1/2/14

The flood of octa-core smartphones has begun, here's what to expect

Posted on 6:05 PM by Unknown

The flood of octa-core smartphones has begun, here's what to expect
For good or bad, a month ago, Chinese MediaTek officially launched its all-new MT6592 chipset, powered by eight ARM Cortex-A7 cores, and there's no stopping the flood now. In a typical Android fashion, more is always better, and while there's definitely an argument to be made about the practical feasibility of as many cores, it seems likely at this point, that 2014 will see quite a few devices packing the MT6592 or a similar system-on-chip from the likes of LG, Qualcomm, Exynos, Huawei, Allwinner and Rockchip.

As this is still some pretty new tech, established big brands aren't exactly killing themselves in an attempt to reach the shore first, but that doesn't mean they don't mean to eventually. Truth be told, even if we doassume that octa-core processors are nothing more than show, we still see a future ahead for the seeminglyredundant chips. If anything, history has shown that smartphone buyers sometimes get sold on significantly more gimmicky features.

So, who's taken to the task of carrying out the largely ungrateful task of heading the first charge? Chinese companies, for the most part, at least for now. The same, lacking the financial resources of incumbents, are often forced to look for each and every possible scenario that would serve to differentiate their wares, and MediaTek's new chip fits that bill perfectly. That being said, we're already seeing some palpable interest from large companies, such as HTC, LG, Alcatel (TCL), Huawei and Vivo, though we are yet to witness this materialize into an actual product. At this point in time, the number of devices that have/are set to receive the new octa-core chip easily exceeds two dozens, though we've narrowed it down to the more noteworthy ones. Facts of smartphone industry life apply, of course, so there's no knowing whether all the devices on the list will ultimately end up in customers' hands. Nonetheless, if you've caught an episode of octa-core fever, you'll likely want to keep tabs on them.

Samsung awarded a design patent for a vertically flexed smartphone à la LG G Flex, dockable tablets and a number of others

Posted on 6:01 PM by Unknown

Samsung awarded a design patent for a vertically flexed smartphone à la LG G Flex, dockable tablets and a number of others
With 2013 on path to run its course, we're getting into that special period of the year when Samsung is working overtime to introduce a number of new devices. In fact, if initial intelligence proves reliable, this year could just mark the biggest expansion of Sammy's portfolio, with some four tablets already being suggested. Luckily for us, Santa, or the US Patent & Trademark Office in this case, has left us techies a fitting present, as it has awarded the South Korean company a dozen of patents.Those range from new flexible smartphone designs, through dockable and somewhat nontraditional tablet designs, down to, get this, an electronics door lock. Unfortunately, since these are design patents, no relevant information about specs can be found within the filings themselves, though that doesn't mean we can't take a peek through Samsung's peephole. Anyway...

We're obviously going to start with the most intriguing one – the vertically flexed smartphone design patent that Samsung got awarded. Unlike its Galaxy Round, the new device will be vertically flexed, instead of horizontally, much alike to the LG G Flex, and that's a good thing – people didn't quite care for the Round, and LG arguably won this round (pun intended). Regardless, there's no denying that the design is interesting, especially as the back that seems to have gone through a round (last one, promise) of ornamentation. Of course, whether these serve a purely decorative purpose, or are on some kind of reinforcing duty remains to be seen.


Next up, we have a total of four different tablet designs, though they do look much alike to each other, but with some notable differences. For starters, it would appear that reports of Samsung's plans of going after the accessories market may pan out, after all, for all four tablets will have feature compatibility with an external keyboard dock (probably with an embedded battery, too), that they can snap to, both in portrait and landscape orientations. Moreover, two of the tablets, appear near identical, save for dimensions, which leads us to believe that they're just different sizes of the same design, an approach not unlike Sammy. The other two, however, have a notably different design -- one with what appears to be a home button placed at the very edge of the tablet, and another with a protruding camera strip and what appears to be a quad speaker configuration. Very interesting, so do make sure to take a look.


Lastly, another trio of smartphone design patents may be offering us a glimpse into the future, as Samsung moves to reinforce its phone line with new entrants. Design is a subjective matter, of course, yet three of those sure look good. From the looks of it, the third and final one appears to be yet another Galaxy S2 refresh, as it's looking pretty similar to the many variants of the dated ex-flagship.

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