BlackBerry may be planning to launch a sliding BB10 handset akin to now defunct Torch range, judging by a patent filing unveiled this week.
The filing shows a handset that appears to be a cross between the all-touchscreen BlackBerry Z10 device and the sliding BlackBerry Torch handset which combined a touchscreen and a QWERTY keyboard.
The Canadian smartphone giant filed for the patent back in December 2011, but have finally had it approved, Engadget reports.
So far BlackBerry is experimenting with just two form factors for its all-important BB10 handsets, the Z10 and the Bold-alike BlackBerry Q10 device, due to go on sale this spring.
BlackBerry Live launch?
The company's annual showcase BlackBerry Live (formerly BlackBerry World) is up next month so it's certainly a possibility that we may see this third form factor break cover at the event.
Would you like to see BlackBerry offer a full-touchscreen BB10 device with the added bonus of a physical keyboard? Let us know in the comments section below.
2012's HTC One X will be boosted to Android 4.2, before too long but chances of a further upgrade to Android Key Lime Pie are somewhere between 'slim' and 'none', according to reports.
GottaBeMobile brings word from a notorious HTC tipster that the Android 4.2.2 Jelly Bean update will be joined by the latest version of Sense 5.0, but that'll be the end of the road for the handset.
Developer and HTC tipster @LLabTooFeR wrote on Twitter: "No ETAs at the moment...4.2.2 will be last update for One X"
HTC has yet to confirm an update schedule for the dual-core 4.7-inch handset, which shipped with Android Ice Cream Sandwich, but was refreshed with Jelly Bean 4.1 in November.
HTC One implication
The HTC One X isn't the only phone that'll be expecting an Android 4.2.2 update sooner rather than later.
Even the flagship HTC One that recently went on sale around the world is only shipping with Android 4.1, but it's perfectly conceivable that it'll skip 4.2 and go straight to 5.0.
Key Lime Pie is thought to be the latest version of Android, but Google is yet to officially announce it. That's expected at Google I/O next month.
It’s amazing what technology can do, and what it can help us accomplish. Today this is highlighted by a truly impressive breakthrough, it seems that the first Braille-enabled smartphone could be ready for stores by the year’s end.
Apparently the Braille-enabled smartphone is the work of interaction designer Sumit Dagar who has spent three years working on the device and is now preparing to enter it into a testing phase. If all goes well, it will then start the commercial process. Sumit has also seen a lot of help with this project in the form of award money from Rolex and collaboration efforts with the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi and LV Prasad Eye Institute in Hyderabad.
So how would this very unique phone work? Basically it would feature a haptic touch screen that elevates and depresses content it receives. This means that data it receives could be transformed into touchable patterns that would allow the blind to feel what the phone is displaying.
The hardware consists of a grid of tiny pins that move up and down to accommodate text and images as well, and uses shape-memory alloy technology to expand or contract to its original shape after being used.
“Technology is giving everyone superpowers, but many blind people are not able to tap into these cool, new features, and the technology is making them even more disabled,” Dagar said recently in Rolex interview. “So I decided to do something that could reach out to this population.”
No word on the costs of this phone or exactly when it will arrive later this year, but we have to admit this is a really cool idea and its always great to see new technology that could truly make an important difference in someone’s life.
Apple posted its second quarter fiscal year 2013 earnings today as industry observers and the jackals of Wall Street watched closely.
By the numbers the firm sold 37.4 million iPhones last quarter, which ended March 30. That's compared to 35.1 million the same quarter one year ago.
iPad sales amounted to 19.5 million, up from 11.8 million from the same time last year. Mac sales dipped, dropping from 4 million the year-ago quarter to just under 4 million this go-around.
It was thanks to iPad and iPhone sales that the company was able to post what CEO Tim Cook called in a press release, "record March quarter revenue." For the quarter, the company posted US$43.6 billion in revenue and net profit of US$9.5 billion. That's compared to US$39.2 billion and US$11.6 billion during the same time last year.
We'll have more from the company's earnings call, which gets underway at 2 p.m. PDT, so stay tuned as this story develops.
Phones running Mozilla's Firefox OS are today making it into the wild.
Spain-based Geeksphone opened orders for two dev preview handsets this morning and within hours Keon and Peak had sold out. The startup OEM's online shop is currently displaying a two-line message that it's temporarily shut down for maintenance, an indicator it's reached maximum order capacity.
Mozilla, for its part, is well aware of the situation at Geeksphone.
"Mozilla is thrilled to see such high demand for the Firefox OS developer preview devices, made available today by Geeksphone," Stormy Peters, director of websites and developer engagement at Mozilla, said in a statement sent to TechRadar.
"The support for these devices has been overwhelming, and we are pleased to see the development community excited to create content for the open web on mobile. We believe developers working with Firefox OS will help to bring the next two billion users online, through the power of the open mobile web."
