Posted: 23 Mar 2012 01:08 PM PDT  Google is no stranger to collecting your information in order to better serve you advertisements, but if a recently filed patent ever comes to life, the company will be taking it to the next level. Google has made a fortune out of organizing information. They’ve created algorithms and catalogued the Internet. They’ve taken pictures all over the globe and used them to create an accurate ground-level map of the world. They’ve charted the seas and skies, handed out alternatives to expensive software and created an open source operating system, just to give it away to manufacturers for free. Why? To serve you ads. That’s how Google really makes money. Their ads are everywhere. And more often than not, they’re tailor made to the things that interest you. By looking at the things you search for and look at online, Google can serve you ads that should be of more interest to you. In theory, that’s supposed to make you click on more ads. “Oh hey, I was just searching for this type of product, and here’s an ad for one! What luck!” Apparently, the current methods of information collection are not fast enough though. Google needs to know how to better serve you ads based on the here and now of what’s going on around you. But it’s not like Google can place some sort of monitoring device on you that would tell them if you’re stuck in the rain, right? Well, wrong. Google has recently filed a patent titled “Advertising based on environmental conditions.” Google wants to monitor your phone calls, and listen for things to pick up on that could be of use for advertising. Like rain, so they can sell you umbrellas. Of course, it wouldn’t be a human tapping into your phone calls, filling out information on you. It would be a robot. Which makes it totally not creepy. It doesn’t stop there though. Google would also like to analyze the pictures you take. If you take some pictures in the snow, for example, Google could send you ads for snow shovels or other snow related products. This is absolutely terrifying. Google released a statement on these patent filings saying that not all patents signal a future product or service. Some of the technologies patented by Google do mature into final products, while some don’t. Either way, the fine folks at Google are not only occupying themselves imagining a world where companies get to listen to your phone calls to make more money, but they see themselves playing a key roll in it. I’ve always been creeped out by personalized advertising, but this is taking it to a whole new level. Can you imagine every one of your phone calls being monitored to serve you ads based on what’s going on around you? Would you mind if your phone sent the pictures you take to a computer, where they’re analyzed for key information on your whereabouts? If this is the future of products like Google Voice and Instant Upload, you can count me out now. Bonus video: Thank you Javier for pointing out the hilarious video from fake news site The Onion. |
Posted: 23 Mar 2012 12:58 PM PDT  Welcome back to our weekly Top 10 Android App Updates column, where we take a look at the most upgraded apps for the week. I've found that one of the best ways to discover useful apps is to look at what people are actually updating, and not focus on which apps have the most installs. To find the most updated apps, I turn to AppAware. It's a great tool that shows me which apps have active support from their developers and sometimes reminds me of an old app that I might have removed long ago. Make sure to install it so your activity can help determine our weekly top 10 list. The following is a Top 10 list of apps which were updated in the last seven days and received the most updates during that time period on AppAware. Based on previous feedback, I am filtering out apps that have over 10 million installs since most are well known. I hope you enjoy this weekly feature and discover some apps that you might find useful. QuickPic – Version 2.1.1 What’s new in this version:
Pulse News – Version 2.8.3 What’s new in this version:
DropBox – Version 2.1.1 What’s new in this version:
IMDb Movies & TV – Version varies with device What’s new in this version:
MX Video Player – Version 1 .6 What’s new in this version:
My Tracks – Version varies with device What’s new in this version:
Documents to Go – Version 3.004 What’s new in this version:
Aldiko Book Reader – Version 2.1.0 What’s new in this version:
Camera360 Ultimate – Version 3.1 What’s new in this version:
LinkedIn – Version 2.3.2 What’s new in this version:
Honorable mentionsDid you see any Android apps that received notable updates in the last week? Share your suggestions in the comments below and we will add them to our honorable mentions list. |
Posted: 23 Mar 2012 10:27 AM PDT  Let’s be honest. The Samsung Galaxy Tab 11.6 is nothing more than a rumor at this point. Jonathan Geller of BGR first reported on the device back in December and then I saw a prototype device in January, but we have no hard evidence to suggest that this product will ever come to market. However, I think we all agree that Samsung will issue a response to the new iPad within the coming months, so we will continue to speculate about the announcement and dig for new details. Today I came across this rather interesting picture of an unreleased tablet, hidden on Samsung’s own site.  What is this tablet? So I ask again, what is this Samsung tablet? |
