Apple’s iPhone 6 Topped Presales Figure in South Korea

Apple’s iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus has been opened for pre-order since Friday, 24 October 2014, by three mobile carriers in South Korea. In less than an hour, the carriers reported that the figure has topped the reported pre-sales figure of Samsung Galaxy Note 4 which launched in September.

The first telecom company, KT Corp, claims that the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 plus models together sold up to 10,000 orders in one minute and 50,000 orders in thirty minutes while LG Uplus received 20,000 orders for the new iPhones within 20 minutes. It is the first time that LG Uplus selling iPhone in the local market. South Korea’s largest telecom company, SK Telecom, on the other hand, declined to comment on the detail. However, the company confirmed that the first and second batch of presale orders for iPhones have been fully booked. The iPhones will be made available on the store shelves and for customers starting on 31 October 2014.

Analysts estimated that about 100,000 units have been ordered by now.  it beats Galaxy Note 4 as it had only 30,000 units sold within the first 3 days after it has been launched. However, it seems like it is a little bit unfair to compare these two figures since Samsung has only given 10,000 units to the same three network operators for pre-order purposes whereas Apple seems to give the companies quite a bit of its unit to pre-sell.

Apple’s iPhone 6 Topped Presales Figure in South Korea

Samsung Knox is Rumored to be lacked behind iOS in Enterprise Security.

About 85% of the smartphone nowadays are running on Android.  The latest version of Android, Android 5.0 Lollipop is a big release for Google’s mobile OS. It comes with UI overhaul, a number of reworked features and a few of additional new features. Among these new apps is Knox.

Knox is known to be installed in Samsung Galaxy. One of the examples of Samsung model which is using Knox is the Samsung Galaxy S4. As in the advertisement for Samsung, explaining about Knox is that it is a container which improves the user experience, providing security for enterprise data by creating secure zone in the employee’s device for corporate applications.  The enterprise data is encrypted either at rest or in motion. KNOX workspace container provides users with an isolated secure environment within mobile device, complete with its own home screen, launcher, applications and widgets for easier, more intuitive and safe operation. Application and data inside the container are separated.

Knox is approved by the US Department of Defence and by NSA recently. However, an “unnamed researcher” claims to have found where KNOX keeps its security PIN in an insecure place. It is stored in the plain text file named pin.xml.

Responding to this finding, Samsung has responded with a blog post, denying that it is easy to access the PIN. It is only a trusted system processes which is able to retrieve the PIN and in the event of any system compromise, KNOX Trusted Boot will lock down the container key store.

Some says that Android Security lacks behind iOS security. Which one should we trust? Only extensive testing will answer that.

Samsung Knox is Rumored to be lacked behind iOS in Enterprise Security.

FireTube Could Be Your New YouTube Music Player

We heard rumors back in August that there will be a new music subscription service from Youtube. The rumored name of this service was “YouTube Music Key”. It was supposed to be an ad-free subscription based service costing $9.99 a month. But that was just a rumor.

Since then, nothing has been officially revealed by Google about this product. The closest thing that we could find was the third-party-app in the Google Play app store. It is a YouTube music player for Android and its name is FireTube. This app is made to allow you to “listen to any song, any time, any where.”. Its UI design is easy to navigate and it looks like a typical music player.

Its feature list includes “the largest database of music available.”as proclaimed by the makers of the FireTube app. This app can play music in the background, allowing you to do other things while it plays the songs from YouTube. “Hot Tracks” lets you lets you play the latest tunes. “Automatic Queue” does what it says, it builds a queue of music videos for you to listen to. The playlist that you make in this app can be synced with the same app running on other Android devices and even the Mozilla browser. The playlists can be imported to other devices. And, to top it all off you can watch music videos instead of just listening to them as well.

This app should be available on the Google Play Store right now.

FireTube Could Be Your New YouTube Music Player

Sundar Pichai appointed as Google’s new Products Business Head

In a significant move, Internet Giant Google’s CEO Larry Page has made Indian-born Sundar Pichai the head of the company’s products business. Although no official press release has been issued yet, an internal memo has been sent by Google to its staff informing about the change, according to Re/code.

Sundar Pichai, Senior Vice President at Google looking after Android, Chrome and Google apps, has now been made in-charge of all the products except one at the company. He will now oversee search, Google+, maps, commerce, ad products, research and infrastructure in addition to his existing portfolio.  Only YouTube will remain with its CEO Susan Wojcicki who is a top executive with Google and it was in her garage that Larry Page and Sergey Brin started Google. She will be reporting directly to Page. All the other executive heads will now report to Sundar Pichai.

This move came because Larry Page was concerned that in the coming years Google may not be as innovative as before and he wanted to make certain changes so that bottlenecks are removed and he will get more time to focus on the “Bigger Picture”. Page will now focus his attention on other existing and new products. He will continue to keep with him access and energy, corporate development, Google X, Nest, Calico, finance, legal and business (including ad sales).

Sundar Pichai, 42, joined Google in 2004 and has risen rapidly in the company over the years. He was managing Chrome and was given Google apps in 2012 when Dave Girouard left. Then Andy Rubin stepped down as Android head in 2013 and that too went to Pichai. Sundar Pichai came in limelight at the Google’s I/O 2014 conference. With this new responsibility, he is practically at number two position in the company and considered by many as a potential CEO. However, according to sources, Pichai’s elevation is not aimed at grooming him to take over the reins from Page in future.

