iOS and Android See Record Breaking Sales on Christmas

The two most popular mobile platforms – iOS and Android – both saw a record breaking Christmas this year, in terms of device activations as well as app downloads. They generally see a sharp rise around Christmas every year, as device sales are boosted by people giving them away as gifts.

According to Flurry, the total new iOS and Android device activations on Christmas Day were 6.8 million, compared to just 1.5 million activations on any average day in December. The number is also much higher than the activations on Christmas Day 2010, which were just around 2.8 million.

Naturally, there was also a significant rise in the number of app downloads this Christmas. While around 108 million iOS and Android apps were downloaded on any average day in December, Christmas Day saw around 242 millon app downloads.

Note: Andy Rubin just posted on Twitter that around 3.7 million Android devices were activated on December 24 and 25. Assuming that the device activations were split equally on both days, around 1.85 million Android devices were activated on Christmas Day. This means that the number of iOS devices activated on that day were close to 5 million, much higher than Android.

Even if we assume that a majority of the 3.7 million Android devices were activated on December 25, the number of iOS device activations was likely much more than the number of Android device activations.

Lava S12 Review

Over the past couple of years, Android has been quite a revolution in the smartphone market. Android’s increasing popularity has meant that manufacturers have been churning out Android-based mobile phones at all possible price ranges.

Lava Mobiles, well known for their low-cost handsets, introduced their first Android based smartphone, the Lava S12 recently. Over the past 2 weeks, I’ve been using the Lava S12 as my primary phone and this gave me a chance to evaluate the phone. Let’s see how the phone fares. 

Specifications

Being targeted at the low-end segment, the Lava S12 is powered by a 600MHz Qualcomm MSM7227 processor running on Android 2.2. The screen is a 262k color, 3.2” HVGA LCD screen with 320×480 resolution and unlike most low-end phone, comes with a capacitive touchscreen.

The phone features a 5megapixel camera and comes with the regular connectivity options including WiFi(802.1 a/b/g) and Bluetooth on the wireless side and a microUSB port on the wired side. The internal phone memory is a paltry 120MB and it su but can be expanded with the help of a microSD card.

Bundle

The Lava S12 comes with a pretty impressive bundle & packaging.

Besides the phone, the bundled box comes with a microUSB cable, a stereo earphone headset, charging plug-point, a User’s guide, a leaflet highlighting the phone’s features, a leather pouch and a 2GB microSD card. The leather pouch is a pretty nice addition & feels good to hold.

Build Quality & Hardware

The Lava S12 has a pretty nice feel to it. The phone has a curved front and back shape and feels very good to hold. Though the phone still has a plasticky-feel to it, it doesn’t look bad. The back cover has a pseudo-leather look and this helps in improving the look  feel of the phone. The sides of the phone have a very nice brushed-aluminum finish. Unfortunately the microSD & microUSB slots are covered with a rather flimsy plastic cover and gives the sensation that it might break anytime.

As mentioned above, the phone features a 3.2” HVGA capacitive touchscreen. The top-left corner features the lock/power off button and volume control buttons. The right side of the phone features the headphone jack, the microSD &  microUSB slots. Rounding off the side was a dedicated button for activating the camera.

The capacitive touchscreen was fairly responsive, however at times the phone failed to register my input. Though the phone has a dedicated camera button, more often than not, pressing the button would result in no action and I had to open the camera by launching the Camera app, rather than holding the button.

The phone features four dedicated buttons at the bottom of the screen – the back button, the app launcher button, the home button and the search button. The home button is programmed to bring up the 3D UI, while the rest work as expected.

Software & Performance

The S12 runs on Android 2.2 “Froyo” with a custom spinning 3D UI that Lava touts heavily as it’s distinguishing feature. Hitting the home button brings up the 3D UI. The 3D UI feels like quite a novelty at first. However, with increased usage, the novelty factor wears off and the 3D UI feels gimmicky and isn’t really usable. To make things worse, the 3D UI is quite slow & navigating though the UI becomes a chore.

Samsung Unveils The Galaxy Y Duos and Galaxy Y Pro Duos Dual-SIM Phones

Samsung has just announced two new Android running dual-SIM handsets – the Galaxy Y Duos and the Galaxy Y Pro Duos. While the Galaxy Y is a touch-only handset, the Y Pro comes with a physical QWERTY keyboard as well. The Y has a 3.14-inch QVGA (240×320) resolution screen, while the Y Pro has a 2.6-inch QVGA LCD screen.

