The Canadian variant of the Samsung Galaxy S III will scrap the quad-core Exynos processor found in the European version and instead feature a 1.5GHz Snapdragon S4 processor. The Canadian handset, like the Japanese model, will also receive a RAM boost from 1GB to 2GB. It has already been confirmed that the Galaxy S III would be equipped with a dual-core Snapdragon S4 processor on U.S. carriers with 4G LTE networks. It is unclear, however, if U.S. devices will also receive the RAM increase, although it does seem more likely now. The Samsung Galaxy S III will be available in Canada beginning June 20th. Samsung’s press release follows below.

The Samsung GALAXY S III provides Canadians with a more human smartphone experience

Designed for humans and inspired by nature, the Samsung GALAXY S III brings the best combination of power and performance to the Canadian marketplace

MISSISSAUGA, ON, May 30, 2012 /CNW/ – Samsung Electronics Canada, today announces the models details and availability date of the much-anticipated GALAXY S III. Beginning June 20th, the Samsung GALAXY S III will be available through leading Canadian wireless carriers and authorized national retailers.

“We are very excited to bring the highly anticipated GALAXY S III to Canadians so they can experience firsthand, the power, performance and passion that Samsung is known for,” said Paul Brannen, Vice President, Enterprise Business Group, Samsung Canada. “This next generation of the GALAXY S series is sleek and stylish, and offers users features that promote sharing, and are intuitive and powerful, allowing Canadians to enjoy a more human experience with their smartphone.”

Natural Interaction

Smart enough to detect face, voice and motions, the GALAXY S III adapts to the user, providing users an interface that is convenient and natural.

With the innovative ‘Smart stay’ feature, the GALAXY S III recognizes how the user is using their device such as, reading an e-book or browsing the web. By having the front camera identify eye motion the phone maintains a bright display for continued viewing pleasure.

The GALAXY S III features ‘S Voice,’ an advanced natural language user interface, to listen and respond to user commands. S Voice presents powerful functions in regards to device control and commands, such as allowing the user to play a favorite song, turn the volume up or down, send text messages and emails, organize schedules, or automatically launch the camera and capture a photo.

With ‘Smart alert’ the GALAXY S III will alert the user by catching any missed messages or calls with a vibration to notify missed statuses when picked up after being idle. If the user is messaging someone but decide to call them instead, they can simply lift phone to their ear and ‘Direct call’ will dial their number.

Easy and Instant Sharing

The Samsung GALAXY S III is more than a personal device that can be enjoyed by one user – it wants to share and experience smartphone benefits with family and friends, regardless of location with the following features:

With the new ‘S Beam,’ the GALAXY S III expands upon Android™ Beam™, allowing a 1GB movie file to be shared within three minutes and a 10MB music file within two seconds by simply touching another GALAXY S III phone, even without a Wi-Fi or cellular signal.

The ‘Buddy photo share’ function also allows photos to be easily and simultaneously shared with all friends pictured in an image directly from the camera or the photo gallery.
‘AllShare Play’ can be used to instantly share any forms of files between GALAXY S III and tablet, PC, and televisions that are DLNA enabled, regardless of the distance between the devices.

The ‘Group Cast’ feature that allows users to share their screen among multiple friends on the same Wi-Fi network; users can comment and draw changes at the same time as co-workers- witnessing real-time sharing on individual devices.

The preloaded ‘Dropbox’ application provides an even more convenient sharing experience, supplying 50GB of free storage for two years for not just image and music files, but now also for video content. With the GALAXY S III files can also be instantly uploaded through data networks without requiring WiFi access.

Uncompromised Performance

With a 4.8″ HD Super AMOLED display, the GALAXY S III offers a large and vivid viewing experience. Samsung Mobile’s heritage Super AMOLED display even enhances to HD and 16:9 wider viewing angles. To ensure faster content sharing and connectivity, the GALAXY S III offers Wi-Fi Channel Bonding which doubles the Wi-Fi bandwidth.

The GALAXY S III not only presents features with enhanced usability, but also provides an ergonomic and comfortable experience through its human-centric design. Its comfortable grip, gentle curves, and organic form deliver a rich human-centric feel and design. Available in Pebble Blue and Marble White at launch, Samsung will introduce a variety of additional color options.

The GALAXY S III also sports a range of additional features that boost performance and the overall user experience in entirely new ways, with features such as:
‘Pop up play,’ users can play a video anywhere on their screen while simultaneously running other tasks, eliminating the need to close and restart videos when checking new emails or surfing the Web.

