Amazon Fire Phone

It's here! Meet Amazon Fire, the etailer's very first smartphone. Anyone out there nail its name?

The Amazon phone is about what we expected on the spec front, but it's loaded with two features that Amazon claims help users "see and interact with the world through a whole new lens."

Those features are Dynamic Perspective and Firefly, which we breakdown further below, plus plenty of details on everything else the Amazon phone has to offer.

Perhaps the biggest takeaway from Amazon's phone event, besides the eye-catching 3D (which doesn't necessarily mean customer-catching), is the phone's heavy ties to buying. Amazon wants you to purchase things, and now it's come up with a way for you to do so from your pocket. 

What are your thoughts on Fire? Is it everything you were hoping for and more? Or a let-down that can't hold a candle to the iPhone 5S, Galaxy S5 or other flagship devices? Is Amazon simply trying to sell you more stuff, or looking like it legitimately wants to succeed in the smartphone space? 

Amazon Fire Phone price and release date

The Amazon phone will cost $199.99 (about £117, AU$213) for a 32GB version and $299.99 (about £176, AU$320) for 64GB. Off contract, Fire costs $649.99 (about £382, AU$691) and $749.99 (about £441, AU$798), respectively.

The Fire Phone will be an AT&T exclusive, and pre-orders start today. It ships on July 25 and should be available in stores then as well.

AT&T customers with a Next early upgrade package can get away with paying $32.50/month for 20 months on Next 12 or $27.09/month for 24 months on Next 18 for the lesser storage flavor. A 64GB will run $37.50/month for 20 months on Next 12, while a next 18 option costs $31.25 for 24 months.

As an added bonus, customers who buy the Fire phone will be treated to 12 months of Prime membership free, but the offer is only running for a limited time. 

Amazon Fire Phone Specs

The device features a 4.7-inch screen, a size ideal for one-handed use, said CEO Jeff Bezos. It ranks with 590 nits of brightness and other goodies like an ambient light sensor and Dynamic Image Contrast to make your screen images sing in various viewing situations. The resolution sits at 1280 x 720 with 315ppi.

Gorilla Glass 3 is slathered on the front and back, the buttons are made of aluminum and stainless steel details and a rubberized polyurethane grip make for a chic profile.

On the inside, the Fire Phone features a quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 2.2GHz processor, Adreno 330 graphics and 2GB of RAM. As expected, the Fire runs a forked version of Android, Fire OS 3.5.0.

As for cameras, we know it's fixed with a 13MP snapper on the rear, complete with OIS and a powerful f/2.0 lens. There's even a dedicated camera hardware key - press once to turn it on, twice to take a shot. Amazon is throwing in free unlimited photo storage on Amazon Cloud Drive to sweeten the deal.

The front camera - the normal one - is a 2.1MP-er. Both it and the rear camera can capture video in 1080p.

Dolby Digital Plus surround sound speakers crank out the Fire Phone's audio. The Fire phone features global LTE and connectivity on nine LTE bands, four GSM bands and five UMTS. It features 802.11ac support, Wi-Fi channel bonding, Bluetooth and NFC. Note this is regular Bluetooth and not the LE kind that makes for wearable connections.

We suspect the device is going to need a lot of juice to run its 3D features, and Amazon only managed to put a 2,400mAh battery in to fuel the Fire. The company said in release notes that the Fire has 285 hours of standby time, up to 22 hours of talk time, up to 65 hours of audio playback and up to 11 hours of video playback. But running Dynamic Perspective and extensive testing is needed to see if these numbers are attainable.

Finally, a nanoSIM is preinstalled and the phone has space for a microUSB 2.0 and 3.5mm headphone ports.

Amazon Fire Phone 3D features

The Amazon phone screen has an interface called Dynamic Perspective to adjust the a 3D image on the screen to match users' head position. Lockscreens and wallpapers have a 3D effect, though that's not all.

Bezos demonstrated on stage how the device could render a building on a map in 3D. The building - the Empire State, to be exact - looked like it was coming out of the Amazon phone's screen, and moved as the user moved.

Neatly, in maps, you can tilt the phone to see what's "tucked" information that lives on another layer, like Yelp ratings and reviews, and see under and around edges.

