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Submission + - Amazon's 3D smartphone is a gimmick—but it could present a huge retail opp (qz.com)

Submitted by smaxp
smaxp writes: It’s rumored that Amazon will launch its own 3D smartphone on June 18. While it may be compelling, a sexy 3D feature won’t catapult Amazon into the lead of the cut-throat smartphone category. If this were true, the EVO 3D, introduced two years ago by HTC and the W960, introduced by Samsung four years ago, would have been top sellers rather than niche products. However, a smartphone that renders 3D images does present an internet retailing opportunity for Amazon. It would be useful to Amazon in selling tangible consumer merchandise, just like Amazon’s Kindle Fire tablet was designed to improve Amazon’s merchandizing of ebooks and video streaming products.

Submission + - Intel confronts a big mobile challenge: Native compatibility (networkworld.com)

Submitted by smaxp
smaxp writes: Intel has solved the problem of ARM-native incompatibility. But will developers bite?

App developers now frequently bypass Android’s Dalvik VM for some parts of their apps in favor of the faster native C language. According to Intel two thirds of the top 2,000 apps in the Google Play Store use natively compiled C code, the same language in which Android, the Dalvik VM, and the Android libraries are mostly written

. The natively compiled apps run faster and more efficiently, but at the cost of compatibility. The compiled code is targeted to a particular processor core’s instruction set. In the Android universe, this instruction set is almost always the ARM instruction set. This is a compatibility problem for Intel because its Atom mobile processors use its X86 instruction set

Submission + - Intel confronts a big mobile challenge: Native compatibility (networkworld.com)

Submitted by smaxp
smaxp writes: Intel has solved the problem of ARM-native incompatibility. But will developers bite?

App developers now frequently bypass Android’s Dalvik VM for some parts of their apps in favor of the faster native C language. According to Intel two thirds of the top 2,000 apps in the Google Play Store use natively compiled C code, the same language in which Android, the Dalvik VM, and the Android libraries are mostly written.

The natively compiled apps run faster and more efficiently, but at the cost of compatibility. The compiled code is targeted to a particular processor core’s instruction set. In the Android universe, this instruction set is almost always the ARM instruction set. This is a compatibility problem for Intel because its Atom mobile processors use its X86 instruction set.

Submission + - Q&A: The state of Android wearables and HTC's dual-lens camera (networkworld.com)

Submitted by smaxp
smaxp writes: HTC's Dario Laverde shares his crow's-nest view about why Android Wear is important to consumers and how smart devices will get human-like perception.

At the Android Developers conference, AnDevCon, I had a chance to catch-up with HTC’s master Android developer Dario Laverde about Google’s new wearable user interface (UI) called Android Wear and HTC’s new dual-lens camera. Laverde spends a lot of time in front of innovative software developers, teaching them about the newest mobile and wearable technologies making for an insightful discussion.

Submission + - 9 new iOS features from Apple's WWDC that Android already had (networkworld.com)

Submitted by smaxp
smaxp writes: Apple has a knack for creating excitement over pretty ordinary features. While there was some big news for developers in the WWDC keynote yesterday, like its new programming language Swift and health dashboard Healthkit, some of the announcements were humdrum enough to make you wonder why Apple did not make its keynote shorter.

Here are nine new iOS features announced yesterday at WWDC that Android has had for quite some time. Some are pretty ordinary, while others have long been a big hole in Apple’s offering.

Submission + - 9 new iOS features from Apple's WWDC that Android already had (networkworld.com)

Submitted by smaxp
smaxp writes: Apple has a knack for creating excitement over pretty ordinary features. While there was some big news for developers in the WWDC keynote yesterday, like its new programming language Swift and health dashboard Healthkit, some of the announcements were humdrum enough to make you wonder why Apple did not make its keynote shorter.

Here are nine new iOS features announced yesterday at WWDC that Android has had for quite some time. Some are pretty ordinary, while others like beta testing have long been a big hole in Apple’s offering.

Submission + - MIT and Caltech's coding breakthrough could accelerate mobile network speeds (networkworld.com)

Submitted by smaxp
smaxp writes: What if you could transmit data without link layer flow control bogging down throughput with retransmission requests, and also optimize the size of the transmission for network efficiency and application latency constraints? Researchers from MIT, Caltech and the University of Aalborg claimed to have accomplished this with stateless transmission using Random Linear Network Coding, or RLNC. The universities have collaborated to commercialize this promising technology through joint venture called Code On Technologies.

Submission + - California opens driverless car competition with testing regulations (networkworld.com)

Submitted by smaxp
smaxp writes: Professor John Leonard tipped the audience that California just released rules for testing autonomous vehicles on California’s roads and highways. Californians will soon be seeing more autonomous vehicles than just those built by the Google X labs.