An 8MP camera features a zero-lag shutter speed that lets users capture moving objects easily without delay, with the ‘Burst shot’ function that instantly captures twenty continuous shots, and the ‘Best photo’ feature that selects the best of eight photographs, the GALAXY S III ensures users a more enhanced and memorable camera experience.

HD video can be recorded even with the 1.9MP front-facing camera, which users can use to capture a video of themselves. An improved backside illumination sensor further helps to eliminate blur in photos that result from shaking, even under low light conditions.

With Samsung Hubs, users can continually refresh phone content through the ‘Game Hub,’ which provides access to numerous social games, while Video Hub, a new service offering to the Canadian marketplace, brings users high quality TV and movies for rent . Furthermore, Samsung Music Hub will offer a personal music streaming service.

The GALAXY S III will be available for purchase in Canada starting on June 20, 2012. Samsung is pleased to be working with all of the leading wireless providers in Canada, to give our customers a choice of service provider. The SGH-i747 variation of the GALAXY S III will be available from Bell Mobility, Virgin Mobile, SaskTel, TELUS and Rogers Wireless. The SGH-iT999 model will be available from Videotron, Wind and Mobilicity.

Additional Features Include:

Processor:

Snapdragon S4 Dual Core 1.5 GHz
Qualcomm MSM8960 Chipset

OS (Shipping): ICS 4.0.4

Data: LTE (SGH-i747 variation) and HSPA+ 42 (SGH-iT999 variation)

Memory: 2 GB RAM

Dimensions: 136.6 x 70.6 x 8.6 mm

Weight: 133g

Memory: 16/32GB internal memory (SGH-i747)/ 16GB internal memory (SGH-iT999)

Expandable microSD up to 32GB

Display: 4.8 HD Super AMOLED 1280×720 (306ppi)

Connectivity: NFC, Bluetooth 4.0, DLNA, WiFi 802.11 a/b/g/n, MHL Video Out

Camera: 8MP Rear-facing, 1.9MP Front-facing

Battery: 2100 mAh

Other:

TouchWiz with Motion UX

S Beam

AllShare Play enhance functionality

MP3/ACC+/WAV audio player

DivX/Xvid/MP4/WMV/H.263/ H.264 Video Player

Google’s Nexus tablet has seemingly been confirmed by Rightware’s Power Board benchmark test result site. The rumored device recently appeared in the results database and is confirmed to feature a 7-inch display with a resolution of 768 x 1,280 pixels and a quad-core Tegra 3 processor clocked at 1.3GHz. The benchmarks also confirm that ASUS is the manufacturer, and the device is running Android 4.1 with the build JRN51B, the “J” likely indicating Jelly Bean. The tablet is listed under the name “Google Asus Nexus 7″ and it bears the code name “Grouper,” which lines up with Google’s previous fish-based code names for its Nexus devices. Google’s Nexus tablet is expected to be unveiled at the company’s annual i/O Developer Conference that will take place in San Francisco from June 27th to June 29th — the device is rumored to retail for between $199 and $249. Additional details from the benchmark test results follows below.

“os”: {
“android”: {
“model”: “Nexus 7″,
“hardware”: “grouper”,
“manufacturer”: “asus”,
“device”: “grouper”,
“brand”: “google”,
“display”: “XXXXXX-userdebug 4.1 JRN51B 3XXXXX dev-keys”,
“version_sdk”: “4.1″,
“board”: “grouper”,
“version_code”: “1″
}
}

[Via AndroidPolice]

Read

Sony Mobile on Friday confirmed that it no longer plans to update its Xperia Play smartphone to Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich due to compatibility issues with the device’s gaming features, Phone Scoop reported. “Ice Cream Sandwich demands more from the phone hardware than Gingerbread,” a Sony spokesperson said. “Android 4.0 is a more powerful OS and thus, more resource intensive – applications require more RAM, CPU power, and network bandwidth. From internal testing and feedback from the developer community on the beta ROM software release, we have seen a significant decline in user experience when running high performance games, as they are more demanding on the hardware. As gaming content is so integral to the core Xperia Play proposition, we cannot recommend an upgrade.” Sony’s decision will affect both the AT&T and Verizon Wireless models, as well as models sold overseas. The Xperia Play launched on Verizon last May and AT&T this past September.

