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Samsung has sold more than 200 million Galaxy S smartphones
Want to know how big a player Samsung is in the smartphone market? The company now says that it's sold over 200 million Galaxy S phones since the line first went on the market in 2010. For reference, the Korean tech giant had notched up sales of 100 million Galaxy S devices as of slightly more than a year ago. Samsung isn't breaking down the sales by model, although it had sold over 40 million Galaxy S 4s as of last fall -- much of that 200 million clearly came from more recent customers. It's difficult to compare the data against other manufacturers, since few of them break out sales by range. Apple, for example, said that it shipped 700 million iOS devices of all kinds as of October. However, it's safe to say that Samsung remains a heavyweight at the high end of the smartphone market.
Samsung Galaxy S5 preview: simpler in some ways, more 'glam' in others
Once a year, Samsung takes some of its best material and slaps it together into a premium flagship model called the Galaxy S. While 2014's version -- the S5 -- came a bit earlier in the year than some earlier iterations, we're no less excited to see it become the star of the show at Mobile World Congress. The new device will ship in April (on stage, Samsung specifically mentioned that it launches on April 11th in 150 markets), although exact pricing and availability are still unknown. It features a refreshed design language, yet anyone who has used a GS phone recently will immediately recognize it as a Samsung flagship. Despite its familiar design, the GS5 has a few new useful hardware features, including a fingerprint scanner, heart rate sensor, and a toned-down TouchWiz UI on top of Android 4.4 KitKat. Perhaps the biggest surprise of all, however, was that Samsung didn't overload its prized new smartphone with a heaping dose of new S-branded features. This is a marked departure from the company's previous strategy of cramming in every software feature under the sun, which leads us to wonder if this is related to Samsung's recent agreement to dial back the customization it does on Android devices. So what else is new here? Read on for a deeper dive.
Meet Samsung's new smartwatch family: the Gear 2, Neo and Fit
Samsung's new Gear smartwatches are no longer card-carrying members of its Android Galaxy. That's because Tizen, the company's open-sourced OS, has taken over the reins for the line begot by the barely five-month-old Galaxy Gear. And, in typical Samsung fashion, the company hasn't released just one new Gear, but three with very specific areas of focus: the fashionable Gear 2, the functional Gear Neo and fitness-focused Gear Fit. The newly announced trio was on display here at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, giving us a chance to get acquainted with their particular quirks and let you know whether or not to free up some space on your wrist.
Live from Samsung's 'Unpacked 5' MWC event!
Slow your roll there, eager beaver. We know you're excited to Meet the next Galaxy S5, but the big 'Unpacked 5' event hasn't started yet. If you're worried about missing any of the news as it's unveiled, just be sure to check back here at 2PM EST/ 8PM CET when Samsung's Mobile World Congress festivities kick off. We'll be reporting on all the action (and potentially amusing stage presentation) as it happens live. Until then, be nice to your Galaxy S 4, and say hi to your mother for us. February 24, 2014 2:00:00 PM EST
Stephen Elop: Nokia X will bring more consumers to Windows Phone
After Nokia's big announcement of the brand-new X series, we had a chance to sit down with Stephen Elop, the executive VP of Devices for the company. Naturally, the company's decision to crank out an Android device was a matter of great curiosity for us. Most importantly: Did Microsoft agree to this from the beginning, or did Nokia's acquirer go into this idea begrudgingly? According to Elop, it's the former. "Microsoft bought the Mobile Devices division," Elop told us, "so they knew what they were doing." Given the company's focus on a tile-based experience and its emphasis on the Microsoft Cloud, it's beginning to make a lot of sense. Elop went on to state that the X is primarily a stepping stone (a "gateway phone," if you will) for a largely untouched market segment -- emerging markets and developing countries -- to get acclimatized to Microsoft's suite of services and familiar Live Tiles interface. It's an interesting strategy, no doubt, and we're excited to see if it pays off in the long run -- people won't be rushing to a Windows Phone weeks after buying an XL, but it sounds like the idea is to plant a seed within consumers, as well as a reliance on services like Skype, Outlook and OneDrive. Our interview with Stephen in its entirety is below. Steve Dent contributed to this post.
