Galaxy VS iPhone

Samsung Galaxy S4′sDisplay Will Put the iPhone 5′s Retina to Shame

Galaxy S4 Display vs Retina

For the last couple of years, the quality of smartphones isn’t measured by the number of cores and the amount of storage on the device; but by the display resolution and the sharpness of the display play, which of course is an important role in determining the quality of a smartphone.

According to a recent report, the next addition to Samsung’s top-selling Galaxy S line-up is going to sport a high resolution display, and will have the highest resolution of any other smartphone currently available in the market; this also includes the iPhone 5 with its retina display.

Samsung Galaxy Series

In the past few weeks, we have watched (and read) the good news roll in for Samsung; proof positive that their Galaxy Series has really paid off. Reports are flooding in about the tech giants last quarter, and their bold predictions about 2013 and the mobile market. Apple on the other hand, has some serious soul searching to do, with the future of their device line. Apple stocks seem to be taking a tumble, while many see smooth sailing ahead for Samsung.
Even though Samsung has kept the details on their next flagship device tightly wrapped, it has been known for quite sometime that the Galaxy S4 will at the very least come with a Super AMOLED display, with a pixel density of 440ppi. Although, newer reports are claiming the Korean giant will ditch the traditional side by side pixel layout for the latest hexagonal diamond layout.  This allows more pixels to be stuffed into a smaller space. This would definitely be a bigger step from the current Galaxy S3’s 306ppi display and even the iPhone 5’s 326ppi Retina display.

The Samsung Galaxy S line-up has been the most popular smartphone franchise and has managed to capture a large market share. Even though the Korean manufacturer has been quite mum on the details about the Galaxy S4, we are almost sure a better display is on the list. At CES in Las Vegas, Samsung showed us a prototype of a bendable display and it looks brilliant. But, we are still not sure if Samsung is going to introduce it with the next flagship Galaxy S Phone.

BlackBerry Z10 review

The BlackBerry Z10 is the brand’s response to its critics, the flagshiphandset for the company’s all new BlackBerry 10 operating system

It should come as no surprise to you that the BlackBerry Z10 isn’t going to have a hard time winning over BlackBerry fans. It’s not like it had a hard act to follow, a year of limbo has left its followers with a collection of handsets that range from the excellent BlackBerry Bold 9900 to the less so BlackBerry Torch.

Of course whether they were excellent handsets or not mattered not as they were all running the dreaded BlackBerry 7.0, an OS that has become eclipsed by the constantly updated Android and iOS operating systems.

The Z10 hopes to change all that by combining the brand's superb hardware capabilities – the BlackBerry PlayBook was an excellent tablet crippled by its OS – with a smartphone OS that can finally compete with the likes of Google and Apple.

T3 managed to get a review sample of the phone a couple of days before the official launch - not really enough time for a full review, but here's what we thought about it.

BlackBerry Z10: Size and build

The BlackBerry Z10 measures in at 130 x 65.6 x 9mm making it around the same size as a Samsung Galaxy S2. The Z10 comes in black or white and features an all-plastic body with a slightly rubberised back then can be peeled off to gain access to battery, Micro SD card slot and Micro SIM slot.

Moving away from the glossy glamour of the Samsung Galaxy S3 and the  iPhone 5 the Z10 has gone for a more subtle effect that actually it pulls off rather well. Learning from the PlayBook, BlackBerry has combined a matte-effect sturdiness with a level of build quality that reminds you this is its flagship model.

BlackBerry Z10: Features

Under the hood there’s a dual-core 1.5GHz processor along with an impressive 2GB of RAM. There’s 16GB of internal memory with a Micro SD card slot that can be bumped up to 32GB.

One of the key features of the Z10 is the lack of buttons on the front of the handset, everything is done through swiping from off-screen using BlackBerry’s new ‘Peek and Flow’ OS.

Apps to download first BlackBerry 10

Best BlackBerry 10 apps to download and make the most of the new operating system that aims to take a swipe at iOS, Android and Windows Phone 

BlackBerry 10 is here and the first two handsets the Q10 smartphone with physical keyboard and touchscreen based Z10 handset have been officially unveiled. We've been fortunate enough to get some hands on time with the new BlackBerry Z10  to check out the best features but also some of the apps you can expect to play with.