Read

According to a new report from online advertising network Chitika, smartphones and tablets now account for 20% of all Web traffic in the U.S. and Canada. Traditional PCs accounted for 80% of Web traffic, with smartphone traffic totaling 14.6% and tablets making up 5.6%, AllThingD reported. Chitika found that a whopping 95% of tablet Web traffic came from a version of Apple’s iPad, mainly the newest iPad, and 72% of smartphone traffic also belongs to Apple, compared to 26% for Android devices. The Cupertino-based company didn’t fare as well on the desktop side, which saw 85% of Web traffic from Windows machines compared to 13% from Macs. The report also noted that Windows Phone now accounts for a third as much traffic as BlackBerry phones, and while Microsoft’s mobile platform owns a smaller share of the market, the handsets’ larger displays may be responsible for the proportionally large share of Web browsing.

Read

HP’s open source webOS team, known as Enyo, will reportedly be leaving the company and joining Google, according to The Verge. The computer giant in December announced its failed webOS mobile operating system would move to an open-source model under the name Enyo, with version 1.0 slated for release in September 2012. The website’s sources claim the entire Enyo team will not be headed for Google, but Matt McNulty, the head of the project, will be among those departing. This wouldn’t be the first time the Internet giant has hired former webOS workers; Android’s current design chief Matias Duarte oversaw the creation of the user interface for the operating system while working at Palm. It is unclear if the Enyo team members will be joining the Android group or another Google project.

Read

GameFly announced on Wednesday that it plans to begin publishing mobile games for Apple’s iOS platform and Google’s Android operating system. In addition, the video game rental service plans to further expand into mobile by launching its own Android app store to take on the Google Play store.  ”GameFly is dedicated to giving consumers the best user experience possible, and to be their single destination for console, PC and mobile gaming needs,” GameFly co-founder Sean Spector said in a statement. “We plan to be a leading player in mobile games by launching our retail GameStore for Android and helping to fund mobile developers of all sizes to publish, promote and sell their smartphone and tablet games.” The GameFly GameStore will launch this fall on Android tablets and smartphones. GameFly’s full press release follows below.

GameFly To Publish Mobile Games For iOS And Android Platforms And Launch GameFly GameStore For Android

LOS ANGELES, May 23, 2012 /PRNewswire/ — GameFly, Inc., the leading video game service, announced today its plans to begin publishing mobile games for the iOS and Android platforms, as well as launching the independent GameFly GameStore for Android later this fall. Continuing its foray into digital initiatives, the company has set aside a game development fund to work with mobile developers that are in the process of making a great game, but need the extra resources to publish and promote their titles. GameFly will also expand its mission to be the top resource for all gaming needs, offering expertly curated Android games in the GameFly GameStore with thousands of the best games and daily deals. With its large social network for gamers, game discovery will also be made easier via friend recommendations, and ratings and reviews from fellow gamers.

“GameFly is dedicated to giving consumers the best user experience possible, and to be their single destination for console, PC and mobile gaming needs,” said Sean Spector, GameFly co-founder and SVP of Business Development and Content. “We plan to be a leading player in mobile games by launching our retail GameStore for Android and helping to fund mobile developers of all sizes to publish, promote and sell their smartphone and tablet games.”

GameFly is currently accepting submissions from mobile game developers at GameDev@GameFly.com, and expects to publish its first title this summer. The GameFly GameStore will be available for Android phones and tablets by this holiday season. GameFly’s Game of the Day feature was launched on the popular GameFly mobile App in April, enabling iOS users to discover high quality games or find great deals on titles they may have missed.

Millennial Media on Thursday released a new report outlining estimates first-quarter market share across mobile devices and operating systems. The mobile advertising company found that tablets — the top being Apple’s iPad, Samsung’s Galaxy Tab and Amazon’s Kindle Fire — accounted for 20% of all ad impressions during the first quarter of 2012, an increase from 15% in the first quarter of 2011. “Tablets and other non-phone connected devices have established a clear role in the growing mobile ecosystem,” said Jamie Fellows, SVP, Product, Millennial Media. “The substantial quarterly growth of impressions in this category is tied to both increased usage and adoption, and we expect this trend to continue in the foreseeable future.” The report also found that 14 of the top 20 mobile phones ran Google’s Android operating system, which was installed on 49% of all devices. Apple’s iPhone was the top handset, helping the Cupertino-based company to edge out Samsung, which had four of the top 20 mobile phones, as the top manufacturer. Millennial Media’s press release and two additional tables follow below.

Millennial Media Releases Q1 Mobile Mix Report

Report Shows Significant Growth in Ad Impressions Among Tablets and Non-Phone Connected Devices

BALTIMORE–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Millennial Media, Inc. (NYSE: MM), the independent leader in mobile advertising, today released its Q1 Mobile Mix report, the latest edition of its reliable and widely-sourced report on trends in impressions for mobile devices and mobile operating systems.

