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Samsung Mobile Display promises 10x increase in production next year, end to AMOLED shortages
We already knew about Samsung's grand plans for expanding its display production in 2011, but now we also have a number to give us a sense of scale: 30 million. That's how many screens the new Mobile Display fab (set to go live in July) will be able to churn out in a month, a vastly superior rate than the current 3 million maximum. Lee Woo-Jong, the display business' marketing VP, tells us its estimates for AMOLED market demand have been revised upwards to 700 million units in 2015, with the new facility obviously being the key cog in making that growth happen. Intriguingly, he also notes that Super AMOLED -- one of the big attractions of the Galaxy S line of Samsung phones -- is not exclusive to Samsung's electronics arm, everyone can apparently use it. That directly contradicts what we heard from Sammy's mobile reps, but then this is hardly the first time that one part of Samsung doesn't know what the other is doing. Still, it's nice to at least dream of a S-AMOLED HTC HD7, no?
TI picks up first license for ARM's Eagle CPU core, mass market devices still a couple of years off
The mythical next generation of ARM's Cortex-A series, the Eagle, has made a reappearance in the news this week, but much of the mystery remains. Texas Instruments has now revealed itself as the first licensee of the new core, while also waxing poetic about its deep involvement and collaboration with ARM on its design and particular specifications. No, nobody was kind enough to let us in on what those specs might yet be, but since -- technically speaking -- the Eagle CPU hasn't even been announced yet, that's probably fair enough. For its part, TI expects to be first to market with its OMAP systems-on-chip integrating the latest Cortex core, but that won't be happening for a good while yet, as most projections peg the Eagle's landing to be no sooner than 2012. Guess we'll just have to make do with some dual-core Snapdragons until then.
iPhone 4 Retina Display vs. Galaxy S Super AMOLED... fight! (updated)
If the title of this post isn't enough to entice you, we don't know what else to say. We've gone and run some sunlit comparisons between Apple's brand spanking new phone's Retina Display and Samsung's equally fresh and exclusive Super AMOLED panel on the Galaxy S. We don't know if we'll be able to settle the argument, but we're certainly going to subject both superphones to an expansive visual inspection. Follow us after the break for video exploration of this most pressing topic. Update: Due to the Galaxy S having a separate setting for browser brightness, which we didn't max out in the original investigation, we've gone back and collected some truly 100 percent illuminated pictures. See the gallery after the break. Keep in mind that this shouldn't discredit most of the work done here, as we were more interested in pixel-level detail than brightness.%Gallery-96227%
iPhone 4 to have 512MB of RAM, double the 3GS and iPad?
Apple has traditionally been -- how shall we put it -- cagey with revealing memory and CPU specifics of its mobile devices, but MacRumors is today reporting its discovery that the fourth-gen iPhone's RAM apportionment will be a very healthy 512MB. We've heard similar rumblings from reliable sources of our own. What it means is that iPhone 4 users can look forward to not only the same processor (though potentially at a lower speed) as their iPad compatriots, but also double the memory allowance. Of course, this will hardly be the first handset to offer half a gig for the OS to dance inside, but at least Apple's keeping up with the times. Wouldn't wanna disappoint all those pre-orderers now, would we?
Motorola boosts Milestone XT720 spec with 720MHz CPU and 512MB RAM
Some of you weren't too pleased to see Motorola's new Milestone hitting Europe with just 256MB of memory and a 550MHz processor, and it seems like Moto has listened. We're sure the XT720 would've done just fine running Android 2.1 with its previous spec, but we're hardly going to begrudge a free upgrade. The TI OMAP3440 is now running at 720MHz -- something Motorola had told us the phone was always capable of, though the company had initially opted to downclock away from it, presumably in an effort to extend battery life. RAM gets a healthy doubling to 512MB, bringing the Milestone XT720 more in line with its "premium multimedia" boast, while the launch date seems to remain unaltered: later this month for Europe and a big fat question mark for the USA. [Thanks, Thomas F]
Motorola wants a 2GHz Android by year's end, so do we
Looks like we didn't get the full dish from Sanjay Jha's bout of loquaciousness this morning. It turns out Moto's chief of handsets has also expressed his company's intention to bring the world its first 2GHz smartphone and to do so on an aggressively accelerated roadmap. By the end of the year, Sanjay? Yes please. Another Moto exec is cited as saying NVIDIA Tegra will be providing the graphics prowess, Flash 10.1 will be fully supported, and a gyroscope will accompany HD video recording and output on the dreamy spec sheet. We wouldn't invest all of our trust in the conveniently anonymous exec's promised specs, but that 2GHz number comes straight from the top -- let the countdown begin.