We already know that Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn will be integrated into the BlackBerry 10 operating system with Skype and WhatsApp also unveiled during the official unveiling, so we've picked out the confirmed apps for BlackBerry 10 that you should pack onto your handset first.

Click Here For Download All The Applications 

BlackBerry Z10 UK confirmed pricing and networks

As with all major smartphone launches next up comes the networks, and this is no exception with EE, Vodafone and O2 all confirming the BlackBerry Z10

As with all major smartphone launches next up comes the networks, and this is no exception with EE, Vodafone and O2 all confirming the BlackBerry Z10

The BlackBerry Z10 has an official release date of the 31 January with the new BlackBerry 10 smartphone now being confirmed on EE, Three, Vodafone and O2.

The Z10 will be coming to EE's 4G network available for £49.99 on a £41 per month 24 month contract giving users 1GB data and unlimited calls and texts. Orange and T-Mobile customers can expect to get the Z10 for £49.99 but on a £36 per month contract offering the same amount of data, unlimited calls and texts.
EE hasn't yet given an exact date when the handset will be available however you can expect it to be within the next few weeks.

Vodafone has confirmed it will also be selling the BlackBerry Z10 from tomorrow with the 4G-ready smartphone available for £29 upfront on a £42 a month contract giving you unlimited texts, calls and 2GB of data.

The Z10 will be just one of a number of smartphones that Vodafone will be offering to customers on its upcoming 4G network which, when launched, will be rivalling EE's own superfast service.

Facebook invite for event next week ‘sparks rumours of mobile phone in offing’

Social networking giant Facebook has issued invites for an event at its California headquarters next week, fueling rumours that the firm is planning to launch its own mobile phone.

 

The invite for the event says `Come and see what we''re building'.
While it''s possible thatFacebook is simply unveiling another update to its website, there have been frequent rumours that the company plans to make its own mobile phone, the Telegraph reports.

According to the paper, some recent reports have claimed that Facebook is working on a mobile handset with manufacturer HTC.
The new device would connect directly to a user''s Facebook account and run software such as Facebook Messenger and Instagram, the picture sharing service Facebook bought last year.

The site's founder Mark Zuckerberg, however, poured cold water on the speculations last year, saying `building out a phone wouldn''t make sense for us to do.'

Zuckerberg has talked in the past about the need to improve Facebook search, so there is some speculation that next week''s event will be about that.

Samsung Galaxy S smartphones sales touch 100 mln mark globally

South Korean electronics giant Samsung has said that worldwide sales of its Galaxy S smartphones have surpassed 100 million mark.

Samsung said it had sold over 25 million Galaxy S smartphones, 40 million Galaxy S II smartphones and 41 million Galaxy S III smartphones.
Samsung launched the first Galaxy S model at the end of May 2010, amid increasing competition with iphone maker Apple, the Herald Sun reports.
According to the report, research firm IHS iSuppli said last month Samsung beat Nokia in mobile phone sales and Apple in smartphone sales last year.

Apple''s iPhone sales hit the 100-million mark in March 2011, nearly four years after the introduction of the phone in 2007, the report said.

Robots cook and serve food at Chinese restaurant

A restaurant in China''s northern Heilongjiang province has 20 robots working for it, as waiters, cooks and busboys.

 
According to the South China Morning Post, the mechanical staff at Robot Restaurant in Harbin can work continuously for five hours after charging for two hours and can also display more than 10 expressions on their faces.

When a diner walks in, an usher robot extends their mechanic arm to the side and says ''Earth person hello. Welcome to the Robot Restaurant.''
After diners have ordered, robots in the kitchen set to work cooking their meals.
Once the dish is prepared, a robot waiter, which runs along tracks on the floor, carries it from kitchen to table, the Daily Mail reported.

A singing robot entertains diners as they eat.

The restaurant has gained international fame and continues to grow in popularity since it opened in June last year.

iPhone 5 owners download most data among smartphone users in Europe, finds study

Apple iPhone 5 owners use the most mobile download data of all European smartphone owners, according to a new research.

