The creator of the new Firefox OS platform, Mozilla, has confirmed that it's not planning to produce its own hardware alongside its mobile software.
Speaking to Digitimes, Mozilla's mobile device senior vice president Gong Li explained it was leaving the manufacturing process to its partners who include ZTE, Alcatel, Huawei, LG and Sony.
We saw a couple of handsets sporting Firefox OS at MWC this year in the form of the ZTE Open and Alcatel OneTouch Fire - both of which are low cost offerings aimed at emerging markets.
Li said if Mozilla started producing own-brand devices it would create unnecessary competition with ODMs, which could put them off developing for Firefox OS - and it's on a drive to recruit as many manufacturers as it can.
Samsung and HTC not in
Two noticeable absentees from the list are Samsung and HTC, which have decided to stick with Android and Windows Phone for the time being, although Li hasn't ruled out involvement from both in the future.
"Firefox OS is a new operating system. For vendors, the question of whether to adopt and when to adopt is based on considerations varying from one to another," he said.
"Some vendors will stick to Android and need not choose Firefox OS for the time being, others want to choose non-Android platforms but may not adopt Firefox OS."
It's still early days for the HTML 5-based Firefox OS and we're unlikely to see it make any great strides in the UK, US or Australia in the near future, but if it takes hold in the developing world it could become an overnight hit.
Windows Phone 8 fans: listen up. You could be getting a new toy to play with this year in the form of the HTC One.
Launched earlier this year running Android Jelly Bean, rumours are now suggesting HTC's flagship smartphone - and the best phone in the world today - could get an OS reboot before the year is out.
According to the folks at Neowin, an inside source has revealed that the Taiwanese firm is working on a handset which will look similar to the HTC One, with a screen somewhere in the region of 4- to 5-inches.
One plus 8
The unnamed source stressed that the device in question wouldn't be identical to the One, although you should expect a metal chassis, Beats Audio technology and, obviously, Windows Phone 8.
It's thought that the handset will also borrow the UltraPixel camera technology found in the Android flagship, although specs are far from confirmed.
HTC has already dipped its toe in the Windows Phone 8 water with the HTC 8X and 8S which were launched alongside the platform last year, with the former hand-picked by Microsoft to be its signature WP8 device.
However it's been all quiet since then over at HTC, so it's not a huge surprise to learn that the manufacturer may be planning its next onslaught.
Apparently we could see the Windows Phone 8 smartphone announced this Autumn, with a release date close to Christmas - this is definitely one to watch.
The world's worst-kept secret, aka the Samsung Galaxy Note 3, has emerged in another deluge of leaks, with two photos showing a svelte, bezel-challenged handset tipped for an August release.
The two photos, which come from two separate anonymous sources over in China, aren't giving that much away, although we can see that the handset is pretty slender despite being housed in an ugly case.
There's no guarantee that the other picture is of the Note 3 either, but it shows a large looking screen that stops just shy of the edge of the handset and its photographer says that the screen "takes up 84 per cent of the front surface of the device".
Take note
However, as Unwired View points out, there's a worrying lack of front-facing camera (looks like just a proximity sensor) does leave us pondering whether this is just a fake. You can see the full images below:
Real or fake? You decide
Not much more concrete is the word from one loose-lipped Samsung wireless business division insider who claims that the handset should enter mass production in August.
Talking about a drop in orders for devices like the Galaxy S4, s/he told ET News: "Since we will start placing orders for follow-up models, such as Galaxy Note III, from August, the impact to suppliers will be minimal."
The word on the Samsung Galaxy Note 3 so far has included a possible metal chassis, a 6.3- or 5.99-inch display, Android Key Lime Pie, a super-powerful octa-core chipset, 3GB of RAM and a 13MP camera.
Now, a couple of days later, a second (much clearer) snap has reared its head, seemingly adding to the credibility of the first leak.
Like the earlier shot, the build of the device seems to be exactly the same as the iPhone 5. It doesn't appear to be larger and there appear to be no other format changes.
Sticking with tradition, the iPhone 5S seems likely to be more of an incremental update headlined by improved innards and the new iOS 7 software.
Is that it?
The question is, will those factors be enough to stave off challenges from Samsung, HTC and potentially the Motorola X Phone and an improved Nexus smartphone from Google and its partners?
Would the inclusion of an extra light bulb be enough to encourage you to update to the new handset? Or are you demanding much more from Apple when it unveils the new device later this year?
We're told that all kinds of technologies changed the world - Popular Mechanics' list includes the stapler - but today's researchers are working on ideas even more ambitious than joining several bits of paper together.
New technologies could replace fossil fuels, turn your house into a power station, save thousands of lives - and maybe even create new lifeforms.
Here are 10 technologies that have the potential to change the world all over again.
