Samsung may be hunting the compact camera market to extinction if news that it is developing a 20MP camera sensor is to be believed.
ET News reports that it isn't due to be released until the latter half of 2014, so we're not going to see it sat behind the Samsung Galaxy S5. Current rumours suggest that the S5 will come with only 16MP.
A Q3 launch of the camera module would put it more in line with the annual refresh of the Samsung Galaxy Note series, so we'd expect the mooted sensor to potentially land in the Galaxy Note 4.
There's a chance that this camera may worm its way into the Galaxy S6 in early 2015 and potentially even a Samsung Galaxy S5 Zoom midway though 2014 - the Galaxy S4 Zoom does, after all, already have a 16MP camera.
Other manufacturers are pushing camera tech in new ways, with the HTC One's UltraPixels and LG G2's OIS system, and we're still waiting for Samsung to offering up something new.
Samsung has just announced the Galaxy Grand 2, but it's got plans to cover yet another price point with the Galaxy Grand Lite.
According to SamMobile the Galaxy Grand Lite, as it's being referred to right now, is on its way and could be unveiled at MWC in February 2014.
The phone packs a 5-inch WVGA screen, 1.2GHz quad-core processor, 1GB of RAM, 8GB of storage and a microSD slot to bulk that up.
The rear camera will be a 5MP deal, while there'll also be a front-facing VGA snapper and a 2100mAh battery.
Dual identity
Considering the Galaxy Grand and Galaxy Grand 2 are both dual-SIM (and therefore quite popular in markets such as India), it seems obvious that it'll be the same affair on the Lite. But we expect we'll see it come further West too, with a single SIM option also being mooted.
Will look... much the same, apparently (credit: SamMobile)
SamMobile states that the phone will be available from "somewhere around the fifth week of 2014" which puts it a couple of weeks before MWC. But we could also see the announcement held off until the Barcelona show.
SamMobile also states that the phone will be available in white, "Midnight Black", orange and "Lime Green". So white, black, orange and green, then.
Outdoor specialist Quechua is all about capturing your sense of adventure with its camping, mountaineering and skiing gear and has now outed a smartphone to guard against the perils of those endeavours.
The Quechua Phone, made in association with Archos, pledges to guard against rain, snow, sand, mud, cold, snow and the occasional drop.
It's a 5-inch handset, packing Android 4.1 and a 1.2GHz quad-core Qualcomm processor and 4GB of internal storage with a MicroSD slot. It's also got a 5-megapixel camera for snapping shots of the great outdoors and its inhabitants.
Alongside its IP54 certification, it also packs a whopping 3,500mAh battery unit, which it promises will survive 22 hours of call time, which is sure to appeal to those spending the night in the wilderness.
Lost in translation?
Our French isn't what it was at secondary school, but judging by the source article, there'll be no 4G, but it does come as as accessible price for a second smartphone.
It'll be 230 Euros when it lands on December 5. That's about £190, $312 and AU$343. No word on international availability just yet, but we'll keep you posted.
Facebook has lost its mobile messaging lead to the upstart WhatsApp platform, according to new research published this weekend..
OnDevice surveyed almost 4,000 smartphone users in five countries and found that a whopping 44 per cent of them were using WhatsApp to stay in touch with friends.
35 per cent of those folks - in US, Brazil, South Africa, Indonesia and China - were using Facebook Messenger in November.
Despite eliminating BlackBerry users, the reborn BBM platform was down in 5th place with a respectable 15 per cent of those surveyed using the service, behind WeChat (28 per cent) and Twitter (16 per cent).
The rise of BBM?
BlackBerry's platform does seem to be doing exceedingly well in South Africa, according to the study, will 34 per cent of surveyed users frequenting the app in November.
Another takeaway from the research was the popularity of social messaging apps compared with traditional SMS messaging.
OnDevice found the 85 per cent of its sample used the likes of WhatsApp and Facebook last month, while 75 per cent used text messages.
As is often the case with these surveys, it's by no means conclusive. There was no mention of the $3 billion-valued Snapchat, while the influential European mobile market was ignored entirely.
Apps open up a whole world of video editing possibilities.
Think of the best smartphone movies and, at best, you'll be imagining that video you once took of your drunken friends trying to push over a cow before falling into a ditch. At least it was in HD.
But you should realise that your smartphone is silently weeping, hating you for not realising the untapped potential in its high power video camera, as quality and affordability have now aligned in such a way that almost anyone can become a filmmaker.
