Tuesday 04 January 2011

Video: Blackberry PlayBook HTML5/Flash Capabilities Shown Off    [ 04-01-2011 21:06 ]

Author: Oleg Kononosov   Source: Inside Blackberry     Translation by: Paul Smith     

RIM hasn't exactly been in the headlines for the best reasons this year. Stories about the company and its products have been increasingly centred around declining popularity, falling marketshare and the general malaise that seems to have crept over the once darling of the mobile scene.

One bright spot in the cloud of darkness that seems to have fallen over RIM has been the PlayBook, their upcoming tablet device.  RIM have been keen to talk it up, and with good cause since it has garnered a fair bit of attention and got more than a few excited for it.

RIM's latest bit of promotional material is a three minute video highlighting the devices Flash and HTML5 capabilities. The vide shows the device running through games, videos and websites that use either HTML5 or Flash.

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Honeycomb Will Require Minimum Hardware Specs?    [ 04-01-2011 21:00 ]

Author: Oleg Kononosov   Source: PCMag     Translation by: Paul Smith     

Android has always ben something of a wild west when it came to establishing minimum standards for the hardware. Basically Android would run on pretty much anything that wasn't using punch cards or valves.

Other platforms have taken a different route; Apple of course doesn't license its iOS platform to anyone else and strictly controls its own hardware. Microsoft have taken a sort of middle path, licensing Windows Phone 7 to third parties, but mandating that there be minimum hardware specifications to keep some consistency.

The current chatter is that Honeycomb, the version of Android after Gingerbread, will be following a similar route to Windows Phone 7 and be available only to devices that meet certain requirements.

NVIDIA's Tegra 2 dual core chip is rumoured to be the reference point for Honeycomb and as such it might very well become a requirement to actually run it. The knock-on effect of such a move is that existing tablets and devices that don't use that chip would be left out in the cold in terms of an upgrade.

The Tegra 2 requirement was confirmed by Bobby Cha, the head honcho at South Korean electronics firm Enspert. Of course Mr Cha isn't an official spokesman for Google so we'll have to wait for full confirmation. Mr Cha did go on to say that Motorola would be the first manufacturer out of the door with a Honeycomb powered tablet, which is pretty much what many people were expecting.

If Honeycomb does indeed ship with minimum spec requirements it might cause a bit of upset amongst those who've just bought a shiny new device e.g. a Galaxy Tab and found out their Android upgrade path has been cut short. Of course the boffins will no doubt be working on hacks and ports to get around any such limitations ...

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Win Phone 7 Bug Causing Extra Data Usage    [ 04-01-2011 20:47 ]

Author: Oleg Kononosov   Source: Windows Super Site     Translation by: Paul Smith     

A rather annoying, and potentially costly, bug has surfaced in Windows Phone 7, which causes data to be sent over a 3G connection even when WiFi is available. The obvious implication is that users could end up with bills higher than they expected.

Paul Thurrot, who has authored a book on the platform, said that it appeared devices such as the Samsung Focus were using the handset's 3G connection for data transfer despite WiFi being on and connected. A post from a user at Windows Super Site outlined the situation:

On December 22nd I received an email from AT&T saying that I was close to my 2GB data limit which truly shocked me as I feel I do not use data that much. I went and looked at my AT&T account online and noticed that my phone was sending huge chunks of data seemingly in patterns. For instance on November 21-24 it sent between 30 and 50 MB of data at 10:41pm each day and Dec 1-4 it sent between 30 and 50 MB of data at 9:41am each day. On December 23rd I turned on airplane mode so my phone could no longer send data. I turned airplane mode off briefly on December 23rd and the phone sent 400 MB of data. I called AT&T yesterday, December 28th, but they said that there was nothing that they can do to figure out what was happening on my phone.

So far Microsoft has kept schtum on the matter and there is no public acknowledgement that there is even a problem. Hopefully that's a situation that won't continue much longer. An update for Windows Phone 7 is planned for early this year, some speculating that it could be available within a week, but whether that will offer a fix for the issue or not isn't known for sure.

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