Tag Archives: smartphones

First sight of Firefox OS at Mobile World Congress

February 25, 2013 Tim Anderson

Alcatel OneTouch has a preview of its Firefox OS smartphone on display at its stand here in Barcelona.

3.5” HVGA, 1Ghz CPU, 3.2Mp camera, 256Mb RAM, 180Mb internal storage, MicroSD, 1400mAh battery.

and to give you the scale

The phone looks ordinary, but bear in mind the Mozilla philosophy which is more geared to universal, open access than to high-end smartphones for the few.

Several well-known names have signed up, but that in itself does not mean much. What counts is the extent of that commitment. A device like this one looks more about “let’s put it out and see who bites” rather than serious investment.

The app story (HTML 5 based, naturally) is key and I will be investigating later.

mobile, smartphones

Common sense on non-upgradeable Windows 7 Phones

June 21, 2012 Tim Anderson 10 Comments

Poor old Microsoft. It announces a strong set of features for the next generation of Windows Phones, which I have covered in some detail here, including the news that it will be built on the full Windows 8 kernel, not the cut-down Windows CE as before. So how do people react? Not so much with acclaim for these features, but rather with shock and disappointment at the dreadful news: existing Windows Phone 7.x handsets cannot be upgraded to Windows Phone 8. This must be the end of Nokia, the argument goes, as sales will now stop dead until the new one is on sale.

Of course it would be better if Microsoft had managed to stay compatible with current hardware, but I think the fuss is overdone. Here is why.

First, we have seen this coming. It has been known for ages that Windows Phone would move from Windows CE to Windows 8. I first posted about it in March 2011 and it was fully confirmed about in February this year.
Second, it was never likely that Windows Phone 8 would run on Windows Phone 7 hardware. Perhaps it could be made to run, but of course you would not get multi-core, and it would probably not run well. A change of operating system is hard to accommodate.
Third, upgradability of smartphones is always an uncertain business. Operators do not like firmware upgrades, since it only causes them hassle. Some users like them, but mostly the vocal minority of tech enthusiasts, rather than the less vocal majority who simply want their phones to keep on working.
Fourth, Microsoft is in fact upgrading Windows Phone 7.x devices, with the most visible aspect of the upgrade, the new start screen. It is not ideal, but it is substantial; and there will be other new features in Windows Phone 7.8.

I doubt therefore that Windows Phone 7 sales will stop dead because of this.

Microsoft’s bigger problem, of course, is that the thing is not selling that well anyway. At this stage, it makes sense for the company to go all-out with the best possible features in Windows Phone 8, rather than compromising for the sake of the relatively small number of 7.x owners.

Another question: is Nokia damaged by this? My view is simple. Nokia, for better or worse, has tied its fortunes closely to those of Microsoft. In other words, what is good for Microsoft is good for Nokia. Nokia is the number one hardware partner for Windows Phone, and the prototype shown at the Windows Summit yesterday was a Nokia device. If Windows Phone 8 is a winner, Nokia wins too.

development, mobile, professional, software development

GPU programming coming to low-power and mobile devices – from EU Mont Blanc supercomputer to smartphones

November 14, 2011 onlyconnect

Supercomputing and low-power computing are not normally associated; but at the SC11 Supercomputing conference the Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC) has announced a new supercomputer, called the called the Mont-Blanc Project, which will combine the ARM-based NVIDIA Tegra SoC with separate CUDA GPUs. CUDA is NVIDIA’s parallel computing architecture, enabling general purpose computing on the GPU.

The project’s publicity says this enables power saving of 15 to 30 times, versus today’s supercomputers:

The analysis of the performance of HPC systems since 1993 shows exponential improvements at the rate of one order of magnitude every 3 years: One petaflops was achieved in 2008, one exaflops is expected in 2020. Based on a 20 MW power budget, this requires an efficiency of 50 GFLOPS/Watt. However, the current leader in energy efficiency achieves only 1.7n GFLOPS/Watt. Thus, a 30x improvement is required.

NVIDIA is also creating a new hardware and software development kit for Tegra + CUDA, to be made available in the first half of 2012.

The combination of fast concurrent processing, low power draw and mobile devices is enticing. Features like speech recognition and smart cameras depend on rapid processing, and the technology has the potential to make smart devices very much smarter.