 

In a new study, Apple iPhone 5 owners were found to use 50 percent more download data than iPhone 4S users.

However, Samsung Galaxy S III was top of the list for data uploads, ahead of the iPhone 3G and the third-placed iPhone 5.

This is the third year of the study, conducted by Arieso, and for the first time smartphone users were shown to be downloading more data than tablet owners, the Telegraph reports.

According to the report, the Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 10.1 was above the Apple iPad on the tablet data list, with Tab 2 owners using 20 percent more download data than iPad users.

China mobile users hit by large botnet bug

Security researchers in China have discovered a huge botnet running on the smartphones of more than a million unsuspecting mobile users in the country.

The devices had been infected by a Trojan-based attack first discovered in 2011, news agency Xinhua reported.

The botnet can allow the smartphones to be hijacked remotely and potentially be used for fraudulent purposes, the BBC reported.
The warning comes as mobile Internet use in China has soared, growing by more than 18 percent in the past year.

There are now more than 420 million mobile users, according to the China Internet Network Information Center (Cinic).
The surge has attracted the attention of Apple chief executive Tim Cook, who met with the chairman of China Mobile last week, the report said.
Details of the meeting were scant, but a China Mobile spokesman said it was regarding `matters of co-operation' in the region.
According to the report, in China specifically, local authorities even went as far as to warn operators to clean up security weaknesses in their mobile app stores.

Despite warnings at the time, it is believed that the Trojan is still very much active and enabling the growth of the botnet, the report said.

Users have been advised to monitor their call and data logs for unusual activity, it added.

How Facebook's new search tool could also help businesses

Graph Search feature could provide businesses with reams of information about customers -- and help find new clients

Businesses that aren't very active on Facebook might want to think about ramping up their presence in case Facebook's new service proves useful.
Facebook's new Graph Search, announced this morning but not yet available, could be a valuable tool for businesses, who increasingly use the social network to maintain contact with customers.

[ Also on CITEworld, see how Avanade broke free of the email trap | Sign up for CITEworld's InCITE newsletter -- delivered weekly. ]

Graph Search is designed to offer a much better search function for Facebook users to find material they and their contacts have posted on Facebook. It is not a full Web search tool like Google or Microsoft's Bing, but is rather meant to improve the fairly poor internal Facebook search available now.

For instance, users will be able to find all the photos they've liked, search for all photos of two particular people, and locate all their friends who live in a particular city, Tom Stocky, a Facebook product director, said on a video about the service. Other examples Facebook offered include looking for music that friends like or searching for people who like cycling who are from your hometown.

Facebook pitched the new feature as an end-user benefit, but in fact it could prove extremely useful to businesses who want to make the most of their presence on Facebook.

For instance, a retail business might be able to search among its users for everyone who likes posts about a certain kind of product in order to offer them a deal, or search for all followers in a city in order to invite them to an event. A business might be able to search for followers who have attended certain kinds of events or checked in at particular locations.

Business could use GraphSearch in subtler ways. Searching for the kind of food and music followers in a city like could inform decisions about the kind of food and music featured at an event.
Eventually, Graph Search could become a useful tool for advertisers as well. CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the company is not displaying advertisements in search results at first, but as the product matures, this seems like an obvious way for Facebook to increase revenue -- and perhaps steal search ad budget from rival Google.
Facebook said that results will only show things that have been shared with you on Facebook.

For now, Facebook GraphSearch is available in a "very limited program" in the United States. Facebook is offering a sign-up page for people interested in finding out when they can start using the service.
The concept behind Graph Search is reminiscent of a similar service from Microsoft's Bing search engine. Users who connect their Bing searches to Facebook will see results in the right hand column of Bing that come from their Facebook friends.

Mobile security remains a BYOD hurdle at the federal level

Around half of federalemployees use smartphones and tablets for work, but most of those devicesaren't secured well

Just like employees in the private sector, government employees are reveling in the productivity gains of accessing their office apps and data from their smartphones and tablets. However, not unlike private companies, federal agencies are falling short on securing those devices, potentially increasing the ease with which malicious hackers and cyber criminals can get their hands on potentially sensitive Federal data, be it Social Security numbers, FBI files, and so forth.

