Android Authority |
- LG Optimus L3 II landing in Brazil this week for unspecified price
- Sony Xperia ZL due out in Russia in early March
- Here we go again – Samsung begins teasing March 14 Unpacked event
- Sprint’s LG Optimus G gets unexpected Jelly Bean update
- HTC One named best in show at MWC, Sony Xperia Tablet Z wins best slate
- ARM demos a tablet using Samsung’s big.LITTLE based Exynos 5 Octa at MWC 2013
- NVIDIA showcases five new games optimized for Tegra 4
- How much does it cost Samsung to sell millions of Galaxies?
- LG starts rolling out Jelly Bean update for Optimus Vu II
- Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 7.0 gets Android 4.1.2 Jelly Bean update
| LG Optimus L3 II landing in Brazil this week for unspecified price Posted: 27 Feb 2013 02:37 AM PST
Although LG tried to make it look like the Optimus L II family was entirely new during MWC, some of you probably remember seeing the trio earlier. In which case you won't be surprised to hear that the L3 II and L7 II are expected to make their debuts this week, while the L5 II is due out in early March. The smaller and more modest member of the series will hit the ground running in Brazil, with several unnamed countries in South and Central America, Europe, Asia, Middle East and Africa following soon after. Pricing is still kept secret, but, judging by the fellow's low-end specs, you'll probably get a fairly nice deal for it. The L3 II will be out in single and dual SIM versions, as well as four different colors "tailored to users' individual styles": indigo black, white, pink and titan. Here's a quick rundown of the L3 II features known at this time, with the remaining gaps to be filled soon:
We know the LG Optimus L3 II is far from special, but could it snatch some solid sales in the coveted budget-friendly niche in emerging markets? What kind of pricing does it need in order to do so? The post LG Optimus L3 II landing in Brazil this week for unspecified price appeared first on Android Authority. |
| Sony Xperia ZL due out in Russia in early March Posted: 27 Feb 2013 02:03 AM PST
Forced to live in the shadow of its almost identical twin, the Sony Xperia ZL is apparently looking to break out and enjoy its own 15 minutes of fame. Mostly ignored by the press last month, the non-waterproofer captured the spotlight a couple of weeks ago, when its impressive screen to body ratio was revealed. And yet ZL's shot at glory never looked too strong, mostly due to its supposed delayed release compared with the Z. But now the two are set to be on (almost) even ground in parts of Europe, if we are to trust a report emerging from Russia. Mother Russia is scheduled to get the Xperia ZL in "early March" and chances are several other countries on the old continent will follow suit sooner rather than later. Pricing doesn't sound too hot, at 27,000 rubles or $880, but the Z is worth almost 3,000 rubles extra ($100), so that's only fair we guess.
Meanwhile, the only other countries where the ZL has an ETA are still Germany and Canada. Both were said to get the ZL no sooner than April, but you probably want to get your ducks in a row earlier if you're thinking of picking this bad boy up. The German price tag is rumored to be €599.99 ($785), while up north the handheld should go for no more than $700 off-contract. Maybe even $650 if you're really lucky. Just as a quick recap, let's say the ZL is due out with a splendid 5-inch 1,920 x 1,080 pixels resolution display, a quad-core Snapdragon S4 Pro CPU, 2 GB of RAM, a 13 MP rear-facing camera, 16 GB of on-board storage space, microSD support, a 2,370 mAh battery and 4G LTE speeds. Android 4.1 Jelly Bean will be buttering up the device upon launch, with a 4.2 upgrade scheduled for "soon after". The post Sony Xperia ZL due out in Russia in early March appeared first on Android Authority. |