Both the handsets are powered by an 832MHz processor and run Android 2.3 Gingerbread with TouchWIZ running on top of it. Other key features include Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, a 3MP fixed-focus camera on the back, microSD card slot and A-GPS. The Galaxy Y Pro also has a front-facing VGA camera. The handsets are also capable of recording videos in VGA resolution. The phones will have 4GB of internal memory, and will come with a 2GB microSD card pre-loaded in the box. Both the phones also have 3G, 512MB of internal memory and 384MB of RAM.

Both the handsets are expected to hit the Asian markets sometime in January 2012. The Korean company did not announce the pricing of either of these handsets.

Upcoming Underwater Neutrino Detector To Be Taller Than The Burj Khalifa!

The largest structure ever in the history of mankind is being built for the smallest particle of matter known to mankind. Called the KM3Net Telescope, the structure will be a neutrino detector, taller than the Burj Khalifa, but buried under 3200 meters of water! The whole structure is the latest in the series of larger and larger neutrino detectors and will be the product of a pan-European contribution. It will be the second largest structure in human history, second only to the Great Wall of China.

The neutrino detector (Courtesy: KM3Net)

The super-structure

The super-structure will consist of long cables, holding an optical modulus at the end of each. Each of these optical moduli is a standalone sensing unit, sensitive to light. It will consist of 31 photo-multiplier tubes (or PMTs), which are sensitive light-detectors. All of this will be sealed up as one unit inside a 17-inch glass sphere. The detector will consist of a huge number of such optical moduli!

The optical modulus

Why neutrinos are such a headache!

Neutrinos are notoriously hard to detect. They interact only via the weak force (which is also responsible for the decay of heavy nuclei) with other particles and no other force. They leave no trails in the conventional detector chambers, as they are not charged. They do not affect other matter gravitationally, as they are massless (or have extremely small mass!). In order to detect them, the best strategy is to let it hit a proton and convert it into a neutron. This liberates a positron (or anti-electron). The positron emitted travels at such high speeds that it emits radiation called Cherenkov radiation. (Cherenkov radiation is the radiation emitted by a charged particle when it moves faster then light in that medium. Thus, here the electrons/positrons have to move faster than light moves in water). This radiation is detected by the PMT’s. The radiation comes in the form of a cone. This is how the neutrino is indirectly detected.

The KM3Net project is also a Cherenkov type detector, like the famous T2K detector in Japan, which is the largest right now.

Tall, Taller – Tallest!

The whole structure will be taller than the Burj Khalifa, the tallest building in the world. But, this will not be noticed, because it will be underwater. The chamber will be filled with water, as it has a high density of protons. It is meant to detect neutrinos coming through the Earth, and through the sea-floor. This is possible, since neutrinos interact very weakly.

Sometimes mountains have to be moved before the truth can emerge.

Sprint’s HTC EVO View 4G Android 3.2 Honeycomb Update Now Available

It was a month ago that HTC started rolling out the Android 3.2 Honeycomb update for the HTC Flyer in Europe. Today, HTC and Sprint have started rolling out the Honeycomb update for the Sprint’s version of the Flyer, the EVO View 4G.

The update with the version number 2.23.651.1 weighs in a little over 217MB in size, so EVO View 4G owners are recommended to use Wi-Fi to download the update. The jump from Gingerbread to Honeycomb was quite a big one, and brings in quite a lot of big changes including H/W acceleration, new web browser, new Google Apps, new launcher, a tablet optimized UI and much more.

Below is the full change-log of the update-:

• Physical Hard keys replaced with on screen Soft keys
• New Google search, available on every page
• System Bar: Quick access to notifications, status, and soft navigation buttons available at the bottom of the screen
• Notifications menu moved to the bottom right corner of the screen, on the System Bar.
• The Action Bar–which can be accessed by touching the Plus Sign icon at the top right of the screen–is the key to contextual, changing menus that are controlled by each application.
• Enhanced security including Sprint Data Link and 3LM

Fixes include:

• Google video chat
• Bluetooth capable in Airplane mode

Nokia Maps Suite Updated For Symbian Phones

Today, in a blog post Nokia announced that a new version of the Nokia Maps Suite is now available for download for Symbian handset users. The update brings about some major changes in the Nokia Pulse app, including few login prompts, improved notifications and much more.

The update also removes the Live View app from the Nokia Maps suite, but the app is still available for download as a standalone app.

