Mobiles @ NCSU

It’s been leaked, teased, and practically dissected for a while now, but today Google is finally making the Nexus 4’s successor official. The Nexus 5 is finally formally announced, and it looks as though all of the initial information we had about it was indeed spot-on. Starting today, the Nexus 5 is available for purchase on Google Play for $349 (16 GB) and $399 (32 GB) in either black or white in the US, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, U.K., Australia, Korea and Japan, followed by offline availability (non Google Play) in Europe, Central/South Americas, Asia, CIS and the Middle East will begin in mid-November.

Let’s start with the device itself. Although Nexus 5 is the spiritual successor to the Nexus 4, its industrial design borrows a lot from the recently announced Nexus 7. The two share a similar rotated landscape “nexus” logo emblazoned on the back, and are simple plastic with soft touch finishes. The Nexus 5 also appears to eschew the shaped, rounded glass edges which were very highly praised on the Nexus 4 for a more traditional flat panel and lip approach. Although the Nexus 5 does appear to share a lot of its hardware platform with the LG G2, there’s no rear mounted buttons or emphasis on narrow bezel, rather the Nexus 5 appears to be a lot more pragmatic.

True to its name, the Nexus 5 is topped with a 5-inch 1080p LCD display, a step up from the 4.7-inch 1280x768 display which was in the Nexus 4, and following with the ever inflating display size trend. The display also boasts in-cell touch which we’ve come to expect this generation.

Dimensions show the Nexus 5 getting roughly 4 mm taller and 0.47 mm wider, but thickness actually decreases by 0.51 mm and weight by 9 grams versus its predecessor. Platform is based on a Snapdragon 800 (MSM8974) SoC running at the higher 2.3 GHz bin we’ve seen before, with Adreno 330 graphics and the same 2 GB of LPDDR3 at 800 MHz we saw in the LG G2. This isn't the 8974AB with 550 MHz Adreno 330 clocks which it still is a bit early for. On the camera side there’s an 8 MP rear facing camera (no word on optical format or pixel size quite yet), but it does include the same LG Innotek module with OIS from the G2, it just has an 8 MP CMOS behind it. There’s still photo sphere for 360 degree stitched panoramas, in addition the Nexus 5 adds a new HDR+ mode which fuses simultaneously captured images into one HDR image, though I’m not sure how this differs from existing HDR options.

Storage also moves up a notch to 16 and 32 GB options, something the Nexus 4 was criticized for skimping on with its 8 and 16 GB options, oh and there’s obviously no SD card support since this is a Nexus device. Battery is the 2300 mAh 3.8V capacity we suspected, which works out to 8.74 watt hours, although one thing the Nexus 5 has over the G2 that it seems to share a platform with is a QFE1100 envelope tracker which offers 20 percent power savings on the cellular power amplifiers.

On the LTE side we see the FCC leaks and schematics leaks were spot on. There's a considerable set of LTE band coverage for the USA, including Band 17 and 4 for AT&T, Band 4 for T-Mobile, and 25, 26, and 41 for Sprint (making this another Sprint Spark device), and of course LTE roaming band equivalency with the pentaband WCDMA we've come to expect with newer devices. The only thing that's missing on the USA variant is no Verizon (which should not be a surprise to anyone), and no Band 7 for Canada. Just like the new Nexus 7 LTE situation, there's two variants, as I speculated publicly online (LG-D820 is USA, LG-D821 is rest of world), and the rest of world variant has the obligatory Band 3, 7, 20, and so on that makes sense for most markets. This is a dramatic step up from the Nexus 4 which only included hidden Band 4 LTE with appropriate baseband software.

Gallery: Nexus 5 Gallery

Of course, the Nexus 5 comes with Android 4.4 KitKat, which includes a new dialer that offers suggestions and Caller ID by Google with business matching. In addition the rumors about Hangouts were true, which now supports sending and receiving text messages directly. Similar to the Moto X there's now also the ability to search by saying "OK Google," though I'm not sure if this also is possible with the device in a screen-off mode (Update: from the home screen).

Google made the Android 4.4 platform highlights page live, and we have some details as well. On the Android 4.4 KitKat front, there's now more emphasis on optimizations for devices with smaller amounts of RAM, specifically 512 MB devices. I had heard about this rumor a while ago and there are now tools for developers to detect when they're running applications on devices with low memory and accordingly manage processes. OEMs now also have greater liberty to change things for lower-end devices with less RAM. On the NFC side, there's now support for host card emulation, allowing applications to put the NFC controller in a mode that emulates a card for purposes like transit passes or loyalty programs. Android also now adds support for a printing framework with support for PDF export, Google cloud print, and local WiFi printing services. Also new are lower power sensor batching modes which helps keep the AP in a low power state longer, and new step detector and step counter sensor support. There's also of course the new SMS provider for allowing third party applications to deliver and receive SMS messages. WebView has also changed to Chromium from WebKit finally, and includes a new version of V8 for JavaScript. 

