Tag Archives: smartphones

WILL MUSK REVOLUTIONIZE THE SMARTPHONE INDUSTRY?

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For a few weeks now rumors and speculations keep emerging about a new Tesla phone called the Tesla Pi Phone or Tesla model Pi. Of course we won’t know anything until the official release but it looks like the Pi Phone could be a serious competition to Apple and Samsung. 

The device will be compatible with Starlink satellite internet therefore being able to connect to the web all over Earth and even on Mars. The data download speed is said to be as quick as 210 megabits per second. It will have one camera on the front hidden under the display and four lenses on the back capable of taking  great quality photos even in the dark and equipped with technology that enables the user to capture beautiful pictures of astronomical objects. Other features include a fingerprint scanner, a built in solar panel for wireless, eco friendly charging and a photochromic case that will change color in different lighting. Less probable rumors say the Pi Phone will mine the Marscoin cryptocurrency, be able to „drive” the Tesla vehicles and even be equipped with the Neuralink support technology. The phone will be designed by a former Apple designer Antonio De Rosa and made of highest quality materials therefore not breaking as easily as iPhones and Samsungs.

As I’ve said at the beginning, we don’t yet know how the Pi Phone will turn out looking and what features it will actually have. There are still many unknowns but one thing is clear – when Musk enters an industry the competition has to step up their game

Sources: geektech.me

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The First Penta-Cam Aarmoured Smartphone that has a Night Vision Mode and 5G

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Eventually, almost everyone faced the problem of a broken phone screen. There will be no such a problem with Ulefone Armor 11 5G even for the clumsiest person as you need to try REALLY HARD to break it.

Some days ago Ulefone presented their new model that is called Armor 11 5G (this is actually a modified version of Armor 10 5G that was presented the previous year). The phone has got 5 cameras, including the main 48-mp Sony IMX582 module and a frontal 16-mp camera. And what is more appealing, the phone has got a 20-mp night vision module.

Ulefone Armor 11 5G is based on MediaTek Dimensity 800 5G single-crystal system, having a 6,1-inch screen, 8Gb of RAM, and 256Gb memory card. As a new iPhone line, the smartphone can use 5G net, supplying it with a great performance. The 5200mAh battery is responsible for the great work duration and a wireless 10V charger. However, Armor 11 5G is working on Android 10, and for now, there is no possibility to update it to Android 11 (it is said to be possible only after the official release).

Of course, it has an NFC module and Google Pay support, face recognition, and dactyloscopy sensor. One of the aims of the device is its usage for military purposes, and for that, it has IP68/IP69K protection level and a military standard MIL-STD-810G certificate, which makes it perfect to be used in different rough conditions. The price of such a device is unknown yet.

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DIYA. GOVERNMENT IN YOUR SMARTPHONE

Reading Time: 2 minutes      “Diya ” short for “Derzhava I Ya”, or government and me, is a web portal and mobile application of the same name, which are part of the project “Government in a smartphone” of the Ministry of Digital Transformation of Ukraine. This app was made to make the life of Ukrainian people much easier. No more worries about a forgotten ID or driver’s license. Everything is always on you in your personal smartphone! Nevertheless, this app differs from just pictures of documents people take. Each document has its own QR code for requested check-ins.

“According to statistics, only 9% of people in our country use government services online. This is a very small amount though. 91% of Ukrainians now do not use online tools to interact with the government. Why? The first reason is digital literacy. This is what today is the basis of our country’s competitiveness in the world. And this is a challenge that we also accept, ” the Prime Minister said. Not to mention, DIYA provides a special IT course for brand-new users who are not familiar with the technology.

 

This app gives an opportunity to all the Ukrainians to receive services from the government online instead of standing in line for hours to the public offices. It means that now there is a possibility to obtain specific certificates, extracts, and data from various state agencies and registries, submit packages of documents to initiate various processes: opening/closing a private enterprise, processing unemployment benefits, etc. The task of Diya is to make the process of providing these services fast, transparent, and save people from unnecessary bureaucracy.

“Diya” also stores electronic copies of such documents as a foreign passport, ID card, student ID card, driver’s license, technical passport. They are full-fledged copies of plastic originals.

Now in Ukraine, if necessary, all the documents can be presented directly from the smartphone screen. Moreover, DIYA documents are as legitimate as real ones, for example, now citizens are simply able to confirm the ownership of the car and the right to drive it by showing the chosen document in the application. And this is really convenient because it eliminates the need to carry plastic documents with you, which significantly reduces the risk of their loss. The main thing is not to forget to take your smartphone with you.

In order to use the mobile app, you need to download it from the Google Play Market and Apple Store. After starting it, you will have to log in. You can do this using BankID from PrivatBank or Monobank. And that is All. The application itself will pull up your documents, which are available for display in electronic form.