The Q1 Mobile Mix report takes an in-depth look at the mobile device advertising landscape, including the top 20 mobile phones, top 10 mobile device manufacturers, leading mobile device operating systems and top mobile app categories ranked by impressions.

The report found that non-phone mobile devices, such as tablets, accounted for 20 percent of all impressions on the Millennial Media platform during the first quarter of 2012, compared to 15 percent in Q1 of 2011.

The report also found that Android remained the top overall operating system on the Millennial Media platform in Q1 2012, with a 49 percent share of impressions, and Apple remained the leading individual mobile device manufacturer.

Other highlights from the Q1 Mobile Mix report include (ranked by impressions on the Millennial Media platform during the quarter):

• The Apple iPad, Samsung Galaxy Tab and Amazon Kindle Fire were the top tablets in Q1, and all three were among the top 20 mobile devices.
• The Apple iPhone remained the leading individual mobile phone.
• Android made up 14 of the top 20 mobile phones.
• Samsung was the second leading manufacturer and had 4 of the top 20 mobile phones.
• Gaming was the top mobile app category and grew 10 percent compared to Q4 2011.
• Mobile video views increased 958 percent from Q2 2011 to Q1 2012.

“Tablets and other non-phone connected devices have established a clear role in the growing mobile ecosystem,” said Jamie Fellows, SVP, Product, Millennial Media. “The substantial quarterly growth of impressions in this category is tied to both increased usage and adoption, and we expect this trend to continue in the foreseeable future.”

Google on Thursday announced an update to its Google Play Store that allows Android users to make in-app subscriptions. The update comes more than year after the Mountain View-based company introduced in-app billing in what was then called the Android Market. “Since the launch, In-app Billing has been extremely successful in helping developers monetize their apps through try-and-buy, virtual goods, upgrades, and other popular business models,” Google said on its developer blog. “Today, 23 of the 24 top-grossing apps in Google Play use In-app Billing, and the total revenue generated from in-app purchases exceeds revenue from traditional app purchases.” In-app subscriptions will allow developers to sell monthly or annual subscriptions from within their apps. “Developers just set the price and billing interval and Google Play manages the purchase transactions for them, just as it does for other in-app products and app purchases,” the company said.

Read

Google’s Nexus tablet will reportedly ship in June with an initial volume of 600,000 units per month, according to Digitimes. The slate, which is being co-developed by ASUS, is set to be released in July according to the report. The publications claims that Google originally planned to release its 7-inch tablet in May, however the design of the device did not meet its expectations and the cost was too high. As a result, the product was delayed until July for some minor adjustments. The Internet giant has high hopes for its own-brand tablet, shipments of which are expected to reach between 2 million and 2.5 million units in 2012. Previous rumors claim the Wi-Fi-only tablet will be equipped with a quad-core NVIDIA Tegra 3 processor and could cost as little as $199. The slate may be unveiled at Google’s annual I/O conference, which begins on June 27th.

Read

Google’s Android operating system and Apple’s iOS platform showed big market share gains in the first quarter of 2012 as Symbian and BlackBerry shipments plummeted. Market research firm IDC on Thursday published its global smartphone market share report for the first quarter of this year, and Google’s Android was far and away the biggest winner in terms of year-on-year shipment gains.

According to IDC’s study, Android shipments during the quarter totalled 89.9 million units, up a staggering 145% from 36.7 million in the first quarter of 2011. iPhone shipments were up 88.7% over the first quarter last year to 35.1 million units, giving Apple 23% of the smartphone market in the first quarter compared to Google’s 59% share.

“The popularity of Android and iOS stems from a combination of factors that the competition has struggled to keep up with,” IDC analyst Ramon Llamas said in a statement. “Neither Android nor iOS were the first to market with some of these features, but the way they made the smartphone experience intuitive and seamless has quickly earned a massive following.”

Shipments of smartphones powered by Nokia’s forsaken Symbian OS dropped 60.6% to 10.4 million units, and BlackBerry shipments slid 29.7% to 9.7 million units in the first quarter. IDC’s figures place Symbian’s market share at an all-time low of 6.8%, and BlackBerry trailed narrowly with 6.4%.

Nokia’s Lumia devices helped Microsoft’s Windows Phone platform achieve narrow gains in the first quarter, though the market outgrew it once again. IDC shows that combined shipments of Windows Phone and Windows Mobile handsets grew from 2.6 million units in the first quarter last year to 3.3 million units in the first quarter of 2012, but Microsoft’s share of the global market fell from 2.6% to 2.2% year-on-year.