The first wave is about to hit
On fire
While Mozilla stayed high-level as to why developers are flocking to the phones, one very terrestrial factor may be playing into demand.
Geeksphone priced the Keon at $119 (around UK£77, AU$115 ) and the higher-end Peak at $194 (around UK£127, AU$189). Devs will get to play around with the Linux-based, open-source OS before retail units start shipping in June.
Neither device is a barnburner, but that's not really what Mozilla is after.
The burnt orange Keon is home to a single-core 1GHz processor, 512MB of RAM, 4GB of storage, a 3.5-inch HVGA display, 3MP camera and a 1,580mAh battery.
The Peak struts in white with a 4.3-inch qHD IPS display, 1.2GHz dual-core chip, 2MP front camera 8MP rear snapper complete with flash, 1,800mAh juicer and the same RAM and internal storage as its little brother.
Geeksphone is reportedly looking to get orders out at a rate of about 5,000 per day, though it's unclear when the first units will start shipping.
The hope is to have the handsets back on sale before the week is up, so if you're holding on for a dev unit, sit tight. Neither Mozilla nor Geeksphone seem eager to disappoint.
'We're cool, right guys?' (credit: digital.sina.com.hk)
A DVD. Dinner for one. Parking five miles from any event in San Francisco.
There are a number of things you can buy for $15, and those of you affected by "Antennagate" will soon be flush with dinero. Well, $15 of dinero.
Reports indicate that Apple has started paying out settlement checks for the iPhone 4 scandal that broke out in 2010. Some phones had antenna and reception issues, and while Apple gave a number of free bumpers to quell customer fury, those who didn't receive one will now start "rolling" in class action dough.
The $15 is only for U.S. customers as per iPhone4settlement.com, the case's dedicated website. Those of you crouched by your mail slot, waiting for your check, can start day dreaming about the settlement check's possibilities.
One of Microsoft's UK based thought leaders has indicated that smartphones will be the pivotal member of the trinity of devices with tablets and PCs in coming years.
Dave Coplin, Chief Envisioning Officer for Microsoft, told an audience at the Internet World conference in London that, although smartphones are now becoming ubiquitous, they will change the way people behave.
"We will have more and more access to information that will challenge what we do inside and outside of our organisations," he said, adding: "They will not be phones any more; they will be our windows to the digital world."
Their role in providing the quickest way to access information will be crucial, although tablets will also be important for functions that work effectively on touchscreens, and keyboard computers for work that needs a lot of typing and data input.
Coplin also stood by Windows 8 as a disruptive technology and argued that in the long term it could help users to become more creative. The operating system has had generally positive reviews but there have been criticisms, some expressed at the conference session, about the way the user interfaces work with a keyboard.
"We want to disrupt the way that people work, to get them doing more on touch enabled devices, but we're in a period of pain at the moment," he said.
He portrayed Windows 8 as part of a change that will make people more creative in the long term, and said that over three years they can change the way they think about technology.
The comments came towards the end of a presentation in which Coplin championed the cause of flexible working, suggesting that the traditional office space often hampers creativity and that people should have more freedom to find a place where they can best get a job done.
Nokia has won an injunction in the Netherlands that will ban HTC from using the current microphone components found in its HTC One phones around the world.
The injunction is effective immediately and will last until March 2014. It prevents supplier STMicro from selling its microphones to HTC, meaning HTC must now scramble to find a new source for the tech.
Nokia's engineers found that the audio capture components inside the HTC One were those allegedly invented by Nokia, made exclusively for the Finnish company's phones, and featured in the Lumia 720.
"HTC is disappointed in the decision," it told TechRadar in a statement. "We are consulting with STM and will decide whether it is necessary to explore alternative solutions in due course."
Deep impact?
However, HTC told us that it did not expect the ruling to have any "immediate" impact on sales.
On whether it will lead to a delay in the release of the black model of the HTC One however, the company refused to comment.
The HTC One was originally meant to go on sale in March but faced a series of setbacks due to camera shortages, leading to a delay in a number of countries. This, of course, led to a big hit on HTC's financial results.
It used to be easy to tell a couch potato from a gym bunny. But nowadays even the most healthy among us has an HD screen in their pocket, and sofa surfers are as likely to move for a Wii as a wee.
Tech and pecs are no longer mutually exclusive, so which bits of fit kit should we all have on our handsets?
Read on to witness the fitness according to TechRadar.
1. Adidas miCoach
Like a horribly healthy angel on your shoulder, miCoach offers voice-coaching as it tracks your workouts using GPS. With training plans for various sports and 400 built-in exercises, this Adidas app even tells you when you need to buy new shoes.
