After a number of delays, BlackBerry is ready to begin the rollout of BlackBerry OS 10.3.1 on 19 February. This release has already been available for Passport and Classic users, and starting 19 February, it will be available for other BlackBerry users too.
With the first Tizen device, the Samsung Z1, shipping and reaching the hands of customers, it might be a good time to take a look at what kind of development options you have if you want to build a Tizen application. While you can code in HTML5, the real deal is, as always, native development.
You can also delve deeper into Tizen development.
Meanwhile, AndroidCentral has taken a look at the Z1 as well, concluding:
If we're ever to see Tizen on a high-end phone, with a proper global marketing push behind it, chances are it'll look drastically different to what we see on the Samsung Z1 today. For now, what Samsung has is a lower-cost, slightly more modern replacement for its older Bada devices, not a potential successor to its vast Android lineup.
Ars Technica reviews the Samsung Z1, the very first Tizen smartphone. The conclusions are... Well, it's a piece of crap.
Similar to when Samsung started making modern smartphones, its first swing at building an OS boils down to a lesser copy of the market leader. Tizen is just a less mature version of Android with no apps and no major ecosystem player supporting it. The OS feels like it's straight out of that Dilbert comic where the Pointy-Haired Boss suggests "If we work day and night, we can match our competitors' features within twelve months." Tizen seems to have done a good job copying an OS from several years ago, but it never evolved while its competitors did. For now, the conclusion of any Tizen-based smartphone review will always say "this would have been a better product if it ran Android."
Tizen: a bland, outdated, pointless operating system nobody is asking for except Apple bloggers.
Late last year, Open webOS was renamed to LuneOS, and they've released a new version. The post is dated 9 January, but for some reason, it only showed up for me today (no idea why).
As far as I can tell, it's still limited to the Nexus 4 and HP TouchPad for now.
We've been testing pushing early updates to a small group of opt-in users for update9 and the connectivity hotfix. This went well so we're going one step further and making each software update available for opt in approximately one week before releasing it. We mainly expect this to be useful for developers and technically minded users who can handle potential problems (eg if you don't know how to do a backup and a restore then it may not be for you).
Flip a toggle on your Jolla account settings page and you'll receive each new Sailfish update a week before general release so you can test it out. Needless to say, my switch has been flipped.
Samsung's scale is such that when it chooses to change, the whole mobile industry feels the repercussions. So far, the key alterations from previous Galaxy S generations appear to be a move to an all-metal construction, a display that may be curved on one or both sides, and the repudiation of Qualcomm's Snapdragon processors in favor of a full reliance on Samsung’s own Exynos. These factors all matter individually, but taken as a whole they mark a major departure from the almost cynical pragmatism with which Samsung has approached its phones in the past. Let's address each one of them in turn.
Samsung's problem is that all the things that caused its rapid growth in smartphones were things that were easily replicated both on the low end (Xiaomi etc.) and the high end (Apple). Samsung needs something unique for its smartphones, and aping Apple and HTC by moving to an all-metal construction is not going to do it, nor are gimmicky bent screens and whatnot.
It may already be too late.
OsmocomBB is an Free Software / Open Source GSM Baseband software implementation. It intends to completely replace the need for a proprietary GSM baseband software, such as
In short: By using OsmocomBB on a compatible phone, you are able to make and receive phone calls, send and receive SMS, etc. based on Free Software only.
This project is doing amazing work, but despite all the effort, it only supports very small number of phones based on one particular baseband chip because this one happens to accept unsigned firmware. It only supports 2G (and not even completely), so 3G and 4G are completely out of the question. Don't expect to flash this on your Samsung Galaxy Whatever any time soon.
Aside from the immense technical knowledge, expertise, and dedication required to code your own baseband software, there's a huge legal barrier - it's pretty much illegal to use a baseband like this without explicit approval. In fact, the people behind the project do not use their software on carrier networks.
Despite the fact that the need for a properly open source baseband firmware is obvious to everyone, the cold and harsh truth remains that we're not even close.
Following delays of over a year, Samsung finally shipped its first Tizen-powered handset, the Z1, earlier this month in India. The arrival of Tizen on smartphones - remember it's been on Samsung's Gear smartwatches for almost a year now - has been a long time coming, and there's been plenty of speculation among press and mobile industry watchers that Tizen could emerge as a viable alternative to Android for the Korean electronics giant.