Samsung: iPhone 4's retina display is nice, but it's no AMOLED
Samsung seems to have taken exception to a little sidenote made by Steve Jobs during his iPhone 4 announcement at WWDC10 this Monday. While waxing poetic on the virtues of IPS, Jobs let us know that he considers it an entirely superior display technology to OLED, and now the world's biggest display maker has a few words to say about it. According to a Samsung spokesperson, the high-res retina display on the iPhone 4 offers only a 3 to 5 percent advantage in sharpness over its own Galaxy S Super AMOLED screen, but sucks down a wasteful 30 percent more power. Moreover, Samsung believes its screens offer better viewing angles and contrast, and concludes by saying that "structurally, IPS LCD technology cannot catch up with AM-OLED display technology." And here we thought Samsung and Apple were getting along so well.
HTC EVO 4G meets magnetic macro lens, shoots gorgeous closeups
As phone accessories go, protruding lens attachments are rarely top of our wishlist, but this one here might just alter our perspective a little bit. Good and EVO have gone to the trouble of obtaining a magnetically mountable macro lens to test out how well the EVO 4G's camera performs with a little more optical prowess. The answer is that in spite of the inevitably goofy appearance, the jumbo Android handset delivered some highly impressive imagery, getting really up close and personal with its subjects and picking out exquisitely tiny details. The results are certainly of a caliber unobtainable with the default optics and well worth checking out -- the source link is where that party's at.
Hitachi working on cheaper, higher quality IPS touchscreens for cellphones
In case you haven't heard, IPS panels are making inroads into the lucrative mobile market this year, and Hitachi's been working behind the scenes on something that should keep that momentum going. In the mainstream, touchscreen IPS displays are currently only available on Apple's iPad (and expected to show up in its next-gen iPhone), but should Hitachi's new production technique pan out, we might be seeing this screen tech in much more affordable devices as well. The company has fiddled with the arrangement of the touchscreen elements inside the panel, which it argues has made them cheaper and easier to produce and replace. All good news, but these things do take a while to filter through into reality, until which time you might wanna sate yourself with the latest desktop IPS displays, those ain't too shabby or expensive either.
NVIDIA puts its Tegra 2 eggs in Android's basket, aims to topple Apple's A4
Microsoft's Kin One and Kin Two might not turn out to be the most auspicious devices for Tegra's debut in the smartphone arena, but NVIDIA seems to be learning from its mistakes. Admitting that the company committed too strongly to Microsoft with the first-gen iteration, Jen-Hsun Huang has now said that the second generation of Tegra will look to Android devices first and foremost. This newfound focus will materialize with both smartphones and tablets in the third and fourth quarter of this year, and will, according to Jen-Hsun, offer device makers a viable competitor to Apple's A4 SOC. In other news, NVIDIA has now shipped "a few hundred thousand" Fermi cards, and has also achieved 70 design wins with its Optimus graphics switching technology. Eleven of those are now out in the wild, but the vast majority are still to come, mostly as part of the seasonal "back to school" refresh at the end of the summer. These revelations came during the company's earnings call for the first quarter of its 2011 fiscal year, and you can find the full transcript at the source below. [Thanks, TareG]
Samsung acquires 'Android' trademark for mobile hardware sales in Korea
As it turns out, Korea operates two separate trademark systems for hardware and software. So while this doesn't affect Android OS and its distribution, Samsung's recent acquisition of the Android hardware trademark does forbid other manufacturers from releasing Android-branded devices -- whether they be a mobile phone, a PMP, PDA, GPS, DMB, or any other snappily titled mobile computer -- into the Korean market. This will be felt by local competitors like LG, who has an Andro-1 OEM handset in the works that would infringe Samsung's newfound rights. The trademark previously belonged to local supplier Triplex, who'd held it since before Google's OS came into being, and apparently using just four characters of "Android" will be sufficient to offend the authorities. Sammy's clearly decided to aggressively pursue being the premier supplier of Android phones in its backyard, and rubbing LG's nose in it must've been the chocolate frosting atop that eclair. [Thanks for the translation, Didier]
Qualcomm's 7x30 offers stellar 3D and multimedia performance, coming this year (video)
Feeling the post-MWC blues? Not enough smartphone hardware talk to get you through your Monday trudge? Fear not, we've grabbed a pair of Qualcomm demo videos from this year's event in Barcelona that show off its MSM7x30 smartphone platform (first announced in November of last year). It has now made its way into some demo devices and its early performance points to a very happy future for all of us mobile media vultures. Equipped with the same CPU as resides inside Qualcomm's Snapdragon, this system-on-chip comes with an HDMI output and the ability to play back 720p video on both its host device and your nearest HDTV. There's also some very welcome 3D gaming on show as well as YouTube playback using Flash 10.1 (smooth and silky), but our attention was captured by a nifty picture browser provided by Scalado. It allows you to view up to 1,000 images at the same time, zoom into each individual one, or sort them by name, color and other attributes. Being able to handle all that, with only minor perceptible lag, shows we're looking at what's shaping up to be a pretty beastly chip. Check it out after the break, and expect it to show up in a lust-worthy smartphone near you by the end of 2010. [Thanks, TareG]