 

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OnePlus 9 Pro – new Android-powered flagman | OnePlus lures buyers away from Samsung

Reading Time: 2 minutesThe latest information accounts for OnePlus stated this April they are going to present the new OnePlus 9 and OnePlus 9 Pro. However, the company made a decision to move its presentation to mid-March 2021 due to Samsung Galaxy S21 presentation to be hold on 14 January 2021.

Also, Jeremy Smith (AKA “Concept Creator”) – a Dutch 3D designer, used the materials of OnePlus 9 Pro given by the company to create a 3D model of a new smartphone.

The new OnePlus flagman, as it is informed, will get a 6,7-inch Fluid Amoled display with QHD+ resolution, rounded sides, and a fingerprint scanner that will be inserted into the display. And some good information to cheer up mobile gamers – it will get 120Hz refresh rate.

The front camera with 32Mp resolution will be in the upper left smartphone’s corner. Talking about main cameras, OnePlus 9 will get quad-cam, while 5x optical zoom. Besides, the phone will be provided with stereo drivers with Dolby Atmos sound.

The most interesting part of the phone is its processor and it is a top-level Qualcomm Snapdragon 875. Certainly, there will be two versions of the phone: 8Gb RAM + 128Gb memory and 12Gb RAM + 256Gb memory. A 65-watt quick charge will be included in both versions.

According to the latest news, such a presentation transfer is made to attract some of Galaxy S21 customers’ attention to the new OnePlus 9 Pro. OnePlus is a great figure on the Android-powered smartphone market, just like Samsung. It provides smartphones with great power, however, the price of OnePlus smartphones is lower than Samsung’s (the recommended price for OnePlus 9 is 700 euro, and 900 euro for the Pro version), and such a presentation rescheduling might work out well for OnePlus.

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New flagship smartphones every year. Do we really need it? LG says no!

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How much can companies improve a smartphone in one year? Does the industry really need it? The new flagship phones launched every year are standard in the smartphone industry. The only question is, what is the purpose, besides filling the producers’ pockets? The new iPhone from Apple, Galaxy from Samsung or the V series from LG appears every year. These are flagship phones, that is, the fastest, best and the most expensive phones of a given manufacturer. LG slowly breaks out of this trend and announced that it will no longer launch new phones every year, and only when it is needed or will have something interesting to present. LG’s Vice Chairman, Jo Seong-jin said:

“We will unveil new smartphones when it is needed. But we will not launch it just because other rivals do. We plan to retain existing models longer by, for instance, unveiling more variant models of the G series or V series.”

Designing a new smartphone model is certainly not an easy process. It is necessary to design a new graphics processor, a new CPU as well as most of the components that make up the smartphone. And then you have to start production of all these components and assemble them. And all this in one year! This means more or less that when a new iPhone or Samsung Galaxy has a premiere, they already know what the next model will feature, and maybe the production process has already begun. The question should be asked whether we need it, and whether it is necessary to spend a thousand dollars a year on the phone, which is several percent faster than the predecessor. It is worth mentioning that if there were no software updates that slow down older phones, we would not have noticed a difference in performance.

The last affair with Apple and slowing down of older iPhones has proven that the companies force us to buy a new model in a very cunning way. Apple under the pretext of saving battery life in older models began to slow them down through software updates. I wonder how many people were fooled and actually believed that their smartphone has become too slow after just one year. On a global scale, probably millions.

 

Sources:

  • https://www.androidcentral.com/lg-will-stop-releasing-new-phones-every-year
  • https://android.com.pl/news/107561-lg-nowe-smartfony-premiera-nie-beda-wydawane-regularnie
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Reasons behind smartphone games’ popularity

Reading Time: 2 minutesWe all know that devices such as smartphones or tablets are multitasking handheld personal computer that are used for several purposes other than calling and texting alone.
Today’s mobile devices are used as camera, calendar, television, web browsing, sending e-mail, geolocation, tape recorder, calculator, compass, accelerometer, digital mapping and many other. These features build a strong product value to consumers which gives the possibility for each consumer to personalise their device(s) further by downloading any applications needed and wished resulting to use one single device instead of few for many users.

Games are one of the most popular application’s categories, representing a total of 39% of all downloaded applications, generating over $50 billions in revenue worldwide in 2016 which counts up to 81% of mobile store consumer spending (compering to 75% in 2014). While the gaming industry is growing in terms of profitability counting over $100 billion in revenue in 2016, the thriving preferences to play games on mobile devices seen these past few years resulted last year to generate (for the first time) the biggest source of revenue from the other devices such as PC or even consoles games (32% in total comparing at 31% for consoles and 23% for PC).


source: Newzoo, 2017

The reasons of it changed trend are caused due to few main reasons:

Lower cost of production: Due to a far less development costs to create games on smartphones thanks to a far less needs of complicated coding because of smartphone’s smaller screen sizes, lower resolution and processing power, it results to decrease greatly the cost to produce such games. Also, because these are downloaded by the users directly through the device, it negating the need for packaging and shipping, all that resulting to lower as well dramatically the price of the game to the user.