The fun doesn't stop there. Fire Phone also lets you one-handed tilt through a line-up of items you may be shopping for, like women's dresses, in the Amazon Shopping app. You can also auto-scroll through an article, a web browser or ebooks, and tilting in Amazon Music reveals song lyrics.

And Dynamic Perspective seems acutely tuned to games, making the images you see on screen pop out and forcing you to manoeuvre around them just by moving your head.

Dynamic Perspective is good at recognizing what's a human head and what's not, and there will even be an SDK for the feature so app developers can 3D-ify their games and offerings.

Bezos explained onstage in Seattle that in the early days of the Fire Phone, Amazon went so far as to make its own headset to emulate 3D effects. That's not really practical for real-life, Amazon concluded, which is perhaps a little jibe at Google Glass.

To solve the 3D issue, Amazon did indeed stick four front-facing cameras on each corner of its phone. No matter what angle it's being held at, two cameras will always be facing the user, Bezos claimed. They are of the infrared variety - ultra-low power, Amazon swears - so they work in darkness.

The Dynamic Perspective system also relies on four infrared LEDs on the front to compliment the cameras. 

More Amazon Fire Phone Features

The Amazon phone is full of little touches, like swipes, to make it easier to use. Bezos and Co. seem very keen to make the Fire Phone as user-friendly as possible, probably hoping to keep their customer satisfaction rankings cozy in their No. 1 slots.

Following in line with the Kindle tablets, the phone features a dedicated Mayday button to connect to customer support. It will work over Wi-Fi, 3G and 4G, and is free.

Because video is so tied to the Amazon experience, the company has included a number of video features with its first handset. IMDB's X-Ray is headed to the Fire Phone, and Second Screen lets uses Miracast video from their Fire phone to their Fire TV. ASAP, another Fire TV feature, is also making it to its phone-y cousin.

The Kindle Store, Audible, Kindle Newstand and the recently purchased Comixology are accessible on the phone.

Taking advantage of Amazon's digital content library, the Fire provides "instant access" to over 33 million songs, apps, games, movies, TV shows, books, audiobooks and magazines. Prime members will get unlimited streaming access to movies and TV episodes at no extra chard. The same sort of deal applies to Kindle Owners' Lending Library and Prime Music members. 

An enhanced carousel features "active widgets" that show you the last several messages, emails or alerts in your various communication and organization apps.

The info pops up right on the home screen and users can deal with it without ever wandering away. Third-party apps can come up with their own uses; USA Today flashed headlines that are relevant to a user while Zillow popped up property information based on location.

The Music app features a "three-panel design," with the left for navigation, the center for various controls and the right with lyrics.

Amazon Fire Phone Firefly

Amazon also unveiled something called Firefly. By pressing and holding a dedicated button, the Fire Phone can recognize printed phone numbers, email and web addresses, business cards and much more. Firefly even works at a distance, so you can capture a phone number on a sign from across the street, for example.

The idea is to be able to send an email, make a call, save a contact or go to a website without having to type it all into your phone. 

It doesn't stop there though; Firefly can also recognize songs, TV episodes, art, magazines, movies, music, QR codes and bar codes. iHeart Radio and StubHub build their own apps with the Firefly SDK to make it easier for customers to start a new radio station or find concert tickets.

Users can pull up info on items like books or a painting, potentially making it a handy information tool.

By the numbers, Firefly recognizes 245,00 movies and TV episodes, 160 live TV channels and 35 million songs. It can supposedly ID 70 million items (over 100 million all told), such as books, DVDs, video games and CDs, and even work around issues like folds, glare and curves. Users can then read product details for these items, add them to their Wish List, and order them on Amazon.com.

Translation - it's easier to buy things with the Fire Phone.

Amazon is releasing an SDK for the feature, meaning third-party developers can take advantage of its item-recognition abilities in their apps, too. The SDK is available immediately.

How DO Astronauts Watch the World Cup Live in Space..?

If you think you’re going out of your way to watch your favorite World Cup soccer games down the pub because you’ve forgotten to subscribe to ESPN, imagine what it must be like for football fans in space. Space station astronauts and cosmonauts can’t simply tune in to regular TV and they certainly can’t pull up a bar stool at the Kings Head in front of the HD wide-screen.

