Latest Gadgets, Tablets and Smartphones
Google [GOOG] has officially announced that there are now 190 million Android smartphones. This number also accounts for $2.25bn in extra ad revenue for Google.
Back in July Google also made an announcement but that time there were 130 million devices active which means there’s been 60 million more added since then.
A lot of iPhone 4 users want to get Siri but unfortunately Apple [AAPL] has decided against offering it and has instead made it iPhone 4S only. We don’t know the reason for this as it could be related to the iPhone 4 not quite having enough power or that it’s some other hardware tweak that we don’t know about. It could also be a sales thing so that the 4S has another slight edge against the older versions.
Anyway, a developer has managed to port the Siri interface on to the iPhone 4. The downside is that it doesn’t quite work yet as the interface isn’t talking with the Apple servers yet. Siri requires a connection to the servers at Apple so that your voice records can be stored and used to improve the service. It appears that Apple isn’t authenticating the use of Siri on the iPhone 4 and hence, not allowing it to function fully.
We’ve been busy testing Siri for the iPhone 4S today to see if it works as advertised and also look at how it can be improved. What we wont touch on in this review is iOS 5 or the hardware in general. We’ll get on to those in the next few days after having more time testing the device and OS. On to the review…
Siri is a personal assistant for the iPhone 4S that goes beyond responding to simple commands. Siri understands context and allows you to speak in natural language to ask your phone to do things such as read my text message, remind me to do this, email this person, check the weather amongst several other things. When first getting the iPhone 4S you need to enable Siri and preferably allow it to use your current location as this comes in handy with some of the options you can set. On the settings screen there are just a handful of options which allow you to select who you are, which country you are from (currently 5 options available) and if you want Siri to activate when holding the phone to your ear. When these are set, you’re ready to go.
Windows 8 received quite a warm welcome when it was first announced. The new metro layout along with how it functions on the desktop and tablet was one of the many interesting new features about the operating. Today though, we’re taking a quick look at the task manager and although the task manager is a place that’s rather boring to visit for most users, Microsoft has made a number of improvements to make it more user friendly.
With the launch of iOS 5 there’s a bunch of features that are being discovered as more users update their iPhones. One of those is the new camera functionality. We already know of the double tap on the lock screen to get to launch the camera. We also know that the up volume button can also act as the shutter button. What we learn today is that the headphone volume control can also be used as a shutter button.
Google could be getting more closely involved in music from what we have read today. From what we understand, Google [GOOG] is currently signing deals with major record labels and when the contracts are complete, an MP3 store could be opened to compete with the likes of the iTunes store as well as Amazon store.
We already heard rumblings of the iPhone 4S having just 512MB of RAM and this has now been confirmed by both iFixit who took the iPhone 4S apart yesterday and by Anandtech who did some research on the part numbers found on the chips found inside.
The possible reasons for Apple choosing to use a lower amount of RAM are likely to do with power consumption. The more RAM the more cells that need updating.
Microsoft has announced that it will be launching Windows Phone 7.5 Mango in India. The first device that will launch in India is the HTC Radar. The launch date is expected to be as early as next week. Other devices will follow in the coming months which includes the Samsung Onmia W as well as the Acer Allegro.
iFixit now has an iPhone 4S and has begun taking it apart to check and confirm exactly what is inside of it. We’ve seen various official pictures from Apple that show the A5 processor and battery but other than that we don’t know the exact chips which should reveal a few more details about the inner workings of the device.
iOS 5 was rolled out yesterday and when it did, it caught one ISP (probably a lot more who haven’t admitted it) by surprise. The update page of that ISP has the following statements posted:
Apple in the UK has begun shipping the iPhone 4S to customers and currently is giving an estimated delivery date of tomorrow, October 14.
The HP TouchPad can finally run Android Gingerbread thanks to CyanogenMod 7.1.0. The new update now allows you to install the Google operating system on to the HP TouchPad tablet. Note that this is an Alpha version and that it has been described as very basic and quite buggy. Some features work but a lot doesn’t so before you go ahead and install make sure you can put up with problems.
