Search Results for: samsung

Another day, another patent story. After a spot of bad news for Apple, comes something good for the Cupertino, Calif.-based corporation. A United States International Trade Commission judge has decided in a preliminary ruling that Samsung infringed four of Apple's intellectual property patents.

The ruling will be considered by the full commission, with a result expected in February, but it’s an important, albeit early, victory for Apple as the ITC has the ability to block the import of infringing products into the US.

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US wireless carrier T-Mobile announced two weeks ago that the 5.5-inch Samsung Galaxy Note II will come its way "this fall," and surprise, surprise -- it's available starting today.

Unlike AT&T, that announced the "phablet" alongiside the LG Optimus G a week ago and priced the Galaxy Note II at $299.99 on a two-year contract, T-Mobile will sell the Samsung-made quad-core smartphone in Marble White and Titanium Gray for a marginally higher $369.99 on a new two-year contract, basically $70 more than what the former charges for it.

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Uh-oh. While Apple was launching all its new and improved products yesterday, bad news brewed in the background. I just hope the company hasn’t pre-emptively spent any of the $1.05 billion it was awarded from Samsung recently, because the US Patent and Trademark Office has just ruled that 20 patents relating to overscroll technology (the bounce effect that happens when you scroll beyond the edge of an image or document) are invalid, and that could spell problems for the Cupertino, Calif.-based corporation.

According to Groklaw, "the notorious rubber-band patent [Apple's] been going after Android with, has just been tentatively rejected by the USPTO on re-examination. Apple has two months, until December 15, 2012, to respond and try to save it".

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Bad news for some people who pre-ordered the new Samsung Chromebook yesterday. Shortly after the announcement, the South Korean manufacturer introduced a 3G model.

Chromebook 3G comes with an 11.6-inch display sporting a 1366 by 768 resolution, 1.7GHz Samsung Exynos 5 dual-core processor based on the Cortex A15 architecture, 2GB RAM, 16GB SSD for storage, runs Chrome OS and, on top of the Wi-Fi model from yesterday has a Verizon Wireless 3G WWAN with up to 100MB of free cellular data per month for a period of two years. The price for getting a Samsung Chrombook with cellular connectivity is $329.99. Worth it?

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Apple today lost an appeal against the UK ruling that found rival Samsung's Galaxy Tab did not infringe its design rights. The original case, in which Judge Colin Birss declared Samsung’s tablets were not cool enough to be confused with the iPad, found in favor of the South Korean company and ordered Apple to publish a notice on its website and in various print titles (for a minimum of six months), informing visitors and readers that Samsung did not copy the design of Apple’s tablet.

The Court of Appeal’s review of the case upheld this ruling, meaning that Apple must comply with the original order. And just for a little additional salt/wound rubbing, one of the three appeals judges, Lord Justice Kitchin, stated that the typeface used in the notices must be no smaller than 14 point Ariel.

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Yesterday my colleague Joe Wilcox wrote "AT&T starts LG Optimus G preorders Oct. 16, sales Nov. 2," but today Sprint announced that the LG-made quad-core power-house is coming its way, just like the controversial Samsung Galaxy Note II "phablet".

Unlike the AT&T variant the LG Optimus G will come with a 13MP camera, instead of the 8MP shooter announced yesterday, and it will be available for pre-order from November 1, with sales to start on November 11. On a two-year contract the Qualcomm-powered smartphone will cost $199. Also announced is the Samsung Galaxy Note II, that will be available for purchase on October 25 for $299.99 with a two-year contract.

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It's no iPad Mini, but it is a mini alternative to one of the more popular smartphones on the market today, Samsung's Galaxy S III. The Galaxy S III Mini is smaller in size and specs than its older brother, and is clearly gunning for the entry-level smartphone consumer. Unfortunately, because of its modest bag of tricks, putting it next to the Galaxy S III is kind of an unrealistic comparison and this device could easily fall behind last year's Galaxy S2.

