The undisputed leader of all sales from all carriers that offers the iPhone is the iPhone 4S for last two months of 2011. Who would have thought otherwise?  More interesting and telling is the struggle for second place. The Samsung Galaxy S II looks like the leader for the second spot, except for Verizon where Samsung’s Galaxy Nexus took the position in December 2011, while in November 2011 it was Motorola’s Droid RAZR as Verizon’s second big selling phone.

T-Mobile doesn’t offer the iPhone 4S, so their best selling phone is the Samsung Galaxy S II. But it’s easy to imagine that if they could cater iPhones to their customers, the iPhone 4S would have been the leader with T-Mobile, too.

Another interesting feature in these trends is the fall of original iPhone 4 popularity which can be seen on a full span of six months research. Can Samsung’s Galaxy S II overtake iPhones one day? I don’t think so. Samsung is still the fourth in the race for the best vendor prize,  after Apple, HTC, and Motorola. Even if Samsung is on the rise now, who knows how much time it will take them to beat HTC? And if it will be quite rather long wait, then there will be the iPhone 5 available by then which will start a totally different game.

Carriers which are piggybacking on “big guys” bandwidth didn’t make it into this report. But volumes of their sales of handhelds most probably cannot really change the picture.

The post Top Selling Phones of 2011: iPhone 4S Leads The Way appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

Samsung Series 9 notebooks are well known products, you can fetch one right now at Amazon, for example. This past week at CES 2012, we saw the second generation of this notebook, a totally revamped Series 9 Macbook killer.

This time, Series 9 notebook from Samsung has an amazing Duralumin (aircraft grade aluminum) unibody with a total thickness of just half an inch. That might just fit inside a brown paper envelope.  Samsung is setting the bar for the new ultrabook class, although Samsung doesn’t like the “ultrabook” moniker, we’ll just let it be the Samsung Series 9 notebook to make them happy.

It’s powered by a hefty Intel Core i5 processor and comes with USB 2.0, USB 3.0, and an SD Card slot. As shown, it has a 13.3 inch matte screen sporting a 1600×900 resolution and weight of just 2.5 pounds. Original Series 9 notebooks had 2.8 pounds, even if it was outfitted with plastics here and there instead of the aluminum unibody shell like here.

What was not shown off was their 15-inch version of the same notebook.  Described as the fitting the same form factor, this model sports the same 1600×900 resolution. But with a bigger screen brings more weight, it’s still just 3.3 pounds, and the thickness is still that awesome half of an inch.

This new generation of Samsung’s Series 9 notebooks may try to suck air out of Apple’s MacBook Air. But they will need to improve on a few things before that ever happens, for one: battery life of these Samsung models is still a mere 3 hours compared to the Air’s 6 hours. Pricing of $1399 for 13.3 inch model and $1499 for 15 inch model could be just a $100 or so less than equally equipped MacBook Air, which could prove insufficient incentive to buy Samsung Series 9 notebook instead of the Mac OS X totting Air.  Expect it next month through Samsung’s typical channels.

Update: To straighten out any confusion, Samsung is taking an Apple-esque approach to their names.  We’re used to PC manufactures incrementing and updating their model numbers every time a new version is released.  Not with Samsung and the Series 9, the model discussed in this post is the 2012 version.  Jump here to press release for unconvinced eyes.

The post Samsung Series 9 Ultrabook Closest To MacBook Air Killer appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

Verizon is widely known for its Verizon Wireless operations. But cell phone carrier  services are not all that the big V can offer to its customers. A growing Verizon FiOS network that was first deployed 6 years ago offered ultra fast Internet access, it has since evolved into a multi-functional service that includes FiOS Internet, FiOS TV, and FiOS Digital Voice.

Fiber optic cable technology employed by Verizon FiOS is famous by its so called “last mile problem” solution. In short, Verizon FiOS has fiber optic cable going to the premises to never lose on signal quality and bandwidth.

FiOS TV service consequently feeds up to 530 high quality and HD  TV channels to homes. The alliance between Verizon, Samsung and LG are to bring very high quality TV content, together with rich Internet media content, to the Verizon customers’  TV sets. Flexview DVD catalogs shown here are just one possibility. Thanks to FiOS speeds, chosen content starts playing almost instantly, that is, with no delay or buffering.

High quality multi-party video conferencing can also become a reality. When WiFi hardware under new 802.11ac standard will become available, benefits of such an alliance may show on new WiFi-connected mobile devices from Samsung and LG.

The post More On The Verizon, Samsung And LG Alliance appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

New Samsung HDTVs UNES8000 LED and PNE8000 Plasma are really stunning pieces of rapidly evolving technology.  This time, it’s not just 55 inches of Super OLED goodness, or beautiful plasma screen on a second model, it’s these features bundled with both TVs, as per Samsung press release:

Consumers can use Samsung’s new Smart Interaction technology to easily manage their TV experience. By using Voice Control, Motion Control and Face Recognition features to complement the remote control, users can turn the TV on or off, adjust the volume or activate selected apps through speech. They can also use voice to activate the search function in the web browser and “tell” the TV what they are searching for.

The Super OLED’s built-in HD camera recognises movement in the foreground to enable intuitive control, and two unidirectional array microphones recognise voice at an incredibly accurate rate. Noise cancellation technology helps to separate any background noise from the user’s commands.

In other words, these TVs supposed not just watching you Big Brother style, they also listen to you carefully (that may mean selecting your voice out of ambient noise) and checking whether it is really you by face recognition feature.

