had indicated the ban would be lifted over the weekend and the government followed through with the promise. He said there was great demand “from all sections of society” to unblock YouTube.

“PTA [Pakistan Telecommunication Authority] is finalising negotiations for acquiring a powerful firewall software to totally block pornographic and blasphemous material,” read another. Yet those firewalls, reportedly designed by government technicians, proved ineffective. According to the New York Times, the ban was lifted after pressure from the influential television news network Geo, which found that anti-Islam content could still be viewed on YouTube. Many in Pakistan remain angry at the ban, claiming it amounts to an attack on citizens’ rights.

Google set to release Maps for iOS tonight

Those tired of Apple’s self-built mapping solution for iOS are in for a treat tonight. According to All Things D, Google is set to release the long awaited Google Maps for iOS as early as tonight. Representatives from Google and Apple have yet to confirm the news. Here’s hoping Google Maps for iOS will bring all the features we’ve come to expect with the Android version of Google Maps, including turn-by-turn guided navigation, as all mapping solutions for iOS 6 to date have been less than stellar.

Samsung Tells World to Get Ready For Something New at CES 2013

There have been a ton of rumors flying around lately about the annual Consumer Electronics Show (CES) happening in Las Vegas January 8th through 11th, 2013. Much speculation has been made about what Samsung intends to unveil during the show. The tech giant has recently added further fuel to the rumor fire with the release of a teaser trailer warning the world to “get ready” for “something new” at CES 2013.
Many reports will have you believe that Samsung plans to unveil their new flagship smartphone called the Samsung Galaxy S4. This is unlikely considering the Galaxy S3 was only released earlier this year and sales are still going strong with plans to update the phone to Android 4.2 in Q1 2013. What is possible is this rumor confused reports of Samsung’s intent to showcase their fully working 4.99 inch HD Super AMOLED 1080p display with 441 ppi which will make it among the best displays on the market. It is expected that this will be the display for the future Galaxy S4 phone for which Samsung will probably hold a separate reveal for in late spring, like it did for the S3.
Super AMOLED is the term Samsung uses to describe its AMOLED displays that include a touch digitizer and offers superior viewing in sunlight. Samsung especially uses these displays since they happen to be one of the main AMOLED panel manufacturers.
Samsung could also go a step further and introduce a device that takes advantage of their flexible AMOLED displays which is made on film instead of glass and which they claim is “thinner, lighter and unbreakable“. The device could be the rumored Gakaxy S4 but it could also be a whole new phone or tablet. The flexible displays were shown off as prototypes at last year’s CES but the tech manufacturer has yet to make full use of the technology.
Yet more reports have Samsung working with the same branding teams that helped develop the brands for Nike and Starbucks in an effort to reboot their entire brand and refresh their image. They are expected to their new branding strategy at CES 2013 also. This is possibly further evidence that a new phone from the existing Galaxy S line won’t be featured at the show this January. CES 2013 is still a month away, so until then it’s all just speculation and rumors.

Samsung’s Galaxy S IV Could Feature Unbreakable Display

It’s inevitable these days for rumors to emerge long before a product is announced, let alone released onto the market. Samsung have been no stranger to this and the Galaxy S III had a bajillion rumors attached to it before it finally arrived in May. Of course, the Galaxy S IV will be no different and the rumors are just now starting to get interesting. Earlier in the week we brought you news of “Project J” along with some other upcoming devices.
Thanks to Reuters we now know that Project J is definitely the internal name for the new Galaxy S phone, and is named as such in honor of JK Shin, mobile division chief at Samsung. We’ve heard a couple of things surrounding the Galaxy S IV and they keep on cropping up again and again. There’s of course the rumored 5.0″ Full HD Display (1920 x 1080), a quad-core Cortex A15 CPU and a 13MP Camera. It’s fairly obvious at this point that Samsung will be bringing a Full HD packing phone to market, after all HTC have already hit the US market with their Full HD beast with the Droid DNA.
“We believe preparations for volume manufacturing of unbreakable plastic substrate displays continue. All in all, we could see a strong products push in the high-end in the first half, followed by other releases.” says Nicholas Gaudois, an Analyst with a 5-star rating from Thomson Reuters. The main advantage that Samsung has over everybody else is that Samsung are the leading manufacturer of OLED displays, which can replace glass with plastic substrates. Making it a lot easier to produce more resilient displays. Add this to the fact that Samsung have been advancing development of their flexible OLED panels and they’re in a a good position to make some of the first unbreakable displays on the market.
While the Galaxy S IV is unlikely to catch the flexible display train it could well come with a new OLED screen that we’ve not seen before. After all, the Galaxy S III’s display was a stunner but, with its PenTile arrangement, it was more of the same. Samsung’s main differentiator between Apple is not only the sizes of their displays but also the high-resolution panels. At 441 ppi a 1080p Display at 5.0″ would blow the iPhone 5′s “retina” display out of the water that packs just 326 ppi.

With over a million downloads, Microsoft’s Bing translator app comes to Windows Phone 8

One of the most popular and useful mobile apps out there on the Windows Phone platform is the Bing Translator app. This free service combines augmented reality with the phone’s camera and speech & text translation, helping anyone better navigate the world. And now it’s available on the newest version of the Windows mobile operating system.

Starting today, those with Windows Phone 8 devices can download the app from the App Store marketplace and begin translating whatever they want until their heart’s content. The app uses a translator “lens” whenever you launch your camera, which will enable you to access the “camera mode translation functionality” easily. Seven different languages are supported, including German, American English, British English, Spanish, French, Italian, and Chinese.

Here’s a behind-the-scenes look at the app:

There have been over a million downloads of this app before its release to Windows Phone 8 and will surely be added to the slew of new devices coming out on the market as more people (hopefully) use the devices.