Bharadwaj Chandramouli | Fone Arena

How Samsung Became the Only Company with Two Successful Flagship Smartphones

The IFA event at Berlin, one of the increasingly important consumer electronic trade shows, just started, but tons of devices have already been launched. Amongst them, standing out from the crowd, is the Samsung Galaxy Note 3, unveiled with much excitement and fervor, as leaks failed to provide proper information before launch. The Note 3 is the third iteration of the very popular Note series of devices Samsung made popular. The range, infamously held responsible for creating the phablet phenomenon, also created a paradigm shift in the company, for its portfolio.

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Samsung Galaxy Note 3 vs Sony Xperia Z Ultra Hands on Comparison

sony-xperia-z-ultra-vs-samsung-galaxy-note-3

Samsung just unveiled the highly anticipated Galaxy Note 3 at their IFA unpacked event today. Boasting a beautiful 5.7 inch full HD Super AMOLED display with a 2.3 GHz Snapdragon 800 Processor and 3 GB of RAM, it is easily one of the most powerful devices that have launched till date. But there was also another Snapdragon 800 device that impressed us with its performance and that was the Xperia Z Ultra, the first 6.44 inch device from Sony. How do both these phablets look side by side, and how do they fare in a quick comparison? We shot a video to show you how –

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MZZMJEHnoHY

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Qualcomm announces its own Smartwatch – the Toq, with a Mirasol display that can last for days

You just witnessed the “Sixth Sense” guy Pranav Mistry reveal the latest Samsung Galaxy Gear Smartwatch with much excitement, but Qualcomm had their own “Digital sixth sense” idea. The guys behind the Snapdragon processors have just announced their own implementation of a wearable computer – the Toq Smartwatch. Pronounced “Talk”, the smartwatch has been blessed with Qualcomm’s own technologies like the super low power reflective display tech – Mirasol, Qualcomm WiPower wireless charging and proprietary Qualcomm MEMS technology. Skip past the break for more details and watch this video now –

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YzTrqifCOhs#t=15

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Samsung Galaxy Gear with 1.63inch display announced at IFA

Samsung Galaxy Gear smart watch finally went official at the IFA 2013 event in Berlin, Germany. The Galaxy Gear was one of the most expected devices at the Samsung Unpacked 2. Galaxy Gear smart watch comes with a 1.63inch 320×320 pixels AMOLED display.

samsung-galaxy-gear

In terms of design, the front of the Galaxy Gear is dominated by the display and it is surrounded by metal frame (unusual for Samsung). The strap on the smart watch is made of rubber and as predicted by the rumors, there is a camera that is built onto the strap. The Galaxy Gear isn’t anything on its own and it mainly serves as a companion for your smartphone. The Galaxy Gear is connected to the smartphone via Bluetooth.

Since only the latest version of Android (4.3 Jellybean) supports Low energy bluetooth profile, the number of compatible devices is expected to be limited at launch.

When connected to a smartphone, the Galaxy Gear will have the ability to receive calls, take voice memos and it will display all the notifications from your smartphone.

Samsung Galaxy Gear smart watch Specifications

800MHz Single core processor
1.63inch 320×320 AMOLED display ( 277ppi)
1.9MP AutoFocus camera with BSI sensor
720p playback and recording
Bluetooth 4.0
4GB internal memory + 512MB RAM
315mAh battery

The Galaxy Gear smart watch will be available in six different colors at launch – Jet Black, Mocha Gray, Wild Orange, Oatmeal Beige, Rose Gold, and Lime Green.

There is no word on pricing yet, but the Galaxy Gear will be launching along with Galaxy Note 3 on September 25th across 140 countries.

Samsung Galaxy Note 3 with 5.7inch Full HD display announced, shipping starts Sept 25

Samsung has just announced the third iteration of their successful premium phablet series – Galaxy Note 3. The Galaxy Note 3 was announced at the IFA 2013 in Berlin, Germany. The Galaxy Note 3 comes with a 5.7inch Full HD Super AMOLED display. Just like their flagship smartphone, the Galaxy Note 3 will come in two variants – the international variant sporting the Exynos Octa chipset and the USA variant sporting the Snapdragon 800 SoC. Both the variants will come with 3GB RAM and will have 16/32/64GB variants and a microSD card slot.

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Sony’s Camera Remote APIs lets you write viewfinder apps for its cameras

Sony just unveiled its new range of Camera lenses that use your Smartphone as a viewfinder. Pretty cool concept, but what if one wants to adopt similar functionality for Sony’s other cameras and make specialized apps for the same? Well, Sony’s got you covered as they have just announced their all new Camera Remote APIs that will let you write Viewfinder apps for their cameras, not just their Camera lenses. And since the APIs are platform agnostic, you can literally write camera viewfinder apps for literally any platform.