1. Phones
In developing countries the phone is more important than the PC: mobiles are used for banking, and for forecasting the weather (a critical business when a farmer has to pick the best time to sow or reap a precious crop). But phones can do even more.
Phone location data might also be useful in dealing with natural disasters, improving public transport or just helping retailers make shopping malls more profitable.
Phone tracking data is already fighting infectious diseases, and might help with disasters too
As imaging technology improves we'll see our world like never before, both outside and inside. DARPA recently showed off a 1.8 gigapixel surveillance drone that can watch 25 square kilometres at a time, while advances in medical imaging tech enable doctors to look inside patients with unprecedented levels of detail.
New camera tech enables incredibly detailed images, such as BT's 320-gigapixel London panorama
Fibre-optic cabling has been around since the 19th century, but it wasn't until 1970 that the problem of attenuation - signals degrading over distance - was solved.
Since then fibre-optic has become part of the fabric of the internet, but it's a fabric that, for most people, stops long before it gets to their house.
When fibre broadband finally makes it into every home - which it will, albeit not until some of us are really, really old - it promises to revolutionise the way people use the internet all over again.
Fibre everywhere means internet-connected services we can't even imagine
DARPA calls it Targeted Muscle Re-innervation, or TMR for short. We call it astonishing: TMR makes brain-controlled prosthetic limbs almost as responsive as real ones, providing sensory feedback that enables prosthetic users to riffle through a bag or grab an object without having to look at it.
From electronic eyes to entire exoskeletons, the combination of serious technical talent and enormous piles of cash is bringing us ever closer to a cybernetic future.
3D-printed guns and drugs may get the headlines, but the real effect of 3D printing is likely to be less sensational and much more useful.
It's already helping to revolutionise manufacturing by slashing research and development costs, and in the longer term it might mean that instead of ordering online and waiting for couriers to deliver, we'll just print products at home - maybe even food.
That's good for the environment but could have disastrous consequences for many people's jobs.
You can download a dress, but you can't download Dita. Yet (credit: Dezeen)
Research firm ON World reckons that in 2017, firms will ship some 515 million sensors for wearable, implantable or mobile health and fitness devices, and that's just the tip of an electronic iceberg.
The row over the Prism surveillance system rumbles on, but there's no doubt that the technology to watch people's every move exists: one version, dubbed RIOT, mines public websites such as social networks to build up a surprisingly detailed picture of individuals and their likely future behaviour.
Another, PREDPOL, uses algorithms and mapping data to predict where and when crimes are likely to occur. Put them together, add a bit of Tom Cruise and you're getting awfully close to Minority Report-style policing where the cops turn up before the crime is committed.
Predicting where crime's likely to occur and when it'll happen? There's an app for that
Solar technology has been held back by several issues: solar panels are hefty, pricey, and of course they don't provide energy when it's dark. The biggest problem, though, is efficiency: as National Geographic reports, they only capture 10 to 20 percent of the sunlight that strikes them.
The future? Nanotech that makes the panels much less reflective, much cheaper to produce and much more efficient. Other ideas include tiny antennae on devices that capture solar energy and instantly convert it to power, solar panels that can actually store energy, and nanotech paint that turns entire buildings into solar energy collectors.
Solar panels are famously inefficient, but nanotech could solve that problem (Credit: Mhassan Abdollahi)
There's a controversy brewing on Kickstarter: the Glowing Plant project plans to engineer glow-in-the-dark plants, and some experts are worried: they fear that this is the thin end of a very big and scary wedge.
As Nature reports, "they fear that distributing the plants could set a precedent for unsupervised releases of synthetic organisms, and might foster a negative public perception of synthetic biology - an emerging experimental discipline that involves genetically engineering organisms to do useful tasks."
Biohackers could engineer entirely new lifeforms, good or bad, and the emerging sector is almost entirely unregulated. Friends of the Earth has called for a global moratorium on the release of synthetic organisms "until the proper regulations and safety mechanisms have been put in place".
The MyGenome iPad app is a glimpse of the future, enabling you to analyse the full genetic makeup of someone. For now that someone is the developers' CEO, but if DNA sequencing prices continue to plummet - the cost per person has dropped from US$2.7 billion to US$5,000 in ten years - then full genome analysis could be in many of our futures.
That could have profound implications: we could discover if we're prone to particular kinds of cancer, or if we have higher than average risks of various unpleasant conditions, or if particular drugs could kill rather than cure us.
Angelina Jolie's recent preventive surgery was an example of DNA sequencing in action: Jolie has the BRCA1 gene, which means she has a high risk of developing the breast cancer that killed her mother.
As Carole Cadwalladr writes in The Guardian: "revealing our full DNA will revolutionise medicine - but it will also raise huge ethical questions about what we do with the information".
Genomic medicine could warn us of any ticking time-bombs that might lurk in our genetic make-up
