Yota Devices released its first smartphone on Wednesday, featuring a dual-sided display. The Moscow-based firm is initially launching its YotaPhone in Russia, Austria, France, Germany, and Spain, with plans to expand device sales to 20 countries in 2014. The Android device has a backlit liquid crystal display (LCD) screen on one side and an always-on electronic paper display on the other. Users can choose what the e-paper screen displays. It can show a photo or wallpaper, stream social media, display text messages or maps, even function as an e-book. The rationale for implementing the always-on display, says Vlad Martynov, the company’s chief executive, was to eliminate the need to activate the display to access information, which he says “is a major distraction and actually serves to impede our interaction and relationships with our friends, family and colleagues.” Using e-ink allows information to be available without draining the battery, but it also added roughly 15 percent to the device cost. Martynov says this feature not only differentiates the product, but also benefits users. “YotaPhone … is about allowing users to get access to the information they need and want in an easier and less disruptive way. The EPD achieves both of these essential objectives.” The phone also has a 13 megapixel camera and dual-core 1.7GHz Krait processor with 2 GB of RAM, running Android Jelly Bean 4.2.2. The device will sell in Russia for 19,990 roubles (US$600) while it will retail for 499 euros in Europe. (Reuters)(CNET)(The Telegraph)
Wednesday, December 25, 2013
Tuesday, November 12, 2013
Curved Displays: Latest Smartphone Innovation
Curved displays are the newest hardware feature planned for next-generation smartphones. LG Electronics has announced that it is ramping up mass production of its six-inch curved smartphone displays to launch in November, although devices with the screens may not be commercially available until 2014. Samsung Electronics, the global leader in smartphone sales, says its curved displays will be available this month. Users could bend or fold curved displays, which might eventually result in innovative, new designs for mobile and wearable devices that observers say could potentially transform the market for high-end smartphones. The challenge in making curved displays is manufacturing the screens in volume so that they are affordable, thin, and heat resistant. Curved displays are already commercially available on large-screen televisions, which both Samsung and LG Electronics began selling this year. Global shipments of devices with flexible displays will reach nearly 800 million by 2020, predicted market research firm IHS earlier this year. (Reuters)(USA Today)
Thursday, September 13, 2012
Smartphone app can track objects on the battlefield as well as on the sports field
"The great advantage of a smartphone is that it provides so many tools in a single, readily available, relatively inexpensive package," said Qia Wang, a doctoral student in MU's College of Engineering who led the development of the software. "For example, on the battlefield, a soldier needs a rangefinder, compass, GPS and other tools to do reconnaissance before calling in an air strike. With our software, the soldier can have all those instruments in one device that can be purchased off the shelf. When that soldier returns from war, she can use the same software to protect her family by clocking a speeder near her children's school and catching the culprit on video."
Wang and his colleagues developed their software to locate and track:
Targets of known size -- When the size of the target is known, a single image is enough to pinpoint the target's location. The software computes the latitude and longitude of the target using the smartphones' GPS location, compass reading and the distance to the target based on the relative size of the target in the image compared to its known real-life size.Targets of unknown size -- If the exact size of a target is unknown, the software uses two images to triangulate the location of the target.Moving targets -- By taking a short video of a moving target, the smartphone software can calculate how fast the target is moving and in what direction it is going."Currently, our software is limited by the physical abilities of smartphone hardware, but the devices are improving rapidly," Wang said. "We anticipate that improvements in GPS accuracy, battery life and camera resolution will allow our software to make even more accurate observations. We also are making our software more user-friendly."
The targeting and tracking software is not available commercially yet. A prototype version has been created and is currently being tested. More algorithms and methods are being developed to improve the speed and accuracy. Details on the programming and functionality of the software were presented by Wang and his colleagues at the Geospatial InfoFusion II conference and published in the Proceedings of the Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers.
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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by University of Missouri-Columbia.
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Wednesday, September 5, 2012
'No-sleep energy bugs' drain smartphone batteries
"These energy bugs are a silent battery killer,"said Y. Charlie Hu, a Purdue University professor of electrical and computer engineering. "A fully charged phone battery can be drained in as little as five hours."
Because conserving battery power is critical for smartphones, the industry has adopted "an aggressive sleep policy," he said.
"What this means is that smartphones are always in a sleep mode, by default. When there are no active user interactions such as screen touches, every component, including the central processor, stays off unless an app instructs the operating system to keep it on."
Various background operations need to be performed while the phone is idle.
"For example, a mailer may need to automatically update email by checking with the remote server," Hu said.
To prevent the phone from going to sleep during such operations, smartphone manufacturers make application programming interfaces, or APIs, available to app developers. The developers insert the APIs into apps to instruct the phone to stay awake long enough to perform necessary operations.
"App developers have to explicitly juggle different power control APIs that are exported from the operating systems of the smartphones," Hu said. "Unfortunately, programmers are only human. They make mistakes when using these APIs, which leads to software bugs that mishandle power control, preventing the phone from engaging the sleep mode. As a result, the phone stays awake and drains the battery."