NVIDIA has competition though. ARM, which designs most of the CPUs in use on smartphones and tablets today, has recently started designing mobile GPUs as well, and its Mali series supports OpenCL, an open alternative to CUDA for general-purpose computing on the GPU. The Mali-T604 has 1 to 4 cores while the recently announced Mali-T658 has 1 to 8 cores. ARM specifically optimises its GPUs to work alongside its CPUs, which must be a concern for GPU specialists such as NVIDIA. However, we have yet to see devices with either T604 or T658: the first T604 devices are likely to appear in 2012, and T658 in 2013.

mobile

Nokia results: demonstrating the Osborne effect?

July 21, 2011 Tim Anderson 1 Comment

Here’s Wikipedia:

The Osborne effect is a term referring to the unintended consequence of the announcement of a future product ahead of its availability and its impact upon the sales of the current product.

The reference is to Osborne Computer Corporation, a pioneer of early personal computers, which announced the next generation of its range long before it was available. Sales of the current model immediately dived, and the company went bankrupt.

In February this year, Nokia announced that it was abandoning its Linux-based MeeGo smartphone OS, then in development, and that Symbian would be reserved for low-end phones. Its future smartphone strategy will be based on Windows Phone.

Now here come the results:

The challenges we are facing during our strategic transformation manifested in a greater than expected way in Q2 2011.

says the release, which report an 11% decline in sales quarter-on-quarter and an operating loss:

In the period from January to June 2011, net financial expense was EUR 74 million (EUR 141 million). Loss before tax was EUR 141 million (profit before tax EUR 632 million). Loss was EUR 261 million (profit EUR 279 million), based on a loss of EUR 24 million (profit of EUR 576 million) attributable to equity holders of the parent and a loss of EUR 237 million (loss of EUR 297 million) attributable to non-controlling interests. Earnings per share was EUR -0.01 (basic) and EUR -0.01 (diluted), compared with EUR 0.16 (basic) and EUR 0.16 (diluted) in January-June 2010.

Would these results have been better, if Nokia had not bet its business on Microsoft’s mobile OS back in February? My guess is that they would. Nokia in effect announced the obsolescence of all its current Smartphone range. Smart device sales are down 32% year on year.

Still, even the Osborne effect does not account for the decline in its sales of feature phones, down 20% year on year and 25% quarter on quarter. This is what Nokia says:

The year-on-year and sequential declines in our Mobile Phones volumes were driven by distributors and operators purchasing fewer of our mobile phones during the second quarter 2011 as they reduced their inventories of those devices which were slightly above normal levels at the end of the first quarter 2011. In addition, our lack of Dual SIM phones, a growing part of the market, until late in the second quarter 2011 adversely impacted our Mobile Phones volumes during that quarter. Mobile Phones volumes were also adversely affected by continued pressure from a variety of price aggressive competitors.

Despite the grim figures though, it is too early to pronounce the failure of CEO Stephen Elop’s strategy. After all, no Nokia Windows Phones are yet on sale. The company must be hoping to hang on until it has a decent range of Windows Phones, and for Microsoft to grow its mobile market share dramatically above what it is currently.

Should Nokia have chosen Android rather than Windows Phone? Android’s extraordinary growth suggests that it should; yet there are signs of significant copyright and patent trouble for Android, and by attaching to Android Nokia would have been a me-too behind more established vendors such as Samsung, HTC, and nearly everyone else.

Should Nokia have persevered with MeeGo and Symbian? Although early MeeGo devices are winning praise, I doubt that the OS would have challenged Android and iOS; but that is open to speculation.

The problem for Nokia is that if it was going to make a radical platform shift, some degree of Osborne effect was inevitable. Adopting Windows Phone could not have been done in secret.

That said, perhaps the company could have been smarter. Rather than laying all its cards on the table, could it have announced a Windows Phone strategy alongside MeeGo and Symbian, adopting a more gradual approach to avoid shocking the market?

It is also worth noting that Nokia’s problems started long before the arrival of the new CEO. What we are seeing now is the playing out of old mistakes, not just the impact of what may be new ones.

However you spin it though, the new Nokia is a lesser thing than the Nokia of old, which commanded rather than followed the mobile market.

gadgets, mobile, smartphones

Motorola Atrix – the future of the laptop?

February 17, 2011 Tim Anderson 1 Comment

I took a closer look at the Motorola Atrix on display here at Mobile World Congress. This is a smartphone built on NVidia’s Tegra 2 dual-core chipset. I’m interested in the concept as much as the device. Instead of carrying a laptop and a smartphone, you use the smartphone alone when out and about, or dock to a laptop-like screen and keyboard when at a desk. The dock has its own 36Wh battery so you are not tied to mains power.

The Atrix has a few extra tricks as well. HDMI out enables HD video. An audio dock converts it to a decent portable music player.

The smartphone also morphs into a controller if you use Motorola’s alternative dock, designed for fully external keyboard and screen.

It is a compelling concept, though there is a little awkwardness in the way Motorola has implemented it. The Atrix has two graphical shells installed. One is Android. The other is a an alternative Linux shell which Motorola calls Webtop. While you can freely download apps to Android, the Webtop has just a few applications pre-installed by Motorola, and with no official way to add further applications. One of them is Firefox, so you can browse the web using a full-size browser.

The disconnect between Android and Webtop is mitigated by the ability to run Android within Webtop, either in its own smartphone-sized window, or full screen.

Personally I prefer the idea of running Android full screen, even though it is not designed for a laptop-sized screen, as I do not like the idea of having two separate sets of apps. That seems to miss the point of having a single device. On the other hand, Webtop does enable non-Android apps to run on Atrix, so I can see the value it adds.

Leaving that aside, I do think this is a great idea and one that I expect to become important. After all, if you do not think Tegra 2 is quite powerful enough, you could wait for some future version built on the quad-core Tegra 3 (name not yet confirmed), which NVidia says is five times faster, and which may turn up in Smartphones late in 2011.

gadgets, mobile, smartphones

The LG Optimus 3D is amazing

February 15, 2011 Tim Anderson

Today I got to see the LG Optimus 3D here at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. I was impressed. Of course I cannot really capture it in a pic; but here it is anyway.

It really is 3D, which is amazing after a lifetime of 2D screens, and with no spectacles required.

The trick is that there are two screen images. When you look at the screen, your right eye gets a slightly different angle on the screen than your left eye. The technology uses that different angle to deliver a different image to each eye. At least, this is how it was explained to me.

There is also a dual-lens camera so you can take your own 3D pics and videos. The Optimus 3D has a 1GHz OMAP4 dual-core processor, and HDMI output for connection to high resolution external displays.

3D is cool and makes for some immersive games. But how much extra will customers be willing to pay for 3D on a Smartphone? Interesting question.

adobe, intel, silverlight, software development

Silverlight (and AIR) for MeeGo Linux coming in October?

April 17, 2010 onlyconnect

Back in September 2009, Intel and Microsoft announced an official port of Silverlight for Linux, or at least for what was then Intel’s Moblin project, a Linux distribution tailored for netbooks. It was surprising to learn that this would be an official port using Microsoft’s code, as opposed to something based on Moonlight, the open source and also somewhat officially blessed version of Silverlight for Linux.

Since then I have been watching for more news about this Silverlight port, but heard nothing. Then in February Moblin merged with Nokia’s Maemo to become MeeGo. What next for the Silverlight port?

Earlier this week I met Intel’s Uli Dumschat at the company’s software conference in Barcelona. He spoke on Intel’s software development products for Atom-powered devices such as those running MeeGo. I asked him about Silverlight for MeeGo and he knew nothing about it.

It seems I was at the wrong conference. Today I spotted this post from Charlene Zvolanek at Intel’s Developer Forum in Beijing:

In May, the 1.0 version will be released, and with 1.1 coming out in October, there will be support for Silverlight, Java, and Air. Developers can write native or runtime apps that can be Java-based, Web-based, Silverlight-based, or Air-based. Even though it’s open source, Intel has been working closely with Microsoft to make sure that MeeGo and Windows are friends.

I also watched the keynote from Intel’s Renee James, who said that MeeGo devices are expected in the “second half of this year”, though I imagine they will be 1.0 devices – who knows, maybe 1.1 will be an upgrade option later.

So Silverlight on MeeGo now has a date. Is this Silverlight 4.0? Will it run out of browser? Access to local resources? Does this date apply to MeeGo Smartphones as well as netbooks? All good questions, about which I know nothing. Watch this space.

Tim Anderson's IT Writing