The Galaxy S III Mini has a 4" WVGA Super AMOLED touchscreen, which is more than three quarters of an inch smaller than the screen on the full-sized Galaxy S III. This reduced screen size helps shrink the overall footprint of the device by two tenths of a square inch (.6" smaller length x .3" smaller width.) It's not a tremendous reduction in size, but it defies the general trend of smartphones going bigger.

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U.S. wireless carrier T-Mobile on Wednesday announced that it will bring the Samsung Galaxy Note II to its product lineup, but unlike the previous model this one does not have to make due with underpowered hardware compared to its international sibling.

Just like the international model, the T-Mobile variant of the Samsung Galaxy Note II comes with a 5.5-inch HD Super AMOLED display sporting a 1280 by 720 resolution, and is powered by the same 1.6GHz quad-core Exynos processor and 3100mAh battery with a quoted talk time of up to 15 hours. It will run Android 4.1 Jelly Bean with TouchWiz, and it will be available in two color options, Titanium Gray and Marble White.

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They say the apple doesn't fall far from the tree. But it does.

Samsung's brand has recovered from a disastrous low, demonstrating the benefits of aggressive, compelling marketing and the pitfalls of a competitor's public product problems. Make no mistake: Samsung's snarky attack ads, which make fun of iPhone idolators, are as effective today as they were when first aired in November 2011. The perception change, which puts Apple's brand lower, also shows the damage done by iOS 6 Maps and dissatisfaction with the company's response.

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Samsung announced Galaxy Note II at IFA little more than a month ago, and the handset was among the first smartphones to come with Android 4.1 Jelly Bean out of the box. Acknowledging the popularity the previous model has among modders, the South Korean electronics giant has released the open-source code for its latest phablet.

The source code is available to download from the Open Source Release Center and covers the international model, as well as what appears to be three regional devices (codenamed SEA, MEA and SWA). By using the source code, modders can customize the stock Android 4.1 Jelly Bean with TouchWiz to create custom images that include various tweaks, but can just as well take a number of elements to use in custom Android distributions such as CyanogenMod 10.

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Soon after HP announced the availability of Open webOS 1.0 Edition, the WebOS Ports team made a new announcement of their own -- the porting of the open-source operating system to the Samsung/Google Galaxy Nexus. They did not waste any time...

The port is in the early stages of development, and accordingly it's a work in progress. Hardware acceleration is not yet implemented, but according to The Open webOS Project Blog the team is working on correcting the issue. A video has been posted detailing a functioning Open webOS running on the Samsung/Google Galaxy Nexus without any apparent issues aside from hardware acceleration, a good sign considering the narrow time-frame since HP released it.

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The recently-revealed security exploit on Samsung Android phones running the TouchWiz interface appears to have already been fixed, Samsung said in a statement to the media Wednesday.

The exploit, which allowed maliciously-crafted sites to remotely wipe Android phones, was shown publicly at a conference in Buenos Aires, Argentina last week. Samsung on Wednesday said the software build which contained the exploitable loophole was an early production version, and the public should not be at a significant risk because it was already patched.

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Great news for Verizon Wireless Samsung Galaxy Nexus owners -- Google posted the Android 4.1 Jelly Bean factory image for the "forgotten" users of the big red.

The LTE Galaxy Nexus can be updated to Android 4.1.1 Jelly Bean, build number JRO03O using the factory image posted on Google Developers website. The recent development comes almost two months after the Mountain View, Calif.-based corporation released the factory images for the Samsung/Google Galaxy Nexus HSPA+ model, and represents a significant delay for the update to reach the LTE model.

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Telecommunications Security researcher Ravi Borgaonkar from the Berlin Technical University has revealed just how easy it might be to perform a malicious factory reset on Samsung Android smartphones running the TouchWiz interface.

Claiming to have used codes for Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD), a session-based GSM protocol typically used to send messages between a mobile device and an application server, Borgaonkar remotely wiped a Samsung Galaxy S III on stage at the Ekoparty Security Conference in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

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HTC promised, and Samsung delivered.

After a number of leaked beta builds surfaced, the official Android 4.1 Jelly Bean update for the Samsung Galaxy S III is now available in select European countries.

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