Galaxy S4 Launch: Samsung‘s Time To Shed Copycat Tag

Samsung's latest flagship Galaxy smartphone goes on sale this week, as the South Korean giant seeks to cement its lead over faltering rival Apple in an increasingly saturated market.

The Galaxy S4, armed with eye motion control technology that will pause a video when the user looks away, comes with a faster chip and is thinner and lighter than the Galaxy S III.

Unveiled last month at New York's Radio City Music Hall, the touchscreen device goes on sale in South Korea on Friday and will roll out globally over the weekend.

The release of the Galaxy S4 comes as Samsung finds itself at something of a crossroads in a market that was once dominated by Apple's iPhone.

After years of following and refining the iPhone's pioneering innovations -- a strategy that resulted in bitter patent battles with Apple -- Samsung has dethroned its California-based rival to become the world's top smartphone maker.

With that title has come increasing pressure for Samsung to shed its copycat label and come up with its own game-changing innovations.

"Samsung has entered territory that it hasn't been in before, and sales of the S4 will show if can sustain its newfound status in the market," James Song, analyst at KDB Daewoo Securities, told AFP.

Recent smartphone launches have lost something of the glamour and excitement that surrounded the early iPhone releases, in part because they are seen as offering incremental technology upgrades rather than breaking new ground.

The S4's features include a high-definition, five-inch (12.7-centimeter) screen, enhanced picture-taking capabilities and the capacity to translate to and from nine languages.

Its release has been preceded by a massive promotional campaign -- from the glitzy launch in New York to lighting up the sails of Sydney's iconic opera house on Tuesday night with images shot by ordinary Australians.

Samsung -- the world's largest technology firm by value and also the top handset maker -- has boasted stellar sales growth, setting new records for operating profit in every single quarter of last year.

First quarter results, due on Friday, are expected to show a 53% surge in operating profit from a year ago to 8.7 trillion won ($7.7 billion), largely fuelled by smartphone sales.

Samsung is estimated to have shipped 65 million smartphones globally in the first three months of 2013, for a market share of around 30%, according to Taiwanese analyst firm DRAMeXchange.

Apple by contrast, reported on Tuesday that its quarterly profit had dipped for the first time in nearly a decade, with DRAMeXchange estimating its iPhone shipments at 37.5 million units for a 15.3% market share.

But Apple's iPhone commands a profit margin double that of Samsung's smartphone stable which holds a much wider range of devices for both low- and high-end buyers.

"Samsung still has a very long way to establish itself as a leader, not a chaser, considering it has never had a genius in innovation like Steve Jobs," said Song.

"But Jobs is no longer at Apple either and the company is struggling. That may help Samsung earn some time to come up with ways to become a market leader in every sense," he added.

JK Shin, the head of Samsung's mobile unit, said verdicts from global wireless operators to the Galaxy S4 had been "far more positive" than with previous models and predicted of a "good result" ahead.

More than 41 million units of the Galaxy SIII have been sold globally since its release last May, while the first and second editions racked up sales of 25 million and 40 million respectively.

Song said the S4 had the potential to reach the 80 million sales mark by taking advantage of Apple's recent problems with supply chain disruption.

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Sony Xperia Z to hit Indian Stores On 12 March 2013

Sony has announced the Xperia Z and Xperia ZL for India today. The Xperia Z will be available in stores from March 12 onwards and is priced at Rs 38,990. Both phones will ship with Android 4.1 Jelly Bean and are already up for pre-order on certain online stores. The two phones will be part of a staggered flagship strategy for the company in India, with the Xperia ZL arriving in stores later this month.

Both phones share many specifications, but we will start with a look at the Xperia Z. One of the biggest selling points for the Xperia Z is its water-proof and dust-proof body. The phone is IP57 certified, which means you can immerse it in up to 1 metre of water for 30 minutes. Despite this rugged heritage, the Xperia Z is incredibly slim at 7.9mm and also features a microSD card slot. Naturally, the back of the Xperia Z is non-removable.

The Z is powered by a Snapdragon S4 Pro SoC, which has four Krait cores ticking at 1.5GHz each. The phone has an Adreno 320 GPU for graphics and 2GB of RAM. All that coupled with Jelly Bean should ensure a very smooth performance. The display on the Xperia Z is said to be a stunner. The 5-inch LCD panel beams out 1920 x 1080 pixels natively, while Sony’s proprietary Mobile Bravia Engine 2 enhances image quality and colour reproduction.

Here's a promo for the Xperia Z, which shows the thinking and engineering that went into designing the phone.

The resolution and the screen size of the phone result in a pixel density of 441 pixels per inch. The display is protected by shatter-proof and scratch-resistant glass. Sony has also baked in niceties like an OptiContrast panel, which is normally reserved for their higher-end Bravia televisions. The technology improves image clarity and boosts the display's contrast ratio while minimising reflections.

The camera on the back is a 13-megapixel one with support for 1080p and HDR video recording. Of course, all of Sony’s camera bangs and whistles like image stabilisation, face detection and 3D Sweep Panorama are present.

