At the Samsung Galaxy S4 launch event, they did not only unveil the Galaxy S4 but also showed off a number of accessories that will work with it, as well as some other Galaxy S devices. There was enormous information that was showered to the general public, all at one that we’re still touching base with many untouched topics!

S Health Scale

The Scale for the GS4 was something that could be counted among the first few accessories. It is referred to as a companion accessory to the S4′s S Health application. The scale assists one in keeping an eye on the weigh loss or gain of an individual and input it into S Health via Bluetooth.

It is now known yet if the scale is capable of doing more than that as the functionality is so common that there are plenty of other type of scales available to do its kind of job.

Wireless Charging Pad

Off late the wireless charging feature has raised a lot of eyebrows and has caught the attention of many. We have news that Samsung is finally introducing its first wireless charging pad with the Galaxy S4. Equipped with Qi wireless charging capability, it will be able to charge itself by simply placing it atop the wireless charging pad.

Regardless of the angle or direction in which the device is put on the wireless charging pad, the device is able to charge itself. This could turn out to be very helpful to people who tend to empty out their pockets all at once, hoping their S4 will land on their wireless charging pad.

Samsung Wireless Gamepad

Coupled with dual analog sticks, a D-Pad, shoulder buttons, running on 2-AAA batteries and ability to connect to the Galaxy S4 via Bluetooth, the wireless gamepad feels comfortable in the hands as it feels just right in the hands.

The game that was demoed with the wireless gamepad was Sonic The Hedgehog 4: Episode II, which ran super smooth on the Galaxy S4. The delay between inputs on the gamepad to the actions performed in the game were nonexistent as every input resulted in an immediate response, which is crucial in a game like Sonic where responsiveness is crucial.

And with the wireless gamepad promising to allow for up to 100 hours of gaming on just 2-AAA batteries, you can be sure you’ll be using it for a while before needing a fresh set of batteries.

Stay tuned!

Samsung is gearing up to unveil its next-generation smartphone, the Galaxy S IV, in New York City on Thursday, a launch that further positions the company as Apple’s biggest competitor.

The Korean electronics giant has created a lot of buzz surrounding the announcement, which will be live streamed online and in Times Square. First, it handed out paper invitations at Mobile World Congress conference last month — a move we’d expect from Apple — by drawing attention away from the show and onto its upcoming launch. Then, the company organized a flash mob.

This will be Samsung’s first time launching a device in the U.S., and not overseas. Hyped by its “Unpacked” marketing campaign, the event will take place at Radio City Music Hall, just blocks away from Apple’s flagship store on Fifth Avenue.

Samsung, which will be launching its massive Galaxy S IV tomorrow, seems to be biased towards its US customers and would be manufacturing a special Galaxy S IV for the country which would be faster than the normal Galaxy S IV.

According to details from Bloomberg, the US version of the Galaxy S IV will use Qualcomm Inc.’s quad-core chip while the other markets will receive the Galaxy S IV with the traditional Exynos chip with eight cores.

Also in the details is the 13 megapixel camera but the eye scrolling feature we reported some days back seems to have been cut off from the list of features. Instead of the eye-scroll feature we may see an eye tracking feature which lets users pause videos when moving their eyes away from the screen, more like an eye-pause feature.

Overall the handset would have a larger 5 inch display showing a gradual rise from the earlier devices of the series. While we are not even sure about this news, taking into consideration the most recent details, we may see something different tomorrow.

Days leading up to the launch, Samsung has posted a series of teaser trailers — including comments such as, “This is going to be one of the most amazing products to hit the market since TVs went color” — and even tweeted a photo of the smartphone itself. (Well, sort of. It reveals the front view of the rumored Android-based smartphone amid a shadowy background.)

The past few days have viewed numerous associations turned out with their monetary reports for Q4 2012 and now Samsung is taking their turn to tell shareholders how they performed in the final quarter. Unsurprisingly, the effects are truly exceptional, with Samsung posting income of 56.06 trillion won (US$52.45 billion) with a managing benefit of 8.84 trillion won (US$8.27 billion). For the whole year of 2012, Samsung reported 201.10 trillion won income ($188.14 billion) for 29.05 trillion won benefit (US$27.18 billion).

Essentially, each one of Samsung’s divisions reported an expand on the final quarter and likewise a build contrasted with the same quarter the previous year. Here’s a breakdown of a percentage of the figures:

Benefits for Q4 are up 10% contrasted with Q3, and are a 89.3% expand on Q4 2011

Samsung’s Mobile Communications division developed 4% contrasted with Q3, and were up 58.5% contrasted with Q4 2011. This development was on the back of awesome Galaxy S III and Galaxy Note II deals.