Don't believe us? Just look at the number of smartphone film festivals that have popped up, from Festival Pocket Films in France, to the iPhone Film Festival and Mobil Film Festival in America and the Olleh International Smartphone Film Festival in South Korea. All of these and more are dedicated to films shot largely or entirely on smartphones.
And filmmakers have already found some success in the field. The first feature length smartphone film, 'SMS Sugar Man', was shot back in 2007 on a Sony Ericsson W900i and since then there have been several other full length movies and numerous shorts and music videos.
These include 'Olive', which was shot on a Nokia N8 with a 35mm zoom lens and was the first ever smartphone film to get a cinema release.
Also of note is Park Chan-wook's 'Night Fishing' short, which was shot on an iPhone 4 and won the Golden Bear for Best Short Film at the 61st Berlin International Film Festival and 'Departure', a film shot on iPhones by three different directors in three different countries.
There's clearly an appetite for using the medium of a smartphone to create a feature length piece of cinematic glory, but surely a 'proper' camera makes more sense?
Power within
It might seem weird to think that a filmmaker would choose a mobile for their movie, particularly someone established like Park Chan-wook, who's better known for his award winning revenge thriller 'Oldboy', but with the phones we have today it's not that much of a surprise.
The Samsung Galaxy Note 3 for example can shoot 1080p video at 60fps or 2160p video at 30fps and soon more phones are likely to have 4K cameras, allowing for higher quality videos across a range of handsets.
Indeed Ruben Kazantsev, the co-founder of the iPhone Film Festival, thinks that this isn't a fad created just because the technology is there.
"Smartphone film making is here to stay," he told us emphatically. "We have been running IFF for over three years now and each year the films get better and better. So as the technology changes so will the quality of the films."
There are real advantages to shooting on a phone too. For one thing, it's a lot cheaper than conventional camera equipment, and it also opens up the medium to a gigantic number of wannabe directors as manufacturers have smuggled this high-power tech into your pocket, removing the barrier for entry.
Not only does that empower almost anyone to be a film maker, but it also makes it easier to counter equipment problems on set. Kazantsev, also a producer on the smartphone film 'Departure', highlighted an issue that only a smartphone could have solved:
"During our filming of departure we had a warehouse space for a limited time and we were down to the last scene with 20 minutes left.
"As we were getting ready to start filming I noticed my hard drive was full and had no time to download the footage to make room, since we had 20 minutes left.
"So I asked our crew 'who has an iPhone?' and almost everyone popped one out of their back pockets. If we did not have the backup cameras/smartphones we would have never gotten the last shot."
Filming on a phone also allows more risks to be taken as there's less money at stake. And because of their size and portability, smartphones can film almost anywhere, which potentially allows for shots that a traditional camera couldn't get.
A smartphone film called 'Goldilocks' included a scene where a phone was put in a ziplock bag, then placed in a glass and had wine poured on it while filming. If you're feeling a little more flush with cash, solid state microSD cards can be fitted to phones and flung around to get some truly amazing shots – you might smash the phone, but the footage will survive.
Smartphones also allow for more opportunistic filming, allowing you to capture moments that would otherwise be lost because you didn't have your video camera with you, used more often than you'd imagine in professionally produced films.
Of course there are downsides too. Susan Botello, the person behind the Mobil Film Festival, laments the lack of storage space on phones, telling us that "a phone with a great camera for video [but] low space makes it worthless."
She also argues that most phones have a horrible microphone and that the handling of low light situations needs to improve – elements which are being focused on quickly by the likes of HTC, Nokia and Apple with multiple microphones with dual membranes to improve sound quality, and massively upgraded low light sensors in cameras.
Other issues include the fact that the battery will be drained quickly when filming and ideally you'll probably still want to invest in some other equipment, such as lights, microphones and a tripod.
These issues and more mean that smartphone films haven't yet hit the mainstream. They're still fairly few and far between and the need for smartphone-specific film festivals demonstrates that they're not always comparable to more conventional films.
That isn't necessarily a bad thing. These festivals give mobile film "a platform which is a parallel to the traditional industry and open a door to film makers who use smartphones to shoot" according to Botello.
And in their very nature smartphones are going to attract independent and guerrilla film makers. Those who are unable or unwilling to work within the system and who can't afford the major expenses of a standard film.
This leads to unique projects that perhaps wouldn't be seen in mainstream cinema, such as Luke Geissbuhler's 'Space Balloon' short, which involves an iPhone being shot into space and then falling back down to earth, all while filming.