Posted: 23 Mar 2012 10:06 AM PDT  Two years ago ARM Holdings announced their new architecture that would replace the Cortex-A9 CPU core found in most of today’s Android phones and tablets. Codenamed Project Eagle, the new Cortex-A15 CPU was dubbed an “Intel killer” since it was designed for a wide range of devices, including low-power servers, and boasted speeds up to 2.5 GHz. Eric Schorn, VP of Processor Marketing ARM, said that A15 is “The biggest thing ARM has ever done, the degree of commitment is truly phenomenal. It's like taking a desktop and putting it in your pocket.” As most Android fans know, new phones come out every other week and it’s a difficult choice knowing when to upgrade your device. However, we only see a new CPU architecture released every 2-3 years. For this very reason, many of us have been waiting to see who releases the first chip with an ARM Cortex-A15 CPU core. NVIDIA, Samsung, ST Ericsson, Texas Instruments and a few smaller players have all confirmed or hinted at new parts based on Cortex-A15, so it’s been exciting to watch them compete and see who can come to market first. Based on all the information we gathered at CES and Mobile World Congress earlier this year, it has become clear that Samsung will be the first company with a chip that includes Cortex-A15. The average consumer doesn’t care what processor is inside their phone, but if you do then read on to brush up on the latest details. Enter the Exynos 5250 Regular readers of the site are probably familiar with Samsung’s Exynos 5250. It was first announced last year and processor nerds like me have been obsessed with it ever since. Back in January we were the first to reveal some of the details about the Exynos 5250 when we interviewed an executive from Samsung LSI at CES. They told us that Exynos 5250 would feature dual-core 2 GHz Cortex-A15 CPUs (that we already knew), but they surprised us with the news that it would feature an ARM Mali-T604 GPU. Some people doubted our info about the Mali-T604 GPU, but this week Charlie Demerjian of SemiAccurate confirmed the details with a leaked slide from the Common Platform technology forum. There wasn’t anything we didn’t already know in the slide, but we felt it was a good chance to take a closer look at the Exynos 5250. Samsung’s 32nm HKMG process technology The move from 45nm to 32nm reduces power consumption. Most of Samsung’s mobile application processors are produced in Korea, but they just spent $3.6 billion to upgrade their fab in Austin, TX to boost capacity. Recent rumors suggest that the Austin fab is currently producing Apple’s A5 chip for the iPhone, but we believe they are also producing the Exynos 5250. Since Samsung has their own fabs, they use a different process technology to produce their chips. Their latest process node is 32nm High-k Metal Gate (HKMG), which reduces power consumption. This is the industry’s first HKMG process. I won’t pretend to know what all of this means, but the benefits of 32nm HKMG include:
The main takeaways here are that Samsung’s 32nm HKMG process allowed them to be first with Cortex-A15 and it reduces CPU/GPU power consumption by around 40-50% compared to their 45nm process technology. ARM Cortex-A15 CPU core“The ARM Cortex-A15 brings unparalleled performance to our Exynos processor family and the exploding mobile marketplace,” said Dojun Rhee, vice president of System LSI marketing, Device Solutions, Samsung Electronics. “Designers need an application processor platform that delivers full high definition multimedia capabilities, fast processing speed and high performance graphics to meet end users expectation for a connected life on the go. The advanced low-power, high-performance processor technology of the new Exynos 5250 continues to deliver an unprecedented level of performance for users to enjoy a completely new mobile experience.” So how fast exactly is Cortex-A15? It is capable of processing 14 billion instructions per second (DMIPS, Dhrystone million instructions per second) at 2.0 GHz. That’s almost double the performance over a current Cortex-A9-based dual core processor running at 1.5 GHz, capable of 7,500 DMIPS. It also means it should be faster than Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon S4 and NVIDIA’s Tegra 3. Memory bandwidth has been increased to a staggering 12.8 Gigabytes per second (GB/s). Once again, that is double the 6.4 GB/s maximum found in current dual-core Cortex-A9 processors. For even more nerdy details, head over to ARM’s official documentation on Cortex-A15. ARM Mali-T604 GPU coreNo consumer devices have used the ARM Mali-T604 GPU, so we don’t have a lot to compare it with. However, Samsung says it will offer about a 400% improvement over the current Mali-400 GPU found in