This wearable Sony concept will let you document your life with photos
Back at CES, Sony unveiled a curious wearable: the Core, a miniscule activity tracker made to slot into accessories, like its SmartBand. At the time, details surrounding this waterproof sensor were scarce, but here at Mobile World Congress, we've gotten more insight into how the tiny tracker fits within the One Sony world. And as you can see above, Sony's exploring ways to pair it with a camera you wear around your neck, so it's always ready to document your day. But, first, here's a little background on the Lifelog app that makes it tick. The Core is effectively useless without Sony's Lifelog, a lifestyle-tracking app for Android the company demoed onstage at its presser and is planning to release to Google Play in March. Think of Lifelog as a curated Facebook feed for your life, but without much effort on your part. It records your locations, communications, physical activity and photos taken and places them in a graphed format, in addition to coaching you with set goals. From what little we've been told about the Lifelog camera concept, it seems users would be able to pair it to a smartphone and then set specific triggers for photo capture, like times of the day or activities. So say you want to record the moments of your daily jog, this concept would handle that automatically and upload the shots to your personal feed. It's the sort of the stuff quantified selfers get all hot and bothered over -- you know, those ardent lifebloggers. But just because Sony's showing off this Lifelog camera concept, that doesn't mean we'll ever see it become a commercial reality. Sony may just be testing the consumer waters or simply showing off its idea of the possible road ahead.
AT&T expands LTE roaming to 13 more countries
Mobile World Congress is in Spain, which is lucky, because today's the day that AT&T allows its users to use LTE while they're there. Following the deal with Rogers in Canada, 'Ma Bell has pushed out a list of 13 countries, including Japan, Russia and South Korea, where road warriors can now suck down super-fast data in peace. In order to make sure you're not going over on your plan, the the company has also launched a new travel app for iOS and Android devices that'll alert you if you get close to your cap. Someone should have brought MWC forward by a fortnight -- that way everyone could have used LTE while during the Winter Olympics.
LG updates F Series with two new LTE phones (hands-on)
With all this G2 mini and G Pro 2 talk recently, you'd be forgiven for forgetting that LG also has other handset lines. On the table (literally and figuratively) today are the F70 and F90 mid-rangers. The former is a 4.5-inch (WVGA) device with a 1.2GHz quad-core Snapdragon 400 taking care of bi'niz, plus a 5-megapixel camera, 2,440mAh battery and just 4GB of internal storage. As for the F90? Well, it's a little bigger at 4.7 inches, but has the same chipset and onboard memory. You will get a slightly better camera though, with LG giving it an 8-megapixel shooter. Thankfully, both come with a microSD card slot to augment that lackluster amount of onboard storage. The phones themselves? Well, they're a plucky pair, that's for sure. It's easy to dismiss mid-spec handsets like these out of hand in the design department, but LG has clearly made enough effort to make sure that they feel well-built and don't look entirely terrible. The textured back panels go a long way to brush off that low-end feel you can sometimes get at this level, and the small details around the edges, ports and buttons also add a nice aesthetic touch. The menu and UI, however, definitely feel like they're more intended for users who like to keep things simple with bigger fonts and basic options, and that's no bad thing. Power users will, of course, already be looking elsewhere. One other thing to remember is that, toe to toe, these two cheeky chaps aren't all that different in specification to the LG G2 mini, even down to the much-touted "knock knock" feature. Food for thought right there.
HTC to expand its US reach in 2014 by launching a greater variety of phones
HTC seems to understand that it needs to do something to get its products into more hands. That's the sentiment that exec Jason MacKenzie expressed to us today after the company's Desire press event. Said MacKenzie, "You can expect to see more devices in the US that reach out to more market segments." Among these new devices, he tells us, is the new Desire 816 announced at today's show. Such a move shows that while the HTC One was one of our favorite devices of the year, it simply wasn't enough to make a significant enough impact in market share; by offering phones at a variety of price points, HTC believes that more people will take notice of its products as they hang out on store shelves. And if the company can keep up its ability to make tempting handsets with good build quality and low enough prices to compete, it likely will have a much larger impact in the US than anything Robert Downey Jr. can have.
Samsung's Galaxy Core LTE could also be the S 4 Mini... lite? (hands-on)
When you have the inventory that Samsung does, you don't need to make a fuss when you launch a mid-range Android phone. But the Korean firm did recently release one -- the Galaxy Core LTE -- and it's certainly worth a moment of your time if you're in that market. Design-wise you know the drill: take one of Samsung's flagships and nip a bit here, maybe a tuck there. Aesthetically it's derivative, sure, but comfortable -- like some well worn-in shoes. On a positive note, the back panel is textured, and feels like something between rubber and a soft touch finish. This at least stops it feeling too much like one of Samsung's many "sausage machine" handsets. As for specifications, it's fairly typical of the current mid-tier breed. That means a 4.5-inch qHD display, a 1.2 GHz dual-core chip (based on Arm's A9, but no mention of specifics), a 5-megapixel/VGA camera combo, 8GB of storage (plus a microSD slot) and a 2,100 mAh battery. We only got to spend a short while with it, but if we're honest, we were actually impressed by how quick and fluid menu navigation was, or how responsive Google maps rendering was. This, of course, should be no real test of a modern phone, but it still gave us a little "not bad" reflective moment. At the moment we only know it's coming to Europe and Asia, with no mention on price. But if we're betting on anything, it's that it'll have a new cousin to look up to too -- in just a few short hours.
