Galaxy S III Is Too Hot, It Even Melts Down

Samsung’s Galaxy S III is a hot device. It is the most expected Android smartphone of the year, and millions of enthusiasts already jumped the gun on it.

However, it appears that the device might be too hot for its own good, and we don’t mean that figuratively. One Galaxy S III unit reportedly malfunctioned while in an in-car holster, which resulted in the device being damaged, most probably permanently. The user who witnessed this says that some of the phone’s internals melted, and that they caused burns over the lower part of the device. It was a global HSPA+ flavor of Galaxy S III, which reportedly sparked into flames, and went down with a bang. While the phone’s screen continued working, the user claims that there was no reception, and that the device itself suffered a lot of damage along the base. Clearly, this is not the first time that we learn of exploding handsets, though it does come as a surprise that it happened to Samsung’s latest flagship, and that it occurred so soon after its official release.

Apparently, Samsung was already made aware of the issue, and it is currently investigating to learn what caused the unfortunate accident. “There have been recent online posts displaying pictures of a Samsung GALAXY S III that appears to have heat-related damage at the bottom of the device. Samsung is aware of this issue and will begin investigating as soon as we receive the specific product in question,” the company said. “Once the investigation is complete, we will be able to provide further details on the situation. We are committed to providing our customers with the safest products possible and are looking at this seriously.” Hopefully, this proves to be only an isolated event, otherwise Samsung’s image would be hurt, and sales of its flagship Galaxy S III might drop a bit.

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The New Windows Phone 8 Start Screen Detailed on Video

One of the enhancements that the new Windows Phone 8 platform will arrive on devices with is a new Start screen, aimed at increasing the personalization options that users can benefit from.

According to Microsoft, the new Start screen in Windows Phone 8 has been tailored to support each user’s specific needs. The handset won’t be a simple phone, but it will be a reflection of user’s personality, the Redmond-based software giant claims.

In the video above, you can have a look at the main changes brought to Windows Phone’s start screen, such as resizable live tiles, and more, all meant to reduce the time users spend on the phone. “Live Tiles are the heart and soul of a Windows Phone. With the new start experience, your Windows Phone is even more personal than ever before,” Microsoft notes.

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Intel Avoton in 22nm Arriving Next Year

Intel just refuses to let the Atom architecture die its rightfully deserved death. After pulling an ugly prank with the “performance is irrelevant netbook” concept three years ago, Intel is now pushing Atom strong in the server market.

Intel’s General Manager for the Cloud Infrastructure Group, Mr. Jason Waxman, presented his vision on what the micro server evolution will look like during the next year. While end-users finally understood what a hoax Atom was and are now stirring away from netbooks, Intel wants to use its “Jedi-Knight powers” to hypnotize the corporate market into buying its low-performance processor. In our humble opinion, they have a strong chance on achieving their goal in the short term, as the corporate market is usually the first victim of Intel’s marketing. There is a certain market niche for these micro servers using low-power processors, but Intel’s In-Order architecture is certainly not the best solution.

ARM’s Cortex A9 and Cortex A15 cores are simply better and consume even less power. DELL demonstrated what can be achieved with ARM architecture in a server chassis. AMD’s Out-of-Order architecture is also offering superior performance, while the GPU compute potential is exponentially higher. It will be an interesting fight on the micro server front next year.

Note:

In a recent talk I had with several scientists working for Schneider Electric or ST Micro at Grenoble INPG, I was amazed how professionals are completely mind-set on Intel. One even told me that he “wouldn’t use AMD on a keychain,” and none of them believed that AMD had better graphics or was able to fit in the same thermal envelope or thin format as Intel’s processors.

For people that don’t have time to do specific research to understand what the advantages or disadvantages of a certain processor architecture are, Intel’s marketing money will likely sway the deal towards the blue side.

I heard arguments like “AMD CPUs are hotter and break down in a few years,” and “Intel is quality, while AMD is cheap.”

The most amazing thing was that none of them had any knowledge that AMD actually had the superior architecture for seven years, between 1999 and late 2006.

Marketing campaigns seem to have a perfect impact on those that refuse to do the research (uninformed buyers) and on those that are too busy with their own research to do anything else (professionals/scientists).

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Nokia Will Allow Scalado Imaging Technology in BlackBerry 10

Last week, Finnish mobile phone maker Nokia announced plans to purchase the imaging specialist Scalado, which has been its partner for the past several years.

The move is meant to enable the vendor to deliver better camera capabilities to its Lumia users, Nokia announced. Apparently, the handset vendor is also committed to allowing Scalado partners to continue using the imaging technology from this company even after the acquisition. Nokia’s Kevin Shields, SVP of Program and Product Management, confirmed that last night at the Windows Phone 8 launch event in San Francisco, The Verge reports.

“We're doing it in such a way that Scalado can...fully deliver on commitments they've made to all of their partners, that includes RIM,” he said. Research In Motion will use the technology in its upcoming BlackBerry 10 OS, which should deliver an overall enhanced experience to its users, as can be seen in the video above.

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Nvidia’s Kepler GTX680 Overclocked at 2 GHz on EVGA’s Classified GTX 680

Professional overclockers seem to have found the secret of Kepler overclocking and Vince “k|ngp|n” Lucido managed to clock the architecture at an amazing 2002 MHz. The score reported on the ORB page is 213 points higher than what MSI’s Radeon HD 7970 Lightning achieved in the hands of the Polish overclocking team.