Turn your workspace into workout space with nine sets of easy yoga movements to do at your desk. Text, pictures and audio guide you through moves to overcome everyday ailments – all low-key enough not to upset your colleagues' coffees.
Offering more than 300 exercises with detailed descriptions and animations, this is one fitness buddy that won't leave you gasping as they go for the burn. A paid version adds another 1,400 exercises, HD videos, body metrics tracking and more.
Part exercise, part role-play, this app encourages you to stay fit with the threat of imminent zombie attack. Missions involve running or jogging to collect supplies, earn rewards and progress the plot – all to a soundtrack of motivational undead moans!
This feature-packed free version of a paid app will track any distance-based sport, measuring duration, distance, speed and burn, as well as letting you set targets, get audio updates on your progress, and even hear encouraging things said by your friends online!
Demanding 30 minutes a day, three days a week, this app aims to have you ready for your first 5km run in just nine weeks. Cartoon coaches ease you in gently, then build you up to increasingly active workouts.
You really can 'just do it' with these fast, flexible workouts ranging from 15 to 45 minutes. Including audio guidance and video demos from top Nike trainers (wearing sneakers), it also boasts Facebook and Twitter integration and unlockable workout rewards.
Eat yourself fitter with this handy database of calorie, fat and carb figures for supermarket and chain restaurant foods. Type in what you eat (or scan the barcode) and it'll tot up your intake in the blink of a pie.
As the name suggests, this workout programme dispenses with gym equipment in favour of 200 exercises you can do almost anywhere. Based on a best-selling book, the app is boosted by a free video pack to show you how it's done.
Guilt-trip your gut into submission with this ingenious app that gives to charity whenever you workout. Choose from a range of American good causes, and corporate sponsors will fork out for every mile you walk, bike or run.
For those keen on grabbing a HTC One but not wanting to be locked to a particular network, we have good news - an unlocked 32GB model is officially on its way.
The 32GB handset ditches the unlocked bootloader of the 64GB Developer Edition, but we can only see this being a big miss for the major tinkerers out there.
The new unlocked model is only available on the US store for now, with a price tag of $575(around £375/AUS$560), but TechRadar understands that it is set to appear elsewhere, including the UK, very soon.
Unlocked, unleashed
We've rated the HTC One as the best smartphone in the world right now, so this news means you should be running out of excuses to go out and get one.
Especially as the 32GB model comes in a fair bit cheaper than the iPhone 5 with the same storage and unlocked network.
HTC previously opened pre-orders for the HTC One Developer Edition, which came with 64GB of storage and an unlocked bootloader allowing for custom ROMs.
EE's 4G take-up continues to trickle rather than swell, with the network claiming 318,000 people on its super-fast network after five months.
That equates to 2.3 per cent of EE's contract customers - EE says that 53 per cent of its customers are on post-pay deals; so 2.3 per cent of 53 per cent of its customers are on 4G.
That's a fairly underwhelming 1.2 per cent of its overall customer base shelling out for it's top-end 4G plans - but it is early days for 4G in the UK and EE is as-yet the only player in the super-fast network field.
However, EE still reckons it's well on track to have signed up over one million 4G customers by the end of the year, by which time it plans for its network to cover 70 per cent of the UK population as well.
The press release makes a big deal of its 'high value customers' - those are the ones who can afford to shell out for EE's fairly hefty 4G pricing plans - and crows continually about its holding of 36 per cent of the UK's available mobile spectrum.
According to EE's own research, those who have opted for 4G report that they are using less or no public Wi-Fi thanks to the superior cellular connectivity, and 1 in 5 also claim to be using their home broadband less.
As our mobile devices become smaller and more intricate, the easier they are to lose. And the more powerful they become, the more desirable they are to thieves. The It's Mine Bluetooth bracelet links up to your mobile device and alerts you if the link is broken - by either the bracelet or the device going out of range. It does this by vibrating on your wrist.
We've seen similar devices in the past, such as the Kensington BungeeAir Power Wireless Security Tether for iPhone. Kensington's device wouldn't just alert you to your phone going missing, it would also help you find your keys, protect your phone from drops, provide additional battery life and lock the phone if someone tries to remove the case.
The It's Mine Bluetooth bracelet doesn't have quite as many additional features, and is compatible with a much wider range of Bluetooth-enabled devices, but it will alert you if you get a phone call, and enables you to reject unwanted phone calls if it's not the right time.
Verdict
While the It's Mine Bluetooth bracelet works well enough, there's no getting away from the fact that you have to wear the rather unattractive bracelet if you want to protect your phone. If the bracelet was slightly more stylish or had more functionality, such as a built-in watch, then it wouldn't be too much of a problem.
That said, if it keeps you from losing your precious smartphone, then £20 (around US$30/AU$29) and a slight knock to your street cred is a small price to pay.