Google will update Nexus 4, 7, 10, the Samsung Galaxy S4 and HTC One Google Play edition devices to KitKat with an OTA update in the coming weeks, signaling EOL status of the Galaxy Nexus. As an aside it would've been quite in-line with Google's stated 512 MB platform target if 4.4 had come to both Nexus S and Galaxy Nexus devices as well. 

We’re incredibly excited about the Nexus 5 and hope to have the full review as soon as possible.

Source: Google

When we reviewed the Kindle Fire HDX, we were impressed with its gorgeous display. High density displays are common now, but to find a display with bright, vivid, and accurate colors is something special—not what you'd expect in a product that costs less than $250. But we did see something unusual: a blue glow bleeding in from the edge of the display. We gave the pre-release hardware the benefit of the doubt; often, early hardware isn't quite at production levels. Now that the Fire HDX is in buyer's hands, though, it seems that the blue bleed is endemic. And after doing a little research, we've discovered that the HDX's stunning display and its blue bleed are related.

Our review sample, with blue bleed in full effect.

The Kindle Fire HDX's 1080p 1920x1200, 7-inch display is built by LG. For movies and most UI experiences, everything looks fantastic. Open the browser, however, and you're likely to run into the problem: a faint blue haze glows along some edges of the screen, especially when the screen is mostly white. That blue bleed was evident for users that read with the light background in the Kindle app. Since reading is an integral experience to all Kindles, this problem has caused a considerable amount of consternation.

Amazon seems to be trying to get ahead of that consternation, though; if you check the order page for the Kindle Fire HDX, you'll see a little disclaimer regarding what Amazon describes as "a blue tint around the edge of the device." The company also states that "[a]ll displays have some level of light emission around the edges, and the light on the Kindle Fire HDX 7" is blue due to the technology used to render perfect color accuracy." The first part of that statement is true, but it was the second part that really got us curious.

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Phonebloks was a campaign that focused upon attracting the interest of OEMs by showing that there was an incredible amount of interest for a modular phone. This was mostly for reasons of reducing electronics waste, the potential for incredible customization, and the potential for reduced upgrade costs associated with the 1-2 year upgrade cycle. As the current model requires the purchase of an entire phone, upgrading a single “module”, or a set of modules that would update the device would reduce the cost of upgrading to the consumer, much like the current desktop PC system of upgrading individual components.

However, at the time it seemed unlikely that such a campaign would ever produce a meaningful result in the industry. Now, it might be less so as Motorola announced Project Ara, a platform that promises the same modularity that the Phonebloks campaign was promoting, and has also partnered with the creator of the Phonebloks campaign for this project.The concept is largely the same, with an endoskeleton and modules that make up the phone. The display, following the Phonebloks concept, is also likely to be its own module. While actual details of the concept are effectively nil, there are still an enormous number of challenges that such a design would face.

The first would be from a purely hardware perspective, as there is an unavoidable tradeoff between volumetric efficiency and modularity in such a design. While modern smartphones are effectively a tight stack of PCB, battery, and display, this adds in an entire interface for each module that connects them together. This means that the memory module would effectively go from the size of an average eMMC chip to around a full-size SD card due to the need for a durable interface that would connect it to the rest of the phone. This is most readily seen by the differences between the international and Korean LG G2, as the international variant has a ~15% larger battery by virtue of the sealed design that allowed for LG Chemicon’s curved battery pack with thinner walls to allow for more battery capacity.

The second issue in this case would be regulatory, as the FCC only tests single configurations for approval. Such a design would be incredibly challenging to get approval for as there could easily be unpredictable RF behavior from unexpected behavior from a specific setup of modules, or issues with the endoskeleton portion because the modules aren't all part of a single PCB that is unlikely to suffer issues with short circuits or other connection issues, while a modular design would face such challenges.

The final major issue is that of history, as the failure of Intel’s Whitebook initiative from 2006 makes it much harder to see a similar initiative succeeding in the smartphone space. As the Whitebook initiative promised a DIY, modular laptop, much like Phonebloks and Project Ara, and failed due to the rise of completely integrated laptop designs such as the Apple rMBP line, it seems unlikely that such a project would succeed without significant compromise, either in modularity or in competitiveness with the more integrated smartphones. While laptops like the rMBP are effectively impossible for the user to repair, much less open, they have become incredibly popular, and the PC OEMs have followed Apple’s lead in this regard, with consumer demand generally tending towards thinner and lighter laptops, just as the same demand seems to occur in the smartphone space, it is difficult to see such an initiative succeeding. While such initiatives are sure to garner widespread enthusiast support, enthusiasts generally lose their ability to influence the market once a market segment becomes popular with general consumers, as can be seen by the PC industry. However, it remains to be seen whether there is mass-market appeal for such a phone, and it may well be that Motorola is tapping a niche with enormous potential.