Growing number of smartphone users: We see every year a considerable growing number of smartphone users worldwide (this year, almost 11% increase of smartphone users in comparison to 2016, making in total around 2.4 billion to use such a device), making these games a lot more accessible for any smartphone owner today.

New type of market segment: Not everyone wants complicated games and willing to “waist” their time on time-consuming games. Rather than that, a lot are just looking for quick and easy time-passing games just to entertain themselves for a few laps of time while waiting for a friend, on the bus and other ones.

Makes it possible to play anywhere, anytime: Smartphones gives the possibility to play games anywhere thanks to their size, making them extremely portable oppositely to PC or consoles that requires bigger space and more are more complicated to connect in comparison to smartphones.

https://www.appannie.com/en/about/press/releases/app-annie-forecasts-33-percent-growth-consumer-spend-app-stores-2017-surpassing-139b-2021/

http://resources.newzoo.com/hubfs/Reports/Newzoo_Global_Games_Market_Report_2017_Light.pdf?utm_medium=email&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-_Z0XYnALOZRIbak6BMlZ5WvAxRSVmDAVdHrfgD_L75oFhAr2vD-z76u_h0gnhgXytqwj5VN4Mjhx-Iy–J_8oD73UFpayprei7D3UQ9VKbVkqeX7g&_hsmi=53391639&utm_content=53391903&utm_source=hs_email&hsCtaTracking=b1e7ad0f-0367-47fe-af74-d25b087e0247%7C1f97673a-73fc-4014-ac26-8ed0a696bc2a

https://www.wired.com/2013/01/how-mobile-kills-the-console-but-advances-the-gaming-industry/

https://www.statista.com/statistics/330695/number-of-smartphone-users-worldwide/

http://mobilemarketingmagazine.com/24bn-smartphone-users-in-2017-says-emarketer

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Free to read! *Charges may apply*

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Put your hand in your pocket. Dig around. What did you find? A few coins? A paper? Or did you find a Smartphone? Yes. I bet you did. Now as you unlock your phone what is the first thing that your eyes see? You will say: “Just a bunch of apps”. Perfect. Now as well, its more than likely that you did not pay for this “Free” application. Because as the economist Milton Friedman said: “There is no such thing as a free lunch.” But one might think: “I just downloaded this application for free. How can they make money off me?”
Well that is a slippery question that has many answers to it. However this time I will focus on one, that is the ever growing gaming app industry. The Mobile Video Game Industry is set to make $30.3 billion dollars worldwide. The big name gaming apps that are generating this revenue are free-to-play. Some of these are Angry Birds, Clash of Clans, Temple Run, Candy Crush Saga, and Fallout Shelter just to name a few.
However the most interesting and lucrative part is how low cost these applications are to make. An application can cost to make between $10,000 to $250,000. One might say that is a high cost for a free to play application. However to create the average video game console/pc can cost between $1,000,000 to $140,000,000. That is a large sum and risk for the developer to take. As well for the consumer its a hefty tag to pay with the average game costing $60. This is why its becoming more intriguing, for big name video game companies to start creating free-to-play applications. Bethesda, the video game developer that has created iconic games like Skyrim (one of the highest selling games of all time) and Fallout, created a free-to-play application called Fallout Shelter. Within the first two weeks it made $5.1 million dollars, this game was created as form to advertise their upcoming game Fallout 4. But they might have stumbled within their actual cash cow with this free-to-play game, that will probably out gross the product that they were marketing for. Another highly addictive and revenue generating juggernaut is Candy Crush Saga. In 2014 they generated $1.5 billion dollars for a game that is just entering is third year of existence.
I wont give you any further examples since you know where this trend is going. Free-to-play apps make money. But how? Well through many different ways. One is in game purchases. The application offers you to shorten wait time, an extra life, an outfit, a character, more resources, pretty much anything in which the game revolves around. However they do this in a clever way. At the beginning they give you a few “tokens” in which you normally would pay, then they show you how they can be used during a “tutorial” and show you how advantageous it can be. So after playing the game a few times, the difficulty level starts going on an incline. Then eventually you are forced to either wait for your waiting time to end, or gain more life….but if you don’t want to wait, then you can pay.
Developers play with the addictive qualities of these games and smartphones to keep trying to fish for the money from your bank account. One might want to deny that these free-to-play games are going to go away but the forecast portrays that by 2018 mobile gaming will generate $45 billion dollars.
As you see this is the present and the future that is implemented into smartphones. But are you willing to get with the times, so you can spend your valuable time and money on a pointless application?
I’ll let you decide. I am gonna go read a book off my Kindle app…..wait….
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