E Ink Holdings (EIH) will suspend a cooperation agreement it signed with LG Display for the production of FFS (fringe field switching) LCD panels and will buy back a sum of corporate bonds (CBs) issued by its Korea-based subsidiary Hydis Technologies from LG Display, according to EIH.
FFS, originally developed by Hydis, has performance similar to IPS and has been used in lieu of IPS LCDs. E Ink will manufacture FFS LCD panels at Chunghwa Picture Tubes’s (CPT) G6 fab.
Samsung has a new ad. It’s about the Galaxy S II smartphone. No, it’s more about people who stand in line to get iPhones. Actually, it’s a bit of both.
Maybe it’s because it was only yesterday, but I can’t help but compare Samsung’s ad to Apple’s iPad 2 ad titled ‘Love’. The iPad ad made me feel good; the Samsung ad frustrated me enough to write this post.
John Gruber gets to the heart of the problem:
This one from Samsung is more “people who buy iPhones are image-conscious fad-following idiots”.
The part that gets me is around the 30 second mark when the Apple guys are looking at someone’s Galaxy S II side by side with an iPhone 4:
A guy: Oooh.
Second guy: Check out this screen; this thing is huge.
Third guy: It’s pretty massive.
What Samsung wants you to believe is that bigger is better when it comes to a smartphone. The 3.5-inch 960×640 IPS LCD used in the iPhone 4 and the iPhone 4S is small and therefore not as good.
The Galaxy S II packs a 4.3-inch Super AMOLED Plus display that uses RGB sub-pixels in its 800×480 pixel format. So it definitely is bigger, by 0.8 inches.
When it comes to display specs one of the most important indicators of how good your visual experience will be is resolution. Resolution as in pixel density, the proper definition. Apple kicked up the relevance of resolution several notches when it introduced the iPhone 4. Along with it came the 3.5-inch 960×640 IPS LCD with a resolution of 326 ppi or Retina Display.
The Samsung Galaxy S II has a bigger display, certainly, but the resolution is 217 ppi. That is significantly lower than 326. And that means everything is less crisp. You get more of less.
Here are some other things to consider. OLEDs die sooner than LCDs. If you are ever in Seoul, South Korea keep your eyes open for bluish tinted smartphones. Those are smartphones with OLEDs that have circuitry that compensates for the blue OLED phosphor that dies out quicker than the red and green. Sure most of you don’t want to keep your smartphone more than the two year contract, but wouldn’t it be better to be able to sell your smartphone to get some money back?
Then there’s power consumption. Some people seem to think that OLED displays consume less power than LCDs. Well, that’s generally not true. OLED displays consume more power than LCDs with one exception: When you’re watching videos. Because the overall brightness levels are on average darker than anything else you do on your smartphone OLED displays consume less power than LCDs. The brighter the display the more power OLED consumes.
To conclude, yes the Samsung Galaxy S II has a bigger display than the iPhone. But bigger in this case means, well, bigger and that’s about it. The iPhone’s Retina Display has a significantly higher resolution, which I consider to be one of the most important specs in determining whether you’ll be getting a fantastic visual experience, or not. And this is not to say that the Galaxy S II doesn’t look good; it does. But what I am saying is the iPhone 4/4S with the smaller but higher resolution display looks better.
NPD reported January through October U.S. tablets sales, excluding iPads:
PC manufacturers are dominant in the tablet space, as four of the top five tablet brands already have a strong U.S. consumer PC presence. Only two of the top five brands play in the smartphone market.
PC manufacturers are not dominant in the tablet space. Companies that provide a complete ecosystem — hardware, software, app stores, movies, TV shows, books and periodicals — are. PC manufacturers are utterly failing in the tablet market. The only thing you can learn from NPD’s report is that tablet market share numbers sure do look different when you don’t count any of the tablets that people are actually buying.
NPD reports on U.S. point of sale (POS) data that covers roughly 65% of the market. Not included in NPD POS data are retailers such as Costco, Walmart, Sam’s Club, etc. These retailers are massive and Walmart in particular sells a variety of tablets. Here is a list of tablets Walmart sells online, up to date as of yesterday: Velocity Micro Cruz T301, BlackBerry PlayBook, Maylong M-250, Filemate Identity, Motorola Xoom, Acer Iconia Tab/10.1, Acer Iconia W500, Toshiba Thrive, Kaser Net’s Go, ASUS Eee Pad Transformer, Samsung Galaxy Tab, Arhos 70/100, Coby Kyros MID8024/1125, Sony Tablet S, E Fun Next5/6, ViewSonic ViewPad 10, Sungale Beam (7- and 10-inch), iCan Tablet, Ematic eGlide, Vizio VTAB1008, and Lepan TC970. Costco sells the Samsung Galaxy Tab/7.0 Plus, Toshiba Thrive, Acer Iconia A500, and Vizio VTAB1008.
Barnes and Noble doesn’t release tablet sales figures. And Kindle Fire tablet sales data will most likely not be available from Amazon either based on how secretive the company has been with E Ink-based Kindle sales.
In the near future tablet sales will increasingly come from companies like Amazon—companies that do not share tablet sales information—and maintaining relevancy for its U.S. tablet POS data will be quite a challenge for NPD going forward.
No.
In an interview last week with Forbes, Microsoft Chief Research and Strategy Officer Craig Mundie said that Siri’s capabilities are not Apple-specific, and notes that Windows Phone’s similar “Tellme” technology has been functional for over a year.
You can watch Forbes’ Eric Savitz interview with Craig Mundie on YouTube.
John Gruber on Tellme:
Not bad at all — but not Siri.
Tellme ≠ Siri.
According to The Verge:
via John Gruber. Christian Zibreg, 9to5Mac:
Both VIA and HTC share the same owner, Formosa Plastics Group, a Taiwanese conglomerate whose diverse interests include biotechnology, petrochemical processing and production of electronics components. The entity is owned by the Wang family. The wife of VIA Technologies’ CEO is Ms. Cher Wang, chairperson and co-founder of HTC. In July, VIA Technologies, the original owner of S3 Graphics, won a lawsuit against Apple over infringement of two of S3 Graphics’ patents in Mac products.
Plan A: Transfer S3 from VIA to HTC. Hit Apple hard. Plan B: Let’s not implement Plan A.
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