Here’s a look at the key specs of the Xperia Z
5-inch TFT LCD with a 1920 x 1080p resolution, 441 PPI

LTE, Cat3, up to 100 Mbps DL, HSPA+, GPRS/EDGE

Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n, Wi-Fi Direct, DLNA, Wi-Fi hotspotGPS with A-GPS support

Bluetooth 4.0 with A2DP

GPS with A-GPS support and GLONASS

NFC

13-megapixel camera with HDR video recording, image stabilisation, Sony 3D Sweep Panorama; 2-megapixel front-facing camera with 1080p video recording

16 GB internal storage with microSD card slot

The Xperia Z has a non-removable 2330 mAh battery. Sony’s proprietary Stamina Mode technology should help in increasing battery life by throttling data-hogging apps when in standby mode.

Both the Xperia Z and the ZL will feature some exclusive Sony apps. The company has bundled in a subscription to the new Sony Jive music streaming service, as well as Sony LIV, a video streaming service featuring exclusive Indian content. The Jive service is free for the first six months and users can then opt to subscribe to it after the initial free period.

Here's a quick look at the phone

The Xperia ZL has the same display and processor as its big brother, but loses the water and dust-resilient body. Instead, Sony has managed to fit the 5-inch display in a body smaller than the Galaxy S3. The ZL has a small flap at the back, which houses the SIM and the microSD card slots. The back panel itself is non-removable and houses a 2370 mAh battery, slightly bigger than the Xperia Z.

Another unique design feature is the placement of the front-facing camera, which is housed below the display. The camera on the Xperia ZL is the same 13-megapixel unit as in the Xperia Z and has the same features, including the HDR video mode. The ZL also has an IR blaster and one-touch mirroring features, something that the Xperia Z gives a miss. One other neat inclusion is dual-band Wi-Fi support to play nicely with the 5GHz wireless band.

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Sprint users: The hot new HTC EVO 4G LTE will hit stores this Saturday

If you're a Sprint customer up for contract renewal now or in the near future, there's a new hotness coming to town this weekend: the HTC EVO 4G LTE. Running the latest version of Android, Ice Cream Sandwich, the svelte new smartphone features a 4.7" display, dual-core processor, 8-megapixel camera, Beats Audio, 16GB internal storage, and support for NFC for mobile payments and wireless data transfer.

As the name cryptically implies, the new HTC smartphone features support for Sprint's brand new 4G LTE network — so brand-spanking-new, in fact, that it rather barely even exists yet. The new device succeeds the original HTC EVO 4G launched back in 2010, which had the distinction of being the very first handset to run on Sprint's WiMax network — at the time, the first true 4G cell network in the U.S. It also had the distinction of having some pretty terrible battery life as a result, so we hope the new edition isn't plagued by the same frustrating shortcoming.

After a short delay at U.S. Customs over one of those pesky patent squabbles, the HTC EVO 4G LTE will finally be on offer at a Sprint store near you this Saturday, June 2, for an on-contract price of $199. Will you be picking one up?

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Samsung Galaxy S3 hits store shelves in India

Samsung Electronics launched its flagship Galaxy S3 smartphone in India on Thursday, making an aggressive push to counter Apple's popular iPhones in a competitive market.

The 16 GB smartphone, priced at 43,180 rupees in India, runs on the Android 4.0 platform and features a 4.8 inch screen.

The Galaxy S3, powered by Samsung's quad-core microprocessor, also tracks the user's eye movements to keep the screen from dimming or turning off while in use.

Samsung packs new features such as the S Voice, its equivalent of Apple's Siri, and launched its own music service on the device. The S3 also boasts of an 8 megapixel rear camera.

"India is one of the top three strategic markets in the world for Samsung," a company release quoted H.C. Ryu, Samsung's vice president of sales and marketing, as saying at the phone's launch in India.

The company is aiming to outsell its previous model S2 that helped the South Korean firm topple Apple as the world's largest smartphone maker.

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3G Capable BlackBerry Curve 9320 Announced, To Arrive In June

RIM has announced a new BlackBerry phone – the Curve 9320, an entry-level device with 3G capabilities and BlackBerry OS 7.1, which according to the latest reports, is expected to arrive in India sometime in June. Pricing is as of yet unknown, but it is expected to be anywhere between Rs. 12,000 and Rs. 14,000, looking at where it would fit in the BlackBerry lineup.

The BlackBerry Curve 9320, first spotted in early March, is essentially the 3G-variant (7.2Mbps down, 5.76Mbps up) of the recently launched Curve 9220 (read our review), and shares most of its features, apart from a larger 3.15MP camera (compared to the 9220’s 2MP offering), with flash and image stabilization, as well as the GPS connectivity sorely-lacking in the 9220.

Common specifications include a 2.44-inch 320x240 pixel display, 512MB of RAM, Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n connectivity, stereo FM radio, 512MB of ROM, microSD card slot support up to 32GB, and a 1450 mAh battery, which is rated to deliver up to 7 hours of talk-time, and 30 hours of continuous FM radio playback. The Curve 9320 should also arrive in the same range of colours as the 9220.

Of course, like the Curve 9220, the Curve 9320 will come with the new dedicated BBM-button, for one-click access to the platform’s many integrated features. RIM has also added Parental Controls, allowing for feature and app access restrictions in BBOS 7.1. When introducing the smartphone, Carlo Chiarello, EVP of RIM’s Smartphone Business division, said:

“The new BlackBerry Curve 9320 is designed to make it easy for users to stay socially-connected. The new BlackBerry Curve 9320 will be especially popular with customers upgrading to a smartphone for the first time and existing Curve customers looking for a step up in speed and functionality.”

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