IDC’s full press release follows below.

NVIDIA CEO Jen-Hsun Huang previously mentioned that more Tegra 3-powered tablets would be coming to the market this summer, starting at the low price of $199. At the company’s annual shareholders’ meeting last week, vice president Rob Csonger revealed Kai, a plan to democratize its quad-core Tegra 3 system-on-a-chip. NVIDIA is looking to offer tablets that are more powerful than Amazon’s Kindle Fire, but that will be offered at the same low price point. “Our strategy on Android is simply to enable quad-core tablets running Android Ice Cream Sandwich to be developed and brought out to market at the $199 price point, and the way we do that is a platform we’ve developed called Kai,” he said. “So this uses a lot of the secret sauce that’s inside Tegra 3 to allow you to develop a tablet at a much lower cost, by using a lot of innovation that we’ve developed to reduce the power that’s used by the display and use lower cost components within the tablet.”

[Via The Verge]

Read

Samsung’s Galaxy S III hasn’t even launched yet and it’s already setting records. News of the high demand among carriers for the upcoming flagship Samsung smartphone emerged last week, and now U.K. carrier Vodafone has confirmed that it has received a record number of end-user preorders for the Galaxy S III ahead of its launch later this month. A Vodafone spokesperson wouldn’t confirm numbers while speaking with The Inquirer, but the company did say preorders of Samsung’s latest Galaxy phone have been off the charts. “With over a week to go until launch, it’s already the most pre-ordered Android device we’ve brought into our smartphone line-up to date and our limited time offer of 2GB of mobile data and 100 free music tracks is being snapped up,” the Vodafone spokesperson said. U.K. retailer Carphone Warehouse also confirmed that it has seen huge pre-sales demand for the phone. The international version of the Galaxy S III is currently available for preorder in the U.S. from Amazon, but Samsung has not yet unveiled any local versions of the smartphone.

Read

As previously reported, after a less than stellar unveiling at Mobile World Congress in February, Samsung delayed the launch of its Galaxy Note 10.1 in order to make revisions. The original Galaxy Note 10.1 featured a 10.1-inch 1280 x 800-pixel display, a dual-core Exynos processor clocked at 1.4GHz, 1GB of RAM and a 3-megapixel rear camera. The slate utilized Samsung’s S-Pen stylus, however unlike its “phablet” counterpart, the device lacked a slot to store the nifty stylus. Samsung has addressed the issue in the redesigned version of its upcoming tablet, and the company added a new quad-core Exynos processor as well, according to Tablet Community. Unfortunately, the South Korea vendor has not announced a release date for the device. A second image follows below.

[Via Android Police]

Read

In the widely publicized patent infringement case between Google and Oracle, a San Francisco jury on Wednesday found that Google’s Android operating system does not infringe Oracle’s patents. Jurors have been dismissed and Judge William Aslup of the U.S. District court of Northern California exonerated the Internet giant of any wrong doing. The verdict marks the end of the trial’s second phase, which focused on patent infringement claims. Google earlier this month was found to have infringed Oracle’s copyrights, however, and the proceedings are set to resume on Tuesday morning.

[Via The Verge]

Read

Google has focused a great deal of effort over the years on making its Android operating system more attractive. Android partners’ first attempts at tablets were lackluster to say the least, and while Honeycomb and Ice Cream Sandwich have revamped the user interface, they still leave much to be desired for many users. Luckily, Android users have the option of completely customizing their devices with various home screen replacement apps, and a nearly endless number of custom ROMs. These alternatives cannot compete with Chameleon, however, an Android home screen replacement app like no other.

Chameleon replaces the standard Android home screens and app launcher with a custom layout of widgets and apps that deliver users a wide range of information. The software can change its appearance and functionality based on GPS locations, Wi-Fi network connections and time zones, along with Home, Office and Evening modes, that will automatically adjust to a user’s needs. Chameleon will also include numerous widgets based on popular apps and services, such as Facebook, Twitter, Nextflix, Instagram, Google Drive, Gmail, Clock, Calendar, Weather, Media Player and an RSS Reader.

Chameleon requires a tablet to be running Android 3.2 Honeycomb or newer, with a 10.1-inch display and a 1280 x 800 resolution or higher. Early adopters can pre-order the app through KickStarter for as little as $5 and will receive Chameleon in August, prior to its September release on the Google Play Store. A video demonstration follows below.

Read