Find: The Kindle Fire HDX truer color display

Interesting information on lcd color displays, and their challenges. 

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// published on Ars Technica // visit site
The Kindle Fire HDX display bleeds blue—and that’s OK

When we reviewed the Kindle Fire HDX, we were impressed with its gorgeous display. High density displays are common now, but to find a display with bright, vivid, and accurate colors is something special—not what you'd expect in a product that costs less than $250. But we did see something unusual: a blue glow bleeding in from the edge of the display. We gave the pre-release hardware the benefit of the doubt; often, early hardware isn't quite at production levels. Now that the Fire HDX is in buyer's hands, though, it seems that the blue bleed is endemic. And after doing a little research, we've discovered that the HDX's stunning display and its blue bleed are related.

The Kindle Fire HDX's 1080p 1920x1200, 7-inch display is built by LG. For movies and most UI experiences, everything looks fantastic. Open the browser, however, and you're likely to run into the problem: a faint blue haze glows along some edges of the screen, especially when the screen is mostly white. That blue bleed was evident for users that read with the light background in the Kindle app. Since reading is an integral experience to all Kindles, this problem has caused a considerable amount of consternation.

Amazon seems to be trying to get ahead of that consternation, though; if you check the order page for the Kindle Fire HDX, you'll see a little disclaimer regarding what Amazon describes as "a blue tint around the edge of the device." The company also states that "[a]ll displays have some level of light emission around the edges, and the light on the Kindle Fire HDX 7" is blue due to the technology used to render perfect color accuracy." The first part of that statement is true, but it was the second part that really got us curious.

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Find: Finally, a modular phone architecture - Motorola's Project Ara

A great idea, for google, motorola and everyone. Will set motorola apart from the crowd, which it sorely needs, and will set us all on the path toward cheaper more renewable mobile devices, which we all sorely need. Improves experience with a new way for users to express themselves through customization. 

Phones are small enough now that I think the extra space modularity requires won't be a serious problem.

Really hope motorola sees this through. 

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// published on AnandTech // visit site
Motorola's Project Ara: Phonebloks from an OEM

Phonebloks was a campaign that focused upon attracting the interest of OEMs by showing that there was an incredible amount of interest for a modular phone. This was mostly for reasons of reducing electronics waste, the potential for incredible customization, and the potential for reduced upgrade costs associated with the 1-2 year upgrade cycle. As the current model requires the purchase of an entire phone, upgrading a single “module”, or a set of modules that would update the device would reduce the cost of upgrading to the consumer, much like the current desktop PC system of upgrading individual components.

However, at the time it seemed unlikely that such a campaign would ever produce a meaningful result in the industry. Now, it might be less so as Motorola announced Project Ara, a platform that promises the same modularity that the Phonebloks campaign was promoting, and has also partnered with the creator of the Phonebloks campaign for this project.The concept is largely the same, with an endoskeleton and modules that make up the phone. The display, following the Phonebloks concept, is also likely to be its own module. While actual details of the concept are effectively nil, there are still an enormous number of challenges that such a design would face.

The first would be from a purely hardware perspective, as there is an unavoidable tradeoff between volumetric efficiency and modularity in such a design. While modern smartphones are effectively a tight stack of PCB, battery, and display, this adds in an entire interface for each module that connects them together. This means that the memory module would effectively go from the size of an average eMMC chip to around a full-size SD card due to the need for a durable interface that would connect it to the rest of the phone. This is most readily seen by the differences between the international and Korean LG G2, as the international variant has a ~15% larger battery by virtue of the sealed design that allowed for LG Chemicon’s curved battery pack with thinner walls to allow for more battery capacity.

The second issue in this case would be regulatory, as the FCC only tests single configurations for approval. Such a design would be incredibly challenging to get approval for as there could easily be unpredictable RF behavior from unexpected behavior from a specific setup of modules, or issues with the endoskeleton portion because the modules aren't all part of a single PCB that is unlikely to suffer issues with short circuits or other connection issues, while a modular design would face such challenges.

The final major issue is that of history, as the failure of Intel’s Whitebook initiative from 2006 makes it much harder to see a similar initiative succeeding in the smartphone space. As the Whitebook initiative promised a DIY, modular laptop, much like Phonebloks and Project Ara, and failed due to the rise of completely integrated laptop designs such as the Apple rMBP line, it seems unlikely that such a project would succeed without significant compromise, either in modularity or in competitiveness with the more integrated smartphones. While laptops like the rMBP are effectively impossible for the user to repair, much less open, they have become incredibly popular, and the PC OEMs have followed Apple’s lead in this regard, with consumer demand generally tending towards thinner and lighter laptops, just as the same demand seems to occur in the smartphone space, it is difficult to see such an initiative succeeding. While such initiatives are sure to garner widespread enthusiast support, enthusiasts generally lose their ability to influence the market once a market segment becomes popular with general consumers, as can be seen by the PC industry. However, it remains to be seen whether there is mass-market appeal for such a phone, and it may well be that Motorola is tapping a niche with enormous potential.



