First, Amazon beat Apple and Google to the punch, announcing a cloud-based music locker. Now the Internet retailer says owners of its Kindle e-reader – which competes against the iPad – can avoid the New York Times’ newly-erected Paywall.
I’ve been waiting for something like Amazon’s Cloud Drive to store my photos, music, and videos online. With recent outages of cloud-based services like Gmail and Netflix there is always a concern about your data simply disappearing because of some glitch. I don’t know whether or not that’s something that we need to accept as we move increasingly more toward the cloud, but I’m assuming Amazon’s S3 datacenter is as secure as any other. There’s just one thing missing though: an iOS app.
That’s punch one. Punch two: subscribe to the New York Times on your Kindle and access the nytimes.com as much as you want and without any hassles. I wonder if I can do this with the Kindle app on my iPhone…
UK carrier O2 has decided to do exactly what we’ve been asking mobile operators to do for donkeys’ years — it’s going to allow users to chew through their data allowance in whatever fashion they like, without imposing artificial surcharges for tethering secondary devices to your phone.
A mobile operator making business decisions that actually makes sense to smartphone-toting folks like you and me. Smart, very smart. Now, can we get some of this sensibility across the pond?
Mobile Review via Boy Genius Report:
According to intel acquired by blog Mobile Review, LG has been tasked with producing a pure-Google, Nexus tablet for the Mountain View-based Android maker.
As far as I know all Honeycomb tablets are pure, since Google has not opened up the source code so that brands can make modifications. Nonetheless Google has a history of working with a major brand to build a halo product. The Google Nexus One was a collaboration with HTC. The current Nexus S is with Samsung. I guess LG is up next. Might it be called the Nexus Q?
Apple’s apparent focus on software in its WWDC announcement backs up what my own sources are saying about the annual conference. That is, expect a software show in 2011, not a hardware event.
I was expecting the next iPhone to be announced in the middle of this year. So were many others. I wasn’t expecting a completely revamped iPhone 5. Instead I’ve written that it would most likely be a speed bump incorporating Apple’s new A5 chip into the same industrial design with the name iPhone 4S.
But maybe Apple is waiting as it often does, for technology or something else to be ready for its next iPhone. If Apple decides not to unveil its next iPhone during WWDC 2011 that can possibly mean that Apple wants to wait for AT&T.
It isn’t too difficult to see that the next jump in data connectivity for smartphones is LTE. Verizon is ahead of the competition and AT&T is following from way behind. Three extra months for AT&T would allow the carrier to build up a larger more palpable LTE network and allow Apple to unveil an iPhone that has LTE capability and expect brisk sales on both AT&T and Verizon. Why would Apple wait for AT&T?
Sales of the Verizon iPhone 4 has been strong but not stratospheric. At best the demand for the CDMA iPhone 4 is on par with the GSM version. One aspect of the CDMA iPhone 4 that gets little attention is Verizon itself. Personally I don’t trust Verizon to do what is right for the customer and its backend accounting system seems to be light years behind AT&T’s. Does that mean I trust AT&T? No, I don’t trust either, but I trust Verizon much less. This stems from having experienced both Verizon and AT&T for several years and I can tell you AT&T is more straight forward. Verizon, on the other hand, has only one goal in mind: do everything to maximize revenue per user. They will always up-sell, always pimp overpriced peripherals, always find an angle to get you to sign up for more. Then there are all sorts of accounting errors on your bill, or multiple bills for the same period. I think others get this about Verizon. The other obvious reason is that a lot of iPhone users on AT&T are still stuck with their two-year agreements. Whatever the reason sales of the iPhone 4 for Verizon haven’t been stellar.
The bottom line is that Apple needs both Verizon and AT&T to successfully launch the next iPhone. I think it would be beneficial to Apple if the iPhone was available on T-Mobile and Sprint, too. In the case of the iPhone more competition is better. Think of the additional 2GB of data for tethering offered by AT&T. Would that have happened if the iPhone 4 was still an exclusive? The extra 1000 minutes? Might not be directly related, but somehow I think it is. More competition is good for us iPhone customers.
So Apple needs AT&T to have some semblance of a LTE network in the US if the company wants to announce the next iPhone with LTE capability. Apple should not and probably will not let Verizon runaway with LTE. That could be the reason why Apple might not unveil the next iPhone at WWDC 2011 and wait until September.
Traditionally, the ceiling for the efficiency of fluorescent OLEDs was believed to be 5 percent. Now, Kieffer and his collaborators have produced fluorescent OLEDs with close to 10 percent efficiency.
Professor John Kieffer and graduate student Changgua Zhen doubled the external quantum efficiency of blue OLEDs from 5% to 10%. This is good news as blue OLEDs have had the lowest efficiency among the three primary colors. Due to differences in efficiencies it has been a difficult balancing act of minimizing differential aging.