| Here we go again – Samsung begins teasing March 14 Unpacked event Posted: 27 Feb 2013 01:42 AM PST About a year ago, the speculation related to the Galaxy S3 was approaching climactic levels. The rumor mill was working in overdrive, fueled by supposed leaked specs, blurry shots, and fake renders. Of course, Samsung was perfectly happy with all the hype. After all, the Korean giant encouraged the speculation by not releasing any hard info ahead of the Galaxy S3's launch on May 3. Now, it's rumor season all over again. And Samsung is, again, doing its best to fuel the hype storm. Ahead of MWC, Samsung mobile boss JK Shin confirmed that the Galaxy S4 would be revealed on March 14 in a New York Unpacked event. Invitations have already been sent (we got ours on Monday) and today Samsung has begun teasing the event. It's not much to begin with – just a post on the Samsung Tomorrow blog, showing the paper invitations that some press members received at MWC in Barcelona. The post is titled "Ready 4 the Show? The Next GALAXY Coming Up!", if you needed any more confirmation that the Galaxy S4 will indeed be called the Galaxy S4. Last year, Samsung tried to keep the name of the S3 under a shroud of mystery. It's good to see they are not going for the same trick twice. Samsung also put up the Unpacked2013.com site, which for the moment, is just a mobile registration form for those who received their paper invitations. After you insert the 13-digit code on the invite, you are asked to fill in your personal details, and that's it. To promote the S3 (like it needed it), Samsung created the tgeltaayehxnx.com site, an anagram for "thenextgalaxy". Then, the Korean company published some cryptic videos contrasting galaxies with… sheep. Not the brightest idea, in my view, and I hope they've decided to be more mature this year. After all, they just need to let the products talk, and the recent celebrity-endorsed ads suggest that Samsung is past the name-calling phase. Or at least I hope so. What to expect in the following three weeks? Well, expect a lot more dubious leaks and supposed pics of the Galaxy S4. And from Samsung, look for a few more tantalizing hints about what's to come. We'll cover them all. But March 14 can't come soon enough. The post Here we go again – Samsung begins teasing March 14 Unpacked event appeared first on Android Authority. |
| Sprint’s LG Optimus G gets unexpected Jelly Bean update Posted: 27 Feb 2013 01:40 AM PST
We're not sure what LG was thinking when it shipped the Optimus G with Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich onboard, but at least we can look forward to some enhanced features that have been promised to arrive alongside Jelly Bean. While the Android 4.1.2 rollout date for the flagship device is still a mystery, we're now hearing that several Optimus G owners on Sprint have received the long-awaited system upgrade. Before you get too excited, we don't think Sprint has officially started pushing out the Jelly Bean update, seeing that there's no announcement yet. There's also some speculation that it was LG who actually rolled out the 474MB update early. Nevertheless, the LS970ZVB firmware is already out and about in case you've gotten tired of waiting and want to have a taste of JB right now, but note that your Optimus G has to be on stock ROM and locked to make the jump successfully. Head to the XDA thread for the full details. As for what you can expect to see, aside from Google Now, expandable notifications, and other Jelly Bean tweaks, LG has enhanced the QSlide function, as well as included new features like Privacy Keeper, Quiet Time, and more. Thinking of grabbing and installing Jelly Bean manually? The post Sprint's LG Optimus G gets unexpected Jelly Bean update appeared first on Android Authority. |
| HTC One named best in show at MWC, Sony Xperia Tablet Z wins best slate Posted: 27 Feb 2013 01:25 AM PST
MWC might still be technically going on for around 48 hours, but we know very well that the show's juiciest parts are behind us. Unfortunately, this year's "Congress" has proven one of the most disappointingly uneventful in recent memory, with just a handful of really cool devices getting official intros. It therefore shouldn't come as a surprise that the show's shiniest star has been the HTC One, a gadget that came to Barcelona after being unveiled in its own dedicated event. The One claimed the title of "Best in Show" in the inaugural TechRadar MWC Awards, but we don't figure anyone wants to argue with the online publication. Sony's Xperia Z might have had a shot at challenging One's gold medal, but the 5-incher has already been named the star of last month's CES. And two major titles in less than a couple of months would have probably been too much, right?