These vehicles offer great promise, such as freeing the driver’s attention for productivity or leisure, better safety and less congestion. It will be a while, though, before we see these vehicles on the road. Autonomous vehicles will move the Zip Car car-as-a-service concept forward when deployed, because a subscribers would simply summon cars using an app.

Submission + - Microsoft's Surface Pro 3 may replace Apple's lost iPad shipments (networkworld.com)

Submitted by smaxp
smaxp writes: The Surface Pro 3 raises the question for the enterprise — why buy a notebook and a tablet?

Microsoft announced the Surface Pro 3 today, which aims to put the squeeze on enterprise tablet shipments. It’s a WinTel all-the-way tablet that is also an Ultrabook that looks like a very capable alternative to buying both types of devices. In light of Apple’s 16% year-over-year decline in iPad shipments last quarter, the potential for the pure-play large tablet market may be over estimated, because while touchscreens are important, keyboards are needed to get work done.

Microsoft’s Surface Pro 3 was designed to fit this opportunity, which Android and iOS tablets with accessory keyboards don’t address as well as a Windows 8.1 device does with a keyboard.

Submission + - XLTE leaves test phase as Verizon announces mobile data speed boosted (networkworld.com) 1

Submitted by smaxp
smaxp writes: People who depend on their smartphones for mobile internet access might have guessed Verizon was upgrading its network in large cities like New York, San Francisco and Chicago before the announcement of XLTE this week. Verizon didn’t just turn on XLTE today; it’s been testing for months and you might have noticed.

At the Moscone Center for the RSA Conference, Verizon customers with an AWS-compatible smartphone saw LTE speeds at 53 Mbps downstream and 24 Mbps upstream and faster. This is counterintuitive because data-hungry attendees at tech venues like the Moscone Center use up the Wi-Fi capacity first, and then flood the 3G and 4G capacity. Experiencing these speeds during the RSA conference tipped Verizon's hand.

Submission + - Verizon would let the US internet come in second to Bulgaria (networkworld.com)

Submitted by smaxp
smaxp writes: Without net neutrality, ISPs would destroy U.S. broadband speeds

Verizon argued for a slower internet, slower than most internet connections in Bulgaria in its Federal law suit against the Federal Communications Commission and net neutrality. In arguing for a snail slow internet Verizon challenged the very powers that underlie the draft net neutrality rules the FCC released last week for public comment.

Submission + - Will the FCC be able to enforce an open internet? (networkworld.com)

Submitted by smaxp
smaxp writes: If the FCC can't make the large broadband providers comply with its rules, the country could experience another competitive debacle. Verizon prevailed in court last January and struck down the FCC’s ability to order an open internet, leaving the commission with fewer arrows in its quiver to protect and promote an open internet. In the words of the FCC:

"Today, there are no legally enforceable rules by which the Commission can stop broadband providers from limiting Internet openness."

During the next four months, the FCC will write these rules. But to make the rules work, the FCC will need to regulate cooperation among rivals and enforce compliance. The strength of what is yet to be written in the section that the FCC has captioned in advance as “Enforcement and Dispute Resolution” will determine the open internet of the future.

Submission + - Motorola declares war on the feature phone (networkworld.com) 1

Submitted by smaxp
smaxp writes: According to Motorola,

"70% of mobile phone users in the world are still using feature phones that can’t unlock the full wonder of the mobile Internet, in many cases because they don’t think it’s worth the $337 for a smartphone (the average selling price globally in 2013)."

Motorola’s new parent company Lenovo has a strong market position with computers and smartphones in the high-growth markets of Asia, where the Moto E will meet the needs of first time smartphone users and the Moto G is an affordable choice for consumers that want to tap the area’s fast-growing 4G LTE networks. Let’s see if Lenovo can exploit Motorola’s first-rate product designs and tradition of durable, value-priced devices into a position within the top five smartphone manufacturers in the developing markets.

Submission + - A Microsoft smartwatch would derail Nadella's plans (networkworld.com)

Submitted by smaxp
smaxp writes: The eruption of news about a Microsoft smartwatch this week based on recently released patent filings is extremely disconcerting. With the Apple World Wide Developer Conference approaching next month, there is much speculation that Apple will announce the iWatch. In response, did Nadella lose confidence? Was it a moment of Nixon-like paranoia that led to the Watergate break-in, or a moment of Clinton-Lewinski machismo that pushed Nadella into the smartwatch business?

Submission + - Inflight Wi-Fi: Not just a business-class perk anymore (networkworld.com) 1

Submitted by smaxp
smaxp writes: AT&T's new class of inflight broadband is designed for the always-on mobile consumers that take 3 billion flights per year.

It looks like AT&T is trying to capture a new and much larger category of consumers who want to be constantly connected with their mobile devices, compared to the professional group that has to be connected with their notebooks. This larger group wouldn’t pay $29.95 for slow internet access, but many more will pay less to stay connected on fast broadband.

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