Findings are detailed in a research paper being presented during the 10th International Conference on Mobile Systems, Applications and Services, or MobiSys 2012, June 25-29 in the United Kingdom. The paper was written by doctoral students Abhinav Pathak and Abhilash Jindal, Hu, and Samuel Midkiff, a Purdue professor of electrical and computer engineering.
The researchers have completed the first systematic study of the no-sleep bugs and have proposed a method for automatically detecting them.
"We've had anecdotal evidence concerning these no-sleep energy bugs, but there has not been any systematic study of them until now," Midkiff said.
The researchers studied 187 Android applications that were found to contain Android's explicit power control APIs, called "wakelocks." Of the 187 apps, 42 were found to contain errors -- or bugs -- in their wakelock code. Findings showed the new tool accurately detected all 12 previously known instances of no-sleep energy bugs and found 30 new bugs in the apps.
The glitch has been found in interactive apps, such as phone applications and services for telephony on Android that must work even though the user isn't touching the phone.The app may fail to engage the sleep mode after the interactive session is completed.
Smartphone users, meanwhile, don't know that their phones have the bugs.
"You don't see any difference," Hu said. "You put it in your pocket and you think everything is fine. You take it out, and your battery is dead."
To detect bugs in the applications, the researchers modified a tool called a compiler, which translates code written in computer languages into the binary code that computers understand. The tool they developed adds new functionality to the compiler so that it can determine where no-sleep bugs might exist.
"The tool analyzes the binary code and automatically and accurately detects the presence of the no-sleep bugs," Midkiff said.
The Purdue researchers have coined the term "power-encumbered programming" to describe the smartphone energy bugs. Researchers concentrated on the Android smartphone, but the same types of bugs appear to affect other brands, Hu said.
The research has been funded in part by the National Science Foundation. Pathak is supported by an Intel Ph.D. fellowship.
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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Purdue University. The original article was written by Emil Venere.
Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.
Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.
Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.
Saturday, July 14, 2012
'No-sleep energy bugs' drain smartphone batteries
"These energy bugs are a silent battery killer,"said Y. Charlie Hu, a Purdue University professor of electrical and computer engineering. "A fully charged phone battery can be drained in as little as five hours."
Because conserving battery power is critical for smartphones, the industry has adopted "an aggressive sleep policy," he said.
"What this means is that smartphones are always in a sleep mode, by default. When there are no active user interactions such as screen touches, every component, including the central processor, stays off unless an app instructs the operating system to keep it on."
Various background operations need to be performed while the phone is idle.
"For example, a mailer may need to automatically update email by checking with the remote server," Hu said.
To prevent the phone from going to sleep during such operations, smartphone manufacturers make application programming interfaces, or APIs, available to app developers. The developers insert the APIs into apps to instruct the phone to stay awake long enough to perform necessary operations.
"App developers have to explicitly juggle different power control APIs that are exported from the operating systems of the smartphones," Hu said. "Unfortunately, programmers are only human. They make mistakes when using these APIs, which leads to software bugs that mishandle power control, preventing the phone from engaging the sleep mode. As a result, the phone stays awake and drains the battery."
Findings are detailed in a research paper being presented during the 10th International Conference on Mobile Systems, Applications and Services, or MobiSys 2012, June 25-29 in the United Kingdom. The paper was written by doctoral students Abhinav Pathak and Abhilash Jindal, Hu, and Samuel Midkiff, a Purdue professor of electrical and computer engineering.
The researchers have completed the first systematic study of the no-sleep bugs and have proposed a method for automatically detecting them.
"We've had anecdotal evidence concerning these no-sleep energy bugs, but there has not been any systematic study of them until now," Midkiff said.
The researchers studied 187 Android applications that were found to contain Android's explicit power control APIs, called "wakelocks." Of the 187 apps, 42 were found to contain errors -- or bugs -- in their wakelock code. Findings showed the new tool accurately detected all 12 previously known instances of no-sleep energy bugs and found 30 new bugs in the apps.
The glitch has been found in interactive apps, such as phone applications and services for telephony on Android that must work even though the user isn't touching the phone.The app may fail to engage the sleep mode after the interactive session is completed.
Smartphone users, meanwhile, don't know that their phones have the bugs.
"You don't see any difference," Hu said. "You put it in your pocket and you think everything is fine. You take it out, and your battery is dead."
To detect bugs in the applications, the researchers modified a tool called a compiler, which translates code written in computer languages into the binary code that computers understand. The tool they developed adds new functionality to the compiler so that it can determine where no-sleep bugs might exist.
"The tool analyzes the binary code and automatically and accurately detects the presence of the no-sleep bugs," Midkiff said.
The Purdue researchers have coined the term "power-encumbered programming" to describe the smartphone energy bugs. Researchers concentrated on the Android smartphone, but the same types of bugs appear to affect other brands, Hu said.
The research has been funded in part by the National Science Foundation. Pathak is supported by an Intel Ph.D. fellowship.
Share this story on Facebook, Twitter, and Google:Other social bookmarking and sharing tools:
Story Source:
The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Purdue University. The original article was written by Emil Venere.
Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.
Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.
Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.