Below is the full change-log for the update-:

Pulse v0.91.21

Notifications – more reliable push notifications

Keyboard – various bug fixes including stuck CAP lock, frozen cursor, delete key stops functioning, and we also added split-screen feature

Login – fewer Nokia Account login prompts

Interoperability – compatible with latest versions of various Qt components, especially important because the latest Store client available this week uses a new version of a dependency that is not compatible with the previous Pulse v0.91(6)
Live View


No longer included in Map Suite
Still available as standalone app

Public Transport


No changes

Places


No changes

Apple’s Siri Can Now Help You Shop for Electronics

With the introduction of the iPhone 4S, Apple also introduced an artificial intelligence agent called “Siri.” Siri is capable of doing many things (ex: create a task, read out loud an email), but it also is integrated with one of the most powerful search engines; Wolfram Alpha. Wolfram Alpha plus Siri allows users to find out what flights are above them, solve math problems, and much more!

Today, Wolfram Alpha has quietly announced that it is now pulling data from Best Buy’s public APIs to enable queries against the retailer’s database of 35,000 consumer products. This means that iPhone 4S Siri users have a new way to shop and compare products using their voice. Sorry Android owners, you are once again left out in the dark.

Users can search now for a general product category or a specific product model and obtain a detailed report detailing product features, prices and availability, users ratings, price comparisons with similar models. Oh, but it just doesn’t stop there! Wolfram Alpha notes that users can even shop for products based on their specific needs, such as asking for “the lightest digital camera under $100 with a pixel resolution greater than 12MP.” This is just one step forward to moving away from answer engines to search engines.

Currently, the Best Buy data is only available to users in the United States. Yesterday, Apple released a new ad promoting the iPhone 4S and Siri, but the ad never actually mentiones or displays the words “iPhone 4S” or “Siri.” You know your brand is strong built when you don’t have to mention a feature or the product’s name. Which other company can do that today?

Nokia Lumia 710 Goes On Sale In India For Rs.18,999

Last month, Nokia announced the new Lumia 710 smartphone in India. This handset was originally unveiled at the Nokia World 2011 in London. The Nokia Lumia 710 is the company’s second smartphone which runs on the latest Windows Phone 7.5 Mango Operating System. After waiting for a month, Nokia finally released the Lumia 710 smartphone in the Indian market. If you are planning to buy one, then check out the complete specs below.

Nokia Lumia 710 features a 3.7 inch WVGA display, sporting a resolution of 800 x 480 pixels, 1.4 GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor, Windows Phone 7.5 Mango OS, 5 megapixel auto-focus camera with LED flash, HD (720p) video recording and playback, Skydrive cloud storage and much more.

Other features include a 3.5mm headset jack, Wi-Fi 801.11 b/g/n, 3G Connectivity, MicroUSB 2.0, Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR, 512MB RAM, 8 GB internal memory, Zune Music, Internet Explorer 9 Mobile, A-GPS, up to 34 hours of music playback time, up to 7 hours of talk-time, up to 400 hours of stand-by time and a 1300 mAh battery.

The Nokia Lumia 710 comes with a price tag of Rs.18,999. This handset is preloaded with Nokia Drive, Microsoft Office Apps (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, SharePoint and Office 365) and Nokia Music with MixRadio. Nokia Lumia 710 is available in Black and White colors. You can also get the exchangeable back covers in Black, White, Cyan, Fuchsia and Yellow colors.

Motorola Xoom Tablet to Cost a Hefty $800

We knew Motorola’s tablet release would make waves upon its release. But with a hefty price tag and data plan strings attached, it may be more of a cannonball.

The Xoom tablet will debut on February 24 at an $800 price, according to a leaked Best Buy ad. And in a small disclaimer line underneath the picture of the tablet, the ad claims that “a minimum of one month data subscription is required” in order to unlock Wi-Fi. If the ad is accurate, that means even if you don’t want to go 3G, you’ll have to buy the 3G service for a month to unlock Wi-Fi access on the tablet.

The ad provides a list of rates for different data plans, with 1GB/month costing $20, 3GB/month at $35, 5GB/month at$50 and 10GB/month at $80. Surprise surprise, there are no unlimited data plans on Verizon’s network. But we’ve been expecting it, as Verizon has been saying for some time that it would eventually do away with its unlimited data package.

As the flagship tablet for Android’s upcoming version 3.0 (Honeycomb) OS update, Motorola’s tablet has received lots of attention from the tech community. Motorola has positioned its tablet offering as a direct challenger to the iPad’s extremely strong 75 percent hold on tablet market share, recently taunting Apple in a Xoom-focused Super Bowl commercial.

