Apple Wins the Holiday; Galaxy S8 May Have a Stylus Supporting Model; How About a Paper Airplane Machine Gun?

Posted: December 28, 2016 | Author: | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Ever since the Galaxy Note meltdown in late summer, the year has gone south for Samsung. Now that holiday figures are in, we know the extent. According to Flurry Analytics, if you got a phone for the holidays, it’s likely it was an iPhone. 44% of new phone and tablet activations were for Apple devices. Samsung didn’t quite hit half of that, with 21%. Huawei was a distant third at 3%, with 5 other phone makers tied for 4th at 2%. Medium phones are still most popular at 45%, but phablets are gaining fast…picking up 10% year over year to capture 37% of the form factor share.

A new rumor may throw a bone to Samsung’s hardcore Galaxy Note 7 fans. Bgr.com reports that there may be a ‘plus’ sized Galaxy S8 that will accept the S Pen stylus. The leak out of China says it won’t fit inside the phone, and will sell separately. Still, it’s a popular feature that may bring a lot of Note fans back to buy a new S8.

Everyone’s been to sporting events where they inspect for weapons and such. Everyone has also seen the occasional paper airplane sail down to the court or field. Now, gizmodo says you might see a blizzard of them without such checkpoints. A fellow named Dieter Krone has developed a 3D printed machine gun that folds and shoots 120 paper airplanes a minute! Take that, opposing team!

Bendable, Foldable Samsung Smartphone by Next Year; In-Flight Wi-Fi to Become Much More Useable

Posted: June 7, 2016 | Author: | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Samsung has developed the tech for folding screens to the point they may roll out smartphones with it next year. Engadget.com picked up a story from Bloomberg saying that a couple of devices will have flexible OLED screens- one folding like a cosmetic compact and another that transforms from a 5-inch smartphone-sized screen to a roughly eight inch screen …basically, converting from a phablet to a tablet. If the rumors hold up, we could see these by Mobile World Congress next February!

If you’ve tried it, you know in-flight Wi-Fi is more like in-flight dial up…but that’s about to change. According to bgr.com, American has signed a deal with Viasat, and is ditching Gogo. Where Gogo has relied on ground stations, Viasat use satellite tech to get Wi-Fi to travelers. They are claiming 12Mbps to every passenger, which would be enough to stream movies, make Skype calls (with some lag) or surf the web without feeling like you want to commit homicide. Gogo is also rolling out a satellite system, but it only gives 70 Mbps to the entire plane to share, which won’t be much better than what they already offer. American’s fleet should be equipped with the Viasat faster internet by September 2017.

Apple iPhone 7 Rumors & Holiday Sales; New Google Glass Model Leak

Posted: December 29, 2015 | Author: | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Another rumor has the iPhone 7 being waterproof, and in addition, appleinsider.com is reporting it will used new compound materials to conceal antennas, losing those unsightly plastic antenna cover bars. There is some hand wringing that iPhone 6S sales won’t be as good as the 6 had, but the holidays were great for Apple…according to a Flurry Insights report picked up by appleinsider.com, 49.1% of all devices activated Christmas week were from Apple. Phablets were only 13% of last season’s sales, but this year they grabbed 27% of the device market.

Whether we like it or not, there will be more glassholes. Google Glass lives! Hi resolution images of the next generation Google Glass have showed up on an FCC site. They look almost identical to the previous model, but have a hinge to fold just like regular glasses. The prism is larger, as well, according to arstechnica.com. This version of Google Glass is supposed to be enterprise only, and not intended to retail customers.

Super King Sized Samsung Tablet Coming?

Posted: August 21, 2015 | Author: | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Samsung had good success for a while supersizing smartphones into phablets, and now theverge.com says SamMobile is reporting the company is working on an 18.4 inch Android tablet. Internally, it’s called Tahoe, and it has a TFT LCD display with a 1920 x 1080 resolution, a 1.6 GhZ processor, 2GB of RAM, 32GB of internal storage, and rear and front cameras — 8 megapixels and 2.1 megapixels, respectively. SamMobile speculates that it wouldn’t be aimed at mainstream users, but for salespeople to make presentations, and architects needing a large mobile device for site visits. No word on when it might hit the market.

As Apple is rumored to be working in secret on their own electric car that would run their Car Play software, Mercedes-Benz is apparently open to different types of collaboration with Cupertino. In an interview out in the last few days, the Daimler CEO, Dieter Zetsche, was quoted as saying “Google and Apple want to provide system software for cars and bring this entire ecosystem around Apple and Google into the vehicle. That can be interesting for both sides.” According to macrumors.com, Apple hired former Mercedes R&D VP Johann Jungwirth, who is now Director of Mac Systems Engineering.

Phablets Will Far Outsell Tablets the Next Few Years

Posted: August 5, 2014 | Author: | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , | Leave a comment

Tablet sales have been dropping, and laptops edging up, but business insider.com says phablets are the big thing. They project phablets will outnumber tablet sales by 3 to 1 by 2018. Many define a phablet as a smartphone with a screen between 5 and 7 inches…not quite the handy pocket or purse size of a 3.5 or 4 inch smartphone, but still small enough to use as a phone, and big enough to negate the need to haul around two devices.

Twitter is testing showing you tweets from random accounts your friends follow. Thenextweb.com reports that it’s just a test, and so could just go away if they decide not to incorporate this alleged feature.

Samsung’s upcoming Galaxy Alpha smartphone will not just be their first metal clad model. Gigaom.com says they’re ditching Qualcomm’s Snapdragon processors for their own Exynos chip…the first Samsung LTE phone to use it. Using their own chips more and more may counteract the drop off from no longer being Apple’s sole supplier of processor chips.