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Find: Intel Opens Fabs to Competing Chips

Nvidia gpus and motorola arm socs fabbed by intel in the usa. Whooda thunk it? 

Intel is generally one gen ahead in chip size, so those who contract with them will have a power performance advantage. Gpus, for example, could see a sudden jump in speed. Phones could get improved battery life. 

You know that things are bad at intel if they can't use all their fab capacity. 

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// published on AnandTech // visit site
Intel Opens Fabs to Competing Chips

In a story posted today on Forbes, Altera has announced that they have entered into a partnership with Intel to have their next generations 64-bit ARM chips produced at Intel’s fabs. Details on precisely what process technology will be used on the upcoming chips are scant, but 22nm would give anyone willing to pay Intel’s price a leg up on the competition, and of course Intel will be moving to 14nm in the future. Really, this announcement would be interesting even if someone were to merely use Intel’s older 32nm fabs.

Intel has apparently inked deals with other companies as well. The Inquirer has this quote from an Intel spokesperson: “We have several design wins thus far and the announcement with Altera in February is an important step towards Intel's overall foundry strategy. Intel will continue to be selective on customers we will enable on our leading edge manufacturing process.”

The key there is the part about being “selective”, but I would guess it’s more a question of whether a company has the volume as well as the money to pay Intel, rather than whether or not Intel would be willing to work with them. This announcement opens the doors for future opportunities – NVIDIA GPUs on Intel silicon would surely be interesting, but given that AMD has gone fabless as well we could also see their future CPUs/GPUs fabbed by Intel.

If we take things back another step, the reality of the semiconductor business is that fabs are expensive to build and maintain. Then they need to be updated every couple of years to the latest technology, or at least new fabs need to be built to stay competitive. If you can’t run your fabs more or less at capacity, you start to fall behind on all fronts. If Intel can more than utilize all of their fabrication assets, it’s a different story, but that era appears to be coming to a close.

The reason for this is pretty simple. We’re seeing a major plateau in terms of the computing performance most people need on a regular basis these days. Give me an SSD and I am perfectly fine running most of my everyday tasks on an old Core 2 Duo or Core 2 Quad. The difference between Bloomfield, Sandy Bridge, Ivy Bridge, and Haswell processors is likewise shrinking each generation – my i7-965X that I’m typing this on continues to run very well, thank you very much! If people and businesses aren’t upgrading as frequently, then you need to find other ways to keep your fabs busy, and selling production to other companies is the low hanging fruit.

Regardless of the reasons behind the move, this marks a new era in Intel fabrication history. It will be interesting to see what other chips end up being fabbed at Intel over the next year or two. 



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Windows Phone 8 GDR3 Update Breakdown

Higher resolution screens, less battery life
  
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Windows Phone 8 GDR3 Update Breakdown

Today, Microsoft announced the third developer update to Windows Phone 8, which brings support for larger screens, and 1080p display resolution. This also means a larger start screen, going from 4 to 6 live tiles of horizontal space (on larger screens), but otherwise maintaining similar start screen design. GDR3 also brings support for the 8x74 SoCs, better known as Snapdragon 800.

There are also some other usability features added to the phone, such as driving mode, which disables many types of notifications and turns on an auto-respond feature to prevent distractions. It seems to work automatically based upon a paired Bluetooth device that is remembered.

Accessibility is also improved, with a screen reader similar to Talkback on Android. The internet sharing feature finally brings Bluetooth tethering. Other feature additions include custom ringtones for more items like IMs, and personalized call/text ringtones based upon contacts, autorotation lock, native management of the “Other storage” files and better file management in general, a tap to close application function similar to iOS 7, WebOS, and Android 4.x, although differing in UI implementation, immediate WiFi connection on startup, and general improvements to the Bluetooth stack.

 

While many features have been implemented in this update, many such features have been significantly delayed in implementation when compared to Android or iOS. While iOS seems to be staying in the 300 PPI range for mobile displays, Android is in a race to ever greater resolutions, as seen by the rapid spread of 400+PPI displays. Windows Phone seems to be stuck in the middle of this because while it may make sense to stick with ~300 PPI from a battery life perspective, due to the approximate 20% jump in power draw on the display from the increased backlight requirements, it seems that Windows Phone is mostly compared against Android devices, not iOS. This also seems to make things more difficult for Microsoft, as the update cadence simply doesn’t stack up when compared to the rate at which Google iterates Android, and the design of the OS is simply not well suited to widely varying screen sizes and pixel densities, a trait shared by iOS, but not by Android, which has proven to be extremely important as displays have taken five notable jumps in resolution in the past four years, with a huge number of variations when it comes to screen size. It remains to be seen whether Microsoft will amp up the pace when it comes to the Windows Phone update cycle, specifically in the areas of SoC support, resolution/DPI support, and general UI additions, but for now, this update seems to be a continuation of previous strategies and with little change in the execution of said strategies. 