But fortunately for the six-man crew orbiting over 200 miles above our heads, NASA has an infrastructure in place that allows live and recorded terrestrial television to be beamed into low-Earth orbit.

As explained by DNews’ Trace Dominguez NASA uses a special Ku broadband connection with the space station that allows requested shows or events to be watched by the space station crew between their busy work schedules. Of course, the astronauts can’t just flick channels whenever they please, Mission Control in Houston, Texas, has possession of the remote control.

“Space station crew members request whatever programming they would like to see, and Mission Control arranges for those television shows to be uplinked to them on their Station Support Computers,” Public Affairs Officer Stephanie Schierholz, at NASA Headquarters in Washington D.C., wrote in an email to Discovery News. “NASA’s Johnson Space Center television infrastructure pulls in programming from both commercial and cable outlets and can route any connection to Mission Control for uplink to the crew.”

For up to 80 minutes of every 90-minute orbit around Earth, the space station crew can have connection to the Mission Control feed. “For example, the final match of the World Cup falls during off-duty time on a Sunday, so (the space station crew) might choose to watch some of the game live during the times they have Ku-band connection to Mission Control,” added Schierholz.

For more detail on how the space station gets its World Cup fever on, watch Trace’s space-soccer-tastic DNews video below:

World Cup Kicks Off, Here’s Brazil from Space

The soccer World Cup kicks off in Sao Paulo, Brazil, and during a recent orbital pass of the International Space Station, NASA astronaut Reid Wiseman snapped a serene nighttime shot of the soccer nation.
In the photograph, the city lights of Rio de Janeiro (center-right) and Sao Paulo (far-right) can be seen and, interestingly, three of the World Cup stadiums are also in the frame: Arena de Sao Paulo, Estadio Mineirao (Belo Horizonte), and Estadio Do Maracana (Rio de Janeiro).

news.discovery.com

Adidas Brazuca

The Adidas Brazuca is the official match ball of the 2014 FIFA World Cup, which is being held in Brazil.It is made by the company Adidas, a FIFA Partner and FIFA World Cup Official Match Ball supplier since 1970. The ball was supplied for the world cup by Forward Sports of Sialkot, Pakistan.

Naming

The name of the ball was revealed on Sunday 2 September 2012. It was selected by a public vote organised by the Local Organising Committee and Adidas, with over one million Brazilian football fans voting. The name Brazuca was chosen with 77.8% of the vote. Two other voting options were given: Bossa Nova (14.6% of the vote) and Carnavalesca (7.6% of the vote).

According to FIFA, "the informal term 'brazuca' our fellow is used by Brazilians to describe national pride in the Brazilian way of life", and "mirroring their approach to football, it symbolises emotion, pride and goodwill to all". The term is also used as slang for "Brazilian" and became well-known abroad due to the Brazilian diaspora.

Technical aspects

The ball is a developmental successor to the Adidas Tango 12 series of balls, with the same bladder and carcass but a different surface structure The ball weighs 437 grams and has a circumference of 69 centimetres. The ball has been made of six polyurethane panels which have been thermally bonded; the reduction in the number of panels is claimed to increase the consistency in the ball. The Brazuca ball has been stated to be more aerodynamic than the Jabulani ball used in South Africa for the previous World Cup. It is textured to feel more like the Adidas Finale 13, the official UEFA Champions League ball, than the Adidas Jabulani.

Design

The ball has a multi-colour design to represent Brazil

Testing

The Brazuca has gone through an extensive testing process before its use at the World Cup. Adidas had been developing the ball for over 2 years, and had worked with many teams and players to ensure the ball was acceptable. The ball has appeared in the FIFA U-20 World Cup, DFB-Pokal (German Cup) final as well as disguised as the Adidas Cafusa in international friendly matches.

Production

The Brazuca is produced in Pakistan. The original manufacturer is Taipei-based Long Way Enterprise who manufacture the ball in their subsidiary YaYork Plastic Products in Shenzhen, Guangdong province, China. The company has been associated with production of Adidas balls since 1997.