With a score of P16472 in 3D Mark 11 with Performance setting set, Nvidia’s Kepler managed to achieve the highest score for a single-GPU card in FutureMark’s new 3D benchmark. The card responsible for the feat is EVGA’s GTX 680 Classified with 4 GB of GDDR5 memory onboard.

The memory speed was an effective 7406 MHz, while the system’s CPU, an Intel Core i7-3960X six-core processor, was overclocked to an amazing 5.53 GHz.

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First ARM vs. Intel Benchmarks: Cortex A9 Trounces Xeon E3

Although HP stabbed Calxeda in the back today, the small start-up has something interesting to show the industry. The company is presenting the first benchmark results of its ECX-1000 processor architecture.

The test compares a Calxeda ECX-1000 SoC that has four Cortex A9 processor cores inside to an Intel E3 Xeon based on the Sandy Bridge architecture. The model of choice was a quad-core E3-1240 Xeon processor that runs at a fact 3.3 GHz frequency and consumes a maximum of 80 watts. Considering that the comparison is done with a SoC, we must add the power consumption of the chipset when calculating Xeon’s power consumption.

The results show that Calxeda’s processor is 20% slower than Intel’s Xeon, but this is offset by the amazingly low power consumption of only 5.26 watts.  Xeon uses a 19 times higher 102 watts, while working at a 300% higher clock frequency.

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FaceTime in iOS 6 Goes Cellular, But Not if Operators Don’t Play Ball

Apple says that in iOS 6 FaceTime not only works over WiFi, but also over cellular networks, “so you can make and receive FaceTime calls wherever you happen to be.”

That’s all fine and dandy, except not all carriers might be ready to allow such traffic on their airwaves, according to an analysis by MarketWatch. The market research firm notes that none of the iPhone carriers in the US were willing to comment on the matter, except one spokesman from AT&T who said the operator was "working closely with Apple on features disclosed for iOS 6, and we'll share more information with our customers as we get closer to launch." That pretty much sounds like there will at least be extra charging for this feature, if it even gets supported at all.

MarketWatch specifically outlines that FaceTime's appetite for data consumption is part of the reason why the service wasn't initially supported over cellular. Adding insult to injury, these cellular networks “were once dominated by subscribers with unlimited data,” MarketWatch says, citing industry sources.

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Windows Phone 8 with New Microsoft and Nokia Apps

Microsoft is set to bring the next-generation Windows Phone 8 platform to the market this fall, on devices coming from Nokia, Huawei, Samsung and HTC, and with a new range of applications packed inside.

Among them, we can count Audible, Microsoft's direct response to Apple's Siri, as well as Wallet, the company's own app designed specifically to enable mobile payments on the platform. Moreover, there will be a series of new Nokia applications available for all Windows Phone 8 users, including a new flavor of Nokia Music, Nokia Counters, Camera Extras and Smart Groups.

Nokia's Transport and Drive will also be enhanced for Windows Phone. All these apps will start arriving on Lumia devices as soon as next week. ith over 100,000 applications in the Windows Phone Marketplace, Windows Phone 8 users will enjoy a strong ecosystem, Microsoft stated.

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No Windows Phone 8 for Existing Devices

In addition to unveiling all the new features and capabilities that Windows Phone 8 will arrive on shelves with, Microsoft also confirmed that the platform will not be released to existing smartphones.

However, the Redmond-based software giant did commit to providing Windows Phone 7.5 users with an update that will offer them the possibility to enjoy some of the features that Windows Phone 8 will arrive on shelves with. Dubbed Windows Phone 7.8, the update will deliver to existing users the new, updated Start screen on Windows Phone 8, with resizable live tiles, as well as with access to some other features.

Windows Phone 7.5 users will also benefit from new applications in the Marketplace, Microsoft said. Unfortunately, Microsoft was not specific on what these features would involve, nor on when the update should start arriving on mobile phones. Stay tuned for more on the matter.

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Windows Phone 8 Now Official

Today, Microsoft came to the Windows Phone Summit with the next-generation Windows Phone 8 operating system in its pocket.

Just as expected, the company packed the upcoming mobile platform with a nice range of enhancements, in an attempt to attract more users to its side and to gain a larger portion of the smartphone OS market. Windows Phone 8 will arrive on shelves with a shared core with Microsoft's Windows 8 platform, something that has been long rumored to be so. It will be released this holiday, with elements common with Windows 8, including kernel, networking, multimedia, driver support. Through making this move, Microsoft ensures that devices would arrive on shelves in a wider range of form factors and price points.

Moreover, Microsoft announced that Windows Phone 8 would arrive on better hardware than before, including devices with multiple processors (the OS can support up to 64 processors on the same device). Support for more powerful GPUs will also be included in the OS, so that users would benefit from a better multimedia and gaming experience. Moreover, Windows Phone 8 will add support for microSD cards, so that users can add increased storage space into the mix as they please, and it will also add support for more screen resolutions, including WVGA, WXVGA and true 720p. Windows Phone 8 will be launched with Internet Explorer 10, which should deliver the same experience that IE10 on Windows 8 has to offer, including the same level of security.

For developers, Microsoft announced the availability of native code for developers, so that better applications and gaming would be possible. Windows Phone 8 will also arrive with a changed Start screen, with increased customization capabilities, including the possibility to change the size of live tiles. The platform will also feature built-in Nokia mapping services, including turn-by-turn navigation, and will arrive with encryption and secure boot for Enterprise users. Microsoft demoed a Nokia development device, which features a dual-core application processor, a higher resolution screen, and other hardware designed for Windows Phone 8.

However, the handset might never arrive on shelves, Microsoft said. The company also mentioned that the platform is not compatible with current Windows Phone devices.

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