The Xoom touts an impressive spec sheet - a 1-GHz dual-core Nvidia Tegra 2 processor, 10.1-inch HD display screen, 5-megapixel back facing camera with 720p HD video capture and 2-megapixel front facing camera for video chat.

But even with admirable hardware, the company may find it difficult to get the tablet off the ground if customers feel bogged down with a hefty initial price tag and strings-attached data plan options.

Order India’s Aakash Tablet Online

There have been many cheap tablets available, mainly in the Asian region, but none of them have been in the news as much as the Aakash tablet, or the UbiSlate 7.

It was first announced a couple years ago, and has been in the limelight since. Kapil Sibal gave us a sneak preview last year, and it was officially unveiled earlier this year.

The Aakash tablet has been made by DataWind, a Canadian company, and is priced at Rs 2500 ($50) for the basic version. It comes with a 7 inch touchscreen display, and is powered by a 366 MHz ARM 11 processor. It runs Android 2.2 Froyo, and has a 2100 mAh battery. It comes with Wi-Fi connectivity. It is now available online, with a cash-on-delivery payment option.

The UbiSlate 7, an upgraded variant of the Aakash tablet, is priced at Rs. 3000 ($60). It comes with a 7 inch touchscreen display too, and is powered by a 700 MHz ARM Cortex A8 processor. It has a 3200 mAh battery and runs Android 2.3 Gingerbread. It offers Wi-Fi, as well as GPRS connectivity.

The UbiSlate 7 seems to be a decent deal. It will be available in January 2012. I’ll probably be getting one. At just 3000 bucks, you can’t go wrong.

You can buy the Aakash Tablet and the UbiSlate 7 here: Aakash Tablet

Nokia E6 Symbian Belle Firmware Leaks

Late last month, a Symbian Belle firmware for the Nokia C7 made its way on the Internet. Now, a couple of weeks later, a Belle FW for the Nokia E6 has leaked online. The Belle update for the Symbian^3 handsets is going to bring some much needed UI enhancements, a new camera app and much more.

Some E6 owners who tried the leaked Belle FW on their phone are reporting an increase in performance, and a much smoother scrolling performance compared to the Anna firmware. Other changes in the Belle FW include new widgets for weather and mail,  a much faster and improved web browser, and a much prettier and usable UI. Interested Nokia E6 owners can find the download link and installation instructions over at DailyMobile forums. Since this is an early leak, I’d recommend business oriented users to stay away from this leak.

The official Symbian Belle firmware update for the existing bunch of Symbian^3 handsets like the Nokia N8, C7, C6-01, and the E6 will get the official firmware update sometime in early 2012.

Motorola Wins Patent Ruling Against Apple in Germany

Motorola has won a ruling against Apple in the Mannheim Regional Court in Germany, which could lead to a ban on the sales of Apple 3G products like all the iPhone models, and the iPad 3G variants, according to a report by FOSS Patents.

The court has ruled that Apple’s products violate a GPRS patent owned by Motorola. It is a FRAND patent, which Motorola is required to license to any manufacturer that wishes to use the technology. However, Apple hasn’t made a reasonable binding offer to Motorola yet, to license the patent, which is why the court has granted Motorola a preliminary injunction against Apple.

It has also ordered Motorola to post a $134 million bond, if it wants to enforce the ruling. In case the ruling is overturned later, Apple would be reimbursed using the bond.

Apple has already appealed the ruling, and requested a stay against the injunction. A ban seems improbable, but it seems very likely that Apple will have to license the patent from Motorola, in order to continue selling the iPhone or iPad in Germany.

Looks like Microsoft isn’t the only one getting rich from patent licensing, and Apple isn’t the only bully arm-twisting others on the patent playground.

Motorola and Verizon Unveil The Droid Xyboard Tablets; U.S Version Of The XOOM 2

Motorola and Verizon just announced the Droid Xyboard tablets, which are basically the U.S version of the recently unveiled XOOM 2 and the XOOM 2 Media Edition.

The 10.1-inch XOOM 2 will be known as the Droid Xyboard 10.1, while its smaller variant, the XOOM 2 Media Edition will be known as the Droid Xyboard 8.2. Both the tablets are powered by the old and under-powered Nvidia’s Tegra 2 processor and come with 1GB of RAM on-board. The Xyboard tablets sport a IPS display panel for an improved image quality. Other than this, both the tablets have a 5MP camera with Auto-Focus and LED flash at their back, and a 1.3MP HD camera in the front.