What we've found during our initial hands-on time with an Indian Samsung Z1, however, is a phone that's very much at ease with Google's ecosystem.
I want one of these - if only to see what Samsung can build if they're not just shipping Android.
As vast and sophisticated as the mobile tech industry may have become, in the end it still relies on some very basic ways for making money. You can either sell hardware, like Apple's doing, or sell ads, which account for roughly the same proportion of Google's regular income. Netflix and Amazon's Kindle store have found success as cross-platform services, but spending on mobile software is unlikely to ever match that of the old days when we paid for Windows, Office, and Photoshop on the desktop. It's easier to sell things that a person can touch and interact with physically. This is why HTC is diversifying into selling weird cameras, why LG and Samsung keep churning out new smartwatches in search of a perfect formula, and why everyone at CES earlier this month had a wearable of some kind to show off. And in spite of their lamentations about tough competition, HTC, LG, and Lenovo are all generating profits from their smartphone operations, and Samsung's recent sales decline hasn't been enough to put the Korean company on the wrong side of the ledger. None of these manufacturers have a profit driver of the caliber of the iPhone, but they're running sustainable businesses even while relying almost wholly on Google's Android software.
Just to illustrate: Apple has sold one billion iOS devices to date, and last year alone, one billion Android smartphones have been shipped (so this excludes tablets). These numbers - Apple's profits, Android devices shipped in just a year - are insane.
TouchWiz has long been known as being far too full of bloat and unnecessary software, but the real problem with Samsung's version of Android is that these added features come with a hard hit on performance. According to a report this morning from SamMobile, the Korean company might be going as far as to remove all features from the OS that can possibly be downloaded - and this just so happens to coincide with today's market share numbers showing that Apple and Samsung were neck-and-neck in Q4.
Isn't competition lovely?
Last week, Samsung officially announced its first Tizen-based smartphone, the Z1 in India. The device is priced at INR 5,700 (~ $92), a relatively higher price tag for its low-end hardware, especially when you compare it with Android value-for-money smartphones like the Xiaomi Redmi 1S and the Asus Zenfone 4. It features a 1.2GHz dual-core processor from Spreadtrum, 768MB RAM, and 4GB internal storage, but Samsung is trying to defend its pricing. The Korean giant claims that Tizen can not only run Android apps, it is also lighter than other platforms. It means that Tizen requires relatively less powerful hardware to run as smooth as other platforms.
A new video from Simrandeep Singh Garcha shows that Tizen runs quite fast and smooth on the Z1, a rarity for smartphones in a similar price range. The video shows Tizen running without any sort of lag on the Z1, as well as new features like customisable colour themes and icon sets. It appears that even things like web browsing are smooth and fast on Tizen, as seen in the second video, thanks to faster page load times as well as smooth scrolling, panning, and zooming.
Credit where credit is due: it actually looks kind of nice, which is surprising, considering its developed by Samsung. This still doesn't take my doubt away about Tizen's viability in the smartphone space, but I still welcome any and all competition for Android and iOS.
An email sent to the Sailfish developer mailing list goes into some great detail on what to expect from Sailfish over the course of 2015. It looks like they're planning to touch every part of the system.
2015 will see Sailfish OS evolve towards a display resolution and form factor independent operating system capable of running on a range of devices. It will also bring a renewed Sailfish UI. We plan to demo this evolution at the Mobile World Congress in March.
We have now started to work full speed on the new UI framework changes and are currently in the prototyping phase. Our main driver is to introduce changes that
The remainder of the long email lists a whole lot of changes the Sailfish team at Jolla plans to implement - from the lower levels all the way up to the user interface.
In addition, chairman and co-founder Antti Saarnio posted on the Jolla blog with more hints about the future of Sailfish, and one thing in particular stood out to me:
The Sailfish OS is still young, and needs more stability, better connectivity, and simplification to the user experience. The small Sailfish OS native app ecosystem needs its own program, which guides and supports app developers. The amount of applications is not important, rather the most important applications for people need to be native, and of high quality. Friends, Tweetian, Sailgrande, just to mention a few, are excellent proof points of the potential of native Sailfish OS applications.
This is very good news. Improving the operating system is one thing, but the quality and availability of native applications is another. I'm glad Jolla recognises this and seems to be taking steps to do something about it.