HTC's One naturally snatched the Best Phone crown of MWC as well, while the tablet competition had a pretty surprising winner – Sony's Xperia Tablet Z. Don't get me wrong, I dig slightly overpriced stylish 10-inchers as much as the next guy, but I would have figured the Galaxy Note 8.0 deserved to be in the spotlight more. Sammy doesn't really need to sweat it though, as the Note 8.0 will probably crush the Tablet Z when it comes to what really matters – sales. But if you think Tablet Z's crown is a surprise, wait till you hear this – the People's Choice award went to… Mozilla's Firefox OS. Again, not that the new open-source platform doesn't have the potential to evolve into something great, but as it stands it's far from special. And the first few phones running on it – just terrible! Meanwhile, TechRadar doesn't mention Asus at all, even if the Fonepad and Padfone Infinity looked worthy of at least some sort of consolation prize. Anything else missing from the list? Oh, yeah, the HP Slate 7, LG's pile of rubbish new hardware and ZTE's infamous Grand Memo. Shocking, eh? The post HTC One named best in show at MWC, Sony Xperia Tablet Z wins best slate appeared first on Android Authority. |
| ARM demos a tablet using Samsung’s big.LITTLE based Exynos 5 Octa at MWC 2013 Posted: 27 Feb 2013 12:51 AM PST
The demo cycles through some “real world” work loads, like browsing and using Google maps, and shows which cores are being used (Cortex-A7 or Cortex A-15) and how much energy is being consumed. What is interesting about the demo is seeing how much the Exynos 5 Octa favors the power friendly A7 cores. The big.LITTLE architecture isn’t a half baked system where the CPU moves to the A7 cores when it is generally idle. The switching between cores is frequent and the Cortex-A15 is only used when necessary. During the most intensive part of the demo, the A15 cores where used almost exclusively, but during tasks like browsing the A15 cores just blipped into life momentarily before the A7 cores took over again. If ARM has managed to engineer the architecture in such a way that the context switch from one core to another isn’t too expensive, and we can assume they have, then big.LITTLE looks brilliant! The post ARM demos a tablet using Samsung’s big.LITTLE based Exynos 5 Octa at MWC 2013 appeared first on Android Authority. |
| NVIDIA showcases five new games optimized for Tegra 4 Posted: 26 Feb 2013 09:40 PM PST
Fortunately, that is not the case at all. In fact, NVIDIA has just revealed a total of five new Tegra 4-optimized games that are said to be primed for the TegraZone spotlight. The games in question are as follows:
Dead on Arrival 2 in particular is interesting for its use of high-resolution models and PhysX. Since the release of the Tegra 4 has been pushed to July of this year, and the Shield gaming device has subsequently been delayed until September, it may be a while until these games finally become available through TegraZone. In the meantime, feast your eyes on the preview video below which shows graphics from one of the games both with and without Tegra 4. The post NVIDIA showcases five new games optimized for Tegra 4 appeared first on Android Authority. |
| How much does it cost Samsung to sell millions of Galaxies? Posted: 26 Feb 2013 08:44 PM PST
'Think Different' ad creator says Samsung's new commercials are better than Apple's ads, a result of huge ad spending from the South Korean company over the years which paid for some clever writing. Clever writingYou may not know Ken Segall by his name, but you certainly know some of its work, as you have undoubtedly seen various Apple ads he helped create, including the aforementioned 1997 "Think Different" Mac campaign. While he no longer works at TBWA/Chiat/Day, the advertising agency in charge of Apple's TV ads, he did share his opinions on the Samsung vs Apple fight when it comes to recent TV ad campaigns. In a post titled "Apple battling where it used to crush," Segall says that Apple is having a tough time in getting its message across, with Samsung's ads getting a lot of momentum these days. While Apple still focuses on its products in its 30-second short TV ads, Samsung has a completely different strategy for its media attack. The Android device maker is focusing on people instead of devices, telling funny stories and taking plenty of hits at the competition – mostly Apple – in its ads, which ultimately become viral videos. Unsurprisingly, just a few months ago we learned that a Samsung Galaxy S3 ad became the most viral commercial of 2012, with other Samsung Galaxy ads also present in that top 10. Even if Samsung's style can be criticized for the way it takes some hits at potential customers, at the end of the day, the ads are still hilarious and therefore they're helping Samsung deliver its messages across. More recently, Samsung has pulled out all the stops on an expensive Super Bowl series of TV ads starring Paul Rudd, Seth Rogen and LeBron James. Then it had director Tim Burton appear in a Unicorn Apocalypse commercial that aired during the Oscars a few days ago (above,) with the ad being a special episode in Samsung’s SAFE TV ads. Comparatively, Apple has released a short 30-second spot during the Oscars (below,) and did not plan anything special for the last Super Bowl edition. However, while Segall says that Apple is not buzzing as it used do, he expects Apple to "recalibrate" in the future. Huge ad spendingWhat's interesting in this piece coming from Apple's former ad man is a reference to Samsung's ad spending practices compared to Apple's. While Segall doesn't provide numbers himself, he does point us in the right direction – to an Asymco post from late November, 2012, in which Horace Dediu looked into "the cost of selling Galaxies." And in case you were wondering, Samsung does spend an awful lot of money for advertising purposes. According to advertising data that's available in earnings reports, Samsung outspends some major corporations out there including Apple, HP, Dell, Microsoft and even Coca Cola. Dediu estimated that Samsung would spend $4 billion on advertising in 2012, roughly a billion more than in the previous two years, while Apple spent about $1 billion on ads, a number slightly up from previous years. He also noted that in addition to high advertising costs, Samsung would also be spending a lot of cash on "commissions and 'sales promotions.'" These costs amounted to over $4 billion in 2011, while an estimate for 2012 was not available. However, considering that Samsung increased its advertising budget each year, it would have been logical to assume that the company spent well over $4 billion on those "commissions and 'sales promotions'" as well in 2012.