In a story posted today on Forbes, Altera has announced that they have entered into a partnership with Intel to have their next generations 64-bit ARM chips produced at Intel’s fabs. Details on precisely what process technology will be used on the upcoming chips are scant, but 22nm would give anyone willing to pay Intel’s price a leg up on the competition, and of course Intel will be moving to 14nm in the future. Really, this announcement would be interesting even if someone were to merely use Intel’s older 32nm fabs.

Intel has apparently inked deals with other companies as well. The Inquirer has this quote from an Intel spokesperson: “We have several design wins thus far and the announcement with Altera in February is an important step towards Intel's overall foundry strategy. Intel will continue to be selective on customers we will enable on our leading edge manufacturing process.”

The key there is the part about being “selective”, but I would guess it’s more a question of whether a company has the volume as well as the money to pay Intel, rather than whether or not Intel would be willing to work with them. This announcement opens the doors for future opportunities – NVIDIA GPUs on Intel silicon would surely be interesting, but given that AMD has gone fabless as well we could also see their future CPUs/GPUs fabbed by Intel.

If we take things back another step, the reality of the semiconductor business is that fabs are expensive to build and maintain. Then they need to be updated every couple of years to the latest technology, or at least new fabs need to be built to stay competitive. If you can’t run your fabs more or less at capacity, you start to fall behind on all fronts. If Intel can more than utilize all of their fabrication assets, it’s a different story, but that era appears to be coming to a close.

The reason for this is pretty simple. We’re seeing a major plateau in terms of the computing performance most people need on a regular basis these days. Give me an SSD and I am perfectly fine running most of my everyday tasks on an old Core 2 Duo or Core 2 Quad. The difference between Bloomfield, Sandy Bridge, Ivy Bridge, and Haswell processors is likewise shrinking each generation – my i7-965X that I’m typing this on continues to run very well, thank you very much! If people and businesses aren’t upgrading as frequently, then you need to find other ways to keep your fabs busy, and selling production to other companies is the low hanging fruit.

Regardless of the reasons behind the move, this marks a new era in Intel fabrication history. It will be interesting to see what other chips end up being fabbed at Intel over the next year or two. 

Today, Microsoft announced the third developer update to Windows Phone 8, which brings support for larger screens, and 1080p display resolution. This also means a larger start screen, going from 4 to 6 live tiles of horizontal space (on larger screens), but otherwise maintaining similar start screen design. GDR3 also brings support for the 8x74 SoCs, better known as Snapdragon 800.

There are also some other usability features added to the phone, such as driving mode, which disables many types of notifications and turns on an auto-respond feature to prevent distractions. It seems to work automatically based upon a paired Bluetooth device that is remembered.

Accessibility is also improved, with a screen reader similar to Talkback on Android. The internet sharing feature finally brings Bluetooth tethering. Other feature additions include custom ringtones for more items like IMs, and personalized call/text ringtones based upon contacts, autorotation lock, native management of the “Other storage” files and better file management in general, a tap to close application function similar to iOS 7, WebOS, and Android 4.x, although differing in UI implementation, immediate WiFi connection on startup, and general improvements to the Bluetooth stack.

While many features have been implemented in this update, many such features have been significantly delayed in implementation when compared to Android or iOS. While iOS seems to be staying in the 300 PPI range for mobile displays, Android is in a race to ever greater resolutions, as seen by the rapid spread of 400+PPI displays. Windows Phone seems to be stuck in the middle of this because while it may make sense to stick with ~300 PPI from a battery life perspective, due to the approximate 20% jump in power draw on the display from the increased backlight requirements, it seems that Windows Phone is mostly compared against Android devices, not iOS. This also seems to make things more difficult for Microsoft, as the update cadence simply doesn’t stack up when compared to the rate at which Google iterates Android, and the design of the OS is simply not well suited to widely varying screen sizes and pixel densities, a trait shared by iOS, but not by Android, which has proven to be extremely important as displays have taken five notable jumps in resolution in the past four years, with a huge number of variations when it comes to screen size. It remains to be seen whether Microsoft will amp up the pace when it comes to the Windows Phone update cycle, specifically in the areas of SoC support, resolution/DPI support, and general UI additions, but for now, this update seems to be a continuation of previous strategies and with little change in the execution of said strategies. 

Wired UK

Pride and diversity. Dependency and acquaintance. Pride and nostalgia. Sun and moon.

These are the answers given by Nokia's vice president of software, the research director of ETLA (the Research Institute of the Finnish Economy), Finland's minister of European Affairs and Foreign Trade, and the CEO of Jolla—now Finland's new smartphone hope. The question was: use one word to describe Nokia's historic relationship with Finland and one word to describe it in the future. For those of you confused by the last answer, it has to do with which orbits which.

The trend is striking, even from Nokia itself. The company that built a country has lost its aura and relinquished the controls.

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