LG G3 will be waterproof and dustproof

A report out of Korea on Sunday, says that the LG G3 is going to be waterproof and dustproof. This seems to be the new trend for top-shelf Android models which was started with the dunking of the Sony Xperia Z during the 2013 CES show in Las Vegas. Since then, all of Sony's high-end Xperia phones have included the feature, and last year Samsung offered the Samsung Galaxy S4 Active which can withstand being submerged in 3 feet of water for 30 minutes.
Other models, like some of the later Motorola DROID handsets, are protected from minor splashes. While never officially confirmed by the manufacturer, a teardown of the HTC DROID DNA revealed it to offer some minor protection from water as well. The HTC Butterfly is IPX5 certified, which protects it from water sprayed on it from a nozzle.Now that the Samsung Galaxy S5 is going to come with IP67 certification, the competition might have to consider making this more than a niche feature. Among the other high-end models expected to compete with the LG G3 and Samsung Galaxy S5, the HTC One (2014) might not come to market with protection from water or dust.  Keep in mind that today's report about the LG G3 is speculation, although it does make sense. The big question is whether smartphone buyers are as concerned with getting their handset wet as the manufacturers seem to think that they are.





 source: ETNews (translated)

BlackBerry sales double in the UAE as CEO Chen plays "What would Steve Jobs do?"

BlackBerry CEO John Chen recently sat down with The Grey Lady (The New York Times) for a wide ranging interview. Chen said during the chat that he has a plan that starts with enterprise customers, continues with plans to profit more from selling server software than by selling handsets, and ends with BlackBerry coming out the other side as a new consumer brand. Chen's five year plan fits perfectly with the five year contract he signed late last year.
His main focus seems to be on software, not surprising considering his background. He turned around an ailing Sybase and sold it to SAP for $5.8 billion. "I’ll let the software determine what kind of device we make," Chen stated, which means that BlackBerry devices could end up inside larger products. Or, BlackBerry could devise new products and form partnerships to get them manufactured.This is not to say that BlackBerry will give up making handsets. Chen says that his company must continue to produce phones in order to keep a presence with consumers, although in the future smartphones could be replaced as the device used to run apps and access the internet. The CEO does plan on pushing BES, especially to financial companies. And Chen isn't too full of himself to admit that he is following something he learned from the late Steve Jobs. "I watched Steve Jobs on YouTube, when he came back to Apple," said the executive. "He got up and said, ‘I don’t have a new product, I’m insanely focused on my customer base.’ That’s me now."

"Apple has to sell 58 million phones to get, I’d guess, a 10 to 12 percent margin. If you’re not first or second in phone sales, where do you get any margin? You could sell 30 million phones and lose money. I have to be realistic here."-John Chen, CEO, BlackBerry 

 

There is some other BlackBerry news sure to put a smile on John Chen's face. Price cuts that BlackBerry put in place in the UAE have led to a doubling of sales in the region during February, from the prior month. After a recent report from comScore showed that Windows Phone now has a higher market share than BlackBerry in the U.S., John Chen can use all of the good news he can get. 

 

 

 

 

 source: NYTimes, TheNational via BerryReview

Fire at plant producing PCBs for the Samsung Galaxy S5 could push back release date?

A rather huge fire at a factory producing printed circuit boards (PCBs) for the Samsung Galaxy S5, could lead to a delay in the release date of the eagerly awaited handset. Samsung hasn't announced a delay, but has said that it is looking for other factories to source the PCBs from. The Samsung Galaxy S5 is scheduled to launch in 150 countries on April 11th.
The fire that broke out was a massive blaze that required a response from 287 firefighters and 80 firetrucks. By the time the fire was put out, equipment and component damage amounted to a steep $1 billion. The fire broke out at 7am local time and it took 6 hours to put it out.

 




 source: AsiaNewsAgency (translated) via SamMobile

Nokia patents reveals active bezels for phones and tablets

A patent belonging to Nokia reveals that the Finnish based manufacturer might soon offer active bezels in future models of its Nokia Lumia smartphones and tablets. To increase the size of the touch-sensitive area of a device, Nokia's idea is to make the bezels respond to touch input. You probably are asking yourself how could this be done? Considering how often a device user touches the bezels on a device, wouldn't this lead to a number of accidental touches?
According to the patent, Nokia has solved this problem by making the bezels active only after the user presses down on part of the bezel with a force that would exceed a predetermined amount. This would allow the phone or tablet to know that the user wishes to interact using touch input on that part of the device. A visual indication or haptic feedback could be used to let the user know that the bezels are active.