In case you're not keeping track of the total amount of cash Samsung was expected to have paid on marketing last year, Dediu’s report offers us the bigger picture: the company was estimated to have spent around $12 billion in 2012 on “Marketing Expenses:”
We will note that the $12 billion number referred to Samsung's entire business and not just its mobile division, but it wouldn't be far-fetched to assume that the bulk of those "Marketing Expenses" goes to Galaxy-related ads and promotions every year. After all, the mobile division brings in most of the cash, so it does require plenty of advertising. Since Dediu published his report, Samsung released its Q4 2012 and FY 2012 earnings report, pretty much confirming that Marketing Expenses estimate. In fact, Dediu had Samsung spending anywhere north of $11.38 billion on promoting its products, and Samsung actually spent $11.95 on those Marketing Expenses. It's abundantly clear that Samsung is willing to pay a lot of money to make a lot of money – Marketing Expenses account for 6-7% of sales according to earnings reports – so we shouldn't be surprised to see the company atop of the Android universe and of the mobile business. And from the looks of it, Samsung will do whatever it takes to sell plenty of Galaxies each year, even if that means pouring more billions on advertising purposes, so don’t expect anything to change in 2013 either. Just look at the last graphic above: Samsung spent over $30 billion to market its products from 2009 to date, with most of that cash most likely promoting Galaxy smartphones and tablets. And with that kind of a budget, we shouldn't be surprised to see that those Galaxy and/or Unicorn ads work very well in Samsung's favor. After all, 72andSunny, the ad agency in charge of Samsung's ads, must deliver results to keep receiving those huge paychecks – we will note though that while we can look at Marketing Expenses in earnings reports, we don’t know exactly how much Samsung pays its ad agencies for the commercials we see on a regular basis. Nor should we be surprised to hear that “Galaxy” means “Android” for some people or that Samsung reportedly wants to sell 100 million Galaxy S4 units this year. Or that Google is worried about Samsung’s hold of Android. Since we did mention 72andSunny, it's worth pointing out that the agency will be in charge of Google's Chromebook ads in the future, replacing BBH, so we can expect the Search giant to release some interesting commercial in the coming months. But we'll talk more about them when the time comes. As for Samsung, should the company be blamed for outspending the competition on promoting new products? Definitely not, as each company is entitled to go about its business as it sees fit (keep in mind that, while we focused only on the marketing side of the Galaxy-device-selling business there are plenty of other costs involved in selling those millions of units each year). And we can't but wonder whether anyone else in the Android ecosystem has the willingness to invest the same kind of cash on marketing Android products in the foreseeable future. The post How much does it cost Samsung to sell millions of Galaxies? appeared first on Android Authority. |
| LG starts rolling out Jelly Bean update for Optimus Vu II Posted: 26 Feb 2013 07:05 PM PST
For now, the Jelly Bean update is limited in availability to those who are residing in Korea. To be more specific, those who got their phones from either SK Telecom or KT can already upgrade their handsets today. Meanwhile, users of the LG Optimus Vu II under LG U+ will have to wait for a while until March, for that’s when they will receive the official software update for their handsets. The LG Optimus Vu II was first announced last year as a follow-up to the original Optimus Vu. Both phones from LG are notable for the fact that they feature 4:3 displays instead of widescreen ones that are normally used in today’s world of large-screened handsets. This new software update brings the Optimus Vu II up to the same level as some of the mid- to high-end Android phones that got released alongside it near the end of last year. The post LG starts rolling out Jelly Bean update for Optimus Vu II appeared first on Android Authority. |
| Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 7.0 gets Android 4.1.2 Jelly Bean update Posted: 26 Feb 2013 06:37 PM PST
Currently, the software update is said to be rolling out in phases. So if you own a Galaxy Tab 2 7.0 yourself, don’t worry if you still haven’t received an upgrade notification on own device. It probably just isn’t available for those in your country yet, but it should be very soon. According to the official firmware details, the software update goes by build number JZO54K. It can be facilitated through Samsung KIES or via an over-the-air (OTA) download. It’s best to wait until you get an official notification to upgrade before checking for the latest software on your device. In the meantime, you may prepare by making sure that your tablet is fully charged in order to avoid any hiccups during the actual upgrade process, that is once you begin. The post Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 7.0 gets Android 4.1.2 Jelly Bean update appeared first on Android Authority. |
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