Their Semiconductor division developed 10% quarter-on-quarter while posting 39% more income

Surprisingly, the Consumer Electronics division (which advertises TVs and apparatuses) reported a 20% expand in deals for a 87% build in benefit, quarter-on-quarter.

One of the few divisions that posted a decreased product of bargains was the Display Panel division, whose income was down 8% contrasted with Q3. That declared, in Samsung’s viewpoints for 2013, they want the Display Panel division to develop marginally, made by a solid interest for tablet boards and imposing (60″+) premium shows. Samsung additionally needs development in a large portion of their different ranges, safeguard for featurephones which it predicts will decrease energetic about an ascent in smartphones, and a powerless Q1 2013 because of seasonality.

On the whole things are searching truly useful for the Korean hardware titan, and with approaching proclamations for revamped features incorporating a Galaxy S III successor, 2013 might well be an additional huge year for Samsung.

Courtesy: Samsung (PDF)

Stay tuned!

Samsung had earlier this month asked us to ‘Get Ready’ for ‘Something New’ which the Korean giant plans to unveil at the upcoming CES 2013 early next month.

Furthermore it appears that Samsung may be wanting to reveal a couple of bendable screens at CES which we might see in activity in smartphones and TVs afterward year.

Consistent with an article by CNET, Samsung Display, a part of Samsung Electronics will showcase a 5.5-crawl bendable screen with HD show and a determination of 1280 x 720 pixels. In addition, the association is stated to be wanting to showcase a 55-crawl adaptable screen for utilization in TVs.

While we have perceived adaptable presentations in activity from Samsung previous, this time around, it tends to be stated that the bendable showcases can bow until the edges meet yet should not be fit for of moving up.

We might see the showcase in movement in the Galaxy Note III which can be expelled at some point subsequently year and we have as of now caught wind of the bits of gossip around a week back.

We are pondering in the matter of how an adaptable showcase could be utilized as a part of smartphones as different parts should not be bendable. We are simply a couple of weeks far from CES 2013 and see the presentations in movement.

A Christmas Gift Guide published by a retailer from the United Kingdom – Argos , shows they’ll be a selling a Nexus 7 with 32GB capacity for £199.99, the current selling price of the 16GB model. There was news earlier but nothing for sure that ASUS and Google would introduce a 32GB version of the Nexus 7 soon.

The Nexus 7 was unveiled at Google I/O in June and was first released in July of this year. The tablet was designed and developed by Google in conjunction with ASUS and features a 7-inch display, a Nvidia Tegra 3 quad-core processor and 1GB of RAM.

ModGadgets gets to you another leak from the HTC wave – HTC Proto! Earlier, the phone manufacturer flagged off in style after the successful launch and reception of handsets such as the HD2 and the original Desire. But considering the competition which  the Samsung Galaxy SII (and more recent SIII) and the iPhone gave it,  it is clear HTC aren’t having the best year of their business life.

The HTC Proto, another Android powered device is profoundly considered as the successor to the current HTC One V. Here is a short table showing both handsets, comparing specs and design.

On paper, apart from the screen size, both devices are almost identically spec’d out. But it’s what is under the hood that will make the difference. The chip has been changed from a Snapdragon single-core S2 to a dual-core S4, which should increase the level of performance from the CPU and GPU while maintinaing battery life at the same time.

After the rumoured successor to the One X was reported on two weeks ago, it looks like HTC are wasting no time in trying to steady the ship in the run up to the holiday season.

Images courtesy: The Verge and HTC

Emergency services in Marin County, California have been implementing a pilot project plan of using QR codes to retrieve the medical history of their patients since a year. Lifesquare, a start-up firm with the motto of saving lives is asking residents to store information about their medical conditions on its website, which would link them to a QR sticker, which in turn could be used to access important information. The stickers are being distributed by CVS pharmacies. Emergency works will scan the codes with around 50 iPhones purchased by the county.

Meanwhile, there are folks who have raised concerns about their privacy. Ryan Chamberlain, Lifesquare’s director of public outreach responded by mentioning that people already disclose their information when applying for a thing as simple as a driver’s license. To add more, there are credit cards whose details at many instances fall into non-government organizations too.

Lifesquare, he says, is different. “Here you own it, you put it into your own profile and nobody else touches it.” If they’re able to keep people from associating their service with a dystopian future where everyone has a barcode tattooed to their neck at birth, they just might save a few lives.