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Sony releases the WG-C20, a more portable 2nd gen Wireless Server for your Smartphone

Remember the crazy WCG-10 wireless server from Sony? They have released a successor to it, but it now looks a lot slimmer, just like the Xperia devices, and it can now charge them too! Funnily enough, at first glance, one would think it is actually the back of a Xperia device. A quick recap of what it does is, it’s a portable solution that can connect wirelessly to your smartphone and back-up files, or even let you access the files already in the server and play it back. Pretty interesting concept, that is possibly better explained in a video –

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQAgFYufDDE

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Sony DSC QX10 and DSC QX100 Camera Lenses officially launched for $250 and $500 respectively

Hot on the heels of the new camera-centric Sony Xperia Z1, the company just announced their new range of camera lenses at the Pre-IFA press conference. The Sony DSC QX10 and DSC QX100 are one of a kind camera lenses that act as your Smartphone’s own camera, with the former acting as the camera’s viewfinder. It is a pretty intriguing concept only slightly hindered by the pricing, coming in at $250 for the QX10 and $500 for the QX100. The QX100 is a high end camera lens with specifications of the RX100MII Point and Shoot camera, while the QX10 is a cheaper long zoom camera lens, both with a wireless viewfinder as the display. Still trying to wrap around the concept? This video might help –

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0TWh3EvSZ_0

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Alcatel refreshes the One Touch series with super thin Idol Alpha, Idol S and Idol Mini smartphones

Alcatel, the French company well known for its Enterprise level communications equipment is also responsible for some of the consumer facing devices in the One Touch range of Android Smartphones. After launching the One Touch Idol X, the flagship of the portfolio, the company has also released three other phones in all sizes and prices. The three new phones that have launched in the One Touch series are the Idol Alpha, the Idol S and the Idol Mini. This is along with the new Phablet and the Tablet from the same series.

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Samsung S-View Cover on the Galaxy S4 Google Play Edition, it works

The Samsung Galaxy S4 Google Play Edition was launched with much anticipation, as to how it will work and how the updates will roll out. While the immediate roll out of 4.3 inspired confidence there was always a worry that buying the S4 Google Play Edition will strip out all the important features of TouchWiz. While that still stands true, we found that one neat feature of the TouchWiz enabled S4 still works for the Google Play Edition, and that is the S4 View Cover functionality. We snapped the S4’s S-View Cover on to the S4 GPE and shot a quick demo of it for you –

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fVMK2JC7z5Y

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Did Google just accidentally leak the LG Nexus 5?

Having announced the Google KitKat partnership for the next version of Android, the company released a video showing a celebratory installation of the new mascot in GooglePlex. This video might have looked normal at first, but keen eyes spotted a weird new device with the Nexus branding on the back. Could this be the unannounced Google Nexus 5? Also, if the logo is inspected at close, it looks to be made by LG. Unless our eyes fool us, this might actually be the upcoming Nexus 5 phone from Google, made by LG.

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Apple sends out invites for a colourful September 10th event, hints at iPhone 5C

Apple has finally decided to make the yearly “new iPhone” day official. September 10th is the date, so mark your calendars if you haven’t already, because it’s been a while since Apple reporters predicted the exact launch date of the new Apple iPhone(s). With coloured flat bubbles dominating the invite, it’s quite easy to understand that the iPhone 5C might be what Apple is indicating here.

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Android 4.4 KitKat is the next sweet Google update you’ll crave for

Out of the blue, Google have announced the codename for the next version of their Android operating system. The next sweet Google update is called Android 4.4 KitKat. The next update has been just named and no other details have been revealed, but that isn’t the real story here, it’s the name. Google and Nestle are now in a bizarre tie-up to promote Android KitKat. Watch the hilarious parody promo video from KitKat –

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OKOrkLxOBoY

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Nokia Lumia 1020 Camera Grip Unboxing

The Nokia Lumia 1020 was shown off as the best camera on a smartphone at the announcement in New York. Our initial impressions of the device echoed the same thoughts but what makes it an even greater camera is the accessory that released along with the device. Yes, the Nokia Lumia 1020 launched along with a unique camera grip accessory that enhances the usage of the Lumia 1020 as a camera. You might have note in our unboxing that we definitely wanted to own the accessory soon, and that we did. Here’s an unboxing of the camera grip in video –

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RTZ08GOLfQw

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Nokia Lumia 1520 “Bandit” Screenshot reveals a cluttered GDR3 start screen

EVLeaks, the guy known for most leaks these days has revealed yet another interesting bit of information today, pertaining to the future of Windows Phone. On the day of the huge Microsoft-Nokia announcement, this leak comes as something to look forward to, but then after taking a single glance at it will be quite the opposite of a reaction. Yes, what you see above in the leaked image is an indirect confirmation of the existence of Nokia Lumia 1520 codenamed “bandit” and a quick look at the cluttered look of the Windows Phone GDR3’s 1080p supported start screen.

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