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Konka tries to differentiate with familiar-looking Kanzi 3D UI
Some phone makers carve their own path, others ride on their coattails. Konka, however, somehow carves its own coattails, and we admire the ingenuity. The Shenzhen-based mobile maker, known for its familiar designs and logo font, has just announced that, going forward, its smartphones will be using the 3D Kanzi UI from Rightware -- as formally seen on ZTE handsets. So does this complete the trifecta of design flattery? The Kanzi interface can be seen in action in the video after the break, but if you weren't sure how 3D it was, then there's a PR after that too, which might mention it. Just a few times.
Kanzi: ZTE's 3D UX for ICS handsets
To skin or not to skin? That's hardly ever a question for Android OEMs. And, in the case of some Chinese manufacturers, that mark of software differentiation comes in the form of three dimensions. We've already seen Huawei trot out its (optional) 3D UX for the Ascend P line, and now it appears ZTE's ready to follow suit with a custom interface powered by Rightware. The Kanzi UI, as it's called, will come pre-loaded on all of the company's smartphones currently shipping with Ice Cream Sandwich, treating users to a 3D homescreen experience and giving developers a unified platform to port their designs. It's good news if you're a fan of that overlaid visual gimmickry, but we much prefer our Google desserts vanilla and without any toppings. Hit up the break to check out the official presser.
Orange's Santa Clara Medfield phone gets benchmarked, well, the browser does
Wondering how those Medfield handsets stack up to their ARM-powered competition? Well, we can't promise a full suite of benchmarks just yet, but we do have a peek at a pair of browser-centric tests. The German Caschys Blog managed to get a hold of Orange's upcoming Santa Clara device at CeBit and ran Qualcomm's Vellamo and Rightware's BrowserMark on the Atom handset. In both metrics the Z2460 more than holds its own, scoring an 89,180 on the web-based BrowserMark -- putting it just ahead of the iPhone 4S which clocks in at 87,801, but well behind the Galaxy Nexus' 98,272. Things look just as promising on the slightly more hardware-intensive Vellamo where it trounced the latest Nexus and was hot on the heels of the Xiaomi Mi-One Plus and Transformer Prime. Of course, neither of these tests really tax the CPU or measure 3D graphics performance. We're not even sure what the clock speed on chip inside the handset is. We were originally led to believe 1.6GHz, though, Caschy is reporting the model he manhandled was running at just 1.4GHz. Then, there's perhaps the biggest question of all -- battery life. For that, we'll just have to wait and see.