Image courtesy: Lifesquare

News has hit this weekend that at least one HTC Mozart has received an update to Windows Phone “Tango”, the latest release from Microsoft that (for the most part) has only minor upgrades. The news comes courtesy of Aviraj Ajgekar, a Microsoft evangelist, who reported on his blog (via WPCentral) that he received a series of updates.

Ajgekar, whose Mozart was originally updated to 7.10.8107, received updates that installed version 7.10.8112.7, followed by 7.10.8773.98 then finally to 7.10.8779.8, which as WPCentral points out is just ahead of the “standard” Tango upgrade. Ajgekar handily provided some screenshots such as the one above that show the progress of his updates, and he says that the updates only took a few minutes to download, of course due to Tango being a relatively minor update.

HTC and Microsoft have yet to confirm that they are pushing out Tango to all devices, but judging by this it’s either starting right now or it’s not too far away. If you have a Windows Phone and you have been prompted to download a Tango update, please let us know in the comments below.

Image courtesy of WPCentral

Source: Neowin

April saw the launch of the hotly anticipated Nokia Luimia 900 on AT&T, along with the HTC Titan II and the Nokia Lumia 610 in select developing markets. While last month was great for Windows Phone buyers, there is only one upcoming release for May.

Nokia Lumia 900 (HSPA+)

No other devices have been announced in the Windows Phone space, and I wouldn’t expect that any more will be announced until close to the release of Windows Phone 8.

Android

April saw the launch of the HTC One series in Europe, and the United States should see the HTC One X (AT&T) shortly while the HTC One S (T-Mobile) is available now. For May though, there are still a number of devices that are set to launch.

Samsung Galaxy S III

Originally I was told that the Xperia P would be launched right at the end of April. Unfortunately that didn’t happen and so it should be available sometime this month. Like the Xperia P, I originally was told the Xperia U would be available at the end of April. Instead, expect it this month.

Sony Xperia Sola

This interesting device with a “floating-touch display” is already available in Hong Kong and is expected to be released in other regions this month along with the other devices in the NXT range above.

Display: 3.7-inch TFT LCD at 854 x 480
Camera: 5 megapixels with LED flash, 720p video capture
Chipset: ST-Ericsson NovaThor U8500: dual-core ARM Cortex-A9 at 1 GHz, Mali-400 MP, 512 MB of RAM
Storage: 8 GB on-board; microSD slot
Connectivity: Quad-band HSPA, Wi-Fi b/g/n, Bluetooth 2.1, FM radio
Software: Android 2.3 with Timescape
Size: 116 x 59 x 9.9 mm at 107 grams

LG Optimus 4X HD

Perhaps the most interesting of LG’s upcoming line-up is the LG Optimus 4X HD. While it doesn’t have an official release date as of now, it’s either expected to be available this month (most likely) or early-June

Display: 4.7-inch HD-IPS LCD at 1280 x 720
Camera: 8 megapixels with BSI sensor, LED flash and 1080p video capture; 1.3 megapixel front-facing camera
Chipset: NVIDIA Tegra 3: quad-core ARM Cortex-A9 at 1.5 GHz, Kal-El ULP GeForce, 1 GB of RAM
Storage: 16 GB on-board; microSD slot
Connectivity: Tri-band HSPA, Wi-Fi b/g/n, Bluetooth
Software: Android 4.0 with LG skin
Size:8.9mm thick (other dimensions unknown)

Nokia 808 PureView

Nokia’s camera-centric 808 PureView running Nokia Belle is expected to be released in May – I’m hearing in the last week – although only in Europe as Nokia has shelved a North America and Australian launch.

Other devices are slated for a “Q2 2012″ release, but they are not expected to be released until June. This includes the Asus Transformer Pad Infinity 700 and Asus Padfone; the Huawei Ascend line and the Huawei MediaPad; and the Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1.

Many in the industry believe that HTC, which was once most beloved among Android fans, has fallen from grace. That the company has lost its way, its edge. I am here to tell you that those people are wrong. I offer as evidence the new HTC One X.

The One X, the company’s new flagship Android smartphone, is the kind of phone that just leaves you breathless. Its single-piece polycarbonate body is unique in the Android world, and it is as comfortable to hold as it is drop dead gorgeous. The X’s 720p resolution touchscreen display is just as attractive and functional as it is expansive, measuring 4.7 inches across the diagonal.

The One X’s two marquee features, however, are likely its Android 4 OS with the new Sense 4 user interface and the phone’s powerful NVIDIA Tegra 3 processor, which has 4 processing cores that can run at speeds of up to 1.5GHz. The real world impact of a quad-core processor might be negligible for most tasks, but there’s no denying that the marketing appeal it offers is great.

Source: Neowin