So what are the EQEs of green and red? I’ve googled high and low, but I haven’t found anything definitive. It seems green fluorescent OLEDs have an EQE of around 7-10% with reds more in the 15% range. I think I’ll need to ping my friends who are more knowledgeable. Stay tuned.
It’s not an unqualified disaster, as viewing angles are pretty wide, the 854 x 480 resolution is decent, and under the right circumstances you can obtain some pleasantly vibrant images from it, but it’s still one the worst screens we’ve seen on a review phone — hell, review hardware of any kind. This was most apparent to us outdoors when we used it side by side with Sony Ericsson’s own Xperia Arc, the latter handset giving us better contrast, saturation, and of course, brightness.
The most important component on a smartphone, tablet, or computer is the display. Wouldn’t you agree? Yes, everything is important and Apple shows us that the complete package is what maximizes experience, but if you were to choose just one I would think it’d be the display.
Obviously Sony Ericsson didn’t think so. The display on the Xperia Play seems to be so terrible that Vlad Savov at Engadget deemed it the worst display on a review phone he’s ever seen. He might be exaggerating a bit but my recommendation is to make sure to test the Xperia Play outside before signing two years of your life away.
The Sony Ericsson Xperia Play is targeted at boys (old and young) who have time and are generally free from having to drive themselves.
During my four month stay in South Korea last year, I put on a lot of miles riding in the clean, efficient subway system in Seoul. Every time, without exception, there was someone texting, watching TV, or playing games. Guys played on iPhones, iPod touches, and Sony PSPs. Girls played, too, but not a single one on PSPs.
The Xperia Play is a very niche product targeted at guys who demand exceptional display performance and who will complain bitterly because Sony Ericsson dropped the ball.
Gretchen Dahlkemper-Alfonso via TreeHugger:
Many of these air pollutants are damaging to the health of my family, and I am particularly concerned with the dangerous amounts of mercury that these coal-fired power plants release into our air and water – and into the bodies of my children.
There are currently zero limits on how much life-threatening pollutants such as mercury, arsenic, etc. can be emitted by power plants.
Also according to EPA, at least 1 in 12, and as many as one in six women of child-bearing age has enough mercury in her body to put her unborn child at risk.
In addition to the air, we should be aware that all the CFL bulbs that we installed because we wanted to save energy and be green include trace amounts of mercury. Each CFL bulb may not contain enough mercury to make a difference but tens of millions will eventually need to be replaced. And some of them will make it into landfills and into our environment. The best bet for lighting? LED bulbs. Though they are expensive, they last much longer than CFLs, and are mercury-free. And consider purchasing LED-backlit LCD monitors as well as TVs to lessen the demand for mercury-containing CCFL backlights.
The Samsung display, model number LTN154MT07, has an LED-backlight and is the same one as used in the current MacBook Pro’s predecessor from 2010. This has been confirmed by some users of the glossy-screen model. The maximum screen brightness of 302 cd/m² and average of 288 cd/m² make this display rank in among the best of them. In terms of sharpness, color crispness and contrast, the picture appears excellent, by no means worse than the glossy version.
Excellent, but like almost all LCDs used in notebooks, viewing angles on the LTN154MT07 need to be improved. I’ve been holding my breath a good long time for an IPS equipped MacBook. I hope it’s coming soon.
Also known as the Samsung Galaxy Player 5, with a 5-inch display.
Fritz Nelson at InformationWeek:
The latest one-upmanship centers on size. While I don’t care whether the iPad 2 or the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 is a couple of sheets of paper thinner than the other, that Samsung would go through such a redesign so quickly shows what’s at stake here. Samsung’s spokesman said the company doesn’t enter a market where it doesn’t intend to be No. 1. In response to the pictures directly below (the iPad 2 is the device on the left), there was really no official Samsung response other than to say that the specifications are 8.6 mm. He was at a loss for words. I’ll bring my calipers on June 8; meantime, these pictures will have to suffice, at least for those who care about these quibbles.
In the photos that Nelson is referring to, the iPad 2 without a doubt looks thinner. The iPad 2 is the tablet to beat and I don’t think it is impossible. Far from. The iPad 2 uses a 9.7-inch LCD module with the casing all around the LCD panel and the backlight unit. Apple slid just the LCD panel and the BLU into a module-less unibody aluminum display chassis in the new 11.6-inch MacBook Air. Apple shaved millimeters off the thickness of the MacBook Air. This same trick can be used to make the already thin iPad 2 even thinner in the next iPad.
And then there’s something else: the cover glass and the LCD isn’t even optically bonded, so there is a small air gap between the two. By optically laminating the two Apple could make the iPad 3 even thinner. The crazy thing is that Apple has already been working on the iPad 3 for quite some time now. Doesn’t bode well for competitors.
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