Sundar Pichai appointed as Google’s new Products Business Head

Interesting Hidden Menu Option on Samsung Galaxy Smartphones

There are pieces of code which have been embedded as part of computer software since long time ago without us as users know about it. Normally the pieces of code will surface when a specific set command was given. In this blog, we are going to show a piece of code which hidden in Samsung Galaxy smartphones. The secret screen is used to check whether the device is in good working condition.

So, how to access this secret menu?  Well, you can access the screen by opening the Phone app and entering the code *#0*# and when you enter the last symbol, the secret screen will automatically appear.

Most of the option in the secret menu is not really interesting. It seems like this menu is developed for testing purposes. There are 21 menu options altogether. For example, there is “Red”, “Green”, “Blue” and “Black” which allows you to check the screen’s output for flaws like the stuck pixels or color irregularities.

When you click on “Sensor”, it will display a cool-looking screen where raw data from your phone’s sensors will be displayed. On top of that there are graphs showing readings from your accelerometer, gyroscope, and compass. If you click on “Image Test”, a Chihuahua picture will be shown, which is quite funny in a way.

Therefore, those are some examples of what you can find in the hidden menu on Galaxy handsets. Please try the rest if you have time and at your own risk obviously. If you want to share your findings, please leave us a comment!

Interesting Hidden Menu Option on Samsung Galaxy Smartphones

The Biggest Issue of Smartwatch is About to Solve, Thanks to Samsung’s New Flexible Battery

Situation of smartwatches

Smartwatches is a product that most people do not find interesting at the moment. People write about them a lot though the device is not popular. It is still believed that the development of smartwatches is moving in the right direction, and they will become as important as a smartphone in future.

The “flexibility” factor

Currently there are different issues with smartphones and smartwatches. Something that really needs to be understood is the flexibility. It is something that can really change the design of smart products for a certain period of time. The idea of flexible smart products was considered to be possible when people came to know about graphene. It is an exceptional product that has everything to fix what is wrong with the smart products. It can be used to make a very thin, flexible and long-lasting battery. Before this scientists also started working on flexible screens. Now when there is a hope that both flexible screens and flexible batteries will be possible to manufacture, it will enable companies to make flexible smartphones in the future. Those flexible mobile phones could be folded or rolled up.

The present level of flexibility

So far people have not seen anything like a flexible smartphone though engineers are working to get there. Products like Samsung Galaxy Note Edge, Samsung Galaxy Round and LG G Flex have flexible screens, but they are slightly flexible.  The flexibility level of Samsung Galaxy Round and LG G Flex is limited. The objective of their flexibility is to give user a better grip or a better viewing angle. Both of them cannot be bended to any desired level.

Flexible battery

It is impossible to make a flexible smartphone without having a flexible battery. Samsung made an announcement that they have achieved this. It is claimed that this battery remains fully functional even if it is rolled up. However, it does not mean that there will be flexible smartphones in the market soon. The main use of flexible batteries is going to be in a less important gadget that is smartwatches. At the moment smartwatches have a very short battery life, and the situation will be totally different after the addition of flexible batteries.

Present smartwatch

Not long ago, there was a discussion on the advantages of the Pebble Smartwatch. Despite the fact that it has the least features among all the smartwatches available, there is one thing that makes it unique from all others. Its battery will last for at least seven days. Majority of smartwatches usually last for 3 days, and sometimes for 4 days. Sometimes they last for even more than 4 days if the user does not use any of its features for which he has paid a good amount of money. Now Samsung is going to put this flexible battery in the wristband of the smartwatch which will extend the battery life for significant amount of time.

New smartwatch

It can be said that the coming changes in smartwatches will benefit Samsung. Due to longer battery life, companies especially Samsung will sell smartwatches for more than $250. As a result, users will be able to enjoy all features for a longer time.

Future prospects

There are people who like their smartwatches the way they are; however, most people do not buy the device due to short battery life.  Time will decide if longer battery life will convince more people to buy a smartwatch.

 

The Biggest Issue of Smartwatch is About to Solve, Thanks to Samsung’s New Flexible Battery

Nokia’s Conference Call on Q3 2014 Results and Future Plans

Nokia has reported the company’s Q3 2014 earnings report during a conference call on Thursday.  The conference call was started by Matt Shimao, Head of Nokia Investor Relations then continued by Rajeev Suri, President and CEO. Timo Ihamuotila, EVP and Group CFO was also present during the conference call.

The conference call started with a reminder for investors who are planning to attend Capital Markets Day on November 2014 to register as soon as possible so that the venue logistics can be optimized. Any question can be sent to cmd2014@nokia.com.

It is continued by releasing the company’s planning regarding the future business and financial performance of Nokia and its industry. Shimao also explained further that this planning is going to involve risks and uncertainties and the actual result can be differ because of internal and external factor. The complete interim report can be found in the company’s website which includes the detailed explanation of the contents of non-IFRS information and reconciliation between the non-IFRS and the reported information.

The conference calls then continued by Rajeev Suri who explained that Nokia has delivered both growth and strong profitability in this quarter. On top of that, he further explained that the three businesses have grown on a year on year basis with overall performance of 13% year-on-year net sales growth.

With the recent launch of “HERE” maps for Android which boost the growth up to 12% and other technologies with 9% growth.  Whether Nokia wants to go back to the businesses of smartphones in the future, it is still not confirm yet. After all, the branding itself is an important asset to own.

Nokia’s Conference Call on Q3 2014 Results and Future Plans