However Long Way was unable to meet the high demand for the ball. A second supplier, Forward Sports (based in Sialkot, Pakistan), was brought in to help manufacture the ball.Forward Sports, who have been associated with Adidas since 1995 and already supplied footballs for both the Champions League and the German Bundesliga, were awarded the contract by Adidas at short notice after the original manufacturer in China failed to meet the demand.

 

 

 

Unveiling

Adidas unveiled the Brazuca at a launch event on 3 December 2013, two days ahead of the traditional unveiling of the World Cup match ball at the draw of the group stages of the World Cup Final. The launch event took place in Rio de Janeiro at Parque Lage and featured a 3D light projection, which revealed the Brazuca to everyone in attendance.

On 7 December 2013, Major League Soccer announced a FIFA-approved version of the Brazuca as the official match ball for the league's 2014 season.

 

 

Buy Brazuca Online..

Windows Phone 8.1: Top Eight New Features

 

 

 

Microsoft launched its highly-anticipated Windows Phone 8.1 update at its keynote address at the Build 2014 conference on Wednesday. The event also saw the unveiling of the Windows 8.1 Update operating system version, alongside three new devices, Nokia Lumia 930, Lumia 630 and Lumia 635, which will be the platform lead devices for Windows Phone 8.1 OS version.

Microsoft's Joe Belfiore, VP Windows Phone program management and design, introduced a bevy of enhanced features in the Windows Phone 8.1 that the Redmond giant hopes will bring more personal and smarter experience for consumers.

Microsoft has announced that Windows Phone 8.1 will start rolling out to Windows Phone 8 users in coming months. The Redmond giant also confirmed that the entire Nokia Lumia range will get OTA (over-the-air) update called Lumia Cyan, which will include Windows Phone 8.1 features and the new Lumia features into one update.

We've broken down the eight biggest new features in the Windows Phone 8.1 including the ones that made it into the highlights - Cortana, Action Centre, Word Flow and more personalised Start Screen.

1. Greater Start Screen Personalisation

Microsoft in an attempt to offer more customisable options to Windows Phone users, has added 'Start background' feature that allows users to add an image to the tiles on the Start screen of the device.

The feature will add an image of the user's choice to multiple tiles on the Start screen. Earlier, the Live Tiles on the Start screen on Windows Phone 8 were limited to solid colours.

In 2013, Microsoft added the third Live Tile column on the Start screen of the Nokia Lumia 1520, and then left it to manufacturer adoption. However, with the Windows Phone 8.1, the company has now added an extra column of Live Tiles on all screen sizes, with users able to choose whether to turn this feature on.

   

2. Cortana: Finally arrives to take on Apple's Siri and Google's Google Now

One of the highlight features of Windows Phone 8.1 is Cortana, which is Microsoft's voice-based virtual assistant. The Redmond giant's Cortana is based on a popular AI character in Microsoft's blockbuster video game franchise, Halo.

Cortana is powered by Bing and is similar to Apple's Siri or Google Now, completely replacing the search feature in WP8.1. Microsoft's Joe Belfiore claimed that the new digital assistant from Microsoft will get better with time as a user spends more time with it by asking questions to Cortana, filling up details in its Notebook section.

Cortana can be launched by pressing the Live Tile placed on the Start screen or by pressing the Search button on the Windows Phone device. Belfiore said that Cortana can interact verbally or by typing, and stressed its ability to understand natural language voice commands. It can also interact with third party apps, though developers will have to build Cortana-compatibility into their apps.

Microsoft has announced that Cortana will be available first in the US as a 'beta' and later will released in the UK and China in the second half of 2014, while in other countries Cortana might reach by 2015.

3. Action Centre for notifications

Microsoft has finally launched one of the most awaited features on Windows Phone platform, the Action Centre. The Windows Phone 8.1 update brings the Action Centre to all Windows Phone-based devices which will show notifications for calls, messages, emails, apps and others. It will also offer quick settings access to Flight Mode, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and Rotation Lock options. Notably, the quick access options are customisable.

The Action Centre for Windows Phone 8.1 can be accessed by a simple drop down swipe gesture like seen in Android and iOS.

4. Word Flow Keyboard

Another big addition in the Windows Phone 8.1 has been the introduction of the Word Flow Keyboard, which is a Swype keyboard-like feature for Windows Phone users. The Word Flow Keyboard allows users to glide over the display and type words.

