Samsung Continuum - First Android phone with dual touchscreens?

   On the 8th of November Samsung officially confirmed the dual touchscreen Continuum for Verizon. Samsung billed it as the "first phone with a dedicated ticker display," referring to the secondary 1.8-inch color screen below the capacitive touch buttons. As it turns out now. that was all just a marketing strategy and the whole front facing surface of the device is one single large 4 inch display. But it is actually an innovative idea as the four Android buttons are fixed in the screen and the smaller display portion turns on separately to show you the new emails and messages without the whole battery hogging screen being turned on with potential savings on the battery life. Either way, you get a gorgeous AMOLED display (the best display in the market, right next to Apple iPhone's Retina Display) and many other features.


To read the full specification list, please click on the read more link.

What is Windows Phone 7 and how is it different from Windows Mobile?

Lets begin this article with a little history of Microsoft operating systems. As some of you would remember, just a few years ago we had devices in Pakistan from manufacturers like Imate, O2 and Acer called PDAs. These devices were usually for niche audiences and a normal mobile user rarely came across someone using these. Mostly people in business environment or tech-savvy people would be seen with these. Almost all of these used Microsoft Windows Mobile operating system which according to its User Interface was somewhat like a stripped down version of Microsoft's Windows for desktop PCs. This OS wasn't that user friendly and navigating the menus and the applications was a pain, but since this was the only OS present at that time, there was nothing people could do and they just learned to accomodate. At this time Microsoft was an obsolute leader in the mobile OS space. From the year 2000 till 2010, Microsoft enjoyed a monoploy with little competition for a solid 10 years.

Click on the read more link to read the full article.

Canadian scientists make blood from human skin cells! Goobye disability?

Scientists at McMaster University Canada authored a study published in Nature. The scientists used directed differentiation to turn skin cells into hematopoietic progenitor cells to produce other blood cells.

To transform skin cells directly into blood, the researchers had to inject a virus into a gene called OCT4 in skin cells. The altered cells were then soaked in a solution of proteins called cytokines. This is when the skin cells would differentiate into different kinds of blood cells such as red blood cells, platelets and white blood cells.

Please click on the read more link for the complete article.

Nokia E7 starts shipping December 10th!

    Nokia has announced on Twitter today that the 4-inch tilting QWERTY handset -- a phone Espoo (Nokia headquarters) has labeled the true successor to the storied Communicator series -- will start shipping out on the 10th of next month, though exact availability dates and times will undoubtedly vary a bit from market to market. This is a beast of a device and a true successor to the E90 which was launched in 2007 and can still hold its own against many non-touch devices today! This handset will also be the first device by Nokia with Symbian^3 that has a 4 inch touchscreen. For all those who are going to stick with Nokia through thick and thin and did not buy the N8 because of the lack of keyboard, well , it was worth the wait. This device is going to sit right at the top of the heap of the Symbian^3 devices for a while, just like its successor the E90! This phone, where released, will be in the Rs. 70,000/- range, so it will not be everyone's cup of tea but those who can afford it, will not be disappointed! And then again, if you have ever used the iPhone or an Android device for any period of time, make sure you clear away from all symbian touchscreen products!

Preview of Nokia X3-02 - Pakistan's Next Bestseller?

Here is a treat for all those who want Nokia's excellent built quality with a touchscreen phone but just find the Symbian UI too complicated for their liking. The Nokia X3-02 is a very novel design for the complete mobile industry as a whole and one begins to think why this hasn't been tried yet. The model uses the traditional S40 Nokia OS which has found its way into so many hands that models with this OS are almost ubiquitous for the non-smartphone segment of the market. With this iteration of S40 we see an optional touchscreen that is not the main interface for navigation but a supplementary one. Meaning you can use the normal keypad for everything you want to do, but the touchscreen can be used as well. This is an excellent idea by Nokia to introduce its loyal fan base to the touchscreen market.