However, one feature from Orwell’s “1984″ design guidelines for TVs is missing here: Samsung HDTVs presented may still have “Power OFF” button. I would suggest Samsung, for better Orwellian compliance, lose this button, together with the prohibited voice commands “Power OFF!”, “Shut OFF”, and the like.

Jokes aside, these “smart” TV features are still stunning. Face recognition for your kid can easily implement parental controls on content a kid is allowed to watch, or not to watch.

The post Your Next TV Will Watch You appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

Earlier today Mobile Magazine had an article about how accessory company, Anymode, let the cat out of the bag early about the upcoming US-market version Samsung Galaxy Note would debut at CES.

Now Samsung has officially announced the LTE-equipped Galaxy Note. AT&T will be hooking up the device with its brand new 4G LTE service.

This oversized phone or mini-tablet sports a 5.3-inch 1280×800 ultra high resolution Super AMOLED Plus display, an S-pen that works as active Wacom-style stylus, and it runs Android 2.3.6 Gingerbread. Battery is a powerful 2,500 mAh to support this big, dense and hungry screen.

We knew this day would come eventually, and it looks like today’s the day. However, this toy is quite expensive fetching around $700 for a non-LTE unlocked version in Europe. Additionally, it seems like a lot to pay for a smartphone that is still running Android 2.3 versus 4.0 ICS.

No word on when shipping begins.

[ source ]

The post Samsung Galaxy Note Comes To US With 4G LTE appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

Having Nexus in its “classic” black, or getting a white phone for whatever cost is the question of personal preferences. However, as the white Nexus show up late for Christmas, they would hardly be in such demand as Samsung may have projected.

If you ask me, when I see cheap plastics on rather expensive phones, it absolutely doesn’t matter to me whether this plastic is white, black, mauve, or whatever.

The post White Nexus Coming To UK in February appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

As reported by Phandroid, developer WugFresh from GalaxyNexusForum.com has created a Root Toolkit for the Galaxy Nexus that gives you two different functions. Function “Unlock + Root” unlocks the bootloader and roots your device, while “Unroot + OEM Lock” will get you back to factory stock firmware. You can even install the latest Samsung drivers and SDK with a single click, as this screenshot shows.

Here’s a short instruction for deploying this tool:

• Install the program by double clicking the GnexRootToolkit.sfx.exe

• Use the Drivers + SDK option first to install and configure the necessary components to your system
• Click the “Unlock + Root” or “Unroot + OEM lock” buttons depending on what you want to do

• Note that the “Unroot + OEM lock” procedure can also be used to just flash back to stock without re-locking

Download:

There are some caveats while using this tool though. As WugFresh himself has posted:

Your data will be erased when you unlock it. It will say that explicitly on your device when you get to the unlock screen. You need to take your own steps to preserve your data, like backing up your sdcard contents to your computer, using apps like SMS backup+ for your texts.. ect. Once you are rooted though, you can use an app like ROM toolbox or Titanium backup to make full backups of your data and apps, or even better, you can use ClockworkMod to make full backups or your entire device; one of the main benefits of rooting.

Rooting and unlocking Galaxy Nexus was achieved earlier by other developers (Team Black Hat and Snow02), it’s just this simple “one-click” tool that makes it attractive for many more users of Galaxy Nexus. The tool is reported as working fine, as advertised.

The post Galaxy Nexus Root Toolkit Roots And Unlocks Bootloader appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

Naturally, a presumed quad-core 1.5 GHz Exynos 4412 application processor for this phone might be a good basis to include 3D visual capabilities for its screen. Real question is, how much traction the idea might gain amongst consumers? Samsung 3D TVs are still looked upon as a niche product, however, maybe a phone with 3D UI capabilities will fare better.

Imagine a carouseling 3D TouchWiz 5.0 UI on such a phone’s home screen, or on apps screen. When the icons and widgets will be rendered really in 3D, it might be actually operated better with hovering swipes than applying the regular touch swipes. That is, if Samsung will embrace Cypress Semiconductor TrueTouch technology for its rumored Super AMOLED Plus HD capacitive screen’s sensor. But just as with those renderings from Russian artists, one of which is shown here, it may never happen.

Samsung Galaxy S III is expected to show at Mobile World Congress (MWC) in February-March 2012.

The post Samsung Galaxy S III Going 3D? appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

There are many ways to pay homage to the Genius design of Apple products.  One of them, certainly will invite some attention from Cupertino giant is the Hackintosh movement.  The folks out of this group of talented hackers must wear their Apple’s “Cease and Desist” letters as badges of honor or something.  Now, 9to5mac.com demo’d a Samsung tablet normally meant to run Windows 7 but running OS X Lion instead; they call it the HacPro Touch.

It’s only working on video out, and the HDMI link routinely blanks the tablet screen.  There’s also no output on the main tablet screen just yet. However, if you are interested in x86 tablets running OS X you should follow tonimacx86 forum.

If you ask me, sure, I’m a proponent of everything running on everything, Arduino robots included. But as much as I’m trying to look into the depths of my Crystal Ball, I just can’t see much of the future for x86 tablets in 2012 and beyond. Sure, it could be just me, but I’m kinda sick and tired of fans and grills for heated air exhaust on x86 tablets.

But when we talk about ARM-based devices, sure, count me interested. Apple software running on other devices other than Apple’s may look sexy to some, but always troublesome. If done correctly could create much needed hype for Samsung slates, but until then, its a work in progress.

The post HacPro Touch: A Samsung x86 Tablet Running OS X appeared first on Mobile Magazine.