Xiaomi has announced their spectacularly spec'ed Mi Note Pro, which features the latest in Qualcomm's Snapdragon processors alongside a big 2K display and 4GB of RAM for a killer price. That being said, there's something that is not-so-good about Xiaomi's offerings that is a concern to many developers, especially many found here on XDA: Xiaomi's repeated violations of the GPLv2 license for the Linux kernel which Android (and thus Xiaomi's devices), is built on.
Somehow, this doesn't surprise me.
Xiaomi, one of the fastest-growing tech companies in China, has announced its latest flagship device. The Mi Note is a 6.95mm-thick smartphone with a 5.7-inch 1080p display, a 13-megapixel camera, options for a Snapdragon 801 processor, 3GB of RAM, a 3000 mAh battery, and curved glass on both the front and back panels; the company refers to the front glass as "2.5D" and the rear glass as "3D."
While Xiaomi has occasionally stoked accusations of Apple mimicry with devices like its Mi Pad, the Mi Note isn't really in that vein. It might not win any awards for industrial innovation, but it appears to be an understated product without much in the way of direct design lifts.
My dislike for Xiamoi's shamelessness is no secret, but this here seems to have a little more unique identity to it than its previous offerings - save for the name, of course. If this trend persists, they may be ramping up to more unique devices for western markets governed by excessively oppressive patent regimes.
Samsung Electronics Co Ltd recently approached BlackBerry Ltd about buying the company for as much as $7.5 billion, looking to gain access to its patent portfolio, according to a person familiar with the matter and documents seen by Reuters.
South Korea's Samsung proposed an initial price range of $13.35 to $15.49 per share, which represents a premium of 38 percent to 60 percent over BlackBerry's current trading price, the source said.
Executives from the two companies, which are working with advisers, met last week to discuss a potential transaction, the source said, asking not to be identified because the conversations are private.
Big news, if true.
Samsung seems to have finally really honestly for realsies released its first Tizen phone.
In terms of the hardware, the Z1 comes with a 4-inch WVGA TFT display, 1.2 GHz dual-core CPU, 768MB RAM, 4 GB internal memory, microSD card slot up to 64 GB, 3.1 MP camera at the back, VGA front shooter, dual-SIM connectivity, 3G, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.0, GPS and a 1,500 mAh battery. The device is certainly underwhelming when it comes to the spec sheet, but Samsung claims that the "lightweight" Tizen OS would run without any issues on the hardware on offer. With the Z1, Samsung is looking to lure in customers with attractive content deals.
Remember - hope springs eternal.
The debate between FHD vs QHD has been strong within mobile enthusiast communities. While many people want to get their hands on the latest and greatest of display technology, others argue that QHD is simply not worth the downsides and that FHD is more than enough. So what should we look for in our phones? Let's find out.
I've never seen a mobile QHD display before, so I have no idea if it makes any sense on a mobile device.
Early December 2014, I bought the Moto 360 with Android Wear. As someone who loves both watches and technology, it seems like a great time to jump into the world of smartwatches, and see if it has evolved beyond the bulky '80s stuff that has come before. I'll first give you a concise history of smartwatches, after which I will dive into Wear and the 360 themselves.
LG and Audi's smartwatch collaboration is the most desirable wearable of CES 2015, and while the carmaker says it's just a prototype, the device offers a tantalizing glimpse of future LG wearables. Or at worst an agonizing look at a beautiful watch we'd love to own.
We tracked down the Audi/LG watch - still officially nameless, by the way - in Las Vegas today, and we can exclusively reveal that it's not running Android Wear as originally believed. In fact, it's packing completely different software based on LG's Open webOS.
...I give up.
Two scenarios for the smartwatch market, put forth by Ben Bajarin. Scenario one:
Apple will easily strongly influence the smart watch category in 2015 and 2016. It is hard to argue against Apple’s vertical advantage and tight control of their entire ecosystem. This advantage undoubtedly will give them a dominance in the early stages of a category. If a number of things play out, we can see them command the category for the long term.
And scenario two:
Another possible scenario is the smart watch category shapes up very much like the smart phone category. Apple succeeds at their goal to acquire the top 20% of the market and rake in the majority of the profits. While Android Wear, or another third party licensable smart watch OS, provides the software platform to the vast majority of hardware companies making smart watches.
I'm currently writing my Moto 360 and Android Wear review, and I don't think either of these scenarios will happen. My prediction: the current generation is going nowhere. They are cumbersome, finicky, uncomfortable, and unpleasant to use. They solve a problem that's not really a problem.
While some awesome future technology could change things, the current state of technology is simply not good enough.