Microsoft claims that the Word Flow Keyboard is one of the 'most intuitive smartphone keyboards' and learns from users writing style. Belfiore noted that the Word Flow Keyboard supports 16 languages, though has not named the languages supported.

Belfiore even claimed that, thanks to Word Flow Keyboard, a kid was able break the Guinness World Record for fastest writing on a smartphone earlier held by Swype keyboard on a Samsung Galaxy S4.

 5. Skype Integration
Microsoft has also upgraded the Skype integration in Windows Phone devices with its latest Windows Phone 8.1. Now, the new Skype app for Windows Phone 8.1 comes with dialler integration that allows a user to switch a regular call to a Skype video call with a click of a button. Further, Skype has also been designed to work with Cortana, as users can setup Skype calls via the new voice-based virtual assistant.

  

6. Upgraded imaging experience

Microsoft takes the Windows Phone photography experience to the next level with the revamped Camera Roll, which gives quick access to clicked images, image tweaking tools and sharing capabilities.

The Smart Shots, Cinemagraphs, and Refocus photos options are directly accessible now from Camera Roll. Microsoft has also added the burst mode features to its Windows Phone 8.1 for clicking continuous images.

Creative Studio has been also added to the Camera Roll, which can use five new filters. The Nokia Storyteller has also received a slight addition with new video slideshow option that allows sharing via Facebook and Twitter.

7. New Sense feature for Windows Phone users

Microsoft has introduced the new Sense apps that include Data Sense, Wi-Fi Sense and Storage Sense.

Data Sense gives a detailed track of data usage on a Windows Phone, which could be braked down according to time- a month, a week etc. Data Sense includes a 'high savings' mode that the company claims will compress the images browsed on the Web, so a user can search more without with less data usage.

Another Sense app is Wi-Fi Sense, which automatically connects to a nearby Wi-Fi hotspot (when detected) to conserve cellular data.

Notably, when Wi-Fi is turned off in Wi-Fi Sense; Cortana can automatically turn it on, when a favourite location with hotspot is available.

Storage Sense can help users manage content stored on the microSD card and inbuilt storage by moving apps, music, images and videos between inbuilt storage and microSD card.

In addition, Microsoft has also improved its Battery Sense feature, giving a breakdown of apps' battery consumption, and also includes an 'automatic mode' in the Battery Saver option that can help extend battery life.

8. Slew of new delights

Apart from the major highlights of the Windows Phone 8.1, Microsoft has also added a number of minor tweaks to its OS.

After multiple leaks, the onscreen keys are official with Windows Phone 8.1. The onscreen keys for Search, Start and Back will now appear at the bottom of the display and this will mean that future Windows Phone 8.1-based devices will not feature the three capacitive buttons at the bottom of the front panel.

Microsoft has also introduced the new Lock Screen, which now comes with multiple Lock Screen themes featuring different visuals and animations - APIs are also available for developers to create their own themes and widgets.

The Calendar app has received a redesign and now shows a week view, along with a weather widget which has been integrated into the Calendar app. It will show at the top.

Various apps such as Music, Video and Podcasts have received improvements and are now split apps, all capable of update vie the Store.

The Internet Explorer 11 for Windows Phone 8.1 was also introduced. The new IE11 comes with new features such as InPrivate browsing, password caching, and a super-handy reading mode.

Are you ready for your first home robot..? Meet Pepper

 

The path to mainstream home robots is strewn with the battery-drained corpses of AIBO and lesser-known, Dalek-esque robots like Wakamaru. But now Japan's SoftBank, flush from the purchase of Sprint, has introduced its robot game changer, teaming up with Aldebaran Robotics (the team behind NAO) to make sure it gets it right. This is Pepper-kun. He's adorable... and a bit of a ditz. Is it finally time, like it was for the home PC, for the home robot revolution? 

Those eyes

 

Pepper's giant eyes are designed to look at you wherever you are -- like the Mona Lisa. Creepy side-glances abound, but I was surprised at how comfortable I soon became when interacting with the 3-foot, 11-inch robot. The diminutive size and big eyes project that kawaii ("cute") aura that Japan loves. There's some manga-inspired design here, and it goes against the efforts to design more human-looking robots, which then inevitably tumble into the uncanny valley: Is it human? Is it a machine? It's like how parts of Blade Runner and Hiroshi Ishiguro's Geminoids might weird you out. SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son talked about how he was inspired by Astro Boy, an Osamu Tezuka creation from over 50 years ago.

Fortunately, SoftBank's Pepper sidesteps that weirdness: It's designed to be inoffensive and lovable. Inside those black holes are an infrared sensor and a detector: This measures 3D depth. On the top of the head, there are four mics for directional sensitivity and a pair of speakers distributed between the ears. Confusingly, in the mouth, there's one of two high-definition cameras; the other resides between the eyes. There are touch sensors in the head and hands, as well as three bump sensors in the base. (I'll get to those; I'm working my way down.) This particular Pepper is the model that'll be working part-time in SoftBank's phone stores, although I'm told the hardware will be nearly identical to the ones the carrier will offer for sale early next year.

 That voice

 

Pepper speaks in childlike Japanese. The software behind it can speak and detect French, English and Spanish, but again, this is the robot that'll be working phone stores in Japan, where there's not a huge need for foreign-language skills at the moment. Pepper's "personality" features a love of cheesy jokes, but you'd probably have to appreciate that Japanese humor to get most of it. Still, it's a nice touch.

SoftBank's spokesman tells me there's a difference to the behavior between the shop-centric model (Pepper starts a lot of conversations and wants to play a lot of games), and the eventual home robot. The latter will base a lot of its interactions on established information and on face detection -- it'll know who it's talking to. Less small talk and gags and more "Don't forget your umbrella," "Are you feeling okay?"-type interactions. SoftBank is reiterating Pepper's ability to read into what you're saying emotionally, from a light-and-friendly "No," to an aggressive one. The meaning is different, and Aldebaran Robotics' boss told our Japanese colleagues that it can typically tell the difference if you say, "Yes," but your heart (and probably your face and intonation) says, "No."

Pepper, though, asks if he can join your family, asks what kind of person you are. It's friendly small talk, but it's also tinged with a hint of impatience. If he can't understand your roughly pronounced Japanese (sorry), he'll move on to a new question, or ignore you outright. But I don't feel all that offended; I feel like Pepper's still learning -- he's still a kid and I humor him. Maybe it's the way he talks, or the fact that he's a couple of feet shorter than me, but I forgive him for it, and that might be how it worms its way into Japanese homes.

The hands

 

They aren't going to pick up anything anytime soon. As you might have seen in the intro video, the hands, nay arms, are surprisingly fluid and Pepper's numerous poses are quite natural. There's a degree of give to the hands' movement too: They've been designed to be soft and pliable, because kids. Children can get excitable and they run around a lot. So to avoid poked eyes and subsequent tears, the fingers are bendable, while joints are surrounded by flexible rubber so that they don't pinch if a hand gets trapped in there. The whole body is a combination of gentle curves and SoftBank colors (white and light gray -- it's all very interior design-friendly).

There are touch sensors on the arms, as well as the head. But during our first meeting, it was the head patting that got Pepper's attention most. I'd love for Pepper to have the ability to hold our keys or umbrella while we prepare to go out, for example. I want my robot butler.

The leg(s)

 

 It's not a bipedal robot. ASIMO is safe for now. It's something Son mentioned at Pepper's debut, but it is a fact that wheel-based robots are far more energy efficient. SoftBank pegs the battery life of its newest sales assistant at around 12 hours. A combination of three specially designed wheels allow it to rotate on the spot, reverse and generally navigate its environment. To help, there are three bumper sensors and a trio of paired laser sensors augmented with sonar. This doesn't just avoid collisions, but also ensures that it can maintain a degree of distance -- you can keep your personal space. And if bipedal is your dream robot form, Aldebaran Robotics does have one in development.

The point

 

do you expect Pepper to do? That's the next challenge for SoftBank. It doesn't offer much in the way of manual labor or cleaning, but it definitely, unwaveringly, offers a glimpse into the sociable future of robots. Imagine Siri's savvy with Pepper's expressiveness and, er, Boston Dynamics' maneuverability -- that's probably the future.

 

But will it be a commercial success? By installing these robots in its stores (four at the moment, but rolling out further later this month), it could become a familiar sight in Japan -- and that's what Pepper will need if SoftBank's expecting normal people to stump up its 198,000 yen asking price. SoftBank's CEO Son said, "It's the first step," and the core part to this is its affordability. It may not be cheap in the world of phones and tablets, but nor is it out of this world (or your wallet). For a humanoid robot that wants to talk, $1,900 is a bargain.

 

 http://www.engadget.com

Mozilla Trumpets Firefox Smartphone Progress

Mozilla is working diligently to offer $25 smartphones to customers in India this year, which likely would hasten the end of the feature phone. The open source Firefox mobile operating system will be featured, along with a list of modest entry-level specs. Key to the success of the endeavor will be attracting developers to create apps for devices that aren't likely to generate much revenue.

Mozilla showcased the latest developments in its plan to offer inexpensive smartphones running the open source Firefox OS at the Mobile Asia Expo this week in Shanghai.

They include reference designs for production in India; plans to launch the smartphones in India within the next few months; the addition of Chunghwa Telecom, Taiwan's largest operator, to the list of carriers supporting them; and demonstrations of new Firefox OS devices from ZTE and Alcatel.

ZTE Open II

Although Mozilla has announced plans to sell smartphones running Firefox OS for less than US$25 and has teamed with Chinese fabless semiconductor firm Spreadtrum to create reference designs for them, it did not mention pricing in its expo announcements.

"It's a strong sign on the part of Firefox and its OEM partners to grab share in perhaps the fastest-growing market category -- the sub-$50 bracket," Ramon Llamas, a research manager at IDC, told LinuxInsider.

However, Mozilla "is in very good company with a number of Android smartphones," he pointed out.

What the Moz Will Do in Shanghai 

Mozilla will demo sample devices using chipsets from Spreadtrum at the Mobile Asia Expo.

Indian mobile device makers Intex and Spice will use the Spreadtrum-Mozilla reference designs to create Firefox OS smartphones.

Further, two Firefox OS devices that will go on sale this summer will be showcased at Mozilla's booth at the expo.

They are the ZTE Open II and the Alcatel One Touch Fire E.

The Open II was announced at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona in February.

Both use Qualcomm Snapdragon dual-core processors.

The Open II has a 2-MP rear-facing camera; a 3.5-inch HVGA multitouch screen with a resolution of 480 x 320 pixels; runs on GPRS/WCDMA/HSPA+; and is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon MSM8210 CPU.

The Alcatel One Touch Fire E has a 3.2-MP rear-facing camera with a resolution of about 2,600 x 1,944 pixels and a 1.2 MHz Qualcomm Snapdragon CPU. It accepts microSD and microSDHC cards and has USB 2.0 and a micro-USB ports. It has a 4.5-inch IPS LCD display with 540 x 960 pixel resolution.

The Impact on Markets

These low-cost phones "are designed to provide tailored access to free carrier and Internet services, and a browser phone can do that quite readily," Carl Howe, a vice president of research at the Yankee Group, told LinuxInsider.

They "are particularly key in emerging markets where even a $150 smartphone is out of reach for most of the population," he continued.

However, they "don't represent a huge potential revenue stream of app and media purchases," Howe said. As such, they "are entry-level devices, not premium ones" and will serve mainly to bring feature phone users to the smartphone market.

Firefox OS devices might not impact smartphone prices, suggested IDC's Llamas. While Samsung has "a lot of smartphones" at the $100 mark, "I think there's still higher prices that could be charged -- as well as more fully featured devices -- within other markets that will buoy [smartphone] prices."

The biggest impact of these new [low-cost] Firefox OS phones is that they "will write the epitaph for the feature phone market," Howe remarked.

Looking to Firefox OS Phones' Tomorrows

The low-cost smartphone segment "is, and will continue to be, a free-for-all," Todd Day, a senior industry analyst at Frost & Sullivan, told LinuxInsider.

The big problem Firefox will face will be one Microsoft is already familiar with -- a shortage of apps, which are the lifeblood of mobile computing.

"If Firefox OS isn't able to get quality apps built, it will likely have problems competing in developed markets," Day warned.

Firefox "is in for a long, slow slog in the worldwide market," IDC's Llamas said. "We're still only talking a handful of devices and an underdeveloped application story."