the current Galaxy S II models. Massimiliano Villani, Senior Manager Mobile Marketing for Samsung, said “We benchmarked several GPUs and we found that the overall architecture of the Mali family provided by ARM is nowadays the best in class for GPU performance.” One of the main benefits of the faster GPU is the ability to drive super high resolution displays. Exynos 5250 supports resolutions up to WQXGA (2560×1600), which is similar territory to the new iPad retina displays (produced by Samsung). Exynos 5250 is also equipped with embedded Display Port (eDP) interface, compliant with panel self refresh (PSR) technology. This technology instructs the application processor not to send image data to the LCD panel when the set is displaying still image, reducing power consumption. If you are a graphics freak, check out ARM’s official documentation on Mali-T604. Coming to a tablet or smartphone near you? Some may remember that I wrote Samsung would unveil the rumored Galaxy Tab 11.6 at Mobile World Congress, which didn’t happen. That prediction came from a prototype device I saw at CES, but the rumor actually goes back to last year. We don’t know exactly when it will happen, but we still believe Samsung will introduce a next-gen Galaxy Tab with a dual-core 2 GHz Exynos 5250 sometime this year. I think the more interesting story is what happens with the Galaxy S III. This flagship device has long been rumored to use Samsung’s quad-core Exynos 4412, but I’m not so sure if that will happen. It doesn’t make much sense to me to use a chip that features the older Cortex-A9 CPU and Mali-400 GPU when Samsung is on the verge of releasing their first Cortex-A15 part. In our recent Android Rumors Report, I said there was about a 50% chance the Galaxy S III would use Exynos 4412 and a 50% chance it would use Exynos 5250. Having thought about it some more, I’d say the odds are actually much greater that the Galaxy S III will feature Exynos 5250. Samsung’s official Exynos 5250 documentation reveals that the part will initially come in two versions. One is clocked at 2 GHz (for tablets), and the other is clocked at 1.7 GHz (for smartphones). In the Cortex-A15 video above, Yiwan Wong, VP SoC Marketing Group, Samsung Electronics, said “We believe this new core will be the enabler for many exciting next-generation mobile products, such as smartphones and mobile computing devices.” Earlier this year I wrote, “One not so far off possibility for the Galaxy S III could be the Exynos 5250. This part is slated for the second-half of 2012, but Samsung could leap-frog the competition with the first mobile device to feature the next-generation ARM Cortex-A15 CPU and ARM Mali-T604 GPU. This would require a delay of the Galaxy S III from its normal summer release schedule, but it's the choice I'd make if I was in charge.” We now know from a recent earnings call that Samsung’s Exynos 5250 will enter mass production in Q2, so I’m not really sure they would need to delay the Galaxy S III that much. This is the same company that re-engineered the original Galaxy Tab 10.1 in one month, to make it thinner than the iPad 2. Seeing that Apple went with their A5X chip (dual-core A9) in their new iPad, it makes even more sense that Samsung would make an effort to one up their rival. Now every time a month passes and we hear nothing official about the Galaxy S III, it increases the chances they are going with Exynos 5250. If that turns out to be true, then I wouldn’t want to purchase a smartphone right now that could be virtually obsolete within a couple months. |
Posted: 23 Mar 2012 08:53 AM PDT  It’s a good day to be NVIDIA. The GPU-juggernaut has unleashed their first Kepler-powered graphics card, the GTX 680, to the general public. Kepler marks a significant step forward in GPU efficiency and performance, and many PC gamers out there are excited for what enhancements NVIDIA is bringing to the table. While PC gamers flock to update their gaming rigs, NVIDIA’s CEO Jen-Hsun Huang has sent out an email to all employees which hints at what the future may hold for the Kepler platform. While having the most powerful GPU on the market is an accomplishment in and of itself, it’s clear Mr. Huang wants more. Huang sees the super powerful and energy-efficient Kepler platform making its way into data centers, super-thin notebooks, and even superphones (and likely, tablets). NVIDIA’s GeForce (PC) and Tegra (Mobile) platforms have remained strictly separate until now, and Kepler could be the platform to unite these business lines. Having the power of Kepler in a smartphone will bring us one-step-closer to truly PC-quality gaming on mobile devices. For a refresher (or first-look) at what Kepler exactly is, be sure to check out the embedded video below. And for even more info about Kepler and the recently-released GTX 680 PC video card, check out NVIDIA’s product page here. While gaming on the Tegra 3 chipset is already awesome, we can’t wait to see it get even better over the next few years. |
Thursday, April 19, 2012
Update - 285
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment