News articles

Samsung unveils Bluetooth 3.0, 802.11n smartphone • Register Hardware

MWC: Samsung Rolls Out Wave Smartphone with Bada OS | eWeek.com

Samsung reveals first Android phone with DLP Pico projector | Android And Me blog

My comments about these phones

I had never thought that someone would come up with touchscreen smartphones that would beat the Apple iPhone hands down in many ways. What Samsung have done with the new Wave touchscreen smartphone and the Halo Android-based touchscreen projector smartphone that they launched at the Mobile World Congress in Spain has, in my opinion, achieved this goal.

One feature that I liked about the Wave and Halo phone were that they were the first few touchscreen smartphone devices to use the OLED technology for its display. This display, which I commented about in my review of my Nokia N85 smartphone, has a lot of advantages over the common LCD display used, such as high contrast and improved energy efficiency. I have often described these displays as being “vacuum-fluorescent displays for battery-operated devices” because they have the same high-contrast display as the vacuum-fluorescent displays found on most home-installed consumer-electronics devices, yet they don’t need as much power to operate as those displays.

Other things that I have liked about the Wave phone include the use of a Bluetooth stack that works to the current Bluetooth 3.0 standard which allows for high-speed data transfer when used in conjunction with the phone’s Wi-Fi transceiver. Speaking of that, the Wi-Fi transceiver is capable of working as a single-stream 802.11n unit which can allow higher throughput on 802.11n Wi-Fi networks. The Android-powered Halo has Bluetooth to 2.1, but has the 802.11n single-stream Wi-Fi.

As well as launching this smartphone at Mobile World Congress, Samsung had established an app-store and developer network so they can compete with Apple when it comes to applications that extend the phone’s function. They are also part of the Wholesale Applications Community which will improve the marketplace for smartphone applications.

Both phones use a micro-SD card slot for memory expansion or “cassette-style” operation when used as a media player. They use a USB connection and a 3.5mm headset jack which makes them compatible with most standards-based mobile phones and accessories. The Android-equipped Halo smartphone will, as far as I know, offer DLNA home media network integration of some sort.

From all that I have heard about these phones, Samsung, who are part of the “New Japan”, has “dipped their toes” in many smartphone platforms and has offered OLED touchscreen smartphones in two different platforms.

Bluetooth Special Interest Group press release

WiFi Planet article on Bluetooth 3.0

My Comments

Bluetooth has hit the “big 3” by introducing a high-throughput version of its wireless personal network specification. This same technology used for sending pictures or phone-number data between mobile phones in the same space or streaming sound between mobile phones and car handsfree kits can do such things as wirelessly transferring one’s music library between a laptop computer and an MP3 player or “dumping” the contents of a digital camera to a computer.

It primarily allows data streams conforming to the Bluetooth protocols to be transmitted over the 802.11b/g WiFi network just by using the media-transfer levels of that specification. This takes advantage of the fact that a lot of the smartphones and the laptop computers have Bluetooth and WiFi wireless technology built in to them; and that premium MP3 players like the Apple iPod Touch will offer WiFi and Bluetooth on the same device. This is a situation that will become more common as chip manufacturers develop “all-in-one” WiFi / Bluetooth radio chipsets. For applications requiring a small data stream, the device just engages a single Bluetooth transceiver with the regular Bluetooth stack, which can save on battery power.

Intel had developed “My WiFi” which is a competing standard for a personal area network based on the WiFi technology with the devices using the full list of protocols and standards applicable to regular LAN applications. The idea was to have the laptop “split” its wireless-network ability into a client for a WiFi LAN and a very-low-power access point for a WiFi LAN which is the personal area network. At the moment, this technology is limited to laptops based on the Centrino 2 platform and requires that the laptop, being a general-purpose computer, becomes a “hub” device for the personal area network. But what could happen could be that other WiFi chipset vendors would license this technology and implement it into their designs, which could extend it towards other applications.

This would lead to a highly-competitive space for technologies that connect the wireless personal area network together, especially if the primary device of the network is a laptop computer. It could also incite manufacturers of devices like digital still and video cameras to include WiFi and Bluetooth in to these devices.

Who knows what the future will hold for the wireless personal area network.

Broadcom’s New 802.11n Chip Includes Bluetooth and FM

My Comments

I see this design as being increasingly relevant because of the way major electronics manufacturers are building “best of class” personal-electronics devices in all of the device classes (mobile phone, personal digital assistant, personal media player, etc) that they offer such devices in. The main issue that has plagued people who use these devices is the increased likelihood of the device’s battery dying on them when they want to get the best out of the device.

I see this design as a step in the right direction regarding long battery run-time for these devices because, as the article has said,  of integrating the WiFi N, Bluetooth and FM radio circuitry in to the one circuit with improved power consumption. This is certainly important if the device is to be used in a wireless network and with a Bluetooth headset for example.

It also encourages device builders to consider not just Internet-hosted services but network-based services like DLNA-based media server / control / play functionality. Now that this version of the chip integrates low-power FM transmission, this could appeal to the idea of a “music phone” or personal media player with DLNA media play functionality playing music from its own collection or a DLNA network media server through an ordinary FM radio.

At least this chipset will be a step in the right direction for “raising the bar” in personal-electronics design.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/12/01/vista_sp2_april_rtm/

My comments

At least there is some accurate information regarding the arrival of Vista Service Pack 2 and what it will contain. This service pack could draw more people towards Windows Vista and offer something that can avoid the idea of going “back to XP”.

At least there are a few options that may benefit the laptop user and the modern WiFi-driven home computing environment. One would be to work hand in glove with WPS configuration as more routers come with “over-the-air” WPS configuration. As well, the Bluetooth Feature Pack which will offer what is expected of a Bluetooth setup will be available for people who buy Bluetooth functionality independent of the operationg system. This would encompass system builders; and those of us who provide Bluetooth functionality via an aftermarket device such as a USB dongle or move to Vista by buying it through the retail channel. The other desireable feature would be for the operating system to “natively” burn data to Blu-Ray discs; which would definitely come in handy with backing up hard disks or archiving old data.

In my honest opinion, this service pack can “tide us over” until Windows 7 comes on the scene as the next operating system.

Come on “I’m A PC”!