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Find: Xiaomi is shaking up the Chinese smartphone market with quality, and rabbits


 
// published on The Verge - All Posts // visit site
Xiaomi is shaking up the Chinese smartphone market with quality, and rabbits

In three short years since its inception, Chinese company Xiaomi has sold 20 million smartphones, cornered five percent of its home country's smartphone market, and been valued at $10 billion. The Wall Street Journal spoke to the company's founder and CEO, Lei Jun, to find out what fueled such meteoric growth.

The answers include the use of user feedback to add features to upcoming handsets, and a focus on quality that makes phones like Xiaomi's Mi3 the technical equal of the iPhone 5C. The Wall Street Journal's piece also explores Jun's background, describes his desire to be "innovative" like Steve Jobs, and explains how his company plans to sell 680,000 rabbits.



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Find: Top BlackBerry 10 developers quit to form a new design company


 
 
// published on The Verge - All Posts // visit site
Top BlackBerry 10 developers quit to form a new design company

Some of the biggest names behind BlackBerry 10 have departed their ailing employer for the seemingly greener pastures of the startup world. Seven designers who were brought on by BlackBerry after it acquired their previous employer, The Astonishing Tribe (TAT), back in 2010, have left to form their own design group called Topp. TAT specialized in interface design, and its employees were initially responsible for polishing up BlackBerry's tablet-specific operating system. Since then, the TAT designers who left for Topp say that they became the "key players" in designing and developing BlackBerry 10.

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Finland and Nokia: An affair to remember

Well done story. 

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 // published on Ars Technica // visit site
Finland and Nokia: An affair to remember

Wired UK

Pride and diversity. Dependency and acquaintance. Pride and nostalgia. Sun and moon.

These are the answers given by Nokia's vice president of software, the research director of ETLA (the Research Institute of the Finnish Economy), Finland's minister of European Affairs and Foreign Trade, and the CEO of Jolla—now Finland's new smartphone hope. The question was: use one word to describe Nokia's historic relationship with Finland and one word to describe it in the future. For those of you confused by the last answer, it has to do with which orbits which.

The trend is striking, even from Nokia itself. The company that built a country has lost its aura and relinquished the controls.

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Find: region locking of smartphones begins

Not good. Hackers will find new purchase. 

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 // published on AnandTech // visit site
Some Thoughts on Smartphone Region Locking

Recently, reports of Samsung region locking the Note 3 came out via Clove UK, which posted on its blog that the Note 3 would be completely unable to use a SIM card from a carrier outside of the region, and would not ship any Note 3 devices with a region lock outside of Europe.

Of course, while unprecedented in the smartphone industry, this sort of business has been happening for a very long time in the automobile industry, which has effectively banned grey importing to the US. While that isn't common knowledge, some may know that the Skyline GT-R is effectively banned from the US, which is a direct result of a ban on grey imports. The reason for all of this was a push by Mercedes-Benz USA to protect its dealer network and its own margins. In short, the story behind all of this is that grey imports were cutting into profit margins, as importers could easily take advantage of fluctuating exchange rates, and when all was said and done, going through an importer could net thousands of dollars in savings, all of which was effectively taken from the OEM. As a result, MBUSA and a coalition of other OEMs successful lobbied Congress to pass laws that made grey importing effectively impossible, which completely killed that industry.

While there are other possible justifications for region locking devices, looking to the past, it is evident that this move is done for similar reasons, albeit implemented at the software levels rather than enforced by law. While at first such a move threatened to have severe blowback due to the lockout of foreign SIMs for those traveling outside of the region intended for use, Samsung moved quickly to quell such fears, stating that the lock would only be for initial activation and that any region locked device would be able to be unlocked by a regional service center, however it seems that based upon multiple user reports, unlocked devices in certain regions have been completely locked out from using foreign SIMs. Recent information suggests that this lock is also shipping on many other unlocked devices that we're manufactured after July 2013, and such locks may arrive via OTA update for some devices. Due to their enormous marketshare and mindshare, Samsung is best placed to execute such a strategy, and stands to greatly increase margins from this move.

Even though Samsung is the first to do this in the smartphone industry, it is hard to say that such a move would not be pushed by other OEMs, as all would stand to profit from such region locking. While the automotive industry achieved this through legislation, it seems that smartphone OEMs are well-positioned to implement such features in software. While initial SIM locks would be easily bypassed by resellers, forcing the need to acquire an unlock code from a service center in the correct region would be extremely effective at killing grey market imports in the smartphone market, especially if the lock flag were in a partition with signature checks enforced like many carrier locks. It remains to be seen, however, whether the smartphone OEM would move in such a direction. While the automobile industry is nothing to be emulated, it is possible that the smartphone industry will follow in its footsteps. 



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