For now, Android will continue to lead the market and grow; second-place iOS will maintain market share; and Windows Phone will remain a minor, albeit growing, player, Llamas predicted.

Still, low-cost smartphones will catch on in the Far East, he suggested. They could spur a move toward mobile business and mobile commerce

We Can Create Matter from Light?!

 

Every type of matter has an antimatter partner: electrons are paired with positrons, protons have antiprotons, and for every quark there’s an antiquark. When a particle meets its antiparticle, they annihilate into gamma rays: the highest energy type of light, in accordance with E = mc².

So what about light: Is there such a thing as an antiphoton?

The answer is yes, but it’s not a fundamentally new particle. Antiphotons are the same thing as regular photons: there’s no difference at all. That might seem disappointing (no antilight for science fiction stories), but the same physics theory that describes the behavior of matter and antimatter predicts that if two high-energy photons collide in the right way, they’ll annihilate into pairs of matter and antimatter particles. However, that theory has never been tested, but it might finally lead to experiments very soon.

A paper published this week in the journal Nature Photonics explained how. O. J. Pike, F. Mackenroth, E. G. Hill, and S. J. Rose showed that if you send gamma rays into a special heated gold chamber known as a “hohlraum,” the photons would annihilate. (Hohlraum is just the German word for “empty room,” in the typical physics habit of giving fancy-sounding terms to simple concepts.) The result would be hundreds of thousands of pairs of electrons and positrons—and an exciting new way to study the interactions between light and matter.

Gregory Breit and John Archibald Wheeler first predicted this photon-photon annihilation in 1934. (Wheeler is best known for popularizing the term “black hole,” though nobody knows where he got the term or if he made it up himself.) The basic concept is simple: if you collide an electron and a positron at relatively low speed, a common outcome is a pair of gamma rays of equal energy. A law of physics says if you run the clock backwards, it should be equally valid: colliding two gamma rays of the right energy should give you an electron and a positron.

The “right energy” is important: visible light doesn’t have nearly enough. Photons have no mass: they’re pure energy, so by E = mc² there needs to be enough energy in the light to convert into the mass of the electron and positron. Only gamma rays can do it, since all other forms of light are too low-energy.

Electrons and positrons have opposite electric charges, so they happily and fatally attract each other. (We’ve all been in relationships like that.) However, photons are electrically neutral, so their influence on each other is minimal under ordinary circumstances.

That’s where the hohlraum comes in: it’s a gold sleeve heated by laser light to create a kind of gas of photons inside. When the gamma rays enter the sleeve, they interact with that photon gas, annihilating into electron-positron pairs. Using a magnet, experimenters can separate the electrons and positrons at the other end of the sleeve, counting them and measuring their energy.

If the process of annihilating photons is the exact reverse of annihilating electrons and positrons, then the energy of the particles coming out of the hohlraum should follow a distinct pattern. That’s what we expect from quantum electrodynamics: the theory of how light and matter interact. Richard Feynman, Julian Schwinger, and Sin-Itiro Tomonaga, building on earlier work by Wheeler and others, developed quantum electrodynamics—the best-tested and most accurate theory in all of physics.

Nevertheless, there’s still that slight possibility of new behavior any time physicists design new experiments. It’s unlikely, but that’s the reason to make large numbers of electron-positron pairs: it’s enough to spot any anomalies and either verify that quantum electrodynamics is still champion, or see any very small hints that something else is going on.

Beyond that, photon-photon colliders offer a different set of experimental possibilities than typical particle accelerators like the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). For example, electrons and positrons are the lowest-mass particles of ordinary matter (not counting neutrinos, which are governed by different rules). By cranking up the gamma ray energy, it might be possible to make quarks-antiquark pairs, probing the properties of these particles in a new regime.

A few experimental facilities have lasers of the right kind to create photon-photon annihilation, including SLAC in the United States and the Orion laser in the UK. That means it should be possible to test this proposal fairly soon.

Because there’s no mass at the start and the result is electrons and positrons, no experiment could provide a purer example of E = mc². It would also provide a final test of one of the elementary predictions of quantum electrodynamics, but at the same time open up a new set of possible experiments.

And all of this because light is its own opposite.

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