"A force component of the touch input may be detected and compared to a predetermined force threshold. In cases in which the force component of the touch input exceeds the predetermined force threshold, user interaction with the content at that location may be enabled. In this way, the force exerted by the user in applying a touch input in the bezel area may be considered an indication of the user’s intent to interact with corresponding content within the bezel, and such interactions may be provided for accordingly."-Nokia patent filing 

 

 

 The active bezels could be disabled by merely allowing it to be active for a certain period of time. The patent even goes as far as saying that the amount of time that the bezels remain active could correspond with the amount of force used to enable the feature in the first place. 

 

 

 

 

  

 via: NPU

BlackBerry sells its US headquarters buildings in Texas

While the financial particulars were not disclosed, BlackBerry has sold the buildings that make up its headquarters base of operations for the United States in Irving, Texas. A Canadian investment company, Brookfield Property Group will be taking ownership of the 460,000 square foot facility.
BlackBerry bought the buildings in 2009, but has since been in the process of laying off nearly half its workforce. Often when companies sell hard assets like this, they remain tenants on a lease agreement with the buyer. No word if that is the case here or not.The company formerly known as Research in Motion has been going through quite an adjustment the past few years. While it goes through the motions that most struggling companies go through, it continues to push forward with its BlackBerry 10 OS with recently appointed CEO John Chen at the helm.Hard assets like property can add a lot of unnecessary overhead and with BlackBerry’s need to focus on not only staying relevant in developing markets, it needs to hold on to its enterprise and government customers too. Word on the street is that BlackBerry will focus its business locations based on being able to address those needs better.





 sources: Dallas News via BerryReview

The government-official SecuSmart-encrypted BlackBerry is available to everyone for $2770

Who knew that one day we'd be able to buy the kind of secure phone that only spies from movies and high government officials are privileged to? It's happening, folks - Germany's Secusmart GmbH is selling the most secure BlackBerry 10 phones out there for the affordable sum of $2770 (2000 euro), contract-free. The company is looking to offer the same security features that German chancellor Angela Merkel relies on to bankers, lawyers, politicians, and inevitably, drug barons posing as well-groomed businessmen. 

The SecuSuite for BB10 features a hardware-based security solution that integrates elliptic curve cryptography, certificate-based authentication of call participants, and 128 bit end-to-end AES encryption. Basically, it's a chip built into a special microSD card that provides additional secure memory to store confidential information in a protected environment.

It goes without saying that all the extra security measures only work the other end is running the same setup and a secure line is established. If you call a "regular" phone from your Merkel-worthy 'Berry, the communication remains open.

Secusmart's CEO, Hans-Cristoph Quelle, explains that voice encryption and secure communication in general is a "niche that is widening now." Indeed, lately we have been witnessing how mass-concerns about governmental spying on communications are presenting an opportunity for security companies to enter the huge smartphone market. Recently, different companies announced two security-oriented consumer Android smartphones that improve the OS's security from many angles. 

 bloomberg

HTC One M8 leaks in new photos

Half a month -- that's how much longer we'll have to wait until we see HTC's new flagship make it on the stage. Until then, we'll have to settle for intel that has managed to escape the Taiwanese manufacturer's labs. 

Fortunately, we've had quite some stuff leak out, and that trend is on a rise. After an anonymous kid smashed any hopes HTC might have been harboring for keeping the All New One a secret in a massive, 12-minutes hands-on peek into the flagship, we've been growing more and more certain that what we're seeing is, indeed, the real deal. A bunch of snaps of a China Mobile-branded HTC One M8 reinforce that notion, as they show a device that is identical to the one we've been watching come out of every nook and cranny in the past few weeks.

Again, a two camera setup with a dual LED flash module is being confirmed, and judging by the latest HTC teasers, the company isn't even trying to deny it anymore. In any case, we're genuinely interested in testing what this kind of configuration can do, and we honestly can't wait until the 25th of March, which is when HTC will be officially christening its new flagship. 

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

source: cnBeta