Please click the read more link to read the complete article.

Preview of Nokia C6-01 - Soon to be released!

    Nokia has started shipping the C6-01 worldwide and you will soon be seeing this in retail stores in Pakistan (within a month or at the maximum two would be my guess). So I thought we can review it for all those of you who don't want to dish out the Rs. 50,000/- it costs to get an N8 but still want an upgrade in your symbian experience. This smartphone comes with a 5 MP camera with LED flash and auto focus. It has a full QWERTY landscape slider keyboard. It has a TFT resistive touchscreen, 16M colors with the Size of 360 x 640 pixels, 3.2 inches. It has a Proximity sensor for auto turn-off and an Accelerometer sensor for UI auto-rotate. It runs on Symbian's latest iteration Symbian ^3 and will be a delight for most of the Nokia up graders.


Please click on the read more link for the complete article.

Holographic Telepresence - The future of business meetings?

One of the most intriguing challenges in the science of physics is to move one person from one one location to another in a very short time duration commonly known as teleportation. While a huge amount of research is being put into making that possible, science is much much closer to the next best thing which is telepresence.
Telepresence is basically communication with another person present at a distant location with a live 3D holographic presence of that person visible to you near you. As science fiction as that sounds, this technology has been cooking in research labs successfully for quite a while now and the current phase of research is aimed more towards how to make this technology a commercially viable option.

Please click on read more for viewing the complete article.

Sharp Galapagos 003SH - The first Android phone with a 3D display!

It was just a matter of time before this happened. Sharp is company that is leading the technology of glasses free 3D displays. It was inevitable that this technology would trickle down into the mobile phone arena. Unlike the 3D displays you'll find in modern 3D HDTVs requiring the viewer to wear active or passive glasses, Sharp's display uses a parallax barrier system to create a sense of depth by using a series of vertical slits in an ordinary LCD to direct light to the right and left eyes. Other goodies included in the package include Android 2.2 (the latest firmware), a 1GHz Snapdragon powers it, with the 3D-capable displays stretching to 3.8 inches and 800 x 480 resolution. The 003SH also comes with a 9.6 mega pixel camera capable of 720p video. Soon you will see rest of the leading manufacturers jump onto the 3D bandwagon as well!

The HAARP program - Research or the true Weapon of Mass destruction?

As researchers in the world of technology find novel ways to make our lives easier and we are dazzled with the innovations that are making our lives and everyday chores increasingly easy and comfortable we forget that the same technologies have a bad side too. And the advances in those technologies are coming up with methods that are immensely powerful and have the capacity to wreak havoc in the world. One such technology is being developed by US researchers called the HAARP project.


Please click on the read more link to read the complete article.

Android Gains Momentum in U.S. market with 1,309% Growth!

Let me start with a few facts for you first. The U.S. market is the leader and trend setter for the world as far as touchscreen phones are concerned thanks to the immense success of Apple's iPhone. So if any operating system or touchscreen handset manufacturer wants to prove his salt, they have to be competent in this market as products from here trickle down to the rest of the world, for example Blackberry, iPhone, Motorola Razr etc. With the massive amount of success that Google's Android platform has enjoyed recently and the results of the last quarter which shows an 800% plus growth in the last quarter, most people were skeptical that Google will be able to maintain this growth.

 Well, the results are in, and in this quarter Google has shown a phenomenal growth increase of over 1,300%. Yes, its thirteen thousand, i haven't misspelled and yet again betting against Google has proven to be a miscalculated. Also, as you can see in the statistics above, the OHA which is the open handset alliance has Android as its flagship software, now captures almost 50% of the market while Apple is losing ground with just one fourth of the market. Android is becoming increasingly interesting as it slowly moves the smartphone market into the mainstream. This OS will also become increasingly relevant in Pakistan as cheaper handsets in the range of Rs. 15,000/- start getting released from manufacturers like LG with their Optimus line.