The good news, per the Telework Exchange's 2013 Digital Dilemma Report, is that federal employees are gaining, on average, nine more hours of productivity per week thanks to the adoption of work-connected mobile devices. The exchange equates that to an extra $28 billion worth of man-hours per year.

Saving money and boosting productivity are obvious and well-documented benefits of mobile computing and BYOD, so those figures aren't necessarily surprising. However, digging deeper into the data reveals some points of concern about data security.

First, a glimpse of which devices federal employees are using and how: Just under half said they use their personal devices for work purposes. Ninety-three percent use laptops, 64 percent use smartphones, and 19 percent use tablets. Overall, 76 percent of federal employees use mobile devices to access government data, while 42 percent store their email on their devices.

Unfortunately, federal agencies don't seem to be doing an adequate job ensuring that the government data flowing to and from mobile devices is sufficiently secure. (This isn't to say that the private sector, in general, has done a great job in getting a handle on mobile security either. It's not a simple task, to which IT pros can attest.) For example, 79 percent of federal employees have multifactor authentication on their laptops, but only 27 percent have it on their smartphones and tablets. Seventy-six percent have a secure remote connection from their laptops, compared to 27 percent who have that on their mobile devices. Interestingly, though, 24 percent of federal employees' smartphones and tablets are equipped with remote data-wipe functionality, compared to 11 percent of federal laptops.

Here's yet more doom and gloom from the report: 85 percent of federal employees said they have downloaded at least one app to their personal device, a point of concerns considering the 185 percent rise in mobile malware attacks over the past year.

To their credit, agencies are educating employees about mobile security. Eighty-four percent of respondents said they knew who to call if they have a mobile device security question or concern; 80 percent said they have reviewed written mobile device security information; and 74 percent have participated in mobile device security training in the past 12 months.

On the other hand, only 11 percent of employees said they knew whether their organization had any kind of official BYOD policy. Sixty-one percent said theirs didn't have one, and the other 28 percent said they weren't sure.

The Telework Exchange offers straightforward advice: Federal agencies must accept the fact that employees will use their personal devices for work and develop clear BYOD guidelines accordingly. They should then enforce regulations to ensure data and network security -- and help the cause by enabling secure connections and data access.

The Telework Exchange is hosting a Webcast about mobility, security, and productivity on Feb. 12. More information is available The Telework Exchange's website. Also consider checking out InfoWorld's guide to a successful BYOD and mobile IT strategy.

Astronomers discover largest known structure in the universe

Astronomers have discoveredthe largest known structure in the universe - a group of quasars so large itwould take 4 billion years to cross it while traveling at speed of light.

The immense scale also challenges Albert Einstein's Cosmological Principle, the assumption that the universe looks the same from every point of view, researchers said.

The findings by academics from Britain's University of Central Lancashire were published in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society and reported on the society's website on Friday. 

Quasars are believed to be the brightest objects in the universe, with light emanating from the nuclei of galaxies from the early days of the universe and visible billions of light-years away.
"Since 1982 it has been known that quasars tend to group together in clumps or 'structures' of surprisingly large sizes, forming large quasar groups or LQGs," the society said. 

This newly discovered large quasar group has a dimension of 500 megaparsecs, each megaparsec measuring 3.3 million light-years.
Because the LQG is elongated, its longest dimension is 1,200 megaparsecs, or 4 billion light-years, the society said.
That size is 1,600 times larger than the distance from Earth's Milky Way to the nearest galaxy, the Andromeda. 

"While it is difficult to fathom the scale of this LQG, we can say quite definitely it is the largest structure ever seen in the entire universe," Roger Clowes, leader of the research team, said in a statement. "This is hugely exciting - not least because it runs counter to our current understanding of the scale of the universe."

Clowes said the team wouldcontinue to investigate the phenomenon with particular interest in the challengeto the Cosmological Principle, which has been widely accepted since Einstein,whose work still forms the basis for much of modern cosmology.

(Reporting by Daniel Trotta; Editing by Gary Hill)