HTC's Desire 610 joins the affordable LTE smartphone party
Joining HTC's "flagship mid-range" Desire 816 at MWC is this smaller, but similar-looking Desire 610. As the cheaper model of these two LTE phones, many things have been downsized a little here: There's a 4.7-inch 960 x 540 display, a 1.2GHz quad-core Snapdragon 400 chip, 1GB of RAM and a fixed 2,040mAh battery. The cameras are also more modest, with the main one sporting an 8-megapixel sensor with f/2.4 aperture, and the front imager featuring a 1.3-megapixel sensor. Both can only handle 720p video recording. On the flip side, the Desire 610 has preserved some of the goodies from its bigger sibling: microSD expansion (but up to 64GB instead of up to 128GB) on top of the built-in 8GB of space, BoomSound stereo frontal speakers, nano-SIM support and LTE radio for either EMEA or Asia. There's no pricing info at the moment, but knowing that the Desire 816 will be priced extremely competitively, here's hoping that the Desire 610 will cost a tad less than Huawei's counterpart, the €249 (about $340) Ascend G6 4G. Expect this device to arrive in Europe sometime in May.
Live at Mark Zuckerberg's MWC 2014 keynote
Given Facebook's recent $19 billion purchase of WhatsApp, Mark Zuckerberg's Mobile World Congress keynote just got a lot more interesting. Hopefully he'll illuminate us more about how the chat app will fit into the social network's plans, since that'll be top of mind. Either way, we'll no doubt hear more about Highlights, Paper and Trending Topics. To get his take on all that and catch anything juicy, tune in right here at the time below. February 24, 2014 12:00:00 PM EST
HTC wants to combine all your Android phones to cure diseases (video)
With smartphones packing so much processing power these days, HTC reckons we can combine them all to do some meaningful number crunching à la SETI@home and Folding@home. We're talking about curing diseases (AIDS, cancer, Alzheimer's and more) as well as searching for alien life. As such, the mobile company has teamed up with UC Berkeley's Dr. David Anderson, co-creator of SETI@home, for the HTC "Power To Give" initiative. To take part, you simply grab the app from Google Play, install it and it'll run in the background when your phone's being charged up plus connected to WiFi. HTC claims that the combined power of 1 million Ones is almost just as good as a one-petaflop supercomputer, so the more the merrier -- including those from other brands. But for now, HTC will first offer its app's beta release to the HTC One family and the Butterfly series, and it'll gradually add more compatible Android devices over the next six months. Isn't it awesome that even Nokia phones can soon partake in this, too? Update: The good folks at HTC have now published a couple of videos explaining this initiative. Check them out after the break.
HTC's 'flagship mid-range' Desire 816 packs a large display, decent cameras and LTE (hands-on)
That HTC "Desire 8" you've been seeing lately? It's finally unveiled as the Desire 816, a "flagship mid-range" phone that promises to be competitively priced, while also offering LTE (for EMEA and Asia) and HSPA+ (up to 42 Mbps). This pretty phablet comes with a large 5.5-inch 720p display, a 1.6GHz quad-core Snapdragon 400 SoC, 1.5GB of RAM, 8GB of internal storage (capacity may vary), microSD expansion of up to a staggering 128GB and a fixed 2,600mAh battery. You'll get a decent multimedia experience courtesy of the BoomSound frontal stereo speakers (with dedicated amplifiers), along with the 13-megapixel f/2.2 main camera (with Zoe mode in HTC Sense 5.5 UI) plus the 5-megapixel f/2.8 selfie camera. These are all tucked inside a 7.99mm-thick, 165g body, which is pretty good for the size. Interestingly, this will be the first HTC phone to take a nano-SIM, which may be able to lure a few iPhone 5c users. Ultimately, it's all about the price, and we should know very soon given the China launch next month (likely March 18th), followed by a global launch in April. Update: We now have some hands-on photos. Enjoy!
Ford's 2015 Focus brings touchscreen Sync technology to Europe
Europe regularly gets Ford's latest cars, but it hasn't been so lucky with Sync -- the continent typically has to make do with the basic version rather than MyFord Touch. Locals won't have to settle when the 2015 Focus rolls out in the second half of the year, though. The redesigned car will bring Sync 2, which is effectively MyFord Touch under a new name; drivers get a similar 8-inch touchscreen interface with sophisticated control over the climate system, media playback, navigation and AppLink support. The 2015 refresh should bring a few welcome tech upgrades no matter where you live, including a now-standard rearview camera as well as optional blind-spot detection and lane warnings. Ford isn't giving out prices at this stage, although we wouldn't expect this newest Focus to cost much more than the outgoing model.
Panasonic's newest Toughpad isn't a smartphone, except when it is
When Panasonic said that it was done making smartphones, it meant it. The 5-inch Toughpad FZ-E1 and FZ-X1, you see, are very small tablets that just happen to make calls, okay? Both come with a 5-inch 1,280 x 720 LCD display, 2GB RAM, 32GB of on-board storage and a microSD card slot. Another way in which these devices aren't smartphones is in the connectivity stakes. After all, you wouldn't see a smartphone with 802.11a/b/g/n/ac WiFi, Bluetooth 4.0, HSPA+, WCDMA, EV-DO, 3G and LTE radios, not to mention HD Voice, GPS and GLONASS, would you? Since these are Toughpad devices, they're both ruggedized to withstand drops, dust and water to MIL-810G, IP65 and IP68 -- so you can use the device's 8-megapixel camera and 1.3-megapixel front-facing lens in any conditions. There's also a staggering 6,200mAh battery tucked inside, which the company promises will keep you trucking for 14 hours of continuous use and up to 1,000 hours of standby. The only real difference between the two smartphones small tablets is the choice of operating system, with the E1 running Windows 8 Embedded and the X1 packing Android 4.2.2. There's no specific word on pricing, but we could expect 'em to retail for around 130,000 yen ($1,300) when they both drop later in the year.
Fujitsu's working on another senior-friendly smartphone for Europe
Fujitsu's evidently so impressed with how its luddite-friendly Stylistic S01 smartphone has performed in France, thanks to a deal with local carrier Orange, that it's ready to start plugging a follow-up handset. Only, the company doesn't have a clue on specifics just yet, but we'll award a few points for enthusiasm, we guess. All we know of the Stylistic S02, assuming that'll be the device's name, is that it's "expected" to wield NFC and LTE chips, an "energy-saving display" and a processor of the quad-core variety. Plans are to launch the smartphone aimed at "mature users" in a number of European locations this autumn. Not a lot to talk about, we know, but Fujitsu had to announce something phone-related at MWC. Otherwise, people'll just think it makes tablet concepts with scaly touchscreens.
WhatsApp to add voice communication by summer
When the announcement hit that Facebook was snapping up WhatsApp (beating out Google in the process), the gargantuan $19 billion price tag was hard to justify. But, with 465 million active users per month, there's a lot of potential for other, perhaps more profitable services. Today at MWC, TechCrunch has heard from WhatsApp CEO Jan Koum that a new service is indeed coming to the platform relatively soon: voice communication. Of WhatsApp's now 330 million daily user base, those on Android and iOS will get the feature first when it rolls out in second quarter 2014, followed by those on "some Nokia and BlackBerry phones." We're not clear on exactly how it'll work -- whether you'll send voice messages like Voxer, or make calls like Skype -- or if we'll be expected to pay for the privilege. (You can record and send audio clips within WhatsApp conversations already, but it's not exactly elegant.) Given there are a number of free voice-based services available to us already, however, we imagine it being part of the standard subscription. Assuming WhatsApp actually want us to use it, anyway.
The first available Tegra 4i smartphone will come from French company Wiko (hands-on)
Sorry LG: you may have trotted out the G2 mini yesterday, but yours won't be the first Tegra 4i device to hit store shelves. NVIDIA says that distinction belongs to the Wax, a newly-revealed handset from French phone maker Wiko that should launch in Europe "within weeks." We just spent a few frenzied moments with the Wax at MWC, read on for our first impressions.
Garmin's new app turns Sony's SmartWatch 2 into a tiny satnav
We like the idea of hooking our watches into our phones, so when we wander around foreign lands, we don't look like as much of a tourist. Garmin agrees, and has launched a navigation app specifically for Sony's Xperia devices that'll push real-time directions straight to the SmartWatch 2. Acting like a premium satnav, the app offers offline maps, walking directions, real-time traffic and active lane guidance. It'll launch in March, and when you're done with the 30-day trial, it'll cost you $3 a month to get access to the full set of features. Oh, except for the SmartWatch spanning, which'll set you back a further, undisclosed amount, because commerce.