Unlike the bulky proportions of the original XOOM, the Droid Xyboard tablets are slimmer and lighter. Outside, the tablets are made with magnesium-reinforced material along with aluminum housing. The tablets will also come with Dijit, an app which will double their tablets as a universal remote. They will also support Verizon’s blazing fast 4G LTE network. Oh, both the Xyboards also support GSM networks but the capability has been turned off by Motorola and Verizon at the firmware level.

The 10.1-inch and the 8.2-inch Xyboard will come with Android 3.2 Honeycomb on-board, but will get the Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich update sometime early next year. Both the tablets will hit the Verizon retail stores sometime this month. The 16GB 10.1-inch Xyboard will cost $529.99, while the 32GB and 64GB variants will cost $629.99 and $729.99, respectively. The smaller 8.2-inch Xyboard will be available for $429.99 and $529.99 for the 16GB and 32GB variants. These prices include a two-year contract with Verizon as well. No wonder the iPad dominates the tablet market. Until these Android manufacturers price their tablets properly, there is no way they can sell them in large numbers.

Opera 11.60 Tunny with New HTML5 Parser Released

Opera 11.60 or Tunny is now available for download. Tunny is an interim release that is meant to deliver many of the new features that were originally planned for Opera 12 or Wahoo, which got delayed as hardware acceleration is not yet ready for prime time.

Opera 11.60 has a fairly impressive changelog for a point release. It beefs up Opera’s standards support in a big way. Besides a brand new HTML5 parser that is expected to improve interoperability and website compatibility, Opera Tunny ships with a new version of Carakan (JavaScript engine), full ECMAScript 5.1 support and support for CSS3 radial gradients.

The user interface has been refined further. The address bar has been streamlined. As a result, it looks a lot better and simpler, but is also somewhat less useful. The single click bookmark option (“Star button”) that has been a standard feature in most other browsers for quite some time also makes its appearance in Tunny. However, the biggest visible change is in the Mail component. The Mail client, which is used for both reading mails and RSS feeds, now operates by default in a three-column mode and features automatic grouping and pinned messages. Check out our earlier coverage for more on the improved Mail client.

Tunny isn’t a game changer, but brings forth an impressive list of improvements. Opera made a smart call by not letting a single feature hold back numerous other promising enhancements. Wahoo or Opera 12 will still be the release to look out for. However, Tunny provides enough reasons to be a must update for existing Opera users.

Samsung SCH-W999 is a Dual-Screen, Dual-SIM Clamshell Android Phone Heading To China Telecom

Samsung has announced a new wacky Android running handset headed to China, the SCH-W999. This dual-screen, flip phone packs in two 3.5-inch Super-AMOLED displays with WVGA (480×800) resolution. The handset is powered by a 1.2GHz dual-core processor from Qualcomm (S3), and comes with 1GB RAM.

The phone runs on Android 2.3 Gingerbread with Sammy’s own TouchWiz UI jazzing up the stale Gingerbread’s UI a bit. Other usual features like GPS with A-GPS, Wi-Fi b/g/n, Bluetooth 3.0, WAPI and a bunch of sensors. At the back of this dual-screen, clamshell phone is a 5MP camera.

Besides being a dual-screen phone, the phone is also a dual-SIM one with GSM and CDMA network support. The SCH-W999 is headed to China Telecom for an unknown price and will be released at an unknown date.

Looking at the way how some dual-screen Android running phones have failed in the past, I doubt Samsung will even think about releasing this handset outside of China.

Verizon’s Droid Charge Android 2.3 Gingerbread Update Rolling Out Now

Droid Charge owners, here is some good news for you. Verizon and Samsung have finally started rolling out the Android 2.3 Gingerbread update for your handset.

The Gingerbread update for the Charge will bring the usual Gingerbread goodies like a Download Manager app, Power Management details, Improved copy and paste functionality, enhanced security like SD card and device encryption and much more. The change-log from Verizon also states that Charge owners should see an improvement in the camera, GPS, web browser, HDMI output and the audio output of the handset. Most importantly, Charge owners will notice an immense improvement in the performance and the stability of the handset.

The full change-log of the update can be found here. The update is a whopping 119MB in size, so make sure you are downloading the update via Wi-Fi and not via that ultra-blazing 4G LTE network of Verizon.

The Droid Charge gets the Gingerbread just after a year Google announced Android 2.3 Gingerbread. Good job Samsung and especially Verizon! Charge owners, don’t